What Happens in Summer

by Caridad Piñeiro

  Also by Caridad Pineiro

  At the Shore

  One Summer Night

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  Copyright © 2018 by Caridad Pineiro Scordato

  Cover and internal design © 2018 by Sourcebooks, Inc.

  Cover design by Dawn Adams/Sourcebooks, Inc.

  Cover image © itsskin/Getty Images

  Sourcebooks and the colophon are registered trademarks of Sourcebooks, Inc.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems—except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews—without permission in writing from its publisher, Sourcebooks, Inc.

  The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious or are used fictitiously. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental and not intended by the author.

  All brand names and product names used in this book are trademarks, registered trademarks, or trade names of their respective holders. Sourcebooks, Inc., is not associated with any product or vendor in this book.

  Published by Sourcebooks Casablanca, an imprint of Sourcebooks, Inc.

  P.O. Box 4410, Naperville, Illinois 60567-4410

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  Contents

  Front Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Epilogue

  About the Author

  Back Cover

  Prologue

  Sea Kiss, New Jersey

  Playing it safe was far worse than taking a risk on what you wanted.

  Jonathan Pierce knew just what he wanted.

  He grabbed hold of the gnarly branch of the decades-old wisteria vine that climbed the side of the Sinclair mansion and boosted himself up. He’d made the journey so many times this past summer, he could do it blindfolded.

  He scrambled up the vine, finding the familiar foot- and handholds until he vaulted up and over the second-floor railing, and landed silently as a cat burglar on the balcony. It ran the length of the immense oceanfront mansion, with elegant french doors offering views of the sea.

  The first darkened doorway was Maggie Sinclair’s room. He rushed past it quietly; Maggie belonged to his older brother, Owen. Not that Owen had acted on it yet, but Jonathan had known for years that the two were meant to be together, family feud be damned.

  The next doorway was usually Maggie’s dad’s, but the old man had stopped coming down to the Shore as often as he once had, so it was a good bet that room was unoccupied.

  Reaching the third room, he saw the curtains wafting in the summer breeze and the dim light from behind the partially closed french doors. He smiled, and his heart raced with pleasure.

  Connie was waiting for him. Ever-responsible, ever-loyal Connie had broken her own rules to fall in love with him. Or at least he thought it was love. It definitely was on his part. With barely a week left before the girls all went back to college, he intended to let her know just how he felt.

  He slipped carefully through the open doors and shut them behind him. He’d gone no more than a step when she launched herself at him, laughing and kissing him as she said, “What took you so long?”

  “I missed you too,” he said, knowing it was more about the separation to come in a week and not about the long hours since last night.

  He bent his head and kissed her, his touch tender and caring, and she answered in kind, her lips soft and coaxing.

  Although Maggie had been bringing her friends to the Jersey Shore every summer since they’d met freshman year in college, he hadn’t really paid much attention to Connie at first. He’d had his share of girls from his high school class fawning over him.

  But when Maggie and her friends had come back the next year, he had finally, gratefully, noticed what a real woman should be. Like Connie: all luscious curves, but also proud, smart, and independent.

  As impatient as he might have been to make love to her tonight, he wanted her to know how much this meant to him. How this wasn’t just a summer romance for him.

  He leaned over her, his gaze locked on her face. He wanted to say the words—Lord, how he wanted to—but they stuck in his throat, so he let every kiss and touch tell her what he couldn’t voice.

  * * *

  Connie’s heart thudded almost painfully in her chest as she wondered how, in a week’s time, she could leave him. The ache deepened beneath her breastbone, and she put her hand there and rubbed to assuage the hurt.

  What had started as a summer fling with a funny, smart, and beautiful boy had turned into something so much more, with an incredibly amazing man. Falling in love with Jonathan hadn’t been in her game plan, but he was just too hard to resist.

  She should have resisted. He was a Pierce. She wasn’t a Sinclair, but Maggie was like a sister, and that stupid family feud was still going strong, as far as she knew.

  He was going back to Villanova in a week, and she’d be returning to Princeton. The colleges were not all that far apart, but if she was to execute her game plan, she had to stay in the game, which meant studying and more studying. Not nights spent in bed making love and days spent daydreaming about the nights. But like Eve with the apple, now that she’d had a bite of such delicious forbidden fruit, she didn’t know how she could go on a Jonathan-free diet.

  At the moment, she could just admire his sun-streaked, light-brown hair waving wildly around a masculine face with chiseled features. A sexy, dimpled grin was on his lips, and his eyes glittered with a blue as enchanting as a Sea Kiss summer sea.

