by Sarah Morgan
“You and I have been friends a long time, too. Which is why I’m offering you another beer and a seat at my table.”
“Best to sit,” Alec said mildly. “You know he never gives up. It’s one of his more annoying traits.”
Ryan raised his eyebrows. “I have annoying traits?”
“You want a list?” Alec drained his beer. “Because I could put that together for you, with references.”
Zach felt as if a heavy weight were crushing him. “It’s Emily’s table, too.”
“Which is another reason you’re not leaving. After all the hours she spent in the kitchen, she’d be offended.”
“Maybe not.” He wondered if Brittany had told her friend what had happened. “Seems to me she’s in an impossible position. I don’t want to be the one causing friction.”
“The friction seems to be between Sky and Alec, and if Brittany has a problem with you being here, then she needs to get over it,” Ryan said pleasantly. “You were the one who flew Lizzy and Emily to the hospital that night. And you were the one who bothered to pick up the phone and tell me what had happened. You were a good friend to both of us. And let’s not forget I was best man at your wedding.”
If Zach could have found a way of forgetting, he would have done. “The wedding I screwed up.”
“I share the blame for that. You tried to run and I wouldn’t let you.”
“Another time you’ve been put in a difficult position because of me.”
Ryan shrugged. “Relationships are messy things. You don’t have the monopoly on screwing things up. Alec here will support me on that one.”
Alec stretched out his legs. “I will. The happiest part of my marriage was the divorce.”
“Sit down, Zach.” Ryan jerked his head towards the chair. “While you’re drinking that beer, tell me more about Cessna capabilities. I’m thinking of expanding next summer and offering skippered yacht holidays. We already have the Alice Rose, but at the moment if people want to charter her they have the hassle of a ferry trip. I’m thinking you could fly them direct to her and land on the water. Joint venture. Are you interested?”
“In working with you?” Zach curbed his natural desire to run from anything that looked remotely like a commitment and cautiously sank back down. “I might be.”
“Good. I’ll play with some ideas and then we’ll talk again.”
Zach eyed the kitchen door, which had remained firmly closed. “Are you sure you don’t want me to leave? Seems to me dessert is taking a while longer than it should.”
“It’s always the same when the three of them are together. They’re probably just talking.”
Zach felt heat spread through his body. He suspected he knew exactly what they were talking about.
“I HAD NO IDEA Ryan had invited him for dinner,” Emily hissed behind the closed kitchen door. “We agreed we’d invite our friends. I just didn’t think—”
“It’s fine.” Brittany stacked the dishwasher. Usually she was a clear, methodical thinker, but since Zach had come back into her life, that skill seemed to have deserted her.
“Yes, it’s fine,” Skylar echoed brightly. She still hadn’t mentioned the phone call that had required her to leave the room. “After all, they’re both civilized people and anyway, Brittany has been pretending to be indifferent so this is a perfect way to prove it. Isn’t that right, Brit?”
“Yeah, that’s right. I—actually no, that’s not right.” Giving up the pretense, Brittany plopped onto the kitchen chair. “Things are—complicated.”
Emily abandoned the dirty plates and gave her a worried look. “Has something else happened?”
“You could say that.”
“Another spider? Something else? You finally lost control?”
Brittany gave a moan and covered her face with her hands. “Yes.”
“No one is going to blame you for that. So you shouted at him. You shouldn’t feel bad about it,” Skylar said stoutly. “It will have done him no harm to find out how you really feel. There’s certainly no reason to be avoiding him. You can hold your head up high. He’s the one who should be hiding in the kitchen.”
“I didn’t just shout at him.”
“You punched him? Nobody is going to blame you for that, either. What you need is dessert. What are we having, Em?”
“Ice cream.”
“Perfect. It will cool her down. Just give her the tub and a spoon.”
“I didn’t punch him.” Brittany rubbed her fingers over her forehead. “I had screaming sex with him.”
Silence descended over the kitchen. Skylar stared at her and then turned to look at Emily, who was also mute.
“Stop gaping at each other,” Brittany muttered. “It happened. I can’t change that. But I have to work out what to do next.”
“But—why?” Skylar sounded faint. “How—how did you get from ‘I have no feelings for you’ to screaming sex?”
“Well, for a start because you told her to!” Emily glanced at Sky in exasperation. “You told her she should have sex with him to see if it was still as good as she remembered.”
“I didn’t mean for her to actually do it! It was the wine talking!”
“We’re never giving you wine again.” Emily looked at Brittany. “Where? When?”
“He gave me a ride home after my trip to the hospital.”
“That explains why you didn’t call me.”
“I did, but your phone kept going to voice mail.”
“You’re kidding.” Emily groaned. “Lisa called me to tell me what a great week she’d had at Summer Scoop.”
“So in fact this is all your fault.” Skylar closed the dishwasher. “Our friend was in trouble and you were talking about ice cream? You need to reevaluate your priorities.”
“I didn’t know that was going to be the exact moment she called. Why didn’t you leave a message?”
“Because I didn’t know how long you’d be and I didn’t know how to refuse his offer without looking as if I cared.”
