Nantucket Romance 3-in-1 Bundle (63 page)

“Oh, come on, Daddy. She was a spender; you were a saver. She was messy and disorganized; you were a neat freak. She wanted to go places; you wanted to stay home.”

“Is that what you think? That our marriage fell apart because we were too different?” Her dad drew in a deep breath, exhaled, then straightened and walked toward the living room. “Come sit, Kate.”

She followed her dad into the room and sat on the center of the sofa, opposite his recliner.

“Your mother and I had a good marriage in the beginning,” he said. “But soon, we began to disagree about a lot of things. At the time, I thought I was right about everything. I thought it was smart to control the money the way I did. I told myself I was looking out for our best interests. And I thought the house had to be kept a certain way. Your mom liked things neat too, but my standards were high. Unfeasibly high.”

“Mom was a clutter bug.”

“Not initially. The things I did drove her crazy. The way the labels on food packages had to be turned facing front, the way the towels had to be folded in thirds and hung in the center of the towel rack, the way our lives had to run by the clock, down to the second. It all became too much for her.”

“You weren’t the problem, Daddy. It was her. I remember. She was a spendaholic. She used to go out and shop and buy new furniture, new clothes, when we didn’t have the money—”

Her dad tilted his head and gave a sad smile. “Your mom never liked to shop. She didn’t care about new clothes or new furniture. She did it because she was angry with me.”

“Why?” Kate shook her head, trying to make sense of it. “Why would she be angry with you?”

“You know what OCD is?”

“Of course. Obsessive-compulsive disorder. I’ve counseled a couple clients who—” Kate stopped, letting it soak in.
OCD
. “You, Daddy?”

“I didn’t know it at the time. Your mom was after me for years to go and get checked. She insisted something was wrong, but I thought she was being critical. As the years went by, she got angrier and angrier. I wanted the house impossibly neat, so she made sure it wasn’t. I wanted to control the money, so she spent it. I wanted to be punctual, so she dawdled.”

Her dad pinched the crease in his pants, mechanically, following it down the thigh. “I didn’t see any of it at the time. Of course, her actions made me furious, and we had terrible arguments. Unfortunately, you heard a lot of them. It was a vicious cycle that would’ve been broken if I’d just been able to see that I had a problem.”

How could all of Kate’s assumptions about her parents’ marriage have been wrong? So much of what she advised stemmed from what she thought she’d learned from her childhood.

“One day, when you were eight or nine,” he said. “I walked by your bedroom and heard you playing. I stopped and listened. Barbie was screaming at Ken, and Ken was yelling at Barbie. You were holding them face-to-face, and as you were talking in your angry little- girl voice, your mouth was all screwed up, your brows drawn together. I realized you thought that’s the way families behaved. You thought that was normal.”

Kate had spent a lot of time playing with her Barbies. When you were an only child, you learned to make believe. “I don’t remember that.”

Her dad folded his hands across his stomach. “It was then that I began to wonder if your mother and I would be better off apart.”

Kate had thought it was her mom’s decision. She’d been angry with her mom for months. But even though she’d blamed her mom—the woman was her caretaker, the one who fixed her French toast in the morning and made sure her favorite jeans were washed—Kate couldn’t conceive of leaving her home. Even when her mom started drinking.

“When did you find out about the OCD?” Kate asked.

“Not until years later. You were nearly in college by then. None of the women I had dated could tolerate my behavior for long, and I finally opened my mind to the possibility that it was me.”

Kate wasn’t naive. She knew it took two people to nurture a relationship and two people to ruin it. But how had she gotten things so twisted around? Her mom had never set her straight, had never said a bad thing to Kate about her dad, even after they divorced. Instead, her mother drowned her sorrow in alcohol.

“I’m sorry about how I handled my marriage to your mom, Kate. I’m sorry you didn’t have a better childhood.”

Kate’s eyes stung. “I appreciate that, Daddy. I know it’s hard to make a marriage work under the best circumstances.”

“I did love your mom. You know that.”

“I know.”
Does he know Mom went to her grave loving him?Mourning him?
Sometimes it was better not to know.

“I’m not very good at this stuff,” he said. “But I love you, too, you know.” He squeezed his hands together so tight, the tips of his fingers whitened.

Kate didn’t remember ever hearing those words from her father. She’d known he loved her, but hearing them was a balm to her aching heart.

“I love you too, Daddy.”

Sometimes there’s nothing you can do
but put one foot in front of the other.

—Excerpt from
Finding Mr. Right-for-You
by Dr. Kate

Chapter Thirty

Lucas dipped the tack cloth in mineral spirits and wiped the sawdust from the oak pie safe. One more coat of polyurethane and it would be ready for Sydney. He was eager to be done with that job. The day before she’d come into the shop to check on his work, even though he’d told her it wouldn’t be ready for two more days. She’d closed the distance between them and caressed the unfinished piece with her slender fingers as if it were a man’s arm instead of a hunk of wood.

“Very nice, Lucas. You have a certain touch.” She smiled slowly.

He put space between them, wiping his hands on the rag. He’d done everything he could to make it clear he wasn’t interested. He tried to show professional courtesy without stepping one inch past that line. For the life of him, he couldn’t see why she continued to pursue him when there were probably a dozen men who’d be willing to buy whatever she was selling.

The phone rang, and Ethan called him. “If you’ll excuse me . . .”

“Well,” Sydney said, “I’ll check back in a couple days then.”

Now Lucas ran the cloth along the edges of the cabinet doors, taking care to remove every speck of dust so it wouldn’t mar the finish. There was only one woman he couldn’t get from his mind, and it wasn’t Sydney.

