Love on Lavender Island (A Lavender Island Novel Book 2) (11 page)

Paige looked up from her screen and noted that Friendly Bob was heading for the door. She wondered if something had gone wrong between the two men. She forced her eyes back to her laptop but stopped absorbing a single word.

“This is from the gentleman at the bar.” A waiter suddenly set a bottle of white wine on the table. “Would you like me to pour?”

Paige nodded and waited until the waiter was gone, focusing on breathing, then glanced at Adam. That, apparently, was all the welcome he required. He slid off the bar stool and began a reluctant gait toward her.

“Mind if I join you?” he asked stiffly.

She didn’t know. He looked too good tonight. She’d forgotten to factor in that part. The ever-present hat was now off his head, dangling at his side. His hair was pushed off his face, making his eyes more prominent and blue. The work shirt had given way to a crisp white button-up, which he wore under a tweed jacket, and his dark jeans curved around his thick thighs before falling over black boots.

Her voice couldn’t seem to form the words
no
or
yes
, so she simply made a spasmodic jerk toward the extra seat and closed her laptop.

“I was getting some work done,” she said. “Is that what you were doing with Bob?”

He gave her a wan smile as he slid into the chair. “Are we back to talking about business already? I was going to say you look nice tonight.”

She straightened her shoulders and stared at her wine. She
did
think she looked nice. The silky top in a gorgeous mustard color made her feel grown-up and sophisticated for once.

“Thank you. So were you talking to Bob about my proposition?”

He took a swig of his scotch. “I was, in fact.”

“And?”

“I’m sorry, Paige. Unless MacGregor doesn’t show up at all tomorrow, I don’t think I’m going to be able to take Dorothy’s deal. But tomorrow is Thursday. So I’ll give you my final word then.”

Paige’s shoulders slumped. This was not what she wanted to hear. But she held out a tiny sliver of hope that MacGregor might not show up. And if he did, maybe she could at least borrow part of the meadow for the time being—just to get the gazebo erected—and they could make sure it was a temporary structure. The orchard she could work on later.

“But I didn’t come over here to talk to you about land,” Adam said, glancing around the room.

The bar was starting to fill up, and Adam seemed to nod at almost everyone.

“What did you come to talk about?” she squeaked. Moving this to a social rendezvous could be dangerous for her.

“Bob wanted me to cover three things.”

“What three things?”

“One is to have a couple of drinks with you.”

She nodded toward the bottle. “I think we can handle that. Thank you for the wine.” She had to make sure she didn’t drink much. She pushed the extra wineglass toward him. “Do you want a glass? Or three?”

“I’m good.” He lifted his scotch. “And the wine’s actually from Bob.”

An odd disappointment fell through her stomach. She gazed at the flickering candle in a leaf-shaped bronze holder and wished she hadn’t just felt that. She wasn’t supposed to let herself get hopeful about gallantry from Adam Mason.

He stared at her for a few beats, then laughed with embarrassment and shook his head. “But I should’ve taken the credit,” he said softly.

Her fingers nervously stroked her wineglass stem. “So what are the other two things?” she managed to ask.

“The second is apologize,” he said.

Apologize?
A new panic seized her. Was he remembering more from the past? Did Bob know more about that summer than he let on?

When Adam didn’t continue, she had to prompt him through dry lips. “Apologize for what?”

“For whatever I did or said that made you sit over here instead of joining us.”

She relaxed back into her seat a little, but her heart continued to thump as she wondered how much she could admit:
Feeling guilty for contributing to the breakup of a family? Feeling guilty for having a mother who sent you away? Being the one to tell on you? Lusting after you anyway? Reverting to a hormonal teenager every time I’m near you?
The list was long and pitiful.

He patiently waited for an answer, staring right into her eyes, but just then a man’s voice bellowed across the room.

“A-
dam
!”

A man Paige recognized as Antonio from earlier came barreling across the wood floor, followed by a crowd of three men and four women.

“Paige, right?” Antonio said, leaning over to shake her hand. “This is Tanya.” He pointed behind him. “And Joe, Little, Tony, Jen, Sherryl, and Kelly.” Paige glanced up to see Kelly, whom she recognized from the front desk. Kelly gave her a quick wave before plopping into a chair nearby.

For the next half hour, the friends and ranch hands danced to never-ending songs on the jukebox. A country band took over around ten, and bottles clinked in several toasts to Antonio and Tanya. Every time the new couple kissed, everyone took a drink—until they started making out on the dance floor, and everyone finished their glasses and ordered another round. Paige didn’t mean to take so many sips of wine, but the kissing went on and on. The group laughed at story after story, explaining details to Paige when necessary so she’d get the jokes, especially when they were about Adam, and next thing she knew she was relaxing and having a great time.

