Love on Lavender Island (A Lavender Island Novel Book 2) (6 page)

“One more step,” came his voice.

She begrudgingly gave him one more; she couldn’t help but do it with resistance. Stepping into unknown blackness had always scared her. She had a hard time trusting any people at all, let alone men. Let alone
this
man, who could’ve easily hated her and her mom for sixteen years.

After her last faltering step, she felt his hand move away. His towel ruffled again. As her eyes continued to adjust and her breathing returned to normal, his outline started to materialize, and she could see that he was about six feet away, his back now to her, drying off his shoulders, his chest, his abdomen, not a care in the world. As his towel slipped, though, she turned away quickly.

“You okay?” he asked. Ruffle, ruffle.

“Mmm-hmm.”

“Are you sure?” he asked. Ruffle, ruffle. She wondered what he was drying off now.

“Yep.” She glanced away and tried to focus on a cypress tree until it came into full view. The moon had disappeared behind a night fog.

He chuckled from behind her. “Are you always this nervous around water? Or is it the darkness?”

“It’s . . . uh . . . well, yes, I get a little nervous around both.”
And naked men I’ve been fantasizing about since I was thirteen.

“Accidents or something?”

“You could say that.”

“Is that why the townspeople always called you Calamity June?”

She managed a haughty lift to her chin. “I haven’t been called that in years. And I’d prefer you didn’t, either.”

She suddenly noticed a pain shooting through her toe. She bent forward to take a look and thought she saw drops of blood, although it was hard to see in the dark.
Damn.
How was she going to shake the nickname Calamity June if things like this kept happening to her?

“I think I might . . . uh . . . have a splinter or something.”

He came up from behind her, his towel now secured around his waist, his hair standing damply on end.

“It
is
June 1 now,” he said, bending to look at it. “You’re bleeding. Here, follow me. I’ll get you something for that.”

Paige followed him through the dark, trying to ignore the June 1 comment, focusing instead on the crickets chirping around them.

Instead of heading through the glass lobby door, Adam walked toward the back steps of his own place.
I’m going into his house again?
Paige took a few deep breaths for calm.

An old border collie came trotting out the door and nuzzled up against Adam’s leg to greet him. Paige stared at the dog and recognized his coloring. “Is that
Denny
?”

Adam glanced back at her. “Yeah. You remember Denny?”

“He was a puppy when we used to come over.”

“That’s right. He’s an old man now—sixteen—but still the most loyal dog ever. You have a good memory, Paige.”

Danged right I do.
She hobbled behind him, trying to keep her eyes trained away from the body she remembered all too well, and from the towel outline of his apple-shaped bottom, but she failed, and bumped right into the stair rail. He turned and gave her a look that had a mixture of disbelief and pity, then opened the door for her and Denny.

The Mason kitchen was exactly as she remembered: too much wood paneling, cast-iron cabinet handles, a huge butcher-block table for eight to the right. It was, in fact, the same table where she’d sat with her mom, late one night, telling George what had happened with Adam and Samantha. It had been the night George had sent Adam away.

Paige stared at the door Adam had disappeared behind, remembering it led to the bedrooms. As she waited for him to bring back a Band-Aid or a pair of tweezers or whatever he’d disappeared for, rubbing her arm where she’d bumped into the rail and staring at her toe that was still bleeding, she heard a noise in the hallway and glanced up.

Around the corner came Amanda in a pair of low-cut pajama bottoms and a tiny T-shirt that left a band of smooth, flat stomach showing. She shuffled across the room in a pair of UGG boots that were crumpled down at the sides.

“Hey,” she said, heading toward the fridge.

Adam strolled out of the hallway, now in jeans and a T-shirt, holding a box of Band-Aids. Paige turned to stare at him, then Amanda, trying to put the pieces together.

“Amanda, you remember Ms. Paige Grant from earlier tonight?” Adam said, walking through the room to hand Paige the box. “Paige, meet Amanda, my daughter.”

The box and all thirty-six Band-Aids skittered across the floor.

CHAPTER 6

Paige shoved the last of the Band-Aids back in the box, then tried to focus on her toe, which was propped up now, at Adam’s insistence, on a chair.

Adam came over with a basin of warm water, tweezers, and tape. He made small talk about fixing the wooden planks around the Jacuzzi, which she tried to focus on, but all she could think of was the fact that he had a teenage daughter.

A
teenage.

Daughter.

It didn’t take much calculating, or a DNA test, to figure out that the daughter was his and Samantha’s. Once Paige looked at her more closely, right before Amanda grabbed a Coke out of the fridge and escaped to a back room, she could see the resemblance clearly. Samantha had always had a glamorous look about her—long hair that fell in soft curls around her face like Veronica Lake’s, which was what Paige had assumed Adam, and all men, liked back then. Amanda didn’t have that glamour about her—the dyed-blue tips looked more rebellious than glamourous—but she had the same almond-shaped blue eyes Samantha had and the same delicate nose. Her lips were full and pouty like Samantha’s, although Amanda’s held no smile.

But where is Samantha?

