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Max was on a ship. The ship was gone. There were no survivors.
Max was dead.
It was the strangest thing she ever did, but she laughed. Actually laughed at her husband’s grieving father. She reached out and gently touched him on the arm.
“Oh, Harry, Max isn’t dead. He can’t be.”
She would know it if he was dead. She would feel it. Her plan in life was to hate Max Harper every day from now until the day she died. A lifetime of hating him for not putting her first. For not choosing correctly when he had a choice between his work or her.
A lifetime of it.
He couldn’t be dead.
“I’m sorry, sweetie. I know things didn’t end well between you two. Sarah and I were both so sad about that.”
“He’s not dead, Harry. I would know it.”
He nodded. “Sarah says the same. But we can only go by what the experts are telling us, and they have officially declared him dead. We’re going to hold a service, and we would appreciate it if you were there. No matter how you two ended, you were family. His and ours for a time.”
Harry patted her hand, then turned to leave. Eleanor shook her head, still not understanding what had happened. There was no way this could be right. No way she was going to lose Max.
Again.
She stumbled back to her desk in the center of the loft and pulled up her laptop.
“Eleanor? Everything okay?”
She ignored her assistant while she typed Max Harper Oceanographer in a Google search page.
And there it was on her screen.
Max Harper, renowned oceanographer and climate scientist, declared dead along with the crew of the ship the Savior.
She fell to her knees, and Selena immediately crouched on the floor next to her.
“Eleanor, what’s wrong? What’s the matter? Are you sick?”
No, she thought. I’m not sick. I’m dead.
Chapter Two (#u661cda67-d377-529b-b1bb-6732da84ea90)
Two and a half years later
“A TOAST! TO my lovely daughter and her fiancé. I, as I’m sure everyone here does, wish them the most happiness. And I know my dear husband, Frank, is smiling down on them from heaven.”
Eleanor looked at her mother in the center of the room and smiled even as she lifted her glass in the air. She glanced at her sister, Allie, and her fiancé, Mike, and was happy to see they seemed to be having a nice time.
The house was filled with family and friends for the engagement party. A party she knew Allie and Mike didn’t originally want, hoping to keep things as low-key as possible. They had just announced their engagement last week, and no sooner had that happened than Marilyn was planning the party despite Allie’s objections. However, Marilyn was insistent, and, in the Gaffney household, whatever Marilyn wanted, Marilyn got.
Whether her children felt the same or not.
The wedding was almost a year away, but Eleanor had already agreed to take time from her company to make sure she could attend all the various activities. Tonight was just the start. Eventually there would be a bridal shower, then the bachelorette party, the rehearsal dinner, all culminating in what Marilyn Gaffney was proclaiming would be the event of the season in the town of Hartsville, Nebraska, next June.
Given that the population of Hartsville was just a little over five thousand citizens, any wedding that happened in town usually was the event of the season.
“Some champagne?”
Eleanor turned at the sound of the voice behind her. Daniel, her date for the evening, held up two flutes. She gladly accepted one.
“Thank you. You may need to keep this coming.”
“You seem to be getting along with your mother,” he said in a lowered voice. “From everything you had told me on the drive here, I was expecting something a little more dramatic between you two.”
“I’m trying to do everything I can to avoid the drama. Mom and I are fine as long as I’m agreeing with her. It’s when I don’t that things become difficult. Take this party, for example. Completely unnecessary. We’re going to be seeing all these same people at the wedding. What’s the point of doing it twice?”
Daniel raised an eyebrow. “What’s the point of any party? To have fun.”
Eleanor looked at Allie and Mike again. They were still smiling, still chatting with the people around them. They looked like what they were. A couple in love. A couple who was excited about their future.
And Eleanor was happy for them.
All this wedding paraphernalia didn’t bother her. Not in the least. That’s what she was telling herself anyway, and she could be very convincing when she needed to be.
Still, she knew everything on the surface wasn’t always as it appeared.
“I know my sister. It’s going to be hard enough for her to be the center of attention for a day. To keep this up for the next year will be laborious. A wedding shouldn’t be that much work.”
“Speaking of weddings...do you like big ones or small ones? Just so I can get an idea.”
“Daniel,” she said with a soft sigh.
“I hate that sigh, you know. I was only teasing.”
Was he? It was hard to know with Daniel. He liked to call himself a man of action, and that was true. He was always very persistent in getting what he wanted. Much like her mother.
Like convincing her to go out with him when she’d refused him for months.
“This is only our second date. I think it’s a little too soon to talk about weddings, don’t you?”
He gripped his chest in mock pain. “What? You’re not counting all those lunches?”
“They were business lunches,” she reminded him.
“One woman’s business lunch, another man’s date.”
“So you’re saying you have no real interest in investing in Head to Toe?”
He sipped his champagne. “I wouldn’t say that exactly. No.”
“That’s what I thought,” Eleanor said smugly. “Daniel, I agreed to go out with you. I agreed to bring you here so you could meet my family. But you know where my head is right now. Head to Toe is getting bigger every day, and it has to be my number-one priority. I’ve told you my plans.”
“You have. Or you could turn those plans over to me and let them be my number-one priority. Then you could go back to focusing on...other areas of your life.”
Again, she thought he was teasing, but it was hard to tell. Their relationship had started when Daniel, an investment banker, had shown interest in the growth rate of her company located in Denver. He’d asked her out to lunch to discuss the idea of what a large cash infusion could mean. She’d rejected the idea at first, but then the idea to get ahead of the game by growing her company at an accelerated rate seemed compelling.
