by Sarah Morgan
“If you’re walking Darcy, you’ll probably need to check him for listening devices.”
She grinned. “You think she’ll bug the dog in order to eavesdrop on my love life? That’s an interesting idea.”
“Never underestimate how far the locals will go to find out what they want to know. Are you saying Dora didn’t grill you?”
“Until I was charred. Cooked right through. They wanted to know everything about you.”
Knowing her as he did, he doubted they’d extracted much information from her. “So what did you tell them?”
“I told them there’s nothing happening between us. Because there isn’t.” Her gaze flickered to his and then away again. “They think you’re hot, by the way.”
Seth almost fell over the side of the boat. “Excuse me?”
“According to them you’re the most eligible man in the Hamptons, and that’s saying something.” She eyed him. “Martha thinks you have great shoulders. Dora likes your arms. For Rita it’s your eyelashes.”
“My eyelashes?”
“Don’t look to me for an explanation. I don’t get what they see in you. Personally, I don’t find you attractive at all.” She secured a strand of hair behind her ear. “Never did.”
He loved her sense of humor. The fact that it was reemerging now told him she was relaxing with him. “Right. So all that sex we had—”
“I don’t remember ever having sex with you. You must be thinking of someone else.”
“Maybe. She was a cute blonde who used to climb out of the kitchen window because the back door creaked.”
“Yeah? She sounds like trouble. You should have stayed away from her.”
“We weren’t good at staying away from each other.” And then later, when it had all gone wrong, he’d stayed away when he should have gotten closer.
They’d done it all wrong, he realized.
He stood up, cleared up the remains of the picnic and she helped.
“I blame hormones.”
“Hormones?” He stowed the rest of the food in the cooler. “You’re telling me you would have done those things with anybody?”
“Yeah, pretty much. We bad girls don’t much mind who we’re bad with.”
“So I was just in the right place at the right time.”
“That and teenage experimentation. I was a bad influence on you.”
He decided this wasn’t the time to dispute that. Instead he stooped and moved the rope before she could trip over it. “We should make a move before it gets late.”
“If I go home now they’ll still be there and I’ll have to face the inquisition. I’m not sure I have the strength for it.”
He raised the anchor. “After what you told me, I’m not sure I’m ever going to be able to look them in the eye again either.”
“They won’t notice. They’re not looking at your eyes. Apart from Rita, who is obsessed with your eyelashes.”
“Stop. You’re starting to make me nervous.” He tried to focus on sailing the boat back to the marina.
“Now you know how I felt.” She pushed her hat down onto her head. “And they’re reading one of Matilda’s books for their book group.”
“That’s nice. Supportive.”
“Have you read Matilda’s books?”
“I can’t say I have.” He headed back across the bay, the waves slapping gently at the sides of the boat. It was a perfect evening, and there were plenty of other boats on the water. “I go more for thriller and crime than romance.”
“They’re pretty hot.”
“Seems like you learned something new about your grandmother today.”
“I learned a couple of things, and one of them was that I don’t know my grandmother as well as I thought I did.”
“Which surprised you the most? The fact that they read Matilda’s books or the fact that they play poker for money?”
She was silent for a moment. “The biggest surprise was that she’s proud of me.” She leaned on the rail of the boat and stared across the water. “Never knew that before.”
He glanced at her, but all he could see was her profile. “You didn’t know your grandmother was proud of you?”
“No. It never occurred to me for a moment that she was proud of me. Why would it?”
It seemed a strange question to him. “She’s your grandmother. It goes with the territory.” And then he saw her expression and was reminded that her territory had looked nothing like his. And that had been part of the problem. Handling Fliss had been like landing in a different country without a map or a phrase book. “I’m sorry. Give me a minute while I pull my foot out of my mouth.”
“Don’t. Don’t ever tiptoe around me. I don’t want that. The truth is I didn’t give her a reason to be proud.”
Her comment made his heart tighten in his chest.
Did she really believe that? “I’m sure you gave her plenty of reasons.”
“No. I was always the one causing trouble.”
He wondered how much to say. How far to push it. “And you did that to take the attention from your sister.”
She turned her head and met his gaze. “Excuse me?”
“You kept your father’s attention on you so that he didn’t start on Harriet.”
“Daniel told you that?”
“He might have mentioned it, but it wasn’t hard to work it out. You always stepped in front of Harriet. Physically, when necessary, but I guess with your father you had a different tactic in mind. You were the equivalent of a flare, tempting the heat-seeking missile off course.” He waited for her to deny it. To shut him down and close him out as she always did.
Instead she gave a soft laugh. “You’re right. That’s what I did. And it worked.”
“Now we’ve finally got that straight, could we also reach the point where you stop calling yourself the bad twin? I hate it. It isn’t who you are. And it certainly isn’t the way I see you.”
“Those were his words, not mine.”
Seth kept his hands tight on the wheel and his eyes fixed on the horizon. “He didn’t know what he was talking about.”
