by Sarah Morgan
“That’s ridiculous. I—”
“Does two o’clock work for you? I should be done by then. The wind and tide will be perfect.”
“It doesn’t matter! I’m not going to—”
“Dress casual. You know the score.”
“Dammit, Seth! We can’t just—this is ridiculous—” Her voice came to a stuttering halt. “Grams is having friends over for lunch.”
“So she doesn’t need you there.”
“I promised to walk Charlie.”
“I have a clinic in the morning, so you’ll have time to do that before I arrive.” He held out his hand. “Give me your phone—”
She sighed and then handed it over.
He entered his details into her contacts. “Text when you’ve finished doing whatever you need to do for your grandmother. I’ll work on the house until I hear from you.”
“If I did come, and I probably won’t because I’m going to be busy, where would we go?”
“Sailing in Gardiner’s Bay, the way we always used to.”
And she would come, he was sure of it. Fliss loved the water too much to say no. The first time he’d taken her and her sister out on a boat was the only time he’d seen Fliss speechless.
She’d stood in the bow, her hair streaming out like a pennant, legs braced against the roll of the boat.
A repeat of that, he hoped, would be enough to tempt her.
Without giving her more time to conjure up more excuses, he whistled for Lulu and strolled back toward the house.
Generally he wasn’t given to keeping score, but if he did he definitely would have won that round.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
ROSE FELICITY ADAMS lay asleep in Matilda’s arms. Hero lay across the doorway, his head resting on his paws.
“He won’t let us out of his sight,” Matilda said. “Chase is worried I’m going to trip over him.”
Fliss hovered at the edge of the room watching her friend. She’d never seen anyone so content. It was hard to believe the drama of a few nights before had ever happened. True, she looked tired, but there was a light in her eyes, and a smile of pure happiness hovered around her mouth. Fliss wished she could feel half as relaxed. Instead she felt restless and unsettled.
And it wasn’t seeing the baby. For some reason she didn’t entirely understand, the raw feelings of loss and grief that had poured out of her that night of the birth hadn’t returned. Somehow they’d diminished, the sharp edges worn away by the tide of her emotion. Emotional erosion.
No, it wasn’t baby Rose who was the cause of her current feelings.
It was Seth.
I want to discover what we have now.
What did he mean by that? They didn’t have anything now. Except confusion and a whole lot of new stress. She’d thought a conversation would be the end of something. Instead it seemed that it was the beginning. But the beginning of what?
Life would have been simpler if she’d stayed in Manhattan. Or if he’d stayed in Manhattan. Or if he’d been born less attractive. The moment she thought it, she dismissed it. It wasn’t about the way he looked but the way he was. Persistent and damn stubborn. Decent and caring.
And stubborn.
Other people mostly respected her boundaries. Seth seemed determined to invade them. Was that a legacy from his childhood? His family had always been open and communicative. Even when they’d been involved in a shouting match, they’d been communicating. It wasn’t just food they’d shared in the Carlyle household, it had been feelings. Feelings had been right there at the table along with glistening tomatoes and ripe goats’ cheese. To her, it had felt alien and unfamiliar. When they’d tried to include her, she’d answered as briefly as possible, her smile stretched and stiff. She hadn’t been able to switch off that side of her that constantly asked why do they want to know this and how are they going to use it against me?
She wanted desperately to be part of their group, to fit in, but nothing in her past had trained her for this. Her childhood had taught her not to engage. How to deflect any possible intrusion into her feelings. But Seth hadn’t been put off by those barriers. And it seemed nothing had changed.
The fact that he wanted to see her again made her nervous. Uneasy. Exposed. It was like setting the alarm on your house, knowing that the person watching from outside had both the key and the code and could walk in at anytime.
She shouldn’t have gone to his place for dinner. That had been a bad move. If she’d just had the conversation on the side of the road that day, instead of pretending to be Harriet, she wouldn’t be in this mess now. There was nothing remotely disturbing about a conversation conducted in blazing heat with traffic pounding past, kicking up dust. They would have sweated it out and gone their separate ways. Awkward moment done.
Instead, there had been the intimacy of his house. Just the two of them and a thousand heated memories she definitely hadn’t needed in the room with her. And as if that wasn’t torture enough, it had been followed by that walk on the beach, something they’d done so many times before.
Moonlight over the ocean.
Why had she agreed to that?
He hadn’t touched her, and yet she’d wanted him to. Yet another thing that made no sense. The feelings should have faded by now, but instead they continued to throb, unrelenting and raw.
Frustrated by all the things she couldn’t control and didn’t understand, she glared out the window and jumped as Matilda cleared her throat.
“Is everything okay?”
“Of course. Everything is perfect.” If you ignored the fact that she hadn’t slept well since Seth arrived back in her life. The stress was starting to age her.
“You seem tense.”
“It shows? Am I going gray?” She grabbed a handful of hair and examined it. “I’m going to be old and haggard before my time.”
“You’re a long way from old and haggard. Is it Seth?” Matilda looked worried. “Is it my fault for inadvertently revealing you’re not Harriet? I feel terrible about that.”
