Cottage by the Sea Read online

  “Britt,” she greeted her, seeing that the baby bump was clearly noticeable now.

  “Hi,” Britt said, and stood. “I wanted you to know Jimmy and I talked it over, and we’ve decided to consider the adoption agency you mentioned. Would you mind coming with us for our first visit?”

  “Of course. I’d be more than happy to do that.”

  “Thank you, Annie,” Britt said, and then reached out and impulsively hugged her.

  While leaving Oceanside was going to be hard, Annie couldn’t help but feel good that she’d been able to help others as much as they’d helped her.

  CHAPTER 32

  Annie was finishing up her dinner dishes when a loud clap of noise came from the yard next door, jolting her. Standing on her tiptoes, she looked out the window and noticed Preston marching down the steps of Mellie’s place like he couldn’t get away fast enough.

  Uh-oh—looks like trouble is brewing in paradise.

  Over the last few weeks she’d seen a softening in Mellie. She’d been more willing to let go of the piles of stuff that littered nearly every corner of the house. Teresa had not only cleared the kitchen and dining room but had made progress in the living room, too. With each truckload, Mellie had made less and less of a fuss.

  Looking out the window again, Annie saw that when Preston reached his truck, he looked back at the house. His face was scrunched up with a mixture of anger, regret, and disappointment. For a long moment, he continued looking, before opening the door and sliding in. His shoulders sagged as he glanced one last time over his shoulder, started the engine, and drove off.

  Mellie was looking out the kitchen window, watching Preston. Although it was difficult to tell from this distance, it looked like Mellie’s face was red. Whether with anger or tears, Annie couldn’t tell.

  Annie debated going to check on her friend. It would go either of two ways: Annie would be the last person Mellie wanted to see and would demand that she get out and leave her alone; or, she would welcome Annie and cry on her shoulder.

  She gave it a couple hours.

  Preston didn’t return.

  Hoping to smooth the way, Annie baked peanut butter brownies, cut them in neat squares, and set them on a plate. It was her favorite “your man done you wrong” recipe. Armed with the goodies, she walked to Mellie’s.

  Knocking, she let herself into the kitchen, where she was most likely to find her friend. Mellie looked up, her eyes bright with anticipation, until she saw it was Annie. The light quickly faded.

  Annie waited for more of a reaction and got none. “Thought you might need my special brownies.”

  Mellie scowled at the plate.

  “These are my ‘your man done you wrong’ brownies.”

  “Oh,” she said, ignoring the offering, which Annie set on the table. “I guess you heard Preston slam out of the house.”

  “I heard something. You two have a difference of opinion?”

  Mellie grabbed a brownie off the plate. “Something like that.”

  “I won’t ask about it.”

  “Wouldn’t do you any good if you did.”

  Annie had already figured that would be the case. Mellie wasn’t the type to share confidences or seek advice. “Misery loves company, and seeing that we’re both on the outs with our men, I figured we could drown our sorrow in brownies.”

  “I’m more inclined to bring out the Fireball whiskey.”

  “Not a bad idea,” Annie said, amused and only half serious.

  She should have known Mellie wasn’t joking. Before Annie could say anything more, Mellie dragged a stepstool to the cabinet above the refrigerator and retrieved a large bottle. Next she brought out two glasses, filled both with ice, and poured a liberal amount of whiskey in each glass before handing one to Annie.

  “What should we toast to?” Mellie asked, at a loss to find a reason good enough to raise her glass.

  “To sisterhood,” Annie suggested.

  “The sisterhood of rotten men,” Mellie added, frowning.

  Annie shook her head, disliking that idea. “Keaton’s not rotten; he’s stubborn.”

  “So is Preston,” Mellie said and raised her glass a second time. “To the sisterhood of stubborn men.”

  They clicked glasses, and each took a healthy sip. The whiskey burned all the way to Annie’s stomach, but it was a good burn.

