Bungalow Nights (Beach House No. 9) (25 page)

“Well,” she finally said, unable to bear the tension—and eager for the confrontation to end without bloodshed. “You’ve made your delivery. We don’t want to keep you any longer.” Her knee was pumping now, like a telegraph key under the fingers of an experienced operator.

Vance reached over and pressed the twitchy joint, stilling the movement. “I don’t think Fitz is finished.”

“V.T....” His brother started, stopped again.

“Just spit it out,” Vance said. “Layla’s right. We have things we want to get to.” He turned his head to nuzzle her cheek.

The touch of his lips on her skin, his breath on the shell of her ear made her blood run hot again. But Fitz was standing there, watching, so she managed not to melt into the floorboards. Instead, she covered the fingers Vance had on her knee with hers.

His brother cleared his throat once more. “I know...of course, I know about that letter she wrote you. Blythe’s letter.”

“The one breaking our engagement?”

“I’m talking about the second letter,” Fitz said. “After you two were over. In it she said we had begun dating, though it was nothing serious.”

“What?” Vance still sounded calm. “You thought I didn’t guess it was more than that?”

“I...” Shrugging, his brother let the word drift off.

“Fitz, I know you. You’re always serious. It didn’t fool me for a second.” Then he turned his head to press another kiss on Layla’s cheek. “So, if you’ve finally gotten everything off your chest...”

Implying—and she wasn’t sure if it was solely for his brother’s benefit or not—that there were some scary-wondrous sexy times in the offing. Layla squirmed a little on her wooden seat, having mixed feelings about that now. Was she still just a prop to disguise his wounded feelings? Now that something real had happened between them, that didn’t sit so well any longer.

Vance caught her chin and turned her face toward him, his gaze searching hers as if he sensed her new disquiet. “Go away, Fitz.”

“Just one more thing.”

Vance’s sigh was warm against her face. “What?” he said, glancing toward his brother.

“Mom wants you at the engagement party. A brunch deal.”

Vance stilled. “I don’t think—”

“Please. We have to do this right for the family. You need to be there.”

“I told you—”

“You told me you’re with Layla now.” Fitz lifted his arms. “What’s the problem?”

“I’m returning to Afghanistan,” Vance said. “Soon.”

“That’s why we’ll have it soon. You’re here at Crescent Cove until the end of the month, you told Mom. So the party’s scheduled for the last Sunday in July.”

“Fitz—”

“We picked that date just for you, Vance.”

“For me,” Vance repeated. “You’re doing this for me.”

“Hell,” his brother said, spinning around. “Never mind. But you’ll tell Mom you refuse, not me.” He began to stalk off.

“Fitz!” Layla called out.

With a sigh, he halted. When he turned back, the misery on his face made her feel sorry for him all over again. “I forgot my manners,” he said. “Goodbye, Layla.”

Without looking at Vance, she twined her fingers with his and addressed his brother. “You tell us where and what time—we’ll be there.” She didn’t dare look at the man sitting beside her, but she could feel his temper in his rigid posture and the way his hand tightened on hers. Still, it seemed like the right action to take, and if Vance couldn’t commit to it, she’d do it for him.

Anything else was retreat, and her father had taught her to never tolerate such a thing.

Fitz glanced from her face to Vance’s. “V.T.?”

“What the lady wants,” he said, shrugging, then lifted their joined fingers in order to kiss the back of her hand. “Whatever she desires.”

When Fitz was gone, Vance dropped her like a hot potato and rose to his feet. Layla looked up at him, uncertain about what mood he might reveal next. Happiness again, she hoped. But it was a vain hope; she knew it when he ran down the steps, racing toward the surf. Two chubby pigeons twittered in alarm and fluttered out of his way. One of the seagulls he’d befriended sailed close on the wind as Vance drew back his arm.

The gull tried snatching at the ring box on its long arc toward the water. But it missed, and the splash was small and silent as Blythe’s ring sank into the depths.

Vance was silent, too—though not small at all as he stalked back toward the house. His expression hard, he brushed past Layla to mount the steps.

“Are you all right?”

He grunted.

She scrambled to her feet. “What are you going to do now?”

“I’m going to hunt down a calendar.”

