From behind Trent, Angie looked at Kate with a question on her face. When Kate nodded, Angie sent her a thumbs-up, then slipped out of her office, leaving Kate and Trent alone for the first time in weeks.
The space seemed too small and too big at the same time, and Kate wanted to both dash from the room and stay right where she was. She elected to stay, because she wasn’t sure her legs could carry her if she moved.
“Before you say anything, I want to share something with you,” Trent said.
“Okay.” She hoped it wasn’t another article or social media post. She couldn’t handle any more of those.
He took a step forward. “Did you know that Ridley sea turtles, both the Kemp and the Olive Ridley, are the only turtle species that do mass synchronized nestings?”
She stared at him. Was he really talking about sea turtles? Where was this going? “Um yes. I think so.”
“The larger populations of Olive Ridleys in places like India have always done this, researchers think,” Trent went on as he closed the distance between them a little more. A smile played at the edges of his lips. “In French Guiana, the populations of the Olive Ridleys began to drop drastically, like, by ninety percent, so low that researchers considered putting them on a watch list. Until ten years ago.”
She took another step closer. She was captivated, utterly captivated, by the story. “What happened ten years ago?”
“The researchers had attached those things to their backs—”
“Transponders.”
“—and had been watching them for years.” Now Trent was inches away from her, so close she could feel the warmth of his body between them. “All of a sudden, they realized the French Guiana turtles began doing the same thing, as if some of the other ones had migrated and spread the word, or there was some kind of survival instinct that made them band together. They started synchronizing their nesting, all coming out of the sea on the same night to lay their eggs. Within ten years, the population of Olive Ridleys in French Guiana had tripled.”
The scent of his cologne lured her even closer. He was a few inches taller than her, just enough that she had to look up to see the amusement in his eyes, the slight shadow of stubble on his chin. All the things she loved about his face were so close. “What do Olive Ridley turtles have to do with anything?”
“Without each other, they wouldn’t have survived.” He took Kate’s hands in his larger, warm grip, and her heart did a little leap. His thumbs skated over the ridges of her knuckles. “I wouldn’t have made it through that book or the last few weeks without you, Kate.”
“All I did was write the words.”
“You helped me focus, to find what was important, and most of all, you helped bring me home.” His blue eyes met hers, as deep and dark as the ocean. “I’d forgotten what was important until you came back into my life and reminded me.”
She didn’t dare ask the question, but if she didn’t, she’d die of curiosity. “And what is that?”
“Love,” Trent said softly, and hope exploded inside Kate. “That’s what’s important. Love for my company, the work that I do.”
The hope in her chest shriveled. She managed to eke out a few words. “Oh, yeah, that’s important.”
“Love for my family.”
“That’s important too.” Why was he torturing her like this? Just to talk about the company? She wanted to leave, to end this painful moment right now. “Trent, I should go—”
But he held on to her hands, held on to her gaze. “And love for the people who bring out the best in me.” He smiled that crooked smile she had fallen in love with in the hallway of the English building. “Or rather, person.”
She didn’t dare ask who he meant. Too much of her heart was counting on the answer to hear someone else’s name. “That’s good, Trent.”
He craned his neck until she was looking into his eyes again. “You stopped answering my calls.”
“I thought you were mad at me.” She shrugged, and cursed the tears that burned at the back of her eyes. Why had he come here? Why was he holding her hands and talking about love and turtles and the book? “For the blog post and for all those clues Loretta put together.”
He brushed away a tendril of hair that had fallen against her cheek. “You were being true to your nature, and just being you. Who could be mad at that?”
“Well…some people.”
“I’m not one of those people.” The fleecy edge of the jacket tickled along her fingers and tempted her to curve into the softness. “I read the book you wrote three times. No, four.”
“You did? Why?”
“Because I kept looking for what was missing.”
She thought back over the pages she’d written, the notes she’d taken, the stories he had told her. “I think I got everything, Trent. Your childhood, the nursery, the hike—”
“What was missing was you, KitKat. Our history. Your impact on me. And your name on the cover.”
Why did he have to keep mentioning that? Her name and her involvement in this book was what had started all the problems in the first place. She shook her head and broke away. “That’s not how it works, Trent.”
“Says who?” He came around her, standing between her and the view outside Angie’s window. “I called the publisher and told them I wasn’t going to publish the book, not the way it was.”
“Is there something wrong with the text? I can change—”
“There’s nothing wrong with the text, Kate. The book is perfect. It’s the cover that needs to be changed. In fact”—he reached into his pocket and pulled out a folded sheet of paper—“I had them send me a mockup of the new cover.”
Trent’s image was gone. In place of his face, the photo she’d taken that day was there, with Trent’s silhouette on one side and the mountains and the waterfall and the beauty of Washington State on the other. And at the bottom of the cover, the words By Kate Winslow and Trent MacMillan.
“I figured your name should be first, since you did all the hard work. All I did was talk your head off.” He grinned.
“Where did you get my picture? I never posted that anywhere.”
“You showed it to my mom when we were visiting. You were telling her and Marla about our hike to the falls, and my mom asked you for a copy of the picture. She showed it to me last week and I realized that was the perfect image for the cover. Because it was yours.”
Kate had forgotten all about that. She’d been flipping through the pictures with them after dinner, talking about the hike, and his mom had asked for a copy. “I had no idea she showed it to you. That is so sweet of you to use it on the cover, Trent, and my name… I’m…” She let out a little laugh. “Speechless.”