The Beach House (32 page)

An Excerpt from Carly's Gift

One

Sixteen years was
a long time to hate someone.

David Montgomery leaned against a dogwood tree and gazed at the large antebellum-style house across from him. He drew himself deeper into his cashmere overcoat in an attempt to ward off the late October cold. The soft fabric caressed the back of his neck, a gentle reminder of how far he'd come in the almost two decades since he'd called this inconsequential corner of the world home. Back then he'd faced the winters in coarse wool, faded blue jeans and long underwear from the JCPenney catalog. Now he thought nothing of paying what his father had earned in a month as a tractor mechanic for one shirt from his tailor on Savile Row.

Jesus, what idiot urge had brought him here? What could he have been thinking? What had he hoped to gain? He straightened and took a step to leave.

Peace of mind, an insistent inner voice answered, stopping him, rooting him with its teasing promise—to be rid of her once and for all, to bury her in his past, someone no more important than anything or anyone who'd come into his life during the eighteen years he'd lived in Baxter, Ohio.

Conflicting emotions had assailed him since he'd received word of his father's accident. The woman on the other end of the line had insisted his father couldn't last the night. David caught the first plane for Florida. Arriving twelve hours after the call, he'd expected to find his father gone already, with nothing left for him to do but make the funeral arrangements, but he hadn't taken into consideration what a tough old bird his father was. It took Jim Montgomery two weeks before he finally let go of the difficult life he'd lived. Fourteen days of sitting at his father's bedside had given David far too much time to think, to remember.

It wasn't as if Carly still haunted him every hour of every day. After he'd settled in England and his career had taken off, there had been weeks, even months, when he hadn't thought about her at all. Then, invariably, something would come along that triggered a memory—a song, a picture in a magazine—and thoughts of her would consume him.

The sound of a car drew his attention. He glanced down the narrow, tree-lined road and saw a maroon SUV approaching. There was a woman behind the wheel; on the passenger side a small dog had its nose pressed to the front window. David saw a flash of dark auburn hair before the car turned into the driveway of the house he'd been watching—her house. His eyes lighted in quick triumph. How wonderfully fitting—the woman who as a young girl had vowed she was going to set the New York art world on its ear not only still lived in the same small town where she'd always lived, but she also drove the ultimate, flagrant symbol of suburbia. But then, he reasoned with a stab of bitterness, she undoubtedly needed a car like that to ferry around the three kids she'd had with good old Ethan.

David shuddered at his thoughts. What made him still care? She was nothing to him. He'd done everything he'd ever dreamed. More. And she'd done nothing, gone nowhere.

So why was he the one standing out in the cold?

 

Carly Hargrove shifted the cocker spaniel she was carrying to her left hip and unlocked the kitchen door. When she was inside, she gently put the old dog on the floor by his food. “I'll get your blanket out of the dryer, Muffin,” she said, running her hand over his head, then pausing to scratch his ear.

As soon as she'd arranged the dog's bed, she went to the hall closet to hang up her coat. The long car ride she'd taken after dropping the kids off at school had managed to eat up a few hours, but it had done nothing to ease her restlessness.

She set her purse on the closet shelf, yanked off her knit hat and ran her fingers through her hair, fluffing it back to its normal unruly volume. She really ought to do something to calm some of the frizz, if for no other reason than to please Ethan. He hadn't actually said anything about her appearance, but he was quick to point out how attractive other women looked in sleek hairstyles.

At times her heart ached for the man she'd married, her pain wrapped in a ribbon of guilt. Mostly she just went on, letting one day merge into the next without conscious thought, reveling in the joy her children brought her, careful not to think about what her life would be like when they were grown and she and Ethan were alone.

And it had worked.

At least it had until three days ago when she'd run into Horace Manly at the PTA meeting and had been blindsided by the news that David was accompanying his father's casket back to Baxter to arrange for a memorial service.

