At least the tiles were still cool beneath my feet, the grass they gave way to soft and smelling freshly cut. With the pool in reach, I let myself fall into the cool water without stopping to grab a towel or shorts.
Dave was still fully dressed from the waist down, but he didn’t seem to have any inclination to wait either. He dropped in beside me without any hesitation.
The water was cool and refreshing, washing away some of the grossness that no doubt clung to us like a bad fucking rash. When I felt up to it, I did some laps while Dave hung with his arms on the ledge and his eyes turned toward the ocean.
He kept dipping his head below the water, coming up only to do it again. I understood where he was coming from. The water was nice, but the sun was fucking brutal to us in this state.
“I’m done,” he announced about twenty minutes later. He climbed out, stripping down to his boxers and leaving his socks, shoes, and slacks right there in a pile next to the pool.
After shaking the water out of his hair like a dog, he hooked a thumb at the house. “I’ll grab towels.”
He came back a minute later, and I got out of the pool too. We dried off and went to the kitchen where, after drinking a shit ton of water, I flipped on the coffee machine on the counter.
“Feeling better yet?” I asked.
He shrugged. “Better seems like a stretch, but at least I’m not feeling like you’ll have to be writing my eulogy soon anymore.”
“I’ll take it.” I turned to grab mugs and the strongest fucking roast I had, popped the pods into the machine, and waited until the kitchen was filled with the smell of fresh, bitter coffee before filling the mugs.
Dave’s eyes were bloodshot as fuck. He heaved himself onto a barstool at the counter, resting his head on his arms as his eyes tracked me to the fridge. “Don’t tell me you actually plan on eating right now.”
“I’m considering either an entire head of lettuce or frying up everything fry-able in this house.” I opened the door to the sound of his protests.
“All I’m saying is, there’s no way I’m eating right now,” he said. “Unless you’ve got those mini hash browns. Maybe an avocado. Any chance you have hotdogs?”
“Yes to all of the above. I’m also adding fruit, five packs of bacon, and some smoked salmon.”
When I turned with all the ingredients I could hold at one time in my hands, he was pale. “Smoked salmon? No. No way. If you open that right now, you can go back to thinking about a proper sendoff for me.”
I dropped the salmon on the counter, grinning like the asshole I was. “I’ll wait until you’ve dished up whatever you want, but I’m eating this. I need some healthy fats.”
“First the laps, now the fruit and the healthy fats. You might not be from here, bro, but you’ve sure as fuck made yourself into one of them.”
The swim had made laughing hurt less, and I did it as I tossed the salmon right at his face. “Say what you want about me, but you’re the hipster who requested a fucking avocado.”
“Avocados were around long before hipsters, asshole. They’re really good and really good for us.” He shot me a glare and spun the salmon back my way across the counter before he fixed his eyes to mine. I knew from the expression in them what he was about to ask before he asked it.
“We haven’t spoken about it yet, but I’m going to have to leave after we eat, so it’s time we got to it. You can tell me to fuck off if you want, but I’d be a shitty friend if I didn’t even ask. Angelina. What are you going to do?”
To his credit, he didn’t say I told you so, even though he had. “Have you heard from her?”
“I don’t know,” I replied honestly. The guy had stuck by my side through thick and thin. I wasn’t about to start lying or pretending to be cool about everything now. “I probably have hundreds of missed calls on my phone, but I can’t quite bring myself to face them. The thing is still charging in my room.”
I wondered how many of those missed calls would be from her. What would she even have to say for herself?
“When does she get back?”
I rolled my shoulders and let my head fall back. “They should still be filming promo shit for the movie today. She was supposed to get back in a couple of days, but now I’m not so sure.”
“Are you going to hear her out?”
I sighed, running my hands through my wet hair to push it out of my face. “I’m not sure. I have no idea what I’m going to do, but hopefully, I won’t have to figure it out today.”
If Angelina forced me to, she might not like the answer. I needed time to wrap my head around this clusterfuck, and then I needed to work out a way forward. Maybe talking to Dave about it wasn’t a bad idea after all.
Chapter 4
ANNA
“Mackinac Island is known as the all-natural theme park of America,” I told the group of tourists who’d come to the Tourism Center after a stroll around the docks.
Getting to speak to the travelers who came to the island from all over was my favorite part of the job. I never got tired of telling them all about our history and how the island came to be. “It’s even considered a National Historic Landmark.”
“Why aren’t there any cars?” one of the women asked. She had a camera around her neck and had been standing the closest to me since they’d come in. “Don’t you miss them?”
I chuckled, shaking my head. “We’ve pretty much escaped the changes of time. I guess you can’t miss something you’ve never had. We do just fine with our horses and buggies, bicycles, or just on our feet.”
“But why?” a teenage boy pressed. “Cars make things so much easier. We had to get five horses to get all our stuff to the hotel.”
“We have a firetruck and police vehicles for safety, but the residents banded together in the eighteen hundreds when people first attempted to bring vehicles here. We like to preserve our rich history, and horses and bicycles are a big part of that. Our infrastructure was built around the width of a carriage not a car. When the time came, we didn’t see any reason to change that.”
