Then There Was You Read online

  Paige tried to gather her thoughts. “So this is pretty much the nicest thing anyone has ever done for me.” Barring her brother giving up his life, but that would ruin the moment. “I can’t believe you flew all the way here to do this. And yes, since I’ve been here, I have appreciated more how amazing you are and how great what we have is.” Wow, could she get any lamer? This was like something from a straight-to-DVD chick flick. “But I need time to think. Not long, just overnight. This has been a big surprise. I can’t just give you an answer. I need to be sure.”

  He nodded. “Okay.”

  Okay. So what now? “Do you still want to go get some lunch?”

  He looked at her, then shook his head. “No thanks. I’ve said what I’ve come here to say, so I’ll give you space to think about it.”

  Wow. She didn’t know this Nate. This determined can’t-just-be-friends guy.

  He pulled a card out of his pocket, held it out to her. “This is where I’m staying. I’m in room 817.”

  She took it and looked at it. It was a hotel not far away. “Okay. I’ll call you.”

  “What’s the best way to get a cab from here?”

  Paige reached into her pocket. It was empty. She must have left her phone back on her desk. “If you just head back to reception, Phoebe will call one for you.”

  “Thanks.” He paused, then stepped forward and pulled her into a brief hug, “I’ve missed you.” He whispered the words against her hair, then released her and walked away without a backward glance.

  She watched his retreating back get smaller and smaller as he took the path back to the main office. She had a huge decision to make. One way or another, everything between them was going to change.

  Thirty-Five

  “Wow.” Kat let out a low whistle from the opposite couch. This time the tables had turned. She was the one sipping a soda, while Paige sat surrounded by empty chocolate wrappers, destroying a container of fudge brownie ice cream for lunch.

  “That about sums it up.” Paige dug her spoon down, extracting a big chunk of brownie.

  “I have a few other words for it too. Romantic. Gutsy. Bold. Expensive. Want me to go on?”

  “Not really.”

  “Inspiring. Breathtaking.” Kat took a sip of her drink.

  Page swallowed her mouthful. Loaded her spoon up again. “Not helping.” At this rate, she’d be a whole new dress size by morning.

  “You don’t need any help.”

  “Come again?” Another spoonful of creamy deliciousness down the hatch.

  “You already know the answer.”

  “I do?”

  “Yes, and that’s why you’re here, eating your way through a bucket of ice cream, rather than taking some cruise around the harbor staring into Nate’s eyes.”

  “Bit more complicated than that.” Paige peered into the carton. Oh, wow. It was half empty. Time to put the spoon down.

  Kat kicked her feet up on the glass coffee table between them. “Okay, I’m going to humor you. But only because I love you. Because if I didn’t, I’d want to wring your neck about now for being so obtuse.” Her cousin took a sip of her drink. “What was that show we used to watch when we were kids? The one with the girl that Tom Cruise jumped on Oprah’s couch for, and the guy with the floppy hair?”

  “Dawson’s Creek.” Although her cousin already knew the answer. Those were the days, hunkered down on a Friday night, eating ice cream and loving to hate Jen for swooping in and stealing Dawson away. Not only had they spent their teen years following the Creek, between them they owned the entire DVD collection. Kat could still quote chunks of episodes.

  “And who was in the eternal love triangle?”

  Another scoop of ice cream. “Joey and Dawson and Pacey.”

  “And which one is Nate?”

  “Dawson.” Paige mumbled the words. Nate was one hundred percent Dawson. Stable. Loyal. Predictable. Transparent as a piece of cling film.

  Kat held a hand to her ear. “Louder! I can’t hear youuuu.”

  “Dawson.”

  “And who was the right guy for Joey?”

  Paige sighed. “Pacey.”

  “Exactly.”

  “Except I’m not Joey, Nate isn’t Dawson, and there is no Pacey.”

  “You’re being a real pain. You know that, right?”

  Yes, she knew. But only because before Kat waded in, her gut had already told her the right answer. She wanted Kat and her gut to be wrong.

