Chapter 10
SAND BETWEEN MY TOES
LANEY
Two hours later, I was stuffed with three courses of delicious farm-to-table food, feigning a buzz long after my single glass of champagne had worked its way through my system, and ready to go.
The rest of the evening had actually been pleasant.
I’d made polite conversation and accepted the congratulations of several of Megan’s family members.
Enjoyed good food and gabbed with the bridesmaids (minus the one I couldn’t even look at anymore).
Even managed some polite repartee with the Devil, otherwise known as my ex-boyfriend.
All of it seemed so easy with Ronan Black’s arm resting over the back of my chair or his fingers toying pleasantly with the wisps of hair around my neck.
Ronan liked to play games. Of this, I was sure.
He’d suggested the idea of playing husband and wife for the evening with the glee of a middle school boy getting ready to toilet paper a rival’s house.
So, it was a surprise when his version of pranking my ex involved next to no attention sent Derek’s way and mostly just consisted of him being like the best boyfriend—or husband—in the history of relationships.
The moment I shivered, he placed his jacket around my shoulders.
He quietly traded my glass for his so people didn’t catch on that I was abstaining.
And every time Derek, who was sitting on my left, tried to pull my attention back to him and his well of narcissism, Ronan skillfully guided the conversation with compliments about me that should have sounded fake but somehow came off as the most genuine praise I’d ever received.
At the beginning of dinner, when our table was snacking on bread and olive oil, I made the mistake of mentioning that there were six-thousand-year-old olive trees in Greece.
“Oh God, Laney, don’t start with that.” Derek leaned across me to roll his eyes at Ronan. “Has she put you to sleep yet with the Greek trivia? Don’t get her started, or she’ll never stop.”
Ronan soaked a piece of bread in the oil and fed it to me like that was something we did all the time.
He watched me eat for a moment before finally answering Derek’s question.
“In my opinion, finding someone this brilliant and articulate is winning the lottery. Laney could recite Greek trivia or review the goddamn phonebook, and I’d just be a grateful fool, listening to her voice. ”
“That is the kind of stuff I expect in your vows tomorrow,” Megan informed Kev, who dutifully took notes on his phone.
Derek scowled, the other groomsmen guffawed, Reagan huffed, and the other two bridesmaids squealed. Ronan hadn’t moved his gaze from my mouth, and for a moment, I thought he might kiss me. For another moment, I wanted him to.
Then someone across the table commented on the weather, and the spell was broken. Until the next time. And the time after that.
By the end of the dinner, I found myself wondering why, exactly, Ronan Black didn’t have a woman in his life on which to bestow this treatment. If this was him faking it, what it was like when he loved someone for real?
Or, I thought as I recalled his throwaway mention of personality disorders, was he even capable of it?
“Please tell me you’re bringing him to the wedding,” Megan said as she pulled on her coat.
Most of the party had dispersed, and the last of us were getting ready to catch rideshares or taxis to hotels or homes.
I glanced back to where Ronan was casually lighting a cigarette on the sidewalk while he flirted with Megan’s Aunt Ruthie. “You’re kidding, right?”
“No, actually, I’m not.” Megan looked around to make sure no one was listening, then bent closer. “Friday Harbor?”
I swallowed. Our eighth class took a trip to Orcas Island, a period when every girl at Whitman Middle School seemed to be going through her mean-girl phase.
Megan and I hadn’t spoken for three days until doing clean up on the beach for four hours forced us to have the first of many heart-to-hearts.
Ever since, “Friday Harbor” had been our code for absolute honesty without judgment.
I sighed. “Friday Harbor.”
Megan nodded. “I like him. I don’t know what he’s doing here, but he definitely likes you too. More importantly, this is the first wedding event involving you-know-who where you haven’t looked like you’ve sucked on a lemon. So, bring your husband tomorrow if only to save my pictures, will you?”
“Megs—”
“I kid, I kid. Sort of. But really, he did make tonight better. Watching Derek make those faces every time Ronan gave you a compliment was just the cherry on top of the sundae. And… you’ve smiled more tonight than I’ve seen in a really long time.
” She squeezed my hand. “I’ve missed my best friend.
If she comes with him, I want him there. ”
I shook my head. “It’s a bad idea.”
“And it’s my day, so you have to do what I say!” she called as she danced away toward the car that would whisk her back to her parents’ house for her final night of singledom.
“Darla is going to murder you for screwing up the seating chart.”
