CHAPTER 2
Framed in the doorway with the thin winter light creeping through the tiny windows she was lovelier than his memory of her. He’d hoped it would be different. He’d hoped his fantasies of her would be exaggerated as so many fantasies are. But she was here, flesh and blood, and so beautiful she took his breath away. Perhaps because of it, his smile was cynical and his voice cool.
“Hello, Faith.”
She couldn’t move, forward or back. He trapped her now as he had so many years before. He didn’t know it then, she couldn’t let him know it now. Emotion, locked and kept secret for so long struggled against will and was held back. “How are you?” she managed to ask, her hands like a vise around the doll.
“Fine.” He walked toward her. God, how it pleased him to see the nerves jumping in her eyes. God, how it tormented him to learn she smelled the same. Soft, young, innocent. “You look wonderful.” He said it carelessly, like a yawn.
“You were the last person I expected to see walk through the door.” One she’d learned to stop looking for. Determined to control herself, Faith loosened her grip on the doll. “How long are you in town?”
“Just a few days. I had the urge.”
She laughed and hoped it didn’t sound hysterical. “You always did. We read a lot about you. You’ve been able to see all the places you always wanted to see.”
“And more.”
She turned away, giving herself a moment to close her eyes and pull her emotions together. “They ran it on the front page when you won the Pulitzer. Mr. Beantree strutted around as though he’d been your mentor. ‘Fine boy, Jason Law,’ he said. ‘Always knew he’d amount to something.’”
“I saw your daughter.”
That was the biggest fear, the biggest hope, the dream she’d put to rest years ago. She bent casually to pick up the veil. “Clara?”
“Just outside. She was about to mow down some boy named Jimmy.”
“Yes, that’s Clara.” The smile came quickly and just as stunningly as it had on the child. “She’s a vicious competitor,” she added and wanted to say like her father, but didn’t dare.
There was so much to say, so much that couldn’t be said. If he had had one wish at that moment, it would have been to reach out and touch her. Just to touch her once and remember the way it had been.
“I see you have your lace curtains.”
Regret washed over her. She’d have settled for bare windows, blank walls. “Yes, I have my lace curtains and you your adventures.”
“And this place.” He turned to look around again. “When did all this start?”
She could deal with it, she promised herself, this hatefully casual small talk. “I opened it nearly eight years ago now.”
He picked a rag doll from a bassinet. “So you sell dolls. A hobby?”
Something else came into her eyes now. Strength. “No, it’s my business. I sell them, repair them, even make them.”
“Business?” He set the doll down and the smile he gave her had nothing to do with humor. “It’s hard for me to picture Tom approving of his wife setting up a business.”
“Is it?” It hurt, but she set the china doll on a counter and began to arrange the veil on its head. “You always were perceptive, Jason, but you’ve been away a long time.” She looked over her shoulder and her eyes weren’t nervous or even strong. They were simply cold. “A very long time. Tom and I were divorced eight years ago. The last time I heard he was living in Los Angeles. You see, he didn’t care for small towns either. Or small-town girls.”
He couldn’t name the things that stirred in him so he pushed them aside. Bitterness was simpler. “Apparently you picked badly, Faith.”
She laughed again but the veil crumpled in her hand. “Apparently I did.”
“You didn’t wait.” It was out before he could stop it. He hated himself for it, and her.
“You were gone.” She turned back slowly and folded her hands.
“I told you I’d come back. I told you I’d send for you as soon as I could.”
“You never called, or wrote. For three months I—”
“Three months?” Furious, he grabbed her arms. “After everything we’d talked about, everything we’d hoped for, three months was all you could give me?”
