“Because I’m busy. I have Matthew.”
He nodded and sauntered around the garden. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have brought it up.”
“But you did,” she said. “Why?”
He regarded her in the dappled shadows of the evening light, and the way her hips swayed when she turned away from him.
“You wanted it so badly before,” he said, “and you’d be good at it. Being a psychologist, I mean.”
Emma fingered the tiniest twiglike branches of a younger shrub, low to the ground. “It’s a nice thought, but I’m a mother now.”
“Maybe you could be both.”
Something flirtatious sparked in her eyes as she gave him a sidelong look of warning. “You’re going to have to stop doing that.”
“Doing what?”
“Stirring up old hopes and dreams.”
Good God, he was completely enraptured. “Why?”
“Because it’s pointless,” she replied. “I’m not that person anymore.”
She spoke willfully, but Oliver didn’t believe her. Not for one single second.
“And I don’t want to pine for the road not taken,” she added. “Or feel as if I gave up on something, or quit like a coward. This is the life Ichose, Oliver, and I told you I have no regrets.”
She sat down on the old weatherworn bench and looked up at him with an expression that beckoned, and Oliver sat down beside her.
Emma squeezed her hands together on her lap.Damn this man. Damn Captain Oliver Harris.
She’d thought all this was behind her. Her life had certainly taken some unexpected turns that she might not have chosen at the time, but she was happy with where she’d ended up—back on Sable Island with her father and a son who meant everything to her.
Why did Oliver have to come back and upend everything? Make her doubt her choices and long for the paths not taken?
Turning her head, she looked at him sharply. “Why did you come back here?”
“I told you,” he replied. “Because I wanted to see you.”
“Butwhy? You thought I was married, but you came anyway. Didn’t it occur to you that it might be awkward, considering our last conversation on the beach when you left?”
For a few seconds, he seemed lost for words, but soon managed to form a reply. “I’d hoped enough time had passed.”
“Foryou, maybe. But what happened that week left me absolutely wrecked. It crushed all my confidence, and when Logan came along, I wanted so badly to forget you that I practically dove into his arms.”
“Emma . . .”
Her pulse was racing. All the pent-up hurt and anger that she’d repressed over the past seven years came surging out of her, and she wanted to lash out at him, to express everything.
She stood and strode to the other side of the garden. “Please don’t try and tell me that you didn’t mean to hurt me, or that everything happens the way it’s meant to. I told you I’ll never regret anything because I have Matthew now, and I wouldn’t change that for the world. But that doesn’t mean I want to be friends with you, which seems to be the reason you came here. So that we could all be best pals.”
He looked away, toward the ocean.
“Well, that can’t happen,” she insisted fiercely. “Because I don’t want to get caught up in that whirlwind again.”
“What whirlwind?”
“Where I start to dream about you!” She swung her arm about. “Last night, I couldn’t wait to wake up and drive to East Light and see you this morning. I hardly slept a wink. I tossed and turned, trying not to think about you, but it was impossible. And today, I forced myself to stay away from you, but you had to send Matthew into the house and invite me on that damn walk to see the stupid seal!”
