As jealousy reared its ugly little head, Connie wrestled it to the mat. She no longer had any interest in Jonathan, and Emma would never betray their friendship in that way. Or so she told herself as they headed outside and Owen set aflame the logs in a fire pit while Jonathan placed the chocolate, graham crackers, marshmallows, and the long barbecue skewers on a table by the fire.
She and Emma grabbed the Adirondack chairs that usually graced the large grass lawn behind the mansion. Jonathan plopped onto the chaise longue next to Connie, leaving Owen and Maggie to sit side by side on a second chaise. They were soon roasting marshmallows over the fire, although it might have been better to say that her very nondomestic friend Maggie was busily incinerating her marshmallow.
Owen soon came to the rescue, and Connie looked toward Emma as Maggie shared a sexy moment with the older Pierce brother.
Jonathan clearly wasn’t going to let the heat between the two pass without teasing. “If you two are done with your foreplay over there, maybe you want to take a walk on the beach,” he called out.
Connie elbowed him so forcefully that it made him grunt with pain.
“Ouch, what was that for?” he shot back, glaring at her while rubbing his ribs.
She leaned closer to him and whispered beneath her breath, “For being an idiot.”
Maggie and Owen took the hint, however, bolted upright, and offered their excuses to the group.
Connie breathed a sigh of relief. With them leaving, it was only natural that she and Emma offer their graceful goodbyes, only her friend didn’t seem to be in any kind of rush to leave.
“What’s up with the inventing, Jon? Did you get past that design problem making you crazy last month?” Emma asked.
The sting of jealousy lashed Connie again. She only had a moment to wonder how Emma knew about Jonathan’s struggles before he said, “I think so. Worked out the kinks. I’ve got my team checking my specs before we go all in on the prototype.”
“That sounds sooo exciting,” Emma replied.
Connie echoed the sentiment. “It’s interesting to see what new thing you’ve got going on.”
Jonathan smiled and chuckled. “Or is it that you’re looking forward to seeing what new thing blew up during testing?” he said and absentmindedly ran his finger across the scar on his face.
That he could be so cavalier about nearly losing his life chilled her gut, and in a strangled voice, she said, “That’s not funny, Jon. You could have been killed.”
With a half smile, Jonathan met her gaze and said, “Thanks for the concern, Reyes, but I promise you that this time, it’s not nearly as dangerous.”
Emma’s phone chirped to signal a text message, and after a quick look, she winced. “So sorry. Carlo says we have a bridezilla problem, and the event is tomorrow night. Gotta run.” She shot up, dialed Carlo, and talked to him as she marched toward the privet hedges separating the two mansions.
Thinking that this would be the perfect time to make an excuse and follow, Connie started to rise, but Jonathan said, “Bailing already? Never took you for a coward.”
Damn it. He knew just what button to push. She plopped back down onto the chair. “Not running away, Jon. I just don’t see the sense of this.”
He arched a sandy brow. “This? You mean calling a truce because we don’t want to dump more shit on Maggie and Owen?”
Another button pushed. “I don’t want to add to their issues. God knows I’m concerned enough about what’s going on with them.”
“Me too,” he said, then pierced a marshmallow with a skewer and placed it over the fire to prep another s’more.
“You don’t seem very worried,” she said, wondering how he could be so seemingly blasé about the situation.
He speared her with a glance as sharp as the skewer. “You know I’m just a laid-back surfer dude. I don’t sweat the small stuff. Or the big stuff for that matter.”
She knew all too well. It was why there was no way she’d get involved with him again, even if she still found him way too attractive. “I can’t ignore that this thing with Mags and Owen is bound to cause a lot of hurt,” she said.
He surprised her with a grimace, but he tried to hide it by meticulously assembling the s’more as he said, “Worrying won’t help. You need to chill. And if it goes south, we’ll be there to help pick up the pieces.”
For the first time in forever, she couldn’t argue with him. “I hope we’re both wrong,” she said and shot to her feet. “I really should go.”
He eyed her intently, as if trying to figure her out, only she hadn’t changed in all the years, and apparently, neither had he. That he understood that was confirmed by his next words.
“Go find someone safe, Connie. Someone not like me.”
Chapter 2
Connie nodded, mumbled a quick goodbye, and stalked off, crashing through the gap in the privet hedges and over to the patio for the Sinclair mansion.
Emma was inside, still on the phone with Carlo as she paced back and forth in the area just beyond the french doors leading to the patio. As Connie entered, Emma said, “That sounds like a great idea, Carlo. I’ll be over tomorrow morning to help out.”
Her friend ended the call and faced her as she stormed through the door.
“Wow, is that your happy face?” Emma teased.
“He hasn’t changed one damn bit,” Connie said and hurried toward the kitchen, needing something to help her calm down.
“Which is totally cool. It’s nice to see someone who’s stayed true to themselves. Not many people are that strong,” Emma said as she followed Connie into the kitchen and snagged two glasses from a rack that hung over the island.
“You mean there aren’t that many people who still haven’t grown up,” Connie said as she brought over the wine bottle they had opened earlier. She split the last of the wine between them, nearly filling the glasses to the rim before she smacked the empty bottle down on the table.
