I tilt my head to the side and shake it back and forth. “You should’ve sent them. You should’ve shared those things with me. All this time, I honestly thought it didn’t bother you being away from me so often and that you didn’t miss me as much as I missed you.”
He cups my face in his hands and stares into my eyes. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I hate that I made you feel that way. I hate that I never let you know how much it killed me to be away from you. I hate that I made you second-guess everything I felt for you.”
Pulling one of his hands away from my face, I kiss his palm before pulling his hand against my chest. “No more secrets, promise me. Whatever you’re feeling, whatever you’re thinking, you have to share it with me. We have to be open and honest with each other about everything.”
He leans forward and kisses my lips. “I love you and I promise.”
I curl into his side and rest my cheek on his shoulder. He continues to whisper words of love to me as my eyes grow heavy and I drift off to sleep. The alarm on his cell phone wakes us both from a sound sleep an hour later.
“What are you doing today?” I ask as he slides out from under the covers and grabs his clothes from the end of the bed.
“Oh, you know, just some running around. What time are you meeting Ellie? Want me to pack you guys a lunch or something?” he asks, quickly changing the subject.
He’s done that a few times lately when I’ve asked him about his plans for the day. I know he’s hiding something, but even when I flat out asked him what he’s up to, he changes the subject. I even caught him digging through the attic a few weeks ago and he looked like a kid caught with his hand in the cookie jar when I went up there to see what he was doing. I can’t really be mad at him when I’ve been keeping a little secret of my own and I instantly feel guilty about making him promise to never keep anything from me. It’s something that will fix all of my problems, but will undoubtedly piss Fisher off, so I’ll leave him to his secrets until I’m ready to divulge my own.
Fisher finishes getting dressed, leaning across the bed to give me a kiss. “I’ll pack a few things in a basket for you guys and leave it on the kitchen counter. Don’t forget your sunscreen and if you wear that hot, red bikini, keep it on until I get home.”
He kisses my nose and I laugh as he pushes himself off the bed and heads out the door.
“I hate you so much right now. Why do you have to look so hot when I look like a whale?” Ellie complains.
I just came in from the water and I’m standing in front of her drying off while she stares up at me in disgust from her beach chair.
I took Fisher’s suggestion and went with the red bikini, even though I’ve secretly hated this thing ever since I bought it on a whim. I don’t think I have the body to pull it off, but when he saw it in my dresser drawer last week, he started drooling and asked me to model it for him. Let’s just say this red bikini didn’t stay on for more than a couple of seconds that day, so it’s starting to grow on me.
“You don’t look like a whale, you’re pregnant and beautiful,” I remind her. “And you’re barely showing, so quit your bitching.”
I spread out my towel next to her and flop down on my back, closing my eyes and letting the sun warm me and dry off the rest of my body.
“Did you tell Fisher about Stanford yet?” Ellie asks.
I squint open one eye and glare up at her. “No. And I thought I told you we weren’t going to discuss this until I made a final decision?”
Ellie shrugs and rests her head back against her chair with her face turned up towards the sun. “I wake up puking every morning, I get up seventeen times to pee at night and my fiancé uses baby talk to speak to my stomach. Please, give me something to live for. This is exciting and we SHOULD be talking about it.”
I sit up on my towel and cross my legs in front of me.
“It is kind of exciting, right? I mean, this isn’t a completely insane idea, is it?” I ask.
“Hell, no! I mean, when you first told me Stanford called you with a proposal, I laughed my ass off and almost got on the ferry to the mainland to kick his ass, but I really do think this is going to work,” she tells me.
The thing I haven’t told Fisher is that I’ve been in contact with Stanford. After I broke up with him and pretty much embarrassed him in front of the whole town, he left the island with his tail between his legs and I didn’t hear from him again until a few weeks ago. I felt a little bad at first about the way things ended, but then I remembered the shit he said to me. Fisher also set about wiping all traces of him from my mind, so pretty soon it was like Stanford never even existed.
Getting a call from him out of the blue was a shock. When he told me that he quit working for Fisher’s father as soon as he got back to the city, it threw me even more. He overheard the things Jefferson said to me that day at the ballpark and there had been some other questionable things Jefferson had said and done in the time that Stanford worked for him that made him uncomfortable and forced him to realize that the man was not to be idolized. He quit and had a job with another, larger corporate bank with locations nationwide within a week.
He felt bad about the way we parted and he still wanted to do whatever he could to help me with the inn. I immediately distrusted him and assumed he was trying once again to buy the place from me, but he had a better idea. His new company specialized in small business loans and he asked if I would consider refinancing the mortgage on the inn with his bank. I politely told him no and tried to explain to him that having to deal with my ex-boyfriend for the duration of my loan would be almost as bad as having to deal with my ex-father-in-law. I ended the call and assumed that would be the end of it. Within an hour, the president of the bank was calling, giving me his assurance that my account would be serviced by another loan officer and that Stanford’s name would only be on the paperwork as the referring party for commission purposes. He went on to explain that they were committed to keeping the small businesses in America afloat, giving them the lowest possible finance rates permitted by law. I really didn’t want to believe that there might be a chance to save Butler House without having to crawl on my hands and knees and beg Fisher’s father, but it was hard NOT to believe it when the bank sent me a draft of the paperwork. The interest rate is almost seventy-five percent less than what I’m paying now with Fisher’s Bank and Trust and it would cut my monthly payments almost in half.