by Madeline Ash
“I’m Dee. And you’ve got perfect timing.” She had a West Coast accent. “Alexia and I were just heading to the beach to perve on babes. Want to join?”
“I’m right here, sweetheart.”
This from a striking man who’d given Regan a warm smile before sitting back down to resume sketching in a book. He had a captivating kind of elegance and his dark hair curled around his ears, loose loops that looked slightly damp at the scalp and crispy at the ends. The sea salt treatment. She frowned, wondering why Jed and Dee both looked vaguely familiar.
“As if you don’t know that’s what we do down there.” Dee ran an affectionate hand down her husband’s spine.
“I’ll head down in ten,” Parker said, tugging a few potato wedges from a bowl before sliding it along the table. Jed helped himself without looking up. “Give you ladies some proper viewing.”
On the opposite side of the wooden table, Alexia rolled her eyes. She looked different without the synthetic dreadlocks and sci-fi outfit she’d worn on television. With her casual clothes and lack of make-up, she looked comfortingly normal. “We’ll let you know if the going gets that tough,” she said dryly.
Dee smirked and faced Regan, brows raised. “You game?”
What else was she going to do? Sit in her hotel room and agonize away the hours until Stevie arrived? “Okay.”
Alexia smiled and stood. “Want me to show you to your room so you can change?”
“Thanks.” Regan glanced at Felix in parting and he gave a small smile. Trying to pretend everything was normal, betrayed by the discomfort of his stance, the stiffness in his shoulders. She felt like the world’s biggest bitch when she turned away without smiling back.
Alexia led the way into the bar, casual in bare feet and a bikini. She didn’t seem bothered by the sand she brought in on her feet, a casualness Regan appreciated, but she did stop a few youths who overtook them, dripping wet, to ask for their credit card details. “To pay for our legal representation when someone slips over in your wake and sues us.” The youths found towels pretty quickly after that, mumbling apologies with red cheeks.
Inside, Lullabar had a tasteful grunge décor that Regan instantly adored. The ceiling hung low over the entrance and rose up over the main space like the slope of a swelling wave. The high windows were dulled with spray paint, emphasizing the neon graffiti glowing under ultraviolet lights on the walls. The bar counter, the booth tops, even the high standing tables, were made of what looked to be old surfboards cut to shape. A minimal beat ground out of the speakers, giving the busy space the feel of an underground, yet family friendly, club.
“This place is Parker’s baby,” Alexia said, noting Regan’s appreciation. She gestured for her to follow upstairs and led her to one of six doors. Opening it, she said, “And this is your room.”
It was much airier than downstairs. White walls and sheets, wooden floors, and a red hammock that hung from a sturdy frame and overlooked the sparkling splendor of Byron’s main beach.
“We’ll meet you out there. Look for the green beach umbrellas.”
Regan dropped her bag. “I don’t want to interrupt your time with Dee,” she said, awkwardly. “I can hang out up here, it’s no problem.”
Alexia tilted her head. “Are you feeling weird about the royalty thing? Because seriously, Dee and Jed are more down to earth than we’ll ever be.”
The royalty thing.
Regan’s jaw hung loose as the names and faces suddenly clicked into place. The couple had been all over the front pages of the newspapers earlier in the year, alongside headlines of an international real-life fairytale. A long-lost European prince had been reunited with his childhood sweetheart, and together, they had entered royal life. That was why Jed and Dee seemed familiar? Felix had brought a jobless, futureless nobody to share Christmas with royalty?
“Oh, my God.” As if she didn’t have enough things eating her up inside.
Alexia grimaced. “You didn’t know?”
Inadequacy owned her. Mute, she shook her head.
“All right, look. Let’s pretend that didn’t happen. Because Dee hates that people act differently towards her even though she’s the same person she ever was. If I tell her why you haven’t joined us, she’ll carry you down to the beach herself.” She paused, sighing. “More to the point, we know that you’re Stevie’s sister and that you haven’t seen her in a long time.” Alexia’s gaze was frank, but her tone was kind. “Yes, we’re a bunch of gossips. But if I were you, I’d be needing a distraction right about now. Please come to the beach.”
