One Winter's Sunset

CHAPTER TWO

IN THE SMALL but cozy bedroom where she’d spent many a childhood summer, a blank computer screen and blinking cursor stared back at Emily, waiting for her to fill it with words. Something it had been doing for the past twenty minutes. She’d type a word, backspace, delete. Type another. Backspace, delete. What had happened to her? In college, she had been able to write short stories like a chicken producing eggs. Now when she finally had time and space to write, she couldn’t manage to get a word onto the page. This was her dream, and all she could do was stare at it.

Her focus had deserted her. Heck, it had left town months ago. She needed to get her priorities in line again. Somehow.

A light fall breeze whispered through the couple inches of open window, dancing with the white lace curtains and casting sparkles of sunshine on the white-and-blue space. The low sounds of a radio playing downstairs, probably while Carol worked, made for a harmony with the chatter of the birds outside. It was a serene, perfect setting, the kind of place any writer would love to have. Well, any writer without writer’s block, that was.

Emily crossed to her bag, and tugged out the envelope she’d tucked into the front pocket. Melissa’s last note, mailed to her, and she presumed, also to the other girls.

Dear Gingerbread Girls,

I’m laughing as I write that little nickname for us. Remember those crazy summers we had at the Gingerbread Inn? All those adventures in town and late at night? It’s no wonder someone dubbed us the Gingerbread Girls. Heck, we were always together, thick as thieves, Carol used to say.

I miss that. I know we’ve all got older and have gone on with our lives, but oh how I miss those summers, those connections. That’s the one big regret I have now. That we couldn’t figure out a time for a reunion and now it’s too late. I won’t get to see you all one last time.

Promise me you’ll get together. Promise me you’ll keep the Gingerbread Girls alive. Promise me you’ll all follow your dreams, the ones we talked about that day by the lake. I still have my rock. Sometimes I hold it and think back to that day.

You are all the best friends I could ever hope for and I will be forever grateful for the summers we spent together.

Melissa

Tears blurred the letter in Emily’s eyes. She drew in a shaky breath, then propped the letter beside the computer, holding it in place with a small oval stone that she had kept with her for the past fifteen years. Somewhere out there, two other matching stones sat in drawers or on desks, or somewhere. Did Andrea and Casey see the stones the same way? Did they remember that day?

The women had fallen out of touch over the years, separated by busy lives and families. Maybe it was time to get the Gingerbread Girls back together. Before Emily could think twice, she shot off a quick email to both Andrea and Casey, including her cell phone number and an invitation to come to the inn. She left off the news about the For Sale sign, because she hoped to find a way to talk Carol out of that choice.

And in the process, she would write this book, damn it. She would follow her dreams. Emily needed this do over. Needed it...a lot.

A knock sounded on the door. Emily got to her feet and opened the bedroom door to Carol. “Good timing,” Emily said with a laugh. “I’ve got writer’s block on the first word.”

“I’ve got some coffee and cookies that should help with that,” Carol said. “But first, there’s someone here to see you.”

“Someone here to see me?” How could that be? She’d told no one where she was going, and had only sent the email to the other girls a couple minutes ago. Unless they were in the driveway when they got it, there was no way either Andrea or Casey could show up that fast. No one else would be able to track her down so quickly. No one but—

“Cole.”

Carol grinned. “How’d you guess? Yes, he’s here. Waiting in the parlor to talk to you.” Then her good friend’s face fell. “Are you okay, honey? Do you want me to tell him to come back later?”

“No.” Emily knew Cole and knew he wouldn’t take no for an answer. The qualities that had made him a successful businessman had made him a terrible husband. Win at all costs. That pretty much summed up Cole. When they’d been dating, she’d seen that attitude as one that meant he wanted her and their life together more than anything in the world. But she’d been wrong. What Cole wanted, more than anything or anyone, was success, regardless of the cost to attain it. Then as the years went on, he’d employed that approach to arguments, major decisions, everything. She’d had enough and walked away.

