Second Chances (29 page)

Gavin was home.  And he had found her in the one place she was pretty sure she was never supposed to be, judging by the look on his face.

“What are you doing in here?”  He practically snarled the words.

Hannah had been ready to be pleasant.  She had been ready to let him make up with her.  She had even considered continuing their love making here at home, just to be nice, just because he clearly needed it, just because he seemed so much happier and relaxed.  It had nothing to do with her feelings at all.  And then he had to open his mouth and ruin everything.

“Seriously?  You haven’t spoken to me in nearly a day and those are the first words you want to utter to me?  What about…thank you, Hannah, for the lovely weekend.  Or maybe…thank you, Hannah for encouraging me to follow my dreams.  How about even…hey, Hannah, I had no idea you were artsy.”  Her hands were on her hips as she spoke, but she took them off she could walk over to him angrily and show him just how upset she was by the way her arms flew around at her sides.

Eyebrows raised, Gavin watched as Hannah made her way to him, stopping only when they were nose to nose…which was really more like nose to mid chest.  He was going to speak, but before he could, Hannah interrupted again. 

“I’m pretty sure that you have broken at least three common courtesies that you are so quick to harp on, in the last 24 hours alone.  Want me to count them out for you, chief?”  Her hands were on her hips again and she was leaning closer to him with each word, in emphasis of how angry she was.

His mouth twitched.  Hannah saw it and she leaned back.  She crossed her arms over her chest and tapped her foot.  His mouth twitched again.  It took her a moment, but suddenly she realized that he was trying not to smile.  She bit her cheek for a moment while she studied him.  “You aren’t mad?”

Gavin picked her up and held her close.  “Oh, I was mad.  That was my knee jerk reaction.  And then you laid into me.”  He shook his head at her.  “No one speaks to me like you do.”

“Well, maybe they should,” Hannah said with a bit of a smirk on her face.  It felt so good to be close to him again.

“Nobody but you could get away with it.”  He poked her on the end of her nose and bent to give it a light kiss.

“Why is that?”  Hannah asked breathlessly, eyes wide with hope and curiosity.

“Simple.  It’s because…”

And just as he was about to pour out his heart to her, despite the lousy timing and the way the conversation began, Madge called to them from just outside the door.  “There’s a delivery for you, Mr. Meyers?”  She looked concerned, but before anyone else could say or do anything…he had rushed from the studio, leaving Hannah hanging once again.

It was a boat.  The delivery was a boat.  After Gavin rushed from the room, Hannah had to know what was more important than finishing their conversation.  She found him out in the driveway.  He was standing there with a boat, a huge, hulking sailboat.

Gavin was standing proudly on the deck.  How he had managed to climb up there so quickly, she couldn’t even imagine.  He beamed as he stood, checking it all out, looking around, touching the boat and examining it almost as carefully as he had her just a few nights before.  She tingled at the memory.

“So, what do you think?”  He was so excited he was practically giddy. 

Hannah walked around the boat.  The keel was huge.  As little as she knew about sailing, she already knew that they would need a dingy to get close to shore with that keel.  She continued around and that’s when she saw it.

“Oh my word!”  She was shocked.

“What?”  He tried to look innocent, but it was no use.

“You bought
that
boat!”  She wrapped her arms around her body.  He bought the boat they spent the weekend on and she was going to have to look at it and remember…all the time.  It was too much.  “I…I don’t even know what to say.”  And with that, she turned on her heels and marched into the house.

Gavin stared after her.  Part of him wanted to run after her, but the reality was that he had to handle the boat at the moment.  So he gave the driver directions for the boat launch.  And off they went.

Just over two hours later, while Hannah stood staring out the window from the bedroom, the sail appeared and the rest of the boat with it.  And Gavin masterfully pulled up to the dock.  He secured the boat on several of the cleats.  When he finished he looked up at the windows.  She wondered if he could see her there, gazing down at him.  She wondered even more what would happen next.

They didn’t speak until dinner, and then only because Gavin asked Hannah to pass the broccoli.  He had given her the afternoon to get back to herself.  He left her to be artsy or bake or read or drink tea or any of the hundreds of little things he’d noticed the past few weeks that she did to self soothe.  Clearly, none of it had worked.  Maybe he should have sought her out.  For the life of him, he couldn’t understand why she was upset.  He kept playing it over in his mind, kept trying to see it from her perspective, but still he came up with nothing. 

Hannah cleaned up after dinner in silence.  Gavin stuck it out.  She had to give him credit for that.  She had imagined that he might go hide in his office.  Instead, he worked alongside her like normal.  He tried to joke with her like normal.  It was obvious that he wanted life back to normal.  Hannah…wasn’t there yet.  She was too busy trying to figure out what he was thinking.  And she knew that it would take a while longer to find that out.  Once the girls were done with their nightly routine, they would talk.  She was certain.

When she knocked and entered the study that night, Gavin was ready for her.  He was sitting on the couch, instead of his usual seat.  And when she walked in, he motioned for her to join him.  “Hannah,” he began slowly, “I don’t understand why you are upset with me.  Can you help me?  Can you explain why you are so bothered?”  And then, like the businessman he was, he sat quietly and waited.

Familiar with this tactic, Hannah tried to figure out how to explain all her conflicting emotions without admitting her feelings.  She breathed deeply a couple of times.

“Listen, I’m happy for you.  Obviously, you have decided to pursue your dreams and move to the Caribbean.  I’m going to work on being happy for you.  I’m just sad for me and the girls.  I like it here.  We are finally settled.  We were finally feeling safe again.”  She looked up at him and gave him a wicked smile.  “And I really enjoyed the use of the studio.”