“So he dropped you home and then what?”
“He followed me into the house.”
Sky blinked. “He forced you?”
Brittany glanced towards the door. “No! Look—we should get back out there—”
“So basically it was a wild-animal moment. No romance or emotional bullshit. No bunches of roses or singing cherubs. Just mind-blowing sex.” Sky grinned. “That’s not so hard to understand. The man is in crazy shape.”
Emily closed her eyes. “Sky—”
“What? I know you’re blind to every man but Ryan, but you should take a closer look. I don’t know which I prefer, his pecs or his abs. And the way he calms Cocoa does something indescribable to my insides. Did you see his hands? It’s all so quiet and understated. I love that. And I love a man who is kind to animals. Did he use a condom?”
“Skylar!” Emily glanced nervously towards the door.
Brittany felt heat rush into her cheeks. “Yes.”
“Wow. He carries one in his pocket just in case his rampant sex drive overwhelms him in the middle of Main Street. Good to know.”
Emily intervened. “He protected her. That’s all that matters. Now can we—”
“So he followed you into the house and the next thing you were ripping each other’s clothes off.” Sky gave a slow smile. “Mmm. That is so hot. Definitely time to fetch that ice cream, Em.”
Emily kept one eye on the door. “This is definitely not the time or the place for this conversation. I’m supposed to be sorting out dessert. If we don’t go back in there soon, Ryan will come looking for us.” She pulled open the freezer and dug out a tub of blueberry ice cream emblazoned with the Summer Scoop logo. “I hope everyone likes blueberry. Fetch some bowls, Sky.”
“In a minute. She still hasn’t answered the most important question—was it or wasn’t it?”
“What?”
“As good as you remembered.”
Brittany stared blindly out the window.
“It was nothing like I remembered.”
“That’s to be expected.” Emily opened the tub of ice cream. “You were very young and you’re probably seeing the past through rose-tinted glasses.”
“I think she’s saying it was better,” Sky murmured. “Get her a bigger bowl, Em. She might need to push her whole heated self into the ice cream. And I guess Zach might want the option of licking it off.”
“Better still, I might just push you in there,” Emily muttered. “Cause of death, ice-cream inhalation.”
Sky was still looking at Brittany. “It’s all falling into place. The fact that you had wild sex with your ex explains the smoldering glances and the suppressed tension around the table.”
“I’m not smoldering. And there was no tension.”
“Honey, that look you gave him could have lit a candle without a match and I could have sliced the tension with the bread knife. But I’m starting to understand why you don’t want to help out at Camp Puffin. You’re right. It would be crazy to throw yourself in his path again given that you have no willpower. We’ll get you out of it.”
And that was the sensible thing, of course. The easiest way. So why did she feel a twinge of regret?
She always loved her summers at Camp Puffin. There were plenty of things she’d enjoyed that had nothing to do with Zach. Building camps in the forest, surrounded by the smell of pine. Kayaking in the bay beyond the camp, toasting marshmallows over a campfire and scaring each other to death with spooky stories as night fell. Starlight Adventure had been one of her favorite nights of the year, an overnight camp deep in the forest. And friendship. Talking late into the night with her friend Helen, Ryan’s other sister, and creeping into each other’s cabins after dark for feasting and fun.
The summer she’d worked as a counselor had been happy, too. So happy, that for a short time she’d toyed with the idea of training to be a teacher.
Helping out at the camp would have been the perfect way to occupy her time over the next few weeks. Even though she didn’t have the use of both hands, she would have been able to improvise and find ways of making herself useful.
Only one thing was stopping her from phoning Philip Law and volunteering her services.
Zach.
“We need to go or they’ll send out a search party.” Emily smoothed her hair and opened the kitchen door.
It was like a Shakespearean farce, Brittany thought.
“So what do you think?” Ryan took the ice cream from Emily. “Will you help Philip out for a few weeks, Brit?”
“Ryan, how can she with her wrist in plaster?” Armed with new information, Emily immediately leaped in to defend her. “Be practical.”
Sky nodded. “Em’s right. It’s out of the question.”
Brittany felt a rush of love for her friends. No matter what the situation, they always had her back.
There was a pause while they both waited for Brittany to confirm that there was no way she’d be doing it.
She looked down at the ice cream, slowly melting in her bowl. It was the way she felt when she was with Zach. One look and her insides melted into a puddle.
But that was her problem to deal with.
Why should she stay away from a place that had played an important part in her life, just because of something that had happened ten years ago?
And as for what had happened yesterday, well, that was just sex.
This time she wasn’t going to make the mistake of dressing it up with roses and hearts in her brain.
“I’ll do it,” she said firmly. “I’ll help out at camp.”
“But—” Skylar looked startled. “Brit, you can’t possibly do it with your wrist in plaster. Everyone understands that.”
“There will be plenty of things I can do. I want to do it. I’m going to do it. Unless Zach has a problem with that?”
Zach’s gaze locked on hers.
Brittany felt her heart start to pound.
