THEY AWOKE CURLED together on the quilt and lay silently tangled as the sun broke in a cloudless sky. Miranda didn’t say a word, not when she slipped away to use the construction site’s Port-o-let, not when she splashed captured rainwater on her face and hands, not when she wrapped the peach-hued swath of material back into a dress.
Noah desperately wanted to talk to her, have a conversation, talk about the glorious night they’d shared, but he didn’t know where to start. So he pulled on his pants, shrugged into his shirt and wordlessly started clearing the remnants of their trespassing.
“Ready to go?” she asked, hooking her hand into his as he leaned against the wooden frame.
He nodded, despite that he most certainly did not want to go anywhere. After a lazy walk up the beach under the first dawning rays of morning, they’d be back at the hotel. To pack. To check out. Out of the hotel and out of each other’s private lives.
Noah knew it was wrong. He knew this parting would never last. Though they’d made love throughout the night, in the rain, on the porch, atop the quilt, they’d only scratched the surface of truly learning each other. He knew her erogenous zones. She definitely knew his. But more importantly, he now knew that Miranda read the works of D. H. Lawrence when she couldn’t sleep, that her favorite color was any shade of orange, from apricot to tangerine, and she preferred her wines red and dry.
In between their lovemaking, they’d talked. Laughed. Gotten a little misty. About their childhoods, about their families, about the topics they’d never even touched on in three years of what Noah now knew were empty discussions. How much time they’d wasted!
And yet, as he led her down the steps and through the swaying sea grass to the beach, he realized they’d actually done themselves a favor. They’d truly created a night to remember. A night where every single second mattered, where every word and every touch and every look meshed into a picture neither of them would soon forget.
MIRANDA GLANCED AT NOAH through her peripheral vision, not daring to look him in the eye. She’d promised him. She’d promised herself. Desperately, she tried to pull together some anger at herself—even some at him—for making her break that vow by falling in love. But she couldn’t manage so much as simple annoyance. Not when she felt—for the first time in her entire life—whole. Completed. Incredibly satisfied.
And yet, not whole, since she’d soon lose the one man she’d searched for all her life.
She watched the sand and shells beneath her feet, thankful that her hair fell loose about her face, hiding what she was sure was the bittersweet smile lingering on her slightly swollen, well-kissed mouth. He seemed content to scan the horizon and ignore her, except for the tentative hold he kept with her hand in his. She had no idea what she would do once they reached the hotel. Once he took one look at her, he would see that she loved him. She couldn’t hide it. Not when the emotion made her heart brim to the point of bursting. She loved him—him—with all her soul.
And she couldn’t tell him.
They strolled in silence. He swung the picnic basket wordlessly as they walked, watching the skyline as if he’d never seen the soft line of teal water blending into the pinkening sky. Miranda looked at the scene herself, one she’d seen so many times, and realized it did look different. Brighter, somehow. More glorious. Breathtaking.
And she knew why.
“I’m so sorry, Noah,” she murmured, unsure why she felt so compelled to share her feelings when she knew they would destroy whatever friendship was left between them.
He looked down at her, perplexed. “Sorry? For what? For sharing the most amazing night with me?” He set the picnic basket down and wrapped her in a warm, yet somehow incomplete, embrace. “Miranda, what we shared…”
“Was incredible,” she finished, burying her face into his chest through the seam of his unbuttoned shirt. The breeze caught the sides and fluttered the white cotton behind him like a sail. If only they could harness that breeze and fly away. To another world—some distant deserted island where they could live alone and enjoy each other day and night forever.
But that wouldn’t change a thing. Miranda would still love a man who didn’t think himself capable of feeling the emotion in return—a man who vowed to stay out of a committed relationship for the rest of his life, and for the most valiant of reasons.
To keep from breaking her heart.
“Beyond incredible,” he whispered. He slid a sweet kiss on her forehead, catching her breath. “So why are you apologizing?”
Miranda pressed her lips just below the curve of his throat, then inhaled, breathing in his scent, forcing it into her memory. Salty, like the waters of the gulf. And musky, like the essence of man. This man.
