Gwynneth Ever After (21 page)

She twisted a fistful of duvet in her free hand. “Sandy’s coming over after work on Friday...I told her I’d be back Sunday afternoon.”

Silence met her words, lasting so long she began to wonder if their connection had failed. Then Gareth cleared his throat.

“It’s probably a good thing we have thousands of miles between us right now, you know.”

She smothered her nervous giggle with a fistful of duvet. “Probably,” she mumbled.

“But I wish we didn’t.”

Gwyn’s entire body flushed hot. Dear God, did the man have any idea how potent he could be – even long distance? Even if she’d been able to think of a reply, she couldn’t have uttered it.

Thankfully, Gareth didn’t wait for one. “Until Friday, then, Gwynneth with two n’s,” he said. “Sleep well.”

As if.

***

Gareth linked his fingers beneath his head and stared up at the ceiling. She’d said yes. Yes to an entire weekend with him. Just the two of them, unhurried, uninterrupted...

He sucked in a ragged breath, his body catching fire at the very thought of what lay ahead. Bloody hell, forty-two years old and he felt like a kid facing his first date – right down to the nerves and the conviction that the next two days were an absolute eternity stretched before him.

He rubbed his hands over his face and scowled. The shortest eternity ever, maybe. He not only had to finish dubbing the film in those two days – after convincing the director that a week’s worth of work could be done in less than forty-eight hours – he also had to find somewhere he could take Gwyn. Somewhere private, where they wouldn’t be seen and he wouldn’t be recognized.
 

The director would have to wait until morning, but the location...

He grinned. Of course. It would be perfect. He reached for the phone again.

Seconds later, his cousin’s groggy voice responded, “Yeah.”

“It’s Gareth.”

Silence. Then, “Are you dying?”

“I hope not.”

“Is anyone we know dying?”

“No.”

“Then call back in the morning.”

“I’ll make it quick, I promise.”

Sean sighed heavily. “What?”

“Do we still own that cabin you talked me into buying with you a few years ago?
 
Out near someplace that starts with a
p
?”

“Perth. And it’s a cottage, not a cabin,” Sean corrected. “And why the hell do you want to know about it at – ” He paused. “It’s almost three a.m., for chrissake.”

“Just answer the question and you can go back to sleep.”

“Yes, we still own it.”

“Can it be used at this time of year?”

“You have to haul water in, and it gets damned cold if the wood stove goes out, but there’s still electricity and yeah, I’ve used it during the winter.”

“What does it look like?”

“
Excuse me
? You want me to describe a building to you at three in the – ” Sean muttered something violent under his breath. “What the hell is this all about, Gareth? And what time is it there anyway? Shouldn’t you be sleeping?”

“It’s late here too. Look, just humor me, will you? Is the place a dump or what?”

“
No,
it’s not a dump. It’s – I don’t know – casual, I guess you’d call it.”

“But nice?”

“Yes, it’s nice.”

“Guy nice or girl nice?”

“Have you been drinking?” Sean asked suspiciously.

“No.”

“Then what – ” Sean broke off. “This wouldn’t have anything to do with Gwyn, would it?”

“It would.”

“She’ll love it, you can blame me if she doesn’t, I still think you’re an idiot, and now you can kiss off and let me go back to sleep.”

With his ear ringing from Sean’s none-too-gentle hanging up, Gareth grinned with satisfaction and returned the receiver to its cradle. Location solved, dubbing to go.

And only two days until Gwyn.

Chapter 29

Gwyn swung her duffle bag onto the passenger seat and slammed the door shut. She turned to her friend. “Well, I guess that’s it. Any questions?”

“Yes. Are you sure you want to do this?”

“I meant about the kids.”

“You didn’t specify.”

“I’m specifying now.”

“The kids will be fine,” Sandy said. “Rob will be fine. I’ll be fine. It’s you I’m worried about. Couldn’t you have done this with a normal guy instead of a Hollywood superstar?”

Gwyn huddled into the thick warmth of her oversized cotton pullover. She scowled at the redhead. “Would you kindly make up your mind? A few days ago you were the one telling me I should give this a chance.”

Sandy pounced on her words. “So you think it does have a chance, then?”

“That’s not what I meant.” Gwyn sighed. “Your romantic streak is all very nice, Sand, but I’m too much of a realist to see this as anything more than it is.”

“A two-night fling?”

“Something like that.”

“And am I the only one who sees something wrong with this picture? Jack left four years ago, sweetheart. Maybe if you’d done this once or twice since then, it wouldn’t seem so serious.”

“It isn’t serious. It’s a weekend away and I’m a big enough girl to handle it.”

“So when Sunday rolls around, you’ll just come home to your kids and pick up where you left off, is that it?” Sandy crossed her arms and returned her scowl. “Damn it, Gwyn, if you insist on going through with this, at least be honest with yourself!”

Gwyn stared at her friend in silence for a long moment, and then she walked around the car and opened the driver’s door.

“The kids’ health cards are on my desk,” she said. She slid behind the steering wheel, closed the door, and rolled down the window. “I’ll have my cell phone with me, but if something comes up and you can’t reach me, call Gareth’s cousin. His name is Sean and his number is on the fridge. Any questions?”

Sandy shook her head, and Gwyn reached for the ignition.

Her friend’s soft voice stopped her. “Hey.”

Gwyn braced herself, not sure she could take another lecture.

“I’m wrong, aren’t I?” Sandy asked. She tilted her head to one side. A half-smile curved her lips but didn’t ease the concern in her eyes. “You’ve already been honest with yourself.”

Gwyn thought of the hours she’d engaged in an internal debate over her wisdom – or idiocy – in meeting Gareth like this. She thought of the ache she’d lived with for days now, and of how the very sound of his voice across thousands of miles could erase all the stresses of a day as if they’d never happened.

