Vance’s mother was beaming at her. “I’m so glad this doesn’t have to be awkward.”
Which, of course, it wasn’t, because none of this nuptial business had anything, really, to do with her. Even if she had been Vance’s actual girlfriend, there would be no need for self-consciousness.
And she wasn’t Vance’s actual girlfriend.
So she bellied up to the island and grabbed one of the magazines off the stack that Blythe pushed forward. “We’re looking at dresses,” the other young woman told her. “Trying to decide between mermaid, princess, empire, column or ball gown.”
It was like a foreign language to Layla. She must have worn her confusion on her face because Vance’s aunt shot her an amused glance. “You don’t watch any of the wedding shows on television? Never gone gown shopping with a friend?”
She shook her head. “I admit to being ceremonially challenged. I was raised by two very unsentimental, unromantic and deeply entrenched bachelors.”
“But your baking is divine. And you always dress so pretty,” Katie said.
“Thank you.” The compliments warmed her, which felt a little dangerous, too. It was no time to be bonding with Vance’s mom. “My inner girl eventually found its way.”
“A very lovely way at that,” the older woman pronounced.
The kindness flummoxed her again, so Layla directed her attention to the glossy pages, turning them one by one. Blythe would look beautiful in any number of dresses.
“Are you sure you’re okay about this?” the bride-to-be murmured for Layla’s ears only.
“Of course.” A smile tweaked the corners of her mouth. “Think about it. I’d rather you be planning your wedding to Vance’s brother than to Vance himself, right?”
“Oh, right.” Blythe laughed, her shoulders relaxing. “Absolutely right.”
The atmosphere in the kitchen loosened up considerably after that. Katie served up four glasses of a very cold and deliciously crisp chardonnay, along with a tray of chilled grilled asparagus and prosciutto-wrapped cantaloupe on skewers. A half glass in, Layla found herself agreeing to provide white-iced champagne cupcakes for Blythe and Fitz’s upcoming engagement brunch. Vance’s aunt got a little teary about losing Baxter to France for a year...but she seemed sincerely pleased her beloved son had found true love.
Katie slanted Layla a look. “That seems to be going around the Smith family these days.”
Instead of answering, she pretended an avid interest in the magazine pages in front of her. She studied the two-page spread of a wedding party—an entire family gathered around a glowing bride and groom. It looked as foreign to her as the language of bridal gowns. Maybe she’d never daydreamed about a Big Day because she didn’t have a large family with whom to celebrate.
Now she didn’t even have a father to walk her down the aisle.
Oh, God, the tears were stinging again.
“Layla?” Vance’s mother patted her arm. “Are you okay, honey?”
Blinking rapidly, she held the back of her hand to her nose. “Just a tickly nose,” she said, aware her voice sounded scratchy, too.
“Everybody gets those sometimes,” Katie murmured. Then she placed her palm between Layla’s shoulder blades and rubbed a soothing circle.
The touch brought her back under control. She hauled in a steadying breath, then picked up her wine. “You’re very kind,” she said to the other woman, just as Vance’s dad came up behind his wife.
“And beautiful,” he added, grabbing Katie’s glass from her hand and taking a swallow.
“Moocher,” she said fondly. “You remember Layla.”
“It’s good to see you again,” she started—and then found herself at a loss for words when William Smith took her outstretched hand in both his big paws. He smiled, and it was devastating, just like his son’s.
“Welcome,” he said. Then he leaned close. “I appreciate what you shared with me about my son on Picnic Day. I’ve thought of it often.” Then he smiled again, and she realized that he was definitely a charmer when he wasn’t at odds with Vance. He stayed in the kitchen with the ladies, offering groan-worthy opinions on wedding regalia and teasing his wife about their wedding day until she whapped him with a dish towel.
His brother came into the kitchen next, and Layla met yet another handsome Smith male—though he was about three inches shorter than the quite tall William. Apparently the elder Smiths had been joined in a double wedding and Roy told them how his brother’s tuxedo had been delivered to him and vice versa, causing a four-alarm panic until they managed to get control of their groom jitters long enough to figure out what happened and swap clothes.
