Safe Harbor (43 page)

"Oh, don't be, please!" Millie begged, afraid that she'd wrecked things for Sam. "We're the ones made him do it."

Charlotte
kept asking and Millie came around, by degrees, into agreeing to stay for just the one night. "After that, it's home to the bungalow, right Jim?"

"It's where we feel best," her husband explained.

"It's settled, then," said Charlotte, and she went off to make the arrangements.

They watched her leave the room. "She seems happy," Jim volunteered.

"And why wouldn't she be? She's the mother of the bride," said Millie, as if that explained everything.

"Well
...
you
know
..." murmured her husband as Eric Anderson caught their eye.

He came over and sat on a folding chair next to the more comfortable armchair that Holly had found for her new father-in-law.

He looked tired. Tired and a bit down in the dumps. But that was natural, thought Millie, him losing his daughter to another man and all. All fathers went through it. He hadn't been with
Charlotte
for almost a year, so
that
couldn't be it.

Still, Millie was feeling uncomfortable, and when she was nervous, she babbled. "
Charlotte
was just here a minute ago," she said, because for sure he must have seen her. "She's talked us into staying here for the night."

"Ah. Lucky you. I haven't had any success that way, myself," he said with a rueful smile.

Oh, thought Millie, that was putting her foot in it! Her husband began studying the wallpaper, which just infuriated her. He never knew what to say at times like these.

"I'm sorry," Millie murmured, because she didn't know what to say, either.

"Oh, don't be sorry!" Eric said. "I didn't mean it the way it sounded." He made the corners of his mouth go up, but Millie wasn't convinced in the least.

He said, "Would you like me to retrieve your luggage from the Stone's Throw
Inn
?"

Millie pointed in some confusion to Charlotte, who was in the next room talking to someone Eric's age. "I think she's just asking someone—"

"Well! Let's see if I can't take over; they'd recognize me
at the inn, since I picked you
up there earlier."

He excused himself, and Millie gave Jim a poke for not handling the situation better.

****

Eric was aware, as he approached the woman from whom he was separated, that he was fighting for his emotional life. Charlotte Anderson had put up a wall between them that he hadn't yet been able to scale. It was a pretty wall, to
be sure—all covered with sweet-
smelling roses—but that had made it all the more difficult to climb.

If only she'd scream at him, curse him, throw things. But no, she was always unfailingly kind—when
wasn't
she kind?—and polite, but crushingly firm: she wasn't prepared to take him back. He had already spent nearly a year dying a slow and pa
inful death, watching his life-
blood slowly ooze from his self-inflicted wounds.

And now she was seeing someone! Carl! That
... that gigolo! He had to be a good six or seven years younger than
Charlotte
. Granted, she still looked younger than Carl did—contractors weathered more quickly than most—but for two cents Eric would knock his block off. If he could. Eric felt personally betrayed by the man.

After throwing so much business his way over the years
.
...

He went up to his wife in time to see Carl accepting a room key from her and smiling at something she said. She turned to Eric and the smile lingered, and yet something fell away from it. He felt as if he'd just hosed off half the petals from a blooming rose.

He nodded to the guest—who was, after all,
just
a guest, not the father of the bride or even the estranged husband of the bride's mother—and said, "Excuse me, Carl, would you? I'll just steal
Charlotte
for a minute."

Eric felt pleased with his collegial manner, but when he got
Charlotte
to the side he wanted desperately to take her in his arms and kiss her. It had been so long. He missed her so much. To lie with her in their old bed tonight—that would be heaven.

"Lotty," he said, feeling entitled to use the pet name on this of all days. "I—you look really beautiful," he said, interrupting himself. How had he ever been oblivious to that? "What a glow you have today."

"Thank you, Eric," she said, smiling. "You look very dapper yourself."

"Our little girl. Can you believe it?"

"I know," her mother said with a half-mournful smile. "They grow up so fast."

He pretended to be in the way of a passing guest and moved in closer to his wife. She stepped aside, too. He ended up no closer.

"Holly's in good hands, right?" he asked, desperate to keep the conversation going.

"Eric! How can you ask?"

"Of course she is," he said quickly. "But you know I want the best for her."

"I do know, Eric," said
Charlotte
. "You always have."

She recognized that, then; that for most of his life, he hadn't been a shit. He'd been a go
od father, a loyal husband. For
almost all of his sixty-three years. Heartened, he said, "The house is going to seem emptier." He wanted to say,
even
emptier.