Emma smirked as she picked up her goblet. “OMG, he still manages to get to you. I figured you were over that summer.”
Connie glared at her friend, discomfited by the revelation. “You knew?”
Emma’s smirk broadened, and her green eyes twinkled with laughter. With her reddish-blond hair and creamy complexion barely dusted with freckles, she looked even more like a mischievous pixie. “You forget that I deal with couples all the time. It was impossible to miss the sparks between you two. Major heat there.”
“Amazing you can see that and not your sparkage with Carlo,” Connie parried, annoyed with her friend.
Emma wagged a finger back and forth. “No way, Consuelo Maria. You won’t avoid me that easily.”
She laughed and mimicked her friend’s action. “And pulling out the full name won’t work, Emma Anne. Everyone can see how much you like being with Carlo and his family.”
Emma grew thoughtful, shrugged, and sipped her wine. “His family is totally awesome. They feed you like there’s no tomorrow, and we always laugh and have fun. You know what it’s like.”
“It wasn’t always that way with my family,” Connie said. Her grandparents had heartily disapproved of her mother’s decision to be a single mom and had done little to help her out for a long time. It had taken years for things to settle down between her mother and her family. Years before her unreliable father had finally left and their family life had become more stable.
“But they finally came around. You were really lucky they did,” Emma said, and it was impossible to miss the sorrow in her voice.
Connie reached out and laid her hand over Emma’s. “I know it wasn’t easy for you either when your parents broke up.”
“Maybe even long before that,” Emma admitted.
Which was why, between Connie’s dad, who had never really been there, and Emma’s, who had but had screwed her and her mother, the two of them
had commitment issues. Connie was about to respond when Maggie waltzed into the kitchen, a broad smile on her face and a happy gleam in her gaze. A healthy blush that wasn’t from the slight chill of the summer night air painted Maggie’s cheeks with color.
“Someone had a wicked good time,” Emma kidded.
“It was…nice,” Maggie said as she slipped into a chair next to Connie.
Connie peered at Maggie, trying to gauge what had actually happened that night. There was an unmistakable flush on her cheeks, and she had slightly swollen lips. Her blue eyes were as bright as a summer sky, but other than that, there was very little else to clue them in to just how far Maggie and Owen had gone.
“Really? Only just nice?” she asked, narrowing her gaze to scrutinize her friend as she answered.
“Nice,” Maggie repeated. A heartbeat later, she jabbed a finger in Connie’s direction. “That’s all you’ll get out of me, so you can stop the interrogation.”
Connie knew when to quit. Waving her hands, she said, “Far be it from me to push.”
“Which means tag, I’m it,” Emma quipped. “Spill, Maggie,” she said, waggling her brows suggestively.
“No way. I don’t kiss and tell. You guys will just have to be patient,” Maggie said, and to prove her point, she shot out of her chair and hurried from the room.
Connie and Emma tracked her departure and then glanced at each other.
“Something major happened,” Connie said.
“Definitely. Let’s hope it doesn’t cause major damage when it all goes south,” Emma said.
Connie nodded, worry for her friend twisting her gut. “Not when, Emma. If it happens,” she said, trying to be more optimistic than her friend.
Emma waved her off. “Let’s agree to disagree, since I have to hit the sack. Carlo needs help in the morning with wedding plans that have gone off the rails.”
With an air kiss and another wave, Emma left her alone in the kitchen. Well, alone except for her very full glass of wine and the last few cookies from the batch Emma had made the night before. She grabbed the plate and her wine, shut off the lights, and headed to her room.
After a quick change into her pajamas, she climbed into bed and grabbed her smartphone to scan through her office emails while she sipped her wine and nibbled on the cookies. By the time she finished scrolling through her emails and deleting spam and nonessential ones with a swipe, she was feeling more relaxed, if not downright sleepy. She put aside her phone, glass, and the empty plate, shut off the light, and snuggled beneath the light blanket. The summer sea breeze from earlier had picked up speed, and its plaintive wail sounded outside the french doors at the far side of the room. Something rattled against the glass, and she sat up, listening more carefully, trying to stop the skitter in her heart at the thought that Jonathan might have climbed up the vine much as he had so many years earlier.
But it wasn’t him, just the wind kicking up small debris from the potted plants all along the edge of the balcony. She fought back disappointment. There was no room for that emotion in the heart she had walled up so long ago. Except there was a sensation in that guarded space that hadn’t been there in forever. A twinge of both loneliness and hopefulness. Hopefulness she strangled, because she would not let seeing Jonathan again open a crack in that carefully constructed wall.
She had seen what loving the wrong man had done to her mother. The tears her mom had shed until she had finally made the tough decision to let her father leave for good. Connie had been eight when her father had walked out the door and never come back. Much like Jonathan’s mother had left him when he was only nine.
It was no wonder that the two of them weren’t made for a lasting relationship. They’d never had stability in their lives, and yet…
As she closed her eyes and sleep slipped in, so did dreams of Jonathan and of the love they’d shared. Of the way he could make her laugh or make her burn with need or hold her close and soothe her hurts. She hadn’t dreamed of him for so long, but for this night, she let herself imagine how things might have been different between them. The dreams she drifted off to were filled with love, hope, and the promise of happily ever after.
