Love on Lavender Island (A Lavender Island Novel Book 2) (17 page)

Paige wished she had something nice for Adam to come home to—maybe some kind of food he liked—but she hadn’t planned to be here when he returned. While he was showering, she scoured the fridge for leftovers, then spotted the strata Amanda had made the other morning. She pulled it out of the fridge, heated it up, threw together some lettuce and spinach leaves in a salad, and set everything on the table.

“What’s this?” he asked emerging from the bedroom hallway in clean jeans and bare feet, buttoning up his shirt.

“Dinner.”

“You cooked dinner for me?”

He looked so stunned and—if she wasn’t mistaken—touched that she almost wanted to lie and say yes. But she couldn’t.

“Um . . . no. I didn’t cook it. Amanda did. She pulls together whatever you have in the house. This was bread, ham, and eggs—I guess from your limited repertoire of sandwiches and eggs. But either way, it’s here for you. You look exhausted.”

“Amanda made this?”

“Yeah. Did you know she could make a strata?”

“Not at all.” Still looking baffled, he made his way to the table, then rubbed his hand over his jaw. “So all this time, she’s known how to cook, but she’s been suffering through my attempts?”

“Maybe she didn’t want to hurt your feelings.” Paige smiled. “Here, have a seat.” She joined him at the table. “Did MacGregor have a good time?”

“I think he did.”

“Did he make any decisions?”

“Unfortunately, he still won’t commit to a sale. I think he’s playing games with me. Can you be patient for a while longer?”

Paige shrugged. “I’m not going anywhere.”

He motioned with his fork to an empty plate. “You’re going to join me and eat, too, right?”

“I wasn’t going to stay. I’ll just grab something later at—”

“Paige, really. Share this with me.”

She sighed. Sitting here with Adam, acting as if they were actually dating, or at least friends, might be painful or thrilling—she wasn’t sure which. She didn’t want to get hurt by pining after him again. She didn’t want to get close, or fall head over heels in a crush and have him not return any sentiment whatsoever. But she was older now. Maybe she could handle it. She let him cut her a slice.

“So what did you and Amanda talk about?” he asked.

“I got a chance to talk to her about her mom—any good things I remembered. And—oh! Was it okay that I took her down to the harbor every day? She wanted to go. And was it okay I let her drink coffee?”

He smiled. “Coffee was okay. I think she’s been sneaking mine. Where was she going in the harbor? She’d asked me about that, too.”

“To the Friends of the Sea Lion center. I think she was volunteering.”

“Really?”

Paige wanted to tell him about Garrett, but she didn’t want to break Amanda’s confidence. Amanda had so few people here she knew or could trust that Paige didn’t want to ruin that. Instead, she stabbed at her salad so her face wouldn’t give anything away.

“Thank you again for the use of the meadow,” she said. “I ordered the gazebo. It should be here in a day or so.”

Adam looked away and nodded silently.

“I hope you think I did a good job here in return,” she added nervously. “Amanda was great.”

Adam cut another piece of strata with his fork. “It was nice having you here when I came home.”

He kept his eyes on his plate.

Paige’s fork halted in midair. She’d always dreamed of hearing words like that from Adam Mason. Said low, just like that. In this dim lighting, just like that. Eating dinner with him, just like that. And actually hearing them was as wonderful as she’d ever imagined. A warmth curled down like smoke into her stomach. But she didn’t quite know what to do with the information. And she was now doubting she’d even heard him correctly. She put her fork down and wondered how she might get him to repeat that.

“So what movies do you think Bob and Gert had Amanda watching?” he asked. “Did she tell you?”

“Yes!” Paige felt a rush of relief at the change of topic. “They started her on the classics—
Casablanca
,
North by Northwest
,
The Maltese Falcon
, and
Roman Holiday
.”

Adam smiled. “That sounds like Bob’s lineup. He’s a big Humphrey Bogart and Gregory Peck fan. Did she like them?”

“She did. She said she loved Audrey Hepburn, especially, and that Bob had promised to rent
Breakfast at Tiffany’s
next.”

“Ah. Holly Golightly.”

“I told her she needed to see
Last Road to Nowhere
, too, since this very house is in the movie. She seemed pretty impressed.”

“Impressed?”

Paige nodded.

“We’ll have to do that, then. I think I have it here somewhere.”

“You do? I haven’t seen it in ages.”

He motioned toward another room. “It’s probably a VHS. We’d have to dig up my dad’s old VHS player.”

“We could do that!”

He glanced up, and she realized she wasn’t quite sure she was included in “we.” But then he looked over his shoulder toward the other room. “Do you want to look?”

“Sure.”