Adam laughed along but kept glancing across the table at her nervously. She enjoyed watching his dimples make brief appearances.

When the music got louder and faster, and the malty scent of spilled beer hung heavier in the air, Little leaned over and asked Paige if she knew how to dance.

“I do all right.”

“Thought so.” He smiled and held out his hand.

Little was anything but, but the man could bust a move. He was all over the floor, his body jiggling in impressive hip-hop moves that made him look like some kind of gelatin dessert. Paige did her best to keep up with him, and, after the second number, when she glanced back at the table, she noticed Adam staring at her. He took a sip of scotch and looked away.

At the end of the night, once they’d toasted Antonio and Tanya about a million times, once they’d all danced with one another, and once their tables were littered with beer bottles, Paige finally pushed herself to her feet and announced that she had to go home.

“I’ll take you,” Joe said. “I’m heading out myself.”

“I’ll take you,” Adam said, pushing his chair back. He glanced briefly at Joe.

Paige turned toward Adam, coming up to his chest. “Are you sober?” she whispered. She wasn’t sure. His hair was mussed, his grin a little cocky. He had a recklessness about him that didn’t seem his normal self.

“Not entirely, but neither is he,” he said, low. “We’ll walk.”

She nodded. She didn’t know if this was a fun Adam to be with, or a very, very dangerous one. Because he looked too sexy. And too easy. And she wasn’t entirely sober, either. And she knew liquor made her Calamity June side come out and made her confess all kinds of things . . .

She watched him grab his hat, set it on his head, and nod toward the door.

And then had the frightening but thrilling thought that this night could go either way.

CHAPTER 11

The night air carried the warm, earthy scent of California sage as Adam tried to slow his pace to let Paige keep up. Crickets chirped along the dusty roadside, filling the silence that grew between them. His boots and her heels crunched together in perfect rhythm. But then he heard her panting.

“Can we slow down?” she asked.

Damn.
He hadn’t realized he was walking too fast for her. He slowed immediately and glanced at her shoes. They made her legs look great—he couldn’t help but notice that—and they made her move in the sexiest way. But they couldn’t be easy to walk in, especially along a dirt road. He wished he could pick her up and carry her.

“So . . . ,” she said on a deep breath, “what was the third thing?”

He frowned. “Third thing?”

“The third thing Bob wanted you to do. He wanted you to have a few drinks with me, apologize, and what was the third thing?”

“Dance with you.”

She looked up at him quickly. When she seemed to collect herself, she shrugged. “But you didn’t.”

He wanted to read her tone as disappointment, but he wasn’t sure. “No, I didn’t.”

Their shoes crunched along the gravel. Adam had to admit
he
was disappointed. It would have been nice to have held her for a moment, even if he didn’t know how to dance. He’d thought about asking her five or six times. But honestly, he didn’t trust himself. With the way she’d made his blood race all night, he thought his second scotch might have had his hands roaming a little too far.

“Your friends are nice,” she said suddenly. “I didn’t know you had an entire community up here. Do you go out with them often?”

“Not as much as I used to. But they’re good people. We grew up together here.”

“Little sure can dance.”

“Yeah, I noticed you were dancing with him a lot.”

He’d had strange flare-ups of jealousy all night. Every time Little or Joe or Tony would look her way, he wanted to jump in and intervene. It was misplaced, he knew, but there it was.

“That’s because someone who was
supposed
to be dancing with me, on Bob’s orders, wasn’t asking.”

He glanced down at her. “I can’t tell if that’s disappointment on your face or relief.”

“Depends.”

“On what?”

“On how well you dance.”

He chuckled. He was glad Bob had forced him to stay and relax with her—he hadn’t smiled as much in five years as he had in the last three hours.

“Actually, it’s probably for the best,” she said.

“Why is that?”

“I probably had too much to drink. And when I get tipsy, I’m always afraid of what I’m going to do or say.”

“This sounds interesting.” He smiled down at her.

“
Blathering
is what it is.”

An enormous dirt clod seemed to come out of nowhere, and she stumbled over it and grasped his forearm. He caught her and helped her right herself.

“Sorry,” she said.

She hung heavily against him, and it felt so good—the warmth of her body, the feel of her hand, the silkiness of her skin and clothes. It had been a long while since he’d walked a woman home. Or even dated anyone seriously, where you noticed things like how good they smelled, or how nice they felt leaning on you. And he was shocked to have those feelings about none other than Paige Grant—the girl with the goth eyeliner who’d maybe saved him from a fire and whose mother had completely altered his young life. But now he was looking at a sexy, grown woman who had the same spitfire energy, and he was enchanted.

