by Amie Denman
“What’s that?” Autumn asked.
“I’ll show you,” he promised.
As planned, the tender pulled away from the Paige Ellen an hour later with Luke, Jessica, Julie, the groom’s cousin Jack and his wife Amelia, and the maid of honor Marianna and her boyfriend Christopher. The bride and groom hadn’t left their stateroom, and Luke noticed that no one said anything but there were sly smiles exchanged when it came up. The bride’s parents and the groom’s parents also stayed on board along with Autumn’s son.
The group on the tender was chatty and young—they seemed a lot younger than Luke even though he was only thirty-five and most of the group was in the mid-twenties age range. They were all nice, but if he could have any wish he would rather have been alone with Autumn. With her, he could be himself. Her brother Grady put him at ease in the same way, but Grady and his bride were quite busy. Maybe he should rename that room the honeymoon suite after this.
Luke caught Autumn’s eye as the boat sped toward the long dock jutting out from the private island. Was she glad she had come? Regretting leaving her baby behind for her parents to care for? This was only her third day on his yacht, but he was already thinking about how he would miss her when she was gone. Even the little boy was fun to have around with his chubby little hands and cheeks.
Luke smiled at Autumn and wondered what she would think if she knew he was thinking about her cute kid. He got up and moved to Autumn’s seat, squeezing in next to her. “Have you ever snorkeled?” he asked over the sound of the motor and the chatter of the other guests.
She shook her head.
“You would have loved watching my mom and aunt try it a few years ago. Hilarious and fun,” he said, laughing and shaking his head. “They got the hang of it after a while and I had to coax them back on the boat with a bottle of good wine.”
“I always liked them,” Autumn said.
“They liked you, too. All your family.”
“I wish they had come along for this trip.”
Luke shrugged and slung one arm around the back of Autumn’s seat in a casual, we’ve-been-friends-forever sort of way. “I thought about it, but I only have eight guest rooms, and I didn’t want the bride and groom to feel they had to cut someone important to them. It’s a small wedding guest list as it is.”
“I think it’s just right,” Autumn said. “Better than having tons of people at your wedding you hardly know.”
“Like my wedding was,” he said quietly, without any anger or judgment.
Autumn put her hand on his leg. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to say—”
“The truth?” he asked. He put his hand over hers and relished the feeling of her palm pressing into his thigh. He didn’t even care if anyone else saw. They could think what they wanted. Did any of them know about his night with Autumn? Had she told anyone? He didn’t think so, because if she had, her parents and brother wouldn’t treat him the same way they always did. In fact, he might have expected a solid punch in the face from Grady for having a one-night stand with his sister.
“You knew all the people at your wedding, didn’t you?” Autumn asked.
“My guests, yes. Vanessa invited a lot of other people, but she did tell me who they were, if I asked.”
They were silent a moment, and Luke enjoyed just being on the water with a group of friends. Having the means to show other people a good time was the best thing about having money. Providing a spectacular home for his mother and aunt, buying dinner for a friend, taking the Benedict family on his yacht, those were the joys in life money could buy. He didn’t believe that old lie that money couldn’t buy happiness, but he did know money didn’t erase loneliness.
“About that snorkeling,” he said. “There’s a nice cove we could swim where the fish are amazing if you don’t startle them.”
“I’ll try,” Autumn said. “If you’re offering lessons.”
“Just for you.”
Chapter Seven
Autumn took Luke’s hand as she stepped onto the dock. The water was crystal clear giving her a view of the sand and rocks beneath.
“It’s shallow, but deeper than it looks,” Luke said.
“I remember being in Northern Michigan during the summers where the water is so clear you can see all the rocks at the bottom,” Autumn said.
Luke laughed. “But Lake Superior never warms up even in July. You wouldn’t have much fun snorkeling in it. Not like this.”
Autumn noticed he picked up a small bag of what appeared to be masks and fins, but he didn’t invite anyone else to join them in their snorkeling adventure. She didn’t say anything, reasoning that it was Luke’s trip, his friend’s island. He should get to have a say in how he spent the day and with whom. If she was honest with herself, she’d admit that she wouldn’t mind some alone time with him even though it wasn’t the smartest choice she could make.
How often would she get to snorkel on a private Greek Island? Especially with a man who made her wish she could throw away all caution and live only for the moment. Only for them. Was that Luke’s plan, too?
“The beach is that way,” he said to the rest of his guests. “The path through the trees there takes you to the guest house where a small staff is waiting with refreshments and towels. They already set out beach chairs and umbrellas.”
“How do you know all this?” Autumn asked.
“My friend Stephano texted me and told me that’s what I should expect. He’s an excellent host.”
Autumn smiled. “So are you.”
“I’m glad you think so, but I’m about to prove that’s not true,” Luke said. He waited a moment, watching the rest of the group troop down the boardwalk that led through the trees. He turned to Autumn and grinned. “I didn’t invite the rest of our party to enjoy the best part of the island.”
“Snorkeling?” Autumn asked.
He nodded. “Just you and me.”
