The Island House Chapter 13

Charlotte worked toward her first wedding; she worked on the house; she worked at not thinking about her family during the upcoming holidays; she worked on sharing more with Dawson.

He hadn’t pushed her for more information, and she hadn’t volunteered it. She just wasn’t ready to tell him more than she already had.

She had not called her sister or even texted her. She’d ignored Sammy after sending that two-word text.

Work kept her busy, with a few new brides now scheduled that were much less chill than Claudia, who had come in without her mother and they’d had a great meeting—with chocolate sea salt truffles and a little bit of laughing.

With Claudia’s wedding first, Charlotte really needed it to go well.

“Miss Madsen, you have someone here to see you.”

Charlotte glanced up from her desk, her fork paused halfway to her mouth. “Who is it?” She didn’t have an appointment that afternoon, or she wouldn’t have walked over to the salad bar and filled a plate worthy of a family feast.

Riley giggled and stepped into the office a little further. “A really cute man.”

“Dark hair, some gray in the sideburns?” Dawson had come to her office? Why?

“Yes.” Riley sighed and pressed both hands to her heart. “Should I send him in? Is he one of the grooms? Maybe he’s here to book something for his girlfriend.”

Charlotte coughed, choking on the very idea of getting married again. She pushed the salad away, embarrassed at the size of it but unable to do anything about it. “Sure, send him in.”

Riley grinned as wide as the Pacific Ocean and stepped out of the office. Charlotte yanked open the bottom drawer in her desk and shoved the salad on top of the pile of folders there. She had no idea what they even were, but the drawer closed—barely, but it did—and she could deal with unknown files later.

She moved a pen around the surface of her desk and turned toward her computer like she was so busy as Dawson came in.

“Hey,” he said easily, just like he did everything. She knew his life wasn’t picture-perfect, but he somehow didn’t let his past or his crumbled relationships with his family bother him. She marveled at that. Wondered where he put the guilt.

“What’s going on?” she asked, rising and glancing toward the door where Riley and a bridal coordinator stood, staring. “We’re not alone. Don’t kiss me.” She smiled like they were old friends, that she hadn’t kissed him that very morning after seeing him running along the beach, that she didn’t secretly fantasize about him.

Dawson paused, his jovial face turning serious. “I thought you were my girlfriend.”

“They don’t know that.”

He turned and looked at the two women standing there and they scattered like pigeons. After retracing his steps and closing the door, he yanked on the blinds to close them too. When he faced her, Charlotte didn’t like the concern and confusion in his eyes.

“I thought we were dating,” he said, maintaining his position near the door.

“We are.”

“But you don’t want anyone to know.”

“It’s not that.” Plenty of people knew. His friends had known, and while he’d tried to take her to their doughnut shop, she hadn’t wanted to go. She’d suggested an omelet place for breakfast last week instead, and he hadn’t known why she wanted to save the pastries for another time.

She realized, standing there in her office, that she didn’t mind being his girlfriend when no one knew about it. But she didn’t want anyone to know….

Charlotte looked away, her classic move for avoiding hard things. “Why did you come by?” she asked. If people knew she was dating Dawson, it would be real. And she really liked that it felt a bit like pretend to her.

She wasn’t ready for real. She wasn’t ready to introduce him as her boyfriend. She wasn’t ready to be part of a pair.

“I wondered if you had time for lunch, and you weren’t answering your phone.” Dawson looked like he could punch the next person he saw. “But I can see you’re too busy.” He spun and opened the door, stepping through it before she could say, “Wait,” or “I’m sorry.”

By the time she realized what she’d not said, he was gone. She darted out from behind the desk, “Dawson, wait,” falling from her lips. She ignored Riley and Patrice and headed for the door as she caught sight of him in his dark wash jeans and mint green polo heading north down the sidewalk.

She burst out of Your Tidal Forever, the beach stretching in front of her. Whenever she left the office, she took a few moments to enjoy the surf and sand, but today, she barely glanced at them.

“Dawson!” she called. To his credit, he paused. His hulking black SUV waited in the parking lot, and he had almost reached it.

Charlotte hurried after him as fast as her sandaled feet would let her. With basically a piece of flat cardboard as a sole, the shoes weren’t comfortable and hurt her high arch.

He turned around, practically a scowl on his face.

She reached him and wanted to touch him, draw him into her as she had previously. But she was very aware of where they stood and that while this stretch of sand wasn’t nearly as populated as the tops of the bays, there were still plenty of people walking, biking, or running past.

“I’d like to go to lunch,” she said, nowhere near what she needed to say.

“People will see us,” he said.

She hesitated, unsure of what to say. “I know,” she said at the same time he scoffed and looked over her shoulder.

“I knew you weren’t ready for this.” He clicked his keys and the doors unlocked on his SUV. He put that power in his strides and reached it in only a couple of steps. She scrambled after him, thinking he wouldn’t drive off with her halfway outside of the vehicle. Would he?

He didn’t, and she buckled her seatbelt as the backs of her legs burned against the black leather.

They drove in silence, and she didn’t ask where he was taking her. He knew all kinds of hidden gems around the island, and while she’d only sampled a few with him, he’d told her about plenty of places they needed to go.

This drive took them out of East Bay and through Getaway Bay too. They left behind the hustle and bustle of the tourists, the locals, the beaches, and headed around the curve in the island.

Fear gripped Charlotte for a moment. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I just….” She couldn’t find adequate words to sum up how she felt inside. They hadn’t existed in South Carolina either, and she suddenly knew why she’d left.

