“You should tell him that. I think it would matter to him.”
Nodding, she retrieved her cell phone and put through the call to cancel her cab.
David relieved her of her backpack and held the back door to his car for her. When she was settled, he handed her the backpack.
“Thank you.”
“No problem.” David got in the car and sneaked a wide-eyed look at Alex, who’d watched the entire scene unfold. At the end of the driveway, he parked in his spot next to Jared’s sharp-looking black Porsche. Jenny’s car was also in the driveway, behind Jared’s. The three of them got out and followed the sound of voices, laughter and music to the pool area, where Jared was indeed in the midst of a spirited game of beach volleyball with Jenny and Daisy.
None of them noticed the new arrivals until they walked through the gate to the fenced-in pool deck.
“Hey!” Jared said. “You made it. Don’t you own a bathing suit, Doctor David?”
“In fact I do, but I found a friend of yours on the way in.”
Jared’s gaze shifted from David to Lizzie, who stood between him and Alex. Along with the shock that registered on Jared’s face, David also saw love and longing and knew he’d done the right thing by persuading her to come talk to Jared.
“Lizzie…” Jared said when he’d recovered the ability to speak.
“Hello, Jared.”
*
Overcome by the sight of her, Jared lifted himself out of the pool and reached for a towel he’d tossed onto a chair earlier. “What’re you doing here?” On first glance, he could see that she was thin, painfully thin, and he was immediately concerned. She’d confessed to a teenage eating disorder, and the thought of her battling that again—maybe because of him—struck a note of fear in his heart.
“I came to see you.”
“Why?”
Lizzie took an uncertain look around at the four curious faces watching them. “I need to talk to you.”
“We should go and let you guys talk,” Jenny said as she took the hand Alex offered to help her out of the pool.
“No,” Jared said, never taking his eyes off Lizzie. “We have plans. I got steak. We’re having our cookout.”
“Jared,” David said. “It’s fine. We can do it another night.”
Weeks of pain and frustration and more than a little bit of anger boiled to the surface all at once as he stared at the face that had haunted him during forty sleepless nights. “
No
,” he said more emphatically this time. “We’re having dinner.”
“I’m sorry,” Lizzie said, taking a step back. “I’ve come at a bad time. I’ll just go…”
“You don’t have to go,” Jared said more softly. “It would be nice if you joined us.”
“Oh, um, I don’t want to intrude.”
“You’re not,” he assured her, terrified at the thought of her leaving before he could hear what she’d come to say. “You’ve met David Lawrence and Alex Martinez. This is David’s girlfriend, Daisy Babson, and Alex’s fiancée, Jenny Wilks. Ladies, this is Elisabeth Sutter. Lizzie.”
“So nice to meet you,” Daisy said as she shook Lizzie’s hand.
Jared was hardly surprised that the always-compassionate Daisy automatically welcomed Lizzie, despite the fact that she knew the whole ugly story. Jenny was also friendly and welcoming, if a bit more reserved about it than Daisy had been.
The girls donned beach cover-ups while Jared knotted the towel around his waist. “Let’s get some drinks,” he said as he led the way to the deck where he’d chilled a couple of twelve-packs of beer along with some white wine. “What can I get everyone?”
The guys helped themselves to beers while Jenny expertly uncorked a bottle of chardonnay that she shared with Daisy. “Lizzie?” she asked, holding up the bottle.
“She prefers the pinot grigio,” Jared said. “I’ll get it.” His heart beat fast and erratically as he tried to resist the need to stare at her, to drink in the familiar sight of her. He walked inside on shaky legs, his entire body tingling from the shock, the excitement, the need to know… What was she doing here? And why had she been crying?
David followed him inside. “Are you okay?”
“I… I don’t know what I am. Did she say anything about why she’s here?”
“Isn’t that rather obvious?”
Jared poured himself a shot of top-shelf whisky and downed it before pouring another one. “No. It’s not.” The heat of the liquor traveled through his system, calming his nerves.
“Alex and I found her out by the road. She’d been here, saw you in the pool with Daisy and Jenny, jumped to a bunch of incorrect conclusions and had called for a cab to take her back to town. I recognized her from the photos you showed me.”
When Jared realized how close he’d come to never knowing she’d been there at all… And then he remembered the rare moments of frivolity and laughter in the pool. It must’ve looked pretty bad to her, especially in light of his past reputation as a bit of a playboy. That life had ended the moment he’d laid eyes on her, and she knew it. Or she’d
known
it when they were together. He’d made sure of it.
“She was crying,” David said. “She’d seen you with other women, and it upset her.”
“You told her—”
“We set her straight. My girlfriend. His fiancée. We talked her into coming back with us.”
“Thank you for that.” Jared let his gaze wander through the kitchen-sink window to the deck where Jenny, Alex and Daisy had included Lizzie in their conversation. She looked slightly less uncomfortable than she had a few minutes ago.
“We should take off, Jared. You guys have stuff to talk about.”
“It’ll keep until later. I promised you dinner.”
“Jared…”
“I need a little time to get my head together before I talk to her. It would help if you stayed.”
“If you’re sure…”
“I’m sure.”
“By the way, I might’ve let it slip that you’ve been a bit of a mess since you got here. I hope that’s okay.”
“She may as well know the truth.”
“Whatever happens, I hope you get what you want.”
Looking at her sitting on his deck, surrounded by his friends, Jared was no longer certain of what he wanted from her. She’d hurt him badly. He wasn’t sure if he could risk letting her back in—if that was why she’d come—only to have it happen again. “Thanks, man. You and Daisy have been so great. I don’t know what I would’ve done without you.”
“It’s been fun for us, too. Now, you’d better get out there with her wine or she might think you aren’t happy to see her. You are happy to see her, aren’t you?”
