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

by Lauren Christopher

  “Well, you know, between roles. I work there most of the time. I’m the receptionist. And lots of movie stars come in and want to rent space to watch old movies for research. So one day, Dorothy Silver walked in. I about died. I introduced myself to her and told her I was Helen Grant’s granddaughter and visited Nowhere Ranch all the time, and she invited me to lunch. So I went, and when I told her about my mom, she told me about her upcoming wedding to Richard Crawford and asked my mom to do her wedding.” Paige shook her head. She still couldn’t believe it. “My mom’s wedding business could use this lift. Mom’s been ill for the last year, and our business has taken a hit.”

  Adam stalled opening the mustard jar. “I didn’t know that.”

  “Cancer.”

  Adam put everything down. “I’m sorry, Paige.”

  “I know Ginger’s not your favorite person, so I didn’t want to say anything.”

  “No, she’s not. But I’m not an asshole. I don’t like to hear that about anyone.”

  “Thank you. She’s strong. Her prognosis is good, and she’ll fight with everything she’s got. But chemo has taken its toll, and she’s been too weak to handle a lot of business. She didn’t want to give up this Dorothy Silver opportunity, so she asked me to help. And then—do you want to hear the most amazing part?”

  “I haven’t heard it yet?”

  “Dorothy wants me to play her in a movie about her!” Paige could hardly keep the squeal out of her voice. “The casting starts the day after the wedding, so she said she’d fly me to LA immediately and tell the director I had her highest endorsement.”

  “Sounds like a dream come true for you.”

  She sighed. “It is.” She didn’t mention that the real dream was simply getting the money for the yoga studio. Adam would surely find that silly.

  He kept his eyes on her as he unscrewed the condiment jars. “And your sisters?”

  “My sisters think we’re being stupid. They want Mom to rest and get well. They don’t think I’ll get the part anyway. They think Dorothy will back down on everything. They want to donate the property to the island historical society, or sell to MacGregor. But . . . I don’t know about MacGregor.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Something didn’t seem right about him when he was making his phone calls to us over these past months.”

  Adam looked up at her. “What specifically didn’t seem right?”

  “I can’t explain it. It’s just a feeling.”

  He frowned. “You’re not saying that to get me not to sell to him, are you?”

  “Of course not. You can’t do business on feelings.”

  He nodded. “Agreed.”

  Paige continued shredding the napkin while Adam pushed the condiments across the table toward her.

  “So you’re here, basically doing all the work yourself, with Ginger sick and your sisters not on board?” he asked.

  “Well, I’m supposed to be assessing the situation. And . . .”

  She pretended to survey the luncheon meats.

  “And what?” he asked.

  She shrugged. “And talking you into helping us.”

  He pushed the bread choices in her direction. “Paige, I’m sorry for the situation you’re in, but I can’t make financial decisions based on that.”

  “I understand. I’ll take that one.” She pointed to the rye.

  “I have to hurry and sell, or this place is going to lose even more money. And Amanda—she wants out of here. She was accepted into a prestigious art school in Alabama, and I’d like to get her back there before school starts.”

  “Amanda’s an artist?”

  “I’ve never actually seen her art, but I did see the letter of acceptance.”

  “I could see her wanting to escape the island. I didn’t like it as a teenager, either.”

  “I’m with you. When I was a teenager, I wanted out of here in the worst way.”

  “It seems a little stifling.”

  “Agreed.”

  “Too much gossip, too many rumors, hard to escape a reputation.”

  “You’re preaching to the choir.”

  “I don’t know how my sisters can stand it. They say it’s nice if you’re in love, though.”

  He slid a plate across the table to her. “Is that right? Maybe that’s been my problem.”

  Paige smiled and studied the sandwich he’d just made her, thinking of how simple and comforting it looked, like something from her childhood. He’d even cut the sandwich in half. She poked at her crust and tried to get up the nerve to ask the question she’d been wanting to ask: “So you’ve never been in love, then?”

  Adam’s mustard knife halted. “That’s a pretty big question.”

  “Is that your way of saying you don’t have an answer?”

  “No, it’s my way of saying that question might cost you.”

  A little prickle of awareness ran down Paige’s arms. “Cost me what?”

  He opened a bag of potato chips. “A revealing answer about yourself.”

  “Like what?”

  “Tell me about the last boyfriend in LA. Or the current one.”

  Paige froze. She thought maybe he’d ask about her family, not her love life. Could she continue talking to him this way and keep things professional? If he flirted with her, could she resist flirting back?

  But she knew he would go only so far with these questions. He was as aware of their precarious situation as she was—she needed land from him, and involving any kind of feelings would be stupid for either of them. As long as they both stayed distant, and kept things light, they could make this friendly. She’d just have to be sure not to flirt back. Too much.

  “It was, um . . .” She thought briefly about making something up. Her love life was rather embarrassing, pathetic as it was. But then she changed her mind. She hated liars.

  She picked up her sandwich. “The last man I dated was Todd.”

  He made a motion with his fingers to give him more.

  “He was an investment banker. I met him at a party. He had a dog named Duncan.”

  “I don’t care about his damned dog, Paige.”

