She stared at him, blinking rapidly, afraid that her knees might give way. “Months?”
“Yes, and by the time I returned to Sable,” he continued, “you were gone. You’d reconciled with your husband.”
Emma couldn’t make sense of this. She shook her head in dismay. “No. Who told you I went back to Logan?”
“The man on the island,” Oliver said, as if that explained everything.
“What man?”
“The meteorologist. His name was ... I’m sorry. It escapes me now.”
Emma was still reeling from the appearance of her beloved Captain Harris, alive after all these years, stepping out of a shiny rental car and standing in her driveway. She took a few steps back. “Logan and I divorced after he was released from prison. He stayed a part of Matthew’s life, but that was all. And he’s been dead for more than fifteen years.”
Oliver’s face turned red, and his expression slowly darkened to a frown.
His granddaughter, Joanna, cleared her throat, and Emma realized she’d forgotten the young woman was standing there, listening to all this. The whole world, aside from herself and Oliver, seemed to have disappeared in the past three minutes.
“It’s quite hot out here,” Joanna said. “Why don’t you two go inside and talk for a while. I can pop out to the shops and come back later.”
Emma was indeed perspiring, and she needed to cool down. Or sit. Or take a few deep breaths and regain her calm. “Yes. We should go into the house.”
Joanna touched her grandfather’s arm. “I’ll be back in an hour or so?”
Oliver met Emma’s gaze questioningly, and she nodded in agreement. Everything was a blur after that. Joanna got into the car and backed out of the driveway, and Oliver followed Emma up the front steps, where she picked up the pruners and set them on a chair inside the porch. The next thing she knew, she and Oliver were standing in her kitchen.
“Would you like a cold drink?” she asked out of politeness.
“Yes, thank you.”
It was obvious to Emma that Oliver was unsettled by her standoffishness. The whole situation took her back to that day in her kitchen on Sable Island, when she was baking bread and he’d walked through her door, years after breaking her heart. For thefirsttime. What did that make this one? Heartbreak number three? Should she be keeping score? Or would that just be cruel self-punishment?
Emma opened the refrigerator door, took out a large unopened bottle of spring water, and set it on the counter. The task gave her a much-needed moment to collect herself as she filled two tumblers with ice from the freezer, picked up the bottle, and poured.
Half-dazed, she handed the glass to Oliver, resisting a brief urge to splash the water in his face.
“Thank you.” He accepted it and sipped it thirstily. Then he set it down and rubbed the back of his hand over his forehead.
Their eyes connected.
“I’m in shock,” Emma said frostily. “I can’t stop looking at you. You’re older, but you still look the same.”
“So do you. You’re just as beautiful as you ever were.”
The flattery hit her like a brick, and she felt a fresh rush of bitterness toward him. She resented him for having allowed her to idolize him for the past forty years, for causing her to imagine that their love was something special—that he’d been her soulmate, the great love of her life, tragically ripped away.
“Don’t say that to me,” she said. “You don’t have the right, because you broke your promise.”
“I know. I’m sorry, Emma.”
“Stop saying you’re sorry. You said you’d come back for me, but you never did.”
“Ididcome back,” he reminded her. “It just took me longer, but I had no control over that. I nearly died on that island, and it took me months to recover. When I finally did make it back, I was told you’d gone back to your husband. That you didn’t wait for me. What was I supposed to do?”
She scoffed in disbelief. “How could you even believe that I would take Logan back? I told you I didn’t love him. All I wanted wasyou, and I was devastated when I thought you’d died. Now I find out that you were alive the entire time?”
Oliver frowned as he tried to explain. “I thought it would be selfish to disrupt your life again. I thought it best to leave you alone and let you move on.”
“With Logan?” She laughed indignantly. “Did you completely forget what happened between us in the rose garden? Or did it not mean that much to you?”