  “Nate is a great guy. He’s generous and kind. He’s stable and loves God and is crazy about you. And I know people say that marriage isn’t all about fireworks and candlelit dinners and romance. But it’s also a whole lot more than taking the trash out and who will remember to pick the kids up on time from Little League. I know you’re still hurting from the way things unfolded with Josh, but choosing Nate because you’re disappointed and disillusioned and think you’re better off playing it safe is wrong. All wrong.”

  Paige bit her lip to stop herself from pointing out that Kat was hardly qualified as an expert on marriage, given her tendency to sabotage even the most promising relationships.

  Besides, as much as Paige hated to admit it, Kat was right. She stirred her spoon through the now-melted ice cream goop. “You think I deserve better than the guy who checks all the boxes but doesn’t set my world on fire?”

  “I think Nate deserves better.”

  Ouch. Her mouth opened, but no words came out.

  “He’s a great guy and he deserves to be with someone who is crazy about him. And that girl. Is. Not. You.” Heavy emphasis on the last three words. “So you need to give him up. Let him find the girl who is.”

  “What if I give him up, then realize he was the one after all?”

  Kat rolled her eyes. “Seriously? Like that’s gonna happen. After what, seven years? This is not a TV show where the writers take six seasons to draw out what everyone has known all along.”

  “To be fair, I’ve only been single for nine months, and I’ve been here for six.”

  “Yup. But if Nate was the one, you would’ve either A, worked it out ages ago and given Alex the axe long before you did or B, be with Nate right now, not working your way through a tub of Baskin-Robbins’ finest.”

  Paige huffed and shoved the ice cream container onto the coffee table. Kat was right. She was being a pain. She wanted slap herself right now.

  What she needed to do was clear. It was time to gather all her mettle, as her grandmother would say, and do the deed. She leaned back and extracted the hotel card from her pocket. Might as well put them both out of their misery.

  The large tiles of the hotel lobby blurred under Paige’s pacing feet. Maybe she should have written what she wanted to say on cue cards. She was probably going to start crying and mess this horrible thing up, forcing poor Nate to interpret from her tears and flailing hands.

  Her heart thundered like the Endeavor launching. Nate had been nothing but good to her and she was about to hurt him. Again.

  Outside, the spring sun commenced its drop beneath the horizon, gray creeping over the landscape of gum trees and intersections.

  She had to let him go. Let him move on. Find someone. Trying to keep things as they were was pure selfishness. She’d been that for long enough, had taken up the space in his life that should have been for someone else. Why? Because she’d found some sort of pathetic self-worth in knowing he was there, waiting for her to look his way?

  She didn’t care to analyze it more. Not wanting, quite yet, to confront what other ugly parts of her character she might find lurking under the surface.

  “Hey.” Nate’s black Chucks landed in front of her.

  She looked up.

  “Hi.” Her lip started to wobble. Stop it, Paige. Get a grip!

  “I . . . I . . . I’m sorry.” It was all she managed to get out before she choked, the tears starting. Dang it. All she had to do was hold it together for ten minutes. Couldn’t she have at least done him the decency of not
turning into some pathetic weeper when she was the one telling him he’d come all this way for rejection?

  “Shush, it’s okay.” Nate pulled her into his arms, ushering her to some couches nearby.

  She flapped her hands, tried to fan away the tears as she gulped in some air.

  “Here, sit.” He gestured at the floral-patterned couch beside them.

  “I just . . .” Again, cue cards would have been excellent. She struggled for the right words. “You are so amazing, so great. You deserve someone who is crazy about you. And I am. Just not like that.”

  He nodded. “I know.”

  “You know?”

  “I knew this afternoon when you told me you needed to think about it. If you needed to think about it, the answer was kind of obvious.”

  “Oh.” Paige didn’t know what else to say.

  “I’m already booked on a flight out in the morning.”

  “Okay.”