  “You don’t?” She smiled playfully.

  He chuckled and studied a potato chip. “No.”

  “What do you care about?” she asked between bites.

  “Why and when you broke up.”

  The potato chips suddenly demanded her attention. She couldn’t maintain eye contact with him now. This was definitely flirting.

  “Well,” she finally said, “the ‘why’ involved a heart-shaped, voice-recorded frame.”

  Adam sat back in his chair in a languid pose and propped his ankle on his knee. “You’ll have to give me more than that.”

  “He used to go on these business trips, just for a day or two, and one day I was over there while he was packing, and he had this little red heart-shaped frame he was putting in his suitcase. So he showed it to me, and it had a picture of me in it.”

  The fact had stunned her at the time. They’d been dating for only four weeks. The idea that he had a framed heart photo of her for his suitcase, like some married businessman, freaked her out.

  “So he wanted to record my voice on the frame, too,” she said. “He wanted me to say, ‘I love you.’ Right into the frame!”

  She waited for Adam to mirror the shock she always felt when she told this story, but—like everyone else—he looked at her as if he couldn’t see the problem.

  “And you . . . weren’t there yet?” he asked, trying to follow along.

  “Not at all.”

  “How long had you been together?”

  “A few weeks.”

  He nodded thoughtfully. “Sex yet?”

  She raised her eyebrows. “I don’t think that’s any business of yours.”

  “Just trying to put the pieces together,” he said, shrugging innocently.

  Her cheeks were suddenly getting hot, and she made a big show of moving things around her plat
e.

  “And when was this?” he asked.

  “Four months ago.” She pushed the plate away. “All right, my turn. So have you ever been in love? Were you in love with Samantha?”

  “I’m still working on Ted here.”

  “Todd.”

  “Todd, right. So you broke up with him because he wanted you to say you loved him after a few weeks, and it’s a personal policy that you don’t make those kinds of decisions after just a few weeks.”

  “Right.”

  “And that’s why you broke up?”

  “Well, no.”

  He moved a few chips around and waited for the rest of the story. She almost didn’t tell him. It was so pathetic. “I broke up with him because I found another heart-shaped frame.”

  “And?”

  “It had someone else in it.”

  “Where did you find it?”

  “In his bedroom drawer.”

  “You were looking in his bedroom drawer?”

  “I have trust issues.”

  Adam nodded.

  “Don’t nod like you understand this,” she said. “He was a jerk. He was lying to me, and sleeping with someone else, and he couldn’t be trusted. Men can’t be trusted. I’d been through this before, and that’s why I was looking in his bedroom drawer. I felt vindicated that I was right.”

  Adam stared at his plate of chips.

  “And we’re done with Todd,” she said too loudly. “He’s not very interesting. It’s my turn now.”

  Adam looked ready to argue, but the back door swung open from the lobby, and Mendelson popped his head in. “Hey, chief. The riders are back.”

  “I’ll be right there.” Adam scooted his chair back and gathered his jacket and keys. “Sorry, Paige. You can stay as long as you like. Have more sandwiches. I have to start a campfire.”

  Paige watched him walk out and instantly regretted getting so worked up. She never knew when to shut up. Adam made her so nervous. Had she just admitted that she could turn into a psychotic drawer-searching lover? And that she had trust issues?

  If he’d had even an inkling of an idea about letting her kiss him (just once) or maybe taking her up on that dance (just once), she was sure those thoughts were gone now. She probably looked like a lunatic. A real femme fatale. But not the gorgeous, sexy Lana Turner kind. More like the wild-haired, raging Glenn Close kind.

  She ate the rest of her sandwich in silence and then cleaned up the table.

  Adam was probably done with her now.

  Which, really, was the best thing.

  Her mom might even be proud of her.

  Adam jogged out to the riders and swore at himself for being such an idiot. Was he just asking about Paige’s boyfriends? What the hell was wrong with him?

  He had a business to sell, a prospective owner to impress, a dude ranch to run for a weekend, a staff to take care of before he closed up, and a daughter to move off the island and enroll in school in a couple of months.

  Trying to learn more about Paige was getting him nowhere.

  He could be friendly with her—she’d helped him out with Amanda, and he liked helping her with Helen’s place, and he liked smiling at the things she did and said—but everything had to stop there. He had to stop watching her lips. He had to stop asking about her boyfriends. He had to stop caring whether men gave her heart-shaped frames, or how long she waited to have sex with them, or how long ago they may have broken up. Those details were not his business. And no matter to him in any way whatsoever. And he didn’t even know if he could trust her—she might be striking up a friendship to get him to hand over land. Just like Ginger.

  They could have a tentative friendship over the next few weeks, but that was it. He was leaving. And she was too dangerous to have meaningless sex with: she wanted something from him, and he couldn’t let himself forget that.

  Although she didn’t seem the type to be manipulative. Despite her skillful mother, her goth-eyeliner past, and her love for adrenaline and adventure, she had a vulnerability underlying that bravado that was impossible to miss. And he didn’t want to hurt her. She’d obviously been hurt by jackasses in her past, like Ted or Todd, and maybe even this Dirk guy. And he didn’t need to be part of a new parade of jerks. Lord knows he could be. And maybe it was because he’d taken care of Helen and her dogs and her house all those years, but he felt oddly protective of her granddaughter. Not that Paige was like a house or dogs or property, but something about her made him want to protect her. And that meant from guys like him.