“I think it’s really cool,” a little girl said. “Everyone is so friendly here and the fudge is awesome.”
“That’s actually one of my favorite facts about the island,” I said. “Our fudge is world famous. We even refer to tourists as ‘fudgies’ as a term of endearment because almost everyone ends up buying their weight of the stuff here.”
“Is it true that the cars spooked the horses and the people didn’t want them here after that?” the same girl asked.
I nodded, giving her a genuine smile. “It was a safety issue as well as a lifestyle one.”
A man near the back stuck his hand in the air and spoke without waiting to be called on. “Do you really close in winter? How do you people survive?”
“We don’t close totally, although many of the restaurants and shops do. Christmas is actually a magical time of year here. There just aren’t any ferries in, so you have to come by air taxi. You haven’t lived until you’ve seen our ice bridge. It’s spectacular.”
I told them a little more about the ice bridge, how the Victorian era was responsible for turning Mackinac into a premier summer resort that brought in enough money to sustain most of us for the year, and then recommended some more sightseeing activities for them.
As they were leaving, Jessie came in carrying smoothies. My best friend was a gorgeous woman with such a vibrant personality that she instantly warmed any room she walked into.
Her dark brown hair was half pinned back as always, her green eyes were bright, and her bubbly laughter floated over to me when she overheard what some of the tourists were saying. She was wearing dark-wash jeans and a white button-down shirt with light blue stripes, and her fair skin practically sparkled in the midday sun.
There was no doubt about it. When God himself had been dishing out looks, he’d smiled on the Kent family as a whole. I was ninety percent sure that both Jessie and William had stood in the “gorgeous” queue in heaven
at least twice before they were sent to earth.
If I didn’t love her, I’d have been supremely jealous of her. As things were though, she was my friendship soulmate. Once upon a time, I’d believed her brother was my romantic soulmate, but alas, puppy love wasn’t meant to last. If it was, people would just have called it big-dog love and there wouldn’t have been a whole thing about how sweet it was.
“What are you doing here?” I asked as I went over to scoop her into a hug. “I didn’t know you were coming by today.”
She waggled her dark brows, eyes darting one way and then the other as if she were a bodyguard or a spy. Her voice was hushed when she spoke, faux seriousness masking the light in her eyes.
“Before I tell you, I need to know if you-know-who is here?”
I laughed. “You can say her name, Jess. Mildred is out for the afternoon. She claimed she had errands to run, but I think she might be having a secret meeting with her coven.”
“Sounds more like her than errands.” She grinned and held up one of the smoothies. “I really did have errands to run, though. Thought I’d pop in to catch up with you while I was in town.”
As I took the smoothie, I popped the lid off and inhaled deeply. “Peanut butter and banana? Have I told you lately that I love you?”
“Have I told you lately that you’re weird?” She winked and moved farther into the Tourism Center, walking right around the counter to sit down in Mildred’s sacred chair. “So, what’s been going on with you? I feel like we’ve hardly seen each other since the season started.”
I joined her behind the counter to catch up, leaning with my hip against the wood as I sipped on the deliciousness that was my smoothie. “That’s because we haven’t. You have wedding planning coming out of your ears and I’ve just been here, trying to get people to fall in love with our home town so they’d come back and get married at your place.”
She made a gagging noise. “Please stop. I don’t know how many more weddings I can do. Unless…”
Bending her arm to jut her elbow out, she nudged my leg. “Have you decided to take me up on my offer? Will I no longer be planning all those weddings by myself?”
“I’m not going to stop. It’s good for your business, and you know I’ll help you in any way I can, but no, I’m not taking you up on your offer.”
She sighed but didn’t seem surprised. “Whenever you’re ready, you know it will always stand. I also feel like I need to reiterate that it’s not a handout. You’d be working your cute little butt off and you certainly have the right experience. I’m not just offering because you’re my friend.”
I reached out to squeeze her shoulder, smiling as I looked into her eyes. “I’m not trying to be stubborn. I just really don’t think it’s a good idea. You know what they say about mixing business with friendship.”
“You’ll come around,” she said confidently. “Whoever said that doesn’t know our friendship. I know this is at least a little about your dad, but he’ll come around too. You’ll see.”
I changed the subject then. Jessie and I both knew the other’s position on the matter, and neither of us would give it up anytime soon.
“What’s new with you?” I asked.
She scrunched up her nose and shifted in her seat to pull her phone out of her pocket before handing it over. “It’s not really news about me. It’s about William. I never understood why he chose that girl. I had a bad feeling about her, and it turns out my gut was right.”
My heart constricted when I found myself staring at a picture of William, his face covered by his hand as he dodged reporters outside of some nightclub in LA late last night. A quick scroll through the accompanying article told me it’d been just after he’d found out that his fiancée of three months, Angelina Cross, was cheating on him.
Sadness rolled over me like a gentle wave. Even though William had become a man I no longer recognized, I would never wish anything bad for him.