Tempted, Regan almost nodded.
“It’ll help with the wait...” The words curled like a beckoning finger.
She swallowed. “But she’s a princess.”
“Who’s trying to catch a break from all that. Please come and help her feel like a normal person.”
Smart woman had played a winning card. All too well could Regan relate to wanting to feel normal. “Okay.”
Ten minutes later, she emerged from the bar in a black bikini with a towel over her shoulder. She could sense the guys sitting at the outdoor table, could sense Felix like a tingle at the back of her neck. Gut twisting, she found herself incapable walking away from him without as much as a backward glance.
Feigning ease, she looked over.
They sat in silence, surrounded by beachgoers that now looked suspiciously like bodyguards trying to blend in.
Jed was sketching, Parker was gazing down at the beach like the happiest man on earth, and Felix picked roughly at the tabletop, brows low and jaw set. For half a heartbeat, she adored how poorly he fit in at the beach. His subtly styled hair had definitely not seen the water and he was still wearing lace-up shoes despite the sand beneath the table. Today’s nerd shirt, reading Bow Ties Are Cool, was worn over a rigid torso that was entirely unrelaxed by the beauty of the sea.
Then her heart contracted painfully, because his tension was due to her.
Sensing her stare, he looked up, and the instant shift in his expression only squeezed her chest tighter. Fierce longing used the zip-line of his gaze to reach her body, crashing hot and insistent over her skin. Not the kind of appreciation that spoke of lust and nothing else, but a yearning for all of her, and she realized that the hand he’d extended last night, asking to give them a chance, had not been withdrawn. She could change her mind. She could march over there right now and say yes, she wanted more, and he would accept it.
The thought thrilled her. Terrified her.
Tempted the girl deep down who didn’t know better.
Then Jed glanced up, a warning steady in his dark eyes. Not asserting his royal influence, but that of a time-honored friend. His look said watch out, because this was his mate Felix, and she’d not be messing with him on Jed’s watch.
Regan hightailed it to the beach.
It was busy and blindingly bright. Swimmers, surfers, and sunbathers cluttered up the shore, sharing the clean sand and rich turquoise water. The air was laced with brine, the greasy salt of fish and chips, and the hint of the eucalypts growing beyond the sand. Squinting despite her sunglasses, she spotted Dee and Alexia beneath green umbrellas not far down the beach.
Alexia lay on her stomach, forehead resting on folded arms, while Dee relaxed back on her elbows, full figure covered in a retro one-piece bathing suit, red polka dots and all.
“Jeez,” Dee exclaimed as she reached them. “You’re paler than I am.” She stuck a hand in her beach bag and threw her a bottle of sunscreen. “I’ll do your back, if you want.”
Regan caught it, uncomfortable. “I’ll be all right. But thanks. I mean, thank you. I appreciate it.”
The woman angled down her sunglasses. “You’d better not be fawning.”
Maybe a little. But she said, “Never fawned in my life,” and spread her towel beside Alexia’s.
“My kind of girl.” Dee smiled and returned her attention to the shore.
Under the shade of the umbrella, she coat
ed herself in sunblock. She focussed on the repetitive movements and almost pretended to be relaxed, listening to the crash of waves, the buoyant chatter of beachgoers. It was pretty, this paradise where land met sea. Things could be worse.
Then Dee spoke.
“So. Felix is pretty gorgeous. Are you two an item?”
“Dee.” Alexia lifted her head. Her caramel hair hung long and curly down her back, wispy strands breaking away from the thick locks in a look reserved for ultimate beach babes. She and Parker were definitely made for each other. “Remember that conversational run-up we talked about?”
“Oh. So this beach is nice. And Felix, huh, he’s pretty nice, too.”
Alexia groaned as Regan answered, “Yes, he is.” She looped her arms around her legs and set her chin on her knees. “But I’m not.”
