Love on Lavender Island (A Lavender Island Novel Book 2)

by Lauren Christopher

  The fireman couldn’t hear her as the cacophony of the night continued around them. He shuffled her toward one of the counselors, down by where the orange firelight was reflecting in the navy ocean, and kept his sights on the hillside amid shouts and still-arriving sirens.

  “Wait!” she shouted again in desperation. She raced around until she found Adam’s boss and grabbed his arm. “Adam is up there!”

  A shadow of disbelief, shock, then anger passed across his face before he turned and began waving his arms, yelling the information to others.

  Paige was escorted farther down the harbor with the other kids, away from the blazing hill, and their parents were called.

  Paige found Cathy crying against a set of harbor chains and threw her arms around her. Soon Ginger and George came screeching up in their golf cart. “Where’s Adam?” George barked. He had always scared her. She pointed tentatively up the hill, and George’s characteristically angry face suddenly had a moment of worry and shock before contorting into rage again. Ginger clutched Paige and Cathy to her side and pulled them away from the crowd, checked with their counselor, and took the girls home. Up at the ranch, it was a long night of worry and staring out windows for Ginger, while Cathy and Paige finally fell asleep around two.

  In the morning, Ginger told them the ending: Adam had been found, with a girl, Samantha Sweet. Both teens had been questioned. The girl’s parents had been called from the mainland. The reason for the fire was still unclear.

  Paige had torn a paper napkin into shreds, listening.

  Natalie—Paige’s younger sister by a year—came bounding into the kitchen, breaking the tension and worry by demanding some cereal. She asked if she could follow Cathy and Paige to the harbor.

  “I don’t know if we’re going today.” Paige tried to tamp down her sadness. She couldn’t believe Adam had been questioned by the police. At least he was safe from the fire. Although, clearly, he had another firestorm to deal with.

  “We should go,” Cathy said. “It’ll keep our minds off of everything.”

  She wanted Cathy to have a good time. Paige didn’t particularly appreciate that Natalie always wanted to tag along with her friends, but she acquiesced to let Natalie come. The three of them spent that day in the harbor. And Paige had never stopped thinking about Adam.

  Paige snapped herself back into the present and stared at the table where she and Cathy and her mom had sat that morning long ago. She took a deep breath and continued sweeping, wondering if she should do a quick mop to make it even cleaner. But then she glanced again at the falling light and remembered Adam’s comment about the raccoons. Egads. She’d have to investigate that before it got dark.

  She tiptoed up the staircase with the broom. The ranch house was small by ranch standards, but it was still a sprawling two-story spread—larger than anything Paige had ever lived in while in LA. Moving slowly along the dusty wood hallway, she glanced inside each bedroom and felt completely overwhelmed. Nine years was a long time to leave a house vacant. The only way to tackle this would be to focus on one room at a time. And for now, first things first.

  She flung each closet door open, broom in front of her, stifling a scream, and let another shiver run through her. As the light fell, her uneasiness grew. Some of the closets felt stuck, and others were so filled with clutter—decaying boxes, old suitcases, stacks of paperback novels—that she couldn’t open them all the way. She poked the broom inside each one to see if she detected any movement. The idea that critters could be living in there, or might crawl back at night, had shivers racking her shoulders.

  Maybe she should stay with Olivia or Natalie down in Carmelita.

  She glanced out the window—it was probably only seven thirty. She could make it down the mountain in an hour and drop in on either of her sisters—Olivia; her husband, Jon; Paige’s niece, Lily; and brand-new nephew, Aaron, who now lived in Gram’s old cottage on C Street. Or she could show up at the door of Natalie and Elliott, who’d moved in together in Dr. Johnson’s old place, much to Paige’s surprise. As much as all three girls had loved Lavender Island as kids, Natalie and Paige had agreed, early into their teen years, that it wasn’t a fun place for anyone over the age of fifteen and under the age of eighty. But Natalie had come to visit last spring and had fallen in love with a visiting scientist. The idea that her younger sister had fallen in love before she had, and had fallen in love enough to stay on this old-people island forever, had left Paige a little shocked.

