“You look like a pumpkin guy.”
“I have no idea what that means.”
That made two of them.
The truth was the cookbook she’d found in her rental had the recipe and the market had the ingredients. So she made it. She really thought this was more about the gesture than the taste. And since she’d never made a pie—any pie—before, she hoped he didn’t base his willingness to forgive on how edible it was.
Time. To. Go. She stood up. “I should get home.”
“Dinner.”
“Huh?” The keys fell out of her hand. She ducked down and grabbed them. Stood up so fast again that the room spun on her.
“It’s the meal most people eat in the evening.”
She regained her balance and wrapped her fingers around the keys, refusing to let them go. “No.”
His eyebrow lifted. “No, you don’t eat it, or no, you don’t want to have it with me?”
“I’m not looking for a boyfriend.”
He didn’t try to hide his smile this time. “Wow.”
Okay, that reaction, the aren’t-you-impressed-with-yourself tone—all of it was unnecessary. “What?”
“I wasn’t offering to be your prom date.”
“I . . .” Her mind blanked out. She tried to rewind and replay their conversation. “But you said . . .”
“Dinner.” He took a couple steps across the room. Got within about five feet from her, then stopped. “Look, I barely know anyone on the island. You don’t get out much. We seem like a good match.”
Don’t get out much? It was true, but would a bit of tact kill the guy? “Who told you that?”
“The loner thing? Call it an educated guess.”
“I do better alone.” As soon as the words were out, she realized she’d admitted to the exact thing she had tried to avoid saying.
She shook the keys in her hand. The clanking soothed her but she had no idea why. Probably had something to do with the idea of freedom. She held the keys, and she was closer to the door, which meant she held the advantage.
“I’ve spent the last two years trying to convince myself I didn’t need anyone either, but I was wrong.” With each word he grew more serious.
His sister. Her murder. Maddie had read bits and pieces, all filtered through articles designed to gain attention. She knew the ending because the murderer had been caught on Whitaker a few months ago, but that didn’t mean she knew anything about Connor. Not really.
She kept repeating that mantra in her head. She might empathize and feel for him, but she wasn’t the only one in the room throwing up a defensive wall.
“Okay.” That seemed like a neutral response, so she went with that.
“Tomorrow at the Lodge. Six.” He finally broke eye contact and walked around the kitchen island until it sat between them again. “You don’t have to come. Just know I’ll be there and you’re welcome to join me.”
“Not going to happen.” She didn’t have dinner. Well, she did, but not with him . . . or dates . . . or whatever he was proposing.
He opened the box and studied the pie. “Is it me or all humans?”
“Yes.”
He glanced up at her with a smile that disappeared as quickly as it came. “Then I’ll leave you alone.”
He moved around the kitchen, grabbing a plate and a fork. Clinking and clunking things together. Then he went back to the butcher block that held the knives and pulled out a small one. He worked with ease, as if the room were a comfortable place for him.
Her comfort zone consisted of a toaster oven.
“Good.” He’d stopped paying attention to her but she felt like she should say it.
“Great,” he said without looking up.
This is what she wanted—no attachments. Drop and run. Fast and far.
She got the whole way to the front door, keys locked in her hand and her mind ready to move on to the next thing she had to do today, but one question nagged at her. He pricked and poked on the inside of her brain until she looked at him again.
She needed an answer. “Why me?”
He was too busy moving the pie plate around as he shifted the blade, increasing and decreasing the size of his anticipated piece. “Excuse me?”
“You’re reasonably good-looking.”
He froze before slowly lowering the knife. He didn’t lift his head to stare at her until the blade rested against the countertop. “That’s so flattering.”
“And you seem to make friends fine.”
“How would you know that?”
The women. The staring. All that whispering. Come on. He had to know . . . right? “Women lined up to talk with you at the Lodge.”
He frowned at her. “Were we at the same Lodge?”
She might call him McHottiePants in her head but some of the things the women in the Lodge said out loud . . . wow. Married. Single. None of that seemed to matter. Connor sat in a room and the gazes zoomed in on him. She noticed. He had to notice.
She also wanted an honest answer. “So, of all the choices to run after, why pick me?”
His eyes bulged. “Run after?”
“Enough with the self-deprecating crap. Answer the question.”
He whistled. “If you insist, the answer is I’m not sure.”
She snorted. “Really?”
The question earned her an eye roll. He shot her one, then started talking. “Except that the sadness I see in your eyes looks familiar.”
Sadness? Nope. He didn’t get to do that. He knew her for five seconds and was drawing conclusions and pitying her. She hated all of that. “Don’t analyze me.”
“Wouldn’t dream of it.”
“The answer is still no.” She didn’t elaborate but she doubted she needed to. The dinner question hovered over them.
He went back to cutting the pie. “Understood.”
“You’re frustrating.”
He lifted a huge wedge of pie—the equivalent of at least three actual servings—and slipped it onto the waiting plate. “Want to go back to talking about my stitches and how I got them?”
Yeah, he was never going to let that unfortunate little incident go.
