by Taryn Belle
“A match made in heaven, I’d say,” Kiki stated.
Laina reeled herself back into the conversation. “What is?”
“You and James, of course.”
Laina felt herself blushing. The embarrassment she’d once felt at succumbing to James’s charms was gone, and for the first time it occurred to her that if everything worked out between them, Laina and Kiki would become part of the same family. She glanced at James, wondering if he’d had the same thought, but he had an odd expression on his face. Slightly sheepish. Her brows drew together.
“Sure,” Kiki continued, toying with the stem of her wineglass. “You bring in the money, and Laina draws up the plans.”
Laina shook her head in confusion. “Um. What are we talking about?”
Kiki blinked at her. “James’s development.”
Laina fastened her eyes on James, who was tapping his knuckles on the table distractedly. “What development?”
“Wait,” Kiki said to James. “You mean you haven’t told her?”
Laina was beginning to feel sick. James’s elusiveness, that look on his face... “Told me what?”
Kiki fell silent, and then James cleared his throat. “I’ve been meaning to tell you. It’s not like it’s a secret or anything, but I know how you feel about this place, and rest assured, you’ve convinced me to be a lot more environmentally responsible—”
“And he will be,” Kiki piped up. “James is a man of integrity. Always has been.”
Laina’s heart was thumping. “Okay. But what are you talking about?”
James tapped a finger on the table. “I’m planning to build a hotel here. A resort, actually. I’ve already received approval from the council.”
“I see,” Laina said. Though her first reaction was to reject any kind of commercialism here, she also knew that her island couldn’t be protected from change forever. And if James was the developer, she could help him do it right. So that was what Kiki had been referring to—not them as a couple. She couldn’t help a jab of disappointment. “Where will it go? Beachfront, I assume?”
“Actually, I want to take advantage of the views. The beach is such a short walk away no matter where you are on the island, and the resort will be less obtrusive in the hills.”
The hills. She could hear blood rushing through her ears. “So...where then, exactly?”
“That’s the crazy thing,” James said. “Would you believe right here? I already have accepted offers to the properties north and south. The only holdout is this very estate.”
Laina felt a prickly, sick heat sweep up her torso. It couldn’t be—but of course it made perfect sense. He’d done his research before he’d met her and discovered who she was. Or maybe he hadn’t—maybe he’d only figured it out that day they were riding when she’d let it slip. How thrilled he must have been at the convenience of it all—here he was, already fucking the woman whose family happened to own the estate he needed to buy. All he had to do was bring down her defenses by making her think he was falling for her, play like he didn’t know about her attachment to the property, and then marvel at the coincidence of it all while he convinced her to get her parents to sell. Hadn’t she known all along he was too good to be true? He was just like all the other men who’d chased after her for what they thought she had in her bank account. In fact, the only difference between he and Ward was that while Ward had taken nearly a year to convince her he cared for her, James had only taken four days.
“You’re kidding, right?” she finally managed to say. Her head was swimming. Her voice sounded far away, like it was coming through a tunnel. Her eyes moved from James’s pretend-stunned face to Kiki, who was looking at her with concern.
“Laina, what’s wrong?” James asked as she pushed her chair away from the table. Just as she stood up, James’s phone lit up with an incoming text. She glanced down at it.
Jennifer Liu: Are you avoiding me?
God—it was even worse than Laina had thought. She felt like she might pass out. She took a stumbling step backward as Kiki came rushing toward her. James was on his feet now, hands raised in defense as he shook his head. “Laina, please don’t get the wrong idea! Jennifer is just—”
“Stay the hell away from me,” she said in a quavering voice, and then she rushed out of the tent.
* * *
“Laina! Laina!”
She was gone. It was beyond belief, but she was nowhere to be found. He’d been only steps behind her out of the tent. Kiki had intercepted him for a moment, trying to get him to give Laina a little space, and when he’d looked past her again she’d disappeared into thin air.
“Goddamn it!” he roared up at the starry sky. What the hell had just happened? What had he said? He knew she might not be crazy about the idea of the resort, but this? It was as if he’d told her he was planning to bulldoze the entire island to build a freaking parking lot.
Raking his hands through his hair, James paced back and forth on the lawn. Desperation clawed at his throat, but he pushed it away—he had to stay calm right now, think straight, work out his options. He could talk to Kiki to see if she had any insight, but that was a grossly unfair thing to do on the eve of her wedding. He could drive the golf cart down the hill, calling for Laina all the way down as if she would actually answer him. Or he could go back to his room and hope she came to her senses and got in touch with him.
His room.
Just the thought of it brought James’s fists down on his thighs. All those flowers. The champagne. The night he had planned for them, the perfect moment he was going to tell her he was madly in love with her—ruined. Gone. And he had no idea why.
“Just give her some time.”
James whirled around to see Kiki standing near the entrance to the tent. “Jesus, Kiki, are you smoking?”
She shrugged. “I quit the night before I got married to my first husband. I figure I’ll change my luck for sure if I start up again the night before I marry my second one.”
