Chapter Two
Chapter Two
“Jake,” she said again, at a loss. Jake Hawkins, former pro surfer turned elite travel guide. Once the most important person in the world to her, not that she had ever told him so. Of all the places she’d imagined seeing him over the last two years—and there had been plenty of imaginings, more fantasy conversations than was probably healthy—the back deck of a boat on its way to Hempstead Island for her ex-fiancé’s wedding was not one of them.
“I know you’ll take this personally, but you’re not exactly a sack of feathers,” Jake grunted, reminding her that she was still sprawled out on top of him, crushing him with her clumsy weight.
“Oh shit, your back,” she said, clambering off and raising a distinct oof out of him. “Oh god, Jake, I’m so sorry. Let me help.”
“I’ve got it,” Jake said, rolling to one side before going very still. “Actually, no I don’t. Give me a minute.”
“We should get you inside,” Kate said, though she couldn’t quite bring herself to reach for him just then. It wasn’t like she didn’t have plenty of practice helping him in the past, when the injury that brought his pro-surfing career to an abrupt end caused him so much pain he couldn’t move. But that had been before the incident , before Kate had sworn never to try to touch him again.
He was supposed to be in Borneo this weekend; she’d checked his company’s website to make sure. She’d also called her mom and not-so-subtly confirmed it through his aunt. Not to mention she couldn’t imagine Spencer actually agreeing to invite Jake to his wedding. So what was Jake doing here ?
A window slammed open above them and somebody stuck their head out from where Kate presumed all the steering equipment was (hmm, maybe DanSeaLife4376 had been right to call out her incompetence).
“Everybody all right down there?” the man shouted. “What in hell was that?”
Kate wondered the same thing. “You were leaving me behind.”
“They only told me there’d be one last person, so once he was on board I figured we were good. You two better get inside. We’ve got a real bluster coming up. I’ll try to keep it as smooth as possible, but it looks like we’re in for a rough ride.”
So the ship’s captain hadn’t been expecting Jake, either. Interesting. Jake had recovered enough to stand, staggering his way toward the sliding doors and the welcoming embrace of what looked like a very luxurious couch beyond. Kate retrieved her suitcase, giving Jake enough time to shuck his jacket and beanie, sink into the couch, and put his feet up on the low coffee table loaded with a charcuterie plate and a bottle of champagne.
He wore jeans torn at one knee and a Henley, the sleeves pushed up at the elbows and exposing the lean lines of his forearms. His skin was deeply tanned, no doubt the result of his latest tropical destination as a tour guide for the extreme adventure company he co-owned with a friend, his hair like spun gold under the soft lights. He looked both exactly as she remembered him from the disastrous last time they’d spoken, and somehow completely different.
Was he still angry with her? It was hard to tell, considering how tight his expression still was as he gingerly leaned forward to pick up a bunch of grapes. Could be her presence he was wincing at, or it could be the twinges of pain that used to render him immobile.
“Do you need your pills?” she asked tentatively.
“Didn’t bring them,” he said, his tone short. He cocked his head toward her. “Didn’t think I’d get cannonballed on the way there.”
Two years ago Kate would have known he was joking and would have shot back a quip of her own about how an athlete should stay agile and ready for anything. But right now all she could remember was the last time she’d seen him, his normally open and friendly expression twisted in anger, the accusatory words coming so hot and fast she couldn’t keep up with them. He didn’t look like he was about to unleash another tirade on her, but athletes had to stay agile. Even mental ones.
“So, you’re here!” Kate said, trying to sound cool and breezy and landing closer to maniacal. “And not in Borneo. I mean, was it Borneo? Did you say? I thought I heard… probably read it… somewhere. Or maybe Burma? I get those mixed up, when I think about it. And Burbank, though I think that’s a city in California. Was that where they taped The Tonight Sh —”
“Kate,” Jake said, putting up his hands in exasperation. “Stop. I know what you’re doing, and we don’t have to do this.”
Oh boy, here it comes. He was still pissed, and he was gearing up to tell her all the ways she’d failed him as a friend, just like last time. She had enough to worry about this weekend without adding Jake Freaking Hawkins to the mix. She had to get ahead of this.
“You’re right,” she said, squaring her shoulders. “You are right. We’re just gonna… face this head-on. No games. No playing around. No saying one thing and meaning—”
“Kate!” Jake said, wincing again. This time she was pretty sure she was the pain in his backside, though.
“I know we’re not friends anymore!” she blurted out, staring hard at the sweating bottle of champagne and feeling a kinship with its discomfort just then. “Or at all, maybe ever. And that’s fine, really. I’m… super cool with that. You have moved on, I have moved on. Time has moved on—”
“ Time has moved on?” Jake said, somewhat disbelieving.
“You know what I mean,” Kate snapped, irritated that she hadn’t been allowed to practice this at least a dozen times in the mirror. If she’d known he was coming this weekend, if she’d even so much as suspected he might be in attendance, she would have planned—and packed— very differently. She didn’t do well under pressure, as evidenced by the last time they’d spoken. Jake opened his mouth as if to speak, but she held up her hands to stop him; she needed to get this out, her way.
