Love on Lavender Island (A Lavender Island Novel Book 2) (16 page)

Their coffee signaled its preparedness, and Paige poured the two cups. Amanda loaded hers with creamer and sugar and then passed each of the add-ons to Paige, who followed with nearly the same ratio.

“So has Adam told you about my mom?” Amanda’s voice dropped, the maturing teenager gone now and replaced with a young girl filled with uncertainty.

“Yes.” Paige sipped her coffee. “I knew your mom, in fact.”

“You did?”

Here she went. She could do this. “Yes, she was a counselor at the camp down by the harbor, and I was one of the campers.”

Amanda twisted toward her, mug in her hands. She looked very old and very young at the same time, cocking her head and staring at Paige.

“Actually, I guess I was younger than you,” Paige went on. “I was thirteen. Your mom was about seventeen, and she led a lot of the girls’ groups I was in. She was very pretty.”

A tiny smile moved its way across Amanda’s face.

“You look just like her,” Paige added. “She was a good counselor. We all liked her. She had a great voice, and I remember she taught us some fun campfire songs. She also taught us how to French-braid hair.”

Amanda’s smile was full now. “What else?”

“Let’s see . . . I remember her mostly with your dad. He was nuts about her. He stared at her all the time when we were sitting around the campfire, making lovebird eyes.”

Amanda laughed a little—a combination of a little girl’s giggle and a teenager’s quest for subtlety and reserve. “Do you remember anything else?”

Paige’s mind went straight to the fire. And to Samantha’s parents—Amanda’s grandparents, now that she thought about it—coming to the island to drag her away. And to Samantha and Adam’s fight to stay. And to their constant escapes to the boathouse. And to all the drama that ensued.

But she couldn’t tell Amanda those memories, so she took another sip to buy time and finally remembered something else. “She taught me how to make friendship bracelets.”

Amanda laughed and stared into her coffee. “So you’re not Adam’s girlfriend, then?”

Paige blinked at the abrupt shift in subject. She didn’t have a lot of experience talking to teenagers these days, and she wondered if she’d have to keep on her toes for these conversations. She also noted that Amanda never called him her dad. “No, I’m not his girlfriend.”

“Then he’s not the one who made you cry last night?”

Paige’s cup halted midair.

“Tea bags will help that swelling go down.” Amanda brushed sugar granules off the countertop. “I read that in
Seventeen
magazine.”

“Thank you. I was thinking cucumbers.”

“Tea bags are better.”

Paige smiled.

“So I’m glad it wasn’t Adam. Because I’d have to get mad at him. And maybe hide his Tabasco. Guys shouldn’t make girls cry.”

“Thank you, Amanda. That’s sweet of you. I was just, um, sad and frustrated because of the house falling apart.”

“Oh yeah. That sounded bad last night. I saw the emergency trucks.”

“I’ll bounce back.” Paige lifted her chin.

She could do this. She always did.

And what kind words from Amanda.

“Hey, can you take me down to the harbor today?” Amanda asked.

Paige tried to keep up with the new change in topic and backpedaled with her brain.
Damn.
She should have asked Adam if there were any rules for Amanda. Was she being played right now?

“Does your dad let you go down there?”

“Yeah, he just won’t let me drive.”

“Well, that’s smart.”

“He said you were a grown woman, though, and you could do whatever you wanted, including drive the golf cart down the hill too fast even though you’re not supposed to.”

Paige lifted an eyebrow. “He said that?”

Amanda nodded.

A warm, tingly feeling slid through her veins that she was being discussed by Adam when she wasn’t there. Although he was obviously extolling her more rebellious virtues. But still.

“Well, I think I can take you to the harbor today if you want. What time do you need to be there?”

“Three o’clock.”

Paige nodded. “Okay. I have some work to do at Gram’s most of the day, but I’ll come back to get you this afternoon.”

“Great.” Amanda smiled and bounced off to her room.

Paige hoped this wasn’t a terrible decision. She didn’t know how to talk to teenagers, or fulfill requests, or avoid being played. She especially didn’t want to make a bad decision in her brief stint of watching Amanda that would make life harder for Adam when he returned. And, truth be told, she wanted to impress him: he’d asked for a favor, and she wanted to come through. Especially after he was doing her such a huge favor with the meadow.

That’s all this was.

He was doing her a favor, and she was doing him one.

As friends.

With Adam Mason.

Who would have ever thought?

CHAPTER 15

For the next few days, Paige and Amanda developed their routine. They’d start every morning with their shared coffee; Paige would do her hatha yoga on the front porch; Paige would head over to Gram’s to oversee the damage repair and do what she could without getting in the way; they’d meet again to drive down to the harbor at three; Paige would pick her up at five; and then Paige would deliver Amanda for dinner at Bob and Gert’s. Paige thought she was doing a pretty good job of her end of the bargain.

