Echoes (28 page)

Entering the great room a few minutes late, Lauren noticed the others already there, seated in the same area where they had been an hour ago. Only everything was different. Instead
of a bunch of beach bums, they all looked like guests on
Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous
.

Kenton was the first to see her. He rose to his feet. Was that a look of astonishment on his face? Delight? Before she could get an accurate reading, he looked away. Kyle and Gordon also rose, and Gordon was the first to speak. “My, don’t you clean up nicely!”

Teri looked gorgeous in her new-bride glow. It didn’t matter that she had on the same apricot-colored dress she had worn to dinner the night before. Without makeup and with her hair down, flowing freely over her shoulders, she could take on any mermaid in the sea.

Jessica wore a stunning two-piece royal blue outfit and sat with her feet on the footstool and that peaceful expression on her face, looking even more royal than this afternoon. Both Jessica and Teri wore gardenias identical to Lauren’s.

“Shall we?” Kyle said, standing before his wife and offering her his arm. He wore a white dinner jacket. Kenton wore the black one with a white shirt and the new black tie. He hung back, letting the two married couples proceed to the dining room arm in arm.

Look at me! Come on KC, offer me your arm
.

But he didn’t. Without making eye contact with Lauren, he motioned for her to walk ahead of him. So, single file, they trailed the others into the dining room. Their table was waiting in the corner. The husbands pulled out chairs for their wives, and Kenton did the same for Lauren. She was seated across from him at the rectangular table.

“Thanks for the gardenia, Kyle,” Lauren said once they were all seated. “It’s beautiful.”

“You’re welcome.”

“Aren’t they beautiful?” Jessica said. “I love the way gardenias smell.”

Lauren glanced over at Kenton, and as she did, he immediately looked down at his menu. Her heart sank. She wanted him to look at her, to smile at her, to talk to her, to fall in love with her the way she had fallen in love with him in writing and now in person.

Yet the entire meal he wouldn’t look at her. She would feel his gaze on her, but the moment she would try to make eye contact, he would glance away.

The conversation flowed in and around them like bright Maypole ribbons crossing each other. Just when it seemed an opening presented itself for her to reveal her identity to him, the Maypole dancers would turn the opposite direction, and the previously woven ribbons of thought would come undone.

Finally she turned to him and said, “What’s your middle name?”

He looked at her and appeared to be caught, unable to pull away from her gaze, even though he appeared to try. “My middle name?”

Lauren nodded, and the others were silent, curious over her unusual question.

“Carlyle,” he said.

A smile danced across her moist lips as she repeated, “Kenton Carlyle.” Neither of those names were on her list of possibilities in her notebook. It was the first time she had said his name aloud, and the sense of connectedness, the mystery solved, pulsated through her, infusing her with wild hope and anticipation. Now what should she say?

The waiter appeared, displaying the dessert tray and taking their orders. When he came to Lauren she said, “I’d like some Irish Breakfast tea. That’s all.”

She cast a subtle glance at Kenton as he said, “I’ll have the same.” He caught her eye but again refused to really look at her.

The tea arrived. As the others chatted, Lauren meticulously poured enough cream into her cup to just cover the bottom, then tore open a packet of cane sugar and poured half of it into her cup. She watched Kenton’s wonderful, strong, smooth hands out of the corner of her eye as he poured the whole packet of sugar directly into the teapot and added the cream after the tea was poured into his cup. She knew he had been watching her hands as well. How many times over the past year had they each gone through this tandem ritual across the miles?

Pouring the amber tea into her cup, Lauren drew up all her courage and, looking across the table, she said, “Kenton?”

Instead of answering, he stood, his head turned away from her, and said, “Excuse me.” Then smoothly and swiftly, he disappeared.

Lauren felt as if the wind had been knocked out of her. A familiar fear began to edge its way to the center of her heart; the fear that once he knew who she was, he would leave her. And now, when he didn’t even know her yet, he already had left. Lauren felt her hopeful heart shriveling up inside her. KC may have fallen in love with Wren, but Kenton obviously had no room in his heart for Lauren the swooner.

