Up at Butternut Lake: A Novel (17 page)

“Are they still here?” Reid asked.

But Walker ignored the question. He had one of his own for his brother. “Reid, since when are you so interested in my personal life?”

“Since I realized that neither one of us
has
any personal life to speak of.”

“I thought you liked it that way. You know, all work and no play for both of us.”

“Not for both of us,” Reid qualified. He got up and came over to the window. “I like it for me, but I don’t think I like it for you anymore. Because for all your bluster, Walk, I think you want marriage and children. I think you want the whole nine yards.”

“Well, then you don’t know me as well as you think you do,” Walker said, honestly.

Reid put a hand on his shoulder, surprising Walker. His brother, as a general rule, wasn’t very demonstrative. Now, though, he left his hand there for a long moment, then squeezed his shoulder and let go. “I’ve got to push off,” he said, heading for the office door.

“You didn’t come all this way just to dispense brotherly wisdom, did you?” Walker asked, over his shoulder.

“Of course not,” Reid said. “I was looking at a boatyard for sale near Ely. It has definite potential. I’ll be in touch with you about it.”

“If you want to stick around while I finish up some paperwork, we can grab dinner,” Walker offered, leaving the window and sitting down at his desk.

“Another time,” Reid said. “I’ve got to be getting back to the city.”

Reid started to leave the office, then turned back.

“One more thing, Walk.”

“What?” Walker asked, distractedly, looking up from the stack of papers on his desk.

“Think about what we talked about. About asking that woman out. Because the brother I grew up with was many things, but he was never a coward.” And he left, shutting the door behind him.

It’s not going to work, Reid,
Walker thought.
I’m not twelve years old anymore, and I don’t take the bait every time you offer it to me.

But he didn’t go back to work. Instead, he went back to the window and brooded about what Reid had said. Five minutes later, he was heading down the stairs to the showroom.

When he walked into it, he immediately spotted Allie at the far end. She was holding a sheaf of glossy boat brochures with one hand and shaking hands with Cliff with the other. Wyatt was nearby, playing on one of the boats.

“Hey, Walker,” Cliff said, when he joined them. “Ms. Beckett was just leaving.”

“I hope you’re taking a boat with you,” Walker said.

“Not quite,” Allie said. “But Cliff has given me plenty to think about.”

“Good,” Walker said, nodding.

Another customer walked into the showroom and Cliff excused himself to greet them.

“Wyatt, it’s time to go,” Allie called. Wyatt glanced up briefly, then went back to pretending to drive a powerboat. Allie sighed. “It’s amazing how selective his hearing is,” she said.

Walker laughed, glad for the opportunity to have her to himself, even for a few minutes.

“How are you two settling in?” he asked.

“We’re making progress,” she said. “Or at least Johnny Miller, our handyman, is. Thanks to him, our cabin isn’t falling down around us anymore. So that’s a good sign, I guess.”

“How long’s it been since you got here?” he asked. He knew exactly how long it’d been since he’d seen a light on in their cabin that night, but he was at a loss for conversational topics. She never failed, it seemed, to have this disorienting effect on him.

She looked especially lovely today, too, in a summery blouse and skirt with flat sandals. Her luxuriant, sun-streaked brown hair was pulled back in a simple ponytail, and her suntanned face was devoid of makeup. Not that she needed it. Her skin already had a soft, golden glow, and her long-lashed hazel eyes had a luminosity that no eye makeup could deliver.

“We’ve been here for six weeks,” she said, bringing him back to reality.

Something about the way she said it made him ask, “Six
long
weeks?”

“Sometimes,” she admitted. “But we’ve gotten into a routine, which is good. It makes the time go faster.”

“Do you know what would make it go even faster?” Walker suggested.

She shook her head, suddenly wary.

“A boat.”

She smiled. “You’re quite the salesman, aren’t you?” she remarked

“Maybe,” he said. “Or maybe I think if you live on a lake as beautiful as Butternut Lake, you should have a boat to explore it with.”

Her hazel eyes were thoughtful as she considered what he’d said, but then she seemed to remember something, and she looked at her watch.

