The Last Plus One

by Ophelia London

  But when he set the brake and slid from the seat, his movements weren’t as easy as they once were. Maggie’s heart pinched painfully, especially when he slid the sunglasses from his eyes. Even from this distance, she could see the tension etched there.

  Before she could run to greet him, he turned to the back seat and lifted a thin setter gently in his arms before setting her down on the grass that bordered the gravel path. In no way did the white on the muzzle detract from her regal beauty.

  “Lady Anne,” Maggie called out, and oh crap this whole week was going to be harder than she thought.

  Cruz had never been intimidated by other men—or, at least, it had been a very long time since he’d packed on enough height and muscle to no longer be intimidated by them—but the man who must be Maggie’s dad intimidated the hell of out him for some reason.

  “What’s all this talk of a fishing cot, Maggie-mine?”

  She was bending down lavishing kissy kissy sounds on the old dog who had walk-wiggled as fast as she could over to Maggie, and her father ruffled her hair much like he’d ruffled the dog’s.

  “Just figuring out where Cruz is going to sleep. Hey, Dad.”

  At her casual mention of his name, Maggie’s dad looked up sharply, giving him a once-over so thorough Cruz found himself fighting the old impulse to snap to attention and salute. Instead, he held himself still and offered up a friendly smile.

  It was returned tenfold.

  “Cruz Griffin. And here you are, after all this time. Glad to meet you.” So far, he’d seen no evidence of this Yankee reserve Maggie had preached to him only moments ago, for her dad moved to grab him up in a fierce man-hug before crushing his hand in a hearty handshake. “We can’t have the CEO of Sierra Delta 9 sleeping on a fishing cot in my house. What would people say?”

  “They would say when you’re an uninvited guest, you take what you can get, that’s what they would say.”

  They all laughed. Except Maggie. Who wasn’t joking.

  “Of course Cruz will be with you in your room. Might be a tight squeeze in your old bed, though.”

  And then Cruz couldn’t laugh because all the air was sucked out of the universe.

  Maggie blanched and looked comically (well, it would be comic when he remembered it later; at the moment, he was still struggling to live on a planet without oxygen) back and forth between her parents.

  “Hold up.” She stood and brushed her hands on her thighs. “It’s not like that.”

  “Oh, come on. It’s the twenty-first century. You don’t have to make excuses or pretend for your old pop.”

  “Dad, I am not making excuses. Cruz and I are absolutely not together together.”

  There, in the universe without oxygen, the giant man who was Maggie’s father winked over at Cruz before affectionately hugging his daughter to his side. “Don’t think a thing. Your ma and I were young, too. Besides, we’re all adults here.”

  Maggie was too busy making that scandalized ew-gross-parents-and-sex face, so it left him to brave the new, airless world and say, “I’m sure the fishing cot will be fine.”

  “Whatever,” Maggie said, and went back to lavishing attention on the old dog.

  “Gotta get back to work, darling. See what that bunch of dubbers is doing out on the beach today. Just wanted to stop in and say hello once I heard you’d arrived.”

  “Oh, Donald. Don’t take Anne with you. She’ll want to wade in, and the water is much too chilly for her. I’ll take her up to the house with me.”

  With a kiss on the forehead for both his girls, and another orthopedist’s dream of a handshake for Cruz, Donald ambled off to his golf cart, leaving both the Lady Anne and Maggie staring wistfully at the retreating vehicle.

  “I hate to run, kids, but I’ve got to get back to it, too. Oh, and I almost forgot. Mrs. R told me to tell you to come up to the house tonight for drinks. She’d have come down with me to greet you, but there was some crisis in the kitchen with Helen, and, well, you know Helen.”

  Maggie and her mom finally embraced, a quick but affectionate gesture. Then she was puttering off in her cart—a gentle pace because of the addition of Lady Anne in the front seat, he supposed—and the pack of creatures trailed behind her, like she was a veritable Snow White.

  Now he knew where Maggie came by her love for his dogs. Curious, though, why she never had one of her own.

