“For taking me seriously.” She blinked hard and looked away. “I don’t talk about it much. Or at all, really. When I told my mother, she made me swear not to breathe a word to anyone, especially not my father, who would say it was the devil’s work. The only person I ever told was Frank Atwater, the man who used to own the store . . . and now you.”
Ethan came to stand beside her, and for a moment, they stood elbow to elbow, watching a pair of gulls skim over the harbor’s silvery surface. The tide was going out. In another few hours, the water would have retreated completely, exposing a stretch of dull gray mud, providing a veritable buffet for hungry gulls and kittiwakes.
“You never told Daniel?” Ethan asked at last.
“I could never have trusted him with something like that, given him that kind of weapon to use against me.”
Ethan studied her a moment, his expression thoughtful. “But you trusted me?”
“Yes.”
“Don’t get me wrong—I’m glad you did. But why?”
Ashlyn ducked her head, shy suddenly. “You told me that first night that you weren’t interested in your family history. But you’ve been so great about letting me pick your brain. So patient with all my questions. I guess I wanted you to understand why it’s so personal for me.”
Ethan stared at his hands where they gripped the railing, quiet again as the breeze whipped the hair back from his forehead. “Before . . . ,” he said finally, awkwardly. “I didn’t mean to make light of how you feel. I get now why you’re so invested. But it’s different for me. I’m not sure how I even got involved. I should be upstairs writing, or at least working on finals. Instead, I’m up to my ears in some romantic whodunit and I have no idea how it happened . . . except that it gave me an excuse to keep seeing you.”
His final remark caught Ashlyn off guard. “You thought you needed an excuse?”
“Didn’t I?”
The question brought a flush of warmth to her cheeks. “At first. Maybe.”
He reached up to push a lock of hair out of her eyes. “And now?”
It felt like the most natural thing in the world to lean into him, to melt into the circle of his arms, to yield when his lips touched hers. Natural and yet terrifying. It had been so long since she’d let herself surrender to anything, since she’d felt anything. Now, at a touch, all those denied sensations flooded through her, like the steps of some long-abandoned dance. The winding of his hands through her hair, the rasp of his breath against her cheek, the dizzying awareness of crumbling barriers.
This is how it starts. Exactly like this.
Ashlyn stiffened as the warning bells began to jangle. Memories of another first kiss and all that had followed. She’d been so swept up, so eager to be loved, that she’d forgotten to protect herself. And here she was, on the verge of doing it again.
Ethan must have registered her sudden misgivings. He eased out of the kiss and took a step back, looking uncertain and slightly off-balance. “I seem to remember saying something about going slow. Should I say I’m sorry?”
Ashlyn felt off-balance, too, registering both regret and relief as she looked up at him. “Are you sorry?”
“No. But I don’t want you to be either.”
She touched her fingers to her lips, recalling the delicious warmth of his mouth on hers. She wasn’t sorry, but she wasn’t sure that what had just happened was a good idea for either of them.
“Ethan . . .”
He dropped his arms, stepping back. “I know.”
She nearly reached for him, then decided she’d only be sending mixed signals. “I’m not sorry about what just happened. In fact, part of me wonders what took us so long, but I’m not sure—”
He held up a hand. “It’s okay. I get it.”
“No. You don’t. I feel what you do. But there’s a reason there hasn’t been anyone since Daniel. A lot of reasons, actually. I’m better off by myself.”
“You don’t know that. If there hasn’t been anyone, you can’t know it.”
“But I do, Ethan. I have too much baggage to bring to a relationship. And when I say baggage, I’m talking whole steamer trunks full. You deserve better than that.”
Ethan stared down at the railing, shoulders bunched tightly. “I’m not proposing, Ashlyn. I’m just asking you to keep the door open—and to let me help you carry those bags now and then. No pressure. No strings.” He reached for her hand. “You don’t even have to give me an answer. Just stick around long enough to give me a chance.”
The muffled ring of the house phone suddenly interrupted the quiet. Ethan relinquished her hand with a groan. “I need to get that. One of the professors is on baby watch and I told him I’d cover his classes for a few days if he needed me to. He said he’d call tonight.”
“Go,” Ashlyn told him, relieved to be spared a response. “I’ll be in in a minute.”
“You’re not going to sneak down the deck stairs and take off while I’m inside, right? You’ll be here when I get back?”
Ashlyn shot him a grin. “I’ll be in in a minute. Get the phone.”
She watched as he disappeared through the french doors, then saw the kitchen light go on. She took her time gathering their empty bottles and straightening the deck chairs. She needed a few minutes before she went in, to digest what had just happened.
Was she ready to let Ethan into her life? To risk loving and losing—again? It would be lying to say she hadn’t imagined it. She’d been imagining it since that first awkward moment in his study, the first uneasy inkling that something was happening between them. But nothing had come of it. They’d fallen into a kind of partnership after that—collaboration rather than courtship—and she’d convinced herself that it was for the best.
Now, suddenly, things had escalated. She had opened the door and let him in, shared a part of herself that she hadn’t even shared with Daniel. Because she trusted him. But trust was a dangerous thing. So was love. And that was where this was headed if she didn’t put the brakes on. Was she willing to take that kind of leap again? To give someone the power to shatter the small but careful life she’d managed to rebuild for herself?
And there was something else to consider. The possibility that what they felt was merely a by-product of their involvement with the books. What if they’d simply gotten caught up in Belle and Hemi’s story, feeling things that were likely to fade as quickly as they had ignited?
She had no answers, but the sun was nearly down and the temperature was dropping fast, the breeze off the harbor sharp against her cheeks. She had just stepped away from the railing when she heard the patio door open. She turned to find Ethan silhouetted in the doorway. She waited a moment, expecting an announcement, but he just stood there, his face in shadow.
“Well, is it a boy or a girl?”
“Neither. It was Zachary.”
Her stomach did a little flip at the mention of the name. “And?”
“And Marian is alive and well and living in Massachusetts, of all places.”
FOURTEEN
ASHLYN
In the happiest times of my life, I have reached for my books. In the saddest times of my life, my books have reached back.
—Ashlyn Greer, The Care & Feeding of Old Books
October 25, 1984