Beach Cottage Kisses (The Cottages on Ocean Breeze #2)

Chapter Eight

W hy in the hell was his praise of Iris’s work turning her eyes cold, as though she was offended? Or in shock?

It wasn’t the first time he’d found profound value in her work. It wasn’t even the hundredth.

The only thing that had changed from any of those previous times and the current one was the sex.

He’d come out to the beach with determination. Optimism.

And a bit of tamped-down trepidation, too. Telling himself that if he let worry in, he’d cause the ruin he wanted to avoid.

As he watched her, Iris blinked. Seemed to focus more clearly on him. And asked, “Can you do something for me?” Even her voice sounded different.

His imagination? Or he wasn’t wrong to think that they had a problem.

“Of course.” His answer was a no-brainer. That night. But any other night in the past, too.

“Show me the shots, specifically, that speak to you. Talk me through them.”

Eager to have such a simple task, when he’d faced the question with dread, Scott immediately clicked on the screen, and moved to stand beside Iris.

And, eventually, to sit with her, on the steps of her porch, with the outside lights on, as they munched on pita bread with fig jelly, and she brought photos up on the twelve-inch tablet she’d brought outside.

She’d noted photo numbers. He’d tell her what he saw. Sometimes she nodded. Sometimes she just wrote. And then they’d move on.

It wasn’t anything they’d ever done before. And yet…it wasn’t the least bit sexy, either.

It was them. Just on a deeper level.

Liking what he was feeling, seeing, between them, he continued to munch bread, rather than the baked chicken and broccoli salad he had waiting at home for dinner. And to watch Iris work.

She was so intent, to the point of not even always seeming to see him as a person, but rather, as an extension of her apps and programs, showing him a side of her that he’d never seen before.

A couple of hours later, as they reached the end of her day’s shoot, she offered him a beer.

Relaxed, enjoying the new them, he nodded, and took a seat on one of the deep wicker chairs with cushions that she indicated. Uncapping a beer and handing it to her, before reaching for the other, which he opened for himself.

A move he’d have done for any date he’d been with.

After a brief glance at Iris, to make certain she hadn’t caught on to the move, he took warning. Glad that he hadn’t messed things up between them.

But aware that new normals didn’t just appear fully formed. They had to be made. Over time. By continuous choices.

Both small and large.

Like the choice to uncap a bottle.

“This was nice, tonight. Thank you,” Iris said, gazing toward the ocean from her own chair while Morgan and Angel lay sleeping at their feet. As they’d been doing much of the evening.

“It was nice,” he agreed. Ready to build, choice by choice, the friendship that they both wanted. Seeing a way for it to happen.

“I’m seriously thanking you,” she said then, her tone serious, somewhat pensive. But still not at all a woman-to-man thing.

And so he said, “I’m not sure why you feel you need to.” Yeah, she’d brought out her tablet—that had been new—but he’d perused her photo shoots more times than he could count.

Most times while sitting on Sage’s porch, with his sister and Iris and a baby monitor, while Leigh slept inside.

He heard her sigh. Tensed. Waiting. “When I first started taking an interest in photography, I…knew someone…who saw what you saw tonight. Not on the same scale, maybe. I was a total amateur with a second-rate camera, but she saw what I saw behind the lens. You’ve always seen more than most say they do when you look at my work. I just figured it was because photography is the creative medium that speaks to you, but tonight…”

His gut warmed, spreading upward to his chest, not downward.

“You don’t need to thank me for that,” he told her softly. She’d said “she” when referring to the person in her past. Since he knew she identified as heterosexual, he figured she was referring to a friend. A platonic one. “It’s what friends do, right? They see the person in what they do?”

She was silent, and he tensed again.

Too much? He took it too far?

She sipped. He did. Morgan snored. The waves flowed in the distance, gracing them with white noise.

“I quit work early today.” Iris’s words fell into the peace that was trying to encapsulate them.

Grateful that whatever had stopped her from replying to his friend question seemed to have passed, he asked the obvious, “Why?”

She’d brought up the situation for a reason.

“Because I was worried that if I didn’t show up on the beach, you’d think it was because of last night and I didn’t want things to get all weird again.”

Last night .

