Free The Matchmaker by Elin Hilderbrand Page A

would affect her. She feared she might cry, then she realized that crying was far too mild a reaction. She would do something else. She would melt, or turn into a pillar of salt, or spontaneously combust. What happened to a person placed in a situation like this? Box might try to turn this into a formula: if one started with the amount Dabney had loved Clen, then took its derivative and divided it by twenty-seven years, one would certainly end with only a small decimal of 1 percent. Dabney should feel nothing, or practically nothing. She should be able to say, Hey, Beast —because in their long-ago life, that had been their private nomenclature, Cupe and Beast—and shake Clen’s hand or give him a gentle hug because of his arm, and say, So, how have you been?
    Dabney briefly closed her eyes: pink. Pink was normally a cause for celebration. But not today.
    Clen descended the porch steps and stood before her, and she was funneled into the green glen and weak tea of his Scottish hazel eyes. He was older, and bigger, and lopsided, but the sound of his voice and the beauty of his eyes threatened to bring Dabney to her knees. Their love had been a castle, the castle had been reduced to rubble, and Dabney had cleared the rubble away teaspoon by teaspoon for more than a quarter century until she was sure there was nothing left but a barren clearing inside her.
    Why then this rush of feeling, a molten stream of pure silver desire, and a golden glinting of what she feared was love. It had been so many years since she’d felt love like this—love she had known only with Clendenin, love she had forsaken but that she had secretly hoped and prayed would return—that she barely recognized it.
    Love.
    She couldn’t speak. It was just as it had been when she saw him in Sconset on his bicycle. She could not get air. Was she going to faint again? She did not feel well. The return of Clendenin Hughes was killing her.
    “You came,” he said.
    His voice.
    She broke. Sobbing, tears, she felt raw, exposed, and human. Before the e-mail had arrived in her in-box (subject line: Hello ), it had been months since Dabney had cried. The death of their dog, Henry. And before that it had been years—tears of joy, Agnes’s graduation from high school, again from college.
    “You are still so beautiful,” Clen said. “Exactly as I pictured you. You look just as you did when you stood on the wharf as my ferry pulled away.”
    “Stop it!” Dabney screamed. She was shocked at the volume and pitch of her voice, shocked that her voice worked at all. But really, how dare he start out by conjuring the worst day of her life! He had been standing at the railing of the Steamship on a blindingly blue September day. He had waved at Dabney, shouting out, I love you, Cupe! I love you! Dabney had been unable to shout or wave back. She had stood still as a post, mute with sorrow and fear and regret—and anger at herself for the weakness and failings of her psyche. She could not go with him. She felt as perhaps the first Dabney—Dabney Margaret Wright—had felt when she stood in nearly the same spot and watched her husband, Warren, set sail on the whaling ship Lexington .
    Dabney Margaret Wright would never see her husband again.
    Dabney Kimball had seen pink with Clendenin for so many years that she had been convinced they would end up together. But watching him disappear toward the horizon shook her confidence. She thought, I will never see Clendenin Hughes again.
    Yet, here he was.
    He moved to embrace her. She batted at him, pummeled his chest—still being careful of his missing arm; weird how Dabney could be afraid of something that wasn’t there—but Clen pulled her in with his one strong arm, brought her close. She could smell him, he smelled the same, and he was still the same relentless bastard. He would not quit until the world saw things his way.
    “Let go of me!” Dabney said.
    “No,” he said. “I will not let go. I waited far too long for