When she finally got up the nerve to ask, Adam glanced up from his position near her foot. “Dead,” he answered, low, finally getting the splinter out. He cleaned up the remaining drops of blood on the floor and tossed the rag aside.

“I’m so sorry,” Paige sputtered. “Did you . . . did you two marry?”

“No.” He washed his hands at the kitchen sink.

He didn’t seem ready to give more information than that, but he was sort of trapped here now, with Paige sitting on his kitchen table, so she thought she’d try to drag a little more out of him. “Did you co-parent, then?”

“No.” He dried his hands on a towel behind him.

Paige figured he was only going to give answers one sentence at a time. Adam didn’t exactly seem like the kind of guy who would tell his life story. She tried again. “Did you get to see Amanda often?”

“I didn’t even know I had a daughter until six months ago.” He closed a cabinet that had the first-aid kit inside and looked around, as if searching for keys. “Here, why don’t you go out this way?” He indicated the door to the lobby.

Six months ago?
Paige tried to make sure her mouth hadn’t dropped open as she slid off the table to put weight back on her foot. She followed his momentum toward the lobby, hobbling along while her mind still whirled.

“Six months ago?” she whispered up at him as she passed him in the doorway.

He reached forward to open the next door for her. She could smell the clean, chlorine-mixed-with-sandalwood-soap scent that wafted off his T-shirt as he herded her into the voluminous lobby.

“That must have been a shock,” she pressed.

“Mmm.” He guided her past the lobby front desk, where he waved to a thin, balding man that must be Mendelson, then ushered Paige along the flagstone flooring, past the stone fireplace, and toward her room.

“Where were they living all these years?” she asked.

“I should introduce you to Mendelson. I’ll introduce you to the staff tomorrow. They can help you around here until I get your place secured. We’ll have it ready before the dude group comes.”

Paige let him derail her for a second. “How many staffers are there?”

“Fifteen or sixteen.”

“What do they all do?”

“Eight ranch hands, sometimes ten in busy seasons. A maid for the resort. A cook. Someone mans the front desk twenty-four hours. Kelly works in the daytime, a woman named Joanne works early evening, and a guy named Little fills in on days off. Mendelson works overnight. Joanne also handles the wedding planning, and Mendelson coordinates the dude-ranch visits. Little does my handiwork.”

Paige nodded at the litany of information she barely heard and gave a courteous pause before pressing more about what she truly wanted to know. “So where were Samantha and Amanda living?”

He gave a defeated sigh. “Alabama.”

“What did Amanda say when she arrived here?”

“Listen, Paige.” They arrived at 8A, and he turned to face her. “I’m tired. You must be tired. Let’s do this another time. In the morning I’ll send Antonio over to the house to look at the points of entry the intruders might be finding. And Pedro from town is going to take a look at the electric lines. Seems a line went down from our last storm, and they did a quick fix because they thought the property was going to be donated or abandoned. But now they need to look into it deeper. They’ll get it done, though. I told Pedro you needed the electric back on in a hurry. In the meantime, why don’t you stay around here for a day?”

“Here?”

Adam glanced around. “Yes. Here.”

“I can’t stay around
here
.”

His scowl reappeared, with a bit of hurt lacing the edges of the irritation. “It’s not so bad.”

“I mean, I have to get to work. I need to get into Gram’s house tomorrow.”

He shook his head. “I need one day.”

“I can’t spare a day.”

The frustration was back on his face. “I need a day.”

She shook her head.

“Paige.
One
day. Let me get it secured.”

She wanted to argue. But he looked tired, and she was tired, and he’d helped her quite a few times already today, and she didn’t want to put him through any more paces. Guilt had been rising into her throat as she’d realized that she and her mom had split up not just a teenage couple but an entire family—Adam, Samantha,
and
Amanda. And it had had terrible, long-lasting effects.

Paige thought of Amanda again, how sullen she looked, how scared she must be, and how she’d just lost her mother. She’d just learned of a father she might not have even known she had. She’d probably been dropped off here on this island mountaintop, away from life as she knew it, all against her will.

And Adam, meanwhile, was probably trying to figure out how to deal with all of this.

Without anything more to say—except, maybe, a heartfelt
I’m sorry
that she couldn’t yet get out of her closing throat—Paige nodded and headed into her room.

Paige’s head was a fuzzy haze of robin’s-egg blue and seashell pink when she came out of her restless sleep. As she moved to stretch, a strip of sunlight streamed through her window like a spotlight, catching her in the eye. The previous day’s events started to come back to her in flashes: the sweeping, the cleaning, meeting Adam at the Castle, the Dorothy Silver deal going south but having some hope. And then, slowly, the night’s events: the intruder, Adam on his horse, the hot tub, the lights going out, the splinter, Adam’s
daughter 
. . .

God.

She moaned against everything—the long, emotional day, the disappointment at not being able to close a business deal, the guilt she ultimately felt at breaking up a family, the dull ache in her legs and arms from all the sweeping . . .

She rolled over and squinted against the sun.

What time was it?

She snatched her phone from the nightstand. Eight. She should be cleaning by now.