Then it was Fitz who wandered in. He made his way to Blythe and laid on her a lavish kiss that turned the pale blonde’s cheeks pink again. She made an embarrassed protest, which he ignored as he went on to enthusiastically buss the cheek of his aunt, then his mother. Finally, he grabbed Layla and squeezed her in a bear hug.
Vance had mentioned in a grumpy tone that Fitz could be impossible not to like, and she had to admit that was true.
Katie scolded him, though. “Son, are you sure Layla wants to be manhandled like that?”
Fitz met her gaze with laughing eyes. “She thinks I’m perfect. Just ask her.”
Pressing her lips together, she let her eyes laugh back. Fucking Perfect Fitz. Yep, impossible not to like.
Conversation continued in the crowded kitchen, topics rambling and circling while the last details of dinner were completed. Layla found herself smiling and laughing and feeling entirely comfortable as they included her in everything from a squabble about a recent movie to tossing the salad.
When it was nearing time to sit down, Katie wondered aloud about Vance’s whereabouts. Fitz said he’d gone up to his old room, so Layla was dispatched to retrieve him from “upstairs, first door on the left.”
On her way out of the kitchen, a burst of laughter had her pausing to glance back, a smile on her face. Her gaze roamed the small crowd who had welcomed her in, a warm feeling running through her.
They were so nice, she thought. So nice, it was quite likely she might be a little bit in love with Vance’s family.
But surely that wasn’t the case.
She hadn’t fallen for the family any more than she’d fallen for Vance.
* * *
WHEN LAYLA REACHED Vance’s room, she hovered in the open doorway, her eyes going everywhere. The floor was like the rest of the house, polished pavers covered with expensive-looking area rugs. Under the windows directly across from where she stood was a massive desk fitted with little drawers and black iron pulls that gave it a Spanish flavor. To her left, flanking a dresser that matched the desk, were two doors, presumably leading to a bathroom and closet. On her right was a heavy, queen-size bed with a navy coverlet.
Lying atop it was Vance, who appeared asleep.
She rapped her knuckles lightly on the doorjamb.
He blinked, rousing, then lifted onto his elbows to peer at her through drowsy eyes. “Hey,” he said. “Where’ve you been?”
“I think that’s my question for you.”
His brows came together, and he looked about, as if puzzled by his surroundings. After a moment, he sat up and rubbed a hand over his face. “Sorry,” he said. “I came up here in search of my old softball mitt. Just stretched out for a second...”
The night before, she’d slept the deep sleep of emotional exhaustion. But perhaps he had not had a peaceful eight hours. Maybe she snored.
“I’m disturbing your rest, staying in your room at the beach house. Tonight I’ll go back to my own,” she said. The relief she felt at getting out the words let her know it was the right move. Self-protection was clearly in order. Separation from him a first priority.
His brows came together again. “I sleep with you just fine. As a matter of fact...” He crooked his forefinger. “C’mere.”
She clutched at the doorjamb. “I’m supposed to be bringing you down for dinne
r.”
“Not until you come here for a minute.”
On a sigh, she stepped into the room. “What?”
He smiled at her, the charming smile he’d inherited from his father. “Come a little closer, baby.”
The coaxing tone ran down her back like a seductive caress. Cursing her wilting willpower, she approached the bed, then yelped when he lunged forward to grab her wrist and pull her onto the mattress. “Vance!”
“Layla.” With a villainous laugh, he rolled so his long body loomed over hers.
“What do you think you’re doing?”
“I’m fulfilling a lifelong fantasy. I can’t tell you how many times I thought about getting a girl in this bed.”
“You thought about getting your high school squeeze, Marianne Kelly, in this bed,” Layla said, and promised herself her lower lip wasn’t pushing out in a pout.
Vance gave it a light bite, anyway. “I wasn’t mature enough to imagine the vision that is you,” he said, framing her face with his big hands. “You are so stunningly pretty, you know that? I’ll be seeing these big brown eyes in my dreams for the rest of my life.”