“We need to get going soon,” she said, glancing over at her son. “I have to get Wyatt over to Jax’s house. Believe it or not, I have a job interview.”

His expression must have said he didn’t believe it.

“At the Pine Cone Gallery,” she explained. “Sara Gage, the woman who owns it, is looking for a part-time salesperson. And Jax has somehow persuaded her that I’m that person. Personally, I think they’re both crazy.”

“I don’t know about that,” Walker said. “They both seem like smart women to me. But good luck, anyway. And Allie?”

“Yes?”

Here goes nothing
.
And forget about asking her out for a cup of coffee. That’s starting too small.
“I was wondering if you and Wyatt would like to come over some night for dinner. Nothing fancy. I could throw a couple of steaks on the grill. Maybe take you two out for a boat ride after dinner . . .”

Allie frowned. “Well,
Wyatt
would like that . . .” she said, uncertainly.

And you,
Walker wanted to ask.
Would you like that?
He waited. But when she didn’t say anything, he added
,
“It’s not a big deal. Just a couple of neighbors having dinner together.”

“Is that all it is?” Allie asked, leveling her gaze at him.

“Yes,” he said, unsettled by her directness.

She waited.

“No,” he amended. “I mean, I don’t know what it is.”

She waited for him to say more.

“Maybe it would just be dinner,” he said, shrugging. “Maybe it would be something more. We don’t know each other well enough to know that yet. But, Allie, I do know one thing about us.”

He paused. This part was awkward. He wasn’t quite sure how to phrase it without offending her.

“What’s that?” she asked, coolly.

“I know that at Jax and Jeremy’s party, I felt something between us. I don’t know what you’d call it. A mutual attraction, maybe. But I don’t think I imagined it. And I don’t think it was one-sided, either. Whatever it was, I think you felt it, too.”

Her eyes widened with surprise. “Are you saying you think I’m . . .
attracted
to you?” she clarified.

He nodded. He thought he’d made that pretty clear.

Her gold complexion flushed pink. Embarrassed, he wondered. Or angry? He saw her lovely jaw set in a hard line. Angry, he decided.

“Look, I don’t know what
you
felt that night, Walker. But I can tell you right now that whatever it was,
I
didn’t feel it. I’m not attracted to you, Walker. Not even a little.”

“I don’t believe you,” Walker said, without thinking.

Her cheeks flushed darker. “Well, then you’re even more arrogant than I thought you were.”

Ouch,
Walker thought. That stung a little. But he still didn’t believe her. Not entirely.

“Wyatt, we need to go,” she called out to her son. “
Now
.”

And Walker, desperate to repair the damage he’d done, tried to backtrack. “Look, I apologize. Obviously, I read too much into the situation.”

But Allie didn’t answer him because at that moment Wyatt ran over to her.

“Mommy,” he said, his excitement momentarily overcoming his shyness. “I want
that
boat!” He pointed to the boat he’d been playing on. “I already know how to drive it,” he said earnestly. “I taught myself.”

Allie smiled, tensely. “We’ll see about that,” she said. “But for now, Wyatt, can you thank Mr. Ford for inviting us here today? And for having Cliff show us all those boats?”

“Thank you,” Wyatt said dutifully.

“Anytime,” Walker said, still feeling like an idiot. “I’ll walk you two out to your car.”

“That’s not necessary,” Allie said, and she handed him back the stack of boat brochures. He watched while they left the showroom, and then he put the brochures back. He’d have to apologize to Cliff. That was one sale they were never going to make.

“Thanks a lot, Reid,” Walker muttered, as he went back up to his office.

When he got there, he sat down at his desk again and tried to concentrate on the stack of paperwork in front of him. But when he realized he’d read the same sentence three times and it still didn’t mean anything to him, he got up and walked over to the window.

He
knew
he was right. He
knew
he hadn’t imagined the attraction they’d felt for each other at the party. So either she’d flat-out lied to him when she said she hadn’t felt it, or she was in denial about it.
The second one,
he decided, fiddling with the cord on the window’s Venetian blinds. She didn’t strike him as a dishonest person. At least not an
intentionally
dishonest person. But it was one thing to be honest with other people. And another thing to be honest with yourself. Being honest with yourself was infinitely harder.

