Chapter 21
Chapter Twenty-One
F ollowing the speed-dating evening, Saturday in the shop had been the busiest Jade had known it, full of people wanting to buy the books they’d been recommended.
She’d felt chuffed. Pleased enough with herself to instigate a family chat on the Sunday, and remain calm when Lauren kept trying to turn the talk towards her love life. ‘There is no love life. I’m here to focus on the shop,’ Jade told her. ‘And I think I’ve made some real progress in that direction.’
It had felt good talking about a success for a change. Her little team– she was running a team – had been buzzing after the library event. When the last person had drifted out, Mary had attacked the leftover bottles of fizz. Then she’d found some awful music on her phone and badgered them all to dance. Philip, included. The man had actually shown some decent moves once he’d downed a few glasses.
The only low point was Liam and his determination to twist everything. Of course Adam hadn’t helped, but then he hadn’t helped with the whole event, either. Just swanned around telling people they should support the store because otherwise Haven was going to close it down, like he had other thriving businesses on the waterfront.
If only Liam had bothered to hang around long enough to listen to her explanation, she thought for the umpteenth time, rather than slink off to stick pins in her voodoo-doll replica.
That’s if she was even important enough for him to have a voodoo doll of her. Or to have remained in his mind after he’d walked out of the frigging door.
I don’t want to spend my days thinking about you.
Okay, maybe he did think of her. But he didn’t want to.
Just like she did not want to keep thinking of him. Especially not on her day off.
Exasperated with herself, she stood up from her prone position on the beach and shook the sand off her legs. The book she’d been reading fell onto the sand. Great. She’d be picking the stuff out of it for days.
She quickly gathered her things and shoved them into her rucksack, taking a moment to take a final look at the stunning stretch of soft, golden sand that was Madaket Beach. It was so peaceful here, clear blue sea ahead of her, large sand dunes behind her. No rows of loungers, no tacky beachfront cafes. Just beautiful sand as far as the eye could see, a few couples strolling along the beach, a handful of swimmers… and a seal. Yes, a seal had bobbed its head out of the water straight in front of her. God, she loved this island. Forget the issues with the bookstore, with Liam. She would make the most of being here while she could.
Tugging the rental bike off its stand, she began to peddle back past Millie’s restaurant towards the bike path. And no, she was not going to remember this time a week ago, when Liam had shocked her into falling off. Then carried her in his arms and proceeded to care for her.
Nope, definitely not remembering that.
Instead she focused on her surroundings, the smell of pine trees and the glisten of small freshwater lakes, known as the Great Ponds, that nestled between the swathes of lush green countryside. She stopped at one small lake and squealed when she saw what was swimming in it. Turtles. Snapping turtles according to the sign. About a foot long, they were so ugly, they were beautiful.
As she neared the town she climbed off her bike and walked it along the cobbled main street– no way could her bum stand cycling over the smooth stones which, together with the grand old tree-shaded mansions lining either side, gave a real sense of times gone by.
When she reached the wharf she tried not to look at the gleaming white yacht moored at the end.
Her eyes had other ideas though, and her heart lurched as she spotted a male figure hunched over, head in his hands. Without thinking, she clattered the bike to the floor and ran across the rickety wooden slats. ‘Liam?’
His head snapped up, and she heard him mutter a curse before dragging a hand down his face. ‘Go away.’
‘You look awful.’
He let out a humourless laugh. ‘And you look fucking gorgeous. But you need to go.’ He bent and picked up a glass from the floor. That’s when she saw the bottle of whisky.
‘Drinking already?’ It was only just gone five o’clock.
He smirked, his next words slurring. ‘Who are you? My mother?’ As soon as he’d said the last word, his expression turned haggard. ‘Like she’d ever cared. She fucked off and left her mother to pick up the pieces. And she did. Christ, she was awesome at it, being my mom, my dad, my grandma, my whole fucking family. But now she… she…’ He shook his head and took a huge gulp of the amber liquid.
Jade climbed onto the boat and went to sit next to him, her hand curling around his. ‘She what?’ she asked quietly.
He hung his head lower, his long, lean body shuddering as he dragged in a few breaths. ‘Fuck off.’ But it was said without heat.
‘Why?’
Slowly he raised his head, eyes meeting hers for the first time. And that’s when she saw the red rims, the telltale glisten in their stormy grey depths. ‘I don’t want you seeing me like this.’
‘You mean like a human being for once?’
He grunted, taking another swig of his whisky. Silence descended and she wondered how long he’d been sitting here, how much he’d drunk. Whether he would open up to her or tell her to fuck off again, only with more heat.
