In the beginning, that hatred had fuelled her. Her marriage failing had done the same thing. When it had failed, she’d been determined to make her business a success. It soothed the ache that she wasn’t working for Bishop Enterprises. And the strange burning sensation she got in her stomach whenever she thought that Wyatt had sacrificed their marriage for the sake of the job she should have had.
Regardless, it meant world-slowing, mind-stilling moments weren’t easily found. She would enjoy this.
But she opened her eyes when she felt Wyatt’s gaze on her.
It was interesting how she always knew it was him.
She shifted her head and their eyes met, and again it felt as if the world slowed down. Except now, her mind didn’t still, it froze. Handed over the controls of the situation to her heart, who took the reins gladly and guided Summer into noticing how handsome Wyatt was.
He wasn’t the obvious kind of handsome. His face was...complicated. There were faint lines running across his forehead, his eyebrows were dark, almost severe. There was a dent in his chin that always made her think someone had pressed their finger into it and his skin had absorbed the pressure as if it were clay.
There were lines around his eyes, too, which told her his skin crinkled when he smiled. And between his eyebrows, that told her he frowned almost as much as he smiled.
There was the way his nose seemed as smooth as a slope in the Alps, leading to lips that were not quite as full as hers, but were sensuous. And the dents on either side of his mouth—his dimples—made her think she could fall into them every time they appeared.
It made complicated very sexy.
‘You’re staring at me.’ His voice was lightly amused, and she lifted her eyes from his lips.
‘You were staring at me first,’ she said with a smile—and oh, no, she was becoming Marry-the-Man-Before-Thinking-it-Through Summer again.
‘Only because I’ve only ever seen you with that expression on your face once before,’ he said, distracting her.
‘When?’
‘The suntan session of two and a half years ago.’
‘You mean the time I was having a relaxing afternoon on the beach and you poured a glass of ice water down my back?’
‘I did not pour it down your back,’ he retorted. ‘I tripped over the bottle of champagne you’d left on the sand next to you.’
‘So you say, Montgomery,’ she said with a snort. ‘But that water landed an awful lot quicker than you did, and, if memory serves me correctly, you weren’t on the floor when I opened my eyes.’
‘I wasn’t,’ he confirmed, ‘because I have excellent reflexes.’
‘Sure,’ she said dryly.
He shrugged. ‘That’s my story, Bishop. It’s never changed.’
‘Hmm.’
She shook her head, though she was aware her lips were curved. Was even more aware his were, too.
She tried to remember the last time she and Wyatt had smiled at each other. Not grimaced, or exchanged fake gestures of politeness, but smiled. Genuinely, because they were amused with one another or just...comfortable. She couldn’t remember, which did something terrible to her insides.
‘What’s wrong?’
‘Nothing,’ she said immediately, automatically.
There was a stretch of silence.
‘When are you going to learn that you can’t lie to me, Summer?’ he asked quietly. ‘When are you going to realise that I can see right through you?’
But you didn’t, she nearly answered. When it mattered, you didn’t.
She swallowed, clutched at her skirt, crinkling the material of it between her fingers. It was rather that than her lips, which was what she’d wanted to grip closed. To make sure she didn’t say something she shouldn’t. Like the fact that she hadn’t wanted to divorce him; she just couldn’t keep watching him turn into her father. Or feel as if he was turning her into her mother.
Or that she had felt more alone in her marriage than she had with her family.
When Wyatt had found her crying on the steps at her father’s Christmas party, it was because she’d been tired of the pretence. A moment of weakness, she could admit, but it had been worth it because she’d found Wyatt. She’d kept him away from her parents in the six months before their wedding so she wouldn’t have to pretend around him. And for those six months, she had been herself. She’d been happy.
She’d refused to compromise it with the truth of her father’s affair.
At first, she’d made excuses. She hadn’t wanted her father to be a part of her relationship. Besides, she and Wyatt had only just met. And he worked for her father, for heaven’s sake. It had soon become harder. She’d fallen in love with him and had seen his respect for Trevor. After their wedding, when he’d told her about his parents, she’d realised it went far beyond respect. It was about purpose. About having something to work towards. And she’d understood that having a goal kept Wyatt moving forward instead of dwelling in his traumatic past.
She wouldn’t take that away from him. No matter how much she wished his goal were better than having a life like Trevor Bishop’s.
‘I’ll get us something to drink, okay?’ Summer said, in desperate need of something to do.
Something that wasn’t answering him.
* * *
Wyatt gave Summer a faint nod and watched as she moved towards the bar. She was stopped by a dark-haired woman halfway there. Her expression was pleasant—carefully so, he thought—as she leaned down to listen. A moment later she nodded, and stepped forward, before pausing and making her way to the front of the boat, where her parents were.
She spoke to them, nodded. Then she got her phone out of her dress pocket and began to type into it. She made her way down the entire boat, speaking to each and every person, her expression now of concentration as she tapped her phone.