Two words.

That catapulted him down to the ground, in his sister’s living room, his wallet condom stretched to the limit…

All day. He’d made it through the entire day without letting himself go there.

And with two words…

“That alone kind of makes it weird, doesn’t it?” he asked when he could do so without choking. He didn’t look at her. Stared at waves. Sipped beer.

“Yeah.”

She sure didn’t sugarcoat.

He watched her beer bottle rise, looked away before the two mouths made contact—one glass, one warm, soft flesh that he’d tasted. Devoured.

“That’s why I brought it up,” she said. Then she continued, “I just want it clear that I don’t intend to do so again, so if I’m not out tomorrow, or the next day, or any other day before Sage gets back, it doesn’t mean anything more than it meant before she left.” Her tone easy. Through the whole thing.

Which almost convinced him that she was as calm as she sounded. Unless she was a very good actress, he was the only one getting hot and bothered.

Not altogether a bad thing.

Himself he could handle.

Would handle.

A man had to know how to keep it in his pants. Just part of the responsibility of being an adult. He’d been good with that one since he’d first figured out the power he had down there.

“Note taken,” he told Iris, lest she think he had a problem with what she’d said. And for good measure, added, “And ditto.”

She took a sip.

He did.

They’d toasted on it.

And Scott’s next sip…a toast to himself.

Come hell or high water, he’d find a way to quell this sexual burning inside him for the woman he did not want to have sex with, but wanted in his life for as long as he could have her.

He was a man who put determination behind his choices.

One for whom failure was akin to death.

With one woman’s emotional damage already on his soul.

There would not be another.

* * *

Iris was pretty good at engaging her shutoff valve. During the first couple of years of emotional recovery, she’d vacillated between being completely shut down, or in agony. But as she started college, took the reins of her life in hand, she’d found her permanent vibe.

One that was suddenly being challenged.

Why Sage’s wedding had somehow upset her apple cart she had no idea. But she was determined not to let the matter continue any further.

She’d had sex with her friend’s brother and was struggling to wrap her mind around that one. To rationalize the bizarre behavior.

Three years of nothing in that area where Scott Martin was concerned, and then, overnight, she’s hot for him?

Made no sense.

And so, as the second week after the wedding progressed, Iris made a point of shutting down every time she was out on the beach. Whether Scott was there or not. She wasn’t taking any chances on herself until she had a better understanding of what was going on.

No way she was going to lose herself again.

She’d barely made her way out the first time.

One of the counselors she’d seen had helped her practice shutting off the overwhelming swells of emotion that had threatened to strangle her alive. Had given her tools.

Distraction for one.

Putting herself in a public space, rather than living in a private one, when things got to be too much. People tended to put up walls in public.

She’d gotten really good at it.

And it seemed to be working around Scott, too. By Friday, she didn’t even hesitate to head out early for a long walk with Angel on the beach. Down toward Gray’s new place at the end of Ocean Breeze and turning to walk over a mile toward the opposite end. She’d been at home editing all day. Had sent off final content to three different clients, including the San Diego Zoo. And had been offered a much more lucrative contract with the zoo as part of their ongoing crusade to end extinction.

As early as she was, she’d headed out for a talk with Ivy. She’d sprinkled Ivy’s ashes in the waves offshore from Ocean Breeze the day she’d moved in. And those particular waves had been a source of calm and comfort to her ever since. Of course the water wasn’t the same as it had been three years before. But sediment lowered. Her heart knew there would always be pieces of her other half on that beach.

But as she got out to the sand—close enough to the water to see shells that it brought in, but far enough away that there was no risk of Angel getting swept up in it—she took one glance outward, and had to shake it off.

The intensity that had rolled up within her during that glance wasn’t something she could allow. Not with the prospect of seeing people.

Of seeing Scott.

Fridays were his shorter workdays.

And so she stayed focused on being in the present. Considered what she might do for the weekend. Work, of course, but which project? Thought about getting a new comforter for her bed. Talked to Angel about a jellyfish that washed up. Looked for some of the blue blobs that had shown up on their beach—as well as many others in Southern California—the previous spring. Hydrozoans. They’d been all over the news. A sea creature from the ocean floor. She’d donated a plethora of photographs of them to local scientists studying them.

