not every man really lives.
William Ross Wallace
Anna sat crosslegged on her bed that night and typed out yet another chatty email to her mother. That was the good thing about the time difference between Scotland and Ohio: she could send out an email last thing at night and turn off her phone again with the perfectly legitimate excuse of having gone to bed before her mother immediately rang her back.
Tomorrow, she promised herself. Tomorrow, she would pick up the phone and sit through the verbal version of what she’d already gotten in a dozen emails, variations on the theme of her own many failings.
At least, in one way, it would be a relief to get it over with. The task of finding excuses for not picking up when her mother called was taxing her creativity.
Dear Mom,
Sorry I couldn’t phone you back. The committee meetings ran long tonight, and earlier I was trying to find a way to track down the thief who’s been stealing the festival posters and canceling orders with our vendors. On a bright note, Julian Ashford arrived today to begin rehearsing with the actors from the village. Neither Vanessa Devereaux nor Pierce Saunders can arrive until the day before the festival. They’ll do only the last dress rehearsal and the two performances, but they’re both such pros that I’m not worried. Aunt Elspeth’s knee, meanwhile, is much better. I had to talk her out of trying to walk to the inn tonight for the meetings, but fortunately the temperature was so cold that I was able to complain with perfect sincerity that I would freeze on the way back home.
I’m thrilled for Margaret about her Good Morning America audition. So exciting! I know you’d miss her, but think how much fun you two will have shopping when you go out to New York to visit. Will try to call soon!
Love,
Anna
She sent the message and turned the phone off, then crossed the room to plug it in to charge at the spindle-legged writing desk. A faint scratching beneath the windowsill outside caught her attention, and she paused to listen.
The sound came again, too loud for a bird, as if some large creature was scrabbling along the wall. Scanning the desk for something heavy, she found only the brass lamp that stood about twenty inches high. She unplugged that and carried it with her to the window. After easing the sash up, she poked her head out with the lamp raised like a weapon above her head.
“Don’t hit me with that,” Connal said from three feet below her. “At least not until you hear what I have to say.” Toes and fingertips dug into the crevices between the stones, he lifted one hand higher, found a new fingerhold, moved his feet, and repositioned the other hand so that he was about a foot closer to the window than he had been.
Anna’s heart kicked into runaway mode, and she sucked in a freezing blast of air. “What on earth are you doing, you idiot? You’re going to fall and crack your skull like an egg.”
“Great visual. Thanks for that,” Connal said, climbing another foot.
“I’m serious. Go back down. Right now.”
“It’s safer to go down than up at this point, and I’m not going anywhere until we’ve had a chance to talk. If you don’t want me to fall, stand back and let me in.”
The thought of Connal falling . . . Panic squeezed Anna’s lungs. She stepped back, watching with her heart still beating a furious tattoo until he had grabbed the bottom jamb of the window and swung safely through. Unfolding himself, he dusted his hands against his jeans.
“Well, I haven’t done that in a while,” he said, breathing heavily. “It’s harder than I remembered. I must be out of shape.”
Anna crossed her arms to keep from pulling him close in sheer relief. “I take it there was a lot of second-story work in your misspent youth?”
“Nothing that exciting.” He looked down at her with a wicked grin. “The studios used to let me do some of my own stunts before the insurance got too high. I managed to learn a few tricks.”
“Did you miss learning about the invention of the telephone? I hear it’s useful for talking to people—and much safer than climbing the side of a house at midnight.”
“It’s only useful with people who don’t have a history of not picking up when they don’t want to talk to someone. And I figured if I waited until morning and came by, it would be unbearably awkward for Elspeth if you refused to see me.” Connal closed the window against the cold night air and rubbed his fingers together briskly before tucking them into his armpits to try to warm them.
Anna retreated to the desk and set down the lamp, adding some distance between them. Not that Connal was wrong.
“I didn’t set out with the intention of deceiving you, Anna. Please believe me.” Connal’s voice was so soft she had to strain to hear him. “And hurting you in any way was the very last thing I wanted. I’ve been going about this entire relationship backward, and I can’t tell you how much I wish I hadn’t made such a muddle of it.”