She no longer doubted that she was in over her head. When – not if, but when – she and Gareth went their separate ways at the end of the weekend, she would suffer greatly. Her mind flinched from the pain contained in that thought. In the end, her final decision about the weekend had been simply based: if she had to suffer anyway, at least she’d have this one time.

So had she been honest with herself?

She gave Sandy a little smile. “Brutally,” she said. “See you Sunday.”

***

Gareth moved the vase of flowers from the coffee table onto the kitchen table, glowered at it, then picked it up and carried it to the bureau facing the cottage’s front door. Would she like the mixed bouquet? Maybe he should have gone with roses instead. Every woman he’d ever met liked roses.

But Gwyn wasn’t every woman.

Maybe he should have skipped the flowers altogether.

“I mean really, Connor, how lame can you get?” he muttered aloud.
 

He grabbed the vase and marched it back into the living area, setting it with a thump beside the wine glasses he’d already laid out. Sighing, he rubbed a palm over his freshly shaven jaw line. Flowers, wine, music. All the makings of a first-class seduction, which was not what he wanted the weekend to be.

Well, not entirely, anyway.

He had no doubt both he and Gwyn had certain expectations of their time together – hell, he’d barely been able to contain the fire roaming his body ever since she’d agreed to the weekend – but he didn’t want her laboring any longer under the very mistaken impression he wanted only the physical from her. Not now he’d decided Sean and his theory were both as far out in left field as they could get.

Two days away from Gwyn – away from the lightness her smile brought and the ease of just being with her – had convinced him he had finally, after forty-two years, stumbled onto the real thing. The head-over-heels, without-a-doubt, once-in-a-lifetime kind of love that had nothing to do with his guilt-ridden past, and nothing at all to do with fulfilling some kind of fantasy role.

His lips quirked at the absurdity of the last thought. If he
had
been looking to play out a father-fantasy, he doubted it would have included spotted kids, overflowing bathtubs, or Goldfish soup.

No, despite what Sean thought, this was no fantasy. It was real, almost unbearably precious, and...

His amusement faded.

And as Sean had pointed out so helpfully a few days ago, unspeakably fragile because of his continued deception.

He scowled at the flowers. He loved her, but how the hell did he tell her – or more precisely, when? If he told her before she found out about Amy, her hurt and betrayal might go so deep that it outweighed everything else. But if he confessed his secret first, he risked the chance that she wouldn’t listen to his declaration of love at all.

Talk about damned if he did, damned if he didn’t.

Bloody hell.

About to seize the flowers yet again, if only to give himself something to do besides brood, he paused at the sound of tires crunching over gravel. An engine purred into the driveway and fell silent. A car door slammed.

Gwyn had arrived.

He’d just have to wing this as best he could.

Chapter 30

She was here.

Somehow Gwyn managed to park her own car beside Gareth’s, remove her keys from her ignition, and climb from the vehicle – all, she was certain, without conscious participation. But not even auto-pilot could move her feet away from the car and toward the cottage.

Her fingernails bit into her palms.

Now what?

She watched a lazy wisp of smoke drift from the chimney and across the paling blue of the late afternoon sky. The distinct chatter of an irate red squirrel sounded somewhere in the distance, the only sound other than the thud of her own heart in her ears. She drew a shaky breath. Her gaze roved over the cottage, a small, cedar-sided box tucked in beneath soaring pines and naked maples. A lake shimmered behind it. An immense stack of firewood sat on the deck against the building, running most of the length and height of the wall, stopping short of the single window and screen door.

Cozy and rustic, it was the perfect place for a weekend away. A weekend with –
 

The screen door squeaked open. Gareth stood in the doorway, wearing faded jeans and a thick, black turtleneck that deepened his eyes to unreadable shadows. Propping the door open with his foot, he folded his arms across his chest and rested his shoulder against the frame, waiting.

For her.

Gwyn tucked her trembling hands behind her. She leaned against the sun-warmed fender.

“So.” Gareth’s mouth quirked into a wry smile. “Are you planning to stand there all day?”

His words summoned a flash of
déjà-vu
. She remembered their last parting, when she’d sat on the stairs, too tangled up inside to face him. Just as she’d done then, she replied, “Maybe.”

The shadows in his eyes softened. Warmed. His voice took on a husky resonance. “Will you at least come and say hello?”

She stuffed her hands inside her pockets to hide their shaking and forced herself upright from the vehicle. But when she began walking around her car to retrieve her bag, Gareth’s gruff command stopped her.

“Leave it,” he said. “I’ll get it for you later.”

Gwyn turned. Her nerve faltered once again. Gareth held the door wide for her in invitation. She stared at him. She’d told Sandy she could handle this, but was she right? If she left this man now, before anything had really happened between them, she would already face an unfillable hole in her life. But after a weekend in his arms? She drew a jagged breath as anticipated anguish flooded her soul.

How would she survive?

Gareth held out his hand to her in silence. In the same silence, she walked toward him, no more able to deny him than a river could turn away from the ocean that would swallow it.

He took her hand when she reached him, and his fingers threaded with hers, strong and warm.

“I wasn’t sure you’d come,” he said.

“Neither was I,” she admitted.

“I’m glad you did.” He lifted her hand to his mouth and brushed his lips across her knuckles, then turned her hand over and pressed another kiss to her palm.

Gwyn’s insides began a slow, sinuous melt.

Gareth lips grazed the inside of her wrist. A tiny gasp escaped her. His grasp tightened. He untangled his fingers from hers and slid his hand up her arm...over her shoulder...around the nape of her neck. His thumb traced the curve of her ear.