“Now this book will tell you everything you need to know about the sea life around here. Speaking of sea life, have you been to Stargazer Beach lately? I remember how much time you spent there when Julie deGaia was a lifeguard.”
Julie slapped her hand over her mouth to keep a spurt of laughter from bursting forth. Mrs. Murphy truly was a master of prying information from people.
She heard the laughter lurking in Ben’s voice when he answered. “It’s not really beach weather now, is it? But I heard we might have an early spring.”
Pretty good deflection.
But this wasn’t Mrs. Murphy’s first rodeo. “Well, it’s not spring yet, thank goodness. The Reinhards haven’t even held their Winter Ball yet. By the way, have you heard their grandson is visiting? Have you met Felix yet?”
Wow. Truly masterful.
“Yes, very briefly,” Ben answered. The laughter disappeared from his voice. She could tell he felt guilty about scaring Felix, even though it wasn’t his fault. She should have explained her challenging godson’s behavior, so Ben didn’t take it personally. She could still do so, if only she had the guts to step out from behind the Mystery and Suspense aisle. But if she revealed herself now, it would be obvious she’d been hiding back there.
Instead she tiptoed backwards out of the shop and hurried down the street, wrapping her sweater tightly around her against the brisk breeze. It wasn’t quite time to pick up Felix from school. She decided to stop at the Sky View Gallery and Espresso Bar for a quick shot of courage, since obviously she was sorely lacking in that department.
A beautiful silver-eyed woman smiled at her in greeting. “Julie deGaia, right? Remember me? Evie McGraw.”
“Evie. Of course. Good to see you again.” Drawn by Evie’s warm, welcoming manner, she stepped toward the counter, which held a gleaming espresso machine with Italian writing on it. The gallery was filled with photographs ranging from local scenic panoramas and images taken by the observatory telescope, to honeymoon selfie-style shots. “Is this your place? It’s beautiful.”
“Thank you.” She smiled proudly. “It’s finally paying its own way, and I’m pretty proud of that. It was touch and go for a while. What can I get you?”
“An espresso would be perfect. I’m a big fan of speedy caffeinating.”
“I hear that.”
Julie took a stool and looked over her shoulder just in time to see Ben striding past, a few hardcover books gripped in one hand.
She quickly turned aside, hoping he hadn’t spotted her.
Evie set a dainty white cup filled with foamy espresso on the counter in front of her. “Hiding out?” she asked sympathetically.
Busted. Julie took a sip of the invigorating liquid and let out a sigh. “I suppose you could call it that.” Under Evie’s sympathetic gaze, her defenses melted. “I intended to see Ben as soon as I came back, but I don’t think he wants that. I got the hint pretty quickly. Now we’re pretty much on the same page. Keep out of each other’s way and no one gets hurt.”
Except it did hurt. This was Ben. Her favorite person in the world back then.
“Hey, you don’t have to explain anything to me,” Evie said, wiping her hands on a towel. “I know how hard it can be facing a difficult situation. In my family, we have a long habit of avoiding uncomfortable things. It took me years to break free of it.”
Julie eyed her over the edge of the cup. “What inspired you to make a change like that?”
“Well, keeping a secret can be crushing. After a while, it becomes harder to stuff it down than to let it out.”
A lump formed in Julie’s throat. Exactly. That was why she’d come back to Jupiter Point, after all.
“Also, I fell in love,” Evie continued, smiling. “My husband is Sean Marcus. You might remember him. He’s a hotshot now, so when he sees a crisis, he just plunges right in as if it were a wildfire. He helped me find my own courage.”
Feeling lonelier than ever, Julie tossed back the rest of her espresso shot. “Well, I think I’m on my own, and always will be, the way things are going.” She set the cup down and paid with a five-dollar bill. “It’s great to see you again, Evie. I might come back some time and browse for a photograph or two.”
“Come back anytime.”
On her way out, Julie glanced at the photos displayed on the simple cream walls of the gallery. And there he was again. In a photograph, piloting a plane. The photo was snapped from the backseat, so the only part of the pilot’s face to be seen was the back of his head and the corner of his jaw, which was outlined against the bright blue sky outside the plane. But she knew it was Ben. She’d know him anywhere, in any context.
