Kara (Starkis Family #4)

by Cheryl Douglas

  “I didn’t have to tell her. She’s a smart woman. Once we started talking, she figured out the deal. I guess the pieces started to fall into place for her, why I wasn’t willing to set a wedding date and…” I shook my head. “None of that matters now. Point is, it’s over between us.”

  She covered my hand with hers, surprising me with the affectionate gesture. “I’m so sorry, Dustin. I can only imagine how you must feel.”

  “I had no right proposing to her. It wasn’t fair to her.”

  “Then why did you?”

  I withdrew my hand, not trusting myself to touch her when I felt so vulnerable. “I thought I was ready to move on to the next phase of my life. Apparently I was wrong.”

  Kara jumped at the sound of a car engine. “Oh, that must be Jake.”

  “Yeah, your brother said he was coming by.” I leaned forward, preparing to get up. “You think you guys will be getting back together? That’s why he’s here, isn’t it?”

  “I guess so.” She set her drink aside before reaching for her sunglasses. “I mean, I guess that’s why he’s here. But honestly, I don’t know what I’m going to do. I’m really confused. Now more than ever.”

  I wanted to ask what she meant, but we could hear the doorbell ring through the open back door.

  She got up and leaned over the deck railing to yell around the side of the house, “I’m back here, Jake!”

  I stood, wishing I could have had a few more moments alone with her to ask her not to make any rash decisions about Jake, like getting back together with him. In spite of the things I’d said to Darius, I knew Kara and I had a lot more to talk about. I selfishly wanted to know she would still be single when we had that next conversation.

  “Hey, sweetie,” he said, rushing through the gate and scooping her up in his arms.

  He planted a kiss on her lips, and it took everything in me not to knock him on his ass. I had never witnessed another man kissing Kara, and now that I had, I was certain I never wanted to see it again.

  “Uh, Jake,” she said, bracing her hands against his shoulders when he finally set her down, “there’s someone I’d like you to meet.”

  He finally noticed me standing there. He smiled and extended his hand, though I knew once he figured out who I was, he wouldn’t be nearly as friendly. “Hey there. Sorry about that. It’s just been a while since I’ve seen my girl.”

  “Funny,” I said, accepting his hand. “I heard she wasn’t your girl anymore.”

  “Jake,” Kara said, shooting me a warning look, “this is Dustin. He’s—”

  “The ex-fiancé,” Jake said, withdrawing his hand as his smile slipped.

  “You got it.” I grinned, knowing I was the last person he’d expected to find Kara with.

  Suddenly I saw that he was a lot more concerned about me than I was about him, which led me to believe Kara had said things to make him think I was a real threat to their relationship.

  “Well, I’ll leave you two alone.” I gestured toward to the vacant lot. “I have a lot of work to do. You see, I’m breaking ground on a new house next week. Right over there.”

  He turned to look at the lot. “Oh yeah? I heard you’re some hotshot architect. You’re building it for a client?”

  I smiled. “No, I’m building it for myself.” I glanced at Kara, making sure Jake saw the look we shared. I may have felt guilty if he were still her boyfriend, but since he wasn’t, I didn’t give a shit if I offended him. As far as I was concerned, he didn’t even belong there. “You can’t deny it’ll be amazing to see our dream home come to life after all these years, won’t it, Kara?” When she seemed too stunned to respond, I winked at her. “Don’t worry, you know I’ll do it justice.”

  Chapter Six

  Kara

  I was going to kill Dustin. All afternoon, he’d been playing the soundtrack of our lives, loud enough for all the neighbors to hear. There was the song we’d first danced to, the song we used to make love to, and the song the band was playing the night he proposed to me. It was obvious he was trying to send me a message: or torture me.

  “So what’s the deal with your ex?” Jake asked over a lunch of salad, fruit, and grilled chicken. “Is he always so obnoxious?”

  I smiled, trying to conceal my reaction to the mention of the man who kept infiltrating my thoughts. “Not always.”

