Half Moon Hill (30 page)

She felt as if she were moving in a haze, like a mere shadow of herself, as she finally turned and walked back out the door, pulling it shut behind her.

A
nna barely slept. Not only because the bed now felt so empty but because the last week or two began to feel like a mere dream. Had she imagined the closeness that had grown between them? Had she made it all up? No. No, she knew she hadn’t.
But if one of you is suddenly acting like it never happened, does that make it not real?

Stop thinking so much. Things will be better today.
That was what she told herself as she got up early, took a shower, got dressed.
He said he’d see you in the morning, he said it wasn’t a big thing. It will all be fine.

As she hit the stairs in bare feet, ready to go down and think about breakfast—lately, they’d eaten together, eggs or pancakes or something, and she wasn’t sure what to expect today—she heard movement and realized Duke was here.

She walked into the kitchen to find him closing the refrigerator door, a bottle of water in his hand. She’d given him a key long ago, to make things easier, but he looked up as if she might think he didn’t belong here. “Just getting some water before I get started. Clapboard’s being delivered tomorrow, and Lucky’s cleared his schedule to come help me for a few days, but I’ve got plenty to get finished before then.”

Something in Anna froze up at his all-business tone—and the fact that he sounded almost angry underneath it. Nothing was better today. She barely knew how to respond. Like last night, she heard herself murmur, “Okay.”

And then he stumbled slightly and a cat’s shriek filled the air—“Mrow!”—and Duke found his footing as he looked down to snap, “Get outta my damn way, cat.”

Anna’s back went ramrod straight. “Maybe
you
should get out of
his
damn way.”

Duke flashed a challenging look at her that might have frightened her in earlier days with him. Then he said, “I’ll be outside.”

She tried to be nicer, smooth things over. “You don’t want anything to eat?” Not that
he’d
been remotely nice.

“No,” he practically growled, then started toward the back door.

“Duke, what’s wrong?” she asked. She didn’t want to play games here, act like this was normal—she wanted to get to the bottom of it, now.

But he only said, “I need to get to work,” as he continued toward the door. “If you’re ever gonna get this place open, I need to get stuff done.”

“Well, I don’t have a specific date in mind to open,” she replied, “and . . . maybe I think there are
some
things more important than that.”

He’d stopped moving now, his hand resting on the doorknob, but his gaze lay on something outside, through the window, as he said, “Well, I won’t be around forever. So if you wanna get this place in shape while you’ve still got my help, I need to work. Understand?”

What she understood was that he was shutting her out, shutting her down. That simple. No conversation with anyone had ever left her feeling so dejected. “Yeah, sure,” she said. “I understand.”

And as she watched Duke walk out the door, across the screened-in porch, and then outside, it was like . . . he was walking away from her in a much bigger way. And she feared he wasn’t coming back. His words echoed in her brain.
I won’t be around forever.

Did I think he would be?

Maybe I did.

But of course it made sense that he wouldn’t. God knew he’d never made her any promises, never said anything about caring for her—and Lord, she’d found him living in the woods! Clearly the man didn’t know what one day to the next held for him; clearly he was just finding his way, moment by moment.

That all seemed startlingly clear right now. As clear as it had when she’d first found him outside the cabin.

She supposed she should have remembered all that before she’d let herself start caring about him so deeply, before she’d surrendered to falling completely, helplessly in love.

“C
an I help?”

Duke looked up at the sound of Anna’s voice. Damn, why couldn’t she just get the message? He’d been hoping she’d stay inside, find other stuff to do. Maybe he’d poured it on too thick about so much work remaining—he’d just been trying to get away from her. He’d been trying to stop feeling . . . anything.

The second he caught a glimpse of her—in cute shorts and a little summer top as usual—he had to draw his eyes away, back to the piles of pale yellow siding before him. “No work at the bookstore today?”

From the corner of his eye, he saw her shake her head. “No.”

Damn.

