* * *
Lincoln returned to the main house—shaken. He had no idea what the impact of seeing Desiree again would be like. He’d imagined it hundreds of times, but the reality was something completely different.
The raw hurt and anger was still in her eyes, in the stiffness of her shoulders, the chill of her words. Like a fool he’d romanticized their meeting. In his mind’s eye he saw them shedding the past, sharing words of forgiveness and ultimately finding their way back into each other’s lives.
It was obvious that was not to be. Then why was she here? To pour salt in his still-open wounds? To prove to him that she still didn’t need or want him in her life as she’d said that night?
Maybe it was best that he leave until she was gone, he thought as he opened the front door.
“We have a problem, Mr. D.,” Terri said, the instant he crossed the threshold.
“What is it?”
She handed him a printout.
He looked over the figures and frowned. “Did you notify Ms. Armstrong?” he asked a bit too quickly.
“No. I thought I should speak to you first. When her friend Rachel Givens made all of the arrangements she was so insistent that she was going to take care of everything and that Ms. Armstrong was not to be bothered.” She pursed her lips and folded her arms. “So what do we do?”
Lincoln stuck the printout in his back pants pocket. “Wait a day or two and try to put the costs through again. If there is still a problem, let me know.”
“Okay,” she said, making the word three syllables.
“I’ll be in the back office.”
He walked off and shut the door behind him, pulling the paper from his pocket as he crossed the room to his desk. He sat down in the swivel chair, a treat to himself when he’d closed on the property. He spun the chair to face the window, and gazed out onto the cabins beyond. What were Desiree and Rachel trying to pull?
Chapter 8
“What?”
“You heard me, Rae. Lincoln owns this place lock, stock and barrel!” She pressed her fingers to her temple in an attempt to massage away the throbbing that was building by degrees.
“Desi, I swear, I had no idea.”
Desiree grumbled something unintelligible. “I know how much you’ve been lobbying for me and Lincoln to get back together, but this!”
“Desiree Armstrong, I know good and well you don’t think I set this up.”
Desiree squeezed her eyes shut for a moment and sighed. “I don’t know what to think at the moment. Every limb is shaking and my brain is on scramble.”
“Look, if you want to leave I’ll come up and get you.”
Desiree was silent.
“Well, do you?”
“No,” she snapped. “I’m not going to let him run me off.”
Rachel breathed a sigh of relief. “Well…maybe it’s for the best, you know.”
“No, I don’t know,” she snapped and rolled her eyes at no one in particular. “But like Grandma always said, everything happens for a reason.”
“The reason is pretty clear to me.”
“Oh, really? And what might that be?”
“You two were destined to meet again. Let’s be real. What are the odds that you would want to come to Sag Harbor and the only available place to stay is owned by your ex-fiancé? That’s the kinda stuff that only happens in books and made-for-TV movies.”
Desiree had to chuckle despite herself. “Yeah, I guess you’re right. It is kind of freaky.”
“For real.”
They were thoughtful for a moment.
“So, what are you going to do, girl? You can’t stay holed up in your room. You’re bound to run into him again.”
“I know. I suppose I’ll deal with it…some kind of way.”
“Desi…I know the subject of you and Lincoln has been off-limits. But just between us, do you still, you know…still care about him?”
“I’ve never stopped caring about him,” she quietly confessed, then stretched out on the bed. She crossed her bare ankles. “I think about Lincoln almost every waking hour of my days. I dream of him at night. I hear his voice in my head.”
“So why, Des? Why have you stayed away? Why won’t you tell him how you feel?”
Desiree swallowed over the knot in her throat as the old pain rose from her belly.
“Because…” Her voice cracked like fine china falling to the floor. “I don’t ever want to love and lose like that again.”
* * *
“Well, where is she?” Carl demanded.
Cynthia blocked the entrance to her apartment door. She placed one hand on her hip.
“I don’t know where she is,” she said, enunciating every word.
Carl adjusted his navy silk tie and clenched his teeth. “I don’t believe you.” He pointed his index finger in her face. “You know where she is and I want you to tell me!”
“If you don’t leave now I’m calling the police.”
Carl opened his mouth to say something but stopped, then abruptly turned and left.
Cynthia slammed the door and went straight for the phone. She dialed the operator.
“Yes, could I please have the number for Honey Child Accessories?” She took a pencil from the desk drawer, listened to the recorded voice and jotted down the number on a paper napkin. She hung up and dialed the number.
“Thank you for calling Honey Child…”
Cynthia listened and waited to leave her message after the tone. For several moments she sat there staring into space.
* * *
Carl got into his Mercedes and tore away from the curb. Cynthia was lying, he inwardly fumed. There had to be a way to find out where Desiree was. She couldn’t have vanished into thin air.
Why would she leave without saying a word? She owed him. He knew he should have gone to see her in the hospital. But he called every day to check on her progress and then one day he was told she was gone. He should have forced himself to cross the hospital’s threshold, but he had a phobia about hospitals ever since he was eight years old and his mother forced him to visit his sick grandmother.
She had tubes everywhere, he recalled, and monitors that beeped eerily in the stark white room. She looked like a ghost beneath the stiff sheets. Her chest barely rose and fell and he could almost hear the drip, drip of the clear fluid that coursed through the plastic tubes into the thin blue veins that stood out against her parchment-like skin.
“Go on, Carl,” his mother urged in a hushed hospital whisper. “Say hello to your grandma.” She pushed him forward and he stumbled against the metal frame of the bed and suddenly his grandmother opened her eyes. They were black and sunken in her head. The rims were bloodred and watery. She reached out and grabbed his hand with fingers that felt like slivers of ice. Carl screamed and ran from the room. From that day to this he’d never set foot in another hospital room.