But Cole refused to get the message.

“I’ll talk to him,” Emily said. “Just give me a minute.”

“Sure, hon. Take whatever time you need. I’ll talk his ear off. Might as well make him suffer.” Carol let out a little laugh, then put an understanding hand on Emily’s arm. “If it helps, he looks miserable.”

Emily thanked Carol, then shut the door. She faced her reflection in the oval mirror that hung over the antique dresser. She was still clad in a pair of pale blue flannel pajamas, her hair in a messy topknot on her head, and her face bare of makeup. She looked a million miles away from Cole Watson’s wife.

Perfect.

Without doing so much as tucking a wayward strand of hair back into place, Emily spun on her sock-clad feet and headed out of the room and down to the parlor. She no longer cared what she looked like when she saw Cole. She was no longer going to be the woman who stressed about every crease, every spot, who worried about her public image as the CEO’s wife. She was going to be who she was—before.

Cole stood by the window, his back to her. He wore a tailored dark blue suit that emphasized his broad shoulders, tapered waist, the hours he spent in the gym. His dark hair was getting a little long and now brushed against the back of his collar. Her heart skipped a beat when she saw him, just as it always had. That was one thing that had never changed—her attraction to him. Her hormones had never listened to her brain.

He turned as she approached, even though she’d made almost no sound entering the room. “What are you doing here?” he said, or rather, barked.

So much for some kind of tender moment. What had she expected, really? They were no longer together, and maybe someday her heart would get the message. “How did you find me?”

“There is only one place in the world that you have talked about missing, and it’s this place. I took a chance that’s where you’d go, and I was right.”

Well, he’d listened to her talk about the inn. Too bad he hadn’t listened to any of the other problems between them. “Where I am and what I’m doing is no longer your concern, Cole,” she said.

“You’re my wife, Emily.”

“We’ve been separated for six months. I’m not your anything anymore.”

His face took on a pained look, but it disappeared a split second later. “Be that as it may, I should at least know where you are, in case something happens.”

“Well, now you know.” She turned on her heel and headed out of the room.

He caught up to her, his hand reaching for her, but not connecting, as if he’d just remembered they were no longer together. She noticed the glint of gold, the ring he still wore. Because he hadn’t thought to take it off? Or because he hadn’t given up yet?

“Wait,” he said. “Don’t go. I want to talk to you.”

She wheeled around. When she met his blue eyes, a little hitch caught in her throat. A hitch she cursed. “We’re done talking, Cole. Nothing’s changed in ten years—nothing’s changing now. Just—” she let out a long sigh “—let me go. Please.”

And this time, he did just as she asked. Emily walked out of the room, and Cole didn’t follow. She paused at the top of the stairs, waiting until she heard the click of the door. Then she returned to her room, put a hand on her belly and told herself she’d done the right thing.

* * *

Cole stood on the ramshackle porch for a long time. How had it got to this point? What had he missed?

There had been a time when he could smile at Emily, or take her out for a night on the town, and whatever was wrong between them would disappear for a while. But this time, he’d sensed a distance, a wall that had never been there before. Or maybe he’d just never noticed it until now.

Until his wife had crossed two states to get away from him. To this place, this...inn.

He glanced at the run-down house behind him. The overgrown grounds. The peeling paint. Why had Emily come here, of all the places in the world? With what they had in their joint bank account, she could have afforded a five-star hotel in the south of France. Instead, she came to this...

Mess.

Frustration built inside him, but there was nowhere to go with that feeling. Nowhere but back home to New York, and to work. He took a step off the porch, and as he did, a crunch sounded beneath his foot and the top step crumpled beneath his weight, sending his leg crashing through a hole and down onto the soft earth below. He let out a curse, then yanked his leg out.

The door opened. Cole’s hopes rose, then sank, when he saw the inn’s owner, Carol, not Emily, come onto the porch. “Are you okay? I thought I heard a crash,” Carol said.