  He looked resigned, but not devastated. In fact, he looked almost eager to be packing himself back into a cramped flying tube. “I’ve liked you for so long, it’s been impossible to see around you to anyone else. I was eighty percent sure when I got on the plane this would be how it was. But I had to know for sure. Had to know that I had given it everything I had, put it all on the line. And I’m glad I did. Now I can move on, no regrets, no wondering.”

  “Is there someone else? Back home?” The words bypassed her brain and came straight out of her mouth.

  A glimmer of a smile. “I don’t know. Maybe.”

  She wobbled a smile. “Good. That’s great. I’m glad.”

  He ducked his head. “We’ll see. Nothing has happened. I had to do this first. Had to be fair to her.”

  Wow. She hadn’t seen that coming. “Well, I’m sure she’s amazing. She must be to have caught your eye. I hope it works out.”

  “Thanks. What about you?”

  She shook her head. “No one.”

  “Not that guy I met in the office?”

  Her heart constricted. “I’m not the right girl for him.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “It’s okay. It’s for the best.”

  He shuffled, staring at the carpet for a second. “I should go. Early wake-up call and all that.” He looked up. “You get why I probably won’t be in touch for a while?”

  She blinked back more tears. “I get it. I’ll miss you, though.”

  He smiled. “I’ll miss you too.”

  They stood and he pulled her into a quick hug. “Take care of yourself.” Then he turned to walk away.

  “Nate?” He paused. “I’ll be praying it works out with whoever she is.”

  He turned back for a second. “Faith. Her name is Faith.”

  Four hours later, Paige pushed open the front door, her shoulder straining under the weight of her laptop and the few trees worth of paper filling her satchel. It was going to be a late night making up the hours she’d lost with the Nate situation.

  Faith. She rolled the name around in her head. Nate and Faith. It had a meant-to-be ring about it.

  She turned to disarm the alarm but it was already off. Kat’s job must have finished early. “Kat?”

  Paige walked into the living area. Kat sat at the breakfast bar. “How was your afternoon?”

  “Fine.” Kat’s voice was flat and she didn’t so much as glance Paige’s way. Odd. She waited for her cousin to ask how things had gone with Nate but there was silence. Even stranger.

  Paige dropped her purse and laptop satchel on the love seat as she made her way across the room.

  Her cousin’s fingers played with the stem of a wine glass standing in front of her. An open bottle of chardonnay sat on the counter. Jeepers. Her cousin wasn’t a teetotaler but this was new.

  “What’s wrong?”

  Kat glanced at her with red-rimmed eyes then looked away. “Nothing. Allergies.”

  What allergies? Paige was pretty sure she would have noticed those in the last thirty-odd years. “Is it Dan? Has your father done something?” She took a couple of stabs in the dark. Kat had been remarkably tight lipped about her break up. She’d described it as “difficult but necessary” and that was all the information that Paige had managed to get out of her.

  Of course it hadn’t helped that between her working long hours on the tour and Grace and Kat bouncing between the four corners of the earth they had hardly seen each other the last month. Grabbing a soda from the fridge, she rounded the counter and perched on the stool next to Kat.

  “My father is fine. As far as I know.” Kat ran a hand through her hair.

  “Are you missing Dan? You’re allowed to. You guys were together awhile.”

  Her cousin slumped on her bar stool. “I don’t miss Dan at all. That’s the problem. I miss Caleb.”

  Caleb? Who the heck was Caleb? Paige scanned her memory banks trying to place the name in connection to Kat.

  “Not every day, obviously. That would be beyond pathetic. But every now and then it just hits me. Out of nowhere.” Kat picked up her glass and drained the last of her wine.

  Paige’s memory bank finally came up with a match but it couldn’t be right. There was no way her independent kick-butt cousin was pining for a guy from a decade ago. There had to be a more recent Caleb she’d forgotten about. Or hadn’t known about at all.

  “There was a guy on set today who looked so like him I almost thought it was.” Kat gave a deprecating smile. “Which was crazy. What would a farmer be doing on a soap set in urban Sydney? But for a second I imagined him turning around and seeing me . . .” She buried her face in her hands. “I even checked out his left hand.”

