“Jane?”
It was Max’s voice. I blinked my eyes open. Max picked up his book from where it lay in the sand and brushed it off. “Hasn’t anyone told you not to leave books lying around in the sun?” He smiled and sat down beside me.
“How’d you find me?” I asked.
“I went to your house and they said you were at the beach. I’ve been looking for you for the better part of an hour. Miranda gave me an invitation to your party tomorrow night.”
“It’s her party,” I said, “not mine. I think my sister has a crush on you.”
He smiled. “She’s out of luck,” he said.
“Why is that?” I asked.
He looked out toward the horizon.
“I have to ask you a question.” He dug his hand in the sand.
“Go ahead.”
“Are you in love with Guy Callow?”
I turned toward him.
“Is that what you think?”
“I wouldn’t have asked if I didn’t think it could be true.” He was very serious. He twisted his fingers in the sand.
“No. I am not in love, nor have I ever been in love, with Guy Callow,” I said. “I don’t even like him.”
Max stopped twisting his fingers. He looked at me.
“I have some things to explain,” he said. I waited. I realized I was wearing a two-piece bathing suit and moved to cover myself with a towel. “You don’t have to do that.”
I crossed my arms over my stomach. “I wasn’t expecting company.”
“I want to ask you another question,” Max said.
“Go right ahead.”
“Before, when we were together, if I hadn’t run off after I got your note, if I had tried to change your mind, do you think you would have come with me to California?”
“That’s an easy one,” I said. “I knew I had made a mistake almost before I made it, if that’s possible. I was afraid. I was stupid. When I look at Nora, how she believed in Duke, how she stood by him all those years, when I compare myself with her, it makes me sick.”
He took my hand, which required that I uncross my arms. I felt exposed. A shiver slid along my legs and up my thighs. It was nothing like the housefly buzz of titillation given off by Guy Callow. This was a different feeling entirely.
“I should have come back for you,” Max said.
“I could have come after you,” I said.
“When I first saw you after all those years, I was still angry. I hardly knew it, but it was like a stone in my stomach. I was willing to do almost anything to get away from the feelings I had about you.”
“Lindsay?”
“I don’t even know what I was thinking. By the time we were in Vermont, I had decided I didn’t even really like her, let alone love her, but I had led her on and the Maples are such good people. I don’t know why I told you I was thinking of marrying her. I guess I wanted to hurt you. Then there was the accident. If Basil hadn’t come into the picture and Lindsay had wanted to marry me, I probably would have married her for a whole lot of reasons, none of them having anything to do with love.”
“You would have been very unhappy.”
“I know.”
“Tell me about the girl on the phone that night,” I said.
“I dated her twice. I met her at a signing and she turned into an obsessed fan. I know. Sounds silly. An obsessed fan.”
“Did you sleep with her?” He blushed and looked into the sand. I nodded. “You slept with everyone,” I said. He bit his lip.
“I wasn’t as bad as my press, but I was pretty bad.”
“I always felt a little sorry for Glenn Close in
“Have I?”
“I don’t know. It doesn’t matter. Some feelings are so tied up in who you are, you can’t get rid of them, even when you know you should.”
“If I have turned into the kind of man you wouldn’t like, I’ll change,” Max said.
Even though I’d felt a shift in Max since he’d come to the island, I never expected this. It was all so romantic and my life was not romantic; it was pedestrian, even mundane. But here he was. And here I was.
And he was kissing me and kissing me again and it was the same kiss from when I was twenty-three and the years peeled away and the two of us were on the beach in Hull and we were young and nothing had happened to us yet.
“How long have you known?” I asked, pulling away.
“I knew in Vermont. That night at the hospital. You were the only one who made sense. You were the same Jane Fortune I had always known, the one I fell in love with. It was as if no time had passed. I came here looking for you.”
“No, you came here for a book signing.”
“It was just an excuse. I scheduled it myself. They were happy enough to have me. Then I saw you and it looked like you were with Guy.”
“I wasn’t,” I said.
“Anyway, Guy or no Guy, I decided I had to risk it. This time I don’t want to screw it up with half measures. I don’t want there to be any confusion. This time we’re older and I want the whole thing. I want you to marry me.”
“I can do that,” I said.
If possible, I was happier at that moment than I had been fifteen years ago. There was no ambivalence. Not for an instant did I think I might be doing the wrong thing. There is great comfort in being sure of something. And I was sure of Max.
Chapter 37
I floated into the house. Miranda was sitting at the kitchen table going over the list for the party and supervising Bethany’s dinner preparation.
“That bee-a-utiful Max Wellman came by looking for you,” she said. “Very convenient for me. I gave him an invitation to the party. He’s just the kind of person you want at a party—handsome, single, a celebrity. Did he have some literary business to discuss with you or something?”
“Or something,” I said.
Max wanted to announce our engagement at Miranda’s party. He thought it would be the perfect place—with the family all around. I agreed. Miranda’s party would be the perfect place to announce my engagement to Max Wellman.
We had stayed at the beach as long as we could, but at three o’clock I couldn’t put off going home a minute longer. Priscilla would be livid at being left alone with Teddy, Miranda, and Dolores all day.
When I mentioned Priscilla’s name, Max pulled away. He knew she had a hand in my decision all those years ago.
“Priscilla’s not so bad,” I said. “She gave me the wrong advice about you, but it’s no crime to be wrong. And I didn’t have to listen to her.”
He nuzzled my neck.