“The step broke.” Cole put up a hand of caution. “That porch isn’t safe. You might want to block it off or hire someone to fix it.”

“Okay.” One word, spoken on a sigh, topped by a frown.

Cole had been in business long enough to read the signs of a beleaguered owner, one who had more bills than cash. “I could call someone for you. Considering I broke the step, I should be the one to fix it.” Sympathy filled him. He still remembered those early, cash-strapped days when he’d been building his business, watching every dime and trying to do everything himself. Sacrifice had been at the top of his to-do list for many years.

Carol shook her head. “I couldn’t possibly ask you—”

“Consider it done,” Cole said. He had his phone halfway to his ear before he reconsidered.

Fixing that board would only take a minute or two. Calling someone to fix that board would take a lot longer. At least an hour, even if he paid a rush fee, to get someone out here, just to nail a board in place. Judging by the looks of the place, the inn’s owner had enough problems on her plate without adding in a wait on a contractor.

“If you have some nails and a piece of wood, I could put in a temporary fix,” Cole said. Where the heck had that come from? He hadn’t done contractor work for years. His hands were so soft from working at a desk they might as well be mittens.

“I have lots of supplies,” Carol said, pointing to a building a few yards away. “Help yourself.”

“Will do.” Maybe it would feel good to work with his hands again. And maybe he was just trying to delay leaving, hoping for a miracle with Emily.

Carol went back inside, so Cole headed for the garage. It took him a little while, but he found a tape measure, some plywood and a hammer and nails. He measured the space, ripped the board on a dusty table saw, then hammered the wood onto the risers. The actions came naturally to him, as if he had never walked away from construction.

The sun beat down on him, brought sweat to his brow and a warmth to his back. He had hung his suit jacket over the porch rail, taken off his tie and rolled up his sleeves. By the time he finished, all four stairs had new treads. And yes, it had probably taken as long as it would have taken had he called someone, but he had the bonus of feeling like he’d done something productive. Something he could look at and see, an almost-instant result, the opposite of how things happened when he made decisions at his desk.

Emily came out onto the porch. Surprise lit her features when she saw him. “What are you doing?”

“Fixing the board I broke. Then I noticed the other steps were about ready to break, so I replaced those, too.”

She moved closer and peered over the railing at his work. “You still remember how to do all that?”

“Like riding a bike.” Cole leaned against the handrail, which he’d made more secure with a few nails earlier. “It was just like the old days.”

Did she remember those days? That tiny apartment they’d lived in, how they’d rushed home at the end of the day, exhausted but excited to see each other? She’d bandaged his cuts, he’d bring her a glass of cheap wine, and they would sit on the fire escape and watch the city go by. The world would be perfect for a little while.

“I guess you don’t forget some things,” she said.

“No, you don’t.” But he wasn’t talking about hammers or measurements or anything related to construction. “Do you remember those days, Em?”

“Of course.” Her voice was soft, her green eyes tender, then she cleared her throat and drew herself up. “We’ve moved a long way away from those days, though. In more ways than one.”

He pushed off from the rail and stood beneath her. “What if we could get them back? What if we could be the people we used to be? Would we have a chance then?”

She bit her lip and shook her head. “Fixing some steps doesn’t bring us back there, Cole. You’ve changed...I’ve changed. What we want has changed. You can’t turn back the clock.” She gave the railing a tap. “Have a safe trip back.”

Then she went inside and shut the door, closing the door on him, as well. Cole stood there a long, long time, then picked up the tools, returned them to the garage, got in his car and drove away. He’d done all he could here, he realized. And the sooner he accepted that fact, the better.

But as he left the Gingerbread Inn, and the run-down building got smaller and smaller in his rearview mirror, Cole wondered...if he could turn back the clock with the inn, maybe it would be enough to turn back the clock with his wife, too.

