by Meg Maguire
He’d just humiliated her on television, maybe even broken her heart, if their feelings were as mutual as he’d hoped only this morning. Intentional or not, he’d done all that, and he couldn’t harass her on top of it...but neither could he give up. He banged on the glass, shouting a last-ditch plea.
“Leigh! We have to talk. I’ll be on the beach when you’re ready.”
He walked down to the shore and sat facing the water. He’d wait as long as he had to. As long as it took for her to come out, or to call Reception and have him physically removed. He owed her far more than patience, and he’d sit out here until the sun was bleaching his bare bones, if that’s what it took.
* * *
LEIGH CHECKED HER PHONE. Ten o’clock, and Will was still sitting on her beach. From the dark bedroom, she could just make him out in the moonlight, and she shook her head at his tenacity. Then again, she could have called and asked to have him escorted away hours ago.
Did she want to talk to him, or merely to know he was out there, suffering? The former, she finally admitted to herself. She didn’t want assurances he cared about her—she’d never be able to believe him, anyhow. But she did want the truth. She wanted to know why he’d hurt her.
Just before eleven, she slid the patio door open and shivered in the cool night air. She crossed the sand silently, and before she announced her presence, she studied him. His strong arms were wrapped around his bent knees, his eyes fixed on the dark sea. That capable body looked broken, his energy gone from vibrant to despairing.
Yes, Will Burgess was a very good actor. Better than Leigh could ever hope to be.
She kicked sand at his leg and he snapped into action, scrambling to his feet.
“Leigh.”
“Sit,” she said, and took a seat herself, hugging her legs.
Will sat and his mouth opened and closed two or three times. He smiled weakly, clearly at a loss. “I don’t know what to say to—”
“You don’t know what to say?” She laughed. “You better figure something out, because I only came out to hear whatever pathetic justifications you might have for lying to me.”
Again his lips parted, but nothing emerged.
“You’ve been sitting here for five hours and didn’t rehearse a grand speech? A farewell performance?”
“I never lied to you, Leigh.”
“No? You kept a pretty straight face when that first story broke. No clue who leaked that to the press, huh? Then the photos?” It hurt to even look at him, this handsome man who’d gone from heady crush to gigantic mistake so quickly. So publicly.
“I didn’t tell them a thing. And I didn’t take those pictures. How could I have?”
“But you told someone else to. You knew you’d take me fishing that morning. You could have easily tipped someone off.”
“I didn’t have a thing to do with it, I swear.” He drew a deep breath before looking her square in the eyes. “But I did talk to the press, before you came here. I agreed to help them, but I never did. I backed out.”
For a long moment, neither spoke, then he said, “I’m sorry I hurt you.”
The words stung. She didn’t want him knowing he’d hurt her, that she cared. But anyone could’ve seen the affection she’d beamed at him those fleeting, blissful nights. Anyone could guess what a moron she felt like now.
“How could you have let things go as far as they did, knowing I felt something for you?”
“I felt it, too.”
She made a disgusted noise, shaking her head.
“I was never with you for the story. I never planned to get close to you. All I thought it would be was chatting with you, on the plane, selling a few innocent details. Nothing ugly. Nothing personal. I never went digging for dirt.”
“But I’m sure you gave yourself a big high five every time I dropped some in your lap.”
“No, I didn’t. Once we talked at the party, I knew I couldn’t go through with it. I told the tabloid editor to fuck off that same night. That’s what I meant when I told you my gig fell through.”
“Maybe,” she said, nodding. “Maybe that’s true. Maybe the second you realized you could sleep with me. Maybe right then, you decided you couldn’t take the money.”
“That’s not fair.”
“Don’t tell me what’s fair and what’s not. You’re always just the right price away from selling your ethics, aren’t you? A bribe or an extra paycheck or an invitation into somebody’s bed. I bet right now you’re wishing you stuck with the money.” She huffed a breath. “You slept with me. What were you hoping to buy when you auctioned off the details on that one? Your own island?”
