Love on Lavender Island (A Lavender Island Novel Book 2) (12 page)

“That’s very noble of you. But it’s probably smart on both our parts to leave now.” Her delicious-looking bottom lip pouted, and her voice was tinged with a strange awareness that sounded too lucid for the state she claimed to be in. “Are the bats gone?”

He leaned out. “They are.”

She nudged him toward the opening of the crevice. “Let’s get back.”

His chest fell from disappointment, but he knew it had been the right thing to do. He made sure she got down safely, then jumped down beside her as she tugged on her shoes.

“We can sing songs on the way back,” she said, pulling on the left one.

“Why would we sing songs?”

“Because that way neither of us will think about how stupid we were back there.”

He wasn’t sure exactly what she meant by that—whether it was stupid of her to almost be kissed or stupid of him to have missed his chance—but he nodded and followed her back to the dirt road, shoving his hands into his pockets.

And when she launched into a wailing chorus of “Goodnight, Irene” as soon as they started down the road, he burst out laughing.

Damn. This girl was cute.

CHAPTER 12

The dude group arrived at eight the next morning. Through sleepy eyes and a mild hangover, Paige watched them assemble in the meadow. She hoped MacGregor wouldn’t show. But she’d told Adam she’d be well out of the way by the time anyone arrived, so she scrambled out of bed to make sure she had her things packed and rushed outside to pile everything into the golf cart. She’d have to practice her asanas later.

She also wanted to clear out before she had to face Adam again.

Her eyebrows throbbed. But the worst part was remembering how much she’d flirted with him, and how much she’d revealed, and how she’d stumbled into him several times. And then . . . oh God . . . having the bats dive-bomb them, and then
almost kissing him
in the crevice. And then . . . did she
sing
all the way home?

She groaned.

This was not being smart. This was not proving to him how capable she was.

This was being foolish.

This was being weak.

This was being a disaster.

As she scurried to find Click and make her getaway, the dudes hauled large duffel bags toward their rooms, dressed in full Western gear—shiny boots, bright flannel shirts, and spotless ten-gallon hats. There were eight of them, of varying ages from thirty to sixty. Adam brought up the rear, in his more faded, natural colors, deep in conversation with an older gentleman who Paige thought might be MacGregor. Her shoulders fell.

She and her mom had never met MacGregor in person, but she was pretty sure—based on how much attention Adam was giving him—that was him. He’d shown up. Which didn’t bode well for her.

She tore her eyes away from the man who was ruining her plans and . . . well . . . from the
other
man who was ruining her plans. Neither had seemed to spot her. This would be a good chance to make her escape.

“Mornin’, miss,” said one of the freshly minted cowboys leading the pack.

Paige smiled and quickly resumed her packing. She just wanted to get out of there.

“Good morning from me, too,” said another.

Paige turned and gave another brief nod. She had the sense a bunch of locusts were descending.

“Can we help you with anything?” another youngish one said. Without waiting for an answer, he strode over, dropped his duffel bag, and reached for her sleeping bag.

“I’m fine, thank you.” She took the bag back.

“Are you going to be part of our riding group?”

“No. I’m just—”

“Rooms are straight ahead.” Adam had come out of nowhere and lifted the duffel bag of the urban cowboy and shoved it a little roughly at his chest. He pointed in the right direction.

The cowboy took off with his adopted new amble.

“Mornin’, Paige,” Adam mumbled, still watching the cowboy’s retreat.

Her pulse kicked into a silly rhythm at his looming nearness again, his handsome face frowning into the morning sky, his hair brushed back under his hat. She glanced at the chest and arms she’d practically thrown herself into last night and then had to turn away slightly so he wouldn’t see her blush. Should she say something about the almost-kiss? Should she apologize? Should she—

“And who’s this?” came an older man’s voice behind them.

She and Adam both tore their gazes away from each other to turn toward the voice.

“Mr. MacGregor, this is Paige Grant,” he said. “Paige, Dave MacGregor. You two might know each other—Dave, Paige and her mom, Ginger, are the owners of Helen Grant’s property across the way.”

Adam sounded so pulled together. She reached up and smoothed her hair down.