  Paige shrugged off the idea of calling either of her sisters, though. She hadn’t wanted them to know she was here. Not yet anyway. She’d tell them once she got things ironed out with Adam Mason.

  She made timid sweeps with her broom at the last closet just as the light began falling into a dusky purple. A mouse ricocheted out, and Paige screamed. She coughed at the swirl of dust that flew out behind the mouse and broom. But no big critters, at least. Despite Adam’s warning, they didn’t seem to have made homes here. Maybe she could stay, after all. There was running water, and she’d brought a lantern. She could set up her sleeping bag downstairs. It would be like camping, only with a roof over her head. Not that she’d been camping since she was thirteen.

  She headed outside to retrieve the lantern, sleeping bag, her yoga mat, and bottled water out of the golf cart before night fell completely, bouncing them against her hip on the way back in. As she approached the back steps—damn, they were rotting out, too—the same tiny kitten wove its way through her legs.

  “Hey, pretty girl.” Paige set her lantern down to pet her, trying to remember her name. Did Adam say Click? “What are you doing back here?”

  She lifted Click and glanced over her shoulder—hoping she’d get the same visitor who followed last time. But . . . no. She couldn’t wish that. She couldn’t go there again. She just needed to make this deal with Adam, and then mind her own business and stop thinking about him. He’d already made her childhood angsty—she didn’t need him to mess with her adult years, too.

  She went inside, set up the sleeping bag, and laid out a grapes-and-cheese dinner for her and Click, who snuggled into the crook of her arm. Paige pulled out a book, petting Click as she read. She’d put in a few nights of this, wait until Adam got the electricity back on, then finish cleaning up and hope that Adam would come around on the ranch-sale idea by Thursday. Her mind kept drifting to ideas for Dorothy Silver, but she kept dragging it back and tried to concentrate on her book. No sense in worrying about the Silver wedding on a large scale—or the moneymaking acting role Dorothy might give her—until Adam made a decision. She wasn’t even into the second chapter when a sharp scratching noise against plaster echoed through the house.

  Click skidded across the floor and sought refuge behind the pantry.

  “What was that?” Paige whispered.

  She tiptoed across the floor toward the banister with her lantern. Was the noise coming from upstairs? Her mind raced with possibilities—the raccoons, first and foremost—but each sound was different and unidentifiable. Now it was a rustling.

  She scrambled back for her cell phone, which she’d turned off to save the battery, and gripped it tightly as she crept around the corner of the living room. As the stairs came more and more into view, her lantern light splashing shadows across the rails, she looked upward and froze—just as another shadowy outline of a body at the top did the same.

  CHAPTER 4

  He was tall, huddled in the dark, a sweatshirt hood covering his head and most of his face, still as a statue, just as she was.

  A scream erupted from Paige’s throat as she dropped the lantern and flew down the hall. She ran back through the kitchen, scooped up Click, and dashed out the back door into the cool night air.

  Her screams turned to shrieks as she sped into the yard. She sucked in deep breaths as she whirled to see if the figure was following her. No one. Click clawed her way out of Paige’s arms, and Paige wrapped her hands tighter around her waist as she realized her other hand was
empty. She’d dropped her phone?

  Panicked, Paige glanced around the grass, then gave up on the phone and sidled toward her golf cart, keeping her eyes on the house. Through the moonlit darkness, she saw the figure slip out the side door of the house about seventy feet away. He pulled his hood up around his head and began hobbling down the path toward the dark woods, half running, half stumbling toward the shrubbery.

  The sound of horse hooves came up behind her, and she spun again in the darkness, heart in her throat, only to see Adam ride up.

  “What’s the matter?” he yelled as he leaped from his horse.

  “Th-th-there was someone inside. He’s there.” She pointed. “Or he was there. He went toward the woods.”

  Adam steadied her, but his attention was already on the path. “Which way?”

  She shakily pointed.

  He swung back onto his horse. What the hell is he doing?

