“I really like the pictures. Pretty without being too pretty, definitely more modern. And the lack of bean soup references,” Nell replied. “I’m not sure about the slogan, though.”
“Not sure about what slogan?” They turned to find Ned standing behind them, shrugging out of his jacket. He smiled and slid into the seat beside Ana, tucking his arm around the railing of her chair and leaning so he could see the screen better.
Nell said, “Ana’s doing a trendy, minimalist thing, which I like, but I don’t know about that slogan.”
“Hmmm, how about ‘Let the Winds of Fate Blow You Here?’” Ned asked. “It sounds more active.”
“I think if you listen to that a few more times in your head, you’ll realize how bad that is,” Nell deadpanned. “And you can’t just change one word in the slogan—while making a unintentional oral sex solicitation, I might add—and then act like you did something.”
Ned shrugged. “OK, but is it the right word?”
“I think I’ve mentioned several times that it’s not,” Nell told him.
“This felt like such a grown-up conversation until the oral sex solicitation,” Ana mused, chewing on her burger.
“Don’t be impressed, Nell only knows the word ‘solicitation’ because I help her with crossword puzzles,” John said, approaching from behind Ned’s chair and kissing Nell’s cheek.
Nell scoffed as John sat in the last available chair at the table. “You’re not with me for my crossword skills.”
“Should you be drinking that?” Ana asked, nodding at his beer and then made a vague gesture at his deputy uniform.
“Who’s going to tell me any different?” John asked.
“Your dad?” Ana suggested.
John jerked his thumb over his shoulder, where his ancient father, also in uniform, was finishing off a bottle of Bud. Ana laughed. “That makes sense.”
“Speaking of dad, would you care to explain why he told me he would be skipping out on half of his shifts because he’s going to be working the forges three days a week for ‘as long as he damn well pleases?’”
Nell nodded. “I meant to ask—as of this morning, we have an order for more than five hundred weather vanes pending from the gift shop website. I wasn’t even aware that we had gift shop website.”
Ana grinned, pulling out her phone and showing Nell her Instagram account and a post that featured a photo of her fish-shaped weather vane, shown to perfection in the light of the setting sun. “I just happened to post this exclusive preview of the renovations I’m doing to my new ‘island hideaway’ and how I found this amazing vintage weather vane to top my meditation turret. How it was only available from artisan craftsman here on Espoir Island and I’d only managed to get one after being on the waitlist for months. But if you wanted to get on the waitlist, you could click on the link I provided.”
“What kind of horse shit is that?” Nell demanded. “It’s going to take us months to make all of them. Won’t that slow down orders? We need something that will sustain us over time.”
“Oh, trust me, the kind of people you want for customers love waiting lists. It makes them feel like they’re getting something exclusive and difficult to attain. And once the trend runs through my New York contacts, it will make some sort of list in a magazine or a vlog and the West Coast will follow suit. And the tourism dollars will get pulled along with it.”
“That’s your strategy, making trendy social climbers jealous?” Ned asked, his expression dubious.
“I made snail mucus facials and indoor juniper groves the thing last year. Don’t doubt my powers,” Ana retorted.
“That’s gross,” Nell told her.
“I’m just glad you’re on our side,” Ned marveled.
“What about ‘The Struggle is Real?’” John suggested. “Nell said that’s part of your ‘theme.’”
Ana was oddly touched that Nell talked about this at home. She was part of the conversation here on the island and not in a tragic, gossipy way. She liked it. She liked the way Ned and John just joined them, casually, because they were comfortable with each other. All that discomfort and resentment with Ned, it was just…gone. They were, well, she couldn’t completely define their relationship, but things were definitely better.
She liked their relationship. She liked her relationship with Nell—and she never thought she would call anything involving Nell a ‘relationship.’ And yes, eating a casual cheeseburger would have made her break out into anxiety hives six months before, but she preferred this. Sitting in a familiar, cozy place, eating unpretentious food, with people who cared about her. And she realized that John was staring at her, waiting for a response. “It’s funny, but a little too trendy.”
Ned pulled a face. “I think that makes it sound like coming here is a struggle.”
He turned to Ana. “What were some of your backups?”
“It’s quite the list,” Ana warned him, opening the file.
Ned shrugged, sipping his beer. “We’ve got time.”
* * *
Spring roared onto the island like a pissed off lion, bringing high winds and surging storms. May squalls were notoriously rough on Espoir, as the island seemed to lie on some sort of invisible line where warm and cold fronts collided over the water. It was one of the reasons Ned insisted on replacing the windows early in the renovation, even when it meant exposing the house to frigid temperatures. They couldn’t risk the spring rains soaking the walls or floors during replacement.
One such rainy afternoon, Ana walked into the parlor, watching as Ned inspected the finish he’d applied to the floors the day before. Ana did much of the pre-finish sanding herself, going over the wood in circles until her arms ached with the vibrations of the power sander. Rain was pouring over the house in sheets, flooding the road. It appeared that the lake was trying to reach up to smack the house off the hill.
