Love on Lavender Island (A Lavender Island Novel Book 2) (25 page)

“I got a phone call from Dave MacGregor,” Ginger suddenly said. “He’s the one who told me you and Adam were seeing each other.”

“Dave MacGregor called you?”

Ginger nodded.

“If you knew about me and Adam, why did you ask?”

“I didn’t believe him.”

Paige sighed.

“But the other thing Dave MacGregor said was that he’d been trying to negotiate for our property and that Adam had said to go to the source and to call me directly. Did you know that?”

Paige reeled. She knew she wasn’t a very good businesswoman, but she didn’t know Adam had so little faith in her, also. She had actually thought he might be one of the only ones who did have faith in her. What was all that talk about her not being Calamity June and being strong and perfect? What was that whole pep talk about following her dreams? Did he not believe any of that? Was her mother right? Was he feeding her lines?

She shook her head.

“You can’t do business with men you’re sleeping with, Paige. I don’t know how much clearer I need to be. You couldn’t convince Adam of anything because he already saw you as soft. And now he’ll keep telling you what he knows you want to hear so you’ll keep sleeping with him.”

Tears threatened in the back of Paige’s throat. Had she botched this as terribly as her mother was laying it out? Had she been blind? Selfish?

If so, she would straighten it out.

She took a deep breath.

“I’ll fix everything.”

Adam headed out to the barn to meet a grain-feeder inspector he’d lined up.

He hated to leave Paige alone to deal with Ginger as a one-man army, but she’d said she could handle it. Plus, she was certainly used to dealing with Ginger—he knew she could do it. But he still would have liked to have helped.

He’d take his cues from her, though—it was her family, her life. He could only get involved as much as she’d let him.

And what was all that she’d said about his dad? Could she be right? Could he be structuring his life to impress a man who was no longer able to be impressed? Could he be chasing after some kind of acknowledgment he was never going to get? Was the rest of his life destined to be this futile grasp for something, unless he changed it now?

The inspector was there, peering at the grain feeders with his clipboard. Adam walked him through each one to show the faulty tubes. Just as he got to the last one, his cell phone rang. He glanced at the number.
Bob.
It was weird having Bob use a cell phone all of a sudden. He’d have to thank Amanda for her tutoring.

“Excuse me,” he told the inspector, turning to walk back through the barn door. “Yeah, Bob.”

“I have bad news about MacGregor.” Bob was never one to mince words.

“What is it?”

“He’s pulling out.”

“Pulling
out
? What do you mean? He already submitted the offer.”

“He’s allowed to do that.”

Adam let a string of swear words float though the phone.

“I know,” Bob said. “But it’s legal and true.”

“Did he give a reason?”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“I want to know.”

Bob sighed. “He said he was pulling out because you weren’t able to get him the Grant property, too.”

“That son of a—”

“Adam.”

“He’s an asshole. I don’t usually let feelings get in the way of business, but I’m sort of glad our property isn’t going to that prick. Were you not going to tell me that part?”

“It does leave you an option, but I wasn’t going to share it with you. I knew you wouldn’t take it. I knew you’d do the right thing.”

All Adam could think of was Amanda and what she was going to say, how disappointed she’d be. And especially how disappointed she’d be in him. He hated to let her down. He may have let his dad down, and maybe even his mom. But he wasn’t going to screw this up, too. He’d let Amanda down for sixteen years—being a deadbeat dad without even knowing it. And now he wanted to fix it. He pressed the bridge of his nose to keep his head from pounding.

Then he thought of Paige. And a tiny part of him was glad he’d have a couple of extra weeks with her. She was still leaving, of course, right after the Silver wedding, but at least he’d be around to say good-bye. And he could enjoy every second of her until she left. He pushed the selfish thought away as soon as he had it, though—it felt like a betrayal to Amanda—but he couldn’t ignore the way his heart pounded faster.

“So what are our options, then?” he asked Bob, trying to get back to business.

“You’d have to convince Paige to sell to MacGregor. Or you’d have to admit defeat.”

Bob was right. He couldn’t convince Paige to sell to MacGregor. There was no way. She had her own thing going on, and even though he worried he’d look bad to Amanda, his pride didn’t matter. He’d find another way.

“I admit defeat,” he said quietly.

“I knew you would.”

It felt as if a rope tightened in Adam’s chest and made him stand taller at Bob’s words.

“Of course, it’ll delay your inheritance even further,” Bob said.

“I know.”

“You’ll have to start over.”

“I understand.”

“We’ll have to get your dad’s debts paid off.”

“I get it, Bob.”

“You could consider Silver’s proposition.”

“That’s not until late August. Paige said Silver is going on a three-week honeymoon and will negotiate when she gets back. I need to get Amanda in school before then.”

“You might have to consider selling your other property, then, and fast.”

