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       CHAPTER FOURTEEN

      I HAVE TO tell you something.

      It seemed to Angie as if every horrible event of her whole life had begun with those words.

      Her mother looking at her with red, swollen eyes, her voice broken. “I have to tell you something. Your father and I are getting divorced. He moved out this morning.”

      Harry, biting his lip and then looking away, before clearing his throat and saying in a firm voice, “I have to tell you something. It’s not good news, I’m afraid. I’m not happy. I can’t be happy here. I’ve met someone.”

      Her father had met someone, too, not that she had known it at the time. If she had known, maybe she could have been more prepared for how her life was about to change.

      And then Harry turned out to be exactly like her father, as if she could spot a philanderer across a crowded room, when what she was looking for was the exact opposite.

      So, what did Jefferson have to tell her? Selfishly, she wished he would wait until morning. She did not want to end what had been one of the nicest nights of her life on a sour note! How cruel of him to park the boat in the middle of a lake where she had no option to run and hide once he had told her.

      But that’s what she got for declaring her love. That’s what she got for being fearless when she was the person least inclined that way. Why hadn’t she just accepted who she was instead of pushing her boundaries?

      “I had no right to enjoy tonight as much as I did,” Jefferson announced quietly.

      She felt suddenly panicky. “You can spare me the details,” she said. “I think I can guess. You have a girlfriend tucked away somewhere, don’t you? I should have known, really. A man like you—so gorgeous and so much fun and so successful—could not possibly be alone for so long. I—”

      “Angie. Stop it! Of course I don’t have a girlfriend.”

      Her relief was short-lived. “A horrible ailment,” she decided. “Are you dying?”

      “No. Angie, just let me speak. Please.”

      “I’m trapped on a boat. What choice do I have?” How could she have been so dumb? How could she have declared her love for him? Now, he had to make excuses. She braced herself for it. She could imagine what was coming. He didn’t love her. He was going to try and let her down gently. I like you very much. I hope we can remain friends.

      “Are you listening?” he asked.

      “No, I’m contemplating jumping off the boat. Unfortunately, the weight of the dress, wet, would probably drown me.”

      “As if I would ever let you drown,” he said, annoyed.

      That made her look at him. There was a protective fury in his voice. And there was something tortured in the way he was looking at her.

      “Okay,” she said, taking a deep breath, “I’m listening.”

      “Those people, who you so correctly pointed out love me, are trying to help me. They were so insistent I come tonight, because they are trying to bring me back to their world. But I feel their love is with an illusion, because they have no idea who I really am.”

      She stared at him. He was standing at the back of the boat, his weight rocking easily from foot to foot with the boat’s motion. How could he believe people had no idea who he was when he radiated who he was?

      All that quiet confidence and strength.

      “Everybody is trying to make me feel better about what happened that night with Hailey. They’re trying to make me feel better, they want me to get on with my life. But I would have to absolve myself, and I can’t.”

      “Absolve yourself?” she whispered.

      “Here’s the truth no one knows,” he said harshly. “Here’s the truth you need to know before you make your declaration of love.

      “We fought that night. That’s what sent her out onto those terrible roads. We had had a terrible fight. And I was so mad, I didn’t go after her. I knew she didn’t know those roads. I failed her. I failed to protect her. Isn’t that what I swore I would do, when I said those vows to her?”

      “Jefferson, what happened?”

      He looked out over the lake, pensive. When he spoke again, his voice was quiet. Angie had to strain to hear it.

      “I could not believe my ears when Hailey said she wanted to build a house on the land I’d inherited from my grandparents. My grandparents’ house had already burned down by the time I met her, so our trips to the property were not exactly successes. We tried camping once. That was a disaster. We stayed at the hotel in Anslow twice, and that didn’t meet her standards.

      “That’s nothing against her—she was a big-city girl, with a high-powered career that was just reaching its pinnacle. I knew that when I married her.

      “I was fine with our life. I loved my wife. We had a swanky apartment in downtown Vancouver. Both of us traveled a lot with our careers. When we were together it was fancy dinners and theater and entertaining friends. I was content with all of that.

      “Until she said she wanted to build a house here, on my land, on Kootenay Lake. And then I knew how much I had missed it and how much I wanted to come home. Then, I knew I harbored other dreams beyond the amazing success I was enjoying. Of having a family, and of campfires on summer nights and long days on the boat.

      “We started building in the spring. It was a huge undertaking. Summer was the best part of the whole project. We lived in a holiday trailer, but everything seemed exciting—things were happening, the house was taking shape. We’d work all day, then swim and sit around a little campfire roasting hot dogs.

      “But, right from the start, there were disagreements. She picked an impractical location for the house because it would “showcase” her skills. The whole project very quickly seemed to become about showcasing her skills. Budget went out the window with the building of the road to the house site, and it went downhill from there.

      “Double ovens in the kitchen? She didn’t even cook. A craft room? You could not meet a person less interested in being crafty than Hailey.

      “Then the build went into the fall. It was wet and grim. By the time we finished and moved in, Hailey hated it here. It’s cold that close to the water. It’s foggy. Because of where she chose to put the house, it was incredibly difficult to get in and out of it.

      “But, finally, we were nearing completion. That’s when she started picking furniture. Every single thing seemed to be about how it looked instead of how it felt.

      “And that night when we fought, she was placing furniture and it slipped out that she was staging the house. Staging. That’s what you do to manipulate people’s impressions of a space—it’s like you’re creating a fantasy they can walk into. It’s not what you do if you’re planning on living there.

      “So, I pressed her on that, what she meant by staging, and she admitted all of it had really been with an eye to a future sale. The property, by itself, is probably worth millions. With the house on it?

      “She figured with the proceeds of this sale we could buy a piece of property in any big city in the world that we wanted, and she could build our real house there. Our real house, the house for the busy professional couple, with no children. She actually