“You can stay at my place,” he said, his eyes still on the house.
“But the dudes are there now,” she said. “You gave up my room. It’s okay. I’ll find a place in town.”
“I have an extra room in the house.”
Oh no, no, no, no. Paige’s mind whirled through calculations of who would be hardest and easiest to avoid—Adam or her sisters. And Adam came out on the “hardest” end.
“I can’t impose on you for that,” she said. But mostly I don’t know if I can sleep, with you in a bedroom nearby . . .
“Think of it as a favor,” he said. “I have to leave on a pack trip with the group tomorrow, and I wasn’t sure about leaving Amanda alone for three nights. She doesn’t like to be in that big house alone, out in the middle of nowhere. It might be nice if someone stayed to keep her company.”
“I don’t know.”
“C’mon. It works out for everyone.” He tried to give her an encouraging smile, but doubt flashed in his eyes, and he looked away.
Paige followed suit.
This felt a little dangerous.
Like playing with another kind of fire.
Paige sat on the edge of the bed in Adam’s guest room, staring through the window on the north side at the moon hovering over the pond.
She was truly cursed. This newest calamity was going to set her back too far, in both time and money. Her sisters were right about her, and her mother was right to worry. How on earth was she going to get all this fixed up and still plan a wedding for three hundred?
A knock sounded at the door, and she jumped.
“Paige, it’s Adam.”
“Come in,” she said, even though she really couldn’t take any more of him today—or of embarrassing herself in his presence. She didn’t want him to see her in her SpongeBob SquarePants pajamas. Or with her hair all disheveled, or feeling as if she wanted to cry. But this was his house, so she’d be polite and then say she needed to turn in.
His footsteps sounded behind her. She reached up to smooth down her hair and realized there was still plaster in it.
“Are you okay?” His deep voice dropped to a low decibel—soft, tentative, as though he thought she might break apart. And, for some reason, that was all it took: the little piece of plaster in her hair, her deep-set frustration, her growing fear, and topped with his full-of-concern voice. Her nose prickled and tears threatened.
“I’m fine,” she choked out.
He walked around the side of the bed and stared at her for a minute, as if she were a wild animal he wasn’t sure what to do with. “Can I sit down?”
Afraid her voice would betray her if she spoke, she nodded. Her fingertips brushed the first errant tear from her cheek.
The bed creaked under his weight. A silence stretched between them. He leaned forward, elbows on his knees, and clasped his hands in front of him.
“Listen, Paige, I know you’ve been through a lot with that damned house, but I want you to know that I’ll help with whatever you need when I get back. I already called Pedro to get his ass back out here ASAP, and I have two of the best plaster guys I know coming out tomorrow to lend you a hand. Okay? When I get back, we’ll get it fixed up.”
She sniffled and wiped at her face again. “Thank you for arranging that. You didn’t have to. It’s not your responsibility.”
“I know. But I see you trying, and I admire how you keep picking yourself up and going, even when things aren’t going your way. I want to help.”
“I told you—I’m cursed.”
“You’re not cursed, Paige.”
“When I’m here on the island, I’m cursed.”
“The bats and the birds and all that?”
“Well, electric problems, too. Car accidents. Fires. Floods. You don’t want to get messed up with me.” She tried to give her voice some levity, but it wasn’t coming out right. Instead, tears sprang forward again. And as soon as she thought about the truth of what she’d said, the tears burst out in an ugly cry, and she turned away.
“Oh, hey.”
She sensed he was going to reach out to her but then seemed to change his mind. She probably looked like a terror.
“Hey, don’t cry. We’ll get it fixed up. I promise. I’ll fix it for you.”
The sweetness of that, combined with how pathetic she felt, made her want to cry even more, but she tried to pull herself together.
“What else do you need help with?”
She glanced over at him. What she needed was the meadow. But could she say that now? Would that make her too much like her mother? Or would she just be being honest?
“I did find the perfect gazebo for the ceremony,” she said hesitantly.
He nodded slowly. “And?”