  Terrified, she took a step after him, but he raced off at a gallop. She turned and inched toward the golf cart again. There was no way she was going back, even for her phone. She couldn’t believe she’d dropped it. Some brave femme fatale she’d turned out to be.

  She sidestepped faster, glancing between the house to detect any more movement and then at the woods to look for Adam’s return. Where could that intruder possibly have been hiding? Had he been upstairs the whole time? She’d never checked the bathrooms—could he have been hiding in a tub or shower stall? Her shoulders rolled into a violent shiver.

  Crickets trilled around her, making the night seem deceptively peaceful as she took the last few steps. Click crept out of the bushes and cautiously returned to Paige. When they were almost inside the cart, Adam and his horse exploded out of the trees on the other side of the house. Click sprang away again.

  “I couldn’t find him,” Adam said as he thundered up beside her.

  He dismounted, breathing heavily. His dark-denim shirt, rolled up at the forearms, blended into the night as he straightened his hat and moved into his customary hands-hanging-on-his-hips Western pose.

  “I thought you were going to stay with your sister?” He sounded angrier at her than at the intruder.

  “I never said that.”

  “I told you this place isn’t safe.”

  “You said there were raccoons inside, not hooded men.”

  He gave her another aggravated look. “There are sometimes vagrants,” he admitted. “Or sometimes hikers looking to get out of the rain. I try to patrol up here at least once a day. Tonight I saw the lantern flickering up here and thought I’d come investigate. Then I heard your screams.”

  He met her eyes for the first time. And, slowly, his face softened.

  She blinked back for several seconds—soaking in his furrowed brows, his worried eyes, his protective stance. It was the first time Paige had ever seen him direct any kind of positive emotion toward her. But these were not emotions that she could rightfully take from him. They didn’t belong to her. Never had. She’d always wanted attention and concern from Adam Mason, but they had never been hers.

  “You really shouldn’t stay here until we can get the electricity back on.” His voice dropped into an even-more-protective softness.

  She cleared her throat and tried to pull herself back into the present. She ignored the sexy voice, disregarded how it would sound in bed or how those arms would feel wrapped around her. Twenty-nine-year-old women were too old for crushes, weren’t they? It was easier if she looked away.

  “I’ll find somewhere else to stay,” she murmured.

  “What about your sister?”

  “It’s a long story, but I can’t really go there right now.”

  He looked through the darkness back at his own place and seemed to hesitate for a second, but finally he took a deep breath. “You can stay at the resort.” He motioned with his shoulder.

  Back to where a lot of it had happened. Back to that summer. Back to when they were kids, and their parents were in love, and he thought her mother had had him thrown in jail, and they’d split their parents up, and all hell had broken loose.

  But she didn’t know if she wanted to go back to those places.

  And the hesitancy in his voice sounded like he wasn’t so sure, either.

  She gazed at Gram’s place, picturing the figure at the top of the stairs, and another shiver went through her. A cold gust followed, and she wrapped her arms around her middle. Finally, she turned toward Adam.

  “Are you sure?” she asked.

  “You can stay in one of the resort rooms.”

  She couldn’t shake the image of the hooded man. The idea of another intruder moving into her personal space tied her stomach in knots. Her fear of that was much worse than the fact that her hormones, around Adam Mason, had suddenly seemed to forget they were no longer thirteen.

  “You have rooms open?” she asked.

  “Plenty. As I said, the place has been floundering. We’re closing it, but we have one more dude group soon, so the rooms are still made up. They’re coming Thursday. You can have the room until then.”

  Another type of panic shot through Paige. “Closing it? Why are you closing the resort?” Her mind jumped from one difficult truth to another. This was not going to help with the Dorothy Silver situation at all—the wedding guests and huge wedding party would need a place to stay. But she’d have to revisit this problem later. Adam was turning away. And she had too much to worry about. Starting with tonight. She needed a safe place to sleep. Needed to stop noticing Adam’s muscles. Needed to stop imagining what those strong, tanned hands would look like tracing along her body. Needed to stop shivering . . .

  “I have to get my phone,” she said quietly. She wanted to appear to be a strong, fearless woman to this man—pulled together, longing for nothing, no one to laugh at—but that was simply not going to happen. He made her feel weak in a million ways.

