Ex on the Beach (29 page)
But at the same time she was terrified. She cared about Mark way more than she should.
Ginny saw where Andie’s line of sight had landed. “He still cares for you, you know?”
“I know.” Andie was having a hard time making her feet take a step forward. “I’m beginning to wonder if he ever stopped.”
“Like you never did?”
Andie looked at Ginny and nodded. “Like I never did.” She turned back to Mark. “Mom says she’ll help you kick his butt if he hurts me again.”
Ginny laughed then, sounding more like herself than she had all night. “That sounds like a good plan to me. Your mother did know how to kick some butt in her day.”
Again, Andie couldn’t picture it. Her mom might break a nail and rip a brand-name business suit if she kicked someone’s butt.
She peered at Ginny in the dark. “You two going to be able to fix this between you?”
Ginny nodded. “We’ve already started. Today was a good day.”
“And between her and me?” Andie asked. “You think that’s possible?”
“I’ve no doubt, sweetheart. You might find that you even like who she is if you give her a chance.”
That might be stretching it, but Andie was willing to give a relationship a try.
“Let’s go in,” Andie suggested. “I want to talk to Mark.”
They picked up their sandals, and Ginny slipped her arm through Andie’s as she had done on the walk out. “I think you should consider going for it with him,” Ginny said.
Andie eyed her aunt. “Did you forget our earlier conversation? I already did. And since you wanted to know,” she added in a teasing voice, “it was off-the-charts good.”
Ginny’s laughter rang out into the night, and Andie smiled with her. If her aunt was ballsy enough to ask about her love life, she figured she should feel free to tell her about it.
“Good to hear it. Though from the sounds coming from your room, I assumed it had to be.”
Andie felt that heat rising to her face again.
“That wasn’t what I was talking about, though,” Ginny confessed.
“No?”
“No.” Ginny squeezed Andie’s arm as they stopped, and both of them stared up at Mark. “I think you should go for love again.”
This shocked Andie. “After all you went through, you can say that? Don’t you have regrets? Seems life would have been easier without love.”
“I have few regrets in my life, child. I regret losing your mother for all those years. And I regret that I went about things the way I did. I should have at least told her I felt the same way about James, and then let him choose. But I can’t truly regret anything else, because I got sixteen good years with my husband, and I got you out of it.”
Andie looked up at Mark again. “It’s scary,” she whispered.
“The best things are.”
And she knew that she did want to go for it. She wanted love, and she wanted Mark. But she just wasn’t sure she wouldn’t get crushed in the deal.
“I do have one more thing to admit,” Ginny said as they started forward again, heading toward the back stairs to the house.
“Oh geez, Aunt Ginny.” Andie glanced sideways at her aunt. She wasn’t sure could take much more. “What else?”
“Apparently James was sneakier than either your mother or I thought. He somehow knew that she was pregnant with you. After he died, his lawyer surprised us both.”
“He left something for Mom?”
Aunt Ginny shook her head. “He left something for you.” She motioned to the house. “The house is yours, child.”
M
ark heard Andie’s bedroom door open and close from where he sat on the deck. Her lights didn’t go on. Nor did she step outside.
He tapped his thumbs against each other as he waited. He was relaxed back in the same lounge chair he’d been in the first night they’d sat out there together, and he wondered if she would make him go in to her. His eyes closed as he concentrated, forcing his breathing to remain steady. It would be nice if she came to him.
She knew he was on the deck. He’d seen her catch sight of him as she’d returned to the house with Ginny. Although it was dark outside, he had no doubt that her gaze had been on him.
She and Ginny had both worn an air of stress as they’d walked, as if they’d been in deep discussion about a difficult subject. To the casual observer, the strain might not have been noticeable, but neither of them had moved as gracefully as they usually did. Their gaits had been tight, their steps short. And they’d held each other’s arms as if needing the physical comfort of the other.
He assumed the issue between them had to do with Cassie. And though he could easily step inside Andie’s room and offer a shoulder to lean on, he couldn’t help but want her to seek him out.
