ROMANCE: Life Shocks Romances: Contemporary Romance Box Set (Life Shocks Romances Collection Book 2)

by Jade Kerrion

  Soaked and chilled, Michael hauled himself out of the water. He glanced at Raphael, who was staring in the direction of the boat. Raphael’s jawline appeared taut, and there was an intent look in his narrowed eyes.

  What was up with that? Michael had wondered.

  The next day, he had taken out his kayak to search for the black and silver yacht. Few docks were large enough to accommodate that boat, but Michael did not find it anywhere in the old port. On a whim, he headed toward the vacation homes tucked in a quiet but deep-water portion of the bay. The houses—the summer mansions of the super wealthy—were almost always unoccupied, but he found the yacht docked in front of one of the homes.

  He laid the oar over his kayak and stared at the redbrick, white-columned house that looked like Monticello. Now what?

  The patio door opened, and the young woman stepped out. She waved. “Hey, there.”

  “Hi,” Michael said, after looking over his shoulder to make sure she wasn’t gesturing to someone behind him.

  “You look like you could use a break. There’s some rope on the far right side of the dock if you want to tie up your kayak.”

  The young woman gave instructions with the ease of someone born to give orders, but something about her attitude, words, or tone made it sound like he would be doing her a favor.

  Besides, he figured he wouldn’t be getting into any trouble he couldn’t get out of.

  He paddled toward the dock, tied up his kayak with the rope she tossed down to him, and then clambered up the ladder onto the dock. He stared at her. Her eyes were a brilliant blue and seemed to look straight into his soul. The warmth of her smile tingled through him. She was even prettier up close, although he didn’t think she was any older than he was. He wiped his hand on the side of his khaki shorts before extending it to her. “Hi, I’m Michael Falconer.”

  “Lily Herald.” The physical contact of their hands jolted a shiver of anticipation down his spine. “I was wondering if you’d have the courage to come find me.”

  Michael spread his hands and eased into a grin. “Well, here I am. Welcome to Portsmouth.”

  “Thank you.”

  He peered over her shoulder. “Is this your house?”

  “Yes.”

  “Are your parents here too?”

  “They’ll be arriving early next week. They sent me down with my nanny—”

  “You have a nanny?” He couldn’t help the chortle of laughter. “How old are you?”

  Her chin lifted with equal parts arrogance, defiance, and innocence. “I’m sixteen, and my nanny manages my tutors, plans my social calendar, and doubles as my personal assistant.”

  Michael laughed and was rewarded with a musical giggle. “I’m sixteen too,” he said. “I go to the local high school. When I was younger, my babysitter was my next-door neighbor. She’s still my next-door neighbor, except that she’s now married with two kids of her own, whom I don’t babysit, but my twin sister does.”

  “You have a twin sister? How wonderful.” Lily turned and walked toward the house.

  “Her name is Ariel.”

  “Next time, bring her along. I’d love to meet her.”

  “Do you have any brothers or sisters?”

  “No, it’s just me.” She swept a hand toward the house where a middle-aged woman watched her from the patio door. “And my nanny. And my two tutors. And the yacht captain and his crew. And the housekeeper, maid, and cook. The gardeners and stable boys, fortunately, live off-grounds. It’s a full house, and my parents and their personal assistants haven’t even arrived yet.”

  The matter-of-fact tone kept her from sounding like she was bragging. The business-as-usual tone convinced Michael that she lived in a world apart from ordinary mortals.

  An angel. She was definitely an angel—one insulated by wealth and cushioned in luxury.

  Michael glanced back at the house. The woman had vanished from sight, although Michael was certain that Lily’s household staff remained within shouting distance.

  Lily led him through a magnificent house filled with burnished oak furniture that complemented the style of those times. “Are these antiques?” he asked.

  “Some might be,” she said, “but most of them were made to order to look like period pieces.”

  “They look good.”

  “Not my style. Mom almost flipped out when I insisted on decorating my bedroom with B&B Italia instead. Ultra modern European meets colonial American. Not a great combination but it works for me.” She led him into the kitchen, opened the refrigerator, and stared at its contents.

