in Singapore until at least tomorrow.” Often, the trips ran longer than originally planned.
“I came back early,” he said.
She dropped her chin and stared at him, gripping the banister. Evan didn’t come home early for anything. Not when she had influenza and a fever and was too sick to make the girls dinner, let alone get out of bed. She’d had to call Gemma to come up and help her, because Evan had a big client meeting and couldn’t cancel it. Not when she had a migraine and asked him to get home early to pick the girls up from preschool. Then he’d had another client meeting. He couldn’t leave his client in a lurch. She’d had to put on her darkest sunglasses and deal with it, even when he hadn’t come home until well after the girls were in bed (client dinner).
“You came back early?” She narrowed her eyes at him. “Why? Deal fell apart?”
Evan had the decency to look ashamed. “That’s a fair statement, but no. I came back because I missed the girls. And I missed you, Hope.”
She stared at him for a long time. He was still handsome, tall and fit, with the same dark hair and eyes that had caught her eye all those years ago. He was familiar. But right now, standing here in this house, on this island, in the life she had created for herself here, he looked strange and out of place. She knew the correct response would be to tell him that she was thrilled, that she missed him too, and not long ago she might have done just that.
But she wasn’t that person anymore. And the truth was that she didn’t know who she was anymore. Or where that left them.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Gemma
Gemma was working at the table on the porch the next afternoon, a glass of lemonade at her side, the sunshine on her face, and the wilting bouquet of lilacs from the weekend’s party front and center, pulling her thoughts away from the chapter she needed to finish by end of the day and back to other, personal matters. Conversations she’d rather forget. Feelings that never should have crept up in the first place.
What had she done, allowing herself to develop feelings for Leo, of all people, just because he was friendly, and cute, and…something else. Something she couldn’t quite put her finger on, something that defied all logic and tapped right into the part of herself that she no longer trusted, and shouldn’t have trusted. Her heart.
Exasperated, she finally lifted her fingers from the keyboard, pushed back her chair, and grabbed the vase. She marched it through the side door to the kitchen of the house and crossed through to set it in the center of the underused formal dining room, and then walked purposefully back to her computer.
There. Out of sight, out of mind.
If only it were that easy.
She posed her fingers over the keyboard and skimmed her last paragraph, trying to get back into the feel of the story. After taking a day off yesterday to help with the girls, she was now nearly three hundred pages into the story. She knew the characters. She knew what would happen next. She had one week to finish the draft, and then…then she could fall apart.
She wrote two more lines—slowly—and then looked up when she heard something crunching over the gravel driveway. It was Ellie, home early, it would seem. She dragged her foot across the kickstand and left the bicycle at a precarious angle on the front path, waving when she saw Gemma sitting on the porch.
“Writing?” she asked.
Gemma smiled. “I was. I could use a break if you want to join me for some lemonade.” She motioned to the pitcher on the table.
Ellie grinned and pushed her long braid over her shoulder. “I’ll grab a glass.”
She went inside and returned a moment later. She filled her glass and took the seat next to Gemma, staring longingly at the water in the distance.
“I feel bad about how I behaved the other night at the party,” she said, darting a glance in Gemma’s direction.
Gemma hadn’t been pleased that Ellie had tried to argue with her in front of their guests, but she had bigger problems to deal with. Besides, she understood. She saw the hurt in Ellie’s eyes every time that Simon spoke, and when he and his fiancée left at the end of the night, hand in hand.
“We don’t need to talk about it,” Gemma said.