“Ah, yes, the Grants.” MacGregor reached for her hand. “Well, aren’t you pretty?”

Paige shook back. She didn’t know what being pretty had to do with anything, so she ignored that.

Adam turned and suddenly seemed to glare at MacGregor, or maybe just into the sun. He directed the man toward the rooms. “That way.”

MacGregor stared at Paige for another few seconds, then nodded to them both and loped away.

Adam stayed planted, hands on his hips, watching MacGregor leave. “How’re you doing? I wasn’t sure how your head would feel.”

“I’m good,” Paige lied.

She was a little hungover, but she didn’t want to focus on how irresponsible that had probably been. Besides, the pain medication she took was doing its job. Damage controlled. Her greater worry was what Adam might think of her flirting last night.

“I’m, um, sorry about last night,” she blurted. “Especially if I said or did anything inappropriate.”

He finally looked at her. His mouth quirked up at the side. “Inappropriate?”

“The, um . . . flirting. Or trying to get you to kiss me.” She scrunched her face up. It sounded so ridiculous. Like some college coed, not an almost-thirty-year-old businesswoman. “I hope we can forget that ever happened and go back to business.” She flapped her hand around.

As Adam stared off toward the horizon, the sun lit the side of his face. “If that’s what you want,” he said.

“Yes.” She breathed the word more than said it. “Yes. Please. Let’s just forget that even happened. I see MacGregor showed up, after all.”

He glanced once more at Paige with a polite nod. “He has.”

“I hope we can still come to an agreement for the wedding? Maybe we can still work something out? I was thinking maybe the orchard—”

“Paige.”

She looked up at him. His amusement had slid off his face, replaced now by his familiar scowl.

“Let me meet with him first.”

She nodded.

“The electricity should be back on at your place. Pedro said it would be ready today.”

Paige nodded again and watched Adam amble away. She threw her sleeping bag into the back of the cart and took off for her new home.

She needed to keep this situation under control.

Adam had a busy day with the dudes. The first day was usually allowing them to get settled, giving them a tour of the property, and introducing them to the horses. They were at the stables now, getting their first lessons from Joseph, who did the horse-trail tours when he wasn’t bartending at Rosa’s.

It was great to have something to do. It kept his mind off Paige. He’d had a lot of fun with her last night—it was the first night in a long time he’d just relaxed and enjoyed himself, and he’d thought they were even making a connection—but her abrupt 180 this morning reminded him that she was just doing business here. Much like Ginger.

Ginger had started a relationship with his father that summer and had eventually gotten him to fall in love with her. But his father had failed to separate business from pleasure and had started signing over land to her by leading with his heart. Or other body parts. Adam still wasn’t sure. Regardless, Ginger had acquired all the land south of their house and one hundred feet of meadow before George even knew what hit him.

Adam had to be smart. And not make the same mistakes.

He liked Paige a lot, especially the way she was last night—so gorgeous and open. But there was no way he was going to be an idiot about this. She was here to do business. And he knew now that she saw last night as a mistake. Thank God he hadn’t actually kissed her.

He plodded into the kitchen after finishing up in the stables and found Amanda taking up two dining chairs, sitting in one and leaning over the other with a nail-polish brush poised over her toes.

“Hey, you wanted to go down to the harbor today, right?” he asked.

“No.”

“Yes, you did. That’s what you said yesterday. I can take you now.”

“I don’t want to go anymore.”

He set his bridle down on the counter and frowned at her. “Why not? What happened?”

“It was a onetime thing.”

He leafed through the mail. “I’m sorry. What was the onetime thing?”

“Nothing.”

He frowned. It was so damned hard to talk to her. She seemed to look at him with nothing but disdain, if she looked at him at all. But then his thoughts drifted to what Paige had said last night: maybe Amanda just wanted to know how he felt about her mom. He took a long look at her.

“Your mom used to paint her nails like that when she was about your age,” he said.

Amanda’s head snapped up. She stared at him for about ten seconds, which was ten seconds longer than usual. “She did?”

Encouraged, he went on. “Yeah, she had long fingernails, also, and I remember she used to have a different color on every day. Or at least it seemed that way to me.”