Exhaling, she resigned herself to the inevitable. Just as she’d told him the day before, she wasn’t some innocent schoolgirl after her first sexual experience. She was a grown woman who may not have a plethora of liaisons to her credit, but she knew herself nonetheless. Miranda built her whole life on a foundation of honesty. She’d rarely lied to herself if she could help it, and she wasn’t about to start lying to Noah.
She was about to come clean—and he was about to walk away.
Like a coward, she closed her eyes while she said the words. “I’m sorry, Noah, because I love you.”
She forced herself to look up at him. As she suspected, his face was a mask of clay, not hard or stone cold, but unyielding all the same.
“I know I promised this would just be a fling. I didn’t think…”
His eyes reflected nothing. His mouth opened slightly as if in shock.
She leaned down and picked up the basket herself, straightening to her complete height and retreating into the persona that had served her well over all these many lonely years. “But I’m thinking now, with my brain instead of my heart. You don’t have to worry. I anticipate a little discomfort between us until we resume our usual routine, and that will require some time apart, but you have your grant and I have my classes. If we make a concerted effort, we should be able to adequately avoid each other until the feeling…passes.”
He shook his head and glanced away, digging his hands into the pockets of his hopelessly wrinkled khakis. “Miranda, I—”
She held up her empty hand. “Don’t say anything, Noah. I’m not asking you to. I’m not asking for anything. Life happens, as they say. Apparently, so does love. But it’ll pass and I’ll be fine.” She emphasized those last three words, for his benefit as well as hers. She repeated them several times in her mind like a mantra before she spoke again. “It’s not so bad, really. Kind of bittersweet.” Nearly of its own volition, her hand gravitated to his. She touched his fingers lightly, relieved beyond measure that he didn’t pull away.
“You’re an amazing man, Noah. You’ve given me one glorious night…actually, two pretty terrific weeks. I won’t forget that.” She dropped his hand, knowing she had to say one last thing to smooth the way for when their friendship would rekindle. Someday. Later. Much later.
“But I will forget you.”
She spun and walked away. Noah watched every step. He saw the tiny crescent her spin had left in the sand. Watched her footprints meld into the saturated white powder near the shoreline until she finally disappeared into the hotel.
She loved him. And damn his granite heart—he couldn’t love her back.
Not forever, anyway. Right at this very instant, he loved her with every fiber of his being. He felt her absence like a hole in his chest, as if some unseen force had ripped out his lungs and left a huge emptiness all around his heart. He plopped down in the sand and dragged his hands through his hair, wishing he hadn’t let her go, yet thankful she had the power and courage to walk away.
Miranda Carpenter loved him.
At least she said she did, and Miranda never said anything she didn’t mean.
Noah buried his face in his hands, wondering what the hell was wrong with him. His mind slipped back, as if in a vortex of flashing time, to the day Sarah marched into his office with her therapist to tell him she was moving to Los Angeles and he could drop his restraining order. The triumph in her eyes had told Noah she’d finally exorcised the demon in her heart—him. Then he remembered the night he ended his marriage to Trish. He’d left, taking only his clothes and leaving divorce papers. She’d signed them promptly, attaching a handwritten message on a sticky note atop the legalese.
“If only you could have loved me back,” it had read.
If only.
If only he’d loved her in the first place.
There he’d been, a noted psychotherapist—a man others looked to in their quest for secrets hidden deep in their souls—and he’d never looked deep enough into his own to discover that what he’d once assumed was love was really anything but. He and Trish had been children when they’d met, just starting high school. They’d discovered the wonders of hormones and sex together. They’d fought off the angst of adolescent loneliness by remaining true and committed and loyal. But after college, after they’d walked down the aisle and bought a home and even begun planning a family, the ugly truth came out.
Noah couldn’t see a future with a woman he didn’t truly know. The Trish he knew was fourteen and wide-eyed and uncertain of her place in the world. He’d grown and matured right along with her, but in his own self-centeredness he’d never truly recognized the woman she’d become. And when he did, she was no longer the woman for him. So he called it off. Just like that.
With Sarah, he’d never been so blinded as to believe he loved her in the first place. Theirs was a relationship brimming with sexual conquest and playful friendship, but lacking true substance. When the relationship ended, he’d been neither surprised nor disappointed. If she hadn’t started stalking him, he probably would have put the affair behind him a long time ago.