‘I took her to the specialist today, my grandma.’ His voice cracked through the quiet. ‘Fucking AMD.’
Advanced Macular Degeneration. Jade may not be Lauren, but she’d heard of that. ‘She’s having problems with her eyesight?’
He kept his gaze firmly ahead. ‘Problems.’ His shoulders heaved up and down as he let out a sound of disgust. ‘That would suggest there was a solution, but according to the supposed top guy in his field, there is no solution for the type she has. If she’s lucky, she’ll keep her peripheral vision and learn to adapt to using it. If she’s unlucky, she’ll lose it altogether.’
Jade’s heart faltered. She didn’t need to know his backstory to understand how important his grandma was to him. She only needed to look at his distraught face. ‘I’m so sorry.’
‘Yeah, me too.’
Of their own volition, her arms reached up to wrap around him. Let him push her away. She couldn’t sit here and not offer comfort. Not let him know she ached for him.
To her surprise, he leant into her.
‘She loves reading.’ His voice cracked again. ‘Loved, past tense. God, I hated those books of hers, it was always a sore point between us. She used to say they offered her an escape but I’d see her in tears reading them.’ Briefly his eyes lifted to meet hers. ‘How was that helping? Sure, they were a temporary respite from her own crappy life, but then the book ended and bang she was back to reality working all hours at a shitty job just to keep our heads above water.’
Through the strained words, Jade heard his guilt, the tortured knowledge that he was the extra burden his grandma had not accounted for. ‘Just because she cried didn’t mean she was sad. Books, good books, draw emotion from us.’
‘Yeah, well, now she can’t read them. Can’t do a lot of stuff, like driving, being independent. But she just sat there, smiling at me and patting my hand, telling me not to worry. She’d be fine.’
‘Of course she will.’ Jade nudged his side. ‘She’s got you taking care of her.’
* * *
The compassion in Jade’s eyes, the certainty in her voice… it nearly broke him. He’d never been this close to bawling his eyes out. Not since that night at boarding school in the middle of the first term, when he’d known he was never going to fit in, never be anything other than the butt of jokes. The victim of pranks– like the hilarious bucket of cold water falling on him when he opened the door to the dorm.
Now, though, with Jade’s arms wrapped tightly around him, like she was trying to shield him from pain, his emotions were dangerously close to the surface. ‘The specialist mentioned some new treatment that might slow the progression.’ He wanted to talk, he realised, wanted to tell her. ‘She’s down to have it next week.’ He huffed out a breath. ‘I know there are worse things, but Christ, she does not deserve this, not after the life she’s had. She should be living it up now, not reduced to staying in her own home because she can’t see enough to leave it.’
‘But she has you to help her. And if I know you at all, you’ll move heaven and earth to make sure this diagnosis doesn’t cramp her style.’
‘Too damn right.’ He drained the rest of his glass and said a silent prayer of thanks that the build for the Sconset house was already underway. She’d wanted, in her words, to die on the island where she was born. Well she wasn’t doing that alone. She’d do it living with him, in a house fit for a queen. He’d agonised over the design with his architect, making sure everything she loved had been incorporated; big windows with views of the sea, rambling roses around a sheltered porch, a grand fireplace. If he’d had time to build it with his own hands, he would have. Instead he’d done the next best thing and overseen every aspect of its build, much to the annoyance of his vastly overpaid project manager.
Jade’s hand curled around his, her other hand removing the glass from his grip. ‘Come on, let’s walk some of that alcohol off.’
It was probably a good idea, but… ‘Wait.’ He lurched to his feet, feeling the effect of the whisky as he staggered inside to grab a baseball cap, which he secured firmly on his head. He did not want anybody else to see him like this.
Apparently he’d drunk enough to make him compliant because she threaded her arm through his and led him off the boat like a mother taking care of a difficult child. ‘I thought you were mad at me, anyway,’ he said grouchily as they turned away from the resort and towards Brant point.
‘I usually am,’ she agreed with a smile bright enough to burn his poor, raw retinas.
‘You didn’t splash “Sponsored by Haven Resorts” across the poster to make me look stupid.’ Saying it like a statement felt easier. He fucking hated apologising.
He caught the curve of her lips out of the corner of his eye. ‘Finally twigged, did you?’
‘After the tenth person thanked me for putting on an event I had no clue about, and would have vetoed if you had asked me. Yeah.’ She didn’t say anything, just kept that small smile on her face. ‘Why?’ he asked eventually when it was clear she wasn’t going to volunteer the information herself.