When we’d been together, his eyes had always been bright. He’d worn primary colors and loved to laugh. These days, he was always brooding. He only ever seemed to wear black and looked more like a rock star on any given day than the small-town guy I’d known.
“Have you spoken to him?” I asked, placing her phone down on the counter in front of her. Touching it when it had something so terrible on it felt wrong.
She shook her head. “I’ve tried calling him a few times, but his phone is off. I’m willing to bet he’s passed out drunk somewhere.”
I let out a sigh. Poor William.
From the outside looking in, it always looked like he had it all together but now he was going to have to start all over again. I’d heard the rumors about how much of a ladies’ man he’d become—and that was putting the things I’d heard nicely.
While I didn’t doubt that he’d changed, I refused to believe his heart had. And his heart had always been good. I knew this would’ve been a devastating blow to him.
Maybe I should reach out to tell him I’m sorry. I considered it for about half a second before tossing the idea in the mental trash can.
William and I hadn’t spoken a word to each other in over six years, when we’d bumped into each other in town. He’d been visiting Jessie over the holidays and we’d only spoken for about a minute before going our separate ways. That was the only contact we’d had since he left town several years ago.
Besides, he wouldn’t want to hear from me anyway.
Chapter 5
WILLIAM
A long exhale came out of me as I laid my head back on the sofa. I scrubbed my hands over my face, unable to believe how quickly things had gone to shit. A little over twenty-four hours ago, I’d gotten home after work and grabbed a quick shower before heading out to meet Dave. I’d been whistling under my breath the whole damn time, feeling like I had the world at my feet.
I didn’t feel that way anymore. I wasn’t quite sure what I was feeling, but it was nothing good.
Dave had offered to cancel the meetings he had late this afternoon and stay with me, but I’d told him to go. It’d been a move I regretted making now.
I was home alone on a Saturday night wondering what the hell I should do with myself. The television was on and every channel I flicked to was talking about my engagement to the “beautiful actress, Angelina Cross.”
Reporters speculated about why she might’ve cheated—like there’d ever be an acceptable reason for something like that. Annoyance and anger simmered in my stomach, but I didn’t switch the TV off.
One way or another, I was going to find out what they were saying about us. It was better to do it while I was here alone than to be caught off guard again.
A perky blonde woman I’d never met nodded sagely onscreen, as if she was privy to details of our lives others weren’t. “You’re right, James. We have to wonder if her relationship with producer William Kent wasn’t as picture perfect as it seemed. It’s possible they’ve been having issues for a long time.”
James widened his eyes and looked right into the camera. “The question on everyone’s minds is whether the engagement is going to proceed. There hasn’t been any official word from either camp, and we’re all waiting with bated breath to find out if Hollywood has claimed the happiness of yet another one of its power couples.”
I snorted, shaking my head at their shit before a noise from the front door made me freeze. Flicking off the TV, I cocked my head like an idiot who thought it would make him hear better. Another noise reached my ears, sounding suspiciously like the door closing.
The only problem with that was that I wasn’t expecting anyone. There were only three people who had access to this house. One was me, the housekeeper was another, and then there was Angelina.
Just as I’d finished doing the math, her voice sang out from the direction of the door. “Honey, I’m home!”
It took a nanosecond for shock to set in. What the fuck is she doing here?
I shot to my feet as she rounded the corner into the op
en space at the front of the house. She was carrying plenty of bags and had obviously come straight from New York after a full day of shooting. I was pretty sure the jacket she was wearing was actually a part of the wardrobe set.
Normally, I’d have been thrilled she was home early. Even more so to know she hadn’t even bothered to change before coming back to me.
All I felt now was ice spreading through my veins. I crossed my arms over my chest and narrowed my eyes at her. “Why are you here?”
Those cerulean blue eyes I’d been so captivated by since the moment I’d met her filled with tears, and she dropped the bags before coming up to me. When she reached for me, I took a step back and lifted my hands.
“Don’t fucking touch me. Answer the question, Angelina. Why are you here?”
A single tear escaped and ran down her tanned cheek, her full lower lip quivering dramatically. “I’m here because we’re engaged, Will. I missed you and I wanted to see you.”
Disgust filled me and made my lips curl in a sneer I typically reserved for the paparazzi. “Yeah. I got how much you missed me when I saw all that footage of you plastered to another man.”
She took another step toward me, and I backed up even farther. More tears spilled from her eyes as she took in my expression. “I’m so, so sorry, baby. I didn’t mean for it to happen. I’m sorry. Tell me what I can do to make this right.”
Her shoulders shook and she averted her gaze, her fingers winding together in front of her. Angelina never fidgeted, and she sure as shit never looked away first. She was confident—some even called her self-assured to the point of arrogance. She was basically me in female form, and I wasn’t buying this act for a second.
“What’re you going to tell me next? That you tripped and he caught you with his lips?” I forced my face into a neutral mask. “You don’t do anything you don’t want to do. Don’t try to bullshit me. I know you, Angelina. You know me too. Profusely apologizing and telling me you didn’t mean to do it doesn’t mean a thing to me. Not now.”
The Billionaire’s Second Chance: A Small Town Romance Page 3