“I never—”
“Tell me, Will, am I going to discover in a week’s time that I’ve joined the celebrity sex-tape club?”
Her eyes had adjusted to the dark and she could see when his face fell, utterly. “Oh, Leigh. Jesus, no. Like I said, I told them to screw off the second I got to know you. The second I realized I was in danger of having feelings for you—”
She shot to her feet, cutting off his reply. “I don’t know what I came out here expecting to hear. And I don’t care what your excuses are. I just know I’ve spent the last ten years desperately trying to stay sane and respectable.” She dusted the sand from her legs, not meeting his eyes. “Coming here the way I did, that was my own fault. But this... Well, all this is my fault, too. For trusting a man I barely knew, and for not having the good sense to expect that this is exactly what would happen.” She should have known this was the only way it could have ended. Not like those stupid movies. If only everything had faded to black, credits rolling just after they kissed on the beach...
Will stood. “Leigh—”
“Enjoy whatever justifications let you sleep at night, but spare me, please. All you are to me now is a mistake, one I should have seen coming a mile away. I screwed up, trusting you and telling you so much. I screwed up when I slept with you, and when I fell for you. Because I did. I don’t care if that makes you feel like a shit or a huge frigging stud. I can only control how it makes me feel, which is disappointed. But I’ll get over it. You were a hard, ugly lesson to learn, Will Burgess. And I hope I forget about you as soon as possible.”
“Leigh—”
“I know you haven’t accepted my manager’s deal, by the way.”
“Of course I didn’t.”
“I can only assume it’s because you’re holding out for more, or because you think you can get a bigger payoff from the press if you tell them everything you know. And you know...” She felt the tears again, the heat rising in her face. “You know what happened the morning of my wedding. The worst day of my life.” Second worst day of her life.
Will kept his mouth shut, holding her gaze in the near dark.
“We both know you could sell the story. But if any of what you’ve said to me tonight is true, prove it by at least keeping your mouth shut about that. Everything that happened between us was my mistake, and your secret to blab to whoever wants to cut you the fattest check. But that stuff about me and Dan isn’t yours.”
“I’m not going to tell anyone anything. Especially not that.”
“I’ll believe it when I see it.” She started to turn away, then stopped. “And if you really do have a sick father, I hope he gets better. And I hope your club is successful, so you won’t wake up and realize you got his hopes up for nothing, like you did mine. If karma doesn’t come back to bite you in the ass, I hope you’re goddamn grateful for whatever you get from jerking me around.”
Despite the persisting misery, Leigh felt lighter as she turned and headed toward the patio. She’d said everything she needed to, and she’d leave here tomorrow with no regrets regarding how she’d handled things.
She felt sand hit the backs of her calves as Will jogged to catch up.
�
�Leigh, I have no idea what to say to make you believe me.”
“That makes two of us.”
“Even when I first took the offer and we were total strangers, I never wanted to hurt you. I could have told them any number of things about what happened between us, and I didn’t.”
“You couldn’t. I’d have known it was you.”
“No, that’s not why.”
“Spare me, Will.”
“I didn’t—”
She whirled toward him. “Don’t. Just don’t. Even if you did refuse that paycheck, even if you did feel bad about it, how could you have accepted my offer of money without coming clean?”
Will’s expression changed, and when he spoke his voice was soft and quiet. “I didn’t want to lose you.”
“Lose my money, you mean.”
“No, you. I couldn’t stand the idea of hurting you. And not just because of how guilty I’d feel. Because I knew how much it meant to you, feeling like a normal person here and being taken at face value. And that is how I felt about you, as soon as I got to know you. I just wanted the mistake I made to go away, like it had never happened. You deserved to feel that what we had was real.”
“I deserved to live a lie? I deserved to sleep with a man who was being paid to get dirt on me, and believe it was what I so badly wanted it to be?”