Run away, she thought. She’d gotten away to Getaway Bay.

“My ex-husband sat me down about six months ago and told me he’d met someone else.” She watched the trees go by, wishing she could climb one and float away. “We’d been married for eleven years, and while things weren’t perfect, I hadn’t realized how unhappy he was. How unhappy I was. How we didn’t love each other anymore.”

She stopped talking, not sure any of this was relevant. Dawson reached over and took her hand in his but didn’t vocalize anything.

“So I’m…sorting through things. I’m not sure I trust myself to make decisions, especially relationship decisions, and I really like you and don’t want to hurt you.” She whispered the last few words, her emotions teeming too close to the surface to speak properly.

He lifted her hand to his lips. “I really like you too.” A few more minutes of driving, and he pulled under a wooden arch that had the words “Cattleman’s Last Stop” carved into it. The road was dirt but not bumpy, and she spied a huge building up ahead with several cars parked in front of it.

“Doesn’t look too busy,” he said. “It’s usually their evening crowd that’s huge.”

“Where are we?”

“Best steakhouse on the island,” he said. “Angus burgers. And this is a real working ranch, with real cowboys.” He pulled up beside a blue pickup and parked. He didn’t turn off the engine but looked at the entrance to the restaurant like he expected zombies to come pouring out of it at any moment.

Just when the tension between them had made her pulse start to race, he said, “I know you’re not ready for this. I can drive you back to work and leave you alone.”

Charlotte didn’t want that. But was it fair to keep him hanging on? “I don’t want that,” she said. “But I don’t—I can’t give you as serious as you want. I’m sorry. I understand if you’d rather just be done.”

Her heart wailed at the idea though. The hammock on her back deck would be huge without him there to snuggle into, and the idea of not being able to call someone and tell them about her highs and lows brought tears to her eyes.

And not just someone.

Him.

She knew she wanted to call him. Share with him.

She told him that, and he finally looked at her. “I’m okay with what we have going right now,” he said. “I really am. But I do have one more question.”

Charlotte kept her gaze steady on his, unwilling to look away and show her anxiety. “All right. I’ll do my best to answer it.”

“Do you think you’ll ever be ready?”

She wanted to blurt, “Of course,” just so he wouldn’t break up with her. Instead, she thought for a moment and said, “I’m going to try. But Dawson, I don’t know if I even recognize love anymore.”

She’d thought she’d been in love with Hunter. His declaration had been the biggest shock of her life, and the waves were still rolling through the different parts of her life. Her friends. Her family. Her job. Her home. Her very thought processes. Her heart. Her soul.

“I just needed to know you were going to try.” He unbuckled his seat belt and turned off the car. “Let’s go eat. I’m starving.”

Charlotte went inside with him, the craziest décor she’d ever seen looking down on her from the walls. A bonafide cowboy swaggered over to them and said, “Just two today?”

“Yes,” Dawson said with a smile. “How are you, Blue?”

“Good enough.” Blue grinned too, grabbed two menus, and showed them to a booth against the wall. The windows gave Charlotte a great view of green fields, palms waving along the fence line. She’d had no idea there were cattle in Hawaii.

Blue knocked on the table and asked, “What can I get you to drink?”

They ordered sodas and waters, and Blue turned to leave. He sucked in a breath and dropped to a crouch right there at their table.

Charlotte met Dawson’s eye, and he looked apprehensively at Blue. “Blue?” he asked.

The next thing Charlotte knew, Blue crowded onto the bench with her, his whole body turned toward her. Her heartbeat accelerated as he put his arm around her, seemingly trying to make his broad shoulders and big cowboy hat disappear.

Like that was going to work.

“Uh,” she said.

“That is my neighbor,” he hissed, glancing over to Dawson. He leaned out of the booth and toward the entrance. Charlotte could just make out a woman standing there, wearing a black pencil skirt and a pretty blouse with bright, splashy parrots all over it.

“Okay,” Dawson said. “She looks like she might throw up.”

“I asked her out last night,” Blue muttered. “She said no.”

“No?” Charlotte looked over to the woman again, and everyone’s eyes on her must’ve alerted her to something in this direction, because she looked right at Charlotte. “Uh, oh,” she whispered. “She saw me.”

Which meant she saw Blue. 

Charlotte’s adrenaline spiked as the woman started to approach. “Blue, she’s coming over.”

He sighed, dropped his chin to his chest, and then slid out of the booth as quickly as he’d entered it.

His shoulders went all the way to his ears and then dropped as he exhaled. He turned, and Charlotte saw him paste a smile on his face. “Mya,” he said in a cheerful tone. Far more cheerfully that he’d greeted her and Dawson. “What are you doin’ here?”

“I wondered if we could talk.” She worried her hands together and glanced at Charlotte and Dawson. “Are you on a lunch break?”

“Not yet,” he said, smoothly putting his arm around Mya and turning her away from the table. “Why don’t you wait right…” At that point, Charlotte couldn’t make out what more he said.

She looked at Dawson, and they both burst into giggles—quietly. The last thing Charlotte wanted to do was mess anything up for Blue and Mya. Maybe they’d end up getting married, and she could plan the wedding. Maybe out here on this ranch.

Dawson continued with the light mood by telling her about a couple of clients yesterday that had more questions about the volcanoes and human sacrifice than was normal, and everything seemed perfectly fine on the outside.

But inside Charlotte, a war waged, and she had no idea which part of her would come out the victor: her mind or her heart. She could only hope she didn’t hurt the handsome, kind, hardworking man across the table from her.