“Would you like to stay, too, dear?” Gert would ask each evening as she popped her head out the door and her gold-colored chignon shimmered.

Paige shook her head each time. Gert seemed like a lovely woman, but Paige didn’t want to get too invested with Adam’s friends and family, or too attached to the people here. “No, thank you—work to do,” she’d say. Then she’d roll her cart back down the steep mountainside driveway.

The place Amanda had wanted to go at the harbor every day, it turned out, was the Friends of the Sea Lion rescue center, where Paige’s hopefully-soon-to-be-brother-in-law Elliott worked.

Afraid Elliott or someone would recognize her, she shoved her sunglasses on tighter as she accelerated by, pulled down the borrowed cowboy hat, then parked a little up the road, waving to Amanda and ducking away.

During one of their morning coffee klatches, Amanda admitted she was going to the sea-lion center because of Garrett.

“Garrett Stone?” Paige had met Garrett several times during her stints helping at the center during their heavy-intake days.

Amanda nodded and blushed.

“He’s cute, Amanda! And very sweet. How did you meet him?”

“His brothers work here on the ranch, and he came to visit them a few times.”

“Who are his brothers?”

“Gabe and Gordon.”

“Ah, of course.” Now that Paige thought about it, the brothers all did look alike. It made sense now.

Amanda smiled, her spoon making tinkling noises against her mug. “But don’t tell Adam.”

“Why not?”

“He looks at Garrett funny when he’s up here talking to me.”

“I’m sure he’s just being a protective dad.”

“Well, I don’t know what that means, but don’t say anything, okay?”

Paige didn’t really know what that meant, either. She’d never had her dad in her life—he’d left when she was a preschooler—so she didn’t know what it would be like to have a father who wanted to protect you and had only your best interests at heart. At first she was sad that Amanda hadn’t known that, either, but then it occurred to her: Amanda was getting a second chance. A wave of happiness swept over her for both the teenager and her dad.

“I think you’d be okay to tell him, but I won’t say anything until you’re ready,” Paige said.

Amanda’s shoulders relaxed on a sigh.

Paige just hoped again she was doing the right thing. She didn’t want to ruin anyone’s second chances.

On the day Adam was due to return, Paige puttered back over the hill from dropping Amanda off at Bob and Gert’s and then pulled her cart around the back of Adam’s ranch.

She would go in and pack, then quickly escape before Adam came home.

Gram’s kitchen had been well repaired. The flooding was cleared up, the walls were being dried, and the new beams were going in. She probably could have gone home the night before, but she’d told Adam she’d stay the whole time with Amanda. Also, she sensed that Amanda liked company in such a sprawling house.

But, quite frankly, Paige didn’t want to be around when Adam got back.

She’d missed him. Just remembering how sweet he’d been the night before he left, the way his voice rumbled in her belly, the secure presence of his forearms so close to her SpongeBob pajamas, the heat from his body, and the way he smelled—that whittled-wood-and-sandalwood smell that infused his house—made her long for him even more.

She wasn’t thinking of him as a business partner.

Or as a friend doing favors.

She was a mess.

And being too near him would be flat-out dangerous.

The back door opened just as she finished throwing the last of her things into her backpack. Adam’s heavy footsteps fell across the hall’s wooden floor. Her pulse started to race.

“Amanda?” he called. “Paige?”

Her heart lifted to hear her name on his lips. Maybe because he remembered she might be there. But this was her falling for him again. She packed faster.

“I’m here.”

She threw the last of her things into her bag and snatched up the cowboy hat she’d been borrowing to go incognito to town. As she swung toward the hall to rehang it, Adam materialized in her doorway.

He leaned in the doorjamb, a tired frown chiseled on his face. Blond stubble dotted his jaw—clearly a few days of riding behind him—and his eyes had a sleepy alertness that might seem paradoxical on anyone else but looked just right for a wrangler. He wore his riding clothes, with a thin sheen of dust on the thighs of his jeans. He looked tired and rugged and strong and sexy, and she wanted to climb him like a mountain right now.

“Where’s Amanda?” he asked, breaking the spell.

“She’s, uh . . .” Her voice came out in an embarrassing squeak. She cleared her throat and tried again. “At, um, Bob and Gert’s. For dinner.”

She whirled away and grabbed at a few items of clothing she’d left on a chair. Mostly she didn’t want him to see her blush. Her wayward thoughts were suddenly getting more and more wayward.

“When will she be home?” he asked from behind her.

“She’s been getting home about nine.” She found a bra she’d flung onto the floor and a pair of underwear, and she wrestled with her backpack zipper to shove them in. “I think they watch a movie with her after dinner.”

She told herself to simply ignore his rugged look and all that brawny sexiness. Maybe she could bolt for the door without looking up at him.