The truth was, he could use the help. In between bigger projects, he’d continued working on trim repairs and had just had some additional wood delivered on Friday. There were miniature spindles that could be sanded and—now that they’d selected a color scheme—painted, while he kept plugging away at some final repairs around the porch and steps. But he still didn’t look at her. Because that only made him hurt. And he just had to shut out all those feelings for her. Somehow. “Okay then—yeah,” he admitted, “you can help.”

“Just tell me what to do,” she said quietly, and on the inside he felt like what she’d thought he was in the beginning—some kind of monster.

But stop feeling that. Stop feeling anything. Stop thinking. Just focus on the work at hand.

He’d retreated to the woods to forget about Denny, and about his father’s rejection, and his mother’s death. But he wasn’t sure where to go to forget about Anna given that she lived here. He’d gone back out to the cabin last night, but she’d just followed him there. So for as long as he was working on the house, he supposed there was no getting away from her.

You could just quit on the house. You’ve done plenty already. She could hire someone to do the rest—she might not like that idea, but it wouldn’t be the end of the world if she had to.

Still, he didn’t think he could do that. And he wasn’t even sure why. Maybe because he’d agreed to help her. And he took satisfaction in the work. And he’d left enough behind lately already—somehow, despite everything, he didn’t want to leave
this
behind, undone, too. Maybe it was a point of pride—though it was surprising to find he had any left.

“See those little spindles and trim pieces?” he said, pointing. He’d separated the various pieces of wood into piles yesterday morning before installing the new light fixtures. “Those all need to be sanded.” She’d helped him sand the shutters a few weeks ago, so he knew she didn’t need any further instruction on that.

“All right,” she said—and the gentle tone of her voice still made him feel like an ogre. But he just ignored it, just propped up that invisible wall that kept him from responding to it.

From there, he simply focused on what he had to do. Measuring, sawing, hammering. He worked in a different area than she did whenever possible, and when they were near each other he simply acted as if . . . they weren’t. Though at times the silence between them seemed so loud that he wished she’d put on some of those old records before coming outside. And he even considered suggesting it—but didn’t. Being so quiet with her was awkward, but better to be awkward than to open any kind of door that might let emotions back in.

A couple of hours into the day’s work, he knelt on the porch, hammering freshly cut boards into place. And he realized that, long after he’d drained the bottle of water he’d helped himself to this morning, Anna now appeared at his side offering him another.

He looked up, took it from her hand, said a short “Thanks.” Then tried not to feel the fact that their fingers had touched, or that he’d looked into her eyes for a second, or that he wanted to tell her to be sure she drank plenty, too, because it was getting hot out here.

Uncapping the bottle, he took a long, thirsty swallow, and only as he lowered it from his mouth and began to screw the lid back on did he realize she still stood there beside him, staring down at him.

He let out a breath, tried to will her away.
I can do this if she keeps her distance, if she just lets this go. But not if I have to keep looking at her, feeling her. Shit, Daisy, why can’t you just make this easier on both of us?

Finally, he felt he had no choice but to glance up at her. But he didn’t meet her eyes. He tried not to really see her. “What is it? Done sanding?”

She shook her head—and shit, even if he didn’t really peer into those brown eyes, he could still feel the pain there, the confusion. But it didn’t change anything. It didn’t make him any better of a man, it didn’t make him any less scarred, it didn’t make him into the kind of guy Tessa’s brother was—the kind of guy she deserved.

“No,” she said, and he saw her swallow nervously and hated that he was making her feel that way. “I just . . . wondered if I’d done something wrong.”

Aw hell. Keep it simple.
“No.”

“Then . . . then why do you seem mad?”

“I’m not mad. I’m just working.”

He lowered his gaze from her face, but he still saw the tender, hurt way she bit her lower lip before she asked, “Are we not . . . anymore?”

The question nearly stole Duke’s breath. Because it sounded so painfully . . . final. And he . . . just hadn’t thought that far ahead and didn’t particularly want to. But . . . maybe she didn’t have a choice on that, either, if she was putting it to him this way. So he said what he had to, the only reply that made any sense to him, that allowed him to walk away from her the easiest and would hopefully allow her to do that, too.