“We aren’t friends,” she said, this time with a gravity to her words that carried all the weight of the past two years without him. “As far as anyone this weekend knows, we are just… former work colleagues.”
Jake’s gaze was nearly intolerable. “Former work colleagues?”
“Yes, who amicably parted before their last project could be completed,” Kate finished, feeling pretty good about the story she was concocting in real time. She might not have a grip on Loretta, but maybe she could still salvage this weekend. “So I think we just… we call a truce. For the weekend. Pretend… pretend we’re still…”
Still what? Still harboring fantasies about the other person when we’re two glasses of wine and half an episode of The Bachelorette into the evening? Still have their phone listed in most frequent contacts because we keep typing up long, weepy, apologetic texts and deleting them the next morning? Still can’t go to the dim sum shop on the corner without our hearts stopping if someone with tousled blond hair is occupying the back corner booth?
But no, Jake had been off traveling the globe, chauffeuring wealthy adrenaline junkies on extreme adventure tours. Probably leaving a trail of heartbroken women in every far-flung locale he visited. He hadn’t given a second thought to Kate in all those years, she was sure of it.
“Pretend we’re still what, Kate?” Jake asked, his voice soft and even, an underlying intensity to the words making her skin feel tight and prickly.
“Pretend we still care,” Kate said. “About each other.”
“Is that what we’re doing? Pretending?” His gaze narrowed on her. “That’s what you really want?”
Of course it wasn’t what she wanted, but Kate had plenty of practice not getting what she wanted. She put out a hand, determined to play the diplomat for the weekend.
“A truce,” she said. “And then we can each go our own separate way again. Just like before.”
Jake sighed, taking her hand in his warm, calloused fingers and sending a surge of electricity through her that could have powered the whole Pacific Northwest. “If that’s how you want to play it. Truce, Katey cakes.”
Kate wrinkled her nose. “One time you catch me eating cake and you never let me forget.”
“Hang on,” Jake said, giving her a grin that turned her bones soft. “You weren’t just ‘eating cake.’ You were hiding in the bushes at my aunt’s condo eating a slice of cake the size of your head, and you threatened to fork me in the thigh if I even dared to sniff the frosting. It would have left an impression on anyone.”
As if Kate could have forgotten. Her mother had only recently moved into the retirement community and met Jake’s aunt through the bridge club. When Mrs. Hawkins threw a welcome party for her nephews, freshly arriving from Australia, Kate’s mother guilted Kate into attending. Everyone else was from the retirement community, and his aunt wanted some younger locals to “shift the bell curve of death a little lower.” Kate had planned to hide in the bushes with her cake until her mother was ready to leave, but then Jake had come out for some fresh air and caught her lurking.
He’d only been a few months out from the accident that ended his surfing career, still in a back brace and crutches that made getting around hilly Seattle intolerable. Kate’s mom had offered Kate as a taxi service, and she’d hardly needed much convincing. Jake was funny, surprisingly self-deprecating, charming, and hot as hell. He had incredible stories of chasing big waves in Morocco, winning tournaments in California, and cave diving with his brother, Charlie, in Australia. He’d toured the world, been to every beach, and had kept a photo journal to prove it. Those aimless drives around the city eventually turned into Kate’s first big career break.
A series of part-photography, part-travelogue, all thirst-trap books called The Wandering Australian . They featured full-page spreads of pictures from Jake’s time chasing big waves around the world—historic architecture, crystalline waters, and waves that looked blown from glass. And in the middle of them all a shirtless, grinning Jake. They’d also featured vignettes of his trips written by Kate, shared over plates of nachos or pho bowls or, one fateful evening, a pitcher of margaritas in her apartment.
“Well, a gentleman wouldn’t bring it up again,” Kate sniffed, turning her attention toward the distant horizon.
Jake snorted. “A gentleman would have lost his fingers getting between you and that frosting.”
They settled into a silence that wasn’t quite amicable, but didn’t feel so actively hostile, as the waters turned rougher and the sky quickly darkened. Even in the luxurious interior of the boat Kate began to feel queasy, dropping onto the couch opposite Jake and cradling her head in her hands, wishing the hours away until they reached their final destination. When she thought she’d rather go down than suffer another minute of being tossed about, the speaker in the ceiling crackled to life.
“Hempstead Island, coming up.”
The private island of the Hempstead family that included Kennedy Hempstead had once been known as Rum Island. Situated to the northwest corner of the San Juan Islands archipelago, it was a prime location for hiding contraband alcohol from police boats during Prohibition. Russell Hempstead took the profits from his timber mill and purchased good Canadian whisky, selling it back to Seattle’s elites at triple the cost. He then opened his own bank, solidifying his family’s fortune for generations to come.
Kate crawled toward the large windows to watch their approach. At least the waters had calmed in the sheltered cove created by the extended outcroppings surrounding the main island. Still, the sky was a smothering blanket overhead, threatening to open up at any moment.
