“That weekend, I was so looking forward to seeing Liam and hearing about his time away from work. I knew Cassidy. I knew they were talking about living together, possibly getting married. When they broke up, I could tell it was difficult for him, although he didn’t go into much detail about it at the time.” He paused. An audible sigh came from his side of the call. “Which gave me even more reason to look forward to meeting the woman responsible for putting a smile on his face.”
“He talked about me?”
“He did.”
“But he never said my name?”
“If he did, it never registered that his Anna could be my Annalissa.” Random city noises rose in the silence between Daniel’s words. “Last summer, Liam and I met up in Italy. I told him about finding you. When I researched where you live, saw how beautiful it was, I suggested the Gulf Islands as a possible destination for his sabbatical. Then we both got busy, and even though he told me his plans, I didn’t give him any more information about you.” Daniel sighed again before continuing. “I had to resist the urge to ask him to spy for me. I should have been upfront. With both of you.”
Anna worried at what was left of the fringe on the old afghan, grateful for the distance offered by talking on the phone. “Yes, you should have, Daniel, but there’s no do-over on that decision.”
“I agree,” he said, “and I know I shouldn’t have looked through his sketchbook. The first pages were all furniture ideas. Nothing unusual, but then I got to the more intriguing ones, of chairs and tables and his notes about incorporating driftwood into the construction. And then came the nudes. The subject—in all of them—was a very sensuous woman and the expression on her face was…” He paused. “Well, it was obvious she’d just had sex, was about to have sex, or was thinking about sex. And I knew that woman. I spent three days in Mexico with that woman. And never once did I see you look at me the way you were looking at Liam in those pages.”
A shuddering breath echoed in Anna’s ear. Daniel was all but officially confirming she’d made an impression on Liam. He was also confirming he still felt a connection to her.
“I was so upset,” he continued. “I wasn’t thinking or reacting clearly. And when I saw you at Liam’s, I was at a total loss for words. Or at least, kind words. And when you turned around and headed for his bedroom, not the guestroom, it punched me in the gut to know—to imagine—the two of you were intimately involved. I wanted to talk to Liam. I told him I was confused about my actions, about everything, but it wasn’t possible—or advisable—for us to talk right then.”
The afghan fell to the floor when Anna had to stand and stumble to the bathroom for a fresh box of tissues. The best she could do was pull squares of toilet paper off the roll while Daniel kept apologizing.
“I should have been upfront from the very beginning, with you and with Liam. I was afraid you’d changed too much. That what I remembered of you and our time together when we were younger was a series of memories I’d kept in that damn box for far too long.”
Silent tears streamed down Anna’s face. She was done holding back. At some point, her endless supply of waterworks would abate. “I’m so glad you told me all of that, Danny. And I want us to be in each other’s lives. I really do.”
“Me too, Annalissa. Me too.”
There was no getting any work done after their phone call. Anna poured cereal into a bowl, sliced a banana on top, and ate breakfast for dinner in bed.
Liam didn’t call or come by her house in the days following her excursion to Tofino and the conversation with Daniel. She had made the subtext under her texts clear. She would contact him when she was ready, and by Saturday, one week before his sabbatical ended and he was due to leave, she wanted the two of them back on good footing.
She messaged him. “Beginning to see light at the end of the tunnel. Join me for dinner?”
“Ask me in a few days.”
Anna swallowed equal parts pride, humiliation, and irritation, put down her phone, shot her arms into the sleeves of her rain slicker, and stomped along the path to the beach and up across Liam’s lawn.
He opened the door to her frustration-fueled knock wearing a paint-splattered flannel shirt over a white, V-neck tee. She stifled a sudden intake of breath. He was a beautiful man, grown even more so by his time on the island, and the way his arms and legs moved under his clothes was heart-stoppingly, slam-your-drink-on-the-table, sexy.
“I want to talk now,” she said, boosting her bravado by straightening her spine. Raindrops pooled together on their way down her sleeves and dripped onto the tops of her hands. She rubbed the water into her skin with her thumbs.
“Then come in. I was availing myself of the quiet to finish some of my sketches.” He had positioned the table he used for drawing in front of large pieces of driftwood hauled off the beach. The sea- and sun-worn wood glowed in the light emanating from a single desk lamp.
“I won’t stay long, but I didn’t want you to leave before I explained myself.”
“I appreciate that because it made me sad and mad that you cut me off, just like that, and I’m not sure I understand why.” He gazed at Anna. The same low light traipsing over his body did nothing to hide the confusion playing across his shadowed face. Even the addition of generic reading glasses couldn’t detract from the moment.
“I needed to give myself space because I don’t understand what’s happened since New York.”
“Are you really ready to talk?” An unfamiliar edge sharpened his voice. He pulled