  His attempts to get closer had to stop now.

  The cowboys were gathered outside, with Joseph and Mendelson starting the campfire and getting the grill fired up. They usually did a cookout on the first night—it gave the guests a chance to get to know one another, and gave the wranglers a chance to assess who would be able to do what on the rides, especially the overnights. Of course, this dude group was a little different from most—MacGregor was just trying it out with his guys to assess if he wanted to take it over. He wanted the property either way, but he wasn’t sure about the dude-ranch business. Adam didn’t blame him. It was a lot of work. But he’d show him a good time anyway. And they had the bison to bring in.

  “Hey, gentlemen,” Adam said, touching the brim of his hat.

  The other guys greeted him and asked him to join their campfire. He didn’t usually—he typically acted as working wrangler—but in this case he was also a salesman. Joseph nodded his approval—he had the grill under control.

  Adam sat down and shot the breeze with them, hearing about their first ride, knocking around some numbers with MacGregor, swapping stories with one of the others about rounding up cattle, which Adam explained was very similar to rounding up bison—only the bison were bigger and meaner. They would be doing that, too, later in the week.

  “So how long have you known Paige Grant?” MacGregor asked, leaning toward him.

  Hearing her name in such an unexpected way had Adam swiveling his head. “What?”

  “Paige Grant. How long have you known her?”

  “I, uh . . . I’ve known her family a long time. Why?”

  “I want her property. If we expanded this”—MacGregor swept his arm toward Helen’s place—“we could have a whole mess hall set up over there, with the view.”

  “I don’t think the Grants are interested,” Adam said.

  “Oh, I know they aren’t. That’s why I asked how long you knew her. I saw her here this morning and wondered if you knew her better than I thought you did. And, more important, if you could use your influence to get her on board.” MacGregor winked and followed that with a slimy smirk.

  “Like I said, I don’t think she’s interested.”

  “If she’s not interested, then I might not be, either.”

  Adam hid his sudden urge to bloody that smirk right off MacGregor’s face. He adjusted his hat to get his anger under control.

  Then he glanced in the direction of Helen’s house, at the meadow where Paige wanted to start preparing for the Silver wedding, and realized things were about to get a lot more complicated.

  CHAPTER 14

  Paige traipsed through the meadow back to Gram’s house to resume her most recent project.

  But this time her thoughts kept stalling on Adam, and stayed there, swirling in confusion. She wanted to stay distant from him because it was easier to get business done, yet she loved making connections with him on a personal level. She wanted him to take her seriously, yet she loved how he smiled when she said something funny. She wanted to stay away from him so he didn’t hurt her or break her heart again, yet she loved being near him and getting to know the adult Adam.

  She was a mess.

  It was maybe a little dangerous how much she actually liked him. She wasn’t going to protect her heart this way. Even at the height of her past adoration, she’d always been aware of his arrogance, his standoffishness, and his swagger—just the kind of confidence teenage girls swooned over, but women could
quickly fall out of love with. Now she saw that that old standoffishness ran deep. It was less a confidence and more of a wall he put up, perhaps to protect himself, perhaps borne of losing his mother and growing up with George instead, and then developed by having so much responsibility put on his shoulders at a young age.

  Learning these things about him, though, was not helping. It was not protecting her heart. It was not getting business done. It was not helping her mother, or helping Dorothy, or landing her a high-paying part, or furthering her dreams of a yoga studio.

  She unlocked the door and threw her purse on the table. Click had been hiding around the side of the house, but she now made her way in right behind Paige.

  “Hey, Click.” She scooped up the kitten and carried her into the kitchen.

  She hadn’t even tried the electricity earlier that day, but now that it was dark, she welcomed the new fix.

  She flipped on the switch.

  Nothing.

  Flipped it again.

  Zero.

  Click squirmed out of her arms, then landed with a tiny thump and began winding around Paige’s legs, mewing.

  Paige tiptoed through the darkened kitchen toward the circuit breaker, wondering what calamity she could have brought down on her shoulders now. A drip . . . drip . . . drip sounded in front of her. Coming from up high?

  As the pieces started to come together for her, she frantically grabbed for Click. Just as her fingertips curled around the kitten’s belly, a loud crack sounded, then a whoosh. Pieces of wood crashed to the floor. Insulation and dust swirled at her feet.

  Paige screamed and flew out of the kitchen.

  Click rocketed out of her arms—through the air—toward the open door.

  And, next thing she knew, Gram’s upstairs bedroom fell through the floor.

  Paige and Adam stood outside the house in the cool night air, staring up at it, Adam with his hands on his hips. An emergency vehicle’s yellow lights flashed across his face.

  “You’re going to need a place to stay,” he said.

  Paige sighed and ran her hand down Click’s back in the crook of her arm. She would. It would take a few days to get some industrial fans out here, clean up the leak, fix the plumbing, repair the floor, and make the house habitable again. This was going to set her project back two weeks at least.