She did trust him. And that was a problem. She trusted him far too much and followed him without question. After several minutes of walking, she noticed he hadn’t yet removed his hand from her elbow. And, much to her surprise, she found she didn’t want him to let go.
CHAPTER 13
ANNA
Charlie kept his hand hooked around Anna’s elbow for the entire walk across his property, and Anna couldn’t have been happier. She felt about ten years younger than she was, flashing back to her college days when finding love seemed infinitely possible, and the world felt full of promise. She marveled at how quickly she’d grown jaded. She seemed to have aged thirty years in the space of ten. And somehow, Charlie Greene made her gain all that time, all that hope, back.
He walked with her toward a large tree and brought her right up under its canopy. It sat on the top of a gentle slope, looking like a solitary soul in an empty world. Its leaves rustled in the breeze, creating a whisper of music that Anna closed her eyes to listen to. “What a peaceful spot,” she said.
“Yeah.” Charlie squeezed her arm and finally let go of it. She wished he wouldn’t, but it would have been too weird to ask him not to let her go. “My mom and I used to picnic under this tree when the weather was nice. It was our time. She was good at that sort of thing, making you feel special. My father was an important figure in my life, but my mom found a way to makesure I knew that I was an important figure inherlife. This was how she did it.” He put his hand against the trunk of the tree and indicated a spot where three sets of initials were carved. Among them, Anna sawS.G.andC.G.“This was me.” He traced the C and G. Then his fingers found the other set of initials. “And this was her. She carved these so I would always know this was our spot. No one else could have it.”
Despite fighting them, tears welled in Anna’s eyes. “That’s really sweet,” she said, refusing to blink so those tears dried up before they could fall. “I mean it.”
Charlie didn’t look at her as he continued. “She died while I was still young. Really young. I was young enough that my day-to-day memories of her started to fade after a few years. I got into high school, got interested in girls, got my first job, and grew up without her. My memories of watching her cook in the kitchen, listening to her sing or tell me stories before bed are so dim I can barely see them anymore. But all my memories of our picnics beneath this tree are bright as day. I can see her face, hear her voice, just like she’s still with me.”
Anna examined the tree for herself. The initials were old and healed over but still readable. She could picture a mother and child sitting beneath this tree on an old gingham blanket with an open wicker picnic basket at their side. The vision was so vivid that Anna felt she could almost reach out and touch it. “No wonder this property is so important to you,” she said under her breath.
Charlie nodded. “Losing it would be a nightmare. That’s why I felt I had to…” He trailed off, and Anna got the impression he was trying not to insult her. That was out of character, she thought. Normally, he wouldn’t hesitate to verbally slap thesmile off her face. He was actually trying to be nice, and that was probably the most surprising thing about this revelation.
“It’s okay,” she said. “I get it. You didn’t want a film crew trampling all over your memories. But if you didn’t allow it, you might lose them altogether.”
A half smile crossed his face. “You get it.”
“Of course I do.” She sighed and sat down in the grass, basking in the setting sun and the beauty of the view. “I also get why the thought of tourists might scare you a bit, too.”
“Nothing scares me.” He sat beside her and winked. “I’m never scared.”
She smiled a genuine smile, appreciating his moment of sarcastic self-awareness. It charmed her somehow. It took an awful lot of self-control not to just lean into him right now. He looked cozier than a down comforter for some reason.
“No matter what,” she said in a quiet voice, “it will still be your property. You can keep people off it, charge people to view it, or turn it into a theme park. It’s entirely up to you. If you want to keep the address off the map, then don’t disclose that the movie was filmed here. No one will really be able to find it. It’s so far out of the way, and there aren’t any truly distinctive landmarks around. I’ve been doing this sort of thing most of my adult life, and I’m telling you, unless people really want the public to know, most filming locations are just sort of ignored by the general public.” She shrugged. “I promise your address won’t appear in the credits.”
She hoped she’d been successful in easing his mind a little, but it was hard to tell. He was not typically a man of many words. At the very least, he tended to think about what he was goingto say for a long while before he actually said it. Sometimes, she wondered whether he was going to say anything at all. This time, he did. “Thanks.”
“Sorry if it doesn’t help much.”
“It does.” He turned to her, and suddenly, her heart was beating like a bird trapped indoors, fluttering against a window to get out. She waited for him to finish whatever it was he was going to say, but he didn’t say another word. Instead, he leaned closer to her, and she felt herself being drawn toward him, too, like there was some kind of magnetic force between them.
At some point, she just stopped thinking. Five seconds later, she realized he was going to kiss her. One second after that, she realized she was going to kiss him back. There was something so beautiful about the moment, despite the disappearing light, the sudden heavy feeling in the air, and the distant rolling thunder.
Soon, Charlie was close enough that she could feel the heat of his body through her own skin, but before he even touched her, a torrent found them. That distant thunder hadn’t been so distant after all. It came on all at once with little to no warning. Within seconds, they were both soaked.
Charlie, being a man of action, didn’t say a word before jumping up, taking Anna’s hand, and helping her to her feet as well. “Let’s get out of here,” he said, already leading her away from the tree he adored so much. Then he did something she hadn’t predicted at all. Without another word, he took the wide-brim hat from his head and popped it onto hers.
It was such a gentlemanly thing to do, and so unexpected, that Anna nearly stopped running altogether. He gently tugged heralong, though, so she continued to put one foot in front of the other the way a normal, less shocked person would.
The thing about a torrential downpour was that once you got to a certain level of wet, there really wasn’t any point in avoiding the water any longer. Anna could have wrung her clothes out and filled a bucket, she supposed. All the same, Charlie took her back to his house and pulled her under his front porch while he reached out to open his screened front door.
Once his door was open, he gestured for her to enter first. As she did, he pulled his hat from her head and hung it up on a coat tree near the door. The amount of water that poured from that hat when it was hung sideways was impressive, a little torrent all on its own.
Anna patted her hair to examine it. It was far drier than it should have been, considering. “Good hat,” she finally concluded.
“That’s why I bought it.” Charlie laughed and hung his own coat up next to the hat. “You look like a drowned cat,” he said after taking a good, long look at Anna. “You’ll catch your death.”
Anna shrugged. “I’m sure I’ll be fine.”
But Charlie wasn’t buying it. “Let me get you something dry to wear, anyway.” He left her alone, standing in the middle of his small living room, for a few long minutes. When he returned, he was carrying a stack of clothes and a towel. “For you,” he said, handing them over. “Sorry I didn’t have anything in your size. Hopefully, these work out okay. The sweats have a drawstring, so…”
Her smile seemed to silence him. In case he felt uncomfortable, she reassured him. “Thank you, really.”