“I wondered if I could order it and start putting it up in the meadow?”
A thin veil of suspicion dropped over his features as he nodded and stared at the ground. “You do know that some of the meadow is in your family’s name, right? My dad signed it over to your mom.”
“I did know that, but I wasn’t sure how much.”
“About a hundred feet from your side door.”
Paige nodded. From what she could tell in the movie, the gazebo sat more like two hundred feet away, right in the center of the meadow.
“If you overshot your mark less than fifty feet, I think I could overlook that,” Adam said. “And I could probably talk MacGregor into it.”
“Really, Adam?” Paige breathed out a sigh of relief. It wouldn’t be exactly like the movie, but Paige could alert Dorothy to it and suggest enough angles to take pictures that no one would be able to tell.
He nodded but still wouldn’t meet her eyes. “So no worries tonight, okay?” He rose.
She gave a chaotic nod.
“Stay as long as you like. Make yourself at home. I’ll see you when I get back?”
She was relieved he was leaving. Her nose started to drip, and she didn’t want him to see her looking any worse than she already did. She gave a quick nod to whatever he said and let him escape out the door.
As soon as he was gone, she flung herself onto her pillow and let herself sob, half with relief that this setback might not be as disastrous as she’d thought, and half with worry that she was more like her mom than she wanted to believe.
The next morning, Paige straightened her pajamas and shuffled into the kitchen to find the coffeepot. Her eyes were puffy, her throat was sore, and she felt spent from crying into the night. But she was at least relieved not to have to face Adam in this ugly state—she’d heard the entire group and their horses leave at four thirty.
A rustling sounded behind her. She whirled to see Amanda.
“So are you Adam’s new girlfriend now?” Amanda continued into the kitchen and reached for a coffee cup. “You’re making enough for both of us, right?”
“I, um . . .” Paige hit the “Off” button and quickly added enough for a second cup. “Sure. Your dad allows you to drink coffee?”
“I don’t think he notices. I just drink the second cup he leaves in there.”
“Okay. Well. Then.” Paige wasn’t sure how to handle this. She wanted to take her part of the bargain seriously about staying with Amanda, but Adam hadn’t gone over any rules to follow. A cup of coffee wouldn’t hurt a sixteen-year-old, right? Paige was pretty sure she was drinking coffee at that age. Probably doing exactly what Amanda was doing—sneaking the last cups out of a parent’s machine.
Amanda fetched the extras—the creamer from the fridge and then a box of sugar from a cupboard. She seemed to know what she was doing. And thank goodness for the sugar. Amanda readied everything along the counter and then stood next to Paige, watching the coffee finish up.
“So are you?” Amanda asked.
“Am I what?”
“His new girlfriend?”
“Oh. No. Definitely not. I’m just a family friend. My gram used to own the house across the meadow. I used to spend summers here on the island. When I was about y
our age, in fact.”
“Really?”
Paige gave a halfhearted, not-yet-induced-by-caffeine nod. She tried to duck her head to hide her puffy eyes. She might have to find some cucumber slices or tea bags or something.
Their coffee signaled its preparedness, and Paige poured the two cups. Amanda loaded hers with creamer and sugar and then passed each of the add-ons to Paige, who followed with nearly the same ratio.
“So has Adam told you about my mom?” Amanda’s voice dropped, the maturing teenager gone now and replaced with a young girl filled with uncertainty.
“Yes.” Paige sipped her coffee. “I knew your mom, in fact.”
“You did?”
Here she went. She could do this. “Yes, she was a counselor at the camp down by the harbor, and I was one of the campers.”
Amanda twisted toward her, mug in her hands. She looked very old and very young at the same time, cocking her head and staring at Paige.
“Actually, I guess I was younger than you,” Paige went on. “I was thirteen. Your mom was about seventeen, and she led a lot of the girls’ groups I was in. She was very pretty.”
A tiny smile moved its way across Amanda’s face.