  “I was surprised to find him here,” Jake said, trying too hard to sound nonchalant. “I thought you didn’t talk to him anymore.”

  “I haven’t seen him in years, but he and his fiancée were up here for the weekend, and he, uh, stopped by yesterday to say hello. My sister invited him to the party Darius had last night. She thought they might like to catch up. They were pretty close when we were growing up.”

  “Did he come to the party?” Jake asked, reaching for his beer.

  “Yes.”

  “Did he bring his fiancée?”

  I’d been hoping he wouldn’t ask about Jana. I didn’t want to tell him they’d broken up and I feared I may be the cause. Jake had come all this way to see me. The last thing I wanted was to give him the impression I was trying to reconcile with my ex. Reconciling with Dustin, after all the pain we’d caused each other, was unthinkable, but I was sure Jake wouldn’t see it that way.

  “No, she had a migraine.”

  “His fiancée had a migraine, and he came over here to party with you?” Jake sneered. “Sounds like a stand-up guy.”

  I wanted to defend Dustin’s actions, but if I did, that would only invite more questions. I wanted to change the subject, to talk about anything other than my ex. “I think she told him to come. I guess she just wanted to sleep it off.”

  He glanced over his shoulder. From what I could tell, Dustin had been drinking for the better part of the afternoon, which explained why his music got progressively louder with each passing hour.

  “Where is his fiancée? I thought you said she was here with him.”

  “She was, but she had to go home.” Technically, that was true. I just didn’t feel the need to tell him she probably had to go home because she couldn’t stand the sight of Dustin anymore.

  “Why didn’t he go with her?”

  I sighed, coming to terms with the fact that Jake wasn’t going to let this go until I told him the whole story. Maybe it was for the best. The more time I spent in Jake’s company, the more obvious it was to me I’d made the right decision breaking up with him. He was a good guy, but he clearly wasn’t the right man for me. “They broke up.”

  “They broke up,” he said slowly, as though he was processing what that meant. “He ended it, or she did?”

  “I think she did. Why is that important?” As far as I was concerned, it was none of our business. Jake didn’t even know Dustin, so his interest in the man’s love life was baffling.

  “I’m just wondering whether he dumped her because he’s hoping to get back with you.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous. I told you, he still resents me for calling off our wedding.”

  He pushed his chair back, regarding me carefully. “Didn’t look that way to me.”

  “What are you talking about?” I reached for his near-empty plate and stacked it on top of mine. I needed some excuse to sneak inside for a few minutes to collect myself.

  “It seemed to me he was over here ‘cause he thought you two had some unfinished business.”

  I tried to laugh, but the sound came out as a strangled croak instead. “You’re imagining things. Can we please talk about something other than Dustin? I know you didn’t come all this way to—”

  “I came all this way to get answers about why you don’t want to be with me anymore, and since I have a feeling that man may be at the heart of the problem, I do want to talk about him.”

  I reached for my drink. I’d had more to drink this weekend than I’d had in years, which spoke volumes about the effect Dustin’s presence had on me. “Fine, what do you want to know?”

  “I want to know whether you s
till have feelings for him.”

  I eased back in my chair, swirling the ice cubes in my glass. I’d told Jake the basics about my relationship with Dustin, but I’d never told him the depth of my feelings for the man. If that was what he wanted to hear, I’d oblige him. “Dustin was the center of my world from the time I was fifteen years old. He was my first kiss, my first love, my first boyfriend, the man I lost my virginity to, and the man I built my world around for six years.”

  “I get that,” he said, rubbing a hand over his face. “I felt the same way about my wife.”

  “And if I were to ask you whether you still have feelings for her, what would you say?”

  “Of course I do. She’s the mother of my child.”