She opened the door and sent him what she hoped was a look that telegraphed they were even and done. “Goodbye, Connor.”
“I’ll see you around town, Maddie.” He dug into the pie and made a satisfied humming sound as he gave it a try.
The look on his face was kind of cute. All smiling and happy and appreciative.
She refused to be swayed. “You’re not getting the last word.”
He swallowed the bite. “Yes, I am.”
Chapter 7
She made a friend.
A random guy who had been on the island for all of ten seconds. A nobody. Nothing interesting about him. Average in every way except that she moved in on him immediately. No games with this one. No pretending. Right to flirting and helping.
Brought him a fucking pie.
Little Miss Needy couldn’t control herself. Always investing in the wrong people. Looking in the wrong places for security. Ignoring the warning signs and moving in.
She never learned.
All that careful planning unraveled watching her now. Subtlety had failed. She needed to know this was serious. Deadly, even. Ratchet up the pressure and send a physical reminder of just how shitty her life could be. Make her understand that her behavior, once again, forced them into this position. The way she toyed with men. Her refusal to be honest.
Her life was no longer in her hands. No more games or tricks.
After all that time and the hours of watching her, it was time to move in. No more trouble. No more running. No other men. Ever.
She would pay for this.
Chapter 8
“You’re standing outside.” Sylvia delivered that bit of wisdom as she pushed the hood of her jacket off her head and stepped into the circle of white lighting the entry to the Lodge’s double front doors. “And staring into . . .” Sylvia squin
ted as she looked out over the front lawn, illuminated by strings of dainty lights wrapping around and traveling up the trees lining the driveway. “Nothing. Unless you see something I don’t.”
Maddie didn’t think she’d ever get used to the genuine, homey, too-much-chatter conversation the people on Whitaker liked to engage in. They didn’t just say hello. They commented on the weather or what they just ate. Lots of words, all to convey one thought—hello—because, for some reason, a plain hello was never enough.
The island thrived on gossip. It fueled every moment and every interaction, even as the people who lived there delighted in reassuring each other that the residents kept to themselves here. Maddie blamed the divorce from reality on the seclusion. Being cloistered together, seeing only each other for days, weeks, even months at a time, made everyone search out ways to stay alert and keep active.
Unfortunately, her dating life—or the lack of—had moved up on Whitaker’s Most Interesting Topics list. Lucky her.
“I needed some air.” The answer, short and clear, should stop any other—
“The rain just stopped but the temperature dropped below forty and the wind is icy cold,” Sylvia said, plowing forward as she shifted to the side, letting the unusual parade of people shuffling in and out of the Lodge pass by her.
“But the air is outside, so here I am.” There, that should do it.
Maddie loved Sylvia. Her charm and the way she stepped in to assist, coddle, and apply a bit of pressure when needed, never looking for anything in return. She functioned as the island’s welcoming committee, mostly because she ran the one place on Whitaker that any tourist, and they didn’t get many, needed to find if they wanted a bed for the night.
She also made the perfect cup of coffee and a banana cream pie that made Maddie’s mouth water. She seriously considered going inside just to grab a slice.
“Maddie.”
Right. The unwanted conversation. The one that clearly hadn’t ended yet. “Hmm?”
“That’s not a great explanation.”
Yeah, no kidding. “I’m just trying to . . .” What was she trying to do? Part of her hoped a wave of common sense would crash over her and send her running back home. The other part fought the urge to run her fingers through her hair.
She’d worn a dress tonight. Outside. In public. Sure, she’d piled on some leggings and threw on rain boots that screamed sensible, not sexy. But the dress. Black and knee-length and the only one she now owned. The closet in her former life had been filled with skirts and dresses and high heels. Now she lived in jeans and whatever shoes guaranteed she could kick the hardest and run the fastest.
“Maddie, honey.” Sylvia snapped her fingers in front of Maddie’s face. “I sense it’s been a while but there’s no reason to be nervous.”
She’d lost the thread of the conversation because she thought they’d slipped into a discussion of boots. “What are you talking about?”
“It’s only a dinner. Eating with a handsome man doesn’t need to produce this much stress.” Sylvia ended the comment with a wink.
Well, she could unwink, because no. “I’m not here for Connor.”
Sylvia bit her bottom lip in what looked like a failed attempt to hide the smile that overtook her. “Okay.”
Maddie blamed Connor for this. Him and his stupid pretty face. His stupid invitation to dinner. His stupid . . . When her mind circled back to his face again, she cut off the thought with a hard blink. “Wait, why do you think I’m here for dinner?”
“I saw Connor sitting alone and asked him to join me but he said he might have company. And now I see you out here, fidgeting and panicking.” Sylvia didn’t even try to hide her amusement this time. “I put two and two together.”
“It’s not a date.” Maddie said the line more out of habit than anything. She’d repeated the mantra during the entire walk to the Lodge from her house. That constituted a mile of muttering the same four words to herself.
Yeah, nothing weird about that.
Sylvia looked past her, toward the floor-to-ceiling windows in the dining room. “He hasn’t ordered yet.”