Confused, she tried to keep up with him. “A calendar? Why?”

“In order to count down how many more goddamn days are left before I can get the hell out of California.”

* * *

A
DDY KNEW
B
AXTER
had returned. Though she didn’t look up from her laptop screen, she sensed him looming in the doorway of the Sunrise Pictures archives room.
I’ll ignore him,
she thought.
Then he’ll go away
.

She was done with him. She had to be done with him.

It’s what she’d been telling herself since that day in his condo. She’d kept herself busy since then, working by day on the archives and then distracting herself in the evenings by visits with old friends. She’d even gritted her teeth and managed a dinner with her mother and then another with her father.

Thoughts of Baxter hadn’t bothered her at all.

At least not as much as his silent presence was bugging her, as he continued to stand just a few feet away. “What are you doing here?” she groused, her gaze still focused on her computer. “Your reputation as All Business Baxter is going to be downgraded if you keep escaping your office like this.”

Instead of answering, he moved into the room. From the corner of her eye, she saw him riffle through one of the boxes. She’d been sorting the paperwork, and had put what she termed the “numbers stuff” into its own carton. The ledgers were bound by olive-green, cloth-covered cardboard, and she’d barely spared them a glance before separating them from the business and personal letters that she hoped held clues to Sunrise’s demise as well as the truth of the relationship between Edith Essex and her husband.

She’d scanned the correspondence page by page into her computer so she could examine it as much as she liked without damaging the originals. That process now done, she’d entered them into a database, arranged them by date and was now reading through them one at a time.

Baxter moved to stand behind her. “Have you found anything interesting?”

“No,” she said, but continued on in hopes of quickly satisfying his curiosity. Perhaps then he’d go. “From what I can tell, Sunrise Pictures was fine financially—though I confess I’m not an expert at deciphering that side of things. But the letters between Sunrise and its various vendors and suppliers don’t hint at money problems.”

“What about the personal correspondence?”

That made her sigh. “There’s a dearth of it, actually. I hoped to find letters between Edith and her husband, but so far, nothing. There are a few dozen from some of the leading men and ladies of the day to Max Sunstrum, Sunrise’s president, and there’s a nugget or two there. In between discussions of schedules and salary and availability I’ve found references to parties they’d mutually attended. As time goes on, however, more than one correspondent questions where Edith has been and why she’s been absent from the Hollywood scene.”

“Because there was trouble in the marriage? The affair that’s rumored?”

Addy lifted a shoulder. “That’s what I’m trying to find out.
That’s why I’m too busy for interruptions.
” Now she glanced back to see if he got her unsubtle hint.

Damn. She shouldn’t have looked at him. Of course, he’d come right from the office. His hair was in those impeccable layers, as smooth and shiny as golden fish scales. He wore his summer-weight suit like most men wore T-shirts and jeans. The tie around his neck had been loosened.

The tie.

Oh, God. She stared at the navy-and-white stripes, remembering the one she’d secured around his eyes so she’d have the courage to go to bed with him. And she’d gone to bed with him to get him out of her life.

“Why are you still here?” she demanded, frowning.

He frowned right back. “Why did you leave the other night without saying goodbye?”

Addy shrugged again. Not for a million dollars would she admit she’d been grateful he’d dozed off afterward so she could escape. He’d been her first, though not her only lover. A time or two over the years she’d looked into the face of a man she’d been intimate with and managed to make clear there wasn’t going to be another encounter between the sheets.

So it shouldn’t have been hard—once she was back in her clothes—to have said so long to Baxter in a way that made clear she meant it as a permanent goodbye. Except she’d slipped out instead.

“Was that payback for what happened six years ago?” he asked, his eyes narrowing. “Because I essentially sneaked away, you figured you should have your chance to do the same?”

She glared at him. “I don’t know what—”

“Can the crap, Addy,” he said. “I’m not buying for a second your story that you don’t remember our night together then. You gasped in shock when I licked your nipple for the first time. I kissed the tears from your cheek when I entered you—your first time.”

She opened her mouth to emit some matching sort of answer, but nothing came out. He was the one with the confidence to be so blunt. Addy March had nowhere near that kind of self-assurance, and being with Baxter only made her feel the lack more.