CHAPTER THREE

BY BREAKFAST THE next day, Emily had ten pages written and a swelling sense of satisfaction. They might not be good pages, heck, they might not even be publishable pages, but they were closer than she’d got to her dream of publishing a novel in years. All those years in high school and college when she’d written short stories, and made fits and starts at different novels, but never finished any of them. Now with hours of uninterrupted time, her creativity exploded, with pages springing to life as fast as she could write them. She got to her feet, stretching after the long hours in the hard wooden desk chair.

Nausea rolled through her in a wave. She gripped the back of the chair, drew in a deep breath and waited for it to pass. It didn’t.

“Hey, kiddo,” she said to her belly, “I thought this was supposed to end with the first trimester.”

The baby, of course, didn’t answer, and the nausea kept on pitching and rolling her stomach, neither caring that the calendar said Emily was just past three months pregnant. Her clothes still fit, if a little snugly, but she knew it wouldn’t be long before she would start to show.

And that would mean telling people about the baby. People like Cole.

Emily sighed. She loved her husband—she really did—but she had stopped being in love with him a long time ago. She’d tried, Lord knew she’d tried, to make it work, thinking maybe if she kept acting like a wife, she’d feel like one. But the relationship they had had when they’d first got married had drained away, like a hose with a pinhole. The loss had come so gradually that one day she’d woken up and realized it was over, in her heart, in her head, and continuing the facade would only hurt both of them. Six months ago, she’d asked Cole to move out, and he’d gone, without a fight.

Then Cole had come to her one night, telling her he’d do anything to have his wife back. He’d been so sincere, so racked with sorrow, she’d believed him, and found the old passion ignited. One crazy night, a night where she’d believed yes, he finally got it, and maybe they could make it work—

And in the morning he was gone, off on yet another business trip. She was left alone again. She’d had a good cry, called a lawyer and filed for a formal separation.

Two weeks later, she’d realized her period was late and that one night had resulted in the only thing Emily had ever wanted—and Cole never had.

A child.

She’d kept the pregnancy a secret, and kept her distance from Cole, resolving to do this on her own. Now she had a baby on the way into her life and a husband on his way out. Either way, Emily was determined to make her new existence work.

She pulled on some sweatpants and an old T-shirt, then headed out of her room and downstairs toward the kitchen. A little dry toast should take the edge off this nausea, and then she could go back to work on the book.

Emily was just reaching for the loaf of bread on the counter when she heard a tap-tap-tapping coming from outside the window. She leaned over the sink, and peeked out into the bright late-fall day.

Cole stood on a ladder, perched against the side of the building, hammering in a new piece of siding. He’d switched from dress clothes to a crisp new pair of jeans and a dark blue T-shirt that hugged the planes of his chest. Sunglasses obscured his blue eyes, and a leather tool belt hung at a sexy angle from his hips. For a second, her heart melted.

“He was here when I woke up this morning,” Carol said as she entered the kitchen.

Emily turned around and put her back to the window. What did Cole think he was doing? Did he think that fixing the inn’s porch would fix them, too? “Why?”

“I don’t know. I’m just glad for the help. Anything he can fix helps me in selling this place.”

Emily sighed. “It’s going to be so weird not to have this place here anymore. The Gingerbread Inn is such a big part of my childhood.”

Carol paused by the coffeepot. “Do you want a cup?”

“Uh, no. I’ll have tea instead.” Emily grabbed the kettle off the stove, filled it with water, then set it over the flame. Outside, Cole had stopped hammering. Emily resisted the urge to look outside and see what he was doing now. Maybe if she ignored him, he’d leave. Either way, he rarely stayed away from the office for more than a few hours, so whatever “fixing” he was doing would be done soon and Cole would go back to being his usual Type A, nose-to-the-grindstone self. She’d be on her own, just her and the baby, which was exactly what she wanted, she told herself. Her hand strayed to her stomach, a protective barrier.

Emily looked up and noticed Carol watching her. “What?”

“Tea, huh?”

Emily fished an herbal tea bag out of the glass mason jar next to the stove and held it up. “Yup.”