She’d become so used to him being in the house with her, it felt empty without him. The rooms smelled like him after he left for the day. His tools were spread all over. He’d started letting himself in without knocking, so that sometimes she came down the stairs in the morning to find him already working. While he was still somewhat distant, seeing him every day brought back that feeling of connection, the comfort of having Ned in her life. She wasn’t sure she deserved that, but it was nice to have.
“It’s starting to look like a real home again,” she said.
Ned stood, cracking his back, as he grinned at the shiny maple floor. “Yeah, it’s really coming together.”
“I’ve got a pot of chicken noodle soup ready, if you’re hungry. The road’s flooding anyway, so you might be stuck here for a while.”
“Did you make the soup?” he asked, his brows raised.
“Yes. I am capable of putting food items in a pot and leaving them alone,” she said, shaking her head at him.
“Well, I thought you’d forgotten how to do things like that for yourself, what with all the servants,” he said, crossing the room to put away his tools.
Her voice was as dry as dust when she told him, “Well, life skills like tying my own shoes are slowly coming back to me.”
Ned’s head whipped toward her. “You had someone to tie them for you?”
“No!” she scoffed. “I had someone to pick them out for me. A stylist who would coordinate outfits for us.”
“You couldn’t do that on your own? Go shopping?”
“Oh, I did, but I never found stuff that suited me as well as she did.”
“What about buying groceries?” he asked.
“The chef did that. I had a housekeeper to keep the apartment clean and running, a driver, a florist who delivered flowers every week, a laundress.” She paused and started giggling. “I had an assistant who opened my mail for me. I had a personal mail sorter. How stupid is that? How removed from your life do you have to be, not to open your own mail?”
“Are you having some sort of hysterical episode?” he asked.
“
No, I just realized how ridiculous it all is,” she said, wiping at her eyes. “I mean, I’m not going to lie and say I got lost in the glamour and the money. I found myself. I found who I wanted to be. Someone who was strong and independent and used the money she had to help people. I worked for charities. I volunteered. I said the word and things happened. I will say that I probably got so caught up in that, that I didn’t recognize what was happening around me.”
He nodded, his lips pressed together. “I can see how that would happen.”
“And when you asked me, if ever I thought about you? I thought about you a lot. When things were difficult with Bash, and in the last couple of years, that was more often than not, I would wonder what you were doing, what my life would be like if I stayed.”
“How did you think it would have turned out?” he asked. “Because I pictured the house looking like this—maybe a little better than this—us living here, our kids, being happy.”
She scoffed. “Oh, I never got that far. I dried my tears with hundred-dollar bills and forgot about it.”
“Smartass,” he said, grinning at her as she cackled. “I forgot what a smartass you are. And you were never sorry about it.”
“Not once,” she said, shaking her head.
Suddenly, he surged forward and captured her mouth with his. His hands were just as big and warm and rough as they’d been years before, when they closed around her jaw. He pulled away, bending his forehead against hers while he panted over her skin.
“Please don’t stop,” she whispered. “Please don’t talk yourself out of this.”
“I’m not,” he swore. “I’m just trying to figure out if I can get away with carrying you up the stairs.”
“I think we’re both of an age where it’s better not to risk it,” she said, laughing as she backed away, while stripping out of her shirt. He chased after her, damn near tripping as he tried to kick off his boots on the way up the stairs. He caught her just before they reached the big master bed, tugging her jeans down her thighs and knocking her gently back across the mattress.
She tried not to think how different she looked from the last time they were together, what he might see that he didn’t like. It had been a very long time since anyone had touched her and she would enjoy this. No thinking about former husbands and their hands when perfectly good hands were already on her body willing to reach between her thighs and do that thing with his thumb. He’d always been so good at that thing with his thumb. Hell, from what she heard around the hallways, Ned was one of the few boys at their school who knew where to put his thumb.
She wouldn’t worry about the bed not being made or what underwear she was wearing. She wouldn’t worry about which positions would hide her flaws. There was only touch and taste and the smell of his skin as he hovered over her, palming her breasts and kissing the place at the hollow of her throat that always drove her crazy. His hands shook ever so slightly as he touched her, like he was afraid she would disappear again. He nibbled his way down her bared rib cage—and sliding his arms under her hips, pulling her to meet his mouth. He slipped his fingers inside her, plunging and curling them just so, while warm tension built in her belly.
She refused to be embarrassed, at how quickly that lovely heat spiraled into a full-blown, toe-curling, eye-crossing climax. It had been months since Sebastian had touched her and Sebastian certainly hadn’t known how to do the thing with his thumb. Or his other fingers. Or his tongue.
He crawled his way up her body, his eyes darkened and full of determined mischief. The lights sputtered out in the hallway, plunging them into darkness, as he sank into her with a reverent sigh.
Later, long after the lights flickered back on, she sprawled across Ned’s sweat-sheened chest, her hair plastered across her face.
“So, we’re still pretty good at that,” he panted.
“Well, yeah.” She pushed up on her elbows, peering down at him. “That was not the problem. You were never the problem. It was all of the things that came along with you.”
