Barefoot at Sunset (Barefoot Bay Timeless Book 1) (6 page)

Uh…
wrong
. Old if you were blind and harmless if you were wearing a chastity belt. Out there was pretty much the best-looking man she’d laid eyes on in years, with an impressive athlete’s body, a good heart, and the ability to make her do something she hadn’t done in days: laugh out loud.

The rationalization continued like a bad song she couldn’t get out of her head.
What’s the harm? What’s a little lie to strangers? What difference does it make that he’s hot as hell?

He’d offered her a week in paradise for the small fee of a little white fib to a bunch of strangers.

Yes, it had felt strange to lie to the lovely lady who owned this place—who, fortunately, had no idea Emma DeWitt worked on the Casa Blanca account as a copywriter. Mid-level scribes didn’t get dragged into important client meetings. Emma had hoped when she moved from a behemoth ad agency on Madison Avenue to a small shop in SoHo that she’d get more client interaction, but the only interaction she got was with the boss.

She squinted her eyes and tried to picture Kyle when he’d come simpering into her cube a few weeks ago after his spontaneous ski trip with a sister he hadn’t seen in a year.

But the wedding loomed. The big day. White lace and promises, right?

She’d clung to the damn marketing like it was her life raft in a sea of singleness. It had all been so right…so right out of the movies, including the quirky restaurant engagement.

“That reminds me…” Emma snapped her fingers and reached for her handbag, hanging on the back of the door. Deep in the back pocket, she found the satin pouch she hadn’t packed in her checked luggage. In the little bag, she’d placed the emerald earrings Mom had given her. There was a necklace of value, a gold bracelet, and…the rock.

Not a huge rock, but it did the job.

Sliding the engagement ring onto her finger, she waited for the weight of sadness that had pulled her down the day she’d taken it off, at Starbucks, surrounded by busy New Yorkers taking a break from a slushy rain.

When she’d held the ring out to Kyle, he’d shaken his head and said, “It’s yours.”

“But you’re not,” she’d whispered in response, making him avert his eyes and push back his chair and end the world’s most uncomfortable coffee date in history.

History
, she reminded herself. Kyle was history.

She closed her bag and slipped it on her shoulder, checked for lipstick on her teeth, and smoothed her hair one last time. Then she stepped out into the fading evening light of the living room, glancing around for Mark.

After moving her bags into the villa’s only bedroom, he’d taken his belongings and stored them somewhere and must have used the guest bath on the other side of the little house. The villa had one bedroom, but the living room sofa pulled out and accommodated at least one more person, so it wasn’t like he had to sleep on the
floor
, for heaven’s sake.

A few butterflies fluttered in her belly at the thought, and then she spotted him back on the patio, leaning against the railing. And those butterflies soared.

He’d changed to tan linen pants and a pale, short-sleeved shirt that fit his broad shoulders tightly enough to show them off, but with enough drape to say he didn’t care if anyone noticed his body or not. His hair was completely dark in the back, but the last bits of sunlight picked up the silver threads at his temples, giving him the look of a man with wisdom, experience, power, and class.

And a hella fine backside.

He turned as she came outside, studying her while she rounded the pool and approached him, his gaze dropping over her with the same flash of appreciation she imagined lit her eyes.

“I have a question, Mark.”

“Shoot.”

“How recently did we get engaged?”

He lifted a shoulder. “How about a month ago? I was in…” Dark brows knit as he thought about it. “Indonesia? No, Bhutan. The Sacred Rivers. Let’s say we hiked to the Tiger’s Nest Monastery, and I popped the question three thousand feet above Paro.”

She choked a laugh. “Well, that makes getting engaged at Daniel in New York sound pretty pedestrian.”

“Good restaurant, but not very romantic.”

She rolled her eyes. “Okay, Bhutan it is. Three thousand feet off the ground because we were so in love, we were floating on air.”

“You
are
a copywriter.”

“To the bone,” she acknowledged, lifting her left hand to wiggle the ring. “And I can fend off evil predators.”

He reached for her hand to take a closer look. “So this was dessert at Daniel?”

“Actually, the appetizer. So we could spend the dinner planning.”

He nodded, angling the ring to check it out. “I might have gone a little bigger, but not ostentatious.”

“Do you think these people will judge?” she asked.

He lifted his shoulder. “I don’t know. I don’t talk to any of these people.”

“Then why did you come?”

He started to answer, then stopped, catching himself. “I just did,” he said. “You ready? We can walk up the beach to get there.”

She didn’t move, slowly crossing her arms. “No.”

“What? You changed your mind?”

“No, you can’t lie to me.”

He frowned. “I’m not lying. You really do walk up the beach to get there.”

“That’s not what I mean. Just now, when I asked you why you came to this reunion, you said, ‘I just did.’ That’s a lie.”

He opened his mouth to argue, then closed it again.

“Am I right?”

“Possibly,” he said after a second’s hesitation. “Does it matter?”

“Why you came? No. Honesty? Yes. Very much. In fact, it’s my deal-breaker. In this villa, when we are together, it’s one hundred percent honesty or nothing at all.”

He leaned closer and glanced side to side as if someone might be listening to him whisper, “You do realize you agreed to lie to every person you meet this week.”

She caught a whiff of his aftershave, spicy and masculine, giving her an unexpected pull of attraction. “But I’m not lying to you. I can’t do this if we dance around our conversations and tell each other half-truths. It’s the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth between us.”

He studied her face for a long time, his expression changing, but she couldn’t quite interpret his thoughts. “All right,” he finally said. “No lies, only truth with us. I promise.”

And she believed him. Not sure why, but Emma was certain Mark Solomon was a man of his word.