“No, it wasn’t a lie. Everything that happened between us was real to me. The second I felt something for you, I called it off.”
She shook her head. “All that tells me is that you value sex slightly more than money. You may be ethical enough to know you can’t take both, but that doesn’t make you a good person. It sure as hell doesn’t make you into the man I thought I was falling in love with.”
That shut him up. They stared at one another for a few seconds, and when Leigh walked away, she knew he wasn’t following.
She entered her villa through the bedroom, locked the door. She went to the living room and sifted through freshly missed calls and messages, and after ten minutes or more, she heard Will’s truck start up and drive away.
She dropped her head into her palms. She prayed he’d take Angela’s buyout over what the press might offer him. How pathetic that she’d fallen for Will, thinking him the antithesis of Hollywood duplicity. She’d have given him that money gladly. She’d practically begged him to let her, and she’d bought his hesitation. Now he’d get that and more, from her or the tabloids. He nearly deserved it—he’d played her like a fiddle.
But he’d hurt far more than her bank account or her pride. He’d wrecked her hope that she’d ever find true love, a man who loved her for who she really was. For a few glorious days she thought she’d found that, but it had been an illusion, as phoney as a movie set.
Whatever profit came to Will for all her heartbreak, she hoped it was saddled with a steep tax of guilt. But more than that, she wanted him punished, she wanted him gone. Rounded up with all the other regrets of the past ten years, packed away and left to collect dust while she moved on. Living one’s life well was said to be the best revenge, and Leigh would do just that. And if she never thought about Will Burgess again, she’d be halfway there.
* * *
AN EXCEEDINGLY UNWELCOME sight greeted Will as he arrived at the dock the next morning. Twenty feet from his own plane was another one. Bigger, newer, certainly more expensive, and splashed with the logo of a charter company that served islands off the southern coast of Barbados. He strode into the reception area. He was bound to get fired sooner or later. No point putting it off.
There was indeed a strange pilot loitering by the front desk, chatting with the receptionist and the day manager, Analee. His uniform was crisp, its patches more for show than to tout any actual accomplishment, Will decided. He walked over, faking cheer.
“Morning, ladies.”
Analee nodded curtly, with nothing like her usual warm demeanor. “Captain.”
“This my replacement?” Will aimed a thumb in the stranger’s direction.
Analee crossed her arms over her imposing bosom. “No. There’s a special charter this morning. You’re still the pilot ’round here.”
For now. “Special charter?”
“One of the guests requested it.”
The pilot stepped forward and offered a hand and an introduction, which Will returned grudgingly.
He bade them goodbye, panic rising in his chest as he exited. Leigh had requested this asshole, no doubt. What had Will expected? That she’d stick out the rest of her honeymoon after he broke her heart? The resort would surely be comping her stay, to make up for what had happened. Even if they did value Will’s service enough to overlook his nearly getting in bed with a tabloid—for that matter, a guest—they’d be garnisheeing his wages for years to recoup the loss. Though it was far more likely he’d be fired as soon as the gossip dust settled and they had all the facts straight.
It burned. These people had been Will’s family for the better half of a decade, and he’d let everyone down. Let himself down. Let Leigh down, which tied for the lowest low right beside letting his dad down.
But now wasn’t the time for regret. This was the last chance he’d have to talk to Leigh before she flew out of his life for good.
* * *
LEIGH’S CAR ARRIVED at ten-thirty sharp. The driver helped her with her suitcases and she bade a goodbye to the villa, a week sooner than planned. It wasn’t a good riddance...not quite. Though the memories she’d made here with Will had withered from roses to ash, she’d also gotten a lot figured out about herself within these walls and on the surrounding sand. She was bruised, but she’d started to feel like herself again, for the first time in years.
Sleep hadn’t arrived the previous night, and she hoped once she was on a flight back to Los Angeles it might catch up with her. Though more likely, somebody would recognize her between Bridgetown and LAX, throw her off balance and she’d be back to square one. Such was the price of living in reality.
