“What’d she say?”
“She said you kissed once, and that was it.”
Drew snorted. “Yeah, that was a disaster. But seriously, man, I’ve always been half in love with her.”
Evan looked up sharply. “What?”
“Yeah. So to see you two together . . . I just . . . I can’t figure out why you always get the girl. And to think you’re doing it just for kicks—or just to use her to pass your time here—kills me.”
“Wait, you’re in love with her?”
“Well, not anymore. Exactly.”
“She said you have a girlfriend.”
“Yeah, I’ve moved on.”
“But you still hang around with her?”
Drew shrugged. “We have the same friends. And I’ve come to terms with the situation. I know she has a type, and it’s not me. It’s not you, either, by the way. Usually suits, guys with lots of money—I get that. I just want her to be happy. But to see her with you . . .” He shook his head. “And you’re just using her.”
“I’m not using her.”
“You’re fucking her until you leave in a few days? With no plans of a future? I think that’s the definition.”
Evan looked away. “I had no idea you felt that way about her,” he said instead. “I really didn’t mean—”
“You didn’t mean to come here and steal one more thing that might be mine?”
“Of course not.”
“Then leave her alone.”
Evan’s back pressed against the upholstery in the dinette. It sounded like a simple solution. He’d just met her, after all, and he was leaving in a few days anyway. And she’d just said their really, really great sex “meant nothing.” Of course. Yet his heart did a strange thud when he imagined saying good-bye.
“I’ll talk to her,” Evan said.
“There are plenty of other women,” Drew said.
Evan nodded. Of course.
“How long are you staying?” Drew asked.
“Few more days.”
“She knows that?”
“Yeah.”
“Where are you heading?”
“Might go up north to see Mom and Dad. Or maybe south, for another loop around.”
“Really? You’re going again?”
“I might.”
“Where do you start?”
“Panama to the Marquesas, usually.”
Drew nodded. “Well, talk to Lia. Make sure she knows. I’m serious, Ev. If you hurt her—if you screw this up—I’ll seriously never forgive you.”
“Got it.” Evan took a deep breath. He wasn’t sure what he was getting himself into, but he knew he didn’t want to hurt Lia, either. And he didn’t want to screw this up. He wasn’t a man who didn’t care. At least he hadn’t been, in the old days. Renece and Luke’s death had changed him, sure, but he didn’t want to be changed into a man who had no feelings for people who really mattered.
“So a few more days?” Drew asked. “You still up for the charter on Monday? Everyone seems to think you’re the best captain ever.”
Evan didn’t miss the eye roll. Or the jealousy in Drew’s voice. He didn’t mean to take over his boat, too, though. Or his staff. He’d be sure to make this all right. “Sure.”
“I’d appreciate that. I have someone coming on Wednesday, but can you handle things until then?”
“Sure.”
Drew didn’t seem completely comfortable with the idea, but he wasn’t frowning anymore. “I might join you on the charter,” he said.
“You don’t have to do that. I can handle it.”
“I know. But I just want to . . . be there. It’s important. Kyle Stevens is—”
“I know about Kyle Stevens.” Evan didn’t really want to hear his name anymore.
“He might want to invest.”
“You need an investor that badly?”
A sadness crossed Drew’s face as he nodded.
Evan sighed. Damn. He didn’t know Drew was this bad off. But he didn’t want to harp on it right now—his intent wasn’t to make Drew feel worse.
He moved Douglas’s bottled water around on the table and thought about something else that had been bothering him.
“You named the boat after Luke,” he said.
The words flew out of nowhere. He worded it as a statement, but in reality it was a question. If Drew had never forgiven him, and couldn’t even bring himself to go to the funeral—still a thorn in Evan’s side—why had he named his boat after Evan’s son?
“I saw pictures of him,” Drew said. “Mom showed me. He looked just like you and Renece. He reminded me of you, but he had her smile—that smile I remembered.” He looked out the porthole for a minute as the boat swayed. “I wish I had met him, Ev. I’m sorry I didn’t. I know you’ll never forgive me for that. And I was always sorry about your loss. It’s hard to imagine. I just couldn’t go to the funeral, you know? But I wanted to honor him in some way.”
On the list of things they had each grown to resent in the other, Drew’s not attending Renece’s and Luke’s funeral was at the top of Evan’s.
But they were breaking this cycle now. . . .
“I appreciate the gesture,” Evan finally said.
Drew’s hand slid across the dinette for a shake. “Move on?”
Evan stared at it for only a second before taking it. Yes. They would move on. The pain was still raw for everyone. They both still missed Renece. Evan would never stop missing his son. Drew would still feel the pain of being betrayed in his mind. Evan would still feel the pain of Drew missing the funerals. They might not learn right away how to stop feeling jealous of each other and what the other had. But in a world where things could be taken from you in a flash, Evan was learning that—despite the heartache and misunderstandings a family could bring—you had to hold on to the people you cherished. Although there had been numerous misunderstandings between them, Drew was still the little brother who had made him the carrot soup.
