Total pages in book: 109
Estimated words: 109608 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 548(@200wpm)___ 438(@250wpm)___ 365(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 109608 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 548(@200wpm)___ 438(@250wpm)___ 365(@300wpm)
“So it’s all about you and what you were feeling, and you accuse me of being self-absorbed?” he fired back.
“No, it’s all about the fact you want it to be solely about you when it’s not. When we were both there, feeling deeply.”
“You mean something to me, Nora, so when you lashed out when I was feeling deeply, sharing you thought what we had was nothing, you kicked a man I thought you cared about when he was down.”
“And you’re old enough to know you never tell a woman you just kissed, and kissed thoroughly, Jameson Oakley, that the kiss you shared was a mistake.”
Yet again, his eyes flashed. “My words were lamentably unguarded, but also unintentional when I hurt you by saying that. Can you claim the same?”
“Absolutely,” I spat.
He glowered at me.
I glared at him.
His head shot around to look out the windows.
It was then I heard the hushed rumble of the yacht’s engines.
They weren’t just starting up. In the intensity of our conversation, we’d missed their engagement.
They were working.
Thus, when I glanced to the side, I saw we were moving.
I felt my brows knit in confusion.
“What on earth?” I murmured.
Had everyone arrived?
And if they had, why had no one joined us in the lounge?
Jamie slammed his glass down on the bar and prowled to and out the open door to the deck.
Hurrying, I followed him.
He was at the starboard side where I stopped next to him and stared in total incredulity at Chloe, Cadence and Dru standing down on the dock, waving up at us (though, again, Chloe wasn’t waving, she had one hand to her baby bump, and a smug look on her face).
There was a mild, panicked squeak to my words when I asked, “What’s happening?”
Slowly, Jamie turned my way.
I looked up at him.
He stared down at me.
And then he spoke.
“It looks, sweetheart, like we’ve been parent trapped.”
Oh. My.
Lord.
It hit me like a rocket.
Chloe.
That little minx.
This was…
It was…
Unconscionable.
When Jamie managed to talk the captain into turning us right back around, I was going to find her.
And then I was going to throttle her.
Metaphorically, of course.
But make no mistake, I was going to do it.
Meticulously.
CHAPTER 3
MICHAEL ARAM
Jamie
Several years ago…
“We can’t, it’s not right. We can’t do it like this.”
Jamie stood at the front of the church with his daughter, who was in a mild panic.
There were reasons why, and they all centered around the handcrafted, nickel-plated Michael Aram urn with its gold lid and base and the single white cast anemone fixed to the bottom that sat on a plinth at the front of the altar.
Or, more precisely, what lay in that urn.
However, Dru’s words were not about the urn, or the occasion, but about the flowers adorning the church.
She had, he remembered distinctly, requested peach roses for her mother’s funeral sprays.
They were her mother’s favorites.
And Dru’s.
Now, she was saying she’d ordered red, to match Rosalind’s, and Dru’s, hair.
“Darlin’, people are arriving,” Jamie said gently. “I’ve been told the vestibule is filling up. We can’t keep the doors closed much longer.”
As if his words rang to the back of the cathedral, they heard a door open, the low buzz of conversation coming from the lobby, and Jamie and Dru turned that way.
But, he suspected, only Jamie knew the woman who had closed the door on their guests and was walking swiftly down the aisle in their direction.
Her dress was prim with short, capped sleeves, an exaggerated, pointed collar buttoned up to the base of her throat, and a tie belt at the nipped waist, the latter two were black, trimmed in white. The skirt was wide. The style was reminiscent of the fifties, including the black gloves she wore on her hands that ended at her wrists.
He didn’t understand, on seeing her making her way to them, why the weight of the day and his and his daughter’s grief seemed less heavy, but it did.
When she made it to them, she stopped, tearing her sorrow-filled, warm brown eyes from Jamie to look at Dru.
“Hello, dear,” she said tenderly.
“Uh, hi,” Dru mumbled.
Nora Ellington looked back to Jamie. “Can I be of help?”
Of course.
Of course she was there to help.
How she sensed he needed it, he didn’t know.
But she did, and she was there to offer it.
He had only spoken pleasantries and small talk with her since he’d seen her in a restaurant waiting for a friend years before, and now, when he needed her the most, she was there.
“We have an issue with the flowers,” Jamie told her.
Nora’s gaze swept through them, and when it came back to Jamie, she arched her brows in question.
“Dru wants red,” he explained.
“Obviously,” Nora stated, turning her attention to Dru. “Because of your mother’s fabulous hair.”
Jamie’s throat tightened.
Tears shined in Dru’s eyes, these coming from the sadness that she’d worn like a cloak since Lindy’s diagnosis, and naturally more so the last week since she passed, but also in gratitude that Nora understood.