“Right? Why do they need to eat every single day?” Devin Barrett said with a sigh.
“You didn’t have to cook dinner tonight, though,” Eliza said. “We’ve got a fabulous meal in store and then cake. So much cake. Shall we get started?”
By the time they finished eating under the globe lights strung across the terrace, Sam forgot she was ever reluctant to come to the shower. The evening had reminded her of all the things she loved about living in Haven Point. Laughter, good food, cherished friends.
Gemma seemed similarly touched. When she opened the gifts, many of them handmade, she even wept a little.
As people started preparing to leave, particularly some of the older women, she asked for a moment to address them all.
“You’ve all been so wonderful. Thank you. From the moment I came to Haven Point, you have all embraced and welcomed me and I am grateful beyond words. Thank you for the gifts. I shall use and cherish them all.”
“Even the dishwashing scrubbers Eppie and I crocheted for you?” Hazel called out.
She laughed. “Even that. I’m sure Josh will put them to good use. When I took a job here at Caine Tech, I was running away from some fairly painful things in my past. It turns out that instead of escaping, I was really running to something beautiful. This is exactly where I belong, in large part because of the friends I’ve made here.”
Sam sent a swift look at Margaret, wondering how Gemma’s mother handled her daughter finding a new home and friends halfway across the world. Margaret seemed emotional, but Samantha somehow sensed she was also happy that her daughter had found acceptance and love here.
It was hard not to compare that to Linda’s likely reaction under similar circumstances. Linda hadn’t even been able to bear the idea of Samantha moving away for college in Boise, two hours away. How would she have endured if Samantha had moved to another country?
She would have pouted and thrown a tantrum for a week or two and then would have been accepted the inevitable.
It was a startling realization, another reminder that in some ways she most likely had been too hard on her mother when Linda had still been alive. Her mother hadn’t been completely unreasonable.
The shower began to break up after that. As she had been working and hadn’t been able to assist in the decorating, Samantha stepped up to help clean up.
“You don’t need to do that,” Eliza assured her after Samantha carried a load of dishes to the gourmet kitchen. “The caterer has it under control.”
“Is there something else I can do, then?”
“Gemma might need help carrying gifts out to her car,” Eliza suggested.
Samantha filled her arms with gift bags, then headed around the house to the porte cochere out front.
As she approached, she heard Margaret and Gemma talking.
“I had a wonderful time,” Margaret was telling Gemma. “All your friends are truly lovely.”
“Aren’t they?”
Samantha couldn’t see her friend but could hear the happiness in her voice.
“I like them,” Margaret replied. “Which makes me wonder why you’re still hiding the truth from everyone.”
Sam froze at Margaret’s sudden sharp tone, so much like something she might have heard from her own mother before Linda would go on a tirade.
“Don’t, Mother. Not tonight,” Gemma said softly.
Margaret didn’t heed her. “Don’t you think it’s only fair you stop hiding who you are?”
“I’m not hiding anything,” Gemma said, her voice so low Sam almost couldn’t hear it. “This is who I am now. I’m a computer nerd working for Caine Tech. And I’m happy to be that.”
“That’s only part of it. Try as you might to hide it, you’re also Lady Gemma Summerhill. Daughter of the Earl and Countess of Amherst and sister to Lord Ian Summerhill, Viscount Summersby.”
Sam almost dropped the gift bags. Her heart began to pound so hard she couldn’t understand why Gemma and her mother didn’t turn around at the sound.
“Nobody cares about that here, Mother,” Gemma said firmly.
Oh, she was so very wrong. Samantha cared. The chasm between her and Ian had just widened until it now stretched farther than Lake Haven Valley.
He was a peer. His father was an earl. She knew enough about the peerage from the historical romance novels she loved reading to know that since Ian’s older brother had died, he must now be his father’s heir.
Why hadn’t he told her? He had let her make a fool of herself over him, knowing all the time that any relationship between them was utterly impossible.
How could the future Earl of Whatever the Heck Margaret Had Said pursue anything with a dressmaker from a tiny town in Idaho?
What did it matter? This news changed nothing. So what if he was Viscount Summersby and would one day become a freaking earl? She was still exactly where she had been five minutes ago, before she found out the truth.
She had always known anything between her and Ian was impossible. This only confirmed exactly how impossible.
Sam wanted to cry suddenly. The tears burned hot and no amount of blinking them back could prevent one or two from slipping out.
Oh, she was stupid. No matter how mature she told herself she had become, inside she was still Starry-eyed Sam, who fell in love with every guy who was nice to her.
Love. Who said anything about love? She wasn’t in love with Ian. She was attracted to him, yes, and she liked him very much. But she couldn’t possibly be in love with him.
So why did she feel shattered to learn exactly why they could never be together?
The two glasses of wine and the chocolate lava cake she’d had early in the evening seemed to churn through her and she thought for a moment she would be sick. She swallowed down the bile. This was silly. She was stronger than this.