“Move on,” he said, shaking Drew’s hand.
The smile that stole across Drew’s face was tired, not entirely certain. But the relief there was unmistakable.
But quickly the smile disappeared and his eyes turned as dark as a night ocean: “And don’t hurt her,” he added.
Evan finished the shake and nodded.
He suddenly had his priorities rearranged.
* * *
Lia tugged on the net from one side, but Douglas came up behind her and nudged it out of her hands. “Evan and I can get this later, sunshine.”
“I want to help.”
Douglas looked up and down the deck. Fluffy navy purple clouds, tinged in pink from the bottom, lined up across the blue sky like baked goods, promising dusk in a couple of hours and possibly a little rain. Sounds of the festival—a distant rock band, children laughing, a clown’s horn—bounced down the hill from Sandy Cove and across the marina.
“Do you do windows?” Douglas asked.
“Sure.”
“Can you give them a quick swipe? Don’t spend too much energy—it might rain. We just need a quick rubdown to get the saltwater off.” He set her up with a barely filled bucket and a sponge squeegee, then picked up the deck hose and began hosing down as they listened to the distant strains of a Neil Diamond impersonator from up the hill.
“Think they’ll be okay in there?” she asked, nodding toward the galley and taking a few quick swipes at the closest window.
“They should be. Family’s all you got, you know?”
Lia thought about her sisters, and how she often missed their events because of work. She’d felt especially bad for missing Coco’s first school play, and one of Coco’s surf meets that Fin helped with. And she had felt really bad for missing Giselle’s first wedding dress shopping day. She’d also missed a pet fair th
at Noelle had put on and had been really proud of. And her mother had been sick with pneumonia once and Lia had never been able to get up to see her in L.A. because Elle kept her late every night.
The guilt curdled in her stomach as she soaped up the next window.
“Do you have family, Douglas?”
“Little boy in Vegas.”
Lia’s arm froze mid-circle. The fake Neil Diamond launched into “Sweet Caroline.”
“Is that why you always go out there?” she asked.
“Yep. He’s eleven,” Douglas said over his shoulder as he continued sweeping. “He was a late-in-life one. But I love him like crazy. His mother I have a problem with, but the kid’s terrific. I’m trying to save enough money to go live out there, but my work has always been on the ocean. I’ll have enough saved right about the time he leaves home.” He chuckled. “But you’ve got to try.”
Lia continued soaping the window. Yes, you’ve got to try. . . .
She glanced toward the galley and felt immeasurably proud of Drew and Evan.
“I heard you and Cora are sort of an item,” she said, ready to change the subject.
“What?” Douglas turned off the hose. “Did Cora say that?”
Lia turned her face toward the window so he couldn’t see her smile. “Not exactly. I just assumed, by the way she looks at you.”
“Looks at me?”
“Douglas, you men can be so daft.”
He looked out at the ocean for several seconds, then turned the hose back on. “I won’t argue with you there, sunshine.”
As she rounded the last curve to get the front windows, she came face to chest with Evan. “Oooh!”
With one glance at the chest she’d just been running her hands over—and the arms that had just been holding her, naked, against a wall—a ray of tingles shot throughout her body like some kind of fireworks show gone awry. If she’d been worried before that she didn’t have the gene to enjoy sex properly, she knew the worry was over. The secret, apparently, was not being a yoga instructor or a Cirque du Soleil performer. It was having a large man with very soft lips pressing you against a very hard wall, kissing you like he was drinking water after a long, long drought.
She smoothed her dress and looked away so he wouldn’t see her blush. Then she wondered for about the twentieth time who she was around Evan Betancourt.
“Hey,” she said to his third button. She couldn’t quite bring herself to lift her eyes to his face.
“Hey,” he said in a voice that reminded her of slow, sweet syrup.
“How’d it go?”
“It went okay.” He took the bucket from her hand. “You and I need to talk, though.”
“About what?” She had seen the way Evan shot a look at her when she said their little . . . um . . . encounter “meant nothing.” Could she have actually hurt his feelings?
“Drew,” he answered.
“Oh.”
Of course he wouldn’t have been hurt. That was a silly thought. These Neil Diamond songs must be putting romantic notions in her head.
“Douglas and I are almost done here,” she said. “Want to get something to eat?”
“You are done here,” he said, taking the squeegee out of her other hand and dropping it into the bucket. “And I don’t know if my brother is quite ready to see us walk off this boat together. Maybe you should get home. Big day again tomorrow.”
She started to protest. She wanted to be with him. She wanted to talk more. She wanted him to kiss her again, and maybe have a round two of that “really, really great sex.” She wanted to give him someone to talk to and let him vent about Drew. She wanted to be there for him, and help him sort out all his relationships. She wanted to hold his hand, and sit there with him in the falling dusk, and tell him that he was inspiring her to be a better sibling.
But then she realized, with a degree of horror, that she was about to beg. So she pressed her lips together. “You’re right,” she said. “But let me help.” She reached for the bucket.
“Go home, Cinderella.”
