Chapter Fifteen
Avery
Montressa shone bright, ready for another summer.
White linens adorned the dining room tables, lounge chairs sat in a neat row along the beach, and every garden bloomed.
The lake showed off with little whitecaps rippling across the cove.
Avery had worked late last night, creating fresh flower arrangements for each cabin.
This afternoon, she and Nate had delivered the flowers and inspected every cabin except one.
“Can you take the last flower arrangement to the Boathouse?” Nate asked. “It’s already four, and I need to get over to Karaoke Bowl.”
Every year, the night before the resort opened, the Coopers threw a pre-season staff meeting followed by dinner and a fun activity. This year, Nate chose the bowling alley/karaoke bar in a neighboring town. A good plan, since the forecast called for rainstorms.
“Oh, and put this bottle of Prosecco in the fridge while you’re there.” He placed a chilled bottle in her free hand. “A welcome gift for Maine’s biggest social media star, our first guest in the new Boathouse.”
“Sure.” Avery took the bottle and glanced at the label. The best Prosecco Montressa carried.
“Thank you, Avery. We wouldn’t be ready to open without you,” Nate said. “If you don’t feel like coming tonight, you’ll have this whole place to yourself. Last quiet night until October.”
“I can’t think of any reason I’d miss singing while bowling.” Avery smiled. “Is Lily coming?”
Lily had been busy with end-of-the-year school picnics and award assemblies, and Avery hoped to drag her to a corner of the bowling alley and catch her up on everything, from the kiss to Miles’s kitchen.
“Ayuh.” Nate winked. “She needs a night out.”
Avery headed down the path to the Boathouse, thinking about the pre-season kickoff party ten years earlier, when she and Miles had shared glances across the Maine-themed mini-golf course in another nearby town. There was no bigger thrill than realizing your crush might also have a crush on you.
A day ago, as she contemplated getting back in her canoe outside Miles’s house, she’d come close to running back inside.
Her heart wanted him, but her head couldn’t get past their fractured past and a future living apart.
For a relationship to work, they needed to be more mature this time.
Miles’s self-awareness had grown in the last decade, but dating women only once hardly proved he was ready for commitment.
A gust of wind fractured the gentle breeze, blowing her hair back.
Across the water, a swath of heavy rain darkened the horizon.
Every so often, a bolt of lightning lit the billowing clouds above the storm.
Beautiful from a distance, but that angry sky was headed her way.
She shivered. Best to check this last thing off her list and get to the party.
It took two tries to open the Boathouse door.
She made a mental note to make sure Wes fixed that doorknob first thing in the morning.
As she walked inside, Avery let out a sigh and admired her work.
What was dusty and drab was now woodsy and dreamy—a room Maine’s top influencer would immediately post, bringing more attention to Montressa.
Avery placed the Prosecco in the fridge and double-checked the cabin. She pulled the duvet taut on the bed, fluffed the pillows, and opened each dresser drawer to ensure they were clean and empty. She walked to the desk by the door and straightened a lampshade.
Despite the room’s metamorphosis, it still brought back thoughts of Miles.
Even though she’d stopped a second kiss from happening in his kitchen twenty-four hours ago, she wanted to feel his firm lips on hers again.
Like that summer, his arms wrapped around her transformed her into a spinning top, kept in motion by the delicious thrum of his touch.
Hearing Miles admit he felt a spark only made her own feelings burn brighter.
But these days they led opposite lives; his exciting and bold, hers boring and uncertain.
Miles resumed classes at NYU in the fall.
And her MBA started in two months. Both programs were huge time commitments.
The distance alone would be challenging.
Avery fluffed a couch pillow and shook it more vigorously than necessary.
Never asking about Miles or reacting to news of him had manifested her worst fear.
He’d spent the last decade longing for breadcrumbs she never dropped, which had convinced him to stay away.
What could have been if she had texted him or casually brought him up to their friends?
She might have reached out if she’d been in a better place the year after they broke up.
Instead, she had labeled him the villain.
All over five bad minutes. Thinking of it now embarrassed her, but none of it convinced her to apologize.
After all, she had been the one trying to help him after he’d resuscitated Max Perry.
She might have gone about it in a misguided way, but Miles had ended things.