She leaned over and carefully slipped off each shoe. “Anyway, what I’d really love is if you’d start answering my questions.”

He smiled at that and tried not to stare too much down her top. “Have I been skipping your questions?”

“You most certainly have.” She shook one pointy toe at him. “You’re skipping the most important ones, actually.”

“What have I skipped?”

“Samantha. Remember? I asked you after you took the splinter out. I wanted to know what happened there.”

She turned and started charging up the hill.

“Are you going to be okay without your shoes on? There’s a lot of glass on the ground here. And snakes. And scorpions.”

“I feel like I’ll fall if I keep them on.”

“Might be better than the glass and snakes and scorpions. You can lean on me.”

She looked around the ground, as if the scorpions would be right there for proof, then shivered and slipped her shoes back on. She didn’t lean on him—just forged forward—but he wished she would.

“So you’re skipping your question again,” she said.

“What was it?”

“Samantha.”

Their feet made soft crunching sounds along the dirt road for another minute before he answered. He hadn’t thought about it much himself. It was what it was: a situation he hadn’t seen coming, but now he must take responsibility. That was most of his life. Thinking about it, or talking about it, didn’t seem necessary. He just kept getting out of bed, putting one foot in front of the other, and doing what must be done.

“There’s not much to tell,” he said. “I got a call from a lawyer in Alabama about six months ago who told me Samantha Sweet had died, and that I had a daughter named Amanda. And about two days later, Amanda showed up on my doorstep with three suitcases.”

They let the crickets fill the silence while they rounded the next corner.

“How did Samantha die?” Paige asked.

“Cancer.”

“She was so young.”

Adam nodded.

“So those are the
events
of what happened,” she said, “but I’m wondering how you and Amanda felt about it, and why Samantha didn’t say anything about a baby all those years before.”

“I don’t have the answers there. Maybe she just didn’t want to be with me.”

The fact that Samantha had chosen to have and raise a baby by herself rather than name him as the father was something he’d been wondering about for the last six months. He must have really let her down. He’d let everyone down that summer, he knew, sometimes for events he hadn’t even been responsible for, like the fires, but Samantha’s silence when she found out she was pregnant hurt the most.

It didn’t matter how he felt, though. As far as he was concerned, he just had to fix everything.

“So, since she had cancer, Samantha probably knew she was dying?”

“I imagine so.”

“And then she told someone you were the father, so someone would take care of Amanda?”

“I suppose.”

“So she
chose
you, in the end?”

He hadn’t thought about it that way. But he imagined that’s what had happened. Her parents had died in a car crash years ago, he’d learned, but she still had some distant relatives in Alabama she could have sent Amanda to. So Paige was right: Samantha had, in the end, decided Adam might be a good father for their daughter, after all. A bolt of confidence rose from somewhere deep, and he watched their shoes cover the dusty ground for the next minute.

“That looks like quite a view.” She pointed.

Through a thicket of pine trees, they could see a hint of twinkle lights far below. She was right—it was called Top of the World, and it had been a popular make-out spot when he’d been a teenager.

She was halfway up the next rock before he knew it.

“Be careful,” he called. He hated how old he sounded. He wished he still had a spirit like hers.

She nimbly scaled the smooth stepping-stone rocks, then suddenly paused. Her shoes seemed to be getting in the way again, and she bent and peeled each one off, her focus still on the top of the rock. He couldn’t take his eyes off her. Until, that was, she tossed the shoes at him. Adam caught each one.

“Come up here with me,” she said.

“How much exactly did you have to drink?”

“C’mon.”

He hesitated. Climbing the Top of the World at midnight with a beautiful girl was something he’d done as a teenager, but it seemed inappropriate right now, while he had so much responsibility and so many things on his mind. But somehow, everything about Paige seemed lively and a little inappropriate. And she made him smile. And she made him forget for a few minutes that he had the weight of the world on his shoulders.

He dropped the shoes and hauled himself up within seconds, following her onto the next ledge, where she’d crept around the corner and now sat with her legs curled beneath her to take in the view.

Below them, toward the east, Nowhere Ranch unfolded—his resort, orchards, airport, and stables, laid out like a patchwork quilt, deep blue-green velvet in the moonlit darkness. To the south, the island’s harbor and Carmelita rolled out, its city lights sparkling by the sea. A few boat lights could be seen in the ocean, as well as the reflection in the night water, but then the black ripples fell off, deep and still, as if they were at the end of the earth. Way out along the horizon, across twenty-six miles of sea, the lights of LA shimmered as if it were light-years away.