  “Water, juice, or milk?” Lily’s voice cut through his memories.

  Michael yanked his head up. The past blurred into the present, leaving him disoriented. His gaze flashed across the restaurant to rest on Lily seated two tables away with Miki. An open menu lay in front of her. The gaze of every customer in the restaurant shuttled between Michael and Lily as if waiting for something to happen. A meteorite to hit, perhaps, or a crater to open up beneath them?

  Oh, for God’s sake, Michael wanted to stand up and yell. We stopped being an item three years ago.

  But the townspeople had long memories. For six years, from Lily’s first arrival in Portsmouth until the day she married Raphael, she and Michael had been soul mates, apparently destined for forever in each other’s arms.

  Michael grimaced. Destiny was a total crapshoot.

  Lily did not seem to notice the intent focus on her. Her attention did not waver from her child. She looked at Miki and repeated her question. “Water, juice, or milk?”

  Miki gave Lily a winsome smile that should have softened even the Grinch’s heart. “Ice cream.”

  Michael tried to stifle the chuckle, but failed.

  If he recalled correctly, he had given the same answer to Lily’s question nine years earlier when she had peered into the refrigerator. He had stood behind her, his eyes fixed on the denim-clad curve of her hips and buttocks.

  “Water, juice, or milk?” she had asked.

  “Ice cream.”

  She glanced over her shoulder. “I probably have ice cream too.” She reached for the freezer door.

  Michael shook his head. “No, I meant that there’s an ice cream parlor on the boardwalk. If you’d like to walk down there with me, I can show you all the places along the way, introduce you to the folks. It’d be a great way to learn your way around Portsmouth.”

  Lily’s smile deepened. “All right. Sounds great.”

  The walk through the old part of town down to the boardwalk, culminating at the ice cream parlor, had been their first date. He gave her the insider’s tour of the town, introducing places and personalities, and stopped to chat with everyone they met along the way. Her welcome was warm; she was with a Falconer boy, after all, and here, in Portsmouth, it meant something to be a Falconer.

  Every so often, she cast sideway glances his way. The intimate half-smile that crept across her face, lighting her eyes, was like a shared secret. It twisted his insides into tangled knots and made the palms of his hands sticky with sweat.

  By the time they arrived at the ice cream parlor, they had more than earned their dessert. To make their date official, he paid for her ice cream and then walked her home, taking her along a different path through the woods. Their hands brushed as they walked. Each contact sizzled through him. With each step, the birds seemed to sing with more clarity and the sun seemed to shine brighter.

  Lily had always had a way of making the world come alive around him.

  Unfortunately, much too soon, they arrived back at her mansion. She paused on her front door step and turned to face him. “Thank you, Michael. I had a wonderful afternoon.”

  “Great!” He grinned and shoved his hands into his pockets because he didn’t know what else to do with them. “Um…I should go around the back. Get my kayak.”

  “I have a better idea.” She smiled. “Your kayak is a two-seater. Why don’t you leave it here tonight, come back tomorrow morni
ng, and take me out on the water—that is, if you’re brave enough to take me on?”

  His jaw dropped. “Absolutely! I can do that.”

  “Wonderful.” She clasped her hands in front of her and gave him an impish smile that bordered on downright wicked. For a moment, he wondered if she would kiss him.

  She didn’t, not that day, but she did after he brought her home from their kayak expedition around Portsmouth. As their lips brushed, the fragrance of cherry blossoms filled his lungs. He would always associate that spring-fresh scent with her. The kiss had not been his first, but it had been the first to coil need through him.

  The rawness of it terrified him—the heat in the pit of his stomach, the blood rushing into his groin. He couldn’t get enough air into his lungs. He couldn’t think a single thought through from beginning to end. It was as if his brain had stopped working, as if his mind closed out everything except the lovely, delicate angel in front of him.

  Lily had always had a way of shutting out the world around him.