“Don’t. I was planning to confess anyway.” Maybe. Or maybe she would have legged it back to Manhattan. Would he have followed her if she’d done that? And would she have wanted him to? Her thoughts spun randomly, like leaves caught in a gust of wind. She never knew quite where they were going to fall. “And it’s pretty cool having a baby named after me.”
“I blew your cover. And now Seth knows.”
Another person would have told her that Seth already knew. They would probably have laughed about it, the laughter tinged with embarrassment. But Fliss wasn’t that person. “I should have done it a long time ago, but I was so tangled up in my own lies I didn’t know how to get out of it.”
“Was it very awkward? I want details.”
She didn’t do details. “We talked.”
And while he was talking she’d been preoccupied by the shape of his mouth and the thickness of his eyelashes.
How was it right that one man could be so attractive? There was no justice in the world. If there was then she should have been able to spend an evening with Seth without feeling as if her emotions had been dumped in a cocktail shaker and treated with a total lack of mercy.
She didn’t know whether it was his eyes or his smile, but something about him turned her inside out.
Or maybe it was that confidence. She’d always envied that confidence. The fact that he was so sure. She assumed it came from having parents who encouraged and believed in him. Parents who were proud.
She, on the other hand, was a seething mass of uncertainty. And she hated feeling that way. Surely she should have shaken it off by now.
What did it matter that no one in her family had ever been proud of her? She had a business and an apartment, albeit small and shared with her sister. And she’d paid for all of it herself. Her father had never given her a single cent. She was proud of herself. That was all that should count.
“I need you to translate something for me.” The words blurted o
ut of her mouth, surprising her.
“I’ve never been good at languages.” The breeze floated through the open window, taking the edge off the heat.
“I’m talking about men. You understand men.”
Matilda burst out laughing. “Fictional men. I understand my characters, but that’s because I’m the one who made them up. And I hope I understand Chase, at least most of the time.”
Chase had been the one who had led Fliss into the house, and he’d hovered close to Matilda and the baby until she’d gently shoed him off to do some work. The look he and Matilda had shared had made it clear to Fliss that they’d forgotten she was even in the room.
Once again she’d found herself envying their close connection. “Do you tell Chase everything?”
“Yes. It’s what makes it so good. I don’t have to hide who I am from him, he knows and loves me anyway.” Matilda settled the baby more comfortably. “So what is it you need me to translate? Body language or a situation?”
“You told me the other day that you think through the reasons people act the way they do. So that’s what I want to know. The reason.” She’d been thinking about it all night. Her brain had gone around and around until she’d felt dizzy with thinking. And still she couldn’t make sense of it. She’d spent a decade thinking things were a certain way, and now that they were different she didn’t recognize what she was looking at. “I need to understand why Seth is behaving the way he is.”
“I’m going to need a little more information.”
“It’s the first time I’ve seen him in ten years—”
“As yourself.”
“Excuse me?”
“You’ve seen him as Harriet.”
Fliss sent her a look. “Are you going to keep interrupting?”
“Sorry.”
“He invited me to dinner. Why do that? Why go to the trouble of dinner for what might have been the most awkward encounter of the decade?”
“That’s why you’re so distracted.” Matilda nodded, as if Fliss had just shared something momentous. “I’m guessing it was because he didn’t want to rush it. Dinner ensures that you have time to say what needs to be said. He took you to a restaurant? What type of restaurant? Romantic, or neutral territory?”
“It wasn’t a restaurant. He invited me to his home. He cooked.”
“I love a man who can cook.” Matilda tucked the blanket around the baby. “And cooking for you at home is more personal than a restaurant. Intimate.”
“That makes no sense. Why would he want it to be personal and intimate?”
“Perhaps he thought it was better for your relationship to spend time together without anyone else around.”
“What relationship? This is why I’m confused. Our relationship was over ten years ago, and even when it was running hot we didn’t do dinners.” But they’d done romantic moonlight walks on the beach. And they’d done other things, too. Things she couldn’t stop thinking about.
“So what did you do first time around? How did you spend your time?”
Fliss looked at the baby. “She’s too young to hear it.”
“Right.” Matilda laughed. “I get the picture. It was more hormones than head or heart.”
There had been heart, Fliss thought. On her side, at least. There had been so much heart she’d found it difficult to pick herself up afterward. But that wasn’t something she shared.
“Last night he cooked, then we had a walk on the beach and talked.”
“Seems straightforward. So which part of that needs deciphering?”
“The things he said weren’t the things I expected him to say.”
Matilda looked at her. “If you’re expecting some input from me, you’re going to have to give me more.”
“I assumed he was mad at me. I mean, he should have been mad at me.”
“Why? What did you do?”
Fliss stared out the window, letting her mind slide back to the past. “It doesn’t matter. All you need to know is that he wasn’t mad. And—he surprised me, that’s all.” And she’d surprised herself with what she’d revealed. “I thought he’d say his piece and then I’d leave. I thought that would be the end of it. And every time I saw him after that I’d wave and say, ‘Hi, Seth.’”