He scooted his chair out and wiped his mouth, then led her to the next room. If the kitchen seemed to serve as a bit of a community room for the resort workers, this room, behind it, through a closed door, looked as though it might have been intended as a private living room for the family. However, white sheets were thrown over the furniture, and there were no lamps or light fixtures—the room was entirely cast in darkness, as if family living was no longer practiced here.

Adam lifted a few sheets to look in some bookcases and cabinets, then walked back toward her.

“What is that room?”

“The living room. We closed it up when my mom died.”

“It’s looked like that since you were
ten
?”

He shrugged. “I got used to it. It’s always been that way.”

“It might freak Amanda out a little.”

He frowned at the room as if he were seeing it for the first time and nodded. “I never thought about that. I should fix it. Anyway, I guess we moved the VHS tapes. Maybe they’re in my room.”

She followed him down the hallway, past the guest room where she’d stayed, past the room where Amanda stayed, and into a huge room that looked as if it had been added on in the back. She glanced around, then stepped inside while he barreled toward a large walk-in closet in the back. The room was simple and clean and natural, just like him. Tan walls mimicked the color of summer California hills, while a denim comforter echoed the color of the sky. The bed held a cluster of plain white pillows. The furniture was a little mismatched, but neat and clean, and there were several prints hanging on the walls: images of airplanes and aerial views. An enormous old propeller hung from the wall nearest the light switch, the red paint rusted and chipped as if it was a historical piece. There were no personal photos anywhere—no family photos, no pictures of a day at the county fair, no nieces or nephews, no pictures of Adam with his dad or brother. A swift, unbearable ache hit Paige, suddenly and brutally, when she remembered again that Adam had grown up without a mother. Maybe, for him, life and childhood had simply been something to get through, not something to remember with photographs.

“Not here, either,” he said, emerging from the closet. “There’s one more place, but I’ll have to check later.”

She wanted to see this movie with him. The idea of curling up with him on a couch seemed wonderfully appealing. It felt like something that might solidify their friendship. “Where might it be? I’ll help look.”

“I’m thinking we might have moved that old stuff out to the hangar, but you don’t want to go out there. It’s become an old storage shack with a bunch of shi . . . llings in it.”

“Shillings?”

He smiled. “I’m trying to stop cussing. Around Amanda. And now you. Growing up here with my dad and brother and a bunch of ranch hands, I’ve developed quite a mouth, but I’m trying to be more civilized. Anyway, the hangar’s got a bunch of
stuff
in it. But I’ll look later myself, maybe this weekend. I’m looking for something else out there anyway. In fact, I might have seen the box of movies.”

“I can help.” As soon as she said it, she nearly regretted it. She knew that hangar. She’d been there with him before. It had been the place that had sealed her heartbreak. He obviously didn’t remember, and she didn’t need him to.

But maybe it looked different now. “I don’t have anything to do tonight,” she said tentatively. “Let’s look.”

“Are you sure?”

He didn’t look so certain himself, though probably for different reasons.

“Absolutely.” And she led the way with a confidence she wasn’t sure she felt.

CHAPTER 16

Adam lifted the lantern, undid the lock, pulled the main slider back from the hangar entrance, and stared inside. The smell of sawdust and sagebrush wafted out.

“I thought I saw a box that said ‘Movies’ when I was here earlier,” he told Paige over his shoulder.

“What were you looking for earlier?” She took a few steps into the hangar behind him.

“My inheritance.” He put the lantern down so he could search the stacks of boxes with both hands. “Apparently it all fits in a little box marked ‘Private.’”

He didn’t even try to edit the spite out of his voice. He didn’t want anyone’s pity, least of all Paige’s, but spite was something that could flow free.

“George left you a box?”

“Apparently.”

“Do you know what’s in it?”

“I don’t care.”

“How could you not care? It sounds like an adventure movie.”

He glanced at her to see if she was kidding, but she didn’t appear to be. For the second time, he wished he had her spirit. He’d love to be as optimistic and happy as she always seemed. He thought he might have been that way once, back when his mom was alive. When he and Noel used to play and not have any worries. When his mom was always there for him, waiting in the kitchen, making apple pies for him or whittling her little flutes. He glanced at Paige and wondered if that might be some of her draw to him—that constant joy and hope. As it was, it felt like it might be. He liked being near her. His soul felt lighter.

And he hoped he was giving her something, too. Her relief at being able to build that damned gazebo in his meadow was a great reward. He loved being able to bring that look to her face. And he wasn’t being manipulated, as his father had been. They were just two friends helping each other out because they had empathy and respect for each other. That’s all this was.

He wandered farther into the dark hangar, hanging his hands on his hips and staring up at the boxes in the area he’d been before. He wanted to find this movie for her, too.