  Everything in him wanted to deepen the kiss until she moaned with need. He wanted to glide his hands against the smoothness of her skin. He wanted her slim body naked and writhing beneath him.

  His body surged ahead as if on autopilot but his mind recoiled.

  What the hell was he doing? He curled his hands into fists to keep himself from seizing her, shoving her against the wall of her home, and kissing her until neither of them could see straight. The last thing he wanted to do was to frighten her. She was too precious, too delicate—

  Lily smiled into the kiss. Her chuckle was low, the sound intimate, as she pulled away. She rested the palm of her hand against his chest. No doubt she could feel the pounding of his heart and the tenseness of his muscles. “Always the gentleman.” She tucked her tongue in her cheek. “We’ll have to work on that.”

  Michael grimaced as his thoughts returned to the present day. Things had been a great deal simpler when they were just two teenagers enjoying the first blush of puppy love. Now things were too complicated—unfinished conversations, thwarted desire, and broken hearts.

  Lily glanced up. Their eyes met across the room before she unhurriedly lowered her gaze to her menu. Her cool indifference stung him. He could have been just anyone else in the restaurant instead of someone who had once meant something to her.

  Anna’s voice hissed into his ear. “You’re staring at her.”

  The customers at the next table—Ms. Fortran, his high school English teacher, and her family—laughed.

  He grimaced. The curse of a small town was that everyone knew everyone’s business. Unfortunately, his business was the most interesting thing on everyone’s agenda these days.

  “Nothing changes. She’s still making trouble,” Anna said, not bothering to lower her voice.

  Michael gave her a sharp look, but said nothing.

  “You remember the trouble Lily caused at Lindsey’s wedding,” she continued, speaking to Michael in a voice that could be heard by everyone in the restaurant. “I don’t know how she did it, but at the last moment, just minutes before the wedding, she convinced Lindsey to dismiss Katie as maid of honor and took her place. She even had the nerve to wear Katie’s dress.”

  By then, everyone in the restaurant had fallen silent. Anna’s strident voice filled the room. “She just wanted to get paired up with Raphael, who was Jack’s best man. You saw how she leaned on him when they walked down the aisle together after the ceremony. Her play on your brother was so blatant, it was disgusting. And less than a week later—” Anna flipped her wrist. “—they, too, were married. She got her claws into your brother so quickly that she made everyone’s head spin.”

  Including mine, Michael thought. Lily’s abrupt about-turn from a vibrant and long-term relationship with him to a hasty marriage with his brother hadn’t made sense to anyone, least of all him. She had made his head spin, and she had shattered his heart. Three years later, his head still wasn’t screwed on straight and his heart still wasn’t whole.

  I can’t go back there.

  Especially when it was clear Lily had not returned for a reconciliation. If she had, she would not have changed Miki’s name from Falconer to Herald.

  Miki’s voice piped up. “Mama, who she talk to?”

  Lily shrugged. “Herself, mostly.”

  Her tone was cool and indifferent, but Michael had been too close to Lily for too long not to hear the faint shimmer of pain in her voice.

  What stunned him was the matching stab of pain in his heart.

  ~*~

  Two hours later, Michael paced beside the community center swimming pool as he waited for his private student, Miki Herald, to show up.

  The debacle at lunch had proved one thing; he wasn’t completely over Lily, but it didn’t mean he still loved her, and he sure as hell wasn’t going to allow himself to get dragged back into her drama.

  In fact, as long as she didn’t cause any trouble for his parents, he didn’t even need to know why she had returned to town. His best bet was to let things lie.

  Lily’s voice cut through his thoughts. “Miki’s ready for her class.”

  He spun around. Lily wore the black turtleneck she had worn to the restaurant. Her denim jeans and brown suede ankle boots showcased her long, slim legs. Miki, on the other hand, wore a Disney princess swimsuit. Michael frowned. He wouldn’t swear to it—Disney princesses weren’t high on his radar—but hadn’t Miki worn a different swimsuit the last time?

  “Is that a different princess on your swimsuit?” he asked Miki.

