Fingers fidgeting, she twisted her engagement ring so that the diamond rested inside her palm. Protecting the stone. Why else would she have done that?
As she attempted a smooth dip down to a kneeling position, he raised his hand to her. Reflexively, she reached for it, her gaze locking with his. Suddenly, her legs turned to pudding, causing her knee to make an encore performance of its earlier twisting maneuver. Yelping in pain, she collapsed forward, both knees thunking on the hard surface.
She realized, to her horror, that she was now face to face with Mr. Gorgeous. He had caught her by the elbows, effectively stopping her from tumbling all the way to the floor. She quickly pulled herself free with so much force that she fell backward, landing in the center of the table on her backside with her knees bent gawkily in front of her.
He stared at her, wide-eyed. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah.” Painfully straightening her legs, she smoothed down her skirt as best she could manage. “I’m just peachy.”
Eyes softening, he held out a strong hand. “Let me help you. For real this time.”
She paused, studying the sincerity in his gaze. Judging him to be devoid of ulterior motives, she scooted forward enough to take his hand.
He helped her to her feet, then—to his credit—dropped her hand and took a polite step back.
“I don’t think we’ve met.” Acting as though she hadn’t just made a supreme fool of herself, he offered his hand again, this time more formally. “I’m Josh Collins.”
Once again, she quickly assessed him. He seemed nice enough. Not at all like he was coming on to her, thank goodness. She shook his hand. “Kate Jennings.”
“Nice to meet you, Kate.” His shake felt firm and confident. “I don’t remember ever seeing you at U Dub. You must be one of Jessica’s friends from the island.”
Jessica? She tipped him a look. “Oh…I just…got here.” Why couldn’t she form a coherent sentence?
“Hmmm.” Taking a slight step back, he playfully studied her. “Don’t tell me you’re one of Stuart’s friends?”
Who on earth was Stuart? She allowed a small smile and shook her head, unable to cut short the fun he seemed to be having.
“Let me think…” Snapping his fingers next to his ear, he looked up toward the high ceiling. “…Kate…Kate…. Nope. It’s not ringing a bell. I remember Stu mentioning a Candy, and a Shelby, and a Madison, but never a Kate.”
She raised a good-natured eyebrow. “This Stuart sounds like a real ladies’ man.”
“He’s got a solid rep, that’s for sure.” His forehead creased, accentuating his handsome features. “So, I’m confused. If you’re not a friend of Jessica’s, and you’re not one of Stu’s hangers-on, then who—”
“Joshua, my boy.” Chase’s abrupt entrance commanded the room and brought Kate swiftly around. “You must have arrived while I was in my office earlier.”
“Yes sir.” Josh raised his hand to meet Chase’s.
As the men exchanged a greeting, Kate gave herself a subtle inspection to make sure everything was back in place. Realizing she was still shoeless, she quickly slipped her feet into the pumps and shifted demurely to Chase’s side.
Chase placed a firm hand on the small of her back, still speaking to Josh. “I see you’ve met my fiancée.”
An endearing blush washed over Josh’s cheeks as he caught her eye then looked away. An inexplicable mix of embarrassment and disappointment welled in Kate’s throat. Josh hadn’t realized she was an engaged woman. Why did it bother her that Chase had made it known so abruptly?
Chapter 5
Met his fiancée?
Had Josh heard right? Heat crept up his face. He hadn’t even known Mr. Cole was dating, much less engaged. It had probably made the news, but Josh had been buried in finals for the last few weeks. Still, it was strange that Jessica hadn’t mentioned it.
“Oh.” He fumbled for a response. “I guess so.” Something wasn’t right here. Why would any woman want to marry a guy who had been a suspect in his previous wife’s disappearance?
He caught Kate surreptitiously twisting an enormous block of ice to the top of her ring finger. Their eyes met and hers quickly flicked away.
He cast his own gaze down, thoughtfully. Ah. Money. That must be it.
