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But that was hardly fair. And what would she accomplish by jumping all over him? What would that do but push him away?
No. She wanted him to talk with her, to be frank with her. And she really needed him to understand what was bothering her. He should know upfront why she had suspicions about him and the Cartside woman.
And that meant she had to share the little secret she’d been keeping since she was fourteen years old.
She gulped and got after it. “Eleven years ago, when I came for a summer visit, I went looking for you. You know how I was then, always with a thousand things I needed to tell you immediately or sooner.” She tried a laugh. It came out all strangled sounding. He didn’t laugh with her. He only waited, watching her guardedly. So she said the rest. “I ran down to the lake and I saw you sitting out on the jetty with a woman I’d never seen before.”
He knew then. “Melinda.”
She nodded. “You were laughing together. And you kissed her. I ran away, back to the house, before you could see me. I never saw her again until today.”
“You never said a word...”
She fiddled with the towel, tucking it a little tighter. “I felt...embarrassed. Confused. Angry, too, though I knew I had no right to be.”
He touched her then, easing a soggy curl away from her cheek with a slow caress of his index finger. Something hard and painful inside her softened, melted. “You were angry?”
“Yes. Well, actually, I was furious. Do not ask me to explain that. I don’t think I can.”
“What else?”
“Today, before I came into the Blue Room, I heard you two talking. You sounded...affectionate toward her. You told her never to change and she laughed. I didn’t know at that moment that she was the woman from the jetty. But it was a husky, too-friendly laugh, I thought.” She straightened her shoulders. “And it bothered me. A lot.”
“There’s nothing between Melinda and me.” His voice was calm. Level. “Not anymore.”
“But there was something eleven years ago?”
“Gen...”
“I want to know, Rafe. You were lovers then, is that what you’re saying?”
“For that summer, yes.”
“But how? I never saw her again, though I followed you everywhere during that visit. When did you have time to be her lover?”
He made a low sound. It might have been a chuckle. “I got away on my own now and then, believe it or not.”
“Hmph. Eloise never mentioned her. Neither did Brooke or Edward, or your mother. Were you keeping things secret, the two of you?”
“We were, yes.”
“But why?”
He frowned a little. “We always we knew it wasn’t going to last forever. She wanted to keep what we had just between us, didn’t want her parents or anyone getting ideas about some kind of future between her and me—or worse, having people deciding that I was somehow taking advantage of a nice village girl. Melinda always planned to get out, to see the world. And that fall, she did. She went to France. We drifted apart. It’s nothing mysterious.”
“And since then?”
“That first year after she left the village, I went to Paris to see her a couple of times. And then, well, she got on with her life. I had mine. I ran into her once after Paris, a chance meeting in the village about five years ago. She was home on holiday. We said hello, wished each other well. And that was it until today, when I found her waiting in the Blue Room. I was surprised to see her. When you came in, she was telling me about her shop, about how much she loves living in London.”
“All very innocent, then?”
“Gen...” His voice teased her. So did the light in his eyes. He wrapped an arm around her. She allowed him to ease her back across the bed. He braced on an elbow and gazed down at her. “Did you think I was having a little something on the side with Melinda, is that it?”
She started to deny it, just out of pride. But truth was the point here and pride only got in the way of the truth. “Well, yes. I did wonder.”
“I’m not.” He leaned closer. “You’re the only one I’m having a little something with.” He breathed the words against the still-damp skin of her throat. “Scratch that. With you, it’s a whole lot of something.” She did like the sound of that.
She liked it a lot. “Really?”
“Really.”
She knew she was blushing. “It’s only that we got married so fast...”
“We’ve known each other since you were five. Twenty years, Gen. For at least the first fifteen of those twenty, you told me all your secrets.”
She pulled a face. “Whether you wanted to hear them or not.”