Because that’s the only place they’d be together—in dreams, she thought, but dismissed her sadness. She’d gone into this with big brown eyes wide-open, hadn’t she? Temporary lovers...because sometimes a person just needs to be held. Her very own words.
“Stunningly pretty,” he said again, his voice going softer.
Her melting response was a clear warning, and she tried pushing at his shoulders. When he didn’t budge, she frowned at him. “Are you telling me you didn’t sneak girls up here? I thought you were the resident bad boy.”
“Even I had a line I wouldn’t cross,” he said. “Once out of high school I moved into the bachelor house on the other side of the oaks and my bedroom rules were my own.” He bent as if to take her mouth.
She turned her head to the side, so he kissed her cheek. Separation, she knew, meant curtailing the lip to lip. Her gaze caught on the one wall she hadn’t seen while standing in the doorway. It was covered with shelves that were packed with trophies and photographs. “What’s all that?”
Vance glanced over his shoulder. “Souvenirs of my misspent youth.”
“Misspent? The trophies seem to tell a different story.” She pushed harder at him now so she could disentangle her body from his.
With a sigh, Vance let her up, then followed her off the mattress to inspect the memorabilia, starting at the left. A collection of little silver-and-gold baseball players perched on top of foot-high faux-marble pillars. She slid him a glance. “That looks pretty tame to me. America’s favorite pastime and all that.”
He just shrugged, and she moved farther along the shelving. Two hooks held a selection of medals suspended on ribbons, one for downhill skiiing, another for snowboard racing. Beside them were framed pictures of Vance. In each he bore the evidence of injury: a casted foot, a splinted set of fingers, a shaved patch of skull decorated by stitches.
“I think my mother put these on display in hopes they’d slow me down.”
“And did they?”
Instead of answering, he gestured to the right. Now it was trophies and medals for motocross and dirt bike races. They were partnered with more photos of a young Vance. In two he was in leathers and sporting a cut lip. A third showed him holding his arm in an odd position across his chest. She peered at it, then glanced at him.
“Broken collarbone.” Then he picked up a shark’s fin–size fragment of bright yellow fiberglass. “My first surfboard—or what’s left of it after we both wound up hitting some rocks. Damn, I loved that thing.”
At the end of the shelves was another trio of enlarged photographs. Each depicted a spectacularly crashed vehicle. A truck in a ditch. A sports car against a fire hydrant spewing water. An overturned SUV resting on its side like a dead bug.
“Vance.” Layla had to stop and suck in a breath. The accident scenes made her a little sick. “These are—were your cars? Your mom framed pictures of these, too?”
He was staring at them as if he’d never seen them before. “No,” he said slowly. “That was me.”
She widened her eyes. “Why would you take the photos in the first place?”
After a hesitation, he grimaced. “I...I was proud of them.”
She blinked. “Proud?”
He rubbed his hand over the lower half of his face. “Proud that though I totaled the car I walked away without a scratch.”
The tense note in his voice had her placing her palm on his back, stroking it in a little circle like his mom had done to her in the kitchen. She could feel the stiffness of his spine and the rigid muscles surrounding it seemed to vibrate.
“Can you believe that?” he muttered. “I was an idiot.”
“Vance...” she said, her voice soft. “You were a kid.”
“A waste,” he said, still staring at the photos. “I was a fucking waste.”
“You were a thrills and chills kind of guy,” she countered, troubled by the growing darkness of his mood. “Some people are.”
“It’s no excuse for what I put them through. No wonder...” Shaking his head, he retreated from the shelves, stumbling on the carpet until the back of his legs hit the bed. Then his butt.
Layla crossed to him, sitting close so they were thigh to thigh. “Are you all right?”
His eyes still focused across the room, he didn’t appear to have heard her. “Vance?”
With a sudden movement, he turned his head, his gaze pinning her. “Any one of those should have been the end of me,” he said, his face going hard. “Why the hell did I survive?”