  “Let’s do this,” Maggie grumbled, and started picking up bags.

  At the top of the stairs, she stopped and took a breath. It was shaky and probably did nothing to assuage the big ball of stress he knew she carried deep in her chest. Cruz did the best he could to stay still and quiet and give her a chance to reacclimatize.

  Her bedroom was, presumably, just as she’d left it when she’d gone all the way out west for college. He suppressed the desire to look around greedily at all the books and CDs piled on her bookshelves, and instead focused on the bed.

  Big mistake.

  A wrought iron bed complete with footboard and headboard was pushed up longwise against the wall instead of the normal direction. Like a couch or something.

  It wasn’t a twin; it was probably what his abuela would’ve called matrimonial or some old-fashioned term like that. He couldn’t remember because he’d probably not been able to fit on something that size since he was nine years old.

  “This is never going to work.”

  As happened so frequently, her words mirrored his own.

  “We’ll figure it out,” he mumbled, trying not to imagine Maggie lounging on that bed piled with all manner of jewel-bright pillows and beaded covers. It was draped with layers of fabric. Like a tent, or something out of a harem.

  It was frilly and feminine without being over the top—though it was somehow still over the top. It was nothing like Maggie’s house now. Nor their offices. Though it was still undeniably cool. He had no idea what to call it—DeShaun, and everyone else on his staff, would know what style it was.

  All Cruz knew was that it was nothing like the minimal, glamorous decorating style she favored now. This was rich and wild with color. It shouldn’t all go together, but it did. And he wondered if Maggie had decorated it back then, since all the color was absent from her stuff now.

  “There’s nothing to figure out.” Her words pulled him from that line of thought. “We’ve got to get the cot because I’m not sleeping in that bed with you.”

  “Great, because I’m not sure you’d fit in there with me.” Her tone had been sharp and his probably matched it, but for a completely different reason. Oh, they’d fit all right. They’d fit like two ends of a salty pretzel, all twisted up and entwined, warm and soft and—

  He sat on the edge of the bed, wincing a little when it squeaked and the iron bedstead banged up against the wall.

  She gasped, horrified—even he had to admit it was awkward. But he couldn’t resist teasing her about the situation a little bit more, so he made a playful grab at her.

  The bed squeaked again. Banged up against the floral-papered wall.

  “Cruz!” Her squeak matched the bedsprings, and she turned an alarmingly pretty shade of pink. It made her freckles stand out against the bridge of her nose. It made her chest rise and fall and the buttons of her shirt test themselves. It made him realize he was sitting on her harem bed in an empty house on the edge of the world with not so much as a canine chaperone.

  “Would it be so wrong if people thought we were together?” Because at the moment, he couldn’t think of one thing wrong with that outcome.

  She sighed and sat next to him. The bed bounced. Squeak. Thud. And she flopped backward and covered her face, laughing. “Oh. My. God.” Thud. Thud. “Too much for this old bed. Move off.”

  He shook his head. “What was wrong with the boys in this town?”

  “No boy has ever been up here except Tommy, but he doesn’t count.”

  “Not even Cinco?” Cruz swallowed the name like a packet of rusty nails. There was a story there. He was
relieved when she shook her head so violently the bed gave another audible shudder.

  He lay back on the bed beside her. Squeak. Thud. “If your parents were downstairs, they’d be wondering what’s going on up here.”

  “Then it’s a good thing my parents are back at work, because this is the crazy-busiest thing that’s happened at Virtue Cove since Senator and Mrs. Ramsey married here forty years ago.”

  “I cannot believe you’ve known a senator all this time. A senator! Yet you’ve been dragging your feet about the acquisition and DOD contract.”

  Squeak. Thud.

  She’d moved to face him. He could feel her glaring at him, and wondered if he had time to take a long run on the beach before drinks tonight.

  “You promised. Auggie is a human, and therefore off-limits. You promised me.”

  “Auggie? You call Senator Ramsey Auggie? Jesus.”

  “That is his name. And you promised me!”

