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“And you’ll be back to visit your siblings all the time,” Everett assured her.
Charlotte smiled at Anna and again raised Anna’s hand from the table to assess her engagement ring. Although it was much smaller than Charlotte’s, Anna’s heart ballooned with love for it. This was the size Dean could afford right now, and it was the size Anna would wear for the rest of her days.What did she need a big rock for?She had all the love in the world.
“Have you called your family on Nantucket to tell them the big news yet?” Charlotte asked.
Anna shook her head. “No. We’ve selfishly kept the news to ourselves.”
“We know, once we tell them, we’ll have to be on the phone for hours and hours to explain how it happened and what our plans are,” Dean explained.
“And all we’ve really wanted to do since it happened was spend time with each other,” Anna said.
Charlotte and Everett exchanged joyful glances, as though they were enlivened by the happiness between Anna and Dean.
“Remember,” Charlotte said. “I’m a wedding planner. You’d better give me a call when you’re ready to start planning.” She slid her business card across the table, and Anna pocketed it, smiling to herself.
After breakfast, Dean and Anna went back to the inn to change clothes and head out on a hike. Anna had finished her article for her travel magazine last night, and as she changed, her phone pinged with an email from her editor, who said the article was “one of the best things he’d ever read.” Anna swooned and fell onto the bed as Dean bounced onto the mattress beside her.
“What? You look like you might float away.” Dean kissed her gently on the cheek.
Anna showed Dean the email, and Dean cried out with excitement and covered her with more kisses. “I told you they’d love it.”
“You don’t have to be right all the time.” Anna stuck out her tongue.
“I don’t have to be,” Dean teased. “But I mostly am, especially when it comes to your success.”
With their hiking boots on, Anna and Dean hurried down the old-fashioned circular staircase of the Harbor Inn and burst into the bright light that seeped from behind the Pacific Northwest’s gruesome clouds.
“Do you think it’s going to rain?” Anna asked.
Dean shrugged. “I don’t know! Should we brave it?”
Anna thought for a moment. “We’ll both be strapped to our indoor jobs for the next month. We should take advantage of our time off.”
“That’s what I like to hear. Besides, we’ve both lived in Seattle for a while now. We can’t let a little rain scare us,” Dean said.
Anna and Dean made their way from town back toward the trails They walked hand-in-hand, often quiet, their boots shuffling against the wet grass and stepping through the mud as carefully as they could.
Soon, the path lifted in elevation, up and up so that their thighs screamed. Dean laughed up ahead of Anna and said, “I should do that Stairmaster thing at the gym more often.”
“That thing is the worst!” Anna called back.
“Maybe we really should move out here,” Dean suggested. “We could hike this trail every day and get huge, muscular thighs.”
“I still want to fit into my skinny jeans, thanks,” Anna joked.
Dean stopped, turned, and smiled at her. “Nobody looks better in skinny jeans than you do.”
Anna’s cheeks burned with a mix of embarrassment and pleasure. “Dean!” She hurried up and swatted him. “Don’t tease me.”
Dean kissed her with his eyes closed, then grabbed her hand and began to run up the mountain so that Anna squealed as she struggled to catch up. As they went, rain began to fall from the heavens above, dripping from the leaves overhead and flattening across their foreheads and cheeks. Already, Anna’s black hair hung in wet streaks down her back, and Dean’s was wadded across his forehead.
When they reached the top of an embankment, they huddled under thick tree branches for a moment’s rest from the rain. There, they kissed as the rain came down faster and faster. Anna finally laughed and said, “I don’t know. Maybe we should turn back?”
Dean grimaced. “We were too confident, I guess.” He leafed through his pocket to find his phone. “Maybe I can download a weather app and see when the rain is supposed to end.”
“Thank you,” Anna said. A chill crept across her neck, and she zipped her jacket up to her chin.
As the app downloaded, Dean turned, wrapped one hand around the trunk of a tree, and peered down at the monstrous cliff directly beside them. The cliff was rocky and jagged, and it slanted down toward a thick blanket of emerald green treetops. Anna shivered.
