Reunion Beach, Elin Hilderbrand [novel books to read txt] 📗

chef with a hit TV show, and surprise—Jocasta drops husband number two and decides she wants number one back. Even during her marriage, she wanted him back. He didn’t tell me that—I found the emails she wrote him. I wasn’t snooping; I used Bram’s computer one day when he was gone and I checked on the house. In the emails Jocasta swore she’d never loved anyone else and wouldn’t give up until they were together again. Did he tell you that she turned to him for comfort after her divorce?”

My look of surprise reveals the answer, and she sighs before saying, “No, I didn’t think he had, or you’d understand why I’m worried. Bram, being a typical man, let himself be taken in again by a damsel in distress—which Jocasta played to the hilt. She claimed the man she’d left Bram for cheated on her. Ha! I’d call that poetic justice. But not Bram. He said the experience had changed her, and made her realize how her leaving had hurt him. He was thinking of giving her another chance. I’m convinced that if my brother hadn’t met you then, he’d be back with that woman now.”

I try not to let her see how this affects me. Bram had sworn he’d told me everything about his stormy relationship with his ex. But he left out the part of the story where she’d tried to get him back, and he’d considered it. The sin of omission. Or maybe worse, I think with a jolt, remembering. Because he’d asked me, I’d told him that he’d been the only man I’d been with since my husband’s death. It was then he’d admitted to having had a few “flings” since his divorce but nothing serious. He hadn’t been honest with me. He wouldn’t have confided in his sister if he hadn’t been serious about a reconciliation.

Stunned, I probe Nellie Bee for more. “So that’s why you’re worried.” My voice sounds shaky and confused. “You think Bram’s having second thoughts about our marriage.”

Nellie Bee’s eyes widen in dismay. “Oh, Chris, no! Of course I don’t think that, honey.” She reaches out to grab my hand and squeezes hard. “Bram loves you, I have no doubt. He’s a different person since you came into his life. I’ve never seen him so content, especially after the hell that woman put him through. It’s her manipulations that worries me, and how cunning she is. Remember, she had Bram under her spell for years. That he finally married someone else is a mere inconvenience to a woman like her. I think you should tell Bram that she can’t come here. Tell him it’s either you or her, but not both.” Seeing my reluctance, she presses on. “I know it’s not your style. You’re the least controlling person I’ve ever met.”

“But what about Michael?”

“I’ll make my nephew see reason. He has a wife now, and I can promise you that girl wouldn’t allow an ex of his anywhere near him.”

“The special’s only a week away,” I cry. “I can’t change things now. The production crew will be here—”

Nellie Bee flaps her towel as if to swat away my protests. “You can’t stop the special but you can stop her from being a part of it. Trust me, Chris, giving that woman a way back into your husband’s life is a huge mistake, one that you’ll come to regret. Promise me that you’ll tell Bram no way in hell, okay? Please. Before it’s too late.”

* * *

It ends with me promising Nellie Bee that I’ll give it a lot of thought. After our good-bye hugs, she heads back to her house in Beaufort and her sweet, amiable husband, while I lug my stuff back to the golf cart. I wish I could as easily pack up my troubled thoughts, tote them somewhere else. The sun’s now low in the sky with the promise of a spectacular sunset, so I pause before backing out of my parking space by the beachfront villas. (One of the villas Jocasta has booked for the filming, I recall.) Maybe I should go back to the beach to quiet my inner turmoil before facing my husband. A sunset walk always calms me. I discovered its healing balm when I moved here right after our marriage. At our house the sunset view’s limited because the house is hidden in the midst of dense foliage: live oaks, palmettos, and oleander bushes. Bram and I have our cocktails on the upstairs porch to watch the sky above the treetops turn pink, then the pink glow deepens and spreads through the leafy branches below. Other people watch the sunset, he and I like to say, while we prefer the sun-glow. But some evenings I go to the beach alone, seeking the setting sun. Occasionally Bram joins me, coming downstairs to find me gone, and we stroll hand-in-hand, bare feet in the rolling waves. Wordless, we stop and stand in reverence as the sun lowers itself into the ocean, turning everything—water, sky, sand—into a magic world of red and gold.

The golf cart ride home serves the same purpose, and I feel myself relaxing. I take deep gulps of the brisk salt air and it fortifies me. It’s the time of day I love most, when Fripp Island’s at its loveliest. A nature preserve, Fripp, named after a hero of the Revolutionary War, is to me a celebration of the wild beauty of the Lowcountry, and I fell in love with it the first time I came here. Funny; what little I, a native Texan, knew of the Lowcountry before then came from Bram’s TV show. I love to cook and was a devoted viewer of Southern Heritage until I was widowed, when food lost its appeal.

That was before Bram came into my life and everything changed, in a heady rush of excitement and passion unlike anything I’d ever experienced. Although I’d loved my husband Joe Perez dearly, and with great devotion, our love was more