“So, um . . . thanks for letting me stay.” She made a move, but he still stood in the doorway.

“Paige.”

Ah, that deep voice. She was a goner. She knew she shouldn’t, but she looked up at him.

“I’d like it if you would stay,” he said.

Once again, he’d rendered her speechless. He’d probably been the only man able to do that ever in her life—back when she was thirteen, and now that she was almost thirty. She tried to make sure she didn’t have a foolish, gaga look on her face. She wasn’t drooling, was she?

He seemed to misread her silence as a refusal.

“I know I look like crap,” he said. “And I probably smell worse. But if you could cool your heels for five minutes while I take a shower, I’ll make a better entrance and say thank you properly, and maybe you’ll stay for a quick dinner.”

Paige didn’t even know what the hell “thanking her properly” meant, but it sounded amazing.

“Um . . . okay.” She was so damned easy.

She tried to ignore the dimples that appeared on his face as he nodded once and ambled back toward his room.

She might be in trouble.

Adam scrubbed the dust and dirt off his body, then stood in the shower for a minute, letting the water sluice over his head and contemplating where he might want to go with this.

Or where he
should
go.

That made more sense.

Where he
wanted
to go was easy—he wanted Paige. Desperately. Under him, on top of him, didn’t matter. He wanted her in any way he could have her.

Walking up to the house, seeing Denny run toward him, knowing Amanda might be inside, and knowing Paige would be there, too, had given him the strangest sensation he’d ever experienced. As if he could imagine all of them greeting him like that, forever. But as soon as he had the thought, he dismissed it, focusing on petting Denny outside instead. Because Amanda and Denny were a given. But Paige was a strange addition to the equation. Because
forever
and
women
—even beautiful, vivacious women whom he’d been thinking about for days on the trail—were not words Adam thought of in the same sentence.

But he had to admit, he’d been thinking about her for a bizarre amount of time. Partly because MacGregor kept bringing her up, asking when Adam might start to put some pressure on her to sell, suggesting that he might do so by hinting at a promise of a relationship. “Women don’t go for simple sex like we do,” MacGregor had said, as a disgusting trail of spittle and barbecue sauce ran down the side of his face. “But if you promise them a future—a house, a baby, a dog—they’ll roll over for anything you want. Try that, maybe.”

Adam had clenched his fists, resisting the urge to pummel the smirk off MacGregor’s face. He’d told himself he just had to listen to this crap for a few more days. Once they were in escrow, he could hate MacGregor all he wanted. And then all he’d have to worry about was keeping Paige off MacGregor’s radar: Who knew what slimy tactics he’d pull with her, or if he’d pressure her to sell to him?

Over the few days, and at every mention of her name by MacGregor, Adam had ground his teeth.

She was too sweet. And vulnerable. And tough. All at the same time. She was fighting tooth and nail to fix that place. But what he admired even more was that she kept lifting herself up when things were going wrong. She came off as funny and confident most of the time, but seeing that vulnerable side of her brought out every fixer instinct he’d had. He wanted to fix her house, fix her sisters, fix any asshole boyfriends she’d had in her past, fix MacGregor’s smirk, and make life easier for her.

Then came the lascivious thoughts. Which he’d planned to avoid. It wasn’t lost on him that he’d agreed to lend her land as soon as he’d seen her cry. That made him more like his father than he cared to admit—blurring the line between business and beauty, responding to a woman who could make you feel things and do things that you might not do if you were in your right mind. The only difference was that George Mason was further mired by having sex with his women, including Ginger. And Adam wasn’t there yet. And he didn’t intend to go there. It would just complicate everything.

So to walk in and see Paige looking fresh and strong and happy to see him, filling him with hope and that strange warmth he hadn’t recognized, had simply sent him into a spiral of confusion.

Then finding out that Amanda was gone, which gave him a few hours alone with Paige, had suddenly put his libido into overdrive. And seeing Paige’s bras and panties on the floor hadn’t helped. Thank God she moved that lace out of his line of vision while he tried to cast his eyes away. Her cartoon pajamas the other night were cute, but that lace would be his undoing. He had to stop imagining what she wore to bed, although he’d come up with an entire wardrobe over the last four days. Which, in his mind, he’d stripped off every night.

Damn.

He was going to have to control himself.

He was not a slimeball like MacGregor, with barbecue sauce and spittle drooling out of his mouth. He was not a pushover like his father, able to be manipulated because he couldn’t control himself.

Plus, he
liked
Paige.

And he should protect her, as Helen would expect.

And she’d been through a lot. She needed someone to help her and be on her side.

So he was going to be a gentleman. He would make her dinner, thank her like a human being, and then help her stay or go—whatever she felt more comfortable with, given the state of Helen’s house.

He turned the shower off and told himself to behave.

And stop thinking about what she wore to bed.

And how he’d take it off her.

God help him.