“But—?”
“He wants to see me again.” Fliss let out a breath. “I didn’t see that coming. He should be staying away from me.”
“It doesn’t look to me as if that’s what he wants.”
“But what does it mean? He said he wanted to spend time with me. So is that time as a friend, or time as more than a friend?”
“Do you always think this much about relationships?”
“Yes, but that isn’t the point. The point is that I don’t have a relationship with Seth.”
“But clearly he wants one.”
“Why? Where is this all going?”
“I don’t know. Maybe all he wants is friendship. Or maybe he doesn’t know either. Maybe he just wants to spend time with you and see how it turns out.”
And how would it turn out?
“I thought the whole point of having the conversation we had last night was to get it out of the way so that we could move forward. And now he wants to rewind the clock. It’s confusing, and I don’t like feeling confused. It’s stressful.”
Melissa smiled. “Do you always overthink everything?”
“Sometimes.” When it was something that could hurt her? Always.
The baby looked so peaceful, her eyes closed.
Fliss envied the simplicity of her life. At that moment she would have swapped places.
Matilda stirred. “Could you hold her for a moment while I run to the bathroom?”
Fliss thought about the way the baby had felt in her arms. “You don’t want to put her in her crib? She’s asleep. Seems a shame to wake her.”
“Exactly. The moment I put her in the crib she wakes up, and I don’t want her to wake up. And anyway, it’s an excuse for you to have a cuddle with your namesake.”
Fliss had been searching for excuses not to have a cuddle, but admitting that would have required explanations she didn’t want to give, so she took the baby carefully, hoping that her bruised heart proved more robust than the last time she’d handled little Rose. “I hope I don’t wake her up. I haven’t had that much to do with babies.”
There was an ache inside her. Regret? Longing?
If you hadn’t lost the baby we’d still be together.
Was that true?
The thought made her feel sick. It brought back all the “if onlys” she tried never to allow into her head.
“You’ll be fine.” Matilda vanished from the room, stepping carefully over Hero, who didn’t shift his gaze from Fliss and the baby. He’d obviously decided that Rose was now his priority.
“You think this is easy?” Fliss stood without moving, desperate not to wake the baby. “Try putting your paw on a thorn and then pressing down hard. That’s how it feels.”
Hero yawned.
“I would have expected a little more sympathy, given all the outstanding walks you’ve had from me. You owe me.”
Still watching her, Hero settled his nose on his paws, a benign bodyguard.
Matilda reappeared and took the baby from her. “So where’s he taking you?”
“Sailing.”
“Oh, lucky you.” She slotted Rose onto her shoulder as naturally as if she’d been doing it forever. “Chase loves sailing with Seth.”
She’d loved it, too.
“It’s crazy, isn’t it?”
“No. He’s a skilled sailor. He and Chase got into difficulties once out in the bay, and it was Seth who got them out of it.”
“I wasn’t talking about the sailing. I mean, it’s crazy to do something a second time when it went badly wrong the first time.”
“Are you worried about him, or yourself?”
“Both of us.”
Even in the last twenty-four hours, things had changed.
The discovery that he’d tried to contact her and that no one had told her was another piece of the jigsaw that explained some of the events back then.
“Maybe I should have invited him to join me for lunch with Grams and her friends. That would have scared him off.”
Matilda transferred the baby to her other shoulder. “Seth doesn’t strike me as a man who scares easily. You, on the other hand—”
“What? What about me?”
Matilda hesitated. “You don’t sound as if you’re planning a date, that’s all. You sound as if you’re preparing to defend yourself from attack. You’re not exploring the possibilities of a relationship, you’re formulating a battle plan.”
A battle plan?
Fliss thought about it while she walked Hero on the beach in front of Matilda’s house, and was still thinking about it when she returned to her grandmother’s house.
Her grandmother was in the kitchen with four women Fliss knew vaguely from the summers she’d spent here as a child.
“Sorry to disturb you. I came to walk Charlie. Everything okay, Grams?”
“Everything is good, thank you. You remember Martha? She owns the bakery on Main Street, although her daughter is mostly running it now. And Dora, who you’ll remember from the doctor’s office, and Jane and Rita, who used to live down the road but moved to East Hampton. You all know my granddaughter.” She eyed Fliss, taking her cue from her, and Fliss gave a faint smile.
She’d given up on subterfuge.
“I’m Fliss,” she said. “Hello, ladies.” She murmured a generic greeting, hoping that Dora had forgotten the time she’d visited the clinic with poison oak, having brushed against the leaves on her way to meet Seth. “You seem to be having fun. Cookies from Cookies and Cream?”
“Of course. They’re the best. Apart from the ones your sister makes, of course. And we only do this twice a month, so we’re allowed a treat.”
“Twice a month? So this is a regular thing?”
“We meet once to play poker, and once for our book group. We prefer to meet at lunchtime because we all go to bed early.”
Fliss stared at the cards on the table. “Poker?”
“We are the Poker Princesses, didn’t you know?”
