Lantern Lake
Lily Everett
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Prologue
Miles Harrington stood beneath the driftwood arbor in the cozy old yacht club with the winter ocean churning on the other side of the plate glass window. He gazed across the assembled wedding guests—Sanctuary Island’s warm, friendly, quirky residents on the bride’s side…New York’s wealthy elite on the groom’s.
In the heart-thumping anticipation of these last few moments before his bride appeared, Miles could barely focus on anything other than the insistent, possessive drive to make Greta Hackley his, now and forever. But since it would probably be bad form to stride up the aisle, tear open the door at the back of the room where she was waiting to make her entrance, and carry her off, Miles forced himself to stand still.
Casting about for a distraction, Miles registered the swell of the music as the string quartet began to play the processional piece and the first bridesmaid appeared. His attention snapped to her as recognition and memory filtered through the wedding haze.
Ah, yes. Vivian Banks. This should be interesting
.
It took all of Miles’s control not to turn his head far enough to sneak a glance at the final groomsman standing arrayed behind him. He was more than curious about Cooper Hayes’s reaction to coming face to face with the One That Got Away, after all these years—in fact, Miles had a lot riding on this moment.
Specifically, his beloved custom-designed luxury helicopter.
It all started with a bet, that each of Miles’s three young billionaire bachelor friends would find their hearts and their lives irrevocably altered by spending time on Sanctuary Island. After all, it worked for the Harrington brothers! Miles’s other two groomsmen, Leo Strathairn and Zane Bishop had already fallen, and fallen hard. But this was the moment when Miles would discover whether his final bachelor buddy would succumb to the magic of the island.
Okay, so in Cooper’s case, there was less “island magic” involved, and more straight up manipulation and strategy. Miles’s fiancée had made fun of him for being a matchmaker, but Miles had a long history of putting together incredibly successful business deals. He didn’t see why pairing off his friends with the loves of their lives should be any more difficult.
So far, it hadn’t been. And from the beginning of this bet, Miles had been counting on Cooper to be the easiest of them all.
But as Vivian Banks glided gracefully down the aisle toward them and Miles caught a glimpse of her ex’s reaction out of the corner of his eye, Miles started to wonder if his matchmaking skill would finally be put to the test.
Because Cooper Hayes didn’t look like a man who’d just set eyes on his long-lost love for the first time in a decade. He looked pissed. Like he wanted to make someone pay.
And in the instant before the Wedding March struck up and Greta finally appeared, capturing every scrap of Miles’s mind and heart and attention for herself, he realized—Cooper wasn’t only angry at Miles for bringing her here. The true target of Cooper’s slow-burning fury was the only woman he’d ever loved. The woman Miles had been sure his friend
still
loved.
Sorry, Viv
, Miles apologized silently to his childhood friend.
I may have miscalculated this one. But you two are going to have to sort it out on your own, because I have a wedding to complete…and a wedding night to enjoy
.
For the first time in a long time, Cooper Hayes felt his itchy, wandering feet grow heavy and immovable. He was anchored to the yacht club’s weathered hardwood floor, the weight of past and present colliding to root him to the spot.
She was here. Against all odds and decency, the woman who broke his heart ten years ago was a bridesmaid in the same wedding Cooper was standing up in.
The groomsman on Cooper’s right, his friend Zane Bishop, muttered out of the corner of his mouth, “Dude. Isn’t that—?”
“Vivian Banks,” Cooper confirmed. The feel of the name in his mouth was like chocolate—sweet, dark and bitter. Something he’d loved when he was a kid…before he became allergic to it on a trip to the Ivory Coast.
“What the hell is she doing here?” The outrage in Zane’s hissed whisper made Cooper feel better.
Despite the fact that he’d been asking himself the same question, Cooper shrugged minutely. “She and Miles go way back. Family friends. Guess she and Greta got close.”
Cooper ground down the need to walk out on the whole damn thing. Miles couldn’t have realized what he’d done.
Despite the man’s ruthless willingness to do whatever it took to win their bet, he’d been a good friend to Cooper for a long time. Eleven years, in fact, and he’d stuck by Cooper when other people had given up on him.
People like Vivian Banks, for example.
So Cooper gritted his teeth through the ceremony, the love songs and poetry and vows of eternal devotion no more than static in his ears. He got through the whole thing cloaked in a cloud of anger and hurt—the kind of pain that didn’t fade over time—until the crowd of guests erupted into loud cheers and applause.
Startled, Cooper looked up to see Miles and Greta locked into their first kiss as husband and wife. That was the cue to the rest of the wedding party to start the recessional back up the blue-carpeted aisle. And that was the moment when Cooper realized exactly which bridesmaid he’d be escorting.
Without meaning to, he locked eyes with Vivian on the other side of the flowers and shimmery-fabric-draped altar. She’d missed the rehearsal the night before, but she seemed to know what to do. She stepped forward, her lovely, unforgettable features set in a blank mask of pleasantness.
And Cooper stalled out.
His feet—usually so ready to move, to carry him forward on whatever adventure beckoned—remained planted under him. All he could do was stare at her.
The woman staring back at him with dawning panic behind her indigo eyes looked almost the same as the girl who’d ground her designer heel into Cooper’s heart a decade ago. The same wavy black hair, same porcelain skin that showed the stain of a blush so well, same perfect bow-shaped lips. But her eyes…
Still the same rich blue, so dark they were almost purple, but instead of the carefree laughter and mischief he remembered, this woman’s eyes were shadowed with loss…and an echo of the pain Cooper carried like an extra weight in his trusty shoulder pack.