Mr. Cole had his hand pressed against her back in what seemed like an unnecessarily possessive manner. He smiled amiably at Josh while speaking to Kate. “Joshua here is one of our houseguests.”
“Oh?” Kate gave Josh a pencil-thin smile. Gone was the fun-loving girl from just a minute ago.
He tried not to let his thoughts show on his face. “Thank you for having me, sir.”
“Jessica’s friends are always welcome in our home.”
Kate tilted her head at her fiancé, tiny lines forming between her eyebrows. She opened her mouth to speak, but Mr. Cole didn’t give her a chance.
“Will you be joining us on the island all summer?”
“No, sir.” All summer? Josh crossed and uncrossed his arms. Why had he even come for the weekend? So many strange things had happened in this family. “I’m just here for a little break before I start my summer job.”
“Oh.” Mr. Cole nodded. “So, you won’t be staying for the wedding, then?”
“I hadn’t planned on it.” Josh watched Kate wind a hank of her pretty blonde hair around her finger. Why did she seem so uncomfortable? “Actually, I wasn’t aware there was going to be one.”
“Well, perhaps you’ll consider coming back up next weekend. It’s going to be a nice event.”
Next weekend? Josh shifted his weight from foot to foot, not wanting to look at Kate. Did she realize how peculiar this situation was? “I’ll certainly consider it.”
The awkward silence that followed gave Josh the distinct impression that he was the one third of the population of the room that made three a crowd. He was about to excuse himself when the boisterous sound of Jessica’s friends coming in from the deck to the living room drew everyone’s attention.
Mr. Cole gave them a smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes. “Well, this seems like a good time for introductions.” He held out an after-you hand to Kate. “Shall we?”
Kate’s lip quivered, then she offered up a tight smile and started for the doorway. Mr. Cole gave Josh a fatherly pat on the shoulder and they fell into step behind her.
Kate seemed to hesitate at the entrance to the living room, and Josh couldn’t say he blamed her. It would be intimidating to meet this crowd even under the best of circumstances.
Mr. Cole positioned himself on Kate’s left, with a hand firmly placed on each of her shoulders, as if he was preparing to present her as his own personal achievement. Josh eased in on her other side, hoping to lend some sort of silent support. He sensed that she felt even more out of place here than he did.
“Excuse me, everyone.” Mr. Cole’s deep voice cut through the high pitched chatter. All eyes turned to him then landed in judgment on Kate as the group fell silent.
She stiffened almost imperceptibly.
“I’d like you all to meet my fiancée.” Mr. Cole sounded more like he was announcing a new stock option at a business meeting than introducing his future wife.
Josh cleared his throat. This felt weird. Maybe he should just take off after dinner.
In typical Jessica fashion, she flipped her hair over her shoulder and turned to stare out the window, while taking a long sip of her Mojito. Josh subtly rolled his eyes. She and her friends had been fun to hang out with at school, and he had certainly felt for her with the terrible year she’d had, but he’d started to see a side of her that he found totally unappealing.
“Jessica.” Crossing to her, Mr. Cole reached out for her arm.
Slowly, she looked up and smiled sweetly, then rose and allowed him to guide her to where Kate still stood next to Josh. Mr. Cole settled his hand domineeringly on Kate’s back, forcing her to take a step closer to Jessica.
“Jessica,” he said. “
Meet Kate.”
Josh frowned. Kate was just now meeting Jessica? This just kept getting stranger.
“So….” Jessica drew her glass to her lips and subtly sized up her future stepmother. “This is the famous Kate.”
Whoa. Give the girl a little alcohol and she could win a competition with the contents of her glass over who was icier.
Josh was about to say something, anything, to break the tension when the French doors from the patio swung open and Stuart stepped in with a drink in his hand and a girl on each arm.
“Stuart,” Mr. Cole called to him. “Come and meet Kate.”
The creases between Kate’s eyebrows had deepened in the last ten minutes. At this rate, she’d have to hire a make-up artist to putty them in for her wedding pictures.
Through a poorly, if at all, concealed smirk, Stuart quickly assessed her from across the room, then raised his glass to his lips as he spoke. “Nice to meet you, Mommy.”