That desire came with knowing that he was once again vulnerable to her.
Just like before, he was in too deep. There was no other way to go but forward, and though he knew she cared for him, he wasn’t sure how much. He had no idea if they stood the chance of going anywhere, or if she could simply walk away at the end of next week.
He’d figured out his own feelings that afternoon on the boat. It had been a culmination of things. His desire to
not
talk to Rob because his doing so would hurt Andie. The fact he’d put a hook in her hand — and he’d just about shriveled up and died at the sight of it. And then her unbridled excitement when he’d locked them in the small bathroom together.
He would have opened the door if she’d preferred. Done nothing. Pushed for nothing. But the way she’d lit up in front of him had given him a power he could get addicted to.
She’d wanted him. And she hadn’t cared —
too much
— what anyone else had thought.
Of course, it could have just been desire on her part and nothing else.
Not for him.
He’d looked into her eyes in that room and known he had to figure out a way to get her to see it could be more.
They
could be more.
The screen door opened and she stood there, her long dress flowing around her legs in the breeze and her hair lifting up off her shoulders. She looked at him and his heart settled into a steady thump.
“Good talk with Ginny?” he asked. He cleared his throat when his voice came out tight.
She nodded but didn’t step any farther out onto the deck. Just watched him, her eyes steady and direct — but not necessarily seeing him after that first glimpse. She’d drifted a million miles away.
He waited. Something was bothering her. She’d held back a lot in the past. Either not bothered to share with him, or skated over the issues. Of course, he’d allowed it. But tonight he wanted her to see that he was there for her. He wanted her to
want
to share with him.
Finally, she sucked in a deep breath and blinked, and her gaze once again sought his. He let out the breath he’d been holding.
“This house belongs to me,” she stated.
He sat up. “What?”
“This house,” she murmured. She stepped across the threshold of her room and slid the screen door shut behind her, then moved across the deck and stared out at the sea. “It belongs to me — or it will.”
Mark rose and went to her side. “Is that what Ginny told you tonight?”
“Some of it.” She nodded. “Her husband, James, left it to me, to be signed over at my aunt’s discretion. Aunt Ginny said she’d sign it over now if I want. But I said no. It’s her home.”
“Sounds like it’s yours, too.” What a shocker. “Any idea why he left it to you? He died before you were born, right?”
Andie turned to lean against the railing so that she was face-to-face with Mark. The skin between her eyes pinched as she held his gaze. Then she glanced away — looking over his shoulder. “He was apparently my father,” she whispered into the night. “He and my mother had a past
before
Ginny, and then they had one night together years later. I was the result. Then he died.” Her voice trembled. “Seven months later.”
“Oh, babe.” Mark took her hands in his, wanting to pull her close, but fearing the movement would squelch the flow of words. But he had to touch her. Had to let her know he was there for her. “You never had any idea?” he asked.
She shook her head, the slow movement signifying her bewilderment. “Mom never wanted to be a mother, and Aunt Ginny couldn’t get pregnant.” She turned her gaze back to his. “Fate. That’s what Aunt Ginny said. I was somehow their fate?”
Confusion marred her features, but he thought he got it. Ginny saw the good side of things.
“Ginny has always loved you like a mother, hasn’t she?” Mark asked.
“Since the day I met her. More than my own mother ever did.”
The lost sound of Andie’s words pained him. “And she wouldn’t have had you to dote on if James and Cassie hadn’t gotten together, right?”
Andie nodded again. “Right.” She glanced down where their hands were clasped. “But fate? He cheated on her, Mark. Broke her heart, and Aunt Ginny calls it
fate
.”
Mark shrugged. “She believes that everything happens for a reason. Exactly when it should.”
He was starting to wonder if that wasn’t actually the case. He had Andie back in his life, after all. Maybe it simply hadn’t been their time before.
