Page 48 of Fall for You
He straightened, and his lungs seemed to expand in his chest. He took a deep breath, and it felt like the first time he’d really breathed in months.
But then she looked his way, and her lips curled up in a grin, and?—
Ah heck. The wind was knocked out of him all over again.
“You’re here!” She hurried over to him, meeting him halfway.
He arched a brow. “And you…just woke up.”
“Actually, I have yet to go to sleep. I tried, I swear, but I just couldn’t!” Her smile grew, which he hadn’t thought possible. But now she was flashing dimples and her whole body seemed to vibrate with excitement as she shoved a piece of paper his way. “Look. Just look!”
He took the paper and scanned it. “Whoa.”
“Right?” She was dancing now. Like, literally bopping around, too excited to stand still.
Not that he could blame her. He tried to focus on the words on the page, but it was difficult with Willow dancing around him.
“They’re love letters!” She’d clearly run out of patience with his reading. “Listen to this one. I think it must be the last one she wrote. ‘My dearest Charlie. I am most excited and terrified to take this great adventure with you. I know we shall break hearts with such a rebellious act, but I can no longer live without you. So I shall meet you at midnight, because I love you, Charlie King. I love you with all my heart, and I know nothing can make me happier than being with you for the rest of my life. Your sweet Rose forever.’”
Eric just stared at her. She stared back, like she was waiting for something. Then she gave him a pointed look. “They were going to run away together!”
It sounded that way. But…
He frowned, trying to remember the family stories his grandfather told him. He shook his head. “So why didn’t they?”
“I don’t know. Maybe they did.”
Her bright blue eyes sparkled with hope and optimism. And not for the first time around this woman, he actually kinda felt like Darth Vader delivering a fatal blow. “Willow, Rose died. Her tombstone is in the cemetery by the town church. If she’d run away…it would have been a scandal. Everyone would have known.”
Willow stared at him with those big blue eyes, and he had the urge to take it back. Let her have her romantic fantasy with its happy ending.
“Have you seen the tombstone?” Willow’s sharp response had him glancing up from the letter in his hand.
He could admit, the old-timey handwriting and the pretty words… It was easy to get swept up in the romance of it all.
Willow arched a brow in challenge—a chihuahua standing up to a pit bull.
The thought had him choking on a laugh.
“This isn’t funny, Eric.” The flash of hurt in her expression had him sobering.
She peered down at the letter she held. “I want to know what happened to them. How this…” She waved the piece of paper. “Turned into…” She gestured between them. “This.”
He frowned. “The families were already feuding back then. Isn’t that the whole point of them meeting in secret?”
“Yes, but if they were so in love, why couldn’t they get their families to understand? And if her tombstone really is in the town cemetery…” She looked to Eric, and he was horrified to see tears in her eyes.
Like, actual tears. This woman was crying over a dead person who wasn’t even her family.
“If they were planning to run away, why didn’t they?” She finished with a mouselike squeak that made his chest tighten.
He swallowed hard. Mostly because those blue eyes were fixed on him now with a seriousness that was rare from her. Serious and…searching. Like she really wanted him to have the answers.
And…crap. He really wished he had them for her.
“She died in a fire,” he said.The one your family caused.
He swallowed that last part. It was part of the family story, yes, but now didn’t seem like a great time to hurl centuries-oldaccusations. “We lost a lot of the letters and journals from that time in that same fire,” he added. “So everything I know about Rose’s death and the feud with the Spencers…it’s all word of mouth.”