Instead, he allowed his failures with Trish and Sarah to color his outlook on love and commitment in a particularly opaque shade of black. He decided he couldn’t love anyone longer than a few months. He convinced himself that he couldn’t envision his future beyond tomorrow.
He shut Miranda out of the place in his soul that seemed reserved for her from the beginning of time.
Noah was a coward. A fake. But admitting his faults in the privacy of his mind didn’t change a damn thing.
Confront the conflict.
He’d written the catchy buzz phrase in his first published work. He’d preached the rewards of facing discord head-on for years. And yet, he’d never done it himself. Not really. He’d scratched the surface of his psyche just enough to dig himself into a neat, seemingly conflict-free life—when all he’d really done was bury his head in the sand.
And Miranda deserved a hell of a lot better.
“DID YOU SEE the article?”
Miranda looked up from the contract on her desk and smiled at Teri’s sultry pose on the doorjamb. She wore a tight black leotard with long sleeves and a wraparound bodice, accentuating her lithe figure. Her skirt, a multicolored mosaic of see-through patches on a field of black crepe, swirled low to her ankles. She looked every bit the drama queen and Miranda couldn’t resist smiling indulgently, despite that Teri was bringing up a topic Miranda didn’t want to discuss.
“Yes, I saw it.”
Teri seemed completely disinterested in Miranda’s answer.
“Isn’t this a great pose? Just once I’d like to be standing like this, buck naked, when some god of a man looks up and turns to ashes with hot lust for me. Some fantasy, huh?”
Miranda grinned and pretended to agree for the sake of expediency in changing the subject. The last thing she wanted to think about was hot lust and godlike men. It was hard enough to be back at work with Noah only two floors away, though they might as well have been separated by an entire continent.
After packing her small suitcase and calling the front desk to check out, Miranda had slipped onto her balcony for one last look at the gulf, one last memory of a night of loving he’d burned into her as if with a hot-iron brand. She had barely registered the midmorning humidity on her skin when she caught sight of Noah, still sitting on the shore, his gaze lost to some far-off point beyond the sailboats and Jet Skis skimming across the water.
She knew her confession would throw him, but she didn’t think she’d leave him immobile. After feeling guilty for a split second, she slipped back into her room and grabbed her bag. Let him think about it. Let him stew. Maybe he’d finally realize that letting her go was the biggest mistake he’d ever, ever make.
If he didn’t, then she’d be the one to admit the error of her ways. Never to him, of course, but to herself.
For falling in love with her eyes wide open and her logic slammed shut.
Teri abandoned her affectation and slid into Miranda’s office with a swirl of her skirt. She closed the door behind her with a resounding thud.
“Speaking of godlike men…”
Miranda winced. She and Teri thought alike at the worst possible times.
“Sorry,” Miranda said. “I don’t know any such animal.”
“Excuse me, but didn’t you just return from your weekend getaway with Dr. Yummy? I only left twelve messages on your answering machine begging for the details.”
She hadn’t answered Teri’s messages because she hadn’t gotten home until late last night. Her agent had caught her on her cell phone just as she pulled out of the resort parking lot. The radio network had insisted LeAnn find her.
Teri’s ploys had worked, though Miranda didn’t plan to admit that until she’d delivered the signed contract. The show was a go, and she found a certain satisfaction knowing she could educate more people than just the ones who signed up for her class. After negotiating the entire afternoon, she’d spent the evening meeting with a producer, sketching out more topics and working on a schedule. Now, all she had to do was sign on the dotted line and she’d be on the airwaves from ten to midnight every evening.
Miranda fingered the top page of the legal agreement, drumming her nails on the network logo. It wasn’t as if she had anything else to do with her evenings. Or anyone else to do it with. Miranda closed the contract, sighed, scribbled her name beside her lawyer’s big red arrow, and jammed her pen in her university mug.
“As I said, I don’t know any godlike men, Teri.”
“Noah? Not godlike? Do you need new glasses?”
Miranda shook her head. “He may have Apollo’s body and Zeus’s charm, but I don’t know him in the least.”
Teri slid into the curvy chair opposite Miranda’s desk and frowned. Her bright red lipstick against her pale foundation exaggerated the expression to exactly the point of heartbreak Miranda truly felt.
“Did he dump you?”