W
here’s my brother?” Kyle asked nearly five minutes after Kenton had left the table. “Is he making phone calls? I don’t think I’ve eaten an entire meal with him once in the past eight years without his beeper going off.”

Lauren had waited quietly, sipping her tea. Crazy, uncontrolled emotions ripped about inside her. One moment she was ready to run from the dining room, catch a cab to the airport, and leave everyone and everything behind. The next moment she wanted to run though the hotel calling for Kenton until she found him. She would wrap her arms around him and beg him never to leave her. Guilt found its way into her tortured mind.
This is what you deserve
, the accusing voice said.
You abandoned him, and now he’s left you
. But Kenton didn’t know she was the no-show at the falls. She was simply flesh and blood Lauren to him, and he wasn’t attracted to her the way she was to him. Perhaps it was better to find out this way.

“Lauren?” Kyle’s voice shook her from her waking nightmare. “I meant to tell you that I invited Kenton to join us for golf tomorrow morning. I hope you don’t mind.”

“Actually,” Lauren said, clearing her throat, which had grown suddenly tight, “I think I’d like to sleep in tomorrow morning. Why don’t the two of you go ahead?”

“You sure?”

She nodded. “I’m pretty tired. I think I’ll turn in early tonight. Thanks for a fabulous day and a delicious dinner.”

Kyle and Gordon both rose as she pushed back her chair. “Good night, everyone. I’ll see you in the morning.”

Lauren didn’t encounter Kenton on the way to her room, as she hoped. She spent a long, tortured night, allowing her imagination to run through every possible scenario. Then she remembered something she had read in
My Utmost for His Highest
, the devotional book she and KC had read through together, over the miles. She wished she had the book with her now, or at least her own Bible. All she could remember was something in the first entry they had both read, March 22, about maintaining a heart that burned for God. That’s how she had felt that morning in the gazebo. Every emotion had been cleansed and fine-tuned, ready to line up with her heavenly Father’s will.

Now, only twelve hours later, her spiritual renewal was being put to the test. Instead of her usual pattern of thinking, worrying, and then stuffing, Lauren knelt in prayer and stayed on her knees, unaware of the time. She read from the hotel Bible, turning again to the Song of Solomon. At last, some time in the dark, still night, she fell asleep.

When the brightness of the new day roused her, Lauren found she had slept until ten.
Good thing I didn’t go golfing
, she thought, rubbing her eyes and noticing that the red message light was lit on her phone. Jessica wanted Lauren to know they
were all planning to meet in the lobby at eleven and drive down to Manele Bay for the day.

Lauren knew she couldn’t spend the day with Kenton and keep her identity a secret. No matter what he thought of her or what happened to their relationship, she had to tell him. It wasn’t fair to leave him thinking she had dropped off the face of the earth.

Dressed and determined, Lauren left her room ready to search for him. She found Kyle at the concierge’s desk arranging for their dinner that evening at the Manele Bay Hotel.

“Have you seen Kenton?” Lauren asked.

Kyle turned and, when he looked at Lauren, a concerned expression flickered across his face. “Would you mind waiting a minute? I need to talk to you.” Turning to the concierge he said, “Okay, six o’clock is great.”

“And the reservation is for five people, is that correct?”

Kyle hesitated before saying, “Yes, dinner for five.”

Panic filled Lauren. “Did he leave?” she asked Kyle.

Grasping Lauren by the elbow, Kyle directed her to a corner couch in the great room. They sat down, and he faced her.

“Please try to understand this the way I mean it,” Kyle began.

“Did he leave the island?”

“Not yet. He’s scheduled for the two o’clock flight.”

“I have to talk to him.”