  That ache in her heart rocketed to life again together with an almost unbearable lightness in her soul. For so much of her life, she’d been driven to accomplish more and more, but with Jonathan, she could just be herself. No goals or responsibilities. Just…happy.

  And so, in the blink of an eye, her game plan altered. She could see it all so clearly, only now Jonathan was there beside her at each step. Finish college. Head to law school. Pass the bar. Get a job in a big New York City law firm so she could help her family financially, as well as others who had legal problems and couldn’t afford representation. Become a partner. Marry Jonathan. Or maybe marry Jonathan and then become a partner. She didn’t want to wait too long to
be with him forever.

  Not that she’d ever pictured getting married to anyone before, since her home life hadn’t been anything great. But for Jonathan, she’d make an exception.

  As she snuggled into the curve of his arm and pillowed her head on his broad shoulder, she sighed and said, “I can’t believe the summer’s almost over.”

  He grunted his reply in a typical male way. “Sucks.” But then he surprised her by adding, “I’d like to keep on seeing you once you’re back in school.”

  She smiled, pleased by his admission, and glanced up at him. There was a contented smile on his full lips and the first hint of a dimple. The hard line of his jaw had a bit of blond stubble from an evening beard. She ran her hand up to brush away a lock of his hair.

  “I’d like that too,” she said.

  His smile broadened, and the dimple fully emerged, drawing attention to that luscious mouth. She couldn’t resist surging up to skim a kiss along that dimple and the corner of his lips.

  “What was that for?” he asked.

  She wanted to say because he made her happy, but she hesitated. She’d seen what could happen to a woman whose happiness depended on a man, as she’d watched her mother lose herself and her dreams.

  “As a way for you to remember me until we visit each other at college,” she said instead.

  Tension crept into his body, impossible to miss. Enough to worry her. She pulled back from him. “I thought you wanted us to see each other. At least, that’s what you said a minute ago.”

  A chagrined look passed across his features, stirring the worry inside her.

  “I do, only… I won’t be at college this year. I’m not going back to Villanova.”

  She searched his face, finding it hard to believe, but he appeared deadly serious.

  “What do you mean you’re not going back? Did something happen? Are you transferring to another school?”

  * * *

  She was freaking out, and Jonathan understood. To someone like Connie, college meant everything, including the stability she’d not had in her early life because her father had abandoned her family. But he wasn’t like her. The whole predictable route that she and her friends—and even his brother—were taking was not the path he wanted to follow.

  “I liked Villanova. The people. The place. Even some of the classes, but the whole college thing is not for me.”

  Shock registered on her features, and she shook her head, either not comprehending or, worse, not wanting to. “What do you mean it’s not for you? So what do you plan to do? Spend the rest of your life surfing? Or working at the bar?”

  Her words were too much like those his father had shouted at him when he’d told him a week ago of his decision. His father, a bitter and angry old man who never had a kind word for either of his sons.

  Her words, the look she gave him, stoked the anger in his belly. He tried to keep it banked, because he understood where such anger could lead. In as calm a voice as he could muster, he said, “I have plans, Connie. They’re just different from yours.”

  “Was I ever in your plans? Or was this just a summer hookup?” she asked, the upset evident in her gaze, but his own pain was just as alive. Just as sharp.

  He snorted a breath and said more roughly, “You act as if I’m the one who wanted this to be just a hookup, but who’s the one who didn’t want her friends to know she’d been seeing me?”

  She laid her hand over his heart. “It’s not what you think.”

  The pity in her tone unleashed something inside him. Something ugly and hurtful. “Don’t tell me what I think, Connie. I think you’re ashamed of me. That I’m not good enough for someone like you.”

  “I care for you, Jon,” she said, but it was clear that she was unable to fully commit to what was happening between them. “But I know what it’s like to want a man you can’t rely on. A man who doesn’t fulfill his responsibilities. I won’t have that in my life. I can’t have that in my life again.”

  The heat of anger rose inside him, and he clenched his hands at his sides. “If that’s what you think I am, I guess it’s a good thing the summer’s over so this can be over.”

  He marched to the door and stood there for a long moment. He delayed there for a second, hoping for a change, but when she said nothing, he turned back to face her. “I love you, Connie. My bad. I should have known better than to give my heart to someone like you.”

  He stormed through the french doors and slammed them shut but couldn’t move away from them as the sound of her tears froze him in place.

  From behind the glass of the doors he heard “I love you too.”

  He was tempted to go back in. Take her in his arms again and tell her everything would be all right, but he knew it wouldn’t. With a long sigh and heaviness in his heart, he walked away, hoping he wasn’t making the worst mistake of his life.