  “Yeah, but that’s before I knew all the facts. You tricked me.”

  “Well, you tricked me to get here.” She poked him in the gut, and dang that hurt. “I swear, Cruz, you have to pretend you don’t know who the heck he is when you meet him. If you meet him.”

  “Get over it, Maggie. He’ll be there for drinks tonight, and—”

  “That’s it. Take the rental. Drive back to Boston. Have a wonderful flight home and I’ll see you next week.” She started to get up and he caught her arm, dragging her back down on the bed. She landed half on him. Squeak. Thud. Thud. Thud.

  “I’m not leaving you here alone.”

  “Okay,” she breathed, dropping her head on his shoulder. “Then take me with you. I’m already over this wedding business.”

  Forget a punishing, thought-clearing run. He didn’t need any more cardiovascular excitement. This close, the subtle, smoky-floral scent of her skin was an endorphin. The way she closed her eyes and sighed when his arms went around her better than any runner’s high he’d ever had.

  “Knock, knock. It’s awfully quiet in there.”

  The door opened, and squeak thud Maggie launched herself off of him-slash-the-bed.

  “Oops, am I interrupting something?” came the singsong voice from the doorway. “Just bringing in a new set of towels.”

  Maggie’s mom beelined to what had to be an en suite bathroom. Her voice was a little muffled and then there was the creak and thud of cabinets being opened and closed. The howl of dogs outside or downstairs or somewhere.

  “And I’m sorry about the state of things around here. I’m right out straight. This wedding!” She came out and started bustling around the room, straightening doodads on shelves and on the wide wooden desk in the corner that needed no straightening. “Of course you’re welcome here. We will find— It will be absolutely no imposition, no problem at all to have you here this week.”

  He watched, fascinated, as every muscle in Maggie’s body tensed, then released when he stood beside her and dropped a hand on her lower back.

  “In fact, it makes our dilemma so much easier,” her mother continued, eyeing them. “We had a groomsman drop out.”

  The tension returned. “What? Who?”

  “A cousin. Doesn’t matter. He was standing on the end. Laurel fixed the lineup, but it simply ruined the seating arrangement. So, Cruz, you are a godsend.”

  “Mom, he’s not doing the wedding stuff—”

  “Of course he is!”

  “No, he isn’t. I did not RSVP for a guest, and—”

  Lucia waved her hand and continued sprucing up the room that was already neat and tidy. “Your Cruz is a godsend because now I can slide things around on the seating plan and everything will be symmetrical and even again.”

  “Mrs. Kennedy,” he said, but she went right on talking.

  “And don’t you dare say another word to make Cruz feel like he can’t enjoy himself.” She shot Maggie that I-mean-business look he’d been on the receiving end of a time or two—must be genetic—and then turned back to him. “Laurel will love that Maggie is here with you. And oh, I can’t wait to see everybody all dressed up.”

  She kissed Maggie on her cheek and bade him to bend down so she could kiss him too. He watched her wipe a tear away with the hem of her sweater as she walked out the door.

  Chapter 3

  It was settled. Everything was ruined.

  Cruz was now the center of attention. Which meant that everywhere he went this week, he’d be the center of attention. Which meant that he and Auggie would be drawn to each other like magnets—because power found power. And everything she’d worked to accomplish since she left Virtue Cove would erode like her name written in the sand at high tide.

  She’d been kidding herself to think this could work out well.

  Here they were in her room, and it was just like she’d left it. But you are nothing like the girl who once lived here.

  She’d been faintly embarrassed because it had seemed shabby and quaint and small when he’d come in the room behind her. After giving her a few moments alone to face old ghosts. She hadn’t missed that, and her heart had kind of melted when she realized what he was doing.

  All of her hopes and dreams hanging on the walls—those vision boards she’d painstakingly crafted in the long, isolated winter months when she was only shuttled to school and back.

  Maggie hadn’t prayed in a long time, but she prayed he wouldn’t look too closely at the magazine cutouts and old, faded printouts from the internet she had tacked up on those boards.