“It might be better if you didn’t,” Kyle said. He leaned closer and said, “Kenton is …” Kyle worked to choose the right word. “Overwhelmed right now with a relationship he has with another woman.”

“I know,” Lauren said.

“That’s right. He told you that on the phone at our house, didn’t he? But you see, he can’t stand to be around you.”

Lauren’s heart and face fell. She had guessed he wasn’t
physically attracted to her, but Kyle made it sound as if Kenton found her repulsive. “I didn’t know it was that bad.”

“It’s bad, all right,” Kyle said. “He couldn’t finish dinner with us last night because he said you had gotten inside his head or something. He didn’t sleep at all last night. He said he was afraid he would dream, and it would be you and not this other woman that he would dream about.” Kyle shook his head. “My brother is so intensely attracted to you that he’s a wreck.”

Lauren didn’t know what to say. Suddenly it became clear. She had thought Kenton was displeased with her. But in reality, he was drawn to her as strongly as she was to him, only he didn’t know she was Wren. By not looking at her or showing any interest in her as Lauren, he was actually being loyal to her as Wren. How could she have been so blind to what she was doing to him? She could play the emotional game because she knew he was KC. How unfair she had been, first leaving him at the falls and now this.

“I want you to know that this is not like my brother at all,” Kyle continued. “He’s a mess over it. I agreed with him that he should leave today and try to work out whatever he needs to resolve with this other woman. Apparently she’s not interested in a relationship with him, but he can’t let her go.”

“That’s not it,” Lauren said in a tight whisper. “I love him. He doesn’t know who I am. I have to talk to him. Where is he?”

Kyle rose from the couch as Lauren did. “I’m not so sure you should talk to him. Give him some time. You’ll both be living in Glenbrooke. Let him get over this other woman and see what God has for you both this fall.”

“You don’t understand. I am the other woman!” Lauren pounded her hand against her chest. “I’m Wren!”

Kyle fell back onto the couch. “You’re Wren?”

Lauren nodded, the tears beginning to tumble down her
cheeks. “I didn’t know how to tell him. First I was rude to him on the phone at your house, then when I saw him here, I realized who he was, and I fainted like a complete idiot! I thought he despised me.”

Kyle shook his head. “He’s desperately in love with you.” A smile began to climb up his face. “With both of you.”

“I have to find him. Where did he go?”

“Out by the lake. He was trying to avoid you.”

Lauren took off running, trying to brush the tears from her eyes as she bolted out the double glass doors facing the back acreage of the hotel grounds. Taking to the garden path, she scurried past the pool where eight or so guests swam and sunned. Kenton wasn’t among them. She continued down the path, looking on every bench under the arbor and around the lake. Overhead, late morning clouds had gathered, hiding the sun.

“Where is he?” She felt like the Shulamite woman she had read about in the Song of Solomon who went seeking her beloved. A verse toward the end of that poem came to mind: “Many waters cannot quench love.” Perhaps, just perhaps, all the mistakes and mishaps of the past week were not enough to quench their love, which had grown slowly over the past year.

The darkened sky began to rumble. Light drops of warm rain fell on her as she headed up the garden path toward the wooded hillside. Down the trail to the left, tucked beneath tall foliage, stood the gazebo where she had met with God the day before. The drops turned into pellets, forcing her to run toward the gazebo and take shelter. Just as she reached the opening, a loud boom of thunder echoed from the heavens. She bolted inside, nearly colliding with Kenton.

“Kenton, I didn’t see you!” She impulsively wrapped her arms around him in a hug of joy and relief.

He pulled her arms off with his strong hands and looked
as if he were in pain. Perhaps the moist drops on his face weren’t rain but tears. “Listen,” Kenton said, pushing her away, “I know I probably won’t say this the right way, but please bear with me. I need to say it.”

“No, let me speak,” Lauren said. She drew closer to him, and he backed away again, sitting down on the bench circling the inside of the gazebo. She sat down, less than a foot away from him, her heart bursting to tell him she was Wren.