“Look, we’ve had some good times together . . . but it’s not like it was anything serious. We barely know each other, after all.” His stomach knotted even as the words left him, but it still seemed like the wisest way to go.

“Well, I feel like we
got
to know each other,” she insisted. “I mean, we shared things.”

God, why on earth had he expected Daisy to be any less tenacious about
this
than anything else? As usual, he’d underestimated her.

And she was making this hard—harder than it needed to be. Which forced him to do the same thing.

So he just shrugged. And pretended it had been nothing. “Heat of the moment, I guess.” And hell, it was impossible to keep looking at her—at all—so he dropped his gaze to the peeling paint on the wooden boards before him, which he and Lucky would cover with fresh new clapboard tomorrow. “It’s nothing personal, Anna—I’m just not into anything serious, ya know? Got enough shit on my plate as it is, so figured we should cool things down.” And when she still stood there, now saying nothing, he even felt forced to add, “Make sense?”

And finally, her tone becoming a bit less delicate and a bit more clipped, she said, “Sure. Makes
perfect
sense.”

So now she was mad. And he should just let her be. But he wanted to make her understand. “We can still work on the house together. I’ll stay until it’s finished. But after that, I should probably move on, ya know?”

Anna thought about asking him exactly where it was he’d decided to move on to, exactly where it was he thought he’d be so much happier. But she held her tongue. If he could throw away what they’d had so easily, so coldly, what did she care where he went? Or why he didn’t want to be with her anymore?

So even as her heart broke inside her chest, she kept wearing the stronger face she’d finally managed to put on and again said, “Sure. Whatever you say.”

Just then, the trill of the old-fashioned rotary phone in the kitchen rang through the open front windows. And part of Anna wanted to just keep standing there, trying to somehow hold him accountable, somehow make him understand that he owed her more than this now—but another part of her saw the ringing phone as God’s way of telling her to walk away now and quit acting so needy.
He never promised you anything. Never. So stop trying to squeeze from him something he obviously doesn’t want to give. Stop being weak.

“I’ll . . . go answer that.” She pointed vaguely toward the sound, and then she turned and walked away. Trying her damnedest to look confident, feel confident, like always. To put back on that bit of armor. And yet somehow it suddenly didn’t come to her as effortlessly as it always had. It was as if Duke Dawson had somehow torn down everything she’d ever used to protect herself, all in just a few short weeks.

As she headed for the phone, letting the screen door slam behind her, she lectured herself.
Why did you do that? Why did you stand there interrogating him? Why did you embarrass yourself that way?

But she knew the answer. It came to her as easily as breathing.
I thought we had more. I thought it mattered. I was sure of it. So sure. And I still can’t believe he’s making it so much less than it was.
He was belittling every moment they’d spent together, devaluing her love for him. He was making it all . . . nothing.

Picking up the phone, she shoved it to her ear and said, “Hello?” probably a bit too harshly.

“Oh, you’re there. I almost hung up.” It was Tessa.

She tried to soften her voice. “Sorry—was outside.”
Getting my heart ripped to shreds.

“Working on the house with Duke?”

Something in the simple question made her want to cry.
It’s because Tessa assumes everything is still good between us—and I don’t know why it isn’t.
“Um . . . yeah.”

“So . . . I have a weird question to ask you,” Tessa began then, sounding tentative.

And Anna wanted to hang up the phone. She’d had enough weird today to last her whole life and it wasn’t even lunchtime yet.

“The summer carnival starts on Wednesday,” Tessa went on, “and I wondered if you’d want to go with a big group of us.”

Anna was confused. “That’s a weird question?”

“Well, the weird part is . . . Jeremy wanted me to ask you. And I don’t know how serious you and Duke are. Like, if you two are way into each other and it’s all hot and heavy, totally feel free to say no—no problem. The thing is—I couldn’t really tell Jeremy you were seeing somebody because of Duke not wanting anyone to know he’s in town yet. So I told him I’d ask. And I thought I should. Just in case. Because he’s totally smitten with you, Anna. And don’t get me wrong—I love Duke—but . . . well, I couldn’t help thinking how fun it would be if you and Jeremy hit it off, too.”