Miranda couldn’t resist a self-deprecating laugh. “You can’t dump someone you were never really involved with. We had a bargain. We’d have a good time, no strings attached.”
Teri rolled her kohl-lined eyes. “No strings? God almighty, Miranda! Haven’t you heard my sob stories enough to know that no such arrangement exists?”
“Sure it does. Adults have one-night stands all the time.”
“Heartless adults, maybe. Shallow adults, definitely, judging by some of the losers I’ve caught sneaking out of my bed before the sun rises without so much as a ‘thank you and what was your name again?”’ Teri waved away the memory with a jangling flutter of hands, arms and bracelets. “You’re not heartless or shallow. Neither is Noah.”
Miranda scanned her desk, knowing nothing there—not the contract, essays, exams, books—would distract her or fill the growing emptiness inside. Even confiding in Teri would only ease the growing void for the moment. Only Noah could fill the widening vacuum—and that was about as likely as her sister letting this topic drop before Miranda spilled all the beans.
“Thanks for trying to help, Teri, but Noah and I have to work this out ourselves.” She replayed that statement, then realized she was mistaken. She didn’t have a damn thing to work out. She loved him. She’d told him. She’d definitely shown him. The ball was on his side of the net and he had to make the call on whether or not to return or take the fault.
“Maybe the article will help,” Teri said. “Remind him of what a great time the two of you had together, of how ‘perfectly balanced’ the two of you are, according to your Katherine Brown.”
Miranda smiled. She’d read the article more than once since Katie sent her an advance copy by e-mail. Not only had her protégé skillfully described their date, but she’d captured the playful mood of the evening and done a bit of editorializing about Miranda and Noah’s compatibility. Katie had somehow managed to tamp down her cynical side to create a wonderful piece on romance in the new millennium.
Too bad Noah didn’t seem able to do the same. His cynicism kept him from seeing what Miranda knew to be true—they were destined to be together, if only they let destiny take its course.
She’d done her part. She did have her pride. Noah had to make the next move. “It doesn’t matter who thinks we’re perfect for each other, Teri, if Noah doesn’t think so.”
“Do you think so?”
A “yes” answer formed on her tongue, but then Miranda considered exactly what Teri was asking. Yes, she loved Noah. Yes, she knew they made very good friends and even better lovers, but did she think they were perfect? Completely compatible? Searching for the same thing from life and love?
Not by a long shot.
And still, she wanted him with every fiber of her being.
“Nobody’s perfect. No relationship is perfect. Maybe searching for perfection is what’s kept you from finding the right man.” Miranda leaned back into her chair, resigned and spent. “Maybe it’s kept me from even wanting to look.”
Teri came around to behind Miranda’s desk, slipped her arms around her and leaned her head on her shoulder. Miranda clasped Teri’s hands and tilted her temple to her sister’s, wondering when the last time was that she and Teri had shared such a quiet, fortifying moment.
“See what you get for not looking?” Teri laughed and kissed Miranda on the head.
“Yeah.” Miranda hugged her sister tighter, hoping the increased pressure would keep her tears inside. “I find a man who’s so far from perfect, I can’t resist him.”
“DR. YEAGER, do you have a minute?”
Katie Brown knocked before entering. And if that didn’t shock Noah enough to instantly wave her in, her new attire would have. He didn’t disguise his careful inspection. She still favored the color black, but in a formfitting knit dress topped with a crisp denim shirt tied fashionably at the waist, she looked all college student—trendy, serious and confident.
“So, what do you think?” she asked, her eyes brimming with anxious anticipation for his opinion.
“The look suits you.”
“Not the clothes!” She rolled her eyes. “Men can be so shallow.”
She tossed her article on his desk. “Did you even read it?”
Noah scanned the folded newspaper, surprised he couldn’t yet recite the words from memory. He’d gotten Katie’s e-mail with an advance copy of her date review when he logged onto his computer after returning from the beach. He’d been surfing the Net for hours, aimlessly, until he realized he wouldn’t be so easily waylaid from facing the demons he’d ignored for years. Katie’s article sealed his decision.
In our generation, it’s become commonplace to redefine words to suit our purposes and save our consciences from dealing with truth. But virtue has always meant conformity to a standard of right. A truly virtuous person—woman or man—finds courage in holding themselves to that standard of right, however it’s defined in their heart. A truly virtuous person doesn’t settle for anything less but being true to their own soul. One brief night with Drs. Carpenter and Yeager convinced me that holding out for what’s right can be nearly as thrilling as finally finding what you’ve waited for.