Gavin chuckled.  “Okay.  So that’s it?  That’s what’s bothering you?”  He reached behind the couch to the sofa table and grabbed a hot tea that he had made for her in her favorite mug.  “Here.”

Taking the offered mug, Hannah nearly smiled.  “Oh, did you make this for me?”  He smiled and nodded.  “You are so big.” 

Finally she was teasing him again.  Everything was going to be okay.  He was so happy to see her mood change that he didn’t even care that she ever so smoothly changed the subject as well.  He never had a chance to finish his thought, to correct her thinking.  Suddenly he was distracted by the twinkle in her eye, her playful demeanor.

“So,” Hannah began, “is there a chance that you’ll be teaching me to sail, since you are now the proud owner of a sailboat?”

Excited to share his passion with the woman he had so quickly grown to love, Gavin grabbed her hand and dragged her down the path to the dock.  Soon he was going over the basics of the sailboat, teaching her the proper terminology.  And Hannah tried to concentrate, tried to be interested while in her mind she was trying to figure out what to do next.

In the evenings, Gavin and the girls would play out on the sailboat while Hannah made dinner.  On the weekends they would spend all day out on the water, exploring every last bit of Lake Norman.  It was perfect.  And while she had decided to enjoy each day, when she let herself relax too much, she would feel that twinge, that gentle reminder just beneath the surface, telling her she was living on borrowed time. 

Though their time together was pleasant, Gavin could feel her holding back.  And he was confused.  Still, everything in him believed that if he
was patient enough, if he just kept plugging along, everything would come together.  Still, after they put the girls to bed on a Friday night, he felt compelled to talk to her before they spent a weekend camping and sailing on the lake.  It was going to be their first overnight since the trip.  He wanted it to be comfortable.

“Hannah,” he began.  “Is everything okay?  You’ve seemed so distant…”

“Of course,” she answered pasting on a happy face.

“You seem lost in thought half the time, like you aren’t really with us.”  Gavin folded his hands on the desk. 

He had stopped wearing his business suits and had recently adopted a more casual style…polo shirts and khakis.  Hannah rather liked it.  She had also noticed that he now had tan lines on his face from wearing sunglasses.  It was a good look for him.  He looked healthy and happy.  In her heart, she knew the Caribbean was the right move.  It was just hard letting go of her dreams.  It was even harder admitting that out loud, but maybe it was best to get these things out in the open.  Then she would at least have a time frame.

Hannah took a breath.  “I have been wondering how much time we have?”

Gavin looked puzzled.  “For what?”

“Before you leave and I have to find somewhere else to live.”  She heaved a sigh of relief.  At least it was out in the open.

He slammed back in his chair.  “You aren’t coming with me?  We aren’t going as a family?”  He was spluttering and almost at a loss for words.  It never occurred to him in all his planning that she might not come.

“You thought I was…you just expected we were all going?”  She wore a confused look on her face.

“I asked you about living my dream with me…”  His voice trailed off and he shrugged as if that was the best explanation.

Hannah smiled now, more at ease.  “You said live the dream for a weekend.  The weekend is over, chief.”

“You know, if we move to the Caribbean and live on a boat, every day could be the weekend…” Gavin leaned toward her once more.

And somehow, looking into his amazing clear blue eyes that reminded her too much of the water they had sailed and swam in, Hannah heard herself respond in a way she never imagined.  “Let’s see how this weekend goes first.”  Yet even as she spoke those words, she knew that if he pushed her, she would pack up the girls and go.  Caribbean Gavin could prove to be the love of her life. 

Since he had made his intentions known, the weekend felt so much different.  Hannah paid a lot more attention to his
instruction, especially the parts she truly deemed important…like the knots.

“Let’s see your Flemish knot,” Gavin said before they had even pulled away from the dock.  “You’ll be using this one a lot.” 

And Hannah very carefully performed the double eight knot that he had asked to see.  “I’ll get faster,” she assured him. 

“Do you remember what this knot is for?”  Gavin gently tested her. 

Sighing, Hannah admitted she didn’t.  “Refresh my memory, please.”

Gavin sat beside her and made the knot in the halyard.  “This is a stopping knot.  It’s great because it will hold the sheet in place.  It won’t be able to back out of here.  More importantly, unlike some knots that are impossible to untie and therefore have to be cut out, wasting rope, this one can be undone and retied again elsewhere.” 

The way that he was explaining it, the loving manner with which he demonstrated all of it, he was talking about more than sailing.  There was something special about this knot.  He saw a correlation with their relationship.  She smiled as she thought about it.

Soon they were headed out on the lake.  It was going to be the first time the girls experienced life on anchor.  And in all honesty, for them it wasn’t going to be a big change.  They would still have a bathroom to use.  They would still take a bath.  It was the adults who would have to watch the water stores more carefully.  And it was the adults who would have to make the biggest adjustment in their diets.

The first evening, the girls were swimming around the boat with Gavin while Hannah grilled their meal.  She was pretty proud of herself.  She had made aluminum pouches of individualized meals.  There were layered ingredients consisting of thinly sliced potatoes, onions, chicken, broccoli and carrots, all seasoned with white wine, salt, pepper, and garlic. 

“Is it really dinner that smells so good?”  Gavin asked in surprise as he climbed the swim ladder behind the girls. 

“Of course,” Hannah replied smiling.

She helped the girls towel dry and sent them down below to change and hang up their wet suits.  The minute she turned around, Gavin was there…mere inches from her.  His bronzed skin glistened from the water.  His hair looked charmingly tousled from the brisk towel drying.  And then he leaned in suddenly, impulsively, and kissed her on the neck.

“What was that for?”  She asked, pleasantly surprised.