Ouch. Stuart was never one to be tactful, but this was totally over the top. And why was Mr. Cole letting him—both his kids—treat Kate with such disrespect? This just didn’t add up. The group tittered, and Kate’s eyes narrowed. She glanced down, and Josh could see her puzzling over Stuart’s comment.
Suddenly, it dawned on him why she had seemed so confused earlier. She hadn’t even known who Jessica and Stuart were. Was that possible? Hadn’t Mr. Cole told her about them? Josh considered. The Coles had been all over the news in the last year. Where had Kate been living, in a cave?
Josh leaned in so that only Kate could hear. “Don’t worry. None of these other people are related to him.”
“Oh.” An endearing combination of relief and gratitude eased the strain on her face. “Thank goodness.”
Chapter 6
Relieved to finally be on her own and away from Jessica and her rowdy friends, Kate fumbled with her new key. She fumed. Her vision of living a peaceful life as the lady of the manor had slipped into something far less appealing.
Reasonably, she had assumed Chase would walk her down to show her where she’d be staying, but he’d gotten another phone call and had promised to check in on her later. It was just as well. The way she felt right now, she might just pick a fight with him, which was the last thing she needed to do straight off the bat.
She hated feeling irritated with Chase, especially when she’d looked so forward to seeing him. But how could he neglect to tell her about Jessica and Stuart? And why, when he allowed her to find out, had he done it so publicly? Didn’t he realize how humiliated she would feel?
The lock clicked and she slipped the key into her purse. And why was she staying in the guesthouse while the actual guests got to stay in her house?
The reminder of the ‘actual guests’ brought with it a not entirely unwelcome vision of Josh, which she tried unsuccessfully to shoo from her mind. She felt undeniably drawn to him, but that was normal, right? He was a nice guy who had the added advantage of being disarmingly great looking. But, it didn’t take a genius to figure he was probably Jessica’s boyfriend, so why did the thought of him leaving after the weekend send her spirit plummeting even lower?
Grumbling to herself, she walked through the front door, then stopped cold. This place was heavenly. The far wall in front of her was made almost entirely of glass, just like in the main house but on a more comfortable scale. It seemed both homes were designed to be an audience for the breathtaking view of the crystalline water.
How ungrateful could she get? This house was most likely a million dollar property all on its own. It just seemed puny in comparison to the main house, that was all.
As she stepped toward the window, her tender knee folded under her weight. She let out a moan, clutching her leg. Stupid knee. If she wasn’t more careful, she’d need a cane to make it down the aisle.
She ditched her shoes—good riddance—and moved reverently forward. This place wasn’t huge by any means, but it felt sumptuous, with an open-plan design intended to throw all the focus on the outdoor spectacle. It would be like living in a movie theatre with nature as the featured attraction.
She wandered toward the windows and stone fireplace, then into the nice-sized dining area with the kitchen beyond.
Remembering a time when she had loved to dabble in the kitchen, before her life had become all about scrounging to survive, she wanted to cry. After years of sharing a sparse condo kitchenette with a herd of cockroaches and a transitory string of roommates who showed little if any respect for one another’s food stashes, she stood in awe of the gourmet kitchen.
Cookbook shelves lined one side of a trapezoid-shaped island. Turning her head sideways, she read some of the spines. Most of them focused on Pacific Northwest cuisine, which could come in handy if she decided to tackle something other than microwaved instant oatmeal. She should learn how to cook for real now that she was going to be a wife.
A pretty basket filled with assorted teas sat out on the island countertop, daring her to indulge. Behind the basket, a silver tea kettle awaited its call to duty on the smooth black stovetop. Moving around the island, she filled the kettle at the sink, then turned on the burner and set it back down. She grabbed a bag of something called Market Spice, breathed in the to-die-for cinnamony aroma, and plunked it into a waiting mug.
Now what? Might as well unpack while her tea water heated. She’d lived out of her ratty old backpack for far too long and was ready to take a swing at settling in, even if this home was only transitory. Now to find where the driver had left her things.