“He knew. He knew how to wound. And once he’d wounded he knew how to make that wound hurt like the devil. I grew up accepting that I couldn’t please him, and somewhere along the way I stopped trying. As long as he left Harriet alone, that was fine by me.”
“And you wonder why your grandmother is proud of you? What exactly did she say? She told you straight out?”
“No. It was her friends, really. They started to tease her. They repeated her words. Chorused it. As if they’d heard her say the same thing time and time again. I thought they meant Harriet. Whenever there was praise floating around, it was usually for Harriet. And that didn’t bother me,” she added quickly, “because she deserved it.”
“So did you, for a million reasons and certainly for stepping in front of her all the time.”
“I didn’t do that for praise. I did it because I loved my sister and hated to see her suffer. She had a terrible stammer as a child. The more he yelled, the worse her stammer, and the more she stammered, the more her confidence dropped. It was a vicious cycle.” It was obvious that thinking back to that time distressed her.
“And now?”
“She hasn’t stammered for a couple of years.” There was warmth in her voice. “We have a great circle of friends, a cool apartment even though it’s on the small side, and she loves her work.”
“And she has that work because of you.” And the apartment, he suspected. “You’re the driving force.”
“We make a good team. And Harriet is tougher than she looks. And maybe she wouldn’t have set it up if she’d been on her own, but she’s as essential to the business as I am. She’s so happy working with the animals. The clients, both human and canine, all love her.”
He wondered if she even realized the extent to which she put her sister first. At the first sign of threat or danger, she stepped in front of her. It seemed to him that it was s
omething she did instinctively, without thinking or maybe even noticing.
“Do you ever wonder what your relationship with your father might have been like if you hadn’t always protected Harriet?”
“It would have been exactly the same.” She paused. “I came to the conclusion that it wasn’t us, it was him. Something in him made him angry. I didn’t expect him to be proud of me. I’ve never expected that from anyone, so tonight when Grams said that—I felt as if someone had stuffed a tennis ball in my throat. Couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t swallow.” She frowned. “Since I’ve been here I’m starting to realize there’s so much about my grandmother that I don’t know. There are things I’d love to ask her.”
He leaned against the rail of the boat, watching the dying rays of the sun flicker across her hair and face. “Like what?”
“I’d like to ask her about my mother. I want to try to understand why she tried so hard at a marriage that wasn’t working. I want to understand why my father, who didn’t love her at all, wouldn’t let her go. He used us to blackmail her into staying, but why did he even want that? Why not just cut loose so they could both rebuild their lives? He could have met someone else. So could she.”
“You never talked to your mother about it?”
“Harriet tried a couple of times. She wouldn’t talk about it. She said she wanted to think about the future, not the past. And she’s probably right. It’s best to focus on the present.” She threw him a smile. “And talking of the present, how do I handle the inquisition when I get home?”
“Maybe they won’t be too interested in the details.”
“Are you kidding? They wanted to know how you kissed.”
He didn’t know whether to be amused or appalled. “What did you tell them?”
“I told them I couldn’t remember.”
He reached out and yanked her toward him, catching her off balance. She landed against his chest with a thud and a gasp, and for a moment he could smell the fragrance of her hair and skin. His last coherent thought was that if his plan had been to keep his distance, this was the stupidest move of his life. Then he was kissing her, or maybe she was kissing him. It was a blur of hands, lips and need, hers and his, equally matched as it always had been. Everything about it was urgent. A rush of hunger, a burn of desire, and through it all there was the delicious thrill of kissing her again. Only with her had he ever felt this. Everything was exaggerated and more intense. He felt the light curve of her breast and the pounding of her heart beneath his hand. It wasn’t enough. He wanted more, and he tugged at her shirt and felt her hands tugging at his. She was all sleek lines and smooth curves, her skin smooth and warm. He tasted sweetness and desperation on her lips, and felt desire rip through him like flames through a dry forest until all he wanted to do was strip her naked and take her right here and damn the consequences.
But they’d damned the consequences the last time, and he’d spent a decade regretting it. If he carried on, they’d be back where they started, doing what they’d done before. And what they’d had before wasn’t enough for him. This time, he cared about the consequences.
Seth dragged his mouth from hers, yanked her top back down and thrust her away from him, turning his attention back to the boat.
It took him a moment to find his balance. To remember how the hell to sail a boat.
She was obviously the same because she caught the wheel to steady herself and then looked at him, her eyes dazed, strands of hair over her eyes. “What are you doing? Why the hell did you just do that?”
It was a good question.
It took all his effort to produce an answer that wasn’t going to scare her senseless. “I thought I’d remind you how I kiss so that next time they ask you, you’ll be able to answer.”
Yeah, right.
“I didn’t need you to do that! It wasn’t fair of you to do that.” She touched her fingers to her mouth, as if she could still feel his kiss.
He could feel it, too. He felt it on his lips, in his bones and in his heart.