And now, he thought, it was time for him to be honest with himself. For whatever reason, they weren’t going to have a relationship with each other.
So
give it up, Walker,
he counseled himself, still standing at the window. But the truth was, he couldn’t. He’d already tried. Somehow, in the short time he’d known her, she’d gotten under his skin. And now he couldn’t get her out from under it.

Part of the problem, of course, was the powerful physical attraction he felt for her. But that wasn’t all of it. Because most of the time, when he thought about Allie, he didn’t think about her in that way. Instead, he thought about her cutting her son’s pancakes, as she had been doing the first morning he’d met her, at Pearl’s. He didn’t know what it was about that image that stuck with him. God knows, it wasn’t sexy. It was the opposite of sexy, actually.
It was maternal
.

He stood very still now. Maybe Reid was right. Maybe he did want marriage and children. The whole nine yards, as Reid had put it. But if that was the case, why, then, had he botched it so badly the first time?

He was still turning this over in his mind when he drove out of the boatyard that night. He had his windows rolled down to the warm summer night, and Bruce Springsteen cranked up on the sound system, but tonight this drive didn’t give him any pleasure. Because tonight, he was remembering what it was like living with Caitlin in the months before she’d lost the baby.

It was like living with a stranger, he thought now. Only worse. Because he and a stranger would have eventually gotten to know each other. Whereas he and Caitlin went backward in their relationship, from knowing each other to being strangers. Strangers who were married. Strangers who were planning on raising a child together.

Once, they’d had at least one thing in common: their attraction to each other. But that was the first thing to go. Once they realized they’d never had anything else in common, they started avoiding each other. Something that wasn’t that difficult to do in Walker’s thirty-five-hundred-square-foot cabin. Walker buried himself in his work. And Caitlin? Walker had no idea what she did. She had no career in Butternut. She’d given that up when she’d moved there. She had no friends, either. The locals, Walker knew, had mistaken her reserve for unfriendliness. And he’d done nothing to help to dispel that misconception.

So how she filled her days was a mystery to him. But he’d suspected at the time, and he knew now, that she’d been lonely—achingly, hopelessly, miserably lonely. And Walker, who’d persuaded her to marry him and to move here, had done nothing to help her.

Why hadn’t he helped her? he wondered, as he left the town of Butternut behind him and headed out to the lake. But he knew why. He hadn’t helped her because he couldn’t admit how unhappy she was. How unhappy they
both
were. If he’d admitted that, then he would have had to admit that he’d made a mistake in persuading her to marry him. And admitting a mistake generally meant taking responsibility for it, not to mention actually
doing
something about it. And he couldn’t do either of those things, since doing them, apparently, would have taken more courage than he actually possessed. So instead, he ignored her. And hoped, somehow, she would just . . .
just go away
. Disappear. And the amazing thing was, she almost had.

Why else would he have been surprised to see her that late autumn morning, when she came into his study and tapped him, hesitantly, on his shoulder?

“Caitlin?” he said, looking up with surprise. “What’s wrong?”

“I’m sorry to bother you, but . . .”

“But what?” he asked, feeling a trace of impatience. He was rewriting the business plan for the Butternut Boatyard.

“It’s probably nothing,” she said. But she looked shaken.

“What is it, Caitlin?”

“I haven’t felt the baby move since I woke up this morning,” she said, finally, looking down at the tiny bump that had only recently appeared on her slender frame.

“Is that unusual?” Walker asked, embarrassed that he didn’t already know the answer to that question. He’d meant to at least
look
at the pregnancy and childbirth books Caitlin had brought home with her. But he’d never gotten around to it.

“It is unusual,” Caitlin said. “I mean, I’m almost six months pregnant. And I’ve been feeling the baby move for a couple of weeks now. I was feeling it
more
frequently, not
less
frequently, and then today . . . nothing.”

“Not even a little?” he asked, feeling the first knife edge of fear.

“Nothing,” she whispered, her white skin so pale it was almost translucent.