Kit stopped paddling and he lost that smirky expression.
Olivia smiled. “Sounds like you, doesn’t it? Just so you know, you don’t get back from Libya until three years later and it’s in a medic plane. Takes you a year to recover and the military no longer wants you.”
Kit looked so devastated that she almost felt sorry for him. Almost. She swam to the bank, got out, and grabbed a towel.
“I want to hear it all,” he said from behind her.
“You won’t listen. No one does. In the last few days I’ve concocted more lies than I have in my whole life. I was trying to save lives—except that it was all a lie. I...” She sat down on the ground, the towel around her shoulders, and looked out at the water. When she spoke, her voice was quiet. “You and I were so polite to each other. We made a pact to never talk about all the bad we’d been through, all that we’d missed by being apart.”
“When was this?” Kit sat beside her and began rubbing her back with the towel.
“After we were married. By then, you were so famous and—”
“Please no,” he said.
“Not like George and Amal famous but—” When he looked confused, she waved her hand. “You’re famous inside the political world. You solve problems for whole countries. It’s just that you couldn’t solve your own life. You greatly disliked your first wife. Rowan said...” She didn’t finish.
He’d stopped rubbing. “I married someone other than you?”
The disbelief in his voice was so honest that she looked at him. His lip was bleeding again. “After Libya, you came here to Summer Hill. You saw me but you thought I was married and had had another man’s child. Your pride didn’t allow you to ask anyone in town the truth. But...” She looked back at the pond. “But then, I still hated you for leaving me. I’m sure that if you had shown up, I would have pushed a refrigerator over on you.”
“I would never leave you,” he said. “If they came to get me, I’d let you know where I was.”
“You did. Sort of. You left a note and the ring in the well house, but I didn’t see them. I couldn’t bear to go back...back there.”
Kit put his arm around Olivia and pulled her head onto his shoulder. “I want to hear it all. From the beginning. Every word. What happened the day they came to get me?”
“I went to Richmond,” she said. “I was angry at you because I’d slipped up the day before and said I love you. You said nothing in return. You were silent.”
“Because I didn’t love you?” he asked.
“I thought that then, but no.” She took a deep breath. “You had your grandmother’s ring and you were going to ask me to marry you before you left.”
He was nodding in understanding. “But while you were in Richmond, they came to get me. When you saw that I was gone, you were so angry that you didn’t see the note I’d hidden in the well house. Do I have that right?”
“Yes.”
“What did the note say?”
“You asked me to wait for you, to marry you, and to go to your parents.”
“But as I understand it, your pride—and that temper of yours—as well as your lack of faith in me, kept you from seeing the note.”
The last of Olivia’s anger left her. It hurt too much to blame herself for what had happened. It was one thing to joke about her stupidity in not believing in him, but another to see how many lives she’d hurt with her stubborn pride.
“I could have called,” he said. “I’m sure they let me call my parents before I left. My dad has a lot of power in parts of the world. I should have called. And sneaked out to send you a letter.”
She knew that he was taking the blame onto himself. Blame for something that hadn’t happened yet—and now never would.
“Who is Rowan?”
“Your son. He’s an FBI agent and you want him to be with pretty little Stacy, who is one of Ace’s many daughters, but she likes Nate Taggert better. You’ve been very upset about that.”
Kit was looking at her in shock. “These things sound real.”
“They are real. You bought River House for me because you and I had such a good time there. Besides, I have to open an office. I should register at the University of Virginia to study psychology.” She looked at him. “But if I don’t marry you, I don’t need to do any of that.”
He kissed her forehead. “Of course you’ll marry me. Otherwise our daughter won’t have a father. So let’s start at the beginning. I left you a heartfelt note and a beautiful ring and you were too stubborn to look for them. Go on from there.”