“Maybe I don’t always play fair.” He held her gaze for a moment and then turned his attention back to the harbor in the distance. “Maybe I’m not the good boy you always thought I was.”
“What are you saying? That you want to have another wild affair? Another hot, sizzling summer in the Hamptons, is that it? Live in the present.”
He adjusted the heading of the boat. “No. That’s not what I want.” This time he wanted more than the present. He wanted a future. “Sex changes everything. It’s what we did last time. I don’t want this to be like last time.”
“This? There isn’t a ‘this,’ Seth. There is no ‘this.’”
“No?” Keeping one hand on the wheel, he used the other to tug her close. He held her there for a moment, eye to eye, mouth to mouth. “Let’s be clear about one thing. I didn’t stop because I was afraid of being hurt again. I stopped because this time around I don’t want sex to be the focus.” He released her quickly and turned his attention back to the boat, careful to stay within the deep-water channel passing west of Cedar Point.
Sag Harbor was crowded, and he needed all his concentration to navigate back to the yacht club.
He wished he hadn’t started a conversation he couldn’t finish.
His timing, as always, was less than perfect.
Or maybe with Fliss there was never going to be a perfect time. And maybe if he waited for that moment, he might miss it altogether and lose.
He’d lost her once. He had no intention of losing her again.
Mindful of wind and tide, he sailed into the yacht club, rigged the lines and fenders for docking and backed into a slip.
Fliss still hadn’t spoken a word.
Lulu, tail wagging, sprang onto the pontoon and waited expectantly.
Still Fliss didn’t move.
“What did you mean—” her voice sounded croaky, as if she was recovering from the flu “—you don’t want sex to be the focus?”
“I still have feelings for you, Fliss. I want to find out what those feelings are.” He hadn’t intended to say it. The yacht club was busy, and not only were they in public but it was too soon, much too soon, to say what he wanted to say. But now the words were out and there was no taking them back.
She opened her mouth and closed it again, so he figured he might as well keep talking.
“The sex was always the good part, but it clouded everything else. It stopped us being close.”
“We were—”
“I don’t mean close in that way. I mean close in other ways. The ways that glue a couple together and hold them there when something tries to pull them apart. An important part of that is talking. Confiding. You never did much of that. On a good day you gave me access to maybe ten percent of what was going on in your head. This time around I’d like the ninety, and you can hang on to the ten.”
He saw her throat move as she swallowed.
“This is crazy. Us getting involved again after everything that happened? Crazy.”
And not being involved was driving him crazy.
“Why is it crazy?”
“Because—” She shook her head. “It’s too late, Seth.”
“Too late for what we had then, but I don’t want what we had then.”
There was a flare of panic in her eyes. “What do you want?”
More. Everything. All of it. “I want to spend time with you, and this time we’re keeping our clothes on.”
“I’m not the person I was ten years ago.”
“Neither am I. I’m older and wiser, for a start.”
She ran her tongue over her lips. “You don’t know me, Seth.”
“I’ve learned more about you in the past week than I found out during all those long hot summers.”
“Half the time I was with you I was pretending to be Harriet.”
“And that told me something. It told me you still hide when you’re scared.” He paused. “And it told me I’m not the only one who still has fe
elings. You have them, too.”
“Of course I have feelings! I’m annoyed, confused—”
“For me. You have feelings for me.” That silenced her. “If you didn’t you wouldn’t have gone to such lengths to hide.”
” “I felt guilty. I wasn’t even sure you’d want to see me. In a way I was protecting you.”
“And you were also protecting yourself.”
She snatched in a breath. “And why wouldn’t I? We hurt each other, Seth. And maybe some of that was misunderstanding, bad timing—I don’t know—but it was bad.”
In that single moment he caught a glimpse of just how bad.
“So we know not to do that again next time.”
“There is no next time. No present and no future. Only the past.” She snatched up her things, almost tripping over her feet in her haste to get off the boat.
“Fliss—”
“I’m not doing this again. I can’t.”
She all but fled, her sneakers pounding the wooden boards.
Look back, he thought as he watched her run. Look back.
But she didn’t. She kept running, knocking into people in her haste to get away from him.
Lulu looked at him and barked.
“I know. She’s gone, which means I don’t get to ask my next question, which involved sharing a bottle of champagne on the beach and watching the sun go down. The whole thing didn’t go quite as I planned it.”
He hadn’t meant to kiss her, at least not then.
She’d probably go back to hiding behind corners when she saw him coming. Maybe she’d even go back to Manhattan.
With a sigh, he sprang off the boat.
Lulu licked his hand. Sympathetic.
He glanced up one more time and saw Fliss pause at the entrance of the harbor. And then she looked back, a single glance over her shoulder.
His gaze met hers and held.
She stood for a moment, and then turned again with a flip of her gold hair and vanished.
“Or maybe I didn’t mess it up,” Seth murmured.
Maybe this was just the first, necessary step.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
HE’D KISSED HER. Why had he kissed her?