Nothing had changed. Gemma was still her friend and deserved her support.
She slipped back inside the house. When she walked out a second time, she closed the door loudly behind her. Margaret and Gemma stopped their argument immediately, though she could feel the tension between them.
“Oh, darling,” Margaret exclaimed when she saw her. “Thank you so much for helping us carrying things out. We were just trying to make room in the boot of Gemma’s tiny little car. We should have thought things through and had Josh drive us in his big, macho pickup truck so we could carry everything home.”
“I’m sure Eliza wouldn’t mind if you needed to leave a few things here overnight,” Sam managed with a cheerful smile as fake as Roxie Nash’s lip implants.
“We can at least fit in these few things. Thank you for carrying them out,” Gemma said.
Was that a searching look her friend was giving her? Was Gemma wondering how much of their conversation she had overheard? She didn’t want to reveal that she knew the truth now. Gemma would tell them all when she was ready.
“You’re welcome. I can take a load of gifts to your house, if you need help carrying things.”
“We should be fine. I think I can fit most of it.”
“Great. I’ll wait before carrying out any more gifts until you figure out how much room you’ll have.”
“Thanks,” Gemma said.
Sam hurried into the house. She wanted to find her purse and her car keys and slink away into the night but she knew her friends would find that behavior suspicious. As she slipped back to the terrace, she did her best to mask the sadness that had settled over her like a dingy cloud.
Nothing had changed, she told herself again. She only had one more reason to forget about her growing feelings for Ian Summerhill.
Everything suddenly seemed to make a grim sort of sense. She remembered their conversation the last time she had talked to him, the despair in his eyes as he had talked about moving closer to his parents and about helping his father with t
he family businesses.
He hadn’t been talking about some kind of commercial endeavor. He meant all the assorted business that must come from being an earl.
The family must have land and holdings that needed care.
Some of her shock began to trickle away, replaced by a growing compassion. Poor Ian. He was a biology professor who loved his work and his students. He couldn’t have feigned that. He didn’t want to give up his research, but had talked about having no choice but to help his father.
He had seemed so sad the last time they had spoken. And she had tried to offer advice about talking to his father about what he really wanted.
He couldn’t do that. He was as trapped by obligation as she had felt all her life. Compassion seeped through her, along with lingering hurt.
He should have told her the truth. She would have understood. Knowing he was the heir to an earldom certainly would have kept her from spinning ridiculous fantasies she didn’t even want to acknowledge.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
HE DIDN’T WANT the summer to end.
Ian sat on what was becoming his favorite spot, the bench on the edge of the dock in Samantha’s garden, watching his research boat bob on the small waves and listening to the night creatures hoot and splash around him.
Gemma’s wedding was only a week away now and he and the children would be leaving a few days after that. Every time he thought about flying back to Oxford and packing up their things to move home to Summerhill House, he felt claustrophobic, as if he were drowning in those deep, dark waters of the lake, the air slowly seeping out of his lungs.
He sighed, forcing himself to breathe through the sensation until calm returned. He wasn’t drowning. He was doing the responsible thing. The inevitable one.
A light came on inside Samantha’s house, shining across the expanse of lawn through her windows.
That ache in his chest seemed to come back, the yearning for something he couldn’t have.
For her.
Why couldn’t Gemma have hired someone from England to design her wedding dress? Some matronly older woman with a squint and a pencil stuck behind her ear?
And why couldn’t he have found another house to rent for the summer, somewhere far away from her? If he had never met Samantha Fremont, then he wouldn’t have this ache in his chest at the idea of leaving her.
He couldn’t blame Gemma or the real estate agent who had led him here for the feelings growing inside him. He could blame no one but himself. He had known she was trouble the first time he spoke with her and he had fallen headlong, anyway.
No sense brooding about it, Ian told himself. He stood to go back inside his own rental house when he saw Samantha’s back door open. A moment later, she walked down her back steps with her little dog on a leash.
He knew the moment she spotted him. She stopped in her tracks and looked torn, as if she wanted to return to the house. After a moment, she seemed to reconsider and resumed walking toward the dock.
“We have a bad habit of meeting like this.”
Was this the reason he had lingered out here, long after he should have gone back inside? Was he hoping she would come out to join him?
Yes, he admitted. He had missed her deeply these past few days and had thought of a hundred things he wanted to tell her when he next saw her.
Now all of those things seemed to have floated away across the lake like so much cottonwood fluff.
“How was the bridal shower?”
She gave him a long look that suddenly set him on edge. “Interesting.”
“In what way? Or do I want to know?”
For a long moment, he didn’t think she would answer. Finally she gave a small, almost imperceptible sigh and settled next to him on the bench.
The air was suddenly luscious with the scent of her, strawberry and vanilla and Samantha. The moon passed between clouds, gleaming on the water as small breakers lapped against the dock.
“I suppose there’s no point in dancing around it.”
“Dancing around what?” He had a sudden premonition of danger, though he couldn’t have said exactly why.