Adam ran his hand through his hair. That’s what he’d been trying to avoid. He’d wanted to hang on to the seaplane property no matter what. It was his mother’s. He felt as though it was the last thing he could do for her, and now it felt as if he was failing her, too.

But his mother was gone. And Amanda was right here in his life, needing him. And he had to take care of her now. He hoped his mother would have been proud of him for taking care of her granddaughter first.

Also, he’d suddenly had the thought that if he could give Paige some of the sale money to start her yoga studio, he would. He hated to see such a beautiful, talented woman give up on her dreams because she was too busy helping everyone else. Paige deserved to be happy, and she deserved to get the best out of life. He wanted to do this for her.

“Go ahead.” Adam could barely get the words out.

He hung up and realized, for the first time, that sometimes he did let feelings get in the way of business. When they were the right thing to do, of course.

And when they were for a beautiful blonde named Paige.

Dorothy Silver came with an entourage of about fifty people: personal assistants, private yacht captains, doctors, acting coaches, friends, at least one old lover, four cameramen, two videographers who were filming the whole thing for a documentary, and someone who might have been a personal sommelier. Together, they wandered through the ranch house about four people thick. Dorothy kept touching the tendrils of hair that spiraled from her 1960s-style turban, and looked at the entire house as if in a dream.

“It’s just like I remembered,” she whispered about fifteen hundred times.

Clutching Paige’s arm as they walked behind the entourage, Ginger glanced over every now and then and raised her eyebrows when Dorothy would gush over something. They were both holding their breath over everything she said. And they were nervous about her asking about the orchard. They knew Dorothy loved that part of the ranch—it was a crucial scene in the movie, when Dorothy’s and Richard’s characters chased each other around the trees and realized by the end of the scene that they were in love, after an apple conked her on the head. It was kind of a corny scene, but Dorothy wanted to re-create it. She wanted it for the documentary and for the wedding itself.

The entourage slowly flowed outside, where Dorothy put her gigantic round sunglasses back on and gripped the arm of one of the personal assistants. Together, they wandered to the gazebo.

Ginger squeezed Paige’s arm. “She’s going to love it,” she said. “You did a beautiful job.”

There, the entire group stopped and stared. The gazebo had been finished late one midnight—the bright-white paint finally covering the whole edifice, which stood like an enormous wedding cake in the middle of the meadow. Wooden scroll details looked like frosting, and Mr. Clark had sent forty-five flats of pansies to rim the base and create a frothy burst of color. A heart-shaped weather vane, straight out of the movie, which Paige had found on Craigslist in a miracle of fate, topped the gazebo now after Antonio had performed feats of strength to get it up there at two a.m. while she navigated from below. The weather vane now spun prettily in the wind, a cupid’s arrow racing after a heart.

The entire entourage seemed to let out a collective sigh.

Beneath her sunglasses, Dorothy let a tear escape.

Then she turned toward Paige. “It’s perfect, darling.”

Ginger squeezed Paige’s arm. Dorothy reached back to her, and Paige took her delicate hand. Being invited into Dorothy’s embrace was more than she’d ever hoped for.

“Did we talk about your debut in my movie? You have your SAG card, right?” she whispered into Paige’s ear.

Paige thought she might die from joy. But she held off answering until Dorothy had the whole story.

Dorothy gripped Paige’s arm and asked about the gazebo, the rocks, the view, and then came the question Paige had been dreading. “Will we have access to the orchard? Can we go there now?”

Paige glanced at Ginger and took a deep breath. She’d been rehearsing how she was going to say this, and she’d tried to come up with a solution for how they might reconstruct that scene without the actual orchard being part of the wedding. But before she could get the words out, she heard a
yes
behind her.

She whirled to see Adam jogging through the meadow.

He came up and put his arm around her. “Yes, you can have access to anything you need.”

“What?” Paige whispered.

He leaned toward her ear. “I’ll explain later. Just say yes.”

They wandered around with Dorothy, and she asked a million more questions: Could Adam take her to the orchard? Could she hold his arm? Wasn’t he handsome? Didn’t he remind everyone of Richard? Could her staff stay on the property? Could her crew stay there? Could
she
stay there? Could she stay with Adam?

“Paige might get jealous,” he whispered.

Dorothy giggled, and he patted her hand.

She turned and looked at Paige with a grin and another level of admiration.

They made plans for some of the staff to stay in Gram’s house, some to stay at Adam’s resort, three to even stay inside Adam’s house, and guests to stay down the hill and at the Castle.

At the end of the day, even Ginger was looking at Adam with a modicum of approval.

That evening, Adam hauled himself to the kitchen and dropped his backpack on the table. He was so glad to have been able to help Paige.

But there was someone else he needed to talk to.

“Amanda?” he called.

She didn’t come out of her room. Maybe she wasn’t back yet from the stables or the pond. Or maybe she was spending time with Rosa, who was teaching her how to make tortillas.