  * * *

  Superstorm Sandy barreled into New Jersey with a viciousness that hadn’t been seen since the 1944 Great Atlantic Hurricane.

  Connie hunkered down with her family in their Union City home, praying that the sturdy brick building wouldn’t come down around them as it shuddered from the force of the wind and buckets of rain that battered the structure. A constant sound, like that of a freight train roaring by, accompanied the loud bangs and clangs as debris hit their home.

  The night was long, especially as the power cut out just a few hours after the storm began. Luckily, they had prepped with candles and batteries, and their gas stove and furnace kept the house warm.

  Connie finally drifted off to sleep in the early morning hours. She awoke to a cold, clear day and her grandfather huddled over an old transistor radio, listening to reports about the storm and sipping a café con leche. As she joined him and heard the newscast, it was clear that Sandy had caused major damage. Her stomach churned with worry for her friend Emma, who was living in Sea Kiss, and Maggie in her Gramercy Park town house, since there had been massive flooding in the low-lying areas in Manhattan.

  Thankfully, she was able to reach both of them via cell phone just a short time later to confirm that they were okay, but by later that day, it was clear that Sea Kiss had taken a serious hit from the hurricane.

  When Maggie said that she was heading to the Jersey Shore town in a couple of days to check on her family home and help residents with the cleanup, Connie didn’t hesitate, especially since there was zero chance of running into Jonathan Pierce.

  She hadn’t seen Jonathan in the nearly two years since their breakup that momentous summer when she’d actually considered changing her life plans for him. During that time, she’d heard from Emma that Jonathan had been drifting from one job to another and from one place to another, reinforcing the reasons why she had made the right decision years earlier.

  She’d spent too much of her childhood with a father who waltzed in and out of her life with one get-rich-quick scheme after another. She’d seen her mother suffer from his irresponsible behavior, both financially and emotionally. She’d vowed never to be in a similar position.

  “You’re unusually quiet,” Maggie said as they drove down to Sea Kiss in a Jeep Wrangler that Maggie had rented to deal with the possible road conditions down at the Shore.

  “Thinking,” Connie said but then quickly tacked on, “about the damage to Sea Kiss. I know I don’t live there, but I almost feel like it’s home sometimes.”

  “Me too. Emma says there’s not much damage to my family’s beach house, but I worry about everyone else,” Maggie said.

  “Hopefully, it won’t be that bad,” Connie said. They fell silent for the rest of the trip on a parkway that was devoid of the usual traffic since most businesses and schools were still closed due to the aftermath of the storm.

  Nearly an hour later, they were pulling off the parkway and heading toward Sea Kiss, but they had to detour for an assortment of downed
trees, including one blocking access to Main Street. After a few turns, they were able to reach the Sea Kiss downtown to meet Emma and Carlo, her caterer extraordinaire, who was using his food truck to help feed the volunteers.

  They parked and walked over to meet their friends, and as they did so, the mayor and several town council members joined them, as well as Owen Pierce.

  Maggie stiffened beside her at the sight of Owen, and Connie understood the tension. She suspected that if things were different between the Pierce and Sinclair families, Maggie and Owen would have been an item.

  In no time, the number of volunteers grew steadily. Some people were dispatched to handle various tasks on Ocean Avenue, where the storm surge had destroyed the boardwalk, pier, and some of the seaside cottages. Other volunteers were sent to deal with the flooded lighthouse and assorted businesses and homes near the inlet.

  Connie walked with Maggie down to Ocean Avenue, slogging through growing mounds of wet sand and debris the closer they got to the beachfront. Her breath left her as they reached the area and the full scope of the devastation hit her.

  There was no boardwalk left for blocks, and over half of the pier had been swept out to sea. The beachfront was littered with debris, from small pieces of what had once been the boardwalk to immense telephone poles from who knew where. Northward, in the direction of Maggie’s home, the dunes had protected the shoreline to some degree but had been flattened in spots. Sand from the dunes covered most of Ocean Avenue for a couple of miles.

  Where there had once been some seaside cottages, there was now only emptiness for yards and yards until the remains of the first cottage were visible. It had been uprooted and flipped upside down, while the one beside it had been sheared in half. Others farther down had been a little more fortunate and still stood but were heavily damaged.

  Connie’s group of volunteers began to help families clear out the cottages that might be salvageable so that deadly mold wouldn’t take hold in wet walls and contents. As they assisted with that, the Public Works Department was already at work on plowing sand off the street to make Ocean Avenue passable again.