The boxes were marked “Spring 1980,” “Summer 1980,” and “Fall.” Those might be ranch records. Or airport records. It was hard to tell. He knew the one that said “Movies” had been over—

“I found it.” He steadied one of the lower sets of boxes and climbed up to reach the one with the movies, finally dropping it down to the hangar floor. It landed in a rattle of VHS plastic and a swirl of dust that came up into the lantern beam. When he jumped down behind it, Paige was no longer at the entrance.

“Paige?”

“I’m here.”

He looked over toward the workbench that took up about eight feet of wall on the other side. She was standing in front of it, looking up at the rows of flight logbooks that lined the wall above the bench.

“This place is like a museum,” she said.

He followed behind her with the movie box in his arms and plopped it onto the table. “Sure is. We have flight records here dating back to the 1940s.”

“That’s amazing.”

He opened the box flaps and started looking through the VHS tapes, flipping them one by one:
Top Gun
,
Sixteen Candles
,
The Breakfast Club
. . . but
Last Road to Nowhere
was nowhere.

“Sorry,” he said. “I thought it would be here. Wrong era.”

“Bring the box in anyway. Amanda might like some of those eighties movies, too.” She turned to look again at the books. “You and I had an argument here once.”

His hands, already closing up the box, stilled. “What?”

“That summer. I yelled at you. I might have hit you in the balls.”

“
Might
have?”

“Okay, I did.”

He let go of the box and turned toward her. She was still staring at the books, her hand on her throat. The lantern light was coming in from the back and, as she stepped forward, it shone straight through her dress. He thought about mentioning it to her but, bastard that he was, decided not to. He cleared his throat and tried to look away.

Concentrate, man.

“You hit me in the balls?” he asked.

That sounded familiar. He stretched for the memory. He could almost reach it. They’d been standing near here, in fact. She’d been young, her face puffed from crying, her brows knit in anger. “What did I do?”

“Well, not enough to deserve that. I was just a newly hormonal teen.”

He pushed the box back and turned more toward her. “Tell me. I’m trying to mend my asshole ways.”

“Along with the cussing?”

“That’s right. Not doing very well. I’m trying to mend my . . .
jackal
ways? How’s that?”

“You could’ve gone with jerky.”

He chuckled. “Thanks, Paige.”

She turned her face away, then let a silence linger as she stared at the logbooks. “I wasn’t going to admit to any of this.”

He stepped closer. Something was starting to feel dangerous about this conversation, but he couldn’t stop himself. “Is it something
I’m
apologizing for or you?”

“You . . . or me. Both, maybe.”

This just got more interesting.

The light made her look almost ethereal, illuminating a halo around her hair and shoulders. She looked angelic. But the devil in him couldn’t help but note her shapely thighs and the outline of a beautiful behind that the light also provided.

He rubbed the back of his neck to force his eyes downward.

“I’m sorry for my part, whatever it was,” he said.

“You were just ignoring me. I should be the one to apologize.”

She turned and put her arms behind her, up on the workbench, which raised her breasts into an illuminated silhouette of the most beautiful form. He cleared his throat and rubbed his neck harder.

“I followed you out here,” she said.

He stopped and looked at her.

“You and Samantha,” she added. “I had been playing in the orchard, and I saw you guys run in here, so I followed you. You had been making out with her over there.” She nodded her head to the other side of the hangar. “Her clothes were coming off. So were yours. And I bumped into this table, and a paint can went crashing to the floor, and you both turned and stared at me. Do you remember any of this?”

He shook his head.

“So she grabbed her clothes and went running out, and you came over here, zipping up your jeans, and lit into me. You called me a sneak and a pervert, and asked what I was doing over here. And I didn’t know what a pervert was, exactly, but I called you one back and swung the paint can and lobbed you in the balls.”

He didn’t remember any of this. But he kind of liked the image of a little spitball Paige, swinging a paint can at his junk. A small grin escaped.

“Sounds like I got what I deserved.”

He could sort of picture the scene now. He didn’t remember being here with Samantha, but he could vaguely remember Paige. What he remembered were her puffy eyes.

“You were crying,” he said, as the memory came into clearer focus. “I remember that. Were you crying because of what I said?”

“The paint can I swung at you came back at me and opened, and red paint spilled down my front. And then you laughed at me. And you tried to call Samantha back in here to see it, but she was gone. So you had the laughs to yourself. You called me a clown.”

He frowned. “Damn, Paige. I’m sorry. I was a stupid kid.”

“I’m sorry, too. I shouldn’t have been spying. Maybe I just wanted you to notice me.” She leaned her body against the bench. “I wanted your attention. I had such a crush on you.”

She laughed again, but the words hit him hard in the chest. She’d mentioned that before, during their walk from Rosa’s. But he’d thought it was the wine talking.

“You had a crush on me? Way back then? My idiot self?”