And when, almost an hour after she’d left her cottage, Angel gave the high-pitched bark that was reserved for her hello to Morgan, Iris’s heart didn’t even skip a beat.

Continuing her casual pace as her girl ran full speed up the beach for the lavish greeting the girls always bestowed on each other, Iris had a nonchalant, regular smile on her face as she watched Scott approach.

He was talking to the dogs. She couldn’t make out his words, but his voice carried in the slight breeze straight at her.

A voice that was familiar to her. Resonated within her.

As though a part of her.

Of her life , she quickly amended the thought. Just like Sage’s and Leigh’s voices were ones she’d know and identify with as belonging to her personal circle.

Almost as though he’d read her mind, his first words to her were, “I talked to Sage a little bit ago. She sounded happier than I’ve heard her since we were kids.”

Hearing Scott’s affection, Iris’s mind immediately switched to the mundane.

Who actually remembered the sound of a sibling’s happiness from childhood?

Anyone?

Everyone?

Or just multiples who’d been connected since conception?

“She asked me to look in on you. Said you hadn’t texted since Monday.”

Sex on the floor.

Sage’s house.

Beige sand. Glistening. Angel’s front paws on Morgan’s back. “I’m assuming you told her that we’ve seen each other on the beach every night, as usual, and I’m fine?”

“I did.” Good. Breathe.

“I also told her that I’m not your keeper.”

Uh-oh . “And she wanted to know what was going on, right? Because why else would you have said something like that?” Had he told Sage what they’d done?

Heat rose up her neck, tendrils sliding toward her cheeks.

“She asked me why I was tense. Didn’t automatically relate it to you. Or her question. She knows when I’m off, which is why I’ve been texting with her all week, instead of talking to her. It’s a twin thing.”

A twin thing.

His words slammed her in the gut. With recognition. Loss. Agony.

Maybe some jealousy.

She shoved her mind to the words he’d said before the last ones. He’d been texting his twin all week, rather than calling, so that she wouldn’t know he was off.

Because he was off. Just as Iris had been. Fighting not to think about his body on top of hers. Entering hers.

Refusing to allow her mind to dwell any time the fire hit.

Taking a middle-of-the-night shower when she woke up sweating from a far too realistic dream of being with him again.

Apparently, they were both good at pretending, were determined to manifest the future they wanted, but neither of them were being honest with the other.

They were pretending.

Which made their relationship little more than a lie.

When she remained silent, unwilling to voice any of her current thoughts, Scott continued, “I told her about the case.”

He’d rested the prosecution’s case the day before and the judge had called a recess until Monday when the defense would present their side.

Of course Scott was tense.

His career meant far more to him than any sex he’d ever had. It was his life. His words, not hers. But she’d certainly seen truth in them during her three years of knowing him.

And if she was even half the friend to him she wanted to be, she’d have sought harder to talk to him about the nuances in the week’s testimony from his witnesses, rather than being all about shutting herself down.

“How do you think the jury reacted to your witnesses? Especially the wife’s sister? You think they found her credible?”

Hands in the pockets of the pants he’d worn to work, Scott said, “I do,” and spent the next twenty minutes talking to her about expressions on jurors’ faces during key parts of testimony, and also laying out areas where the defense could still sway them. Seeming to find her replies astute, if nothing else.

It was good conversation. Interesting. Stimulating.

If you didn’t have the possibility of losing a friendship on the table.

Because, while she wasn’t giving up yet, the stiffness between them was getting worse, not better. Scott hadn’t taken his hands out of his pockets during the entire walk.

As though he was afraid that he might touch her. Even accidentally.

And she’d kept her distance, too. All week.

Because while they could easily have sex until the intense attraction waned, such a choice would be messy and ultimately, people would be hurt. Sage would figure things out. Make more of the sex than was there. Or she or Scott would. Chances were, they wouldn’t both reach that point at the same time. Emotions would get involved. Sides taken.

Or, discomfort would mandate that they not all hang together.

Iris figured, no matter how it all played out, it was only a matter of time before she and Scott quit accessing the beach at the same time.

Determining, too, that it was probably for the best.