“I want to see you again,” he said. “I want to find some way to make it up to you for—”

“Why?” she interrupted, exasperated. “I’m not expecting you to make anything up to me.”

“But—”

“I didn’t expect anything from you after that night six years ago.”

Baxter blinked. He rubbed his palm along the length of his tie, a gesture she might label as nervous if he didn’t always appear so annoyingly poised. “You really
don’t
remember that night.”

Addy rolled her eyes. Maybe he wasn’t as intimidatingly smart as she’d always thought. “I just admitted I do, okay? I’d had a little crush on you for years, that’s the truth. When you asked me to dance, you’re lucky I didn’t keel over at your feet. My heart was going so fast when you took me in your arms that I thought I might pass out.”

“A crush?” He was smiling, the smug bastard. “I kind of knew the second half of that. Even with only those twinkling lights overhead, I could see the pulse at your throat. Racing. Your skin is so fragile there, so thin and sweet. It’s the first place I put my mouth.”

Addy swallowed, nonplussed again.

“It’s racing now, too,” he said quietly.

She spun back toward her laptop. “The thrill of near-discovery. I’m excited about unraveling the mystery of Edith, Max and Sunrise Pictures.”

Baxter put his hands on her shoulders and began to knead. “You’re so tense, Addy. I’m not going to let you down again. I don’t want it to be that way with us.”

“I told you, you didn’t ever let me down. Why do you keep insisting you did?”

“The things I said, the promises I made—”

“Not for one minute did I expect you to follow through on any of those.”

His hands stilled, then dropped away. “I didn’t think I could feel much worse about what happened, but you just proved me wrong.”

Surprised, she turned to face him again, the casters on the chair legs squeaking in the quiet room. It wasn’t something she’d said to hurt him, but the expression on his chiseled, nearly too-handsome face was pained. “Baxter...”

He threw himself into the seat beside her. It was wheeled, like hers, and he used the heel of one elegant leather shoe to push himself away from the table. “I guess I deserve that. Clearly I have an overinflated sense of my own integrity.”

“What?” Addy stared at him. “I don’t know what you mean.”

“Despite what I did that night, I’ve always considered myself one of the good guys, okay? I’m ethical, I pay all my taxes, I always buy my mother her favorite candy on Valentine’s Day.”

Addy told herself not to be charmed. But he bought his mother candy on Valentine’s Day! “You
are
one of the good guys...at least I’ve always thought so.”

“But you say you disbelieved me that night...even before I had the chance to prove your distrust was well-founded.” He groaned, and ran his palms over his hair. “I
am
a jerk.”

“No, Baxter. I don’t think you’re a jerk. I didn’t put any credence into what you said because...because I’m me, and you’re you.”

“The jerk.”

“No.”
It was frustrating and more than a little humiliating to clear this up. “You’re Baxter Smith,” she said, waving her hand to indicate the hair, the suit, the shiny shoes, “and I’m me.”

He frowned. “I don’t get it.”

“You’re you, and I’m me. Pl—plain Addy.” She’d almost said “plump,” but no need to go into that. “Nose-in-a-book, eyes-on-a-screen, head-in-the-clouds Addy March.”

He just stared at her.

“You know
Little Women,
the book by Louisa May Alcott? The ‘little women’ are the March sisters. I used to pretend that I was one of them. They performed plays and told each other stories and had their loving Marmee and Father.” When Baxter continued to stare at her she thought she wasn’t making herself clear. “I pretended I was pretend people. I could pretend I was pretend people for days on end.”

He still looked puzzled. “If this is about swapping childhood stories, I should probably tell you about the BSLS.”

It wasn’t about swapping childhood stories, it was about why they were ill-suited for each other, but now she was intrigued. “All right, I’ll bite. BSLS?”

“
The
BSLS. The Baxter Smith Life Schedule.”

“Huh?”

“I’m a very, uh, goal-oriented person. Maybe a little obsessive-compulsive. Even as a kid, I made lists, developed agendas, tracked my progress on spreadsheets. The summer after eighth grade, I got into running. I had a target. In the twelve weeks before school started—and the high school cross country season began—I wanted to log five hundred miles.”