  Turning to watch her from under the brim of his hat, he waited patiently for her to make a move. “Do you want me to go in? Just tell me where to look.”

  For a second she pretended he was smitten. She pretended he thought her a beautiful, sophisticated damsel in distress. But then her shoulders felt as though they had bricks piled on top of them, and she didn’t feel much like a sophisticated damsel. Her loose yoga pants and wild hair didn’t help. She was no good at this. This capturing-the-attention-of-sexy-men thing. Besides, she just wanted to sleep. Maybe the adrenaline from running out of the house from an intruder had simply whisked the last cells of hope and energy out of her body.

  “I don’t know where I dropped it,” she admitted. “I can go in.”

  He frowned, and studied her as if he wasn’t too certain, but he led the way, holding his hand up until he looked around to make sure the place was clear.

  In silence, they traveled along the already-dusty-again floor, refocused the lantern beams so they had a little light, then collected the sleeping bag and the strewn grapes and cheese.

  “Is this all you ate?” he asked, frowning at the cheese.

  It felt like more judgment about her ridiculous life, and she didn’t have the strength for it right now, so she ignored him and threw it into her backpack. When she spotted her phone, she tossed it in, too, then pulled the pack onto her shoulder. “All right, let’s go.” She couldn’t get out of there fast enough.

  She led the way out the door and back into the misty night air, where they piled her items into the golf cart to the sounds of chirping crickets. Click peered at them from behind one of the wheels.

  “Here, sweetie.” Paige bent and found a long twig, dragging it in front of Click until she leaped close enough to grab. “What’s a dude group, by the way?”

  Adam threw her sleeping bag into the cart. “Dude-ranch visitors. I’ve got a bunch of corporate sorts coming to experience a few nights on the range and corral some bison. In fact, one of them is MacGregor.”

  That was exactly the kind of experience Paige figured Dorothy’s guests would want—maybe n
ot the bison part, but the eating-around-the-campfire-and-riding-horses part. Could she pay him to do one more dude ranch? Would the ranch belong to MacGregor by then?

  But now was not the time to get into this—Adam was looking longingly toward his house, as if he just wanted to get this night over with, and she was tired herself. She needed her pj’s. And a comfortable bed. And to stop noticing how good he looked with the moonlight in his hair. Or how intimate it felt looking at him in the dark. Or wondering whether he made love to women with the lights off . . .

  “Lead the way,” she squeaked.

  Adam swung onto his horse and led them down the dirt path that curved onto the main road. She bumped along behind him in the golf cart, pushing it to its whopping twenty miles per hour, feeling as if she were driving a clown car. These rental carts were slower than the ones the islanders owned. She floored it and tried to peer through the darkness at the old, familiar landscape. When she’d gone to the Castle earlier, she’d taken a different road down the hill, but now she was heading straight through his property for the first time in eons.

  The meadow was still there—a circular piece between their properties that stretched for about an acre and sometimes had wildflowers in bloom. It was the land that most connected them. Gram used to say that the flowers bloomed when the families were getting along, but even as a young girl, Paige had doubted that. Right now, the flowers were closed to the night sky, but during the day, Paige had seen pretty yellow, white, and lavender wildflowers in bloom.

  To the right, just before the woods started, was a quiet pond and, in front of that, was the apple orchard Dorothy wanted featured as part of her wedding ceremony. It was small but beautiful, with trees in straight rows and neatly kept patches of bright-green grass between each row. It had been George’s pride and joy, and he’d always yelled at the kids to stay away. He’d babied his apple trees all year, especially into the summer months, and every fall the Masons held their annual Apple Fest that the entire island looked forward to. Paige’s family was always gone by then—back on the mainland after their summer visit—but Gram talked about the Mason Apple Fest all the time. It hadn’t been thrown for years, according to Olivia—ever since George had had his first heart attack. Now the apple orchard was too dark for her to see, but Paige knew she’d have to talk Adam into making that part of the wedding experience. It was a key scene from the movie.