Was he haunting her? Was she going to see him around every corner in Jupiter Point?
She paused to look more closely at the photo. She had no pictures of Ben. When she’d left Jupiter Point, she hadn’t intended to move. She’d assumed she’d be back as soon as Savannah didn’t need her anymore. Then Savannah had fallen deep into post-partum depression, Felix had turned out to have issues, and then he’d gotten diagnosed, and they’d never stopped needing her. The Reinhards had eventually gotten rid of her things. And all she had left of Ben was her own memories.
If she was going to have a photo of Ben, this one would be perfect. His back was to her and he was flying away. It would be a good reminder that Ben was part of her past, not her present or future.
She turned to Evie, who was clearing her cup off the counter. “Evie, do you think I could put this photo on hold?”
If Evie was surprised, she didn’t show it. “Sure thing. I’ll give you a good price on it, too. Local discount.”
“Thank you.” Julie glanced at her watch, then hurried out of the Sky View to collect Felix from school.
Luckily, Felix was in a great mood. He’d been invited to a birthday party at the ice skating rink. Felix was a klutz on skates, but he loved the frosty air of a rink. He could spend hours slowly circling, clinging to the walls. Of course, Julie was thrilled to take him to the party. This was what he needed—a chance to connect with the kids here, to find out how different life was in a slower-paced town like Jupiter Point.
It was the last place she would have expected to see Ben.
But of course, with her luck, there he was, helping a dimpled little blond girl skate for the first time. The girl was younger than the kids at the party, and she and Ben were at the opposite end of the rink. Julie shrugged it off and focused on helping Felix with his skates, then assisting the birthday boy’s mother in the snack room.
As she blew up balloons and taped up streamers, she kept an eye on Felix inching around the rink. When he drew close to Ben, the little girl spotted him. Smiling incandescently, she tried to skate toward Felix. Halfway to him, she fell on her butt and burst into tears.
Ben skated after her, then helped her up and brushed ice crystals off her snow pants. Felix watched the entire episode patiently. As soon as the girl stopped crying, he showed her his method of staying upright on skates.
Ben straightened to his full height and watched, arms crossed over his chest. From the snack room, Julie feasted her eyes on him. She didn’t care about the vanilla buttercream cake. All she wanted was to watch Ben on the ice, the way he glided close to the two kids, dropping an instruction now and then, the way his wool sweater clung to his muscles, the way his jeans cupped his ass.
Her heart ached and she realized, crystal clear, that she was not over Ben. Not even close.
The birthday boy’s mother—Candy—caught her looking. “That’s one of the Knight brothers. I’m pretty sure he’s the single one, too. I can handle things here if you want some rink time.”
“No no. I’m good here.” She picked up another balloon and blew air into it. Stare at the red latex, not at the hot guy on the ice. Don’t think about how adorable he is with that little girl.
This was a serious problem. If she kept running into Ben like this, she’d be in love with him all over again in no time. These l
ittle glimpses of him in his real life, relaxed and casual, were torturous. In another world, he’d be giving their child skating lessons. It was the kind of life they’d always known they wanted, filled with ordinary, everyday joys.
But that world never came to be. Instead, she lived in this world, where she and Ben circled each other like planets whose orbits kept colliding.
Something had to give. She had to talk to him. But not here. Not when Felix was attending his first Jupiter Point birthday party.
The next time she ran into him, she’d definitely take the bull by the horns and initiate a real conversation. “Hi, Ben,” she’d say, like a normal adult. “I was thinking we should get together and talk. We should be able to carry on a grownup conversation, right? Like maybe over a butterscotch sundae at the Milky Way like old times. No? Too nostalgic? Okay, how about we go to Neptune’s Oasis, where I waited for three hours until I realized you’d stood me up?”
Ugh. Gah. Why was this so hard?
She blew a little too hard on the balloon and it burst out of her hands. Zooming across the table, it narrowly missing the birthday cake. The air fizzed out of it with a high whine until it landed in a pile of red limpness on the floor. Honestly, she couldn’t think of a better visual metaphor for her and Ben.