Lucas glanced at the calendar hanging cockeyed from a prong on the pegboard. October 21. Today would have been their four-month anniversary. If Kate were here, he might’ve bought her a bouquet of daisies and taken her to Cioppino’s for lobster. Afterward, they would’ve gone home, and he’d have put on her favorite classical CD and kissed her on the corner of her lip, right where—

Cut it out, Luc. You have got to move on.
How many times had he relived moments of their time together? Especially the last night.

He’d tried to stay busy. He worked well into the night until he was too tired to do anything but shower and fall into bed. It was easier that way. He was tired of pitying glances from friends and neighbors. He could imagine what they were thinking.
Poor Lucas. First he lost Emily; now he’s lost Kate. Tsk, tsk, tsk.
But no one brought up Kate, as if the very mention of her name would shatter him.

Everyone wondered where she was, though, including the media, some of whom had come to the island, hoping for an interview. Was it any wonder he spent his days holed up in his shop? Even here, he hadn’t escaped the phone calls. Ethan intercepted them, and at least now the calls were coming farther apart.

The story had quieted down the past couple weeks—a blessing for Kate, he was sure. He supposed her career would rebound since the scandal died so quickly. She’d probably have her next book on the shelves next year sometime, and her life would continue as it had before he’d entered it.

But Lucas couldn’t imagine his life returning to normal. Even though the story had fizzled out, he still found himself avoiding people. Even his family—a fact that hadn’t gone unnoticed.

“We missed you at lunch Sunday,”
his mother had said when she dropped by the shop the previous week. Lucas noticed right away there was something different about her. She seemed less on edge. Happier, despite Lucas’s withdrawal. Was his mom that happy to have Kate out of their lives?

Lucas didn’t think she’d bought his excuse about being late on an order. His dad had come by later that week under the premise of borrowing his jigsaw, but Lucas had seen through that.

“You’re putting in a lot of hours lately,”
his dad said.

“Business is good.”
He wasn’t fooling anyone, and he knew it.

“You know, that Kate was something special.”

Lucas clamped down hard on his jaw. Was his dad trying to rub it in? Didn’t he know Lucas knew it better than anyone?

“She had a talk with your mom before she left,”
his dad said.

When had Kate had a chance to do that? Whatever she’d said must’ve worked a miracle. His dad said he was seeing a side of Susan he’d hadn’t seen in years. She’d finally forgiven him for the mistake he’d made all those years ago. Lucas was happy for them.

Jamie visited him at the shop at least once a week and filled him in on her love life with Aaron. Brody kept bugging him to get an e-mail address so they could communicate more.

Lucas dipped the cloth in mineral spirits again and smoothed it over the drawer face a second time. He was nearly ready to apply the final coat of polyurethane when his shop door opened. Jamie entered, shutting the door. She turned and held up a copy of the
New York Times
.

“Did you see this?” Her chin jutted forward.

“See what?”

“The article about Kate.” She extended the paper.

Lucas wiped the side panel of the pie safe, wiped the rim along the top, taking care to get into the crevices.

“Luc.”
Jamie approached, her flip-flops shuffling on the cement floor.

“I’m not interested.”

The newspaper smacked against her jeans-encased leg. “You are, too, and you know it.”

He moved around the pie case and wiped down the other panel.

“She lost her syndicated column,” Jamie said.

Lucas’s hand paused over the rim, then continued. Why had Kate lost her column? The story had died down just as her publisher hoped it would. Had the scandal done irreparable damage?
How could they cancel her column when she’d worked so hard? She’s Dr. Kate, for pity’s sake.

“You have to do something, Luc.”

He shook his head. “Maybe Kate decided to focus on books instead of the column.”

“That’s not what the article says.”

Lucas looked at the paper, torn between grabbing it and reading every detail he could find about her life without him, and burning the paper so he could spare himself the agony.

“I’m sure she’s fine. The story faded quickly enough.”

“Her book sales are in the toilet.”

Lucas arched his brow. “Did the article say that too?”

Jamie hitched her pointed little chin up a notch. “I’ve been keeping track of her numbers on Amazon.”

“What’s that?” He wished he hadn’t asked. His sister was drawing him in, and he only wanted to put it behind him. He wiped the top of the pie case even though it was already clean.

“Amazon—where people buy books online?” Her look said,
Duh.
“She used to be ranked, like, below two hundred, and now her book is nearly at two hundred thousand!”

Lucas gave up on the pie case and threw his rag on the bench. He hoped it wasn’t true. Kate was too good at what she did to let it all go to waste. “I take it that’s a bad thing.”

“Terrible. I’m telling you, her career is falling apart. You have to do something.”

“Me . . . What am I supposed to do?”

Jamie dropped the paper on the bench and crossed her arms, eyeing him. She tapped her foot, her glittery pink toenails rising and falling.

“You didn’t tell her, did you.” It wasn’t a question so much as an accusation.

“Tell her what?”

“That you love her.”

Lucas turned and wrapped the cord around the sander, then hung it on a prong. His sister had gotten too good at reading his thoughts. Maybe it was all those romances she devoured.

“Well,” Jamie said, “I guess that answers my question.”

Lucas pocketed his hands. “That’s between me and Kate, munchkin.”

“How can it be between you and Kate if she doesn’t even know?”

Little squirt. She was getting too smart for her own britches.

“It might’ve made a difference if she’d known,” Jamie said. “I know it’s none of my business . . . but I want you to be happy. Besides, if you hadn’t helped me with Aaron, we probably never would’ve gotten together.”

“How’s that going, anyway?”

“We’re still going out, but stop trying to change the subject. Are you going to help Kate or not?”

Later that night Lucas lay wide eyed in bed. Jamie’s question rang through his head.
“Are you going to help Kate or not?”
But what could he do when she was gone? He couldn’t turn back time or make that Stephanie chick rescind the story.