“You look just like her,” Paige added. “She was a good counselor. We all liked her. She had a great voice, and I remember she taught us some fun campfire songs. She also taught us how to French-braid hair.”
Amanda’s smile was full now. “What else?”
“Let’s see . . . I remember her mostly with your dad. He was nuts about her. He stared at her all the time when we were sitting around the campfire, making lovebird eyes.”
Amanda laughed a little—a combination of a little girl’s giggle and a teenager’s quest for subtlety and reserve. “Do you remember anything else?”
Paige’s mind went straight to the fire. And to Samantha’s parents—Amanda’s grandparents, now that she thought about it—coming to the island to drag her away. And to Samantha and Adam’s fight to stay. And to their constant escapes to the boathouse. And to all the drama that ensued.
But she couldn’t tell Amanda those memories, so she took another sip to buy time and finally remembered something else. “She taught me how to make friendship bracelets.”
Amanda laughed and stared into her coffee. “So you’re not Adam’s girlfriend, then?”
Paige blinked at the abrupt shift in subject. She didn’t have a lot of experience talking to teenagers these days, and she wondered if she’d have to keep on her toes for these conversations. She also noted that Amanda never called him her dad. “No, I’m not his girlfriend.”
“Then he’s not the one who made you cry last night?”
Paige’s cup halted midair.
“Tea bags will help that swelling go down.” Amanda brushed sugar granules off the countertop. “I read that in Seventeen magazine.”
“Thank you. I was thinking cucumbers.”
“Tea bags are better.”
Paige smiled.
“So I’m glad it wasn’t Adam. Because I’d have to get mad at him. And maybe hide his Tabasco. Guys shouldn’t make girls cry.”
“Thank you, Amanda. That’s sweet of you. I was just, um, sad and frustrated because of the house falling apart.”
“Oh yeah. That sounded bad last night. I saw the emergency trucks.”
“I’ll bounce back.” Paige lifted her chin.
She could do this. She always did.
And what kind words from Amanda.
“Hey, can you take me down to the harbor today?” Amanda asked.
Paige tried to keep up with the new change in topic and backpedaled with her brain. Damn. She should have asked Adam if there were any rules for Amanda. Was she being played right now?
“Does your dad let you go down there?”
“Yeah, he just won’t let me drive.”
“Well, that’s smart.”
“He said you were a grown woman, though, and you could do whatever you wanted, including drive the golf cart down the hill too fast even though you’re not supposed to.”
Paige lifted an eyebrow. “He said that?”
Amanda nodded.
A warm, tingly feeling slid through her veins that she was being discussed by Adam when she wasn’t there. Although he was obviously extolling her more rebellious virtues. But still.
“Well, I think I can take you to the harbor today if you want. What time do you need to be there?”
“Three o’clock.”
Paige nodded. “Okay. I have some work to do at Gram’s most of the day, but I’ll come back to get you this afternoon.”
“Great.” Amanda smiled and bounced off to her room.
Paige hoped this wasn’t a terrible decision. She didn’t know how to talk to teenagers, or fulfill requests, or avoid being played. She especially didn’t want to make a bad decision in her brief stint of watching Amanda that would make life harder for Adam when he returned. And, truth be told, she wanted to impress him: he’d asked for a favor, and she wanted to come through. Especially after he was doing her such a huge favor with the meadow.
That’s all this was.
He was doing her a favor, and she was doing him one.
As friends.
With Adam Mason.
Who would have ever thought?
CHAPTER 15
For the next few days, Paige and Amanda developed their routine. They’d start every morning with their shared coffee; Paige would do her hatha yoga on the front porch; Paige would head over to Gram’s to oversee the damage repair and do what she could without getting in the way; they’d meet again to drive down to the harbor at three; Paige would pick her up at five; and then Paige would deliver Amanda for dinner at Bob and Gert’s. Paige thought she was doing a pretty good job of her end of the bargain.
“Would you like to stay, too, dear?” Gert would ask each evening as she popped her head out the door and her gold-colored chignon shimmered.
