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

by Lauren Christopher

  “Of course”—Adam leaned down toward her ear—“I’m not sure I can give you up just yet.”

  Her heart skipped a beat over his husky delivery and sexy sentiment as she watched him walk back to the counter. Damn. She didn’t want him to have such control over her emotions, but she didn’t know how to stop it.

  She nodded slowly until she could get her heart rate down. “We could come up with ground rules,” she squeaked out.

  His knife went back to its rhythmic sounds. “I’m good with that. You name them.”

  Her fingers found the napkins. “We agree this is only temporary.” That was obvious. They would both be gone by the end of the summer.

  “Perfect.”

  “We don’t trade info about land or money or trade any other kind of favor for sex.” That’s the one that had gotten her mom in trouble. Ginger thought she was helping for love; George thought she was helping for sex. They both ended up angry and disappointed.

  “That’s good.”

  “We never talk about land or deals with our clothes off.”

  Adam walked back to the table with a board full of onions and smiled. “That’s actually a nice visual. But you’re right—I’m good with that.”

  “And we stay FRED.”

  “Fred?”

  “It’s sort of like friends with benefits, only it’s got an end date—Friends Ready to End in Divorce.”

  He scraped the onions into the bowl and thought that over. “All right. FRED.”

  “See? We’re already light-years ahead of George and Ginger.” One of the napkins was in shreds, so she moved on to another. “They didn’t talk, and they weren’t honest with each other.”

  “You’re nothing like Ginger,” he said.

  She took a deep breath. She hoped not, but she wasn’t sure. She didn’t want to harden her heart the way her mother had, especially toward men. She knew she’d been leaning that way, especially with her mother’s warnings through the years, but she wanted to trust. She wanted to trust people. She wanted to trust men. She wanted to trust herself and her own decisions. And, especially, she wanted to trust this particular man.

  “Thanks,” she breathed out. “You’re nothing like George.”

  His mouth quirked up. “I appreciate that more than you know. And, more important now, I don’t want to be like him with Amanda, either.” He headed back to the counter.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Cold. Yelling. Terrorizing. Arbitrary rules.”

  Paige shook her head. How could Adam think he was like George? It broke her heart to think he was so hard on himself. “You’re not like that at all, Adam. Although . . .”

  He looked back sharply. “What?”

  “Amanda and I were driving today, and she did say one thing that I know will upset you. But it’s good you know her thoughts. I know you have only her best interests at heart, and you can work this out with her.”

  “What?”

  “She thinks you’re hiding her up on this hill because you’re embarrassed of her.”

  “Embarrassed of her?”

  “That you see her as a mistake from your past and don’t want the townspeople to know about her.”

  His jaw muscle danced. “That’s not even remotely—”

  “I know—I know. I know it’s not remotely true. And you know that. I’m just telling you to give you a chance to make sure she knows that. Sometimes the way teenagers’ brains work can be mystifying.”

  He stared at her, his scowl murderous. But, finally, he seemed to think it over and then nodded. The knife came back up to the counter, and the chopping continued.

  About a minute later, he walked back to the table with a huge mound of tomatoes on the cutting board. “Thanks, Paige,” he said softly.

  He pushed the tomatoes into the bowl and tossed the concoction with his knife. “And wait. Can we back up a minute? I thought I heard you say something earlier.”

  She reached for a diced tomato and popped it in her mouth. “What?”

  “Did you say a couple minutes ago that that was the most intense sex of your life?”

  “Some of the most.” She gave him a saucy grin. “In the top four.” She pretended to inspect the chilies.

  His eyebrow raised as he slowly finished scraping the last of the seeds off his cutting board. Eventually his mouth quirked at the corner. “I’ll have to investigate this.” He gave her one last glance before returning to the counter.

  She ignored the heat that rose up around her cheeks and snuck a few extra glances at him.

  Being FRED with Adam was going to be a heady ride.

  The door banged open, and Amanda stepped through. Paige reached up to cool her cheeks.

  “Hey, Amanda,” she said.

  Amanda smiled, threw her backpack into the corner, and went into the kitchen to watch Adam finish chopping.

  She waited for Amanda to leave so they could continue their talk, but Amanda stayed in the kitchen with them until dinner. A half hour later, the three of them were enjoying salsa and quesadillas at the dining table, talking about what foreign language they’d each learned in high school, and telling funny stories about the worst teachers each of them ever had. After dinner they went into the family room so Amanda could select another movie to watch.

  They sat together on the sheet-covered couch, but this time Adam positioned himself so he could rest his hand under a blanket on Paige’s thigh.

  Goose bumps ran up her arm through the entire movie.

  When the credits finally rolled, he leaned toward Paige’s ear. “Stay tonight?”

  “I need to get home,” she said, tossing the blanket aside and looking for her shoes.

  “Are you sure?” He glanced at Amanda, who’d turned toward them to listen. Adam cleared his throat. “You can stay in the guest room.”