It had required so much willpower to keep her feelings hidden from everyone, which hadn’t stopped the hurt. But maybe Avery needed to free herself from this limbo between anger and love. Once the resort was up and running smoothly, she’d sit down with him and let it all out.
The inside of the Boathouse grew dimmer by the second.
The dark cloud must be closing in. She crossed to the closet and arranged the bathrobes, lost in the memory of sliding her arms into the sleeves of Miles’s warm jacket the night Casper had run away.
The scent of a forest after an August rain had escaped in a cloud of hot air as he wrapped it around her.
The rattling of the Boathouse doorknob startled her. Miles stood in the doorway with windswept hair, a tan face, and a navy Henley. Working on the lakefront gave him a glow-up no studio could. A heat rose in her neck and cheeks.
“Nate asked me to bring these down for the influencer, who’s a charcuterie expert,” he said, maneuvering a large cutting board and two brown bags inside. “There’s a storm coming. What are you doing here?”
He handed Avery the cutting board, shaped like the state of Maine and perfect for social media content. Miles opened the fridge and loaded the shelves with cheese and cured meats.
“Same thing as you,” she said. “Getting the room ready for Maine’s biggest social media star. Are charcuteries still a thing?”
“They were all over New York couple years back, but everything takes its time reaching Maine.” He laughed and closed the refrigerator.
Thunder clapped above, and a gust of wind sucked the door shut with a loud bang. Her thoughts went straight to the broken doorknob.
“Oh no! Are we locked in?” She walked to the door.
Miles strode to the door in what seemed like three steps and rattled the knob.
“Yep,” he said, picking up his phone and typing. He better be texting for help.
She rattled the knob, but it wouldn’t budge.
“I’m afraid we’ve been set up. Maine’s biggest influencer”—Miles let out a laugh and held out his phone—“is a comedian who posts videos of his dog dressed as a woman. There’s not a charcuterie board in sight on his feed.”
It took Avery a second to piece it all together. Nate had sent her here with Prosecco, and then he’d sent Miles here with…
“Miles.” She slapped a hand over her mouth. “Nate Parent-Trapped us!”
“He meant well, Pepper.” Miles swept a hair off her face and let out a laugh. “I think he and Lily really want us together.”
She gulped. No one would return to Montressa until well past midnight. And this room had only one perfectly made bed.
“We can climb out a window.” Miles took his phone and placed it on the desk next to hers. “But as I see it, there’s no one on property for a few hours, a storm’s coming, and we need to talk.”
A chain reaction of nerves tensed up her spine. The Boathouse was the last place she wanted to have this conversation with him. In theory, she could say what she needed to say. In reality, she wasn’t so sure.
She leaned back against the locked door as Miles stepped forward, the aroma of summer rain and pine trees floating ahead of him.
He placed a hand flat on the door, beside her head.
Without him so much as touching her, she felt him everywhere.
His heavenly scent, coupled with his unrelenting stare sent the familiar thrum of arousal pulsing through her. Avery froze.
“Here’s the thing, Avery Astor Easton.”
The tiny hairs at the back of her neck prickled at the sound of her middle name rolling off his lips.
He shook his head and locked his gaze with hers. “You’re a fool if you think I’m going to let us go after that kiss.”
Amber flecks twinkled in his chestnut eyes. She remembered Paulson comparing Miles to maple syrup, pure and good, and Avery nearly melted.
Miles closed in, his breath brushing her neck, his voice low and gravely. “I tried to walk away and forget you once. It didn’t work. And I’m done dancing around this fire with you.”
Avery licked her lips. This time, she wouldn’t stop his kiss.
Miles cocked the slightest smile and whispered, “I can’t forget you, Pepper. There’s a case of your lip balm at the CVS checkout. I shop there because reminders of you? They’re a welcome, daily occurrence.”
Miles moved a fraction closer, the dimple in his chin shadowed like a crater in the dim light.
“There’s a better ending to what we had,” he said. “We both know that.”
Avery couldn’t tell if it was resolve or seduction in his voice.
Her eyes fell to the bottom button of his Henley.
Confident Miles and his exposed collarbone were taking her words away.
It was all she could do to keep from imagining him pressing into her.
Avery let out a tiny gasp. He studied her for a second, pushed away from the wall, and cleared his throat.
“We need to talk.” Miles extended a hand, nodding toward the couch.