‘You’re forgetting you did try. I refused to answer your phone calls, remember? I deleted your emails unopened and burned the letters you wrote. I had to, or I wouldn’t have survived.’
Her smile widened. ‘We can both be stubborn when we want to be.’
‘Now, there’s something I agree with wholeheartedly.’ He sighed. This wasn’t going too badly. Yet. ‘It’s all very well looking back and saying we shouldn’t have done this or that, but at the time that’s how we dealt with what was happening.’
She reached a hand to him and he took it, wrapped his fingers around hers and held on for dear life. Maybe it was going just how he wanted it. They were finding their way back to each other, though there were still things to sift through, making sure they didn’t crash and burn a second time.
‘Dad, can I go for a swim?’
Hunter groaned and dragged his eyes from the woman holding his heart. ‘All right. I’ll get your towel from the car.’ He looked back at Brenna and his heart stuttered. ‘This is real, isn’t it?’
Her fingers touched her lips, and she nodded. ‘I hope so.’ She was still smiling, and there was something he was afraid to identify in her gaze in case he got it wrong. Love. For him? For him.
‘Bren?’
‘Go get Dylan’s towel, and maybe lock your vehicle.’
He spun around and muttered an oath. ‘That’s your fault for distracting me, Brenna Williamson.’
‘I know.’
‘Brenna, Poppy’s swimming.’ Dylan stood next to her, hands on hips, staring down the beach. ‘I want to swim too.’
‘In a minute, kiddo.’ Dylan was giving him breathing space, yet he didn’t want to stop telling Brenna all the things that had been building up inside from the moment he’d first walked into the rescue hangar, to let free all the words that were freefalling through his skull onto his tongue. He increased his strides, reaching the four-wheel drive and grabbing the bag with Dylan’s gear. Picked up his wallet from the seat and shoved it deep into a pocket. Shut the door. Pinged the locks. Took a deep breath and gazed down the beach to the woman who held his heart in her hand.
Then he was back with Brenna and they were strolling down to the water, hand in hand. ‘Okay, Dylan, now I’m here you can go in.’
He didn’t need any more encouragement.
‘I can’t move away in case he gets into difficulties,’ Hunter told Brenna.
‘I’d beat you round the ears if you did.’ She moved closer, and he wrapped an arm around her shoulders.
‘Now, there’s a surprise.’ He stared at Dylan and the dog but wasn’t really seeing them. It was the past rolling through his head. ‘I loved you even when I told you it was over.’
She nodded. ‘I know. I was only thinking of myself, wanting you to come back to me. After you kept refusing to answer my calls and texts, I began to get angry. You were another person leaving me, and I didn’t look beyond that to the fact that you’d told me so often how much you loved me and wanted us to spend our lives together.’
‘When I stopped coming into work at the rescue centre it was Dylan who was sick. He had some gastro bug that was doing the rounds at preschool.’
‘Poor kid. That’s not nice.’ She locked her gaze on him. ‘You must realise I wondered if you’d gone east after hearing you talking to your mother, and I tried not to think of that as a rerun. Then I wised up, accepted you meant you are staying and if you had to go visit your parents then that was what families do.’
Relief softened away the last drop of tension in his belly. ‘Thank you.’ There was one more thing he had to get out in the open before the past was done. ‘I’m not sorry about Evie. Neither can I imagine life without Dylan.’
‘You shouldn’t.’ Under his hand she stiffened, then relaxed. ‘I nearly got married myself. I met Shane about three years ago and we hit it off straight away.’
A pang of jealousy he had no right to flared. ‘Go on.’
‘We were easy together, sort of drifted along, enjoying similar things, comfortable really.’
‘Sounds dull.’ Hope replaced the envy.
‘Not dull, but there was no excitement. Yet when Shane proposed I accepted. You were out of the picture for good as far as I could see so I wanted to try for that happy family I’d envisioned when we were together.’ She stopped. Her right foot drew lines in the sand, smudged them out. ‘But it was wrong, for both of us, and in the end we called it off. We’re still friends with no regrets. Shane’s found someone else and this time he’s definitely in love.’ She sounded happy about that.