Maybe she shouldn’t wait for Will to get back. She’d try the police first.
First thing the next morning, as soon as she’d dropped off Felix, she drove to the Jupiter Point Police Department. Before she could lose her nerve, she strode to the front desk, where a sergeant in uniform was fielding calls and logging in visitors.
She stared at the signup sheet, wondering how strict they were about names. “I was hoping to talk to Police Chief Becker,” she told the sergeant.
He barely glanced at her. “He’s on vacation. But if you want to file a police report, I’m your man.”
Her heart sank. Why were the law-enforcement types around here so hard to pin down? “How long will he be gone?”
“Two weeks.” Finally, he looked up. “We got a whole bullpen full of police officers here ready to serve and protect. What’s this about?”
A door behind him opened, revealing a brief glimpse of a large open-plan room filled with desks and uniformed officers, some talking to each other, some on the phone.
How could she be sure they could be trusted?
No, she didn’t want to talk to any of these police officers. Especially if she had to sign in. That was too public, too risky.
“I’ll come back to see the police chief,” she told the sergeant politely. She practically ran out of the station house to her car. Her heart was racing. The fear was still with her, she realized, even after all these years.
Her hands shaking slightly, she started her car and headed for work. She’d finally booked her second job in Jupiter Point. The manager of a condo complex had hired her to clean the lobby.
Fifteen minutes later, she had a dust rag in one hand and a bottle of natural lavender-and-vinegar glass cleaner in the other. As she sprayed down the large mirror, she heard footsteps rattling down the staircase, along with the sound of a whistle.
Are you kidding me?
She recognized that tuneless hiss. Ben was such a notoriously bad whistler that it had been a running joke between them. She’d claimed that everything he attempted sounded like Queen’s “We Are the Champions.” His whistling hadn’t improved one bit in the past decade.
She glanced in a panic around the little foyer. The only place to hide would be behind a potted ficus. He’d spot her in a second.
Don’t be such a coward, she told herself fiercely. Or such an idiot. It’s just Ben.
So, she straightened her spine and stood her ground as he burst through the door into the foyer. He saw her right away, pure surprise lighting his face. In what felt like no time, he took in her spray bottle, her dust rag.
Her face burned. Back in the old days, she’d had any number of dreams. Singing, songwriting, recording. Never once had she talked about cleaning lobbies for a living.
She opened her mouth to say hello, when someone else came through the door into the foyer. A woman wrapped her arms around Ben from behind.
“You win,” she said, laughing. “I should know not to ever bet against those long legs of yours.”
The woman was young and beautiful, with magenta-streaked hair and a skimpy workout top. Ben was wearing workout clothes, too, light cotton sweats and a Knight and Day t-shirt. They were on their way to jog, or hike, or bike. And the woman was touching Ben’s chest and the muscles of his stomach.
Julie’s own stomach turned over at the sight. She still remembered the feel of Ben’s skin, so rough in some places, so tender in others.
But from the way the magenta woman was touching Ben, she knew a lot more about his body than Julie did.
Not surprising. She’d left Jupiter Point a virgin, after all.
“What are you doing?” Ben asked in surprise. “Do you work here?”
“Just a little light cleaning,” she chirped, as if there was nothing more delightful than polishing mirrors. As a kind of punctuation, she waved the spray bottle. The tension coiled inside her transferred to her hand, and a spritz of cleaner erupted into the air. Right at the magenta girl’s eye level.
She coughed, eyes watering, and waved the droplets away from her face. “Jesus. Blind a girl, why don’t you?”
“I’m so sorry.” Julie looked around for something to wipe her face with, but all she had was the dust rag. She held it toward her. “I’ve only used one side of this. Would you like to dab the cleaner off with the other? It’s completely natural and nontoxic, don’t worry. It’s lavender. Practically like cologne.”
The girl rubbed her face against Ben’s t-shirt. “Uh, no thanks. I think I’ll live. Ben, come on. That 5K isn’t going run itself.”