Only when she reached the bar and spoke with the barman, showing him her phone, did Wyatt realise she’d started taking orders from everyone on the boat. He would have laughed if he weren’t so surprised. Or if she weren’t coming his way again, now speaking to the people on the opposite end of the bar.
One of the men said something to her and she laughed. His surprise moved up another notch. Who was this person? Certainly not the woman who had all but begged him to keep her from talking to people? Perhaps it was that alien again.
Or perhaps it was just her.
It reminded him of that night at the Christmas party. He’d spent pretty much his entire time there with Summer. At the end of it, he’d been so reluctant to say goodbye that he’d asked her out for coffee. She’d smiled at him—one of those heart-crushing genuine smiles she had; similar, he thought suddenly, to the one she’d given him moments ago—and told him she had somewhere else to be.
‘Where?’ he’d asked, desperate to stay in her company.
She’d tilted her head. ‘Do you want to come with me?’
‘Yes,’ he’d answered immediately and that smile had widened, before she’d nodded and led him to the kitchen.
There, he’d helped her pack all the leftover food into containers that had been stacked in one of the cupboards. They’d loaded them into a van she’d hired, and had taken it to a shelter where people had known her by name.
That had been the moment he’d known he was a goner.
‘Can I get anything for you, sir?’ Summer asked, stopping in front of him and pulling him out of the past.
‘I thought you already were,’ he said dryly.
‘I got distracted.’
‘So it seems.’ He paused. ‘Sparkling water, please.’
‘With lemon?’
‘Just the water.’
‘Okay.’
She widened her eyes before heading back to the bar, giving the other orders to the barman before taking the tray the man had set out and hand
ing it out to the first half of the boat. She did the same with the second half of the boat. Then she returned the tray to the bar before taking their drinks.
‘You okay?’ he asked when she sat down and handed him his.
‘Fine,’ she replied. ‘I was stopped before I could do ours. Figured I’d just do everyone.’ She winced. ‘You know what I mean.’
He laughed. ‘Sure.’ He took a sip of his water. ‘You didn’t have to though.’
‘No,’ she agreed. ‘But this way it seems like I’m interacting with everyone without really doing so. Which keeps my mother happy and makes my father believe—’
She broke off, offering him an embarrassed smile before taking a sip of her own drink. He knew she hadn’t meant to say the part about her father, and he had no intention of letting it go. But he would let her think that he did. He still had his one question, and he already knew what he was going to use it on.
‘That wasn’t the only reason you did it,’ he told her. Gratitude flashed across her face like a shooting star. It was gone just as quickly, replaced by a careful expression.
‘What do you mean?’
‘You do things like that for people all the time.’
‘No, I don’t.’
‘How about that time you paid for the groceries of the woman in front of you at the store?’
‘She left her purse at home. It happens to everyone.’
‘The beggar you gave your lunch to after he asked for money for a loaf of bread?’
‘Which one?’ She shook her head. ‘Doesn’t matter. Anybody would have done that.’
‘Or that time you—’
‘Wyatt,’ she interrupted him. ‘Surely you have better things to do than to repeat every good deed I’ve done in my life?’
He hid his smile behind the glass and watched the birds that flew over the river. He could have mentioned a lot more than he had, though he’d known she would stop him. It was as predictable as her helping people. Her generosity was rivalled only by her refusal to accept it as such.
That had been what had caught him that Saturday night at the party. The fact that she’d attended a lavish event that reeked of money and luxury, yet she’d thought of those without anything. Not only thought about them, but done something about it.
She was the most down-to-earth rich person he knew, and he’d come to know many of them in the nine years he’d built up his own wealth. She was better than even he was. That was saying something since he made sure the money he made went to helping the systems that had kept him alive when he’d been growing up.
Something inside him stilled at that thought, and he realised he needed to keep his head straight. He couldn’t fall back into the man who’d spent a year falling in love with, marrying and then divorcing a woman. He’d tried that fantasy and it hadn’t worked. Even realising it had him remembering that ball of pain that curled tighter and tighter into itself the more time he spent with Summer.
The time he spent remembering why he’d fallen in love with her in the first place. The time he spent watching her interact with people kindly, despite the way she felt about them. The time he spent being surprised by her, and delighted by her. The time he spent being attracted to her. Realising how perfect a match she’d been for him.
If only she’d felt the same way.
Just like that, the ball unfurled, spreading itself out in his chest and letting that pain and anger seep into his body.
CHAPTER SEVEN
WYATT STIFFENED BESIDE HER. She looked over, catching her breath at the fierce expression on his face. It made his complicated features go from handsome to dangerous. It pulled at something low in her belly. Something that stretched out and purred for Dangerous Wyatt’s attention.
She swallowed.
‘What’s wrong?’ she asked, her voice hoarse.
He shook his head and she swallowed again, knowing that whatever had changed between them wouldn’t get any easier if she pushed him for an answer.