She looped back toward the foyer, where she’d noticed a doorway off to the left of the entrance. As she walked down a short hall, she noted a bedroom and a bathroom along the way to a set of double doors at the end.
Feeling as if she were breaking and entering, she opened the double doors. Good grief. If the guesthouse master bedroom was this plush, what must the one in the main house look like?
With a bed practically the size of the entire room she’d briefly shared in San Francisco with two other girls, and an easy chair next to its own corner fireplace, this room could please a queen. It even had a private deck with the same stunning view as the living room. She pictured herself sitting out there leisurely finalizing wedding plans.
Her suitcase rested on one of those expensive-looking hotel luggage stands. After an obligatory check to the inner pocket to make sure the zippered pouch she’d grown to hate was still safely tucked away, she made a snap decision to leave it there. In due time, she would decide what to do about it—tell Chase, maybe?
No. Chase would insist on reporting it, and the last thing on earth she wanted to do was talk to the police. After the way she’d been treated—by the officers who had come to her house the time her mom had called them on her stepdad, then by the police who’d degraded the kids on the street…. And that detective in San Diego. She closed her eyes against a shudder. No. She definitely didn’t trust the police.
Maybe she’d think twice about confiding in Chase. In the meantime, the pouch would be safe in her suitcase.
After rezipping the inner pocket, she opened the main compartment. She removed her wedding planning binder, ran her hand across its smooth pearl white cover, and placed it on the bed. She quickly unpacked all the new clothing items she’d acquired on that shopping trip with Chase, which took up a tiny fraction of the humongous walk-in closet. Going back out to the suitcase, she contemplated. She tugged at a grey sleeve of the one remaining clothing item in her case, then quickly pulled on her It Came From Outer Space sweatshirt over her blouse. It felt like a hug from an old friend. So much had changed so quickly over the last few months, and right now a small thing like her ratty old favorite sweatshirt which she’d had since high school was more comforting than anything she could imagine.
Well, almost anything.
Carefully, she reached into the outside pocket of her suitcase and took out a small stack of photos. Perching on the edge of the bed, she flipped through them, one by one, smiling at
each. It felt a little OCD, but she didn’t care. This was it—what was left of her childhood.
She lingered on the last one, like always. She was long past tearing up when she looked at the shot of herself with her mom, but a brew of bittersweet emotions still stirred.
It had been taken her sophomore year, just a few weeks before everything in her life had fallen apart. Looking at this picture, it felt as though nothing had changed, and she was standing in the front yard of their house next to her mom, wearing the vintage embroidered blouse that had been one of her favorite thrift store finds.
She swallowed hard to prevent her throat from closing. What had happened to that blouse, along with the rest of her things when she’d left San Diego? She pictured the other girls living in the condo claiming her things, like a pack of cheetahs ripping the meat off a gazelle. The thought made her stomach turn.
Maybe it hadn’t happened that way. She had tried for months to comfort herself with the thought that Shari and little Iowa had protected her meager belongings from the others. When they’d realized she was gone for good, they would have divided her things between the two of them. She hoped, if that had been the case, that they would find comfort in good memories of her whenever they wore something that had belonged to her. She looked again at the picture. The vintage blouse would be too big for Iowa, but it would bring out the green in Shari’s eyes. That thought always made Kate smile.
Wiping a tear away, she placed the ‘mom’ side of the photo against her lips. She’d tried not to think about her parents since she left. Did they even still live in the same house? She couldn’t care less about her stepdad, but would she ever get to see her mom again?
Her eyes pinched shut. Maybe she wasn’t quite past tearing up, after all.
A sharp whistling sound dragged her from her thoughts. The tea kettle. Keeping the stack of photos in her hand, she grabbed the wedding binder and headed for the kitchen. She had to stop being so jumpy. Probably the residual effect of seeing that creepy guy in the black sweat jacket earlier.
Tide Will Tell (Islands of Intrigue: San Juans) Page 3