The question chilled her. He was right. He had cheated death, it seemed to her, any number of times. As a child, as a young adult. Again as a soldier at war. She swallowed, hard.
“None of us can know—” she started.
“I know that I was careless with things,” he said, pointing to the automobile photos. “I know that I was reckless with my life.”
But he wasn’t that careless and reckless Vance any longer, Layla thought. As a combat medic, he needed calm control, gentle hands and a compassionate heart for those wounded and hurting. Qualities, she suspected, that were the unforeseen yet fortunate consequences of those very youthful escapades he seemed now to despise.
Turning to him, she took his face in her hands. Her gaze bore into his. “But you’re a good man now,” she told him. “Such a good man.”
The man I’ve fallen in love with.
Everything inside her stilled. Oh, my God. I...
I’m in love with Vance.
The understanding didn’t come as a thunderbolt. It didn’t feel like an anvil had fallen on her head. There was no pain in it—that would come later, she supposed, because he was still just temporarily in her life. For now, though, it was like the sunlight parting coastal clouds, bright and sure and impossible to ignore.
Did something show on her face? Because Vance’s eyes suddenly narrowed. “Layla—”
“Hey, you two!” It was Fitz, calling from the bottom of the stairs. “Come down for dinner!”
She popped up, grateful for the interruption.
“Layla, wait.” Vance made a grab for her shoulder, but she shook him off. His brother’s directive gave her an excuse to make an escape from Vance—though not, she was certain, from her newly acknowledged feelings for him.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
GUT ROILING WITH EMOTIONS, Vance hesitated in his room while Layla headed for the stairs. Something was going on with her, but the something that was going on inside of him was overwhelming his ability to read her. His gaze returned to those damning photos and he seethed, so angry at himself that he could hardly breathe.
He’d always blamed his father for the falling-out between him and his family—not understanding why the man had broken the promise of a position in the family company—but Christ, he’d been wild and irresponsible. Exactly how wild and irresponsible, he hadn’
t realized until seeing these photos again. No wonder they’d cut him loose.
That he was different now...well, how could lost trust be regained?
With a last look at what he now thought of as the Wall of Shame, Vance steeled himself to go down to dinner. It wasn’t easy, not after looking at that damning proof. Christ, he couldn’t wait for this night to be over.
At the top of the stairs, he spied Layla on the landing below. Fitz was nowhere in sight, likely already in the dining room. As Vance took his first step, a tremendous noise from outside the house filled the foyer—the screech of brakes, a squealing slide, then the unmistakable crunch of metal meeting solid object.
Car crash.
Vance froze. His imagination? Had the sound been conjured from his memories and triggered by those photos? But even before his mind could filter the truth, instinct kicked in and he was flying downward. “Call 9-1-1,” he ordered Layla, who’d come to a halt. “Get Fitz, my dad, my uncle. We need blankets and a first-aid kit.”
Wide-eyed, she ran off.
The blood in his veins burned like ice as Vance stepped onto the front porch. Oh, God. The scene was straight out of a Driver’s Ed shock film. His heart slammed against his ribs as adrenaline surged through his system. The last time he’d faced blood and injuries, it had ended in death. Still, he raced across the courtyard and toward the road, cataloging details. Red pickup on its roof, resting against the trunk of a giant oak. Windshield shattered. Front end crumpled. At least one inside; no airbags deployed. Another unmoving figure was sprawled nearby, on the side of the road.
He dropped to the ground by the driver’s window. It was broken, too, the safety glass scattered like teardrops on the truck’s headliner. As he reached to turn off the ignition, he noted the driver was a teen boy—who appeared unconscious—with a seeping scalp wound. There was a teen girl on the passenger side, eyes closed and moaning.
In his peripheral vision, he saw Fitz and his father approach at a run. “You two need to divert any oncoming traffic,” he said, and leaped to his feet to rush toward the body lying on the ground. Another teenager, male, face pale, though his eyes were open and slowly blinking at the sky overhead. Vance knelt down. “Hey,” he said, his voice gentle. “I’m Vance, I’m going to help you.”
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