It was a weird thing to remember about Samantha, but there it was. He hadn’t thought about her in years, and this was a strange place to start, but that was definitely a memory. Pink, black, blue, silver, white—she had different colors all the time. He remembered staring at her toes when they’d sit in beach chairs and wriggle their feet in the sand. She had toe rings, too. But since he’d found Samantha’s toe rings rather sexy, he decided not to mention that part to Amanda.

“Did you like my mom’s fingernails?” Amanda put the lid on her polish and turned more toward him.

He shrugged. “Well, I was an eighteen-year-old boy, so I liked everything about your mom.”

Amanda smiled.

He did a double take and couldn’t help but stare as she toyed with the bottle of polish. She’d never smiled at anything he’d said before. And here she was, smiling for a good two seconds.

“What else did you like about her?” Amanda asked.

Damn.
His blood started racing with something that felt like joy. Amanda was talking to him. In a sweet, smile-in-her-voice way. Paige was right. She was probably craving information about her mom, and maybe just needed to know that he’d cared for her. Why hadn’t he thought of this?

He wandered toward the fridge and pulled out some leftover apple fritters, remembering that Amanda had gobbled one up when Gert brought them over the other night. He popped two of them into the microwave.

“I liked a lot of things about her,” he said to buy himself some time. He had to think. What could he remember about Samantha? “She was beautiful, of course,” he said, hitting the buttons.

“What did she look like then?” Amanda asked.

“Kind of like you, really. She had long hair like yours. She had blue eyes like yours. She always wore sandals, like you do. Except when we were on the horses. Then she had these brown boots with flowers all over them.” He chuckled. He hadn’t thought about that in years, either, but there it was. The other kids had made fun of her flowery cowboy boots, but he’d thought they were pretty. Growing up with just his dad and brother and a bunch of burly ranch hands, he’d found everything that was feminine about girls fascinating.

The microwave pinged. He found a towel to grab the hot plate with and walked the fritters over to the kitchen table.

Amanda was fidgeting with her polish bottle. “How did you two meet?”

He set the plate between them and pulled up a chair. He had to rack his brain for that one. He didn’t dare make something up: What if Samantha had already told her the story, and Amanda was testing him?

He slid the plate over to buy some time. “Have one.”

“I’ll have half,” she said, breaking one in two.

He couldn’t believe she was finally eating something with him.

“So how did you meet?” she asked again around a big bite of pastry.

He strained for some memory. A vague image came to him, of Samantha sitting across from him at a campfire. “We were both counselors here on the island one summer. I had been doing the camp for a couple of years, but one summer she came from the mainland and joined the staff. I remember seeing her across the campfire and feeling like a lightning bolt hit me.”

Amanda smiled at that.

Paige was absolutely right. Amanda just needed to know that he had cared for her mom and, by extension, that he now cared for her. He reached back for any memory he could conjure. Unfortunately, most of what came up was randy eighteen-year-old boy stuff. But he tried to think of something G-rated he could share.

“She was good on horseback,” he suddenly remembered.

“Really?” Amanda crinkled her nose. “I can’t imagine my mom riding a horse.”

“Yeah, we rode almost every day.”

“Seriously?”

Adam nodded. “I was the riding instructor, so I think she used to pretend she needed lessons so I’d take her out every day.”

Amanda laughed.

“She liked this horse we had named Bartlett.” He couldn’t help but smile at that. He’d loved Bartlett, too. “He was a beautiful brown-and-white Appaloosa. She was great with him. She liked the trails that went along Heart’s Cove.”

“Really?” Amanda picked at her fritter.

“Want me to take you out there sometime? You could ride the same trails she loved.”

“I don’t know how to ride.”

“I’ll teach you. I’m a pretty good instructor.” He winked at her.

She looked away, but she didn’t say no.

She finished her half of the fritter and started playing with the nail-polish bottle again. “Did my mom have other friends here?”

“She had lots of friends.”

“Anyone who’s still here?”

“I’ll think about it. I have to remember who was here back then.”

She nodded, then scooted abruptly from the table.