“Do we have to tell them where we’re going?” she asked, worried her cousins would think she got lost.
“They’ll be having plenty of fun, and I doubt they’ll give us a thought. And we won’t be gone too long.” He paused. “Unless you want to.”
Autumn was torn between being a good friend and member of the wedding party and having time with Luke all to herself. So often in her life she would have given her bank account just to be alone with him and to have him look at her as he did now—as if he actually saw her and didn’t just see Grady Benedict’s younger sister. They were all grown up now, but there was a barrier between them that was impossible to overcome.
She felt guilty even thinking of her beautiful innocent Carter as an obstacle or barrier. He meant the world to her.
“You’re not nervous, are you?” Luke asked with a hint of teasing just as he and Grady had teased her when they tried to persuade her not to go bike riding or exploring with them. They hadn’t always wanted her tagging along when she was ten, but they hadn’t always left her behind either which fueled her hopes for the next time. She vividly remembered following them down rocky paths, hoping she wouldn’t go over the handlebars and embarrass herself in front of the older boys. One time, she’d careened off the road and ended up underneath her bicycle. Both boys had circled back, but it was Luke who’d lifted her bike off her and reached for her hand to pull her up. She’d closed her eyes in bed that night and relived the moment until she fell asleep.
“Of course I’m not nervous,” she said. “I’m just worried you’ll have a hard time keeping up with me and I’ll have to invent a story later about what a wonderful snorkel guide you were.”
Luke laughed and slung an arm around her shoulders as they turned in the opposite direction from the rest of the group. “There’s a tide pool with the most beautiful colored water just down the shore. It’s a bit rocky to get there, so you may have to hold my hand,” he said.
Autumn glanced up at him and she couldn’t decide if his expression was sexy serious or cheeky teasing. How could those two looks combine on
one handsome face?
“In case I start to fall or anything,” he clarified. “I expect you to rescue me.”
Autumn shook her head, grinning, and took his hand as they walked along a shelf of rocks bleached white by the sun. She saw the Paige Ellen floating peacefully out on the sea, but the only sound she heard was their feet dislodging small stones and an occasional seagull crying to the rest of the flock. She imagined how much Carter would love trying to scramble over the rocks and picking up the small stones to toss into the water. She had taken him to the lakeshore several times throughout the summer and he never tired of picking up stones and staring at the them as he turned them over in his hands.
She loved the wonderment of childhood, the delight in small things. It reminded her every day to be grateful for everything she had gained from having Carter.
“I’ve thought about that night a thousand times,” Luke said suddenly, quietly, as if he was commenting on the cloudless sky or the air temperature.
With her thoughts on her son, Luke’s mention of her night with him, the night her son was conceived froze her steps. She couldn’t speak, didn’t know what to say. Why would he bring it up when they’d both buried that night so deeply neither of them had spoken to the other since. Why now? He couldn’t possibly know…
“I thought maybe you had, too,” he added.
Autumn tucked a strand of hair behind her ear and avoided looking at Luke. No way was she going to admit how much, how many times she’d thought of that recklessly amazing night. “We agreed to forget about it when we parted the next…uh…morning,” she said. “We both knew it was a one-time thing, something that would never go anywhere.” She took a deep breath and looked up at Luke. “And I’ve never told a single person about it.”
Luke’s brows drew together and he looked as if he was thinking about something painful. Was he feeling guilty about betraying his wife even though she had been dead months before his night with Autumn?
“So it’s our secret,” he said.
“You’ve never told anyone.” Autumn’s words weren’t a question. She knew he wouldn’t have told anyone. Wouldn’t have told her family because of what their reaction would be, and would not have told his friends or associates about a sexual encounter not long after his wife’s death.
Autumn had often wished she could have told her friends about it because it was the best night of her life. It was a shame to keep it hidden when, damn, sex with Luke had been beyond her fantasies. He’d always been focused, intense, driven, and those qualities were all there in his lovemaking, but there had been something else, too. Joy. Layering pleasure over top of his other qualities magnified every breath, every touch, every whispered word that crossed his lips as he used those lips all over her body.
“It never should have happened,” he said. “I should have shown more restraint and kept my…”
He bit his lower lip and Autumn wished he hadn’t stopped talking. What was the next word going to be? Passion, desire, feelings, attraction…did any of those words describe how he felt about her and how they ended up together in his king-sized bed with the luxurious sheets? The island heat gripped her and she had to stop herself from swaying toward him. She wasn’t a fifteen-year-old schoolgirl anymore. She was an adult, a mother, a woman who knew her own mind and made her own decisions…even when her heart threatened to beat so loudly it would frighten away the fish swimming peacefully in the water at their feet.
“Pants zipped,” he concluded. “It was wrong of me to take advantage of you like that.”
Like a popped balloon, Autumn’s emotions whizzed out over the sparkling blue water. He regretted sleeping with her because it had been a lack of control, a primal thing, your average case of lust. Sure, lust had fueled a good part of her actions that night, but there had been so much more.
“Sorry,” he said, touching her lightly under her chin. “I’ll stop talking about it if it makes you uncomfortable. It’s just that I never knew…I mean…I wondered, when you looked back on that night, what you felt.”