James shook his head. “I don’t think you need any luck. Dev’s wild about you.”
She grinned as she bent down, knees sideways to accommodate her skintight black dress, and elegantly snuffed out the half-smoked cigarette on the grass. “Good thing. I’ve lost my taste for it. So you going to tell me what that was all about?”
James threw up his hands. “I wish I could. Honestly, I don’t have a goddamned clue. All I said was that I was hoping to buy this estate. Everything was—gahh!” He let out a sound of frustration. “It was going so perfectly between us!”
“I know. I’ve never seen you like this with a woman, and she’s crazy about you too. Whatever went wrong, I’m betting it’ll be worked out with a little trust.”
“Trust? Sorry, cuz, but you sound like a cheesy greeting card right now.”
Kiki shrugged. “Those cards say what they do for a reason. We all carry our pasts with us into new relationships, and it’s easy to go back to our go-to responses, to things that have gone wrong before.”
“You should have been a psychologist.”
“Nah, I’m not nearly empathetic enough.”
“Good thing, because I don’t have a clue what you just said. You want to try some specifics?”
“Not really.”
James shoved his hands into his pockets. “The crazy thing is that I was going to ask her a favor. Before I met her, I mean—I Googled her and saw that she was a LEED architect. I wanted to build on the cliff where the pelicans nest—the view there is the best on the island. The council vetoed it when I approached them last year, but I thought maybe with her influence here we could change their minds. She’s a change maker, people listen to her. I thought if we could come up with a plan to relocate the birds, and I brought her in on the deal...” He shook his head. “It was stupid. Some lines in nature shouldn’t be crossed, and I’ve always tried to blur the
m in my favor. I see that now, so I decided not to ask her. Screw the panoramic view and the extra millions in revenue—those pelicans are way more important.”
“You should tell her.”
“If she ever talks to me again, which doesn’t seem too likely right now.” He forced a smile. “But I’m keeping you from your special night. Go in there and have some fun, and I’ll see you at your wedding tomorrow.”
“Remember. Trust,” Kiki said, and then she yanked her bandage-wrap dress down her thighs and went into the tent.
James waited for a minute, and then he tried one last time. “Laina!”
* * *
She could hear him calling for her. Let him.
Sitting on the sofa in her cottage with the lights out, Laina reached for another tissue. She had to stop bawling and get herself under control—she was going to look and feel like hell tomorrow if she didn’t, and that was totally unfair to Kiki. She knew her friend; no matter what was happening in her life, she never stopped caring for her loved ones. Even ten minutes ago Kiki’s main concern had been Laina, not her own party that she’d been forced to leave behind. Laina had made Kiki promise not to tell James about her connection to the estate—she would not give him the chance to put on a fake surprise face for her friend and deny he knew anything about it. And Laina wouldn’t pay her friend back for her loyalty by ruining her wedding photos with puffy eyes and an expression of sheer misery. As Kiki was about to walk down the aisle, Laina didn’t want the bride to ask under her breath if Laina was okay. She wanted Kiki’s focus to be on no one but herself, because she deserved to have a perfect day more than anyone Laina knew.
But who was she fooling? This kind of heartbreak was way too powerful to control. Her body collapsed into itself, and she rolled onto her side in a sobbing heap. In truth, she wasn’t sure what she was angrier about—James’s deception or the text. Are you avoiding me? There was no excuse for it. Even if there was a perfectly good explanation for a woman sending him a text with an extremely personal ring to it, even if she was a former conquest that Laina couldn’t fault him for, it showed her that he wasn’t dealing with her. He was letting her hang. Like insurance, backup, plan B if things with Laina didn’t pan out. It was disgusting.
If only, Laina thought regretfully. If only she hadn’t fallen for James, hadn’t slept with him, hadn’t said yes to the blind date with him, hadn’t gotten engaged to Ward and wanted to make him jealous in the first place. How far back could her regrets go? Further than she cared to think about. Back to the way she’d treated her parents, dismissing them along with their surname, carrying a chip on her shoulder because she’d wanted to be raised middle-class while the rest of the world wanted what she had.
She suddenly felt ashamed, and completely disassociated from her family’s world. Her parents would never sell this place, would they? But what did she know? Considering the way she’d behaved over the past decade, it’s not like she had the right to any say in the matter.
And she hadn’t even bothered returning her mother’s texts.
Opening her evening bag with a shaky sigh, Laina took out her cell phone, glanced at her watch and punched in her mother’s number. After a few rings her voice mail picked up.
“Mom, it’s me. Sorry I’ve been out of touch,” Laina started, hoping her voice sounded steady. “You’re probably at your bridge night, so don’t worry about calling back. I just—the place is great. You should see it, all done up for the wedding. It’s gorgeous. And I, um...” She adjusted the phone on her ear. She was an emotional wreck. She should just hang up. She wasn’t thinking clearly—or was she? It had been so long since she’d allowed herself to show any emotion at all around her parents; maybe it was just what she needed. She cleared her throat. “I’m thinking I might like to spend some time here again. With you and Dad, I mean. Not just at the cottage.” She dropped her chin. “Okay, well, gotta go. Love you.” She hung up, pressing the phone to her forehead.
