“It makes absolutely no sense,” she objected. “I live in Hawaii. You expect me to take your sons away from you, the only father they’ve known, when you’re still alive?”
“But I won’t be me.” I gripped her hand. “I won’t know who they are, and there’s a very good chance I couldn’t care less about them, not to mention the danger they might be exposed to if James takes them back to the States. I’d rather have them living with you in Hawaii than in California with the Donato family.”
Natalya slid her hand from mine and stood. “I leave early in the morning. Can I think about this?”
I groaned, frustrated. Then I nodded. “Take your time. We’ll talk in a couple weeks.” She’d be back for the holidays.
She leaned over me, her face less than a foot from mine. She cupped my cheek. “You should think about this, too. You may feel differently tomorrow.”
I doubted I would.
She kissed my forehead and I clasped the back of her neck, urging her lips to linger longer on my skin. She lifted her head a few inches and caressed my cheek with her thumb. “Take care of your boys, Carlos. And take care of yourself.”
“That hasn’t been an easy task lately.”
“I know. But try. I’ll be in my room downstairs if you need me, otherwise I’ll see you in the morning.” She moved to the door, her bare feet a whisper across the floor. “Good night,” she said.
“Good night, Nat.”
CHAPTER 5
JAMES
Present Day
June 22
Los Gatos, California
James should have known returning to his childhood home would reward him with a restless night. He floats in and out of sleep. The cold, deathly quiet interior of a house that’s too large for the three of them keeps him awake. So does his overactive mind.
He tosses in the bed, the sheets tangling around his legs. He worries about his sons adjusting to their new country. He’s concerned they’ll never see him as the father they once had. He’s paranoid he’ll hear Phil walking down the hallway. And the person he wants to talk to the most, the one he used to talk to every day, is the one person he can’t call.
James groans, rolling to his feet. He pads barefoot through the house, triple-checking the locks, then flips the thermostat switch. The fan rumbles to life. Vents creak, stirring the air, erasing the oppressive stillness in the house. Maybe the white noise will help him rest. Remarkably, he misses the ocean outside his bedroom windows.
He misses Aimee.
A memory moves gracefully through his mind the way Aimee did while in his arms as they danced. And suddenly, she’s back there, in his arms, as he spins them around the crowded floor at Nick and Kristen’s wedding. Her smile is dazzling and meant just for him. “I love you,” she tells him.
He leans in to kiss her and the clock in the dining room chimes off the hour. James tenses, then sighs, a frustrated sound of longing. He punches the wall. Not hard enough to do any damage, but with enough strength to bring on the sharp sting of reminder that he is alone in this new life. He doesn’t have anyone he can rely upon, or lean on, not in the way it had been with Aimee for most of his life.
God, I miss her.
He rubs his sternum with the base of his palm to relieve the ache and returns to the guest bedroom where he’s been sleeping, or trying to sleep. He powers on his laptop and launches the browser. He should go to LoopNet and search for commercial properties. But what’s the point? He has no desire to paint, and without painting, he doesn’t have any art to show and sell, which means he must find a job. His interest in Donato Enterprises that Thomas sold on his behalf is enough for them to live off for now, but the money won’t last forever.
James brings up the career-search website Ladders and stares at the home page. He graduated from Stanford with a double major in finance and art history, and because of his father’s expectations of him in the family’s import-and-export business, he completed Stanford’s Spanish-language program. Thanks to his experience at Donato, he’s more than qualified to apply for upper managerial positions. He can also return to school and get credentialed to teach high school or college-level art courses.
Both ideas sound utterly unappealing.
James opens a new browser window and finds himself staring at the satellite view of Los Gatos. He has two sons to support, needs to find a job, wants a new house, and definitely needs to exchange his car. He really should get back into painting. But he doesn’t have any motivation to do anything other than look at the house he once owned with Aimee. This isn’t the first time he’s checked out the house, a three-bedroom, two-bath bungalow in the heart of downtown. He doubts it’ll be the last.
He zooms into the photo until the roofline fills his screen. He doesn’t recognize the car in the driveway. The sycamores in the backyard are overgrown and the grass left to brown. His index finger erratically taps the edge of the laptop. He doesn’t like how the yard has deteriorated and he wonders if the same has happened inside their house.
He and Aimee were supposed to raise their children in that house. They had grand plans to expand—add on a second story and push out the back. And they were supposed to fall more deeply in love as they grew old there together. Instead, she married another man and now has a daughter.
What did she name her little girl?
He swears at himself and slams shut the laptop.
Thank God she doesn’t live there anymore. He’s not sure how he’d react with her there with another man. But damn, he feels like a stalker every time he Googles her, or the house. Or her café. He can’t help it. The same craving that drove him to paint now drives him to learn everything he can about Aimee.
He doesn’t deserve her and deep down he knows he must stop obsessing over her, but he can’t help that either. He wants her back, needs her back, as much as his body needs air to breathe.
After an early-morning walk with the boys through the reserve behind the house, James finds himself on the sidewalk outside Aimee’s Café. He didn’t intend to stop here, but the nearest parking spot was three doors down and the boys are hungry. Starving, rather, as Marc pointed out during their excursion. It’s well past breakfast time.
A sign squeaks overhead and James looks up. He recognizes the logo instantly. A coffee mug under a tornado-swirl of steam. He’d scribbled the logo, a crude drawing nowhere near what he could have designed. he had wanted to spark Aimee’s interest to open a restaurant like he planned to open an art gallery. They’d both been working for their parents at the time. He never intended for her to use that rough sketch, but it touches him profoundly. It’s as though she wove pieces of him into her dream.