  “No.” Paige found one shoe under Denny. The other was providing a small pillow for Click. It was tempting to stay. Even just to stay in the guest room or on the couch. They could talk. They could go over their ground rules once more. But Paige sensed this would be a mistake. She needed to sleep on the whole thing. The more time she spent with him, the more she could see getting attached, and that’s not what FRED was about. She’d spent too many years trying to forget this guy who’d barely known she existed—and she was just now getting to a comfortable, confident, I-can-be-casual-with-you kind of place, complete with mutually agreed-on, laid-out rules—to backpedal now. She needed to think this through, then make a decision by morning that would allow her to best keep herself together.

  “Let me walk you home, at least,” he said.

  Amanda looked up worriedly.

  “I’ll be back in fifteen, Amanda.”

  He gave a whistle, and Denny leaped up onto the couch where Adam pointed. Amanda snuggled close to the warm dog. Click, feeling momentarily abandoned by her new friend Denny, climbed up on the couch, too, and nestled between Denny’s paws.

  “You don’t have to walk me if Amanda’s worried,” Paige said. “I know the way.”

  “Thanks, Paige,” Amanda said with a relieved smile.

  Adam walked her to the door and helped her with her sweater. “Are you sure?” he whispered. “She’ll really be okay.”

  “So will I.”

  Paige stepped out onto the porch, and Adam followed, closing the door behind them.

  “I want to make sure everything’s okay between us,” he said. “You’re still good with FRED?”

  “Of course.”

  “I’m not sure how to act in front of Amanda.”

  “I think we can focus on the ‘friends’ part. We can be better role models that way.”

  “Role models? Man.” The moonlight caught his smile. “Never thought I’d be that.”

  “You’re doing fine.”

  He gazed at her for a moment, then gently cupped her face, drawing her to him and kissing her tenderly. No craziness. No insanity. No frustrated desperation. No leading to another step or hintin
g at something next. No touching her body or pushing to another level. It was just a gentle, giving, yielding kiss—velvety lips saying good night, or he was sorry, or good-bye, or things wouldn’t ever be different for them—she couldn’t quite tell. When he finished, he simply met her stare.

  “Thank you, Paige,” he said, low.

  As she walked back across the meadow, Paige brought her fingertips to her lips.

  And realized she should have made one more rule about kisses. Maybe only during sex.

  Because that good-bye kiss didn’t feel very FRED at all.

  Over the next several days, they fell into a routine: Paige would work on her house all day, Adam would show MacGregor around, Paige would take Amanda down to the harbor and pick her up, they would come back, and the three of them would have dinner together and watch another VHS tape from the movie box.

  The box marked “Private” stayed in the corner, untouched, much to Paige’s surprise.

  She and Adam didn’t have a lot of time to be alone, between the workers at Paige’s house, the ranch hands helping to assemble the gazebo, the dude group at Adam’s, and Amanda. But Adam let Paige know he’d like to be: his hand under the blanket each evening worked itself higher up her thigh until she gasped in inappropriate places during the movies.

  “What’s the matter?” Amanda would ask, turning back toward Paige.

  Paige would press her lips together. “Nothing. I thought he was going to pull out a knife or something.”

  Amanda would look at her as if she were dense. “Why would he pull out a knife?”

  “I don’t know. I must not be paying very much attention.”

  Amanda would shake her head and go back to the movie while Adam would work the smile off his face.

  Sometimes Adam would catch Paige by the waist in the kitchen, and he’d lay a quick, hot kiss on her lips, filled with promise and longing.

  Once, when the dude group was off in the distance, Adam tugged Paige into the grove of trees by the pond and ran his hands along her body in one long, sweltering kiss behind the tallest oak tree—just long enough to remind her of what he could bring her to and hint at what might come next if they could find a couple hours alone.

  Another time, he snuck her into the horse stables before the other wranglers came back and managed to make her come against a haystack with just his hand and a few clever kisses.

  One afternoon, as she was starting to paint the baseboard in the downstairs powder room, her cow doorbell mooed, and she opened it to find Adam leaning in the doorway.

  “I have an hour off. I came to say hello.”

  “Ah. Great. Well, hello. Is that the only reason you came?” She smiled.

  “And to see how you’re doing with the work, of course.” He looked over her shoulder at the interior.

  “Of course.” She stepped back to invite him in. “Let me give you the tour.”

  There were workers moving about upstairs and outside, and Paige managed to show Adam two whole rooms before he had her behind a closed door and pressed her against it, kissing her neck and running a hand up her leg.

  “Adam! The workers are still here!”

  “I don’t care,” he murmured. “They’ll get the picture.”

  “The locks don’t work!”

  “We’ll take our chances.”

  “Adam!” She pushed at his chest.

  He gave her a long-suffering look and then stepped out into the hallway. “Antonio!” he bellowed.

  “Yeah, man?”

  “Don’t let anyone come up here.”

  “Got it, chief.”

  Adam came back into the room, a wolfish grin on his face, and closed the door. “How quiet can you be?”

  They were like two teenagers, sneaking around the premises, and Paige loved every minute of it. The serious, scowling Adam she’d initially encountered the day she got stuck in her grandmother’s window had turned into another man. He was now a winking, dimpled Adam, always looking for the next adventure. As much as she’d been crushing before, she had doubled down now.

  But she still had to talk to him.