“I haven’t done this in a long time,” he said, settling beside her.

The smile she sent his way felt like his night’s reward.

“You used to come here?” she asked.

“All the time.”

“What’s it called?”

“Top of the World.”

“That’s right!” She let out a breath of relief. “I couldn’t remember. I vaguely recall it, but I don’t think Ginger would let us come out this far. What did you do up here?”

“Make out.” He threw her a grin.

Her laughter bubbled into the night. “I’ll bet. How many girls did you bring up here?”

“Ah. A gentleman never brings more than one girl at a time.”

She laughed.

He’d forgotten how good it felt to laugh with a woman—someone who could make you forget the things you wanted to forget and remember the things you wanted to remember. Someone who could remind you how beautiful city lights were from a mountaintop. Someone who could make your heart hammer a little, and confuse you about whether it was due to an uphill climb or to the fact that she looked stunning in the moonlight.

“Did you ever bring Samantha up here?” she asked, twisting her body toward him.

“Probably.”

“I was always jealous of her.”

He lifted his eyebrows.

“I’d see you whisk away with her, like from the campfire or something, and I’d always get jealous. I always wondered what you were doing.”

“Well, you were probably a little young to be wondering what we were doing.”

She laughed. “Maybe. You know, she might need to hear you talk about her mom.”

“What?”

“Does she have any idea how you felt about Samantha?”

“Are we talking about Amanda now?”

“Yeah, sorry. That’s another thing I do when I’ve had too much to drink—I change the subject a lot.”

“I’ll try to keep up.”

“Try harder, buddy. So does Amanda have any idea how you felt about Samantha?”

“No, I wouldn’t imagine . . . I barely remember myself.”

“You don’t remember how you felt about her?”

“Not really.”

She looked thoughtful about that for a second, then gazed back over the view. “Well, make something up. Kids need to know they’re wanted and loved, and if Amanda knows you didn’t even know she existed, she probably assumes you don’t want or love her. But if she learns that you sincerely cared about her mom, she might feel there could be some feeling that will trickle down to her. It’s the same thing as—
ahh! Crap!
What was that?”

She leaped up and started batting her hands across her hair.

He jumped up with her. “What’s wrong?”

“Was that a—
crap
!” She ducked again, then grabbed his arm and tugged him in the other direction. “Are there
bats
out here?”

“Oh. Yeah. I think there’s a cave up there on that next—”

But she’d yanked him toward her and was leaping off the rock slab as the bats swooped in their direction.

“Paige, wait! Be careful.”

She whisked herself down two more ledges in incredibly impressive moves, then pulled him into a tight crevice so they could hide until the bats passed by. She pressed her back against a rock and glanced around the ledge above their heads. “Are they still coming out?”

He poked his head around the formation. Sure enough, in the distance, about seventy of them continued their trajectory to the south. “I think the coast is clear.”

“Bats seek me out.”

“What?”

“I’m attractive to them.”

He stepped back into the crevice with her and smiled. “Well, I can see you being attractive to a variety of species, but
bats
?”

“Birds, too. Hummingbirds especially. And some insects.”

He lifted his eyebrow.

“They find me and dive-bomb my hair. It happens all the time. I think I’m cursed.”

“Cursed?”

“Bad things follow me around. Calamities, if you will. Birds fall out of the sky and land on my head, bats dive-bomb me, I fall out of screens, I get myself stuck in window sills and laundry chutes—that kind of thing.”

“Wait. There’s a laundry-chute story?”

“I’m serious. It’s a curse.”

“Maybe it’s a blessing.”

She rolled her eyes. “How is being dive-bombed by bats and falling out of screens a blessing?”

“Maybe it gives you a life filled with fun and adventure, and maybe people like being around you.”

She looked up at him in the sweetest way, her eyes filled with thanks and vulnerability. She stared out at the empty night for a minute and then gave him another once-over. Inexplicably her hand reached for his shirt, and she pulled him toward her, stumbling just a little. She leaned in, slightly, and tilted her chin toward him.

Did she want him to kiss her? He wanted to. He’d wanted to have his hands on her all night. He moved his arms toward her shoulders but then stopped himself.

She smiled up at him. “You want to kiss me, don’t you?”

He grinned and glanced away. “I do, yes.”

“Why aren’t you?”

He sighed. “Because you’ve told me twice now you’ve had too much to drink, and it’s an asshole move when a guy already knows that.”

She stepped closer toward him and then stumbled on a crack in the rock and fell into his arms.
Damn, she has soft skin.
This time he didn’t take his hands away.