And that it could still not be enough. A powerful connection didn’t make three thousand miles any shorter. It didn’t change the shape of their lives, a shape that seemed determined to keep them apart.
“You know I want everything good for you, right?” she asked, feeling a desperate urge to make sure that he knew that. “All the happiness. All the success. Everything.”
“I know,” he said. “And I want the same for you… but I have no doubts that you’ll get there. I’ve seen how far you’ve come in such a little time. You’re going to be amazing. Just amazing.”
“Is this our goodbye, then?” she asked. This seemed like such a poor setting for it, this wonderful day surrounded by happy people. But then again, would there ever be a good time for this?
He reached down to squeeze her hand.
“No,” he said. “I was hoping that you would meet me for a farewell dinner at Captain’s Crest… you know, now that I’ve got their system up and running again.”
She squeezed his fingers back, a nod to the joke, feeble though it might have been. He was doing his best to keep up his spirits. She could try the same.
“Yeah,” she said. “I would like that.”
They agreed on the time and place and then, with a sad, lingering smile, Shane left the festival. Winnie didn’t even pretend that she wasn’t watching him leave.
She didn’t try to fight the sadness that lay over her like a mantle. She was glad that this wasn’t the last time she would ever see Shane…
But she feared that extending their farewell would only make this pain last all that much longer.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Garrett was starting to worry that there was a thin line betweenromanticandlunatic.
They had five letters that were the same. That couldn’t be coincidence, right?
But this was probably a crazy plan, he thought as he propped his ladder silently against the wall of the bookstore as the sun rose on Sunday morning. At least he had given up the ‘dead of night’ plan that he’d originally hatched, once it had occurred to him that a well-meaning neighbor would be well within their rights to call the police if they saw him climbing up the side of Eleanor’s building under the cover of darkness.
He tested the stability of the ladder, then grabbed the rose and poem… if he could call his amateurish scribbling a real poem. He hoped that this was one of the cases where it was the thought that counted.
Garrett did not consider himself a romantic man by nature. He’d never been prone to great displays of passion. It had been one of the complaints that his former fiancée, Maria, had always had about him.
Eleanor was very different, and they were at different stages in their lives than when his engagement had fallen apart. Andhe wasn’t really comparing, or at least he wasn’t comparing the two women. It was more that he was comparing the versions of himself. And he couldn’t say as much without risking his reputation as the town grump, but he liked the man he’d become these past few years.
A lot of that credit went to Eleanor. Andthatwas why, the night before when he’d been grinning to himself like a total dope about her declaration of love, that he had decided he wanted toshowher that he felt the same.
Hence the poem. And the flower. And the romantic scheme to slip them under her windowsill.
He was halfway up the ladder when a window slid open, startling him so dramatically that he nearly fell off his ladder for a second time in two days.
Any more of this nonsense and Garrett was going to lose all his credibility as a local fix-it guy. You’d think he had never gone up a ladder before in his life. Sheesh.
“Uh, hey there, buddy,” Shane said, sticking his head out of the newly opened window. “What’s going on out here?”
“Shhh!” Garrett said waving his hand frantically at Shane, who blinked back at him in confusion.
“Um,” Shane said… but he said it in a whisper, so Garrett was happy enough about it. “Okay. So I take it that the need for quiet means that Elliedoesn’tknow that you’re climbing up her house? Do I need to be all brotherly about this?”
In all honesty, Shane didn’t really sound like he was worried about what Garrett was doing. He did, however, sound highly amused.
Garrett narrowed his eyes at him playfully.
“No, I’m being romantic, you jerk,” he said without any real ire. “Go back inside. Go back to bed. What are you even doing up, anyway? Aren’t you supposed to be on vacation?”
There was a flicker of what might have been sadness in Shane’s expression, but it appeared and vanished again before Garrett could be certain that he’d seen anything.
“Being romantic, eh?” Shane said, ignoring the question. “I’d say it’s more like playing the fool.”
