Shall I look for a message in Van’s desire to have me farther away?
Then again, is the suite far when the other option is a guesthouse?
Van
Continuing up the staircase, I gripped the banister as we came to the second-story landing and I peered down to the first floor. Visions from the past floated past my mind’s eye. They were recollections I’d successfully kept buried for years, memories I forbade myself from reliving while keeping them close enough to serve as a warning for my future.
It was impulsive of me to propose to Julia. The phone in my breast pocket was receiving one voicemail message after another from my legal counsel as well as others who knew me, all in the name of stopping me from making a mistake.
Another mistake.
Waking beside Julia in the cabin was surreal.
How long has it been since I’ve spent the night—the entire night—with a woman?
A decade.
More than that.
Over a decade, not that I consciously kept count. That didn’t mean I was celibate. It meant that I didn’t open myself up for what came after sex.
I peered down at the first floor again. The structure around me had changed, but the memory was right there, close enough that if I ran down the flight of stairs, I could stop...
“Van?” Julia asked, her voice scattering my thoughts. “Are you all right?”
I shook my head, dispersing the accumulated clutter that builds with time, knocking down the cobwebs veiling the memories, and dislodging the dust that dulled the colors until red was no longer deep and flowing.
I feigned a smile. “It’s been a long time since I’ve escorted anyone new around my house.”
Julia’s blue eyes glowed as she peered over the banister and up to the third level. “What’s up there?”
“Nothing really.”
“You have an entire floor for nothing?”
It wasn’t nothing. At one time it had been everything. “With over ten thousand square feet, there’s a lot of room for nothing.”
“How many bedroom suites?” she asked.
“Five, all on this level,” I added.
Julia’s head shook. “Why so much space?”
“Because it’s never enough.”
Her smile dimmed. It wasn’t a radical change in her beautiful expression, but I saw the way the light in her eyes faded. “Is that the title of your memoir—never enough?”
“I think that one is taken.”
“Every title is taken. When we add the byline ‘Memoir of Donovan Sherman,’ it will be unique.” She looked down the multiple hallways. From the landing there were three options that didn’t include up or down. To the far left was the hallway leading to my suite. In the center, two more suites could be reached. And to the far right, another two, including the one I had in mind for Julia.
“When I purchased the house, I had it gutted, expanded, and redone,” I said. “Suites seemed to be the thing to build. My architect believed that should I decide to sell, the suites would increase its value, making it a viable bed and breakfast. I’m not interested in selling.” I reached for her hand. As we touched one another, I immediately regretted my move and let our connection drop.
Even so, the tingle remained.
Red sin.
“This way,” I said, leading the way to the south wing, my thoughts filled with the woman at my side.