Carly drew in a deep breath and purposefully closed the closet door. Fear of the unknown had begun to insinuate itself into everything she did and thought and she was being dragged down by it. She started up the stairs to make the beds, seeking comfort in the familiar and mindless action.

Sixteen years was a long time, especially in the life of someone like David Montgomery. When he thought about her, it was undoubtedly with a sigh of relief that she hadn't weighed him down when he'd reached for his star.

If he even remembered her.

She tossed king-sized pillows onto the chair beside the bed and smoothed the comforter. Did she really hope that he'd forgotten her?

The lives of everyone she loved depended on that very thing.

With mechanical movements, Carly finished tidying the master bedroom and moved on to her daughter's room. Bending to pick up Andrea's nightgown, she heard the front doorbell.

She jerked upright. It was probably only the mailman, she told herself, angry at how easily she could be shaken.

She started toward the stairs.

The instant her foot hit the landing and she saw the shadowed form of a man through the beveled glass of the front door, she knew. She considered slipping back upstairs but then thought how much more dangerous it would be to have David come back when Ethan or one of the kids were home. If she had to see him at all, it was better that she do it alone.

For days she had tried to imagine what it would be like to see him again. In her mind they'd already had a dozen conversations. He'd been the focus of her thinking when she drove the kids to school, when she stopped for groceries, and when she was lying beside Ethan at night listening to his breathing.

She opened the door wide, refusing to use it as a shield. She wasn't prepared for the man who stood in front of her. There was no semblance of the boy Carly had known—the mouth that had once been so quick to smile was now hard and tight; the wonder and mischief that had shone from his eyes were gone, replaced with a chilling blue anger.

“Hello, David,” she said. “It's been a long time,” she added, an overwhelming sorrow settling through her.

“Yes, it has,” he answered slowly, openly studying her.

“I'm sorry about your father. When he moved away, I missed seeing him.” More than anything she'd missed the tie, however tenuous, he'd given her to David. “I heard you were coming and I . . .”

A corner of his mouth raised in a mocking smile. “And you were wondering if I'd stop by to catch up on old times,” he finished for her.

“I admit it crossed my mind once or twice.”

“Did you think I could come back to my old home town and not look in on you and Ethan? Come on, Carly. Ethan was my best friend. You were . . .” He shrugged. “I seem to have forgotten just what you were to me, Carly.”

She folded her arms across her chest. “Time will do that.”

“You seem to be doing all right for yourself.”

A too-bright smile preceeded her cheerful, “I've been lucky.”

“I doubt luck had anything to do with it.”

An awkward silence followed. “What do you want, David?”

“I don't know,” he admitted.

“You must have some idea or you wouldn't have come.”

“Is that how you see things now? Every question has a simple answer?”

“I'm sorry,” she offered helplessly, knowing it wasn't what he wanted or needed but unable to stop herself. “I never meant to hurt—”

“Jesus Christ, Carly, after all the time we were together don't you think I deserve a little more than that? Both then and now?”

She held her hands out in a pleading gesture. “That was sixteen years ago. If you came here hoping to find me wallowing in self-pity because I married Ethan and missed out on the opportunity to be the wife of a famous writer, you wasted your time, David. I may not cross oceans to spend my winters on a Greek island, but I'm happy. Can you say as much?”

David smiled wryly and rubbed his hand across his chin. “How is it you know so much about me?”

“Let it go, David,” she begged him.

“I wish to hell I could,” he admitted with a sigh. He stared at her for what seemed an interminable time as if searching for something more to say. Finally, wordlessly, he turned to leave.

Carly watched him walk away. Instead of setting him free all those years ago, she'd imprisoned him in the same tangled web of lies that she'd spun around herself. She'd made a hundred promises to David and then sent him a letter that broke every one. Now she had a chance to set things right.