He was wondering what she was doing. Probably thinking to himself that she was attaching meaning to what had happened. Perhaps even wondering if her decision to help out at camp was driven by a desire to get closer to him.
The thought of him reaching that conclusion made her squirm.
She wanted to tell him he had no reason to worry. She wanted to assure him she was no longer a naive, dreamy teenager. That she knew his feelings didn’t go deeper than sexual attraction.
She wanted to tell him all that but she couldn’t with their friends looking on, waiting for his response.
Finally he stirred, reaching for his spoon with the same economy of movement that characterized everything he did.
“No.” He spoke slowly and deliberately. “I don’t have a problem.”
BACK HOME, Zach stripped off his shirt and was about to do the same with his jeans when he heard a light tap on the cabin door.
People rarely knocked on his door. His cabin was far beyond the edge of the camp and off-limits. Although he helped out during the day with activities when it suited his schedule, he didn’t have direct responsibility for any of the children. He’d only ever had two people knock, and each time it had been an emergency and the person had been looking for Philip, so he crossed the room in three strides and dragged open the door, anticipating trouble.
Trouble faced him, but not in the shape he’d expected.
“Hi.” Brittany stood there, thumbs tucked into the pockets of her cargo pants, her shiny dark hair illuminated by the wash of light from the cabin. Her gaze slid from his face to his bare chest and then away. “I know it’s late, but do you have a minute? I thought we should talk.”
Talk?
He wondered what it said about him that talking was never the first thing that came to mind when he was face-to-face with her.
“I seem to remember I already suggested that and you didn’t have anything to say.”
Instead they’d found other ways to communicate. Ways that were now lodged in his head, disturbing his concentration and his sleep.
The corner of her mouth tilted into a faint smile. “I have things to say now, unless this is a bad time …” Her voice tailed off and her gaze slid from his bare chest to the snap of his jeans that wasn’t completely fastened and then to the cabin behind him. “You’re busy. You have company and I didn’t think—which was stupid of me—and it’s none of my business who you—sorry—” Flustered, she backed away and he took one look at her face and realized she thought he was with a woman.
He wondered what she’d say if she knew he’d never brought a woman back here.
He should have let her leave, but not doing the things he should have done had been a trademark of his life, so he pushed the door open a little wider, letting her see the interior of the cabin.
“I don’t have company.”
“Are you sure?”
“You think I don’t know when I have a woman in my bed?” His blunt response brought a flush to her cheeks.
“I—” She glanced from the cabin to his face. “In that case, can I come in?”
The cabin was small and rustic. It was big enough for one to live in comfortably. Two, if they didn’t mind an intimate atmosphere.
Given what had happened last time they’d been alone together, Zach decided not to take the risk.
“We can talk on the deck.” He snatched up his shirt from the back of the chair and saw her frown.
“Why the deck? It’s fine by me if you haven’t made the bed or something. I don’t care if the place is a mess.”
“It’s not a mess. I’m methodical. Comes from being a pilot. Routines keep me alive.”
“So why can’t we—oh, never mind.” Sparks danced between them like the crackle and pop of a bonfire.
“It isn’t that I don’t want to invite you in,” he lied. “I feel like fresh air, that’s all.”
Deciding that the more layers between them the better, he pulled his shirt on over his head, noticing that she kept her eyes fixed on the room behind him.
>
“I always loved this cabin. It’s romantic.” She spoke without thinking and then looked at him and gave an awkward laugh. “Except not right now, of course. We didn’t do romantic, did we?”
He didn’t want to think about what they’d done. And he definitely didn’t want to think about all the possibilities of the cabin. “What did you want to talk about?” As if he didn’t know.
As if it wasn’t obvious.
Restless, she paced to the edge of the deck. Occasionally when the sea was rough, the waves hurled spray over the broad planks and anyone standing on them, but tonight the sea rolled in quietly, licking the shore in slow, sleepy waves.
She leaned on the railing and stared down into the inky depths. Then she took a deep breath and turned to look at him.
“I want to forget what happened. And if the only way of forgetting is to talk about it first, then let’s talk.”
This was the Brittany he remembered. Frank, honest and straightforward in her approach to a problem. Lies didn’t suit her.
And they didn’t suit him. “You want to talk about what happened? I’ve always found you sexy as hell and you didn’t exactly seem in a hurry to stop me,” he said roughly. “That’s what happened.”
There was a gleam of wry humor in her eyes. “I meant what happened ten years ago, not what happened the other night. We don’t communicate well, do we?”
He couldn’t argue with that.
It was like a game of catch, and each of them kept missing the ball.
“You want to talk about what happened back then?” His mouth was dry. “Go ahead. Say what you want to say.” After what he’d done, he owed her that much.
“When Ryan asked me about helping at camp, my first instinct was to say no. I thought it would be awkward for both of us. And then I realized that saying no would mean missing out on something I love. Camp was part of my life. Some of my happiest memories come from the time I spent here. I’d like to help, and the only thing stopping me from doing that is you.” She pushed her hands into the pockets of her cargoes. “We’re both adults, Zach. It was a long time ago. I just want to forget it and move on.”