“Decaf, too. In the morning.” Carol cupped her hands around her mug of coffee and assessed Emily. “Anything you want to share?”

“Nope, nope.” She’d said that too fast, Emily realized. But she wasn’t ready to tell anyone about the baby yet. She thumbed toward her room. “I should get back to writing. I’m on a roll.”

If she stayed in this kitchen one more minute, she was sure Carol would read the truth in her face. The kettle whistled and Emily turned to pour the water. She heard a sound behind her and pivoted back.

Cole stood in the kitchen, watching her. In jeans and a T-shirt, he looked so much like the man she’d fallen in love with that Emily’s heart stuttered, and she had to remind herself to breathe. Cole still had the same lean physique as he’d had in college, and her mind flashed images of every muscle, every plane. Her hormones kept overriding her common sense.

Carol murmured some excuse about needing to start laundry and headed out of the room. Emily shifted her gaze away from Cole and down to her teacup. She dipped the bag up and down, up and down, avoiding Cole’s blue eyes. “What are you doing here?” she asked him.

“Helping Carol out.”

“I can see that.” She let out a frustrated gust. “Why?”

“She’s obviously in a tight spot right now and—”

“Cole, stop making up excuses for being here. I’ve been married to you for ten years, and you have never so much as hung a picture in all that time. So don’t tell me you got this sudden urge to become Homer Handyman.”

“Homer Handyman?” She could hear the smile in his voice, as he crossed the room and poured himself a cup of coffee. “I’m not making up excuses, Emily. I saw Carol needed help, and I wanted to do what I could. I haven’t worked with my hands since college, and I have to admit, it feels good.”

“Then go home and build a box or something. Don’t stay here.”

Cole paused in front of her and waited until she lifted her gaze to his. “Home isn’t home for me anymore.”

She refused to feel bad about that. Refused to let the echoes in his voice affect her. Their marriage had disintegrated, and Cole knew that as well as she did. “Why are you really here, Cole?”

His blue eyes softened, and for a moment, she saw the Cole she used to know. The Cole she had fallen in love with on a bright spring day on the NYU campus. “Because this place means a lot to you,” he said quietly.

The cold wall between her heart and his began to defrost, and Emily found herself starting to reach for Cole, for the man she used to know, used to love. Then his cell phone rang, the familiar trill that signaled a call from the company’s CFO, and Cole stepped back, unclipping the phone with one hand and putting up a finger asking her to wait a minute with the other.

Emily shook her head, then grabbed her tea and walked out of the kitchen before she was once again foolish enough to believe that anything had changed.

* * *

Chaos had descended on the offices of Watson Technology Development, if the number of calls, texts and emails Cole had received in the past hour were any indication. He’d been gone less than forty-eight hours and people were in a panic.

Rightly so, he supposed, considering he spent more hours at WTD than anywhere else in the world. Ever since the day he’d started it, Cole had dedicated most of his waking hours to the company that bore his name. In the beginning, the hours had been a necessity, as he worked his way up from a one-man office to a global company with offices in three U.S. cities and two foreign locations, building computers, cell phones and custom technology solutions for his customers.

It took him a good hour to calm down his assistant, and to wade through all the crises that needed his attention. The urge to run back to the office and handle everything himself ran strong in Cole, but every time he glanced at the pile of wood and tools, he remembered that he was here for another reason.

Not to fix the Gingerbread Inn—though that was the reason he’d given Emily—but to fix his marriage. Deep in his heart, Cole knew he had run out of chances, and if he let Emily go this time, what they had between them would die like a plant stuck in a dark corner for too long. That was partly his fault, he knew, and the only way to fix it was to stay here. Put in the time, handle the project of his marriage like he did any project at work—lots of man-hours.

When he hung up with the office, he flipped out his phone and made a quick list of everything that the Gingerbread Inn needed done to make it sellable. By the time he got to number fifty, he knew he needed two things—a couple of professionals, because some of the jobs were out of his realm—and a second set of hands.