She would not look. She would not look. “Who?”
Sylvia let out a labored and not-so-quiet sigh. “Your nondate.”
“Ah, yes. Him.” Mr. McHottiePants. The guy she should have avoided from the beginning. “Any idea when he’s leaving Whitaker?”
Sylvia shrugged. “Go inside and ask him yourself.”
“That feels like a violation of the Girl Code. You should be helping me.”
Sylvia reached around Maddie and opened the Lodge’s door. “I am.”
Connor gave her fifteen extra minutes before he scanned the menu, determined to eat alone and not care. He could take a hint. It’s not as if she’d agreed to his proposal . . . or suggestion, or whatever this whole food thing was.
Not interested. Got it.
The whole invitation had been a shitty idea anyway. She’d snuck into his house, hit him, threatened him, and then got grumpy when he expected an apology. Paying for her dinner after that might send a weird message.
Just as he got to the menu’s entrée section, he sensed a shift in the room. Looking up, he spied her hovering in the doorway to the dining room. Half in, half out and holding a raincoat that looked only slightly smaller than the oversized one she’d worn yesterday.
He wasn’t the only one who noticed her fumbling around but not actually moving. The entire room did a collective stop-and-stare.
Her hair did him in. Pulled back off her face with stray sexy strands curling down next to each cheek turned a rosy pink from the night air. And the boots. Olive and rubber, stopping just below her knees with a dress that hit right above.
The look totally worked for him.
He stared at her until she stared back. For a second their gazes held and she didn’t move. A bit of the color left her face before she threw her shoulders back and took on that I’m-going-to-burn-this-place-down bravado she shot at him when they met in Ben’s office.
Yeah, good times.
Her eyes narrowed for a second before she plastered a neutral expression on her face and came over to the table. She didn’t sit. Nope, not Maddie. She loomed over him, standing at the edge with a death grip on her coat.
There might be some sort of social guidance about how to have dinner with someone who looked like she’d rather be at a funeral, but he didn’t know what it was. So he went with the safest option. “Hello?”
She glanced at the folded napkin resting on his unused plate. “You haven’t eaten yet.”
“No.”
“You’re still wearing the bandage on your head.” She nodded in his general direction.
“I still have the stitches.”
“How does it feel?”
Since she was biting on her bottom lip and looking wary about his response, he softened the truth. “Much better.”
She hummed before responding. “Interesting.”
He had no idea why that would be the case. “I love these little talks we have.”
“Right.” She spun around and headed back for the doorway.
“Damn it,” he mumbled under his breath as he shot to his feet. In a few steps he stood in front of her, blocking her path but giving her plenty of room to maneuver around him and out of the dining room if that’s what she wanted to do. “That was a joke.”
“I know.”
Almost every sentence she uttered confused the hell out of him. For some reason, that intrigued him . . . and convinced him that he was in even greater need of a vacation than he originally thought. “Then why are you leaving?”
She leaned in and lowered her voice. “I don’t like the staring.”
So she’d noticed. He couldn’t deny it, but he hadn’t meant to make her twitchy. “The dress and the boots. I liked the combination. Kind of cute and—”
Her eyes narrowed again. “What are you talking about?”
He was starting to wonder. “Your out
fit.”
She held her jacket away from her body and looked down before glaring at him. “What’s wrong with it?”
“Nothing.” Not one damn thing.
“I don’t understand you.”
They finally found something they agreed on. “Yeah, same.”
“I meant the room. Everyone in here.” She had her back to the room but she wasn’t wrong. Most of the eating and talking had stopped when she walked in.
He thought about pointing out how standing in the middle of the room for no apparent reason would only ratchet up the problem but he motioned to his now-empty table instead. “Ignore them.”
“That’s not so easy.”
“They’re staring at both of us and you still need to eat. So, dinner?”
She nodded and walked past him. Didn’t even stop as she muttered, “This isn’t a date.”
“Okay.”
It took another ten minutes for her to get settled, sip some water, and scan the menu. As far as awkward dates went, he’d had worse. But, as she pointed out numerous times, this wasn’t actually a date anyway.
Before he could come up with a half-intelligent sentence to break through the crust of ice growing between them, she looked up. “The lemon chicken, right?”
“Excuse me?”
“The other day.” She folded the menu and set it down on her plate. “You said it was good.”
“You remembered.”
She sighed. “Connor . . .”
“I meant that I didn’t think you heard me when I praised it.” She had him spinning in circles. The sensation kept him dizzy and off balance, and he didn’t hate it. “It’s very good.”
The waitress broke into the stilted conversation, took their order, and left. Connor almost hated to see her go. With the food-choice part out of the way, that left the slog of conversation until the plates arrived. He’d never felt this on edge with a woman, as if one tiny step would send him sailing into her off-limits category.
She leaned back in her chair with her elbows balanced on the armrests. “You’re a workaholic.”
“Interesting conversation starter.” But not wrong. When she didn’t say anything else, he decided to go with it. “Who told you that?”
The Secret She Keeps EPB Page 5