  She still had to come clean.

  If she could just get up the nerve . . .

  CHAPTER 21

  The dude group left on a Sunday.

  Adam couldn’t help but breathe a sigh of relief.

  It was great to know he was sliding toward a sale, but nerve-racking having MacGregor hanging around inspecting everything. When MacGregor had seen the gazebo going up in the meadow, he’d barked to Adam, “What the hell is that?”

  “A gazebo.”

  “I hate it,” he’d said.

  “I don’t care.”

  “I’m not buying this property with that monstrosity on it.”

  “It’s on Paige’s property.”

  “It looks like it’s crossing a line.”

  Adam turned and ran his hand over his jaw as if he were inspecting it. “Mr. MacGregor, you have fifty acres of land to play with here. If you don’t like the twenty square feet that the gazebo might be taking up, you can probably talk Paige into razing it anytime after August 7. How’s that?”

  “You’re talking me out of buying your property, son.”

  “I’m doing no such thing. I’m trying to help you be neighborly.”

  MacGregor had just growled. He was already pissed that Paige was waiting on Dorothy Silver’s offer rather than taking him up on his, and doubly pissed that Adam couldn’t sway it.

  But Adam had kept him away from Paige. He hated the way the man stared at Paige’s property or, worse, Paige herself. He’d wanted to take him out on at least twenty occasions.

  And now he was gone—he’d flown back to Tennessee and said he’d be in touch. The ranch had quieted down, the bison were back in the wild after their week of vaccines and injections, and things felt normal for the first time in ages.

  In fact, things felt good.

  Adam didn’t quite want to admit that to himself. The feeling was foreign. Even if he let himself acknowledge how good he felt, he’d have to follow up with the knowledge that Paige was part of the reason, and he couldn’t completely wrap his head around that, or the fact he’d be leaving her soon.

  Besides, maybe it wasn’t Paige.

  Maybe it was about being free.

  And his plans were in motion.

  As things should be.

  And there was no stopping everything now.

  He caught sight of Paige’s golf cart coming around the side of the resort—her hair lifted on the wind as she threw her head back and laughed with Amanda. As they bounced down the road toward town, they looked over at him and waved.

  An incredible warmth filled his chest. And something that felt like joy. He didn’t even really know what it was, but joy was the word that kept coming to his mind.

  Paige and Amanda both trusted him. And relied on him. And liked him. And he liked them. They’d let him take them horseback riding a few times when he could break away from the dude group, and he’d never remembered having such great days. He’d laughed and felt entirely relaxed—Amanda had proven to be a fast learner, and Paige could hold her own. Amanda seemed fascinated by the trails her mom had taken. And Adam had simply felt “at peace,” if that was a real thing.

  These two women were changing his life in ways he couldn’t even comprehend.

  He took a deep breath and looked away.

  He didn’t want to think about what he was giving up.

  Paige went the usual way up the back road to the Friends of the Sea Lion center.

  “I think he’s just not into me,” Amanda said.

  “Maybe he just doesn’t know how you feel about him.”

  “Or he’s just not into me.” Amanda gave a wan smile.

  They’d been discussing Garrett on their drives, Paige trying to encourage Amanda to be herself and not worry about Garrett too much. If it was meant to be between them, Garrett would come around.

  “Sometimes boys can be a little sl
ow,” Paige said. “You have to stay true to who you are. And if he likes you, he’ll eventually show interest.”

  “Is that what happened with you and Adam?”

  Paige blinked back. “What?”

  “It’s not like I don’t know. Jeez. I see you two looking at each other. I’m not dumb.”

  Paige didn’t know how Amanda was going to feel about that, given her mother and all, so she fumbled for the right words. “I had a crush on him when I was a teenager—about your age,” she admitted into the sage-filled air.

  “Was it when he was dating my mom?”

  Dang. Teens were perceptive. “Um. Yeah.”

  “I was starting to figure that out.”

  “How do you feel about that?”

  “I guess it’s okay.” She shrugged.

  Paige couldn’t bring herself to tell Amanda the whole story—that she’d been instrumental in breaking the couple up—and didn’t know if she’d ever be able to admit that. She could barely admit it to herself, definitely couldn’t admit it to Adam, and now certainly couldn’t admit it to Amanda, either.

  “Did your mom ever talk to you about Adam?” Paige asked.

  “She never told me his name. She just said that she and my father were teenage sweethearts, and that her parents and his parents broke them up, but he never fought it. So my mom took that as a cue and left him for good. She said he never really cared about her. And that he lived in a terrible place that she never could have gone back to anyway. And he had a terrible father. And a terrible stepmom. That’s all I knew.”

  Paige reeled a little from that. Ginger was probably whom Samantha perceived as stepmom. And those things she’d said—many were lies or exaggerations. But Paige couldn’t tell Amanda any of that without calling her mom a liar. So she bit her tongue.

  “But I don’t get the sense that Adam was ever that bad,” Amanda said wistfully, staring out at the canyon trees as they rolled by. “Maybe my mom just said some of that because she didn’t want me to feel like he left both of us.”

  Paige couldn’t believe it. “You’re a very smart girl, Amanda.”