  “Right. Well, Dustin and I may not have that connection, but…” I didn’t want to hurt Jake, but I owed it to him to be honest. This conversation, Jake’s presence in a place I now realized I could never share with him, just reinforced the fact I needed to let him go find someone without my kind of baggage. “I’ve never felt about anyone the way I have about him. I’m sorry if that—”

  “I appreciate your honesty,” he said, raising his hand to cut me off. “I wanted to build a life with you, Kara. I really believed we could have had a great thing, but I never wanted to live in some other man’s shadow. I never wanted to look at you and question whether you were thinking about him. Now that I’ve met him and seen the two of you together, it’s pretty clear to me that always would have been the case.”

  “I’m sorry.” I felt terrible that he’d come all this way to spend time with me and was leaving hurt and disappointed. “I do think you’re a great guy, and I know this is probably the last thing you want to hear right now, but I hope we can still be friends.”

  A half smile tipped his lips before he reached across the table. “Believe it or not, I’d like that. Walk me to my car?”

  “Sure.” As I walked with Jake, I shot daggers at Dustin, whose eyes shamelessly tracked our every move. I gave Jake a hug when we reached his car. “I’m sorry you came all this way.”

  “I’m not.” He kissed my cheek. “It was well worth it.”

  I supposed that meant he’d been able to put any hopes of reconciling with me to rest once and for all. That should have made me sad, but I just felt relieved that I could finally close the book on this relationship.

  I watched him get in the car and drive away, waving to me out of his open window. That may have gone down as the most civilized exchange I’d ever had with one of my exes. I knew I would never have the same mature sense of closure with Dustin. He was too much of a hothead, too passionate and intense and…

  Just thinking about him made me want to throttle him for trying to ruin my day with Jake.

  I marched down the stone pathway and kicked my sandals off before I hit the sand. I crossed the distance to his place and gestured toward the Bose speaker mounted beneath the extended awning. “What the hell were you trying to prove with that?”

  “What?” he asked, grinning. “You didn’t like my choice of music?”

  “I’m going to kill you!”

  “Oh, death threats. Should I be scared?” He leaned forward in his chair so he could see our empty driveway. “What happened to your boyfriend?”

  “He’s not my boyfriend. Not that it’s any of your business, but he left.”

  “How come?”

  “Because of you, if you must know.” I knew I was playing right into his hands, getting angry with him and showing him how much his actions still affected me. I should have played it cool, pretended his attempts to get under my skin were futile, but I’d never been a very good actress. According to my sister, I wore my heart on my sleeve.

  “Is that so?” He tossed his ball cap aside and ran his hands through his damp hair. “I hope you don’t expect me to apologize for running him off ‘cause we both know he didn’t belong here.”

  Just when I thought he couldn’t possibly say or do anything to aggravate me more, he did. “Who the hell are you to decide who does and doesn’t belong here?”

  “He didn’t belong here any more than Jana did. I can admit that. Why can’t you?” For a man who appeared to have been drinking all afternoon, he seemed surprisingly coherent.

  “You’re not making any sense.” Though I knew exactly what he meant, I wanted to hear him say it.

  “This is our place,” he said, rolling his broad shoulders. “Whether we like it or not, it always will be.” He stared at the water. “I used to come here alone sometimes, after the breakup, and it was like your ghost was haunting me.”

  “That’s morbid.” But I understood. I would have felt the same way had I been courageous enough to come here alone and face the memories.

  “I came to try to put it all to rest, but I couldn’t. I thought if I brought Jana here, maybe it would be easier, but it just reinforced the fact I can’t be here with anyone else.” He looked at me. “There are too many memories of us here.”

  “But you’re building a house here,” I said, looking at the vacant lot that would soon serve as a tribute to the dream we’d once shared. “You’re going to want to share that with your wife and kids someday.”

  “That was the plan, but after this weekend, I’m thinking maybe I should just build the damn thing and sell it.”