Charlotte
said, "Oh, not at all. Those two hang out here all the time; it will be more of the same—only better," she added with a secretive smile.

Guilt didn't work on her; nothing did. Desperate, he said, "I've just been talking with the Steadmans, and they told me they're staying here tonight. I offered to run over for their luggage; the innkeeper saw me pick them up earlier, so at least there wouldn't be any question."

Charlotte
's smile broadened, sending his spirits soaring. She
did
appreciate the gesture!

"Eric, that would be
so
nice," she said, even laying her hand on his forearm.

The heat of her touch sizzled through his shirtsleeve. For the hundred-thousandth time in the past year, he flayed himself for being a fool.

"Carl," she said gaily across the room. "Could you give me that key back? Eric's offered to go instead."

Carl flashed a grateful grin and said, "Here you go," and tossed the key underhand to Eric, who dropped it and then scooped it up quickly.

He turned in time to see his wife rejoin Carl and walk into his old study. He smiled to himself: a sad, wistful, melancholy smile. He'd
just
been too smart by half.

On his way out, he detoured past his daughter,
mostly
to breathe in her happiness; it might last him through part of the long night ahead. "Hey, punkin, you got your curls back," he said, slipping his arm around her and giving her a peck on the cheek.

"I know," his daughter said. She scrunched her face in disgust. "After all that work blow-drying it straight this morning before the rain."

"You look radiant. Happy?" he murmured.

"Oh, Dad," said Holly, sighing. "More than anyone in the world." Her face lit up, and Eric didn't have to ask why. He turned in time to see his son-in-law and ex-rival coming to reclaim his bride.

"Hey-y-y," he said good-naturedly to Sam. "Give me a break. You'll have her for the rest of your life."

"Not long enough," said Holly's husband, and Eric knew too well it was true.

He was about to say, "Treat her well," but it would be stating the obvious, and besides, he had no right to be giving that advice. Instead he smiled and said, "You're a damn lucky guy, Sam."

He yielded his daughter with more grace than he'd just yielded his wife, and then he went out to his car, slapping the inn key idly against his thigh.

****

Holly, arm in arm with the man she loved, watched her father leave. "I wish he could be even a tiny fraction as happy as we are," she said, sighing.

"That would be blazingly happy indeed," said Sam, stealing yet another in an endless series of kisses from his new bride.

Holly enjoyed the kiss
—she was no fool—and then resumed her train of thought. "At least he's over
Eden
. Frankly, I didn't think he'd be able to resist her when she tried again. I keep pointing that out to my mother, how he deserves credit for that, but so far she's not impressed."

Sam said, "I dunno. I just saw her talking to him, and she looked pretty happy."

Holly smiled and said, "That's because she knows our secret."

"Holy cats, you told her? When?"

"Just a little while ago. I wanted her to know before we go off on our honeymoon."

"Uh-oh." Sam glanced guiltily around the conservatory and shepherded his wife away from their guests and behind a huge schefflera. "What did she say?"

"She asked me when my due date was."

"Cool."

"
Yeah, she obviously forgives you. 
Just don't go stealing her station wagon and taking it for a joyride around the island," Holly teased.

Sam grinned and said, "The hell with the Volvo; I have my eye on your dad's new Porsche."

Sighing, Holly murmured, "Yes
.
.. the Porsche. That didn't help his case with my mother any.
  What repentant man needs a Porsche?"

"Holly, if it was meant to be, it will be."

"I know," she said, slipping her arms around his neck. "Sam?
Will
you love me forever?

His face softened in a look that took her breath away. For an answer, he repeated part of his vow from a few hours before. "You're my sun, my moon, the stars beyond," he whispered. "You are my life."

He kissed her again, a long, tender, utterly devoted kiss, and Holly knew that he meant it forever.

They were discovered by Billy, sweating profusely
despite the
undone bowtie and
rolled
-up
sleeves.
"Hey, you two, let's move it. Daylight's burnin'. Besides," he added to Sam, "I can't get out of this godforsaken monkey suit until you do, man. Have mercy, will ya?"

And so Holly and Sam changed into island wear—shorts and tee shirts—and ran through a hail of rice under brand-new sunshine (which everyone took as an omen), and Jack drove them and Billy to his waiting seaplane, and Billy flew them to
the neighboring
island
of
Nantucket
and their waiting bed.

And Holly and Sam stayed in that bed for the rest of the day and much of the next, without once coming out to say hi to the innkeeper.

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