Sadly, she was doomed to be thrown off balance before even leaving Harrier Key. Will’s plane should have been long gone for the mainland, but she spotted it from the parking lot. And as the hired pilot escorted Leigh and her bags from the car, she found Will himself waiting halfway down the dock, arms locked over his chest.
“Make way kindly, Captain,” Leigh’s new pilot said as they approached.
“Just need to talk to Miss Bailey.”
“I don’t want to talk to you,” she said over her escort’s shoulder. “You had your chance to say what you needed to last night, and that’s more than I owed you.”
Will’s posture changed once he was speaking to her, not the pilot. His shoulders sank and his face went from set to pained. “I don’t even want to talk, Leigh. I want to know what I can do to fix this.”
“Make way,” the new pilot repeated, beginning to crowd Will. He stepped to the edge of the dock, letting them pass, then followed.
“Leigh, tell me what I can do.”
“You’ve already done plenty. More than enough, in fact.”
“Tell me how to make this up to you.”
She stopped to glare at him, both stopping in their tracks. “By leaving me alone.” His expression gave her the tiniest pause, that same broken glimmer she’d seen when he spoke about his father’s situation. Too bad for him, she wasn’t ready to believe it was anything more than another tool in his manipulative arsenal. “Just stay out of my life.”
She turned to catch up with the new pilot.
“I’m in love with you, Leigh.”
She froze. For a long moment she stared at her feet, at the water glinting between the aluminum slats. Heat was rising through her like steam. No, lava. Her fists shook as she turned to glare daggers at him.
“Leigh—”
“How dare you say that.” Two yea
rs hadn’t been enough for Dan to truly love her. How would Will claim to feel the same after a single week?
“It’s true.”
She closed the ten-foot gap between them, marching right up to give him a sharp shove in the chest. It sent him back a pace, nowhere near enough to knock him on his butt or send him toppling into the waves. But for deferring little people-pleaser Leigh Bailey, it was a full-on assault. Oddly enough, it was herself that Leigh wanted to knock some sense into, because for better or worse, she’d fallen in love with Will. Just as quickly, and far more foolishly.
“You don’t love me. You barely know me.”
Will paused a beat or two before saying simply, “I love you, anyway.”
“Live in that delusion if it makes you feel better, but it won’t change the fact that you don’t respect me. Not my privacy or my feelings or my space even, coming here like this. You just love yourself, and you can’t stand letting me leave thinking badly of you.”
“You know that’s not true.” Sure, he’d never seemed too worried about her opinion of his character when they’d first met. But still.
“Love me all you want. But I can’t wait to get home and forget about you. If you loved me—if you respected me—you’d leave me alone to do just that. So that’s how you make this up to me, Will Burgess. You keep standing right there and let me make my getaway.”
His blue eyes were full of defeat. He didn’t speak, didn’t follow. When Leigh’s plane took off he was right where she’d left him on the dock, standing with his hands in his pockets. He didn’t wave as the craft banked and charted a course for Bridgetown. Leigh watched him fade until he was just another speck, another anonymous shape to leave behind with the rest of her disastrous honeymoon.
12
THE FIRST WEEK BACK HOME was the worst. The meetings were endless; daily meetings with Angela and the other members of the PR team. Meetings with friends who’d excitedly bought new dresses and gifts for Leigh’s wedding and deserved some answers.
But things slowly quieted down. Leigh submitted to a second interview, with a respectable fashion and lifestyle magazine. She let them do an editorial photo shoot centered around her holding billowing swathes of gauzy fabric before a wind machine on the beach, a metaphor about her newfound freedom or some such stylish nonsense. More designed to sell the summer’s hot trends, but what the hell, it was fun. And the interviewer let Leigh focus mainly on her future plans instead of the details of her split with Dan or her rebound with...