“I hope they weren’t planning on having this shindig outdoors,” Jake said from close behind her. He was only a few inches taller than her, five foot eleven to her five foot seven, but in close quarters those four inches might as well have been four feet. Kate turned in surprise, tilting her head back to look up at him, caught again by how different he seemed since the last time she’d seen him. Older, a few more scars, but still Jake.
“Kate,” he said, his brows drawing into a frown, but the sliding door banged open just then, startling them apart. An older man in a heavy raincoat with a grizzled white beard glared at them. If he’d had a parrot on his shoulder, you couldn’t have convinced Kate he wasn’t a pirate. “Come on, then, what are you two lovebirds waiting on?” he groused. “We need to get the boat secured before the storm comes in. Train’s a waiting.”
“Sorry,” Kate said, turning a furious red.
“Train?” Jake said in bemusement.
Sure enough, a small train waited just above the docks, the tracks leading around the lush greenery of the island. It looked more like an old car, like a Model T that someone had outfitted with train wheels, but there was a rack in the back for their trunks and a bench back seat with the door open and waiting. There was even a man in an old-school chauffeur’s outfit, complete with a puffy black-and-white-striped hat and dove-gray pants, holding the door.
“Welcome to Hempstead Island,” he said in a demure British accent. Of course the Hempsteads would have an imported British butler. Loretta would have a field day with him. The guilty butler was such a trope of the genre, it could almost be a fun twist if the butler actually did do it. There were certainly plenty of wealthy, eccentric characters around Big Pine Key who could hire a suspicious butler. Maybe Miss Faraday, the reclusive heiress with dark family secrets and a penchant for Loretta’s Gin Rickeys on delivery.
Kate crawled in the back and slipped her phone out of her pocket, the little EMERGENCY CALLS ONLY message at the top giving her heart palpitations. There were no service bars, and she was worried the message about emergency calls was optimistic at best. She hadn’t been able to send a text since the Seattle skyline disappeared. They were all alone out here, at the mercy of the comings and goings of a luxury boat currently being battered by the oncoming waves.
She swiped open the Notes app, letting the fun little loop-de-loop of panic in her gut fuel the potential Loretta scene as she typed.
“Hiya, Jeeves,” Loretta quipped, doffing her imaginary cap.
“Good day, madame,” said the butler, the pinnacle of propriety.
Loretta snorted. “I’ve been called a lot of things, but ‘madame’ might be the worst of them. I’m here for Miss Faraday’s weekly delivery. The old gal might be pushing ninety-five, but she drinks harder than most of the twenty-five-year-olds I’ve seen.”
“I am afraid Miss Faraday is…” The butler’s gaze skittered to the side only a fraction of a second, just long enough for Loretta to know that the next words out of his mouth would be a lie. “Indisposed at the moment. I shall take the delivery for her.”
“I don’t think so, Jeeves,” Loretta said, narrowing her gaze. “I’m going to need to see Miss Faraday myself. In person.”
Except now that she thought about it, hadn’t Miss Faraday suffered a heart attack and died of natural causes in Loretta book two, A Dark and Stormy Murder ? Kate would have to consult the series bible, which was currently stored away on her computer safely tucked in her luggage, which Jake had just tied to the trunk. So maybe not Miss Faraday’s butler, then.
“All set,” Jake said as he slid onto the bench seat beside her, oblivious of Miss Faraday’s potential fate. Kate quickly deleted the silly note as the butler climbed into the driver’s seat, closing them inside the cabin. It had looked wide and roomy from the outside, but Jake Hawkins had a tendency to take up all the space he occupied. His elbow brushed hers, sending frissons of energy all down her spine. Boy, she really was deprived if all it took was a little elbow friction to get her engine going. Of course, that was when it was Jake’s elbow doing the rubbing.
“Brakes released, proceeding ahead,” said the driver as the little car sputtered to life and lurched forward on the tracks. It must have been installed around the time Russell Hempstead was bootlegging it up and down the Seattle coastline, because the seats felt hollow and the doors looked too thick, like maybe they had a secret compartment of hooch still in there.
“On your left you will note the hunting lodge, built in 1934 by Franklin Houser, based on an original design by Frank Lloyd Wright,” said Jeeves as fat drops of rain adorned the hood and windshield.
“What does an island need a hunting lodge for?” Jake asked.
As if in answer to his question, the train car lurched to a halt, throwing Kate face-first into the hard seat back in front of her. Her forehead connected painfully and she tasted blood as she bit down on her lip, swearing under her breath. That was all she needed going into this weekend, a massive goose egg on her face and a bloodied lip.
“Kate, are you all right?” Jake asked, reaching for her.
“Fine, just… surprised,” Kate groused as she sat up, more embarrassed than hurt. Well, okay, a little hurt. What was that seat back made of, concrete? “We stopped so fast.”
“My apologies, ma’am,” said the butler, his genteel tone a little distracted and sharp. “There is an… impediment on the tracks.”
“What kind of impediment?” Jake asked.
“It’s best if you and the lady do not look, sir,” said the butler, just as Kate crawled forward for a better view.
Though she probably should have heeded his words, considering the gruesome remains of a body strewn across the tracks before them.