James. The love of her life. Over.
A fresh flood of tears washed down her cheeks, but she wiped them away impatiently. She’d been fine before him, and she would be fine after him. He might be near impossible to get over, but she had to believe that somewhere out there was a man who didn’t give a flying fuck about who her family was or what they thought she could do for them. She’d be able to trust them. And that was worth everything, even if she didn’t feel half for them what she felt for James.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
SATURDAY. A CLOUDLESS blue sky, sun streaming through James’s window, the perfect day for the wedding of the decade.
A room that still held the presence of roses, even though he’d asked for a garbage bag at the front desk last night.
Laina looking at him in horror, stumbling away from him, hating him.
Stirring awake, James’s reality crashed over him like waves on the loneliest shore. It was the same way he’d felt on those first mornings after his mother died—disorientation followed by a moment of denial, and then the slow downward spiral into grief. The only thing that had given him comfort was knowing he’d never have to go through it again. His only parent was dead, he had no siblings and he would never marry. Even then he’d been sure of that, and it looked like he’d been right. The only woman he’d ever fallen in love with was lost to him.
But why? Why?
If he didn’t do something to work this burning, toxic frustration out of his system, he was going to lose his mind. Today was going to be near impossible to get through. He had to do his best to put on a happy face for the wedding, and he knew that seeing Laina would be pure torture. She was in the wedding party, which meant she’d be standing before him with her beauty on full display. He had to find a way to talk to her beforehand, try to get to the bottom of her fury so he could at least find out what he was dealing with.
A run, he decided—maybe that would clear his head. Swinging his feet the floor, he couldn’t help doing a quick check of his phone. He’d sent Laina a text when he got back to the room last night, but unsurprisingly, it had gone unanswered. He tapped on his messages and pulled up the one that Laina had seen from Jennifer. Just a single line, but he could understand how it could have been misconstrued. And it served him right—he had been avoiding his business partner, dreading breaking the news to her that they would no longer be building on the island’s prime spot. Not that any of it mattered if he couldn’t get the owners of Hibiscus Heights to sell. The whole thing was a mess, and if he was smart, he would just cut his losses and scrap it. But he couldn’t, and it wasn’t about the money. This was going to be his mother’s castle in the sky. He had promised it to her, and breaking that promise felt like breaking the thread that still kept them tethered together across the border of life and death.
You’re right, and I’m sorry. Call me anytime, he typed back to Jennifer. Then he yanked on his shorts and T-shirt, pocketed his phone and left for his run.
* * *
It was pure fantasy, but Laina hardly noticed. Making her way across the grounds of the estate to the main house, she missed the words Kiki and Dev spelled out in eight-foot flower-petal letters on the lawn, the towering white cake in front of a temporary waterfall. But she stopped at the head table to do a check of the place settings. She’d put in a last-minute request for she and James to be separated, and she felt a mixture of agony and relief to see that he’d been moved to the far end of the long table.
Laina’s feet weighed a thousand pounds as she made her way across the lawn. She knew her face was a puffy mess, and she’d hardly slept a wink. Just the thought of James was enough to make her certain she was going to vomit. It was going to be the longest day of her life.
When she got to the dining room, Kiki and Nicola were already gathered around a fruit platter. Through the door to the kitchen, which was bigger than Laina’s entire condo in Atlanta, she could see an army of cooks preparing the wedding feast. She held
her hands up in front of her face as she came in. “Can we make a deal?” she asked her friends quickly. “And just not talk about it?”
“Are you sure?” Nicola asked.
Laina nodded. “I don’t want this day to be about me—it’s about Kiki,” she said, giving her best friend a brave smile.
Kiki waved a pineapple slice at her dismissively. “Please—this whole princess-for-a-day thing is already giving me hives. Everyone keeps telling me to enjoy it, that as soon as I become a mother I won’t have a minute to myself. But you know what? I’m okay with that. I’ve done me for long enough now.” She placed a croissant on a plate and slid it toward Laina. “Eat something.”
As Laina looked down at the pastry with distaste, Nicola laughed. “This reminds me of when I was going through all that stuff with Alex. Kiki kept trying to force food down my throat, but I was so upset I couldn’t eat a thing.”
“I’m like that too,” Laina said.
“I think you might be like me in more ways than that.”
“What do you mean?” Laina asked with a raised eyebrow.
Nicola shrugged. “Just that my triggers were buried in my insecurities. When I met Alex, I was really trying to protect myself from getting hurt, so it’s almost like I was looking for an excuse to send him packing. So when I heard something questionable about him, I jumped all over it before I even knew what the full story was.” She paused, fixing her aquamarine eyes on Laina. “Do you know what James’s full story is?”
“I don’t need to know,” Laina said, raising her chin. “It’s obvious he was using me.”
“How can you be sure he knew your connection to this estate?”
“Because it’s easy to find out! He even admitted he Googled me, and I let it slip a couple of times—”