She shifted, putting distance between them, but she could still feel heat radiating from his body. She could recognise it as anger, and she had no intention of putting herself in the firing line when she wasn’t entirely sure what had caused it.
Though she knew it was her.
The rest of the boat trip was not as easy as the first half. She found herself looking for someone to talk to—anything to get away from the awkwardness happening beside her. But everyone who was available was far enough away from her that she’d have to move. Moving seemed like a concession of some kind, and she refused to concede. Even if she had no idea what she was conceding to.
Why did you have to have a wedding this weekend, Autumn? Summer asked her sister silently. She wished Autumn’s bakery weren’t as popular as it was. Then she felt bad, and immediately took it back. Her sister had worked her butt off to get the Taste of Autumn to where it was. Though that success wasn’t a surprise. Autumn succeeded in almost everything she did. She was perfect like that.
What would Autumn have done if she’d been the one to find out about their father’s affair? Would she have confronted him? Would he have asked her to keep it a secret? And would she have?
Summer stopped when the questions put a lump in her throat. When she found herself wishing it had been Autumn. She had no doubt Autumn would have done the exact right thing. She wouldn’t have put herself on the outside while doing it either.
If it had been Autumn, Summer wouldn’t have had a problem with Wyatt making her feel like an outsider, too. She would have put his desire to build the life he hadn’t had growing up above her own hurt. Because she wouldn’t have been hurt.
If it had been Autumn, Summer would have still been married.
She shut her eyes, fighting the heat of the tears that had been close ever since that conversation with her father. When she thought she’d succeeded, she opened her eyes, blowing out a small breath. But as she lifted her head, her mother looked back and caught Summer’s gaze. Lynette frowned at whatever she saw on Summer’s face, and suddenly the tears wouldn’t stay where they were.
One trickled down her cheek, and her mother shifted forward. But Summer shook her head, offered her a smile, and then turned so that her body was facing Wyatt entirely.
‘Summer?’
There was no longer danger on his face, but concern. Which made her tears want to come even faster, and she shook her head again, wiping voraciously at them before blowing out a breath and offering him a smile, too. She was suddenly immensely glad they were at the back of the boat. Not perfectly private, but enough that she didn’t have to keep up with this ridiculous farce.
‘You’re crying,’ he said softly. He brushed a thumb at a tear she’d missed.
‘No, I’m not,’ she corrected. ‘I’m smiling. See.’ She widened her smile.
His eyebrows rose. ‘I don’t think that expression is working as well as you think it is.’
She let out a small laugh. It sounded too much like a sob for her liking. ‘A lot of things don’t work as well as I think they should. As well as I would like them to.’
He studied her. ‘What’s wrong, Sun?’
It had been innocuous on her sister’s part, using that nickname in front of Wyatt. They’d been at dinner with their parents and Autumn had used it. Summer hadn’t even picked up on it, but Wyatt had asked about it after they’d given Autumn a lift home. Summer had explained it as quickly as she could.
He’d loved it. Said he felt the same way about Summer as Autumn did. Summer had no defences against it. And he knew it.
‘No fair,’ she said softly.
‘What are you talking about?’
‘Calling me that,’ she said. ‘You’re not playing fair.’
There was a moment before he said, ‘Like when you use my surname?’
‘That’s different.’
‘How?’
‘It just is.’
‘Smooth.’
Summer gritted her teeth. ‘Wyatt, I’m not playing a game. I’m—’
‘What?’ he interrupted. ‘What are you doing, Sun? Because I can’t see it. I don’t think you can either.’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
‘But you do,’ he disagreed. ‘You must realise that asking me to be your friend today wasn’t fair.’
‘Now you’re using my words against me.’
‘Like you used what I told you about my parents against me?’
Her eyes widened. So did his.
‘I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have said that.’
‘But you did,’ she replied carefully. ‘Clearly you feel it.’ She paused. ‘Do you feel it?’
‘We shouldn’t talk about this.’
‘Or we should.’
‘No,’ he said, jaw clenched, ‘we shouldn’t.’
‘Wyatt—’
‘No, Summer,’ he said in a tone inviting no discussion. ‘This is not a conversation we need to have.’ He met her eyes. ‘It’s too late. It’s too late to matter.’
* * *
He repeated the words she’d told him the night before under the night sky, but he took no pleasure in doing it. Though he believed it.
What was the point in rehashing the circumstances around their break-up? It wouldn’t change that they were broken up. As much as he wanted to believe that they could be friends, this boat trip had shown him why they couldn’t be.
Friends couldn’t be attracted to one another. They couldn’t have the past hovering over them like an umbrella on a rainy day. They couldn’t think about qualities that were appealing; they couldn’t link those qualities to memories. To emotions.
Since all of that seemed inevitable for him around Summer, he knew they couldn’t be friends.
Second Chance with Her Billionaire Page 7