It was her opportunity to put it in perspective and let him know that it hadn’t meant anything more than a night of ill-considered casual sex with an acquaintance. With one flip sentence, she could tell him it was in the past, no more important than a dinner with a friend or a good movie she saw once and forgot about. She looked into his eyes and the raw emotion she saw there made any reckless comment impossible. He cared about her answer, that was obvious from the soft lines around his eyes and way he leaned forward just a bit as if he wanted to be sure he heard her. He cared about her answer, but did he care about her as anything more than a friend of the family?
It was too much of a risk to find out.
“I do think about it, sometimes,” she said slowly. She paused and swallowed. “It wasn’t something either of us planned, but I don’t regret it, if that’s what you’re asking.”
He slid an arm around her back and they stood in silence for a moment with only the soft lapping of ocean waves behind them on the beach. A strip of sand and rocks created a natural barrier between the sea and the tidal pool where they intended to snorkel and try to discover what lay beneath the surface.
“I would only regret it if it was the cause of one thing,” he said.
Autumn felt her heart lurch and then sink in her chest. He knew about Carter, and he regretted fathering him. It was the worst possible outcome and the reason why she’d kept her secret for so long. And her baby…their baby…was a thing.
“Hey,” he said softly, tightening his arm around her. “You look upset. I don’t want that. Like I said, I would only regret being with you, making love to you, if it drove you away from me. And I’m afraid it did. I didn’t see or hear from you in more than two years. Until I saw you again a few days ago, I didn’t realize how much I missed having you in my life.”
It was twenty-seven months to be precise if he wanted to measure the days and hours since that night, but it was just as well he hadn’t seemed to have done the math. He would have asked the question she dreaded if he even suspected, she knew Luke well enough to know he was direct and went straight after anything he wanted.
“I’ve been a little busy,” she said lightly, turning so that she stepped out of the circle of his arm. “And so have you, flying around the world. Your company is doing great. I followed you in the newspaper on occasion when there wasn’t anything interesting on television.”
“Gee, thanks,” he said with a chuckle.
“Long winters in Detroit,” she said. “A girl has to settle for any entertainment available.”
****
He wondered what she had been thinking in that long moment of vulnerability when her lower lip had trembled and her eyes deepened with an emotion he was afraid to name. He’d suspected over the years that his best friend’s little sister cared about him as more than just a friend, and that’s what made his actions even more reprehensible. He had taken advantage of her feelings for him at a time when he needed reassurance so badly he reached for it where he shouldn’t have.
Luke couldn’t count the number of times he’d reviewed that night in his head with its incredible irony. It was one of the highest points of his life, finally knowing what Autumn felt like in his arms after loving her from a distance for far too long. It was also one of his lowest points, succumbing to his desire for a woman not long after his own wife had died.
He sighed, thinking of how unguarded he’d been that night when he revealed to Autumn the secret about his wife’s positive pregnancy test just days before she died. They’d never had time to tell anyone, and it would only have deepened the grief for her family, so he had told only one person who he knew would never betray him. He had trusted only Autumn with that secret.
He was tired of regretting his night with Autumn, tired of believing he should deny himself a relationship that could be everything his failed marriage wasn’t. Built on friendship, trust, history. What if he proposed a trial relationship? A short-ter
m, no commitments, see-how-it-goes sort of thing? Would Autumn slap him in the face or jump in with both feet?
He took the snorkel gear out of the bag and tried to think about something logical and practical for a moment, even though swimming through the stunningly beautiful water was far from his daily reality. Maybe being far away from home was what made anything seem possible.
“It’s not complicated,” he said. “Keep your face in the water, breath through the mask, and if it gets some water in it, blow it out.”
Autumn laughed. “I did play with snorkels in the pool when I was a kid, and this seems like the same concept but with far better scenery.”
“I hope so.” He put on his mask and waited for Autumn to adjust hers, and then he took her hand and waded into the water until it was almost waist deep before he put his face in and laid on the surface, floating, trusting his mask, and still keeping Autumn’s hand. He glanced sideways and saw her long hair floating out behind her. With her free hand, she pointed, and he saw colorful fish form into a group below them and then zip away in different directions, startled.
He kicked his feet and steered them toward deeper water. He’d only been snorkeling here once, even though he’d been to the island several times, but he remembered some beautiful rock formations under the water. He wanted to share it with Autumn. His wife had been with him on one of his visits, but she hadn’t been interested in snorkeling. As the warm waters brushed past him, he tried to remember anything they’d enjoyed doing together but then the thought seemed traitorous. Vanessa was dead and her family blamed him. He blamed himself and the guilt had led to his night with Autumn.
He let go of her hand and pointed ahead, needing to break the physical contact. He didn’t deserve idyllic stolen moments with her like this. He was destined to be alone with his work, his inventions, his determination to rise above poverty and take what little family he had with him. That was his life. In running the company, he also put dinners on the tables of the people who worked for him, provided them with health care, security. All the things that made a hell of a difference to people.