She smiled. “I wanted you to look at me like you looked at Samantha. But you always ignored me—probably because I was a clown to you.”

“No, probably because you were thirteen.”

She smiled. “Well, that’s true, too.”

“Trust me, Paige, if I’d met you a few years later, I’m sure I would have been thinking differently.”

“Differently how?”

“Differently like I am now.”

He hadn’t meant to admit that. He hadn’t meant to tell her that his brain had been locked on her ever since she’d arrived—either trying to remember her, trying to figure her out, trying to protect her, or trying not to admit to himself that he was flat-out attracted to her. But he didn’t have the luxury of that. Somehow attraction to Paige seemed as if it came with a whole maze of other thrills, which sounded fun. But irresponsible. And—especially with Amanda here now—Adam simply couldn’t be irresponsible. That ship had sailed long ago.

But she definitely looked as if she didn’t mind he’d admitted that.

She took a step toward him. He took a step back. She moved into the light again, and he couldn’t help but look at her hourglass body.

“What are you thinking about now?” she asked.

He tried to swallow. What could he admit to? That he was horny? That he was lonely? That he’d been fantasizing about her for days on the trail? That he could picture taking her right now against this worktable? He didn’t know what she could handle hearing. He cleared his throat.

“Well,” he finally tried, “I don’t think you want to know all my thoughts. But I can tell you that you look amazing in front of that lantern. And that your clothes have been see-through ever since you walked into the beams. And that I’ve chosen not to alert you but have enjoyed looking at you instead.” His voice had fallen into a huskiness that he didn’t recognize.

She took another step toward him. He didn’t take a step back this time.

She put her hand against his chest and stepped closer still, and for a brief, insane moment he thought he might warn her. This would be a risky thing they were embarking on here, both of them trying to sell land to separate people, wanting the other one to help seal their own sale, and both still reeling from their parents’ mistakes—in their own and each other’s lives. But then she leaned up and kissed him.

Her lips were everything he thought they’d be—yielding and sweet, with the promise of warmth and suppleness everywhere on her body. Paige was everything soft and silky and curved that he craved. Before he knew what he was doing, he slipped his hand behind her head and pulled her toward him, giving extra attention to that pouty bottom lip that had been driving him nuts for the last week. He wanted to devour her—her lips, her body, her softness, her comfort. He’d kissed plenty of women in his lifetime, but Paige felt different—she felt forbidden, wild, like something he’d been meant to find long ago but had lost his way.

They banged up against the table, and he pulled them a little farther down the wall—farther into the shadows—and slipped his hand around her bottom, the other thing he’d wanted to touch since he’d seen her stuck in that window. It was as soft and fit in his hand as well as he’d imagined. He loved where it met her thigh: he could feel the sweet half-moon there, outside her skirt. He had to touch inside . . .

He pushed her back, hiding them both from the light, and scrambled for the bottom of the skirt with both hands. Her hand grasped his, and he felt a wave of embarrassment for how adolescent he was behaving—that feeling of overzealousness, as if he’d never seen a naked woman before. But this particular woman felt, in a strange way, like something that, perhaps, he
had
never experienced before.

He pulled back again to make sure she was okay with this.

His answer was gazing up at him—her eyes had become half-lidded, her arms came up around his neck, and she looked at his lips with a teasing smile.

And that was pretty much all the invitation he needed.

He dove back down to taste more of Paige Grant.

Responsibility be damned.

Paige closed her eyes and waited for the thrill of Adam’s hands, which overcame her, warm and firm, fingers spread, slipping under her blouse, down toward her skirt, over her bottom, dragging back up to her rib cage, grazing the undersides of her breasts, then back down to her behind again. He kissed her bottom lip, running his tongue along it, pulling it gently between his teeth until her blood pulsed, and sending a thrilling sensation to every fleshy part of her before settling, languidly, between her legs.

She tilted the bottom half of her body toward him, yearning for pressure, wanting his hands to touch her under her skirt. But his hands, instead, did a controlled exploration up her back, past her rib cage, his thumbs stroking her breasts, causing her to jerk in anticipation. She brought her heels back to the ground. She tried to stay calm. This, after all, was what she had longed for. She wanted to enjoy every second.

She pressed herself against him. “Don’t you want to take my blouse off?” she whispered.

Adam smiled against her mouth. “I’ve wanted to take every one of your blouses off.” He kissed the hollow behind her ear. “But I can’t be sure the wranglers aren’t coming here. How do you feel about getting caught?” He kissed her neck, sucking hard, and the sensation brought her off her heels again.

She gasped for breath. The idea of getting caught was at the top of her turn-ons, actually, but she was embarrassed to mention it. She’d waited too long for this—sixteen years, to be exact—to screw things up.