  She beamed, apparently delighted that he had noticed. “Yes. That was Elsa. This is Anna.” She pointed at her swimsuit.

  “Your mama figured Anna needed her mouth cleaned out with chlorine, huh?” Michael looked at Lily.

  All right, so the joke was weak, but the Lily he had known would have responded with an impish grin. This Lily did not even bat an eyelid. She placed a hand on Miki’s back and propelled her forward. “Have fun in class. I’ll be right here.” She took a seat on the wooden bench.

  Michael did his best not to look at Lily as he coached Miki through the basics of water safety as well as early stage swimming exercises, but it was impossible to keep his eyes off the woman he had once loved.

  What struck him hardest was how alone she seemed, even when she had been standing next to Miki beside the pool, or sharing the lunch table with her daughter. Lily had never appeared that way before; her warmth and radiance always invited people into a conversation with her.

  Now, her aloofness repelled them.

  Even the clothes she habitually wore had changed. The Lily he had dated for six years had loved sundresses in dazzling jewel hues, frequently changing her shoes and handbags to match. This Lily was still stunning, but both times he had seen her, she wore dark-colored turtlenecks in spite of the moderately warm temperature.

  We’re not who we were, Michael thought. Either of us. Still—

  The thought caught him off guard. Surely, he was not thinking— For God’s sake, she was his brother’s ex-wife!

  The little voice in his head, the one that wouldn’t shut up and die, cut in. And before that, she was my girlfriend.

  Who became his brother’s wife without an explanation or an apology.

  A hard knot coil inside his chest, just under his throat. He had deserved better from her, damn it. Six years of friendship and love had shattered, God only knew why, in a moment. No explanation. Zilch. Nada. The engagement ring he had purchased for her was still tucked in a corner of his dresser. She had never seen it. No one, other than the jeweler in the next town, had ever known that he—fool that he was—had purchased an engagement ring for the woman who had, in the week he had planned to propose, married his brother.

  To say that their shared past was fucked up was a hell of an understatement. All the more reason to leave it alone.

  Michael did not realize the half-hour lesson was over until Lily walked to the side of the pool with a s
wim towel in her hands. Awareness jolted his wandering thoughts fully back into his body. Michael scooped Miki out of the water and set her by the side of the pool. “Another super swimming session, Miki.”

  She gave him an impish grin. “I’m awesome.” She threw herself at her mother, who wrapped her in the towel. “You see me?”

  “Yes, I did. Let’s get you into some dry clothes. Come on, Miki.” Lily ushered her daughter toward the exit without a glance at Michael.

  Something snapped in his head—his temper, or perhaps, his grip on rationality. He hauled himself out of the water and shoved to his feet. “Is that it? You bring her in to swim class and then leave when it’s over without a word to me?”

  “What’s there to say?” Her chin lifted. “I thought you made it quite clear at lunch that you weren’t going to let the truth get in the way of any gossip out to destroy my reputation.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “You were there. You knew what happened at Lindsey’s wedding.”

  Michael blinked. Lindsey’s wedding. He hadn’t thought back to Lindsey’s wedding in three years, but Anna, he supposed, was right. It had been the turning point in his relationship with Lily, when Lily, the last-minute maid of honor, paired up with his brother, the best man. “What about the wedding?” His voice trailed away. “Katie…” He frowned, as the memory flashed to the fore. “We arrived late and Lindsey was in the car, waiting at the church, because Katie hadn’t arrived.”

  “Right,” Lily said.

  “Then Katie showed up, upset.” Actually, if Michael recalled correctly, Katie’s face had been red and splotchy, as if she had spent the morning crying. “She said she couldn’t be there for Lindsey, and Lindsey flipped out because she would have uneven numbers of bridesmaids and groomsmen. That’s when Lindsey asked if you could step in since you and Katie were about the same size, and you two changed in the car.”

  “Right,” Lily snapped out the word again. “Of course, the truth wasn’t as exciting as Anna’s story that I schemed to steal Raphael out from under Katie’s nose. You knew the truth, and you said nothing.”