“It’s an interesting concept,” Andie murmured. She let go of his hands and turned to the railing. She wrapped her fingers around the metal and leaned the top half of her body out over the deck, sucking in deep gulps of air. He mimicked her breathing, pulling in the scent of the flowers from below. The scent was sweet and potent, and he realized it was the same fragrance that Andie often wore.
“It smells like you out here,” he said.
She turned her face to him and he smiled at her in the dark. She was still leaning over the railing, and she reminded him of a little girl — a child with her head hanging out the car window, her hair blowing in the wind.
“It’s honeysuckle,” she told him. “I’ve loved the smell since I first discovered it here as a kid. Aunt Ginny always buys me perfume as one of my Christmas gifts. She gets me honeysuckle.”
Her words stopped, and he sensed she was wrangling with something else. All he could do was wait to see if she wanted to talk. In the past they wouldn’t have even made it this far.
Finally, she straightened and put her back to the railing. She crossed her arms over her chest. “You know those scholarships I worked so hard for?”
He nodded. She’d earned scholarships all through her undergrad years as well as during her master’s program.
“I apparently could have slacked off.” She glanced at him, the look hard and angry. “It came from a trust my father set up.”
Wow. “That was—”
“Underhanded,” she stated, the word blunt. “Why didn’t anyone ever tell me it was coming from him? Hell, why didn’t anyone ever tell me who my father was?”
Anger burned brightly in front of him. She was a sweetheart, but when she got angry, she held nothing back.
“Did you ask Ginny?”
She glared at him as if he’d said the wrong thing. Before he could come up with anything else to try, she huffed out a breath and stomped back into her room. As she stepped through the doorway, she glanced over her shoulder. “Will you come in with me?”
Into her bedroom? He pushed off the rail. Oh, hell yeah.
Though he had no idea what was going to go on in there. This evening was not going in any way he’d imagined.
Andie’s mood made him wonder if they’d even get to the topics that had come up on the boat earlier that day. They’d eventually need to talk about them. What Rob had said about Tiffany — he supposed Andie deserved to know how badly he could let someone down — as well as what Andie had said about him having issues with marriage. Not to mention, her accusing him of wanting to leave instead of risking getting involved with her again.
He didn’t want to leave.
And he did want to get involved.
Also, he didn’t have issues with marriage.
Maybe he
had
been looking for excuses to end their engagement before. He hadn’t realized it at the time, but the instant the words had come out of Andie’s mouth, he knew they were likely correct. Something between the two of them just hadn’t been quite right. Not back then.
He’d started arguments during those last months, just as she had. He’d also jumped at the excuse that she was using him when he’d heard her on the phone the morning of their wedding.
He had known she loved him, yes. But he still maintained she’d loved her job more. That it would have eventually come between them in their marriage.
That didn’t mean it had been right to send Rob to the church instead of him.
But history couldn’t be changed. They could only move forward.
And he most definitely
didn’t
have issues with getting married. Marriage and a family were what he wanted. Tiffany and his past played no part in anything.
Once he’d stepped inside, Andie pushed the balcony doors closed tight and then pulled the curtains over them, leaving Mark and her standing in the dark.
“You don’t want to hear the ocean tonight?” he asked. And then it occurred to him. This was her house — or it would be. She could listen to the ocean for the rest of her life. He wondered vaguely how that might play into the two of them.
Heck, he didn’t even know what he wanted from the two of them. But he loved her. That was a fact. So it wasn’t as if he could just walk away without trying.
“I don’t want to risk Aunt Ginny overhearing us talk,” she said. “Or Phillip Jordan for that matter.” She grumbled the last words as if the man had done something to annoy her. She turned on the corner lamp. The one they’d knocked to the floor the day before.
“Did he say anything to you today?” he asked. At Andie’s glance, he added, “On the boat. After …”
Mark knew Phillip had his nose stuck in the air about catching Andie and him on the beach together that first night. After the bathroom escapade, he could only imagine what the man thought of them now. He hadn’t looked Mark in the eye once all afternoon.
Of course, that could also have been because Mark had punched out his daughter’s fiancé.