She wasn’t nice and she wasn’t kind. She was a disaster who’d been better off driving trucks on her own. She’d been selfish and greedy and had taken Felix to bed when she’d known, deep down, he wanted more and that she wouldn’t be able to give it to him.
“Niceness comes in many forms,” Dee offered, watching her over Alexia’s back.
“Good for it,” she muttered, as pent up distress began to swell. How had she knowingly done that to him? The best person to have come into her life and she’d sucked him in and spat him out.
“Have you slept with him yet?”
“Dee!” Alexia glanced at Regan. “You don’t have to answer that.”
Good, because her throat was too tight to answer. She stared straight ahead, jaw taut.
“Do you want to sleep with him?”
Alexia kicked her friend. “You don’t have to answer that either.”
“What are you, her lawyer?” Dee sat up, facing Regan properly. She looked like a fourteen year old girl settling in for a gossip session, and to Regan, there was nothing more horrifying. “She can speak for herself.”
“Maybe you should’ve stayed upstairs,” Alexia murmured.
“What?” Her friend was adamant. “Sometimes it’s hard to talk about something unless someone asks you directly.”
“Maybe she doesn’t want to talk about it.”
Strangely, it was Alexia’s defense that broke her.
“Of course, I want to talk about it!” Regan’s skin seemed to split and all the gunk that had been building inside her gushed out in a pitiful sob, ending her emotional endurance. She pressed her hands over her face. “It’s all stuck in my head, my chest, and it won’t get out. I feel like I’m going to explode and will be better off in pieces.”
There was a beat of stunned silence. Then there was a shuffling and a small spray of sand as Dee moved to Alexia’s towel and leaned in close.
“I hate that feeling,” Dee said, gentle now, words just for the three of them. “It’s like your insides are fermenting and become more and more toxic until your top blows.” Suddenly a hand covered Regan’s, squeezed, and let go. “You’ll feel better if you let it out. It’s cleansing.”
Mortified by herself, Regan ran the back of her hand under her eyes. A quick glance at the women showed a concerned and attentive audience and she almost sobbed again. Caring, female friends weren’t really within her experience. But she’d come home to open up, hadn’t she?
And so she talked. Covered the standard points—she hadn’t seen Stevie in eight years and Felix was her sister’s best friend—and then divulged the latest.
“We slept together last night,” she muttered, eyes on the sand. “It was...almost scary, it felt so right. He makes me want to curl up inside him and stay there. I’ve never felt like that before. It’s never meant anything before.”
Dee tilted her head. “He makes you want to be the little spoon?”
Regan rubbed her face. “Yeah. But I can’t be. It was a mistake, a stupid hurtful mistake. We can’t be together.”
The women exchanged a glance. Alexia’s was pained, Dee’s determined.
“Right,” said the hipster princess. “This will be easier than you think.”
Easy? Regan shook her head.
Dee shoved her sunglasses onto her head and looked at her with a smart, blue gaze. “Ignore whatever reasons you think you have for not pursuing this. That’s mind chatter and it’s not half as articulate as your heart, okay?”
Warily, she nodded.
“Do you want to be with Felix?”
“Ideally,” she answered, “but—”
“Ah, no reasons, remember? Does he want to be with you?”
She sniffled. “He suggested seeing how we go—today, tomorrow, into the future.” Her chin dimpled with held back tears. “I just walked away.”
“So he’s keen.” The woman nodded as if adding it to a mental calculation. “Do you respect him?”
What wasn’t there to respect about such a sweet, thoughtful man? “Of course.”
“His opinions and values? The way he approaches an argument? The way he makes coffee?”
Admittedly, she’d only been around him for three days, but in that time, she’d learned that Felix didn’t let pride rule him. He could have refused to let her stay, considering he’d known nothing about her situation. He could have demanded she tell Stevie that she was in Melbourne immediately, not taking no for answer. Instead, he’d been sensitive to her wishes. He hadn’t assumed that he knew better than she did just because he didn’t understand her.
“Yes,” she said weakly. “He makes good coffee.”
“Do you love him?”
“I...I think so.” She hadn’t loved a man before. The absence of him suffocated her. “I need him.”