  Holy moly. Kat was talking about Caleb Murphy. Everything suddenly clicked into place. Her cousin’s inability to make the jump from like to love. Her seeming preference for long distance relationships. The Kevlar strength emotional wall she put up when it came to men.

  Kat had never gotten over her first love.

  Paige wrapped an arm around her cousin’s shoulder and Kat collapsed into her. With her other she grabbed the side of her stool to prevent the unexpected weight from toppling her over.

  Paige leaned into her cousin and stroked her hair. All this time she’d thought Kat’s relationship issues were the remnants of her parents’ bitter divorce and her father’s stand over tactics when it was the guy who long ago broke her heart.

  “This is so ridiculous. He’s probably married with a passel of kids by now.”

  Paige didn’t know what to say. She’d never even met the guy. It had been ten years. Maybe more. Kat was probably right. “Want me to Google? I can Google stalk with the best of them.”

  Kat pulled in a breath. “Why not? Let’s put an end to this insanity. I should have done it ages ago. Try Caleb Murphy Toowoomba.”

  “Too-what?”

  “T-o-o-w-o-o-m-b-a.”

  Paige’s fingers flew over her phone as she input the words and then scrolled through the results. The first page were links to farming articles. Then, in the middle of the second page, she paused, her stomach cinched.

  “What is it?” Kat straightened up, bracing herself for the bad news.

  “Are you sure you want to know?”

  “Not really. But we’re too far in for me to say no now.”

  “It’s an engagement announcement. From a few years ago.” Paige clicked on the link. Caleb still looked like the photos Kat had sent. Sandy blond hair, tall, weathered features. He had one of those please-just-take-the-photo looks going. Next to him a petite brunette beamed. “What do you want to know?”

  “Does she look nice?”

  Paige studied the brunette’s open face and wide smile. “She does.”

  “Do they look happy?”

  “Yeah.” Paige put her phone down on the counter. “I’m really sorry.”

  Kat swiped a hand across her nose. “Me too. The stupid thing is he was right. It wouldn’t have worked. I was never meant to be a farmer’s wife.”

  Paig
e could no more imagine Kat milking cows and mucking out stables than she could imagine her deciding to take up dirt bike racing as a career. “You’d make anyone a great wife.”

  “We both would.” Kat heaved a sigh as she leaned forward and screwed the cap back on the wine bottle. “Josh and Caleb’s loss, I guess.”

  The breath left Paige’s lungs. She couldn’t be like her cousin. Spending years holding to a guy who had walked away. She’d wasted enough of her life as it was.

  Her visa was valid for another six months. She could find another job here easily enough. But if she stayed here she knew that part of her would be hoping that Josh with his infuriating she’s very missable might change his mind.

  It was time to book her flights home.

  Thirty-Six

  “Hey.” Kellie caught Josh as he was walking out of the main auditorium. They’d just had a new sound desk delivered that week—a Soundcraft Vi6. Such a beauty. He’d spent hours losing himself in playing with every button, every dial, every mix combination. He needed the distraction. Their next live album would be an acoustic extravaganza with this baby in the house.

  “How’s she going?” Kellie smiled up at him. She was one of the few people who appreciated the difference the between an adequate and an amazing sound desk. Not that their previous one hadn’t been great, but the Vi6 was like driving a Porsche after a lifetime thinking a Toyota was sufficient.

  “It’s like . . .” He tailed off, unable to find the words.

  She laughed. “You’re hopeless.”

  “How’s the choir coming?” He matched her shorter stride as they walked down the hallway.

  “Fine. Just can’t believe it’s October and we’re already rehearsing for Christmas.”

  “I know.” He shoved his hands in his pockets. Paige would be gone by Christmas. The thought struck from nowhere, catching him unguarded.

  Then he realized Kellie had stopped walking. “You all right?”

  She looked up at him, something in her eyes that he couldn’t decipher. “Can we talk for a sec?”