  Mellie set her glass down on the kitchen table and stared into the distance. “I told Preston what to expect when he first started showing up. I was perfectly clear that I wasn’t interested in a relationship. I didn’t want to mislead him; I didn’t hide anything. He knew how I felt about anything romantic between us.”

  It appears that Preston’s heart had been rejected not once but twice now, Annie thought to herself.

  “He said he understood that,” Mellie continued.

  Annie wasn’t going to ply her friend with questions, seeing that Mellie hadn’t asked for advice. If she wanted Annie’s opinion, then she’d ask for it. What Mellie needed, Annie figured, was someone willing to listen.

  “I told him all I could offer him was friendship.”

  She stared down at the table, and Annie swore she could see tears glistening in Mellie’s eyes. It was either the pain she felt from her disagreement with Preston or the result of the hard liquor. Annie couldn’t tell which.

  Reading between the lines, she realized Preston must have let Mellie know his feelings. She knew he had loved Mellie for a long time.

  “I don’t need a man in my life.”

  “Don’t have one in mine,” Annie added. Unlike her friend, she would have liked to discuss options with Keaton, to figure out ways to make their relationship work. He refused to give her the chance to do so.

  Mellie held on to the glass with both hands. “It’s my fault,” she said, staring down into the glass. “I let him get too close. He claimed I encouraged him, and he’s right, I did. He’d stop by, and we’d sit and chat. Didn’t know I had that much to talk about with anyone. We’d sometimes be at it for hours. When he left, I was sorry to see him go and I’d think about all the things that I wanted to tell him next time.”

  It was different for Annie and Keaton. Words hadn’t seemed necessary. She could spend hours with him without either of them speaking a single word. It was that companionable silence she missed the most. The way he’d smile at her, like she was the most precious thing in the world, or take hold of her hand and raise it to his lips for a gentle kiss. He never asked her prying questions, never made demands. She’d needed that, needed him. Annie didn’t realize how much until he was no longer there. The quiet felt completely different now, echoing loneliness and loss. Keaton had filled the empty space in her heart that she’d been convinced had been forever taken from her.

  Mellie took another sip and hitched her breath. “Preston admitted he loved me.”

  Annie patted Mellie’s shoulder, hoping that would comfort her. Her friend jerked away as a quick reminder that she didn’t like to be touched.

  “He said he’d had a crush on me from as far back as high school. Loved me from afar for years.” She shook her head to chase away his words. “Doubt he said ten words to me all through school. You’d think he’d have let me know then.”

  “You’d think,” Annie agreed, although she was certain it’d taken Preston all these years to work up the nerve to tell Mellie how he felt.

  “What do you know?” Mellie snapped back.

  “Hey, I’m agreeing with you.” The whiskey had already gone to her head. It was liquor that had caused her trouble with Keaton in the first place. She knew better than to indulge in the hard stuff, no matter how it helped to ease the pain.

  “He kissed me,” Mellie whispered.

  “Was it awful?” Annie scrunched up her face.

  “No,” she whispered. “It was wonder
ful.”

  “Oh no.”

  “Right. Not what I wanted to feel, either. We had a good thing going as friends. I never realized how much we had in common. We share a history, both of us growing up in Oceanside. Most everyone leaves, but not us. Well, I did leave for a while, but I came back. He has a soft spot for animals, the same as me.”

  “Right.”

  “He plays World of Warcraft and so do I. Haven’t had a friend like Preston since I ran off with Cal.” She rubbed her face and muttered, “Biggest mistake of my life, that Cal. I should have turned tail and hightailed it the minute he started spewing his charm on me. I hate how stupid and naïve I was to listen to that scumbag.” She closed her eyes and shook her head. “When I think of all the garbage I put up with because of him, I want to punish myself.” She shook her head again, trying to chase away the memories. “How stupid can a woman get?”

  “Weren’t you a teenager when you ran off with him?” She wanted to help Mellie understand she’d been young and foolish. Everyone made stupid mistakes, no matter what their age. The key was growing from the experience, becoming wiser and smarter.