Which led to another lunch.
Which led to her thinking Daniel himself was rather attractive. It might have been the first time in years she had even registered a man’s appearance. That had to be a good thing, she told herself.
In the end, Daniel hadn’t swayed her with his pitch. Head to Toe was her baby, and a cash investment from someone else meant giving part of it away. Whereas, if she took a loan out for the money to expand, it would still be hers. One was riskier, but the other was tantamount to giving over part control of the business. She didn’t know if she was willing to do that.
Daniel, however, had not been willing to walk away, either.
She would have thought his interest was solely in the company until he surprised her on lunch number two by asking her out on a date. Of course, she said no, for any number of reasons. But he persisted until she got to that point where she realized there was absolutely no reason for her not to go out on a date with him.
He was an intelligent, handsome, sometimes funny man. She liked him. A date made sense. A date might make her normal again. Two years was a long time to grieve a marriage that she had chosen to end.
They’d had an elegant dinner. They had agreed not to talk about work.
It had been...nice.
So she’d asked him to come to this party with her. Only now, he was suggesting there was something missing in her life.
“And what areas would those be?”
“I don’t know. Maybe thinking about other things than your company. Other things you want in life. You were married once. Don’t you think about getting married again?”
Eleanor flinched. “I don’t like to talk about my marriage.”
Because it was hers. Her marriage. Her memories. And talking about Max...thinking about him hurt too much.
“I can see why this would be painful to discuss...”
“We are at a party,” Eleanor said, raising her glass to her lips trying to change the subject. “Didn’t you say something about it being fun?”
This time it was Daniel who sighed.
“Eleanor, you have to see that I care about you.”
Did she? Did she have to see that? After a bunch of lunches and two dates—the second one not even finished yet. They hadn’t even had sex yet. She didn’t want to think about how even the idea of sex with him made her feel.
Disloyal was the best word she could come up with.
“I only want what is best for you. I feel sometimes like I’m battling this ghost.”
“You’re not.”
“We haven’t talked about this. I’m not sure I know how you feel about children—”
Eleanor pierced him with a look that stopped that sentence. If she wasn’t comfortable talking about her marriage, then she certainly wasn’t comfortable discussing the subject of children with Daniel. Definitely not on a second date.
“There you are!” Marilyn proclaimed as she approached them. “You’re not mingling. Everyone is asking about you, but it seems no one is getting a chance to talk with you.”
For the first time in her life, Eleanor was happy to be admonished by her mother. Anything to get Daniel to stop talking about Max and babies.
“Sorry, Mom. Daniel and I were just having a conversation.”
Marilyn smiled and patted his arm. “Yes, yes. I’m very happy with your new young man, but you two can talk all you want when you’re back in the big city. For now, I would like my daughter to be available for her family.”
“Yes, of course,” Daniel said graciously. “We’ll make our way around the room.”
“That would be lovely. I do hope it’s not too inconvenient that we have you at the B and B in town. I know I’m old-fashioned. However, until a couple is married, I just don’t feel comfortable with them sharing a room—”
“Mom.” Eleanor had told her mother only that she was bringing someone she was currently seeing. She definitely hadn’t gone into detail about their sexual status. “It’s fine. Daniel is only staying for tonight. He has to head back to the city tomorrow.”
Her mother made a face as if the word city was distasteful. Probably because she associated Denver with Eleanor’s business, something else she found distasteful. Her mother still clung to the belief that a woman’s first priority should be securing a husband and having children.
Eleanor had done half of that and had failed. Since then she hadn’t been eager to repeat the experience.
Her business, however, was a nice replacement. Way less pain and heartbreak. More control and financial benefit. As far as Eleanor was concerned, if she never got married again, it wouldn’t be the most tragic thing to happen to her.
Because the most tragic thing had already happened.
Her mother was obviously not pleased by that attitude. It meant fewer grandchildren.
“Oh. Well, let’s hope you’re still in Eleanor’s life for the wedding.”
“I promise to do everything I can to make sure I’m back for that. In the meantime, this will be the first weekend Eleanor’s been away from her company in some time. I hope she has time for some relaxation.”
“Of course it will be relaxing,” Marilyn stated, turning to Eleanor. “She’ll be with family. Now, speaking of, your father’s sister and brother want to talk with you. I suggest you start with them. Since your father’s been gone, they claim to feel left out of your and your sister’s lives. I’m making every effort to change that with this wedding.”
Eleanor didn’t miss the emphasis on the word this. Five years later and she was still being punished for her elopement to Max. One would have thought, considering what she went through with his death, she might have been forgiven.
But her mother had a long memory.
“Yes, Mom. I’ll head over to them shortly.”
Marilyn left them, and Eleanor could hear her greeting some new guests as they came through the front door.
“She really does love to play the hostess,” Daniel noted.
“Yes, she does. Now, if you don’t mind, I’m going to make small talk with my family, so they can get as much gossip out of me as possible. Most of them want to know how much money I’m making. Truly, they are not even subtle about it.”
Daniel laughed. “I think I’ll stand in this corner and drink myself silly. Mike already promised he would drive me to the B and B.”
“Yes, poor Mike. He and Allie live together on his farm in North Platte, but now my mother is making him pay for a room. It’s so impractical. But Marilyn’s house, Marilyn’s rules.”
“Hmm,” Daniel said. “A strong-minded woman. Sounds like someone else I know.”