Hunter let it go. Shane was her Evie and, face it, if neither of them had had relationships in the previous six years they probably wouldn’t be much good for anything now. ‘Will you come back to my house when these two have finished swimming? There’s a top-notch bottle of champagne in the fridge, and dinner waiting to be heated.’
Bren looked up at him and grinned. ‘Is that all?’
‘Hell, no.’
He couldn’t wait to get home and put Dylan to bed, but it was only four in the afternoon. ‘This is going to be the longest afternoon of my life.’
‘Half the fun’s in the build-up,’ she retorted, before rising on her toes to kiss him thoroughly so that he’d have pulled her down onto the sand and had her there and then if not for his son only metres away. And half the population of Kitsilano on the beach.
* * *
Finally, dog and boy had had enough. Hunger had overtaken the need to stay wet and sandy. Hunter packed them into his vehicle, Poppy in the back looking concerned. ‘It’s all right. I’ll go very slowly.’
‘Unless you want a mess to clean up, that’s wise.’ Brenna rubbed Poppy’s chest. ‘You’ll be fine, girl.’
And she had been. Frustrating as it was, Hunter had driven slower than a snail, making Bren laugh.
‘Relax. It’s not as though Dylan’s going to sleep as soon as we get there.’
‘No, but he’ll have dinner straight away and be ready for bed.’
And we’ll be in my bed not long after.
At last they rolled into his driveway and parked. ‘Phew. Thought we’d never get here.’
‘We’ve waited more than six years, Hunter. What’s a few more hours?’ Brenna teased.
‘You mean this is like it used to be?’ His heart waited for her reply.
The laughter diminished, was replaced with a soft, gut-wrenching smile. ‘Yes. When we were openly in love. Not lately when neither of us knew what we wanted or were denying the feelings we had for each other.’
‘Then we’re in for an amazing night.’ If Dylan didn’t wake up. Be just their luck if tonight was be one of his restless sleeps. ‘Let’s get dinner under way.’
‘I’m not sure I can eat at the moment,’ Bren confessed.
‘Soon fix that.’ He laughed. ‘What’s this?’ There was a container by his door and when he opened it the smell of banana wafted out. Dipping a finger into the creamy icing, he poked a dollop into his mouth and grinned. ‘You made this.’
Brenna nodded. ‘Like I said, Poppy and I came round earlier. I wanted to sit down and talk about everything and figured making your favourite cake wouldn’t hurt.’
It was silly. It was only a cake, right? But right then he knew what he had to do. He couldn’t let Bren get away again. Handing the container to Dylan, he said, ‘Take that inside for me, will you?’ Then he reached for Bren’s hands. ‘You’re shaking.’
She nodded. ‘I’m scared. I don’t want to lose you a second time.’
‘It’s not going to happen.’ Hunter leaned in close and kissed her gently. ‘Bren, I love you, never stopped. Will you marry me? Help me raise Dylan? Have more children with me? Live in my house and make it ours?’
She blinked once, twice, three times, and then her eyes were ablaze with love, like she’d finally let
go all her worries. Because of him. For him. ‘Yes, yes and yes. And yes. All of the above. I love you so much I want this more than anything. Us and those dreams we once shared, however much they’ve morphed into other ideas.’
Hunter tugged her close and covered her mouth with his. Their kiss seemed to go on for ever. Brenna had never tasted so sweet, so exciting. She was back. They were back. ‘Love you,’ he whispered.
‘The things you’ll say to get someone to plan your colour schemes for the house.’ She grinned.
He slapped his forehead. ‘You see through me too easily.’
‘I might want to paint it lime green and orange.’
‘You can do what you like as long as you keep making those cakes.’
‘I’ve forgotten the recipe already.’
He led her through the front door. ‘Welcome home, Bren.’
If he’d thought she’d been crying before, he hadn’t had a clue. ‘This is going to take a box of tissues to deal with.’
Both her hands wiped at her eyes, her cheeks, and then she gave him her best, melt-the-toes, tighten-the-groin, smother-the-heart smile. ‘I must’ve had an inkling. I’ve been talking to a real estate salesperson about selling my house.’
‘You’ve what? Why? That’s your haven.’
‘Exactly, and it’s time I let it go. Especially now we’re together again. For ever together.’