Stomping down his instinctive reaction, which was to find out who’d made Vivian hurt and make them hurt worse, Cooper shook his head at himself. She was probably just embarrassed that he’d left her hanging for thirty seconds, standing alone at the front of the congregation waiting for him to escort her up the aisle.
Cooper stepped forward, refusing to rush or show any discomfort with the situation. He hadn’t done anything wrong. He had nothing to be ashamed of.
When he was close enough, he offered her his arm. Cooper willed her to meet his eyes, silently daring her to look him in the face after what she’d done to him, but she didn’t. Instead, she ducked her head slightly in a gesture he could never remember seeing before, and let her hand settle gently on his arm. The barely-there weight of her touch reminded him of the time he’d been hiking in Michoacan and stumbled upon a swarm of migrating monarch butterflies.
He’d stood like a statue as the delicate insects alit along his arms and shoulders, even on top of his head. He hadn’t felt their landings; if he’d closed his eyes, he wouldn’t have known they were touching him. But he would have heard them. More butterflies had swooped and fluttered around him, the light whisper of their wings filling his ears exactly the way the thickened throb of his heartbeat pounded in his ears now.
He and Vivian walked sedately up the aisle through the parted sea of smiling faces, but none of it registered in Cooper’s brain. All he could see, all he could hear, all he could feel was Vivian Banks.
“I didn’t realize you were part of the wedding party,” he muttered, low enough that only she could hear him.
The slender fingers on his arm tightened minutely, only for a second, then relaxed. “I’m sorry,” she said, her voice softer and more tentative than his memories. “I don’t know why they didn’t tell you. I asked Miles to make sure it was all right with you—I would’ve been happy to attend as just a guest. Or I would have stayed away, if you told Miles it would bother you to see me. But I guess he didn’t ask.”
Cooper clenched his jaw, forcing his voice to smooth disinterest. “It doesn’t bother me to see you. Why should it?”
Her head ducked further, as if she wished she could hide. “After the way things ended between us…”
“Ancient history. I moved on a long time ago. In fact,” Cooper said as they reached the end of the aisle and pushed their way out of the yacht club and into the fading afternoon sunlight, “I should probably take this opportunity to thank you.”
“To thank me?” Vivian removed her hand in order to wrap her arms around herself. The unseasonably warm Sanctuary Island winter seemed to have finally turned, and the wind blowing in off the ocean snapped with cold. The dark blue satin of her bridesmaid dress may have matched her eyes, but it wasn’t doing much to keep her warm.
Without a second thought, Cooper shrugged out of his tuxedo jacket and swirled it over Vivian’s shoulders. Smoothing the lapels over her crossed arms, Cooper stared down at her and willed himself to feel nothing.
But none of the meditation techniques he’d learned in India or the exotic herbal remedies he’d sampled in China would be enough to keep Cooper blissfully calm and detached. Not when he stood mere inches from the woman who’d changed his life forever. Not when he was close enough to smell the light vanilla scent of her perfume and see the fine-grained texture of her silky skin.
Vivian Banks was within his grasp for the first time in ten years. And Cooper would be damned before he let her slip away again.
At least, not before he punished her for the sins of her past.
***
Vivian shivered, but with the body-warmed folds of Cooper’s dinner jacket enfolding her, she couldn’t blame it on the cold ocean breeze.
After her divorce, she thought she’d be only too glad never to be close to another man again. And for the last two years, she’d been right. She could glimpse a hot guy across the grocery store parking lot or down at the hardware store and feel nothing—not even a flicker of interest. She’d congratulated herself on being done with desire forever.
Apparently, she’d celebrated that victory over her body a little too soon. Because it turned out that her body had only been in hibernation…just waiting for the moment when it sensed Cooper Hayes’s huge, overwhelming, electrifying presence once more.
Tough poop, Vivian told herself. She’d had her chance with Cooper, and she did worse than blow it—she obliterated it.
Staring out over the sand dunes with their lopsided fencing and hardy scrub grass, Vivian felt her eyes burn a little. She blinked hard. “What on earth could you possibly want to thank me for?”
Cooper’s big, warm hands settled on her shoulders like the weight of all her mistakes, pressing her down into the sand. “Well, if you hadn’t left me standing at the courthouse with a marriage license in one hand and my dick in the other, I probably wouldn’t ever have left Brooklyn and traveled the world.”
And become a billionaire
. He didn’t say it, but Vivian couldn’t help thinking it. As someone who had just spent her last scrap of savings on a dilapidated lake cabin a fraction of the size of the immaculate house she grew up in, Vivian was keenly aware of how low the mighty had fallen…and how high Cooper had risen since they last knew each other.
Fate might be fickle, Vivian reflected, but you could always count on her to have a sense of humor.
“If what happened between us helped push you to reach your true potential, then I can only be glad,” she said, her throat tight, but her voice steady.
His hazel gaze sharpened. “You kept up with all that? I would’ve thought once you washed your hands of me, you’d stop caring about my ‘potential.’”
I never stopped caring, Vivian wanted to say. The words trembled on her tongue, but she’d learned something about caution and self-preservation in the last ten years. She held the words back with an effort. “I heard you designed a cell phone app that streamlined the process of getting prescription medicines to patients. And that you licensed it to the American Medical Association for big bucks.”