Ben was still staring at Julie, a puzzled look on his usually carefree face. “You’re a cleaning lady?”
“See, that’s a little bit sexist. If I was a man, would you call me a cleaning man? Or a cleaning gentleman? I prefer the term ‘cleaner.’ In fact, I own my own business, Green and Pristine. I even have employees back in LA.” Jeez, why was she getting so defensive? Screw that. “Anyway, I’ve been hired to clean this foyer, and I’d better get on with it.”
Especially because it would be the last time she cleaned it, that was for damn sure. No way was she going to take another chance on running into Ben in a way that put her at such a disadvantage.
“Well, it, uh, looks great,” Ben said. She could tell he wasn’t sure exactly what to say.
“Actually, you missed a spot.” The magenta girl pointed at the mirror, where a grease mark blurred her reflection. She broke into a jog and grabbed his hand. “We gots to go, yo. Come on.”
Ben gave Julie a helpless smile as he was dragged toward the exit.
She tried to smile back, but it didn’t come out right. Of all the embarrassing ways to run into Ben, this was definitely one of the worst. Not that there was anything wrong with cleaning. But she was wearing a faded old bandanna around her head and her usual cleaning outfit of paint-stained coveralls and yellow rubber gloves. Charming.
After the two were gone, Julie returned to her work. As she dabbed viciously at the spot on the mirror, she glared at her own reflection. “Your life choices suck,” she muttered to herself. “Weren’t there any other professions handy? Why don’t you just let Savannah pay for everything? Is her guilt money not good enough for you?”
The sound of a throat clearing made her jump around. Ben stood just inside the front door, clearly trying not to laugh. “I…ah…dropped my keys.”
She gestured at the earbud dangling around her neck. Generally, she kept one in her ear, leaving the other ear free in case someone needed her attention. Right now, no music was playing, but he didn’t need to know that. “Sorry, didn’t hear you. I was, ah, singing along.”
Better than talking to herself.
He nodded solemn
ly, as if he knew perfectly well she was covering. “Great. I always loved hearing you sing. I’m not surprised that you decided to go for it. Don’t let me stop you.”
She stared at him. I’m not surprised you decided to go for it. What the heck did that mean?
The magenta-haired girl poked her head around the front door. “You coming, Ben?”
No time to ask him. She put both ear buds in and focused her full attention on the mirror. Of course, he was there, too, his big frame reflected back at her.
In the mirror, Julie watched him bend down to pick up the keys. His strong thighs flexed, his t-shirt tugged against the long ridge of muscle along his side, and his ass made her mouth water.
Sweet Lord, he’d grown up fine.
Get a grip. Scrub, scrub. Bob her head to the pretend music. Smile vaguely as he jogged out the door. Inhale that familiar scent that was one hundred percent Ben. Sweetness and sweat, sneakers and fresh air, boy and man.
Oh God. She was so screwed.
6
For some reason, Ben’s black mood—the one inspired by Julie’s reappearance—lifted. Maybe it was because she was so obviously flustered every time she laid eyes on him. It was fairly adorable to watch her hide behind red balloons and non-functioning earbuds. Whatever was going on in her mind, it wasn’t thoughts about what a loser he was, and how glad she was that she’d left him behind.
Meeting Felix had put things in an entirely different light. Was he special needs? Or simply a challenging, eccentric kid? A little of both or neither? In any case, they obviously had a close relationship. Watching her with Felix changed everything. It softened him toward her. He wanted to know more now, not from a place of hurt feelings, but from friendship. What had her life been like since she’d left Jupiter Point? How did Felix fit into it?
At the rate they were randomly running into each other, the perfect moment would arrive when he could have a civilized conversation with her.
But after all those chance encounters, he didn’t see her for another week. Valentine’s Day brought a flurry of tourists to Jupiter Point, and they all wanted to get airborne. Tobias was busy with his new family, so Ben took on the bulk of the flights. When he wasn’t in the air, he was holding interviews with mechanic candidates, or helping Moira train for her race, or working on new flyers, or trying to get their accounting system straightened out, or any one of the thousand details that went with starting a new business.
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