‘Why hold the event? I wanted you to see how valuable the bookstore could be?—’
‘Why say Haven Resorts sponsored it?’ he interrupted.
She gave him a side glance. ‘To show you that you don’t have to remain on the outside. You can become part of the community.’
‘By buying their affections?’
She let out a sound of exasperation. ‘By funding projects that can help both Haven Resorts and people who live on the island. Forget the past and those who did you wrong. There are so many good people living here, if you’d just give them a chance to get to know you. And you all have one thing in common, you love the island. If you didn’t, you wouldn’t have built a business here.’
‘Did you forget about the boy who wanted revenge?’
Another noise of suppressed frustration. ‘Fine, you stayed here to stick two fingers up at certain individuals. But the fact remains, Haven Resorts needs Nantucket as much as Nantucket needs you. Why not work together to make it a better place for locals and tourists?’
He tried to focus on her words, and not on how gorgeous she looked, all fired up. ‘And I suppose one of the projects I should be funding is the bookstore?’
‘That would be for you to decide, obviously.’
‘But you’re determined to make it difficult for me to close it.’
‘If by difficult you mean getting you to realise that you’re wrong to get rid of it then, yes, that’s my aim.’
How was he supposed to keep a level head when all this whisky was sloshing around in his bloodstream and she was staring at him with a smile full of mischief, and eyes that sparkled with defiance. ‘Didn’t I give you one more week? By my reckoning, that ends today.’
Her smile dimmed and she looked away from him. ‘That’s one interpretation.’
‘Give me another.’ Fuck, how much whisky had he drunk? And for how long was he going to convince himself it was the alcohol influencing him, and not her . Her determination not to give in. Her diabolically sneaky methods of getting him to change his mind.
She halted and turned to face him. The breeze ruffled her blonde hair and a stray strand whipped across her face. Before he had a chance to stop himself, he’d taken hold of it, letting the silky lock slip across his fingers before he tucked it behind her ear. His heart pounded, his blood heated and his eyes wouldn’t shift from her mouth.
He wanted to kiss her more than he wanted to take his next breath.
She swallowed as his thumb came in to contact with the soft skin of her jaw. ‘Let me manage the shop until the end of my contract and then, if you’re still not convinced it’s an asset to Haven Resorts, you can close it down.’ She gave him a dry smile. ‘But wait till I’m on the plane, or you might find me chained to the door.’
A wave of acute sadness rolled through him at the thought of her leaving. There were good reasons why he kept people at a distance. Reasons he needed to remind himself of before he started making a big fucking mistake with Jade. ‘I’ll think about it.’
‘Good. But think about it fast because I have lots of other ideas for things I want to do. If you’ll give me the chance.’
He studied her, his chest shifting in a way he hadn’t felt in a long time and didn’t want to feel now. ‘You know you’ve already done what you set out to do.’ She wrinkled her brow and he had to clench his fists to stop his hands from reaching up to smooth the lines. ‘You’re living away from home, standing on your own two feet.’
‘True, but the success of the book evening?—’
‘The one I sponsored?’
‘Yes.’ She gave him a shy smile. ‘It’s made me greedy. I want more of that. I want to go home knowing I’ve achieved something.’
He had something to prove, too, and his own demons to bury. Yet deferring the work for the next few months seemed a small sacrifice for a woman he’d wronged but was still talking to him, trying to help him. ‘Fine. I won’t close the bookstore until the end of your contract.’
A smile split her face and she bounced on her toes. ‘Oh God, I’m so excited right now, I could kiss you.’
‘You won’t find me stopping you.’
‘Oh no.’ She wagged her finger at him, and all he could think was how right she was to keep away but how disappointed, too. ‘Kissing you is dangerous.’
‘It doesn’t have to be.’
‘You seriously think we could get that close and not, you know, want more?’
‘No.’ His groin tightened as he stared into her beautiful eyes. Before there had been want, pure and simple. Now there was also like and respect. If he wasn’t careful, that would morph into feelings that would leave him exposed again, vulnerable. ‘Doesn’t stop me remembering. Or wishing for a repeat.’
Her breath hitched. And when her teeth sunk into her lower lip, he went from half hard to painfully pressing against his zipper. ‘I wish you were uglier.’
He let out a bark of laughter. ‘Back at you.’ Could he trust himself to sleep with her again and not fall for her? His walls were higher now. And their end date was a certainty he could guard against. ‘Come back to the boat with me,’ he whispered, self-preservation flying out of the window.
He had an ache that needed to be soothed, a want that needed satisfying. A lust that could only be sated by her sweet, hot body.