“David?” she called, ignoring the terrible risk she was taking to settle her debt. He stopped and looked back at her over his shoulder. The wind caught his hair, brushing it across his forehead, giving her a glimpse of the twenty-two-year-old boy she'd once loved and believed as necessary to her existence as the air she breathed.

“Yes?”

“Don't go.” For the first time in years she would do something unplanned and uncalculated. Something for herself.

“What's the point, Carly?” He retraced his steps.

She hesitated. “Why did you come, David?”

With an abrupt, angry movement, he grabbed her, his fingers digging into her arms. “To rid myself of you. I don't want to think about you anymore.” He brought his face menacingly close to hers. “I don't want to remember what it felt like to love you. I don't want to care that you could throw away everything we had.” With a look of disgust, he released her and took a step backward. “God— I swore I wouldn't let this happen.”

“There's so much you don't know,” she said. And so much she couldn't explain. “I was young and scared, and I really believed I was doing what was best for everyone.”

“Are you telling me you regret marrying Ethan?”

“I don't let myself think about things like that.”

“What were you afraid of, Carly? Me? Did you think I would go off the deep end if you told me you'd been sleeping with Ethan while I was in New York and that you were pregnant with his child? Or did you think I'd tell you to get lost, so you figured you'd grab Ethan while you could?” He swept the hair off his forehead with his left hand, his wedding ring gleaming in the morning sun.

Carly stiffened her spine, bringing herself up to her full five feet six inches. “I can't give you the answers you want, David, but if you give us a chance, we can be friends.” He started to say something and she put her hand up to stop him. “Friends are infinitely easier to forget than lovers.” When he didn't immediately answer, she went on. “Isn't that why you said you came here today, to find a way to forget me?”

“It's a little hard to think of you as a friend after all the years of hating you.”

He could have hit her and it would have hurt less. “Come inside. I'll fix some coffee and we can talk.” She stepped out of the doorway. “Or do you drink tea now?” Somewhere in the back of her mind a warning sounded. Gathering details of the life he had now would only add color to the canvas of her memories.

“I'll have coffee,” he said, stepping inside the foyer. “Americans don't know how to make a proper cup of tea.” A self-conscious grin played at the corner of his mouth. “I didn't mean that the way it sounded, it's simply a fact.”

She'd always dreamed of going to England, or France, or China, longing to see for herself how other people lived. “Do you like living in London?” It was a dumb question. If he didn't like where he was living, why would he be there?

“Yes.”

“I read somewhere that your wife is English.” She knew precisely where she'd read about Victoria Montgomery, in an upscale magazine called
European Life.
The article had been about the movers and shakers of London society and had included a photograph and several paragraphs on the bestselling author David Montgomery and his stunning wife, the former Victoria Digby, daughter of Lord and Lady Something-or-other.

“Is this what you had in mind, Carly, a cup of coffee and some idle chitchat? If it is, I'm not interested.”

She sighed. “This isn't going to work if you don't bend a little, David.”

After several seconds he took off his coat and handed it to her. “My agent tells me there are times I can be a real stiff-necked son of a bitch,” he said in lieu of an apology.

Carly held the coat on her arm while she reached for a hanger. The coat was soft and obviously expensive and, for an unguarded moment, she thought about slipping her arms into the sleeves and letting David's lingering warmth envelop her. When she was in high school, she'd lived in David's varsity jacket and could still remember the incredible feeling of intimacy that had come over her when she'd be sitting in the middle of class and her own body heat would release a trace of his cologne.

Forcefully shoving the memory to the back of her mind, she hung his coat next to hers and closed the closet door. “We don't have much time,” she said. “I never know when one of the kids will decide to come home for lunch, instead of eating at the cafeteria.”

“That wouldn't bother me.”

“They can't see you here,” she answered, a little too quickly.

His eyes narrowed. “What are you afraid of, Carly?”

For once she could hide behind the truth. “I'm not afraid of anything. It's simply that when Ethan found out you were coming back, he asked me not to see you. I'd just as soon he didn't know you were here.”