  Mellie refused to respond.

  It was then that it hit Annie.

  Bull’s-eye.

  Directly in the middle of her forehead.

  Mellie hadn’t moved forward. She hadn’t forgiven herself. She lived in fear, afraid of making the same mistake. As for wanting to punish herself, she was doing exactly that. By not leaving the house, by rejecting Preston’s love. This was all a form of self-punishment.

  “Preston isn’t Cal, Mellie,” she reminded her, and realized the instant the words left her mouth that she’d said the wrong thing.

  “You know Cal?” she demanded, eyes flashing with instant fire.

  “Uh, no.”

  “Then you know nothing.”

  “I know nothing,” Annie repeated, hoping that would appease her friend.

  “He was a cheating man-whore. Every word out of his mouth was a bald-faced lie. I wanted to believe him, so I accepted everything he said as gospel truth. Grandpa read him like a book. Five minutes after I introduced the two of them, Grandpa forbid me to see Cal ever again. I should have listened. It would have saved me years of grief.”

  “I’m sorry,” Annie whispered.

  “I thank God every day that we never married.”

  “You weren’t married?”

  “Another Cal lie. He was already married. Naturally, he forgot to mention that when I ran away with him. Fact was, he had two or three other wives strewn across five states. I didn’t learn that for a year or two. Should have left him then. But I’m too big of an idiot to realize all he ever wanted from me was my trust fund. Thankfully, I didn’t have full access to it until I was thirty.”

  Mellie reached for the Fireball and refilled her glass, splashing some over the edges in her eagerness to top it off.

  “I don’t think Preston ever married.” Annie remembered Keaton telling her that.

  Mellie ignored the comment. “Did you know he is able to finish the Sunday edition of the New York Times crossword puzzle?”

  “No.” She wasn’t aware of the significance of that feat.

  “In ink!” she added in awe. “I don’t usually make it past Wednesday. They get harder each day of the week, in case you didn’t know.”

  “I didn’t.”

  “He’s so smart. I never paid that much attention to grades when I was in school. What a waste. I might have learned something.”

  Thinking she needed food in her stomach to neutralize the alcohol, Annie reached for a brownie. Mellie slapped her hand. “Those are mine.”

  “But I baked them.”

  “Bake more. I’m not sharing. Preston likes—” She stopped talking abruptly as she studied the plate of brownies. After an awkward moment, she shoved it closer to Annie. “Help yourself. Preston won’t be back.”

  “You don’t know that. Weren’t you the one who told me to give Keaton time? Seems like you need to take your own advice.”

  “I told him to leave.”

  This wasn’t good. No wonder Preston had seemed hurt and rejected.

  “Said I never wanted to see him again.”

  Annie wanted to groan. Poor Preston. It’d probably taken him all these weeks of visiting Mellie in her home to build up his courage to tell her how he felt. How devastating it must have been to be kicked out of the house and be told that he wasn’t welcome back. Annie’s heart hurt for Preston.

  “You love him,” Annie said softly, uncertain how Mellie would react to the truth.

  “I don’t,” the other woman insisted, stiffening with resolve.

  “You do. He’s all you talk about.”

  “I do not. You keep asking about him.”

  “No, Mellie, I haven’t. You’re the one who brought him up, not me.”

  She looked like she was about to argue, then didn’t. She appeared to be mentally reviewing their conversation. Her eyes widened, realizing that Annie might be right. She had been talking nonstop about Preston.

  Gradually a thoughtful frown developed. “You think I love Preston?”

  Annie grinned. “Yup.”

  “All I ever wanted was for us to be friends.”

  “You are friends; that’s what makes this wonderful. Love based on shared experiences and friendship is what helps relationships last.” Ironic, Annie thought, that she should be giving Mellie advice, when her own experiences with falling in love had been gigantic failures.

  “I’ve never enjoyed anyone’s company as much as I do Preston’s,” Mellie admitted.