Paige shook her head each time. Gert seemed like a lovely woman, but Paige didn’t want to get too invested with Adam’s friends and family, or too attached to the people here. “No, thank you—work to do,” she’d say. Then she’d roll her cart back down the steep mountainside driveway.
The place Amanda had wanted to go at the harbor every day, it turned out, was the Friends of the Sea Lion rescue center, where Paige’s hopefully-soon-to-be-brother-in-law Elliott worked.
Afraid Elliott or someone would recognize her, she shoved her sunglasses on tighter as she accelerated by, pulled down the borrowed cowboy hat, then parked a little up the road, waving to Amanda and ducking away.
During one of their morning coffee klatches, Amanda admitted she was going to the sea-lion center because of Garrett.
“Garrett Stone?” Paige had met Garrett several times during her stints helping at the center during their heavy-intake days.
Amanda nodded and blushed.
“He’s cute, Amanda! And very sweet. How did you meet him?”
“His brothers work here on the ranch, and he came to visit them a few times.”
“Who are his brothers?”
“Gabe and Gordon.”
“Ah, of course.” Now that Paige thought about it, the brothers all did look alike. It made sense now.
Amanda smiled, her spoon making tinkling noises against her mug. “But don’t tell Adam.”
“Why not?”
“He looks at Garrett funny when he’s up here talking to me.”
“I’m sure he’s just being a protective dad.”
“Well, I don’t know what that means, but don’t say anything, okay?”
Paige didn’t really know what that meant, either. She’d never had her dad in her life—he’d left when she was a preschooler—so she didn’t know what it would be like to have a father who wanted to protect you and had only your best interests at heart. At first she was sad that Amanda hadn’t known that, either, but then it occurred to her: Amanda was getting a second chance. A wave of happi
ness swept over her for both the teenager and her dad.
“I think you’d be okay to tell him, but I won’t say anything until you’re ready,” Paige said.
Amanda’s shoulders relaxed on a sigh.
Paige just hoped again she was doing the right thing. She didn’t want to ruin anyone’s second chances.
On the day Adam was due to return, Paige puttered back over the hill from dropping Amanda off at Bob and Gert’s and then pulled her cart around the back of Adam’s ranch.
She would go in and pack, then quickly escape before Adam came home.
Gram’s kitchen had been well repaired. The flooding was cleared up, the walls were being dried, and the new beams were going in. She probably could have gone home the night before, but she’d told Adam she’d stay the whole time with Amanda. Also, she sensed that Amanda liked company in such a sprawling house.
But, quite frankly, Paige didn’t want to be around when Adam got back.
She’d missed him. Just remembering how sweet he’d been the night before he left, the way his voice rumbled in her belly, the secure presence of his forearms so close to her SpongeBob pajamas, the heat from his body, and the way he smelled—that whittled-wood-and-sandalwood smell that infused his house—made her long for him even more.
She wasn’t thinking of him as a business partner.
Or as a friend doing favors.
She was a mess.
And being too near him would be flat-out dangerous.
The back door opened just as she finished throwing the last of her things into her backpack. Adam’s heavy footsteps fell across the hall’s wooden floor. Her pulse started to race.
“Amanda?” he called. “Paige?”
Her heart lifted to hear her name on his lips. Maybe because he remembered she might be there. But this was her falling for him again. She packed faster.
“I’m here.”
She threw the last of her things into her bag and snatched up the cowboy hat she’d been borrowing to go incognito to town. As she swung toward the hall to rehang it, Adam materialized in her doorway.
He leaned in the doorjamb, a tired frown chiseled on his face. Blond stubble dotted his jaw—clearly a few days of riding behind him—and his eyes had a sleepy alertness that might seem paradoxical on anyone else but looked just right for a wrangler. He wore his riding clothes, with a thin sheen of dust on the thighs of his jeans. He looked tired and rugged and strong and sexy, and she wanted to climb him like a mountain right now.
Love on Lavender Island (A Lavender Island Novel Book 2) Page 16