“And these reasons you think you can’t be together,” Dee continued, “can you give me a vague idea of what that’s about? You don’t want to stay in Melbourne, or something?”
Regan clenched her fists, face downcast. “There’s something he doesn’t know. I’m not brave, like he thinks.” She was so much weaker. “I could keep it from him so that we could be together, but that’d feel wrong. Since it’d end the same if I told him, I’ve just ended it now without him having to think less of me.”
Silence fell in which Alexia reached into her beach bag, drew out a tissue, and pressed it into Regan’s hand. Dee had turned to look at the sea, red lips twisted in thought.
“I say tell him,” she said finally, turning back. “It might change the idea of you in his head, but not for the worse. Felix is a good guy—Jed’s told me a lot about him. His friendship was a massive support when Jed was in Melbourne, even more so in the past year. He cares about people, accepts them for who they are. In the random event he doesn’t like what he hears, then he’s not who any of us thought he was. I say tell him,” she repeated, and looked to Alexia for confirmation.
Her friend smiled, a little apologetically. “You can rarely fight Dee’s logic.”
That didn’t mean Regan couldn’t try. Panic seized her chest and she breathed slowly, in and out. But what was the point? “I have to tell Stevie anyway,” she said in between breaths. “I’ve known that. Guess I’ll hit two birds with one stone.”
She would risk her future by offering him her past. And pray he didn’t turn away from both.
Alexia nodded. “You’ll feel so much better.”
Dee grabbed her hand again, holding tight. “And if it goes badly, we’ll drink with you.”
Gee. “Thanks.” A moment later, her eyes caught on a family not far down the beach, all wearing red and white Santa hats. She stiffened, horrified. “Oh, shit.”
“What?” the both asked, leaning in again.
“It’s Christmas.”
Alexia frowned. “You just noticed?”
“I haven’t bought presents. I’ve got nothing for Stevie.” She shrunk into herself. “I can’t show up out of the blue, on Christmas, and not have a present for my sister. God, why am I like this?”
“Relax, honey.” Dee lowered her sunglasses again. “She won’t have one for you either.”
“Besides
,” Alexia added, “a present might seem presumptuous, considering.”
“Presumptuous,” she repeated dully. Imagine the presumption in giving one’s sister a present on Christmas. She broke a little more. “Okay.”
“Babe alert,” Dee interrupted, and all three women turned to watch Parker strut past. He was bare from the waist up, showing off a tanned surfer’s body, complete with ripped abs and golden hair. Dee wolf-whistled and Regan managed a smile.
“Why?” Alexia asked, getting to her feet. “Why did I fall in love with the biggest ego in the southern hemisphere?” And she strode off across the sand, unable to hide her grin.
“Thanks for the advice,” Regan murmured.
Dee rolled onto her stomach and kicked her feet up behind her. “You’re welcome. And I mean it about the drinking.”
Regan shifted, sand rasping against her skin just as the thought of meeting Stevie grated against her nerves. Tonight, she’d see Stevie and admit to her and Felix why she’d really run away eight years ago. There were so many ways it could end badly. She looked at Dee as a gust of salty wind speckled them in sea spray.
“I’ll set up a bar tab.”
Chapter Nine
“Dee always knows what to say,” Jed murmured, slanting a quiet smile at Felix.
Felix kept his eyes on Regan not far down the beach. It hadn’t been difficult to read the body language of the three women. Dee had pushed, as she did, and Regan had broken. Not necessarily a bad thing, considering she otherwise had no one to talk to, but he’d been hard-pressed not to march over there and tell Jed’s wife to back off.
He’d also been acutely, devastatingly jealous. Regan had opened up to her.
“Any idea what she said?” he asked, scratching at a knot in the table.
“I wouldn’t dream of guessing what comes out of her mouth,” Jed said, “but it won’t have been intentionally to your detriment.”
Only mildly reassured, Felix said, “Cool.”
For a few minutes, they sat in silence. Jed resumed illustrating his latest concept and Felix watched Regan lie on her side, facing Dee.