But Adam had requested she not go over there today.

She stared at the ceiling and went through a mental checklist of the house, thinking of all the things that would need to be fixed or touched up. There was a water leak in one part of the ceiling that she realized might be coming from an upstairs sink. There was a broken closet door upstairs, a chipped mirror in one of the bathrooms, a busted toilet handle in another, a loose balustrade toward the top of the stairs, some scratches in the wood floor in one of the bedrooms, and the whole house could use a fresh coat of paint. She needed to get the interior and exterior in decent enough condition that Dorothy could come by to give them the go-ahead on the wedding. Then she’d have to jump through hoops to make the whole thing look just like the movie for the actual wedding. It was a lot to take on. But overall, it was doable.

If she could get started, that was.

She swung herself out of bed, unrolled her yoga mat, and spent an hour doing her favorite asana practice, ending with a long corpse pose to help stretch her muscles.

Then she settled at the room’s side table and came up with a game plan. She opened her laptop and created an Excel sheet of the projects she’d need to tackle, typed steps to get each done, and listed target dates. She spread out the landscaping blueprints on one table to study them again, then propped some photos up from the movie along one wall. She stepped back to gaze at the pictures. The place did look magical back then. The gazebo was a bit too big—much larger than a normal one—almost the size of a town-square bandstand—but it looked pretty in the middle of the meadow with its bright-white paint and flowers at its base. She remembered Adam saying it had been a movie prop, so it had never actually existed, but it was a key element of Dorothy’s wedding dreams. Paige would have to build her one. She just hoped Adam would let her build it in the meadow between their properties. If not, she wasn’t sure where she would put it.

First things first, though. Today she’d head into town to get started on some supplies to make the house more habitable.

And hope she didn’t see her sisters.

And try to forget about how guilty she felt now about Adam and Amanda.

Once she got ready, she drove her golf cart down the mountain and into town, hoping she could avoid Adam. Her emotions were all over the place, and she wasn’t sure how she felt about facing him again. The chemistry she’d always felt with him was mixing dangerously with the memories, the fantasies she’d had, the anger and frustration that he’d ignored her, the lack of forgiveness she’d carried for the last several years, and now her guilt. Everything was swirling together in a complicated storm of lust, adoration, resentment, attraction, dismissal, and obsession. It was too many feelings to have for one person, complicated with too much passing time. And now she was asking him to do a very big favor for her family.

She turned her golf cart at the base of the mountain on N Street and puttered her way around the edge of Carmelita. Joe’s Mercantile was on one side; Karen’s Sundries was on another. There was a bookstore called Book, Line, and Sinker that she’d always loved, right next to the toy shop Once Upon a Toy. There was a little hardware store on Main Street that would probably become her best friend over the next few months. She knew the clerk there—an elderly gentleman named Mr. Clark—who always had the prettiest flowers out front, including the gerbera daisies her sister Natalie favored. Elliott routinely bought them for her each month. Natalie had told Elliott last March that she loved him so much she would be ready to take the leap when the daisies went all the way around the house. They were at three-quarters now.

And Paige was jealous.

This realization over the last couple of months surprised her. Mostly because long-term relationships were not her thing. She made the worst choices of men imaginable, and seemed to pick cheaters or other men she couldn’t trust—one after another. She was ready to give up and assume she’d never get married. She didn’t want children anyway. She could be one of those women she admired in the movies—like Katharine Hepburn, maybe, flitting from man to man, adventure to adventure, but never marrying. The other advantage to that lifestyle was that she wouldn’t have to subject anyone else to her Calamity June life. Paige felt as if drama followed her everywhere—car crashes, bee-sting allergies, birds falling from the sky and landing on her head. She’d nearly been hit by lightning once. And even though it had been sort of exciting as a teenager, and even in her early twenties, and everyone said they loved hanging around her because she was like a walking
I Love Lucy
episode, it was starting to become tiresome. And worrisome. And she was starting to think she had a curse.

Paige spotted the entrance to the island’s only market and pulled into the gravel parking lot behind the large wooden wagon filled with fresh flowers. Lavender Island was a floral color-fest, especially at this time of year. The climate was Mediterranean, and there was always an explosion of colorful flowers to highlight the Spanish-style architecture—sea lavender (after which the island was named), regular lavender, geraniums, poppies, blooming ice plant, jasmine, roses, Queen Anne’s lace, baby’s breath, bougainvillea. The island was always gorgeous and alive. The changing color was what Paige loved most about Lavender Island. Everything that stayed stagnant she distrusted.

Paige grabbed a bouquet of irises she’d put on Gram’s dining table in the old blue delft pitcher she’d found in a cupboard, then wandered through the aisles, basket on her arm. She ducked her head when the store owner, Mr. Fieldstone, looked her way. He probably wouldn’t remember her, but she kept her sunglasses handy just in case.

Soon she heard two women giggling by the paperback section.

“Here’s one of my favorites,” one woman said. “Have you read this one, Marie? It’s not erotica, either, but I love it. The hero is a whale watcher, and he manages to do a little sightseeing of his own, if you know what I mean.”