Katie Brown had captured his conflict and held it up to him in stark black and white. Noah still didn’t know exactly what his standard of right was—but when he finally found out, he was quite certain that Miranda Carpenter would fit the bill.
“You’re a very talented writer. Dr. Carpenter definitely steered you in the right direction.”
Katie swung her bag onto the chair and leaned on the backrest.
“Yeah, she did. I bet she could do the same for you if you gave her a chance.”
Noah leaned back, certain he didn’t want to discuss his private life with a woman barely out of her teens who’d only recently accepted the possibility that all men weren’t liars, cheaters or thieves—no matter how insightful or inspiring her first shot at journalism was.
“Katie, I don’t mean to be rude, but my relationship with Dr. Carpenter is no longer any of your concern.”
She shrugged. “You’re right, it’s not. Neither is my childhood, but that didn’t stop you from meddling.”
He adjusted in his chair, certain his red hand was about to get caught in the proverbial cookie jar. “I don’t know a thing about your childhood.”
She dug her hands onto her hips and threw her head back for a hearty laugh. “Yeah, well, here I’ve been at college for two years and I didn’t even know I had a counselor assigned to me. Then last week, she calls me out of the blue and, voilà, I’m her new project. She says one of my friends referred me.”
“And you think it was me?”
“Her exact words were that I had ‘conflicts I needed to confront.’ Sound familiar?”
Noah smiled sheepishly. He should have just left an anonymous message for the campus counselor. But no, he had to go down and visit her personally, talk about Katie, tell her his theories.
“Okay, I meddled. Are you angry?”
Katie seemed to think his question over, but shook her head. “No. She’s cool. She had a mom a lot like mine. Men in and out. Moved a lot. No ‘strong male role model to give her a positive example of male and female interactions.”’
She gestured as she quoted, causing him to chuckle at the stuffy language his field often employed.
“I’m glad it’s working out.”
She nodded and rolled her lips inward while she looked him over with more wisdom than a girl her age should possess. He couldn’t help but squirm a bit.
“I wish I could say the same for you, though. You look more rumpled than usual.”
“Rumpled?”
“Yeah.” Her laugh held a tinge of disbelief, as if she was shocked he didn’t fully understand her description. “You’ve got that whole absentminded-professor thing going. It’s very attractive to women who like that sort of thing…which isn’t me, so don’t get the wrong idea.”
Noah chuckled again. Leave it to Katie to set that record straight. “Thanks for clearing that up.”
“You’re a good guy, Dr. Yeager. You deserve to be happy.”
“I’m very happy, Katie. I have my grant, my work, good friends.”
“Like who? Dr. Carpenter? Or is she more than a friend?”
He cleared his throat and restacked a pile of books he’d collected from his classroom. “Is this an interview? A follow-up article maybe? You knew about our weekend at the Don Faison. You wouldn’t be here to dig for dirt, would you?”
Her eyes took on a tinge of sadness and Noah knew immediately he’d jumped to the wrong conclusion. Katie had never been a self-serving person. She spoke from her heart, acted on her emotions. She’d definitely come here to pump him about his time with Miranda, but not because of her job at the newspaper. Because she thought of them as friends.
“That was out of line,” he said quickly. “I apologize.”
“Good, ’cause I wouldn’t use your relationship with Dr. Carpenter to further my own interests. I came here because I dropped by her office this morning. I didn’t speak to her, though. I could see her working at her desk and the expression on her face just tore me up. Just call me a romantic at heart, but I thought you should know. You’re all for confronting conflicts, and I thought maybe, just maybe, you didn’t realize there was a conflict to confront.”
“I realize it, Katie. The conflict is mine, not Dr. Carpenter’s. And I’m working on it.”
“Yeah, well, work faster.” She picked up her bag and swung it over her shoulder. “I wasted a lot of time being miserable over things I couldn’t control, over feelings I didn’t want to deal with.” Pivoting toward the door, she tossed her last piece of ironic wisdom from over her shoulder. “I’d hate to see you kids make the same mistakes.”