His gaze tore away from her and went over her shoulder. She followed it to see Douglas carrying Drew back to his wheelchair. Fake Neil Diamond crooned “Love on the Rocks.” The scent of popcorn drifted down from the festival booths.
“Let me walk you off,” Evan said in a voice that sounded strange and distant.
She was surprised he was pushing her away so quickly. And sheesh, the way he was holding her elbow to steer her off the boat felt like their perp walk by the harbor patrol the other night.
“I thought we’d at least get to spend a little time together,” she found herself saying.
His glance first looked nervous, but then it relaxed into something more like amusement. He slowed. “All right. You do need to leave now, for Drew. But . . .” His low voice tickled her ear. “If you want to come by later . . .”
Lia smiled to herself and let him guide her the rest of the way off the boat.
Yes, yes, yes . . .
CHAPTER
Twenty-three
The chaos of the festival erupted around them as they sauntered through the grass in the twilight. They’d played the ring toss and water-balloon gun shoot, and had picked up hot dogs and funnel cakes for dinner. Evan snuck up and squirted the last of his ketchup onto Lia’s hot dog. She squealed and squirmed away.
He laughed and resisted the urge to tackle her in the grass—she was getting sexier and cuter by the second, and was lifting the weight of the world off his shoulders. She was reminding him what it felt like to laugh again; and just act stupid; and, quite frankly, to live.
He watched her hair swing around, and his memory shot him back to just hours ago, when she’d leaned against the fiberglass, breasts and belly and thighs all bared to him, hands behind her back, waiting for him to ravish her. And he wanted to be back there right now, doing it all over again.
But damn, he needed to talk to her.
“So Drew was concerned about why you came back here?” she prompted, balancing her red-checked paper hot dog boat to point to a picnic table on top of a grassy knoll beneath a lantern that had just popped on.
He followed her to the top. She’d been pushing him to describe his conversation with Drew. Most of it he wanted kept to himself—he and Drew would have to tread lightly into working out their own differences—but he knew he had to tell her the part that involved her. He’d need to back away from her slowly, but he wanted to give her a reason.
At the table, they laid out their dinner spread, set down their drinks, and crawled into opposite benches.
“He seemed to be under the impression I was here to steal his life.”
“Steal his life?” Lia frowned across the table. “That’s crazy.” She leaned over and snagged one of his French fries. “Although, I guess if that’s how he interpreted your past with Renece, maybe that makes sense.”
A spear went through his lung as he struggled for air. There it was. Her name again. He hardly ever heard it anymore, and Lia said it so casually. He focused on his French fries a minute while he pulled himself together, then stared out at the view. The table was perched at just the right angle that they could see the marina through a narrow patch of trees. Sandy Cove sprawled like a glittering half moon.
“He seemed to think I was moving in on his boat, his clients, his life here . . . you,” he said.
“Me?”
Evan nodded.
“But I’m not part of his ‘things.’”
“He has a lot of affection for you.” He didn’t want to say more than that. It was Drew’s story to tell, Drew’s feelings to reveal or not to reveal. But Evan had to make the next point.
“He wants me to back away from his life, including you,” he said.
Lia frowned. “But he has no right to ask that.”
“He sees it dif
ferently.”
Lia seemed to think that over as she stared at her food. Children’s laughter drifted up over the hill, and a slew of kids came running through the grass, shooting each other with fluorescent water guns they must have won at a booth. Evan thought about how Luke would play like that. He’d loved watching Luke laugh, play, run. There had been nothing in Evan’s life that had prepared him for how much he’d love being a dad, but he had. He glanced up at Lia and had a strange, distant curiosity about whether she wanted kids someday.
“I’m a little suspicious,” Lia finally said.
“Of what?”
“This sounds like a ‘wham, bam, thank you ma’am.’”
Evan frowned. “What are you talking about?”
“Your way of explaining to me that the bang was good, but you’re done now.”
“I didn’t say anything remotely like that, Lia. We can still . . .” He motioned toward the boat but then wasn’t sure what he was offering. They could still what? Fuck a few times? But make sure no closeness was involved? How nice.
“I mean, we can do whatever you want,” he said.
A smile curved her lips. “I think, what I want, is more of that ‘really, really great sex.’”
He chuckled. At least she wasn’t the helpless victim Drew seemed to think she was. And how awesome that she might be open to a physical relationship that didn’t have to go anywhere. But even so . . . He had to be sure.
“Drew thinks I’m using you,” he reiterated.
“So ‘use’ me.”
Evan smiled. She was getting better and better. “He thinks I’ll hurt you,” he added.
“You would only be hurting me if I had feelings for you.”
The same tug from earlier dragged a hook through his chest. Damn. He looked away. He was turning into a sap. He knew she didn’t. Have feelings for him, that is. But maybe part of him thought she was starting to. And maybe part of him hoped she would.
“Yeah, no worries there,” he said.
“I don’t mean . . . I mean, of course I have feelings.” Cinderella waved a French fry around. “I like you and all. But it’s not like we’re going to get married or anything.” She laughed.
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