* * *
Jonathan had been too wound up to sleep, as worry about his brother and Connie had dogged his thoughts. So he did what he usually did when slumber eluded him: he worked.
He was sitting on the couch, reviewing some specs on a new fuel cell when his brother came in from the beach, much the way he’d come in the night before. A goofy, happy grin was plastered on his face, and contentment shone in his normally steely gaze.
It had been too long since he’d seen his brother this happy, which was a large part of the reason why Jonathan was so worried. He didn’t want his brother to get hurt, and being involved with Maggie…
As he’d told Connie earlier, if that relationship didn’t work out, it would mean a world of hurt for his brother. But if it did work out, it could mean a world of hurt for him to be constantly thrown together with the woman who’d stolen his heart that long-ago summer. Which was the second cause of his worrying.
“Looks like you had an epic time, Bro,” he said in as neutral a tone as he could muster, not wanting to rain on his brother’s parade.
Owen was too perceptive not to notice. “Can it, Jon. I know you think this is crazy.”
“Totally crazy, but I see how happy you are with her. Maybe crazy is good for you,” Jonathan admitted.
Owen’s grin broadened, and he shook his head. “You always say I’m too boring and too responsible, so yeah, maybe crazy is good for me right now. What about you?”
“Me?” He avoided his brother’s gaze by looking back at his laptop screen and gesturing toward it. “I’ve still got a gnarly problem with this new design.”
Owen snorted and sat on the edge of the coffee table in front of the couch. “You can’t fool me, Li’l Bro. You know what I’m talking about.”
If there was one person in all the world who got him, it was Owen. So he figured he owed his brother some honesty. But only some honesty, because he wasn’t prepared to bare his soul.
“So yeah, I still have some feelings toward Connie. Anger. Fear. Disgust.”
“Desire. Friendship. Love, even?” Owen challenged, arching a raven-dark brow in emphasis.
Jonathan shut down his laptop and swiveled on the sofa to face his brother. “Look, I can’t lie. She did mean a lot to me, and please notice the past tense there. The two of us are like…oil and water. Birthday suits and porcupines. Me and schedules.”
His brother shook his head and chuckled. “That good, huh?”
Jonathan forced a laugh, the proverbial clown hiding the tears inside. “That good. We’re just too different, and it’s a good thing we found that out before either of us really got hurt.”
Owen scrutinized his features, as if searching for the truth behind the smile Jonathan plastered on. With a little dip of his head, he said, “I think it’s too late not to be hurt, but I understand. You don’t want to be hurt again, like when Mom left. You shut off a part of yourself back then, a part I didn’t see come back to life until Connie came around, but then you closed yourself off again.”
Jonathan hated that his brother could be so intuitive and so right. “I know how you want this thing with Maggie to work out, but women and the Pierce men—never a good thing. We seem to lose them more than the Broncos lost Super Bowls—”
“Or the Cubs getting to the World Series, only now they finally won, Li’l Bro. So I guess there’s hope. You have to win eventually,” Owen said and gave him a brotherly jab on the arm.
Jonathan couldn’t help but smile at his brother’s hopefulness. “Yeah, you can’t always wipe out, and I hope you do win, Owen. I promise I’ll be on my best behavior around Connie so as not to rock your boat.”
His brother considered him for a long, pregnant mom
ent. “Did it ever occur to you that the last thing Connie wants is your best behavior?”
Jonathan couldn’t contain his snort and shot to his feet. “No way, dude. The last thing Connie wants is the real me. She’d rather have some three-piece suit with a stick up his ass. No offense intended.”
Owen laughed harshly, slapped his knees, and slowly got to his feet as well. “I have a suit but can’t seem to find my stick. Considering how uptight you are right now, I guess you know where it went.”
He didn’t wait for Jonathan to respond, and as Owen left, Jonathan felt no anger. He’d deserved the smackdown, because he had to admit that when it came to Connie, he lost his laid-back attitude. Maybe it was because he cared too much. And much like his brother had seen, he’d tried to stop doing that the day their mother had walked out the door and hadn’t returned. Adopting that “I don’t give a damn, I do what I want” persona had helped him deal with the overwhelming sense of loss and failure. With their father’s constant complaints and disregard. With Connie’s lack of belief in him so many years earlier.
He wasn’t going to open himself up to the same disappointment, but like he’d told his brother, he also wasn’t going to make Owen’s life harder by fomenting friction with Maggie’s best friend. Come the morning, he’d apologize to his brother, and he’d figure out a way to deal with Connie. He’d dealt with way more difficult problems over the years as he’d built his business. Surely, he could figure out a way to deal with one stubborn, opinionated, and beautiful woman.
Chapter 3
Connie reviewed the settlement offer for the case she had taken on a couple of months earlier. The plaintiff was a relatively new and small company with a fast-growing line of organic baby food products that had caught the attention of the public due to their quality and pricing. The products had also unfortunately drawn the interest of a much larger and more established company, which had launched a line whose packaging and name were just too close for comfort.
What Happens in Summer Page 3