She met his gaze. “I overheard your mother and Gemma talking. I didn’t mean to eavesdrop. I was helping carry gifts out to the car after the party and they were talking. I don’t think they knew anyone was there.”
He couldn’t imagine what his mother and sister might have said to spark this strange mood. “Is everything okay?”
She met his gaze. “You tell me, Lord Ian.”
There it was, exactly what he had been dreading.
He sighed. “Ah.”
“Yes. Ah. I thought you were simply a rather adorable distracted scientist. The classic rumpled university professor. Why didn’t you tell me the truth?”
He stumbled for a moment, transfixed that she had called him adorable. Is that truly what she thought?
Not really the point, he reminded himself.
“I couldn’t tell you, for a few reasons.”
“From what I overheard, I’m guessing Gemma asked you not to.”
“That was part of it.”
“I don’t understand why all the secrecy. Why would she think anyone in Haven Point would care whether she was Lady Gemma or plain old Gemma?”
“I think her reasons had more to do with herself than anyone here. She wanted to forget, I think. Make a new start. Our brother’s death affected her more than any of us realized, beyond her obvious physical injuries. I was busy with Susan’s cancer amid the ugliness of our divorce and my parents were battling with their own grief. None of us noticed how Gem was struggling until she announced she was taking a job overseas.”
“Poor thing.”
“Yes.” He shifted, feeling guilty that he hadn’t seen Gemma’s pain because his own had obscured it.
“I gather she wanted to make a new start, unencumbered by her title. Apparently she ran into some professional difficulties at a previous job and chose not to use it here. She planned to tell everyone after the wedding but didn’t want it to become any kind of issue beforehand. We discussed it as a family and opted to follow her wishes while we were here.”
He wasn’t sure if she believed him. The darkness made it difficult to tell.
Why did they always seem to meet out here on the dock at night? It had become their own private spot.
“The other reason I didn’t tell you,” he said honestly, “is because, like Gemma, I prefer to forget it myself.”
Before David’s death, as the second son to the earl, he had been the Honorable Ian Summerhill but had never used that honorific in his academic or professional career. Oh, it was hard to hide completely. Word tended to get around in most circles, but he wanted to think he had earned his place on his merits, on his scientific achievements, not on a bloodline that had been an accident of birth.
“That’s the reason you’re leaving science behind, isn’t it? When your brother died, you became the heir to your father’s title.”
The sadness in her voice matched his own so perfectly that he had to fight the urge to pull her into his arms.
“I never expected to inherit and was always allowed to pursue my own interests. When David died, everything changed.”
“Three years ago. I never made the connection. Did your brother die before or after Susan left?”
She was too clever for her own good. “You picked up on that, did you? After, if you want the truth. David died about six months after Susan had left me. When she learned I was now Viscount Summersby instead of plain Professor Summerhill, she tried to come back, said she’d made a terrible mistake and would I forgive her.”
“I hope you told her to shove off.”
He smiled. “Not in so many words. But I didn’t take her back, of course. Not then, anyway.”
“But you let her come live with you aft
er she was diagnosed with cancer.”
“What else was I to do? She needed care.”
She was quiet for a long moment. When she spoke again, her voice was low. “You’re an extraordinary man, Ian Summerhill. Or Lord Ian. Or Viscount Summersby. I don’t know what to call you.”
“Just Ian,” he murmured. Though he now had a hundred more reasons not to do it, he couldn’t help himself. He had to kiss her.
Unlike the urgency and heat of their previous kiss here, this one was soft, tender, but no less moving.
Each time he kissed her was a revelation, a new discovery of uncharted territory. He wondered if it would always be that way. Something told him it would, that he could spend a lifetime exploring different ways to kiss Samantha Fremont and would never grow bored.
This time, she was the one who pulled away.
“We have to stop.” Her voice was thready, aroused.
He couldn’t seem to gather his thoughts. He didn’t want to stop, ever. He wanted to spend the rest of his life kissing her here in the moonlight.
Her head was obviously in a different space altogether. While he was still aching and aroused, she stood, breathing hard. She still had her dog’s leash in her hand, he realized.
“I can’t keep doing this with you, Ian. Surely you can see that. I have spent my entire adult life being an idiot where men are concerned. I fall for the guys who are completely unavailable. I can’t believe I’m doing it all over again.”
He was being altogether unfair to her. He had known it from the first time he kissed her.
He felt like the worst sort of ass.
“I’m sorry. I can’t seem to help myself when I’m around you. All logic seems to desert me. I hope you know I wouldn’t intentionally hurt you.”
“I know.” She gripped her dog’s leash more tightly. “You’re a good man, Ian. I... I wish things could be different. Why couldn’t you simply be a rumpled biologist, obsessed with stinky fish?”
“That would have been much better,” he agreed. While he might be embarrassed at her description of him, that didn’t make him any less entranced by her. “I wish that were the case, more than I can ever tell you.”
Summer at Lake Haven Page 20