“Then answer the question,” she said. “Why did you come if you have no friends or acquaintances at this reunion?”

He turned away, the hint of a smile lifting the corner of his mouth. “You’re going to mock me mercilessly.”

“And you would deny me that opportunity?”

He smiled at that. And then he reached into his pocket and pulled something out, his fist closed around it. “For sixteen years, I’ve periodically received…guidance from my late wife.”

“Like messages from the great beyond?” She had to work to keep the disbelief out of her voice.

“Exactly like that.” He turned his hand over and opened his fingers to reveal what was in his palm. A ring with a bright red stone and writing on the side. A woman’s ring, she realized, with a gold and black ’86 on the side.

“Her class ring?” she guessed.

He nodded, his smile wry enough to tell her he saw the humor and irony and maybe a little bit of foolishness. “Lacey contacted me while I was in New Zealand, asked me to come and be here a week early to help with the planning. They were desperate to get men on the planning committee, and no one had said yes yet.”

“But you did.”

“Not at first. Hell no. I flat out refused the committee and the event, and not because I think I’m too good or too important or too busy, like a lot of the other men had said.” He gave her a serious look. “I didn’t want to open up wounds that have long closed and healed.”

“Or at least scarred,” she added, deeply suspecting that his grief wasn’t truly
healed
yet.

“Completely scarred and numb,” he agreed. “Anyway, I left Auckland and flew to New York, where I keep a small apartment. I had some papers I had to pick up from my safe-deposit box. When I was in it, I lifted up an envelope, and this ring fell out. I totally forgot I had kept it with some of Julia’s things.”

He held the ring with two fingers and angled it so they could both see it.

“And that was the message? Finding her ring?” Bit of a stretch, Emma thought, but hey, she’d never been a widow.

“I had a flash of a memory from the day the rings arrived and we both put ours on. She was so excited. We were outside eating lunch, and she held the red stone to the sun and said, ‘I’m going to wear mine forever. I’ll be the only person at the high school reunion who still wears her Mimosa High ring.’”

Emma didn’t say anything, watching his face as he relayed the story. No sorrow or grief, just a look of warm appreciation. Like he was grateful he’d had that moment with her.

“When Julia suggests something, I usually listen.”

And maybe he was a total nut job. “How often does she, uh, talk to you?”

Laughing, he pocketed the ring. “And she mocks.”

“Not mocking, just…it’s a little out-there, don’t you think?”

“It is, but it doesn’t happen that often. Once every couple of years, something will hit me hard, especially when I have a decision to make. And if I listen to her advice, my choice usually turns out to be the right one.”

“When was the first time?” she asked, fascinated by this romantic illusion.

“When I had the offer to sell Seeking Soulmates, the company we started together. I had no intention of selling, because we were profitable and I enjoyed running the business. Being a workaholic had kept me sane after Julia died, even though I didn’t realize how burned-out I’d become.”

Emma eyed him, seeing a man in his prime of health and life. She couldn’t even imagine him burned-out. “So how did she deliver that message?”

“I’d fended off about six offers from larger companies because I just knew she wouldn’t have wanted to sell to a huge conglomerate that would bury or kill the concept, no matter how much they offered. Then, I was approached by LoveInc.com.”

“Ahh.” She immediately recognized the name of the largest Internet dating site. “The ‘love only happens if you take the chance’ people. Kind of a lame tag line, if you ask me. And they
are
a huge conglomerate.”

“Not back then. The owner had vision and millions in stock options before a public offering. The cash wasn’t great, but his ideas for the company were. I was immediately tempted, but uncertain.” He looked out to the water, which had settled into a million shades of twilight blue, but Emma couldn’t take her eyes off him.

“So how’d she convince you to do it?” she asked, guessing that had to be where he was taking this story.

“I was in midtown, on my way home from a meeting with the LoveInc people, and it started to pour. Cabs were short, but I managed to snag one at the very same moment as a woman. I offered to let her have it, but she asked where I was going, I told her, and our destinations were close. She suggested we share.”

Of course she did, Emma thought. Who wouldn’t want to climb into a cab with George Clooney’s blue-eyed brother?

“Her name was Julia,” he said, his voice a little lower. “She looked nothing like my late wife, but she was very excited because she’d just gotten engaged. I asked how she met her fiancé, and she said—”

“LoveInc.com,” Emma finished.

“Yep. She said it was the best experience, and if she were going to buy stock in a company, it would be that one. Those were her very words.”

“Maybe she was an investment banker working on the deal and wanted you to buy in.”

The corner of his mouth lifted. “You are a cynic. No, she was just a girl named Julia who needed a cab and unwittingly delivered a message that I should sell the company and take the stock offer. And that decision…”

“Made you a rich man.”

“Beyond my wildest expectations,” he confirmed.

Of course, that probably would have happened if he hadn’t accidentally met a girl named Julia who raved about her online dating experience, but she couldn’t help be charmed by the idea of a man who listened to his wife…even from the grave.

“So what do you think your late wife would have to say about the whole fake fiancée to fend off offers and questions idea?” Emma asked.

He thought about the question—really thought about it, she could tell—and then said, “I’m not sure.”

“Maybe we’ll find some seashells that spell out ‘good idea, Mark’ on the sand.”

He laughed. “You’re mocking.”

“Ya think?”

He put an easy arm around her and guided her toward the villa. “So you’re the fiancée who makes fun of me.”

“I could be.”

“I like that.” He tightened his hold, pulling her an inch closer.

I like
that
, she thought. The realization made her slow her step, and he matched the timing, looking down at her.

“What is it?” he asked.