Happy might not be the right word. Confused, agitated, uncertain… But happy? First he needed to know why she’d come. Then he’d decide how he felt about it. “Yeah,” he said simply. That was all he had at the moment. He uncorked the bottle of pinot and followed David back to the porch with an extra glass in hand.
Victoria and her charming Irishman joined them a short time later, as did Alex’s brother, Paul, who brought funny stories from his meeting with an elderly island resident who’d talked for two straight hours, without pause, in support of a parcel the land trust had no plans to develop. Jared had offered him a glass of whisky, which he’d accepted gratefully.
They ate the steak, baked potatoes and salad, swam in the pool, sat by the fire and toasted marshmallows. His friends teased him about how he’d bought every kind of salad dressing offered in the grocery store and how he’d have to eat salad for a year to use them all. Jared took their teasing in stride while he tried to relax and enjoy the gathering, but a humming awareness of Lizzie had him preoccupied as he watched her stare into the fire. She’d participated in the conversation, laughed at Shannon O’Grady’s hilarious quips, eaten a few bites of dinner and had a second glass of wine.
But Jared knew her well enough to sense she was as on edge as he was, anticipating—and probably dreading—what would happen after his friends left.
David stood at ten thirty, extended his hand to Daisy and helped her up. “I gotta work in the morning,” he said regretfully. “I need my beauty sleep.” He turned to Lizzie. “It was really nice to meet you.”
“You, too. Thanks for… Well, thanks.”
“My pleasure.”
Daisy, being Daisy, took it a step further and hugged Lizzie, who seemed surprised but pleased by the gesture. Then Daisy hugged Jared and whispered in his ear, “Good luck.”
“Thanks.” She was so sweet and so caring and had been a very good friend to him in the last few weeks. At her insistence, Jared had become the “other man” in her relationship with David. She’d forced him out of his cocoon and dragged him along on many a date, which he’d appreciated more than she could ever know.
“We should go, too,” Alex said. “I’ve got to work in the morning. No rest for the landscapers this time of year.”
Paul groaned in agreement.
“Before you go,” Jared said to Alex and Jenny, “I think I might’ve found a place for you to have your wedding.”
Jenny perked right up and lifted her head off Alex’s shoulder. “Speak to me.”
“Have you thought about the Chesterfield place?”
Jenny’s smile dimmed. “That was our first choice, but we were shot down because it’s on the market. It’s not available for events.”
“I heard it might be getting a new owner and that he’d be amenable to a wedding there.”
Jenny stared at him, agape. “Did you
buy
the Chesterfield Estate?”
“I might’ve made an offer.”
“
Why?
”
“Because you need a place to get married, and it seemed perfect. Have you seen the gardens?”
Jenny and Alex exchanged a glance along with small, private smiles. “We have,” she said. “My fiancé takes exquisite care of them.”
“He does a brilliant job,” Jared agreed.
“So, let me get this straight,” Alex said. “We needed a place for our wedding, so you
bought
the Chesterfield Estate?”
“I made an offer,” Jared said, trying not to squirm as they all stared at him, no one more intently than Lizzie. “It’d be a great place for a wedding, but it’s also a hell of an investment. The place is incredible.”
Jenny sniffled and dabbed at her eyes. “I can’t believe you did that.”
“It’s not a done deal, so don’t start planning the wedding quite yet. I’ll keep you posted.”
She jumped up and took Jared by surprise with a big hug. “You are too much, Mr. James.”
“It’s no big deal.”
“It’s a very big deal.” Alex extended his hand. “We appreciate it.”
Jared shrugged off their praise but was acutely aware of Lizzie watching the exchange with interest. Maybe he shouldn’t have told Alex and Jenny the news in front of her in light of their differing philosophies about money and all the perks that came with it. “I’ll let you know when I hear back from the broker.”
Jenny, Alex and Paul left a few minutes later, followed by Victoria and Shannon, which left him finally alone with Lizzie.
He sat on the lounge chair next to the one she occupied. Taken in by the glow of the firelight on her gorgeous face, he was silent for a long moment, until he couldn’t wait any longer to ask her the one question that’d been burning in his mind all evening.
“What’re you doing here, babe?”
Chapter 4
“I can’t believe she showed up after all this time,” Daisy said to David as they shared the sink in his bathroom to brush their teeth. “Tell me every detail of where you found her and what she said.”
David spit out the toothpaste, dried his mouth and told the story again, making sure to include every detail as requested.
“So she thought he was fooling around with Jenny
and
me? At the
same
time?”
“Apparently.”
Wearing one of his T-shirts over a tiny pair of panties he’d caught a glimpse of as she’d undressed, Daisy got into bed ahead of him and propped her head on her upturned hand. “That’s kinky.”
David cracked up laughing as he got into bed wearing only a pair of boxers. “From what I heard before I actually met him, Jared had a heck of a reputation as a man about town back in the day. No doubt she’s heard that, too.”
“So she thought he’d gone back to his old ways.”
“Something like that.”
“Imagine if you hadn’t seen her,” Daisy said as she curled up to him the way she did every night.
David lived for this time with her at the end of every long day.
“He might never have known she’d come.”
“He said that, too. He realizes it was a close call.”
“Did he say if he was happy to see her?”
“It seemed he might be reserving judgment on how he felt about it until he heard what she had to say.”
“It’s a good sign that she came, right?”
“It could be, or it could mean she’s looking for some closure so they can both move on.”
“I hope that’s not why she’s here,” Daisy said with a sigh. “That would kill him.”
Her soft curves pressed against his side and her hand caressing his belly had him thinking about his own love life rather than Jared’s. He tightened his hold on her and scooted down to better align his lips with hers.