  My heart lurched at the thought of some stranger living in our house. It was bad enough thinking of Dustin living there with someone else, but just selling it like it meant nothing was unthinkable. “Sell it to me.”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “Are you crazy?” he demanded, reaching for his beer bottle. “You really think I could come up here and watch your kids building sand castles on that stretch of beach someday?”

  The pain in his voice was evident, making it difficult for me not to comfort him. I sat on the edge of the lounger next to his waiting for him to continue while I struggled to keep my hands to myself.

  “Watching you walk hand-in-hand with your husband along the shoreline, crossing over the area where we would have taken our wedding vows...”

  My eyes drifted to the area he spoke of. I imagined the white arbor adorned with fresh flowers while white chairs lined the runner leading to the priest.

  “You’re thinking about it, aren’t you?” His knee touched mine as he leaned forward. “You’re imagining what it would have looked like on our wedding day.”

  “This isn’t healthy,” I said, tearing my eyes away from the beach. “We have to stop doing this.”

  “Doing what?”

  “Living in the past. It’s not good for either of us. We have to let go so we can both move on with our lives.”

  “If you’ve figured out how to do that, would you mind sharing? ‘Cause I don’t know how the hell to let go.”

  I didn’t know how to let go either, only that we had to. I wasn’t even sure this man still liked me. I knew he didn’t trust me, and I questioned whether he respected me. It shouldn’t have been this hard to forget him, but I’d learned a long time ago feelings and memories were a hell of a lot harder to bury than bodies.

  ***

  Dustin

  I was glad we were finally alone, no distractions, just the two of us. I’d imagined this for a long time, getting her alone to demand answers only she could provide, but now that I had her here, the past didn’t seem to matter as much as the present. I was in the place I loved with the girl I’d once loved, and I suddenly wanted to make the most of it.

  “I hear you’re an expert angler now,” I said, smiling.

  She returned my smile, and for the first time all weekend, I felt the stirring of that old connection, the one born of mutual respect and appreciation.

  “I wouldn’t go that far,” she said, laughing. “But I can hold my own.”

  “Show me.”

  More than anything, I wanted to take her out on the open water, the place I loved most, and feel the wind whipping through my hair, the sun on my skin, and the woma
n of my dreams by my side. I knew there was no going back for us, but for a few hours, I could pretend that our life hadn’t been derailed, that we were living the life we should have had.

  “How much have you had to drink?” she asked, eyeing the half-empty beer beside me.

  “Just a couple.” I grinned and gripped her knee when she raised an eyebrow. “Besides, you always said you preferred driving a boat to a car. If you don’t trust me to drive, you can do the honors. We’ll just do a little trolling, enjoy the day.”

  “You and me alone on the open water?” She gripped the edge of her chair as she bit her lip. “How do I know you won’t try to throw me overboard?”

  I threw my head back, laughing. I’d forgotten how much I loved her quirky sense of humor. “I seem to recall you were a pretty good swimmer.”

  “Oh, shut up,” she said, slapping my leg.

  “Come on, what else are you going to do? It’s a holiday weekend, so you don’t have to leave until tomorrow, right?”

  “True.” She glanced over her shoulder at her deck. “But I was going to catch a few rays and finish reading this book that—”

  I yawned dramatically. “Boring.” When she frowned at me, I said, “Come on, I’ll pack a cooler. After we get tired of fishing, we can drop anchor somewhere and go for a dip. What do you say?”

  “Okay,” she said, standing. “Just let me clean up the mess I left behind. Can I bring anything?”

  “Just your…” Sexy self. I knew I couldn’t say that, no matter how much I wanted to. “Hat and sunglasses. I’ve got plenty of sunscreen on board.”

  “Cool, I’ll be right back then.”

  I watched her run back to her place as a slow smile spread across my face. I never imagined I would be sharing moments like this with her again. But now that we were, it felt right. I was taking a huge risk by letting my guard down with her, but it seemed I had no control over it. With every smile, every innocent touch, she tore down another brick. Before I knew it, I feared there’d be no barrier left between us and nothing to protect my heart.