“Darla is getting paid the earth to figure things like this out. I’ll see you tomorrow morning. Don’t stay up too late with your hubby, girl!”
Whistles joined her as a few bridesmaids filed into the car with her. Soon, everyone else had gone too, and I was left on the sidewalk with just Ronan.
He finished his cigarette and flicked the butt onto the concrete before smashing it with his foot. “So, where to?”
I checked my watch. It was getting late. “Well, I have to be at Megan’s by ten to help her get ready, so it’s home for me. I’ll call a Lyft or something.”
“No need.”
Ronan raised his hand, and a big black SUV across the street turned on, then took a wide turn to arrive in front of us. A man the approximate size of an oak tree got out and opened the back door for us.
“Laney, Mac. Mac, Laney.” Ronan turned to me. “Or maybe your memory has come back.”
My eyes popped open. “You mean—”
“Drove us the whole night, babe,” Ronan confirmed. “Witnessed the wedding too. But don’t worry. He’s very discreet.”
The huge man—Mac, apparently—didn’t confirm anything, just continued waiting by the door with a clearly practiced straight face.
“Laney?”
I considered arguing, but decided it wasn’t worth my time. After all, I’d already driven all over Las Vegas with these men, and while it hadn’t exactly been a harmless venture, neither of them had allowed anything to happen to me either.
Well, not anything bad, I supposed.
Although maybe the jury was out on that, too.
Still, for the second time in a week, I followed Ronan Black into a strange car. The engine started with a rumble.
“Where’s home, sweetheart?” Ronan asked.
Oh. Hmm. “Just bring me however far north you’re going.”
Ronan shrugged. “My hotel, then. I’m staying at…” He looked up to Mac.
“The Hotel Ballard,” said the big man.
“The Hotel Ballard,” Ronan repeated with a saucy grin.
Oh, no. I knew what happened with Ronan Black, me, and hotels. And I wasn’t doing that again. “Absolutely not.”
Ronan sighed in defeat. “Fine. Then take us someplace where we can talk.”
Twenty-minutes later, the car pulled up into a broad parking lot typically reserved for boat trailers.
A few people were parked here this time of night, but not so many that we would risk being overheard or seen while we spoke.
And there were things to discuss, I thought. Especially given Megan’s request.
“So, it’s a beach? But it’s called Golden Gardens?” Ronan wondered as we stepped out of the car and were met by the briny scent of the Puget Sound lapping at the edge of the sand bordering this corner of the city in Northwest Seattle.
Golden Gardens wasn’t actually that far from where I lived, by Seattle standards.
I could walk here in about an hour from my apartment or jog in closer to forty, which I did frequently.
I liked the way the park was bordered by tall bluffs, so that when you came here, there was a true sense of escaping the city while.
You could look out across the Sound, watch ferries and cargo ships, and on nice days, take in the jagged, snow-capped peaks of the Olympics.
“It’s a beach,” I confirmed as I took off my shoes and wrapped the straps of my sandals around one hand.
“Should I go barefoot too?”
“No. I just can’t walk in the sand in heels, and my feet cannot take one more minute trapped in these things.”
Ronan, however, was already shucking his brogues and socks, then rolling up his suit pants until his ankles were bared. “Lead on.”
He followed me across the gravel path and onto the beach proper, a stretch of soft sand that gradually gave way to more unforgiving rocks, barnacles and seaweed closer to the water’s edge.
It was a nice night to walk, though difficult, as it always was, not to get mired in memories. There was the jungle gym I’d visited since I could walk. The copse of trees where Jacob Esveldt and I shared our first kiss together.
And there was the spot where Mom and Dad had informed me that her cancer wasn’t going to heal this time.
“So,” Ronan broke through my thoughts. “Now I want to hear about the asshole. I gave you compliments. You owe me a story.”
I snorted lightly. I knew those compliments were too good to be true. “Well, see that bench? That’s where he proposed three months after we started dating.”
“Tell me you turned him down. Three months?”
“As opposed to approximately three hours?”
He snorted. “Touché. Still, though.”
I chuckled. “I did turn him down. We were only eighteen, and we’d barely graduated high school.
He didn’t take it well. Actually, I think it made him even more determined to win me over.
” I looked up at Ronan. “Given our first interactions, it might surprise you to hear that I’m not usually a very impulsive person. ”
Ronan ignored that comment. “So, how did you meet Mr. Wrong?”