  Oh, what did it even matter at this point anyway?

  Her dad could barely walk without grimacing. Her mom was tearing up and being overly affectionate. And everything was weird and she had to duck out before she got emotional herself.

  “I’m going for a walk on the beach.”

  Cruz was sitting on her bed again, and she resented that small invasion of her space. He bounced up and moved to one of his suitcases. “Great, just let me change into—”

  “Alone.”

  She had to pretend she hadn’t seen his face fall. She had to pretend lots of things this week, apparently.

  Maggie wasn’t sure how she got down the stairs and out the front door. The next thing she knew, the sticky, salty air was surrounding her, and she felt it like an undertow. She immediately hooked a right, bypassing the path to the main house. She didn’t want to run into Dad. Or Mom again. Especially after the towel incident. And if she never saw Cinco Ramsey, it would be too soon.

  What the hell was that about? What was he thinking, coming over to check up on her the moment she arrived? Besides, why was he even here this early? He must be up to no good—or out of money or something. The Cinco she knew would’ve skated in at the very last minute possible to avoid censure from the Ramseys, but not a moment before.

  Well, she would give no more thought to Cinco Ramsey. She would give no more thought to anything. Maggie was on a mission to clear her mind.

  She skirted the outbuildings. The pool. The Dog Den. And finally the main house itself. With its gables and shingles, it was almost an exact replica of her own little house. But, of course, in triplicate. Or quadruplicate. Sextruplicate?

  Anyway, she hadn’t grown up thinking of her parents’ house as anything other than a dollhouse. It had made for magical moments. If lonely ones.

  Cinco had bad lungs as a child, and, consequently, the Ramseys spent most of his early years on their spread in Arizona. But by the time the twins were born, he seemed to be better, stronger, and they spent more and more time at the Cove. He had never been Maggie’s playmate, thank goodness.

  Oh, but the twins. Laurel and Janine. Maggie could barely remember the day she met them—only recalled that she’d thought they were two special dolls made just for her and her little dollhouse. But, of course, they hadn’t been allowed to stay with her there, and she’d cried when Mrs. R took them back up to their light-drenched nursery on the third floor of the main house. How unfair it had seemed! And how unfair when Helen
complained that Maggie had been sneaking over to spy in on the babies in the nursery, effectively banning her from entry unless she was with her mother.

  That ban had long since been lifted, but she still felt more at home sticking to the woods that skirted the main house. Maggie knew all the back paths through the woods to the sea. She knew all the ones that didn’t officially exist, too.

  So it wasn’t hard to not be seen. She’d grown rather accomplished at it in her time at Virtue Cove. Except for those bright, shining summers once the twins were old enough to want playmates. Janine, even then, hadn’t deigned to have anything to do with her little sister—younger by a few moments, but a very important distinction to her—or with Maggie. That had suited both Maggie and Laurel. They’d been inseparable, more like twins than her actual twin sister.

  The flash of sun off a windshield announced a car coming up the drive. Maggie didn’t recognize it, but of course that didn’t mean anything. Cars came and went here at the Cove. And it had been a very long time since Maggie went.

  The laughter wafting down from the driveway was loud, and she hightailed it on. If her dad was down working on the beach for the wedding, Maggie knew just where they’d be. She popped in her earbuds and headed in the opposite direction.

  She was wearing totally the wrong shoes. But it didn’t matter. Once she broke through the clearing onto the wide promontory, she was free. The wind buffeting her, forcing her to hold fast to the land beneath her feet, encouraging her, even, to not move lest she fly away. It seemed to want to keep her in one place, so maybe she would put down some roots in that barren, rocky outcropping.

  That thought was anathema to her, so she scrambled her way down to the shore. It had been a lot easier to do when she was seventeen. And had real shoes on. And was apparently a lot more limber.

  Her feet hit the sand, though there wasn’t much sand there—just a little bit of exploded rock from high tides and crashing waves of centuries. It was nothing like the well-maintained beach in front of the Cove, a hybrid of intelligent design on both sides of the celestial ball.