“Relationship?” Anna shivered and leaned back again the desk.
“What would you call it?” He shot her a look she couldn’t read, part sadness and part something else. “It’s more than casual. It has been since the moment I saw you, and I hoped a month would be enough to give us a good foundation for seeing where it could go.”
“You yelled at me the first time you saw me, remember?” Anna gripped the edge of the desk more tightly. “Maybe I should have stuck with first impressions. I’d be feeling like less of a fool right now.”
“I am sorry.”
“I told you about Henry. You told me you didn’t want to go back to acting.”
“Acting and writing are two different things. But you’re right: I’m not very good at trusting people. I’ve been betrayed too often—and so have you. Let me ask you something. If you hadn’t told me about Henry, if you hadn’t had the experience with Henry, would you have expected me to tell you that I was Graham three weeks into our relationship?”
“I didn’t think it was the kind of relationship that dealt in weeks,” Anna said.
“It isn’t, and right now, I’m afraid of losing you before we find out what we can be together. I can’t tell you what my life will look like a year from now, or three years from now, but I know that I want what we have to work. Can’t that be enough?” He took a step closer, then two, until they stood a foot apart. He raised his hand and brushed the back of his fingers against her cheek. “Please don’t throw it away because I made one mistake. A big mistake, but it was only one. I’ve been honest with you about everything else. Maybe I was afraid, and I think you’re afraid, too. I think that fear is keeping us both from moving forward.”
He turned his hand, cupping her cheek, and instinctively Anna pressed her face against his palm. How could she crave his touch so much? She couldn’t get close enough. Skin to skin, she wanted to melt into him.
Was he right? Was it easier to focus on his fear than it was to release her own? There was little she hated worse than a hypocrite. Also, she hadn’t forgotten what Elspeth had said about regrets and could-have-beens.
“You scare me because you have the power to hurt me even worse than I’ve been hurt before.”
“We have the power to hurt each other. Please don’t shut me out.” His voice trembled, and there was pain in his eyes.
Taking the last step, Anna raised her face to his, then stood on her toes to meet him as his lips came down to hers. The contact was bittersweet, too much and not enough, and yet a warm glow of happiness and relief started at her core and spread outwards until she thought it would burst through her skin. There didn’t seem to be enough space in her to hold it all.
Had she felt half of this for Henry? No wonder she was scared to death. Connal’s touch plunged her into a tumble of emotions that went so far beyond those fledgling feelings of childhood memories, hope, and heartbreak that it was like a forest fire burning through everything in its path. She kissed him back, her hands threading themselves into his hair, pulling him closer until he groaned against her lips and drew away.
“I’d better not stay any longer,” he said against her hair. “We’re not teenagers, even if that’s how you make me feel, and I don’t think I could survive the mortification of being caught by Elspeth in the middle of the night. Come to lunch with me tomorrow? We can talk some more?”
Anna nodded into his shoulder, but neither of them let go. It felt too much like Connal would vanish if she let go of him, as if she had conjured him in her sleep, and when he stepped back, she felt cold all the way to her bones.
She made him tiptoe with her down the stairs to leave by the front door. Then too keyed up to sleep after he’d gone, she fixed herself a cup of tea and sat in the front parlor in the dark, looking out at the cloud-chased moonlight rippling on the loch. How was she to make sense of what she was doing, of what he’d said, of where the two of them were going? In one respect, he was right, though. At the very least, they needed to know what they had together before it was time for her to leave.
It struck her that every relationship had turning points, the way turning points set the framework of any story. With Connal, she’d passed the point where she’d accepted the call to adventure, the midpoint when she was no longer the same person she had been before. Where did her story with him end? She didn’t know, but she couldn’t turn back; she knew that much. He had drawn her all the way out of the safe, familiar walls she had built around her heart, and whatever happened between them from here on out, she was going to feel every bruise and bump and bit of joy.