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Now she told him the whole story. “He was actually a very nice guy. Arlo Doyle. He’d worked for Uncle Lochlan before my uncle had to retire. Arlo came to the house one day, and Uncle Lochlan lit up. He talked as if nothing was wrong—not a single sign of dementia.” She looked at Dane. “You remember how bad he got seven years ago, when I had to put him in memory care?”
Dane nodded. He remembered so well her trauma over the decision.
“But he was himself again. The uncle I used to know. For days afterward, he remembered everything they’d talked about even though Arlo had been there only a couple of hours. I actually thought I must have imagined the shift in him, that he couldn’t be as bad as I thought.”
“I understand completely. I had a similar day with my grandfather.”
An old school chum of his grandfather’s had come to visit. The man had known him before the war, before he’d changed. And for that one day, Grandpa had been a completely different man—the man he must have been when Dane’s grandmother married him, when he’d been fresh out of college, with hopes and dreams the war had yet to destroy.
Dane still treasured that glimpse of the grandfather he’d never known.
Cammie nodded. “I thought I could make the phenomenon happen again, so I invited Arlo over.” She closed her eyes, and Dane reached for her hand once more. “But I couldn’t duplicate it,” she whispered.
He stroked her warm skin before he withdrew and let her go on.
“Uncle Lochlan liked Arlo so much. And I thought he was sweet. Then he asked me out. I said yes. I didn’t intend for it to get serious.” She blinked away what might have been a tear, so it didn’t fall. “He told me right away that he was separated, not divorced yet, but that he’d left his wife a few months before. I appreciated his honesty. And he was so good to me. We laughed together. We watched movies together. He liked all the old classics the way I do. We went to that old theater on University Avenue in Palo Alto, the Stanford, where they played classic movies, and we saw Meet Me in St. Louis. Margaret O’Brien, who played the little sister, gave a talk before the movie. It was amazing. We had pizza afterward.”
His heart flipped over, and he had to admit he was jealous. Binge-watching classic movies was their thing. And he was incredibly sad that he hadn’t been the one to take her to see Margaret O’Brien and Meet Me in St. Louis.
She shrugged. “Anyway.” And she left it at that.
He wanted to see her laugh. But they had to get through this. He didn’t ask if she’d slept with this Arlo. He accepted that she had. And he didn’t rage inwardly, since he’d skated through his always brief relationships.
She pressed her lips together for a moment, before she finally got out, “Then he told me his wife wanted to patch things up. And that she was pregnant.”
Her words tore a hole in the pit of his stomach. “I’m so sorry.”
Even now, she straightened her shoulders. “I kept my dignity. I didn’t cry. I was very proud of myself,” she said with the barest of smiles. “I told him, ‘Go back to your wife for the sake of the child.’” She waved a hand as if she were shooing a phantom away. “‘And if you need a good family therapist, I’ll find you the best one. I’m good at finding what people need.’”
That’s what Cammie always did—found exactly what a man needed right when he needed it.
“It was a thousand times worse than Mayhew, wasn’t it?” he said, not wanting to hurt her, but realizing she needed to get it all out, that she wanted him to understand why it could never work between them.
“You see, she was only three months pregnant. And we’d been dating for five.” She swallowed. “Which meant he’d slept with her while he was with me. He’d been playing both ends. Maybe he hadn’t meant to.” She shrugged her shoulders as if giving Doyle the benefit of the doubt even now. “But it made me realize I wasn’t—” She paused.
He knew exactly what she’d been about to say. “But you are good enough. He was a two-timing ass.”
Her eyes were bleak. She was back in that moment, feeling the pain all over again. The first guy she loved had only wanted her for Clyde’s contacts and his business acumen. He was a leech, a thief. The next guy had been on the rebound. He might not have meant to screw her over, but he had. And in between, there was Dane himself, seducing her on a golf course, taking her back to his condo, and making love to her that very night. Rushing her. Pushing her.