  “You can laugh with Preston and cry with him, too, Mellie. And, most important, you can be yourself. Preston is willing to love you, Mellie. Forgive me for being blunt, but you’re not an easy woman to love.”

  Annie closed her eyes, ready for her friend to lambast her for being brutally honest.

  “I know,” she conceded.

  If Mellie was willing to accept a few hard-to-accept truths, then Annie figured she’d drop another. “You mentioned earlier how much you regretted running off with Cal.”

  She nodded. “Stupidest mistake of my life.”

  “And you wanted to punish yourself for that.”

  Her friend narrowed her eyes. “I said that? I did, didn’t I?”

  “Yes, you did, and Mellie, my dear, dear friend, that’s exactly what you’re doing. You’re punishing yourself by holing up inside this house. You’re refusing to forgive yourself for your willingness to accept Cal’s lies and for wasting all those senseless years.”

  Mellie’s face hardened. “Thank you, Dr. Phil.” She shoved the plate of brownies back at Annie. “I think it’s time you left. Take these with you. I don’t need your sympathy any more than I need your advice.”

  Scooting back her chair, Annie took her glass over to the sink. “These are people who care about you, Mellie. Preston loves you and I count you as one of my dearest friends. You can accept that love and friendship, or you can reject it. The choice is yours.”

  Mellie refused to look at her. After what seemed an eternity, she murmured, “Like I said, it’s time for you to go.”

  CHAPTER 33

  Keaton stopped off at the animal shelter to check on his friend Preston. He hadn’t seen much of him lately, since Preston had taken over duties with Mellie. Unfortunately, it seemed Mellie and Preston’s relationship had abruptly ended. He didn’t know the details, and he wasn’t inclined to pry into his friend’s personal life. Preston had accepted that Keaton was no longer involved with Annie, and Keaton didn’t feel he could do any differently when it came to his friend and Mellie. Privately, he wished it would have worked out for the two of them, seeing how much Preston cared about Mellie.

  He waited until the animal shelter was closed before he went in
, so they could catch up without constant interruptions. Keaton was determined not to mention Mellie, but he knew something was up and it wasn’t good, which Preston confirmed when he told Keaton that he’d no longer be available to deliver the mail and groceries to her.

  Keaton had his own code and let himself into the shelter. He found Preston hauling the heavy bag of dog food from stall to stall, filling the dogs’ bowls. The barking was a tumultuous uproar, the dogs all eagerly awaiting their turn to be fed. They made it impossible for Preston to realize he was no longer alone. Rather than announce himself, Keaton picked up a second bag and pitched in with the row of dogs in the stalls on the opposite side of the kennel.

  Preston glanced up, saw that he had help, and thanked Keaton with an abrupt nod.

  “You okay?” Keaton asked, once they were directly across from each other.

  “Any reason I shouldn’t be?” Preston flared back.

  Yup, Preston was having relationship problems. Not that Keaton was any kind of expert. He’d made peace with the fact that Annie would soon be leaving town. It was inevitable, and had been from the start, only he hadn’t wanted to believe it. He’d been a fool to think she’d even consider staying, although he had expected she’d complete the contracted year. It seemed a signed contract, plus the lease on the cottage, weren’t enough to keep her in Oceanside. At the first opportunity, she’d found an excuse to walk away. He’d hoped…He stopped, refusing to let his mind drift into a minefield of negativity. It’d been a huge mistake to involve his heart. He knew it at the time, but that hadn’t kept him from falling hard for a woman who many would consider miles out of his league. Letting Annie go hurt about as bad as anything he’d endured in his life, but he was wiser now, accepting it. He wished her well, but for his own protection, he wanted nothing more to do with her.

  Preston made a few grumbling noises. If he said anything, it had completely bypassed Keaton. Keaton had promised himself to leave matters alone, but it was clear from the sunken look about Preston that he was brokenhearted. Keaton recognized that pain all too well. He didn’t know if he could help, but he decided to try.