He pushed her hair out of her face. “Is this an apology or a multi-layered insult, because it’s very difficult to tell the difference.”
“It’s not that I don’t want you. I wanted you then and I want you now. And you’ve always been better than me. Kinder. Less selfish. More thoughtful.”
He raised his head to glare at her, but there was no real heat in it. “Those are all the same thing.”
“I mean, it was here. This place, the island, the responsibilities, the permanence.”
“Why wasn’t here, enough?” he asked.
“Because I wanted to see the outside world. And at first, it was enough. There’s so much out there.”
“Did any of it make you happy?”
“Yes,” she told him, making him snort. “Tropical islands. The Eiffel Tower. Five-star restaurants. The Grand Canyon. Day spas, regular spas. It all made me very happy.”
He gave her a knowing look.
“OK, it made me temporarily very happy. And then I would go back to my life and I would realize what was missing in my marriage and in my home. And I would frantically try to fix it, and it never worked. So I would try to focus on those things that made me temporarily happy. They were distractions. You were never a distraction.”
“And do you still feel that here isn’t enough?”
She jerked her shoulders. “I don’t know. It could be. It helps that I’m not running around, chasing distractions. I just need more time to work everything out in my head.”
Ned chuckled, tucking her against his side. “You’re still terrible at apologizing.”
“I accept that.”
7
After months of work, Fishscale House was finally market ready. Or at least, it only looked way less haunted. The doorbell was changed something far more bell-like, for starters. Ned had painted the interior walls a softer white, the kind of finish that looked good in firelight and bold summer sun. The floors shone bright in the light pouring through the windows. The staircase gleamed, polished and good as new. She’d used lemon-scented wax on all of the wood surfaces and it smelled clean and new, like home.
Ned was in the parlor, installing some sort of new grate in the fireplace. It was the very last piece to be installed. She’d started walking into the parlor to show him her redesigned poster for the new genealogical center, but she stopped to watch him work, with a little smile on her face…which had a lot to do with how he was bent over in the fireplace, his denim-clad butt pointed towards her.
She sat on the bottom step, contemplating the interior of Fishscale House… and Ned’s rear. She could spend the rest of her life staring at that butt. She balanced her chin on her hand, smiling to herself. A long-term relationship with him would probably require a little more of her—conversations, probably; emotional availability, sex, commitment, spending way less time on social media or worrying about public opinion, locally or globally. But she thought maybe she could handle that. Ned was a lot of things she’d been missing for years—open, kind, loyal. He understood that Ana had emotional needs that couldn’t be met by airline upgrades and dinners at chefs’ tables. He talked to her, almost to the point of exhaustion, when he was bothered. She’d never have to worry about him betraying her or ignoring her existence. She could even consider maybe thinking of one day discussing the subject of marriage.
But she wouldn’t mention that to him because it felt way too soon…Also, she would never call him ‘open, kind and loyal’ to his face, because she doubted he would appreciate being described like a golden retriever.
She glanced around the foyer, so polished and pristine compared to what she saw walking into Fishscale House months before. It was such a beautiful house, but it could be more. People might actually pay to stay in a house like this. Back when she was still trying to fix things with Bash—she really had to stop defining the timeline of her life that way—she’d booked weekends in B&Bs that didn’t have the charm that Ned had given to Fishcscale House.
The Seacliffe Inn was the only other hotel on the island. Part of the reason tourism was limited on the island was that when the inn was full to capacity, that was the limit of Espoir’s accommodations. If she could convince other people with historical, non-creepy homes to offer something similar, that would be even better. Competition created a stronger market.
Ana had proven she could deal with self-promotion. And hosting guests couldn’t be worse than hosting some of Bash’s colleagues…or his family. She would hire someone on for the cleaning. And probably the cooking.
That was for the greater good.
She would have to ask Jackie about the licensing and insurance issues involved in opening your house up to the public. Also, she would have to get some furniture.
Her cell phone buzzed in her back pocket. Jackie’s name and number flashed on the screen. Speak of the devil. “Hey, I’ve been meaning to call you.”
“I have news!” Jackie crowed. “Your ex messed up!”
Ned turned at the bright, loud voice, which was easily heard even across the room.
“I know, we’ve been through this. He made a huge mistake, leaving me. It’s lovely that you want to validate me, Jackie, but—”
“No, I mean, he messed up on an epic, international scale. His new lady friend convinced him that they absolutely had to visit some salt cave yoga retreat thing in the Virgin Islands, forgetting of course, that it’s called the U.S. Virgin Islands and that they’re more than willing to extradite wanted felons back to the mainland.”
Ana stifled a snort. “Well, geography was never Bash’s strong suit.”
“His legal team will be meeting him at a very low-profile airport in New Jersey—”
She winced. “Oh, he’ll hate that.”
“And then he will appear before an extremely irate judge. And because said legal team doesn’t want the distraction of dealing with a high-profile divorce with an extremely uncooperative spouse who will be unlikely to do anything besides cause trouble in the press, Houston is offering you a handsome cash settlement.”
I Loved You First Page 14