Brighton nodded. “That seems to be the universal reaction.”
“Hattie, come on,” Summer chided. “You hadn’t heard about that? Get with the program.”
Hattie took a moment to digest the news, then narrowed her eyes and took a step toward Brighton. “Why on earth would a man like Jake Sorensen marry a woman like you?”
Brighton backed away until she banged her hip on a decorative table, almost upending a porcelain vase. While she tried to steady the wobbling vase, Summer rounded on Hattie: “Dude. That is so uncouth.”
“We’ve been over this, Ms. Benson. I do not respond to ‘dude.’ Not in this lifetime nor the next.”
“Brighton’s very accomplished.” Summer threw an arm around Brighton’s shoulders. “She’s working with Lila Alders at the jewelry store, and she’s also an insurance . . . Uh, she does something with numbers.”
“I’m an actuary,” Brighton informed the ceiling.
“Right.” Summer nodded. “She’s not just some pretty face.”
“My point exactly,” Hattie said. “Jake Sorensen doesn’t dally with smart, capable women. And while I suppose she might be considered passably pretty—”
“Ouch,” Brighton whispered to Summer.
“—don’t his predilections run more toward the peroxide blond pinup type?”
“Hey,” Summer said, fluffing her platinum hair. “You say that like it’s a bad thing.”
Miss Huntington turned on her polished pump heel and led the way to a sumptuously appointed sitting room overlooking the ocean. “You’re much more his type than Miss Smith is.”
“Yeah, and look who I ended up with,” Summer argued. “Dutch isn’t my usual type, but he’s perfect for me.”
“What’s your usual type?” Brighton asked as they trailed after Hattie.
“Narcissists with cool cars and no conscience,” Summer replied. “And, Hattie, how do you know all this about Jake? I didn’t realize you took such an interest in him.”
Hattie quickened her pace. “I’ve been to the Whinery a time or two. I make it a point to keep abreast of the goings-on in my town.”
“Your town.” Summer rolled her eyes. “Like you own the place. Which . . . I guess you kind of do.”
“Yes.” Hattie’s smile was sinister. “You’d both do well to remember that.”
“Don’t mind her,” Summer told Brighton. “She’s just trying to distract us from the fact that she’s got a schoolgirl crush on your husband.”
Hattie whipped around again, and Brighton threw up her hands in a reflex of self-defense. The heated pink hue spreading through Hattie’s cheeks was faint but unmistakable.
“Oh my God.” Summer burst out laughing. “You totally do. You cougar, you!”
“Silence.” Hattie settled into a pink and green striped settee and crossed her dainty ankles. “I do not fancy Jake Sorensen in the way you’re implying.”
Brighton perched on the tufted pink chair next to Hattie.
“I have to ask.” Summer sprawled out next to Hattie and gave the old lady a little nudge with her elbow. “Did you guys ever hook up? Maybe you had one too many glasses of cabernet at the Whinery? It’s okay—you can tell us.”
Hattie stood up and moved to a chair across the room. “How dare you even imply such a thing!”
“Anyway.” Brighton scrambled to redirect the conversation. “We have reason to believe he was once married to a woman named Genevieve Van Petten. Do you know anything about her?”
“Married?” Hattie sat perfectly still for a moment. “Astonishing. That little tidbit explains quite a lot, actually.”
Summer and Brighton exchanged glances. “It does? Like what?”
Hattie waved one hand, dismissing them. “If you’ll excuse me, I have to make a phone call.”
“To whom?” Summer asked.
“If you want me to find out more about Jake Sorensen and Genevieve Van Petten, you’re going to have to stop asking questions and be patient.”
“Can we at least wait in the kitchen?” Summer asked. To Brighton, she said, “Her chef makes the most delicious lemon frosted cookies.” She led the way through the dining room to a cavernous kitchen so white and gleaming with stainless steel accessories that it could double as an operating room.
While Summer rummaged through the pantry in search of cookies, her cell phone rang.
“Well, well, well. Speak of the devil.” Summer held up her phone so Brighton could read the name on the screen: SORENSEN. “Why’s he calling me and not you?”
“Oh, I turned my phone off.” Brighton’s stomach felt fluttery. “I don’t want to talk to him right now.”
“Well, I do.” Summer answered the phone with, “This better be good.” She cast her gaze up and listened for a moment, then said, “Tell it to Brighton, buddy. We’re at the Purple Palace getting the lowdown on your sordid past . . . Yeah, I’d hurry if I were you.” She ended the call with a click and a smile. “He’ll be right over.”
Brighton blinked. “He’s coming over here? Now?”
“Mm-hmm. Lila told him she sent you to me, and I guess he wants a sit-down.” Summer opened the massive refrigerator and started rifling through the shelves.
Brighton sank down on a carved hardwood stool. “I can’t believe this.”
“Which part?” Summer asked.
“All of it.” Brighton tried to pinpoint where, exactly, things had gone wrong. “‘Let’s get married,’ we said. ‘It’ll be fun,’ we said.” She lowered her head into her hands. “And now I’m making black diamond poison rings and asking scary old ladies for gossip and trying to wean myself off my sexual addiction to my drive-through husband and relapsing in the middle of the night.”
“Well, it could be worse,” Summer soothed. “You could still be normal.”
chapter 27
“Let me ask you, Miss Smith.” Hattie arranged herself in a white wicker settee on her vast veranda as her butler (or “manservant,” as Summer insisted on calling him) served iced lemonade garnished with sprigs of fresh lavender. “Have you ever read The Great Gatsby?”
“Yes.” Brighton tried to remember the details. “Junior year of high school, I think.”
“Well, according to my sources, Jake Sorensen and Genevieve Van Petten are the contemporary equivalent of Gatsby and Daisy. When they met, he was poor and uneducated. But very attractive. He amused her for a summer; then she left to finish her schooling.”
“That’s not The Great Gatsby; that’s Dirty Dancing,” Summer said.
“When you say he amused her, you mean he married her,” Brighton clarified.
“Yes,” Hattie replied. “They lived together for a month or two, which had the intended effect of scandalizing her mother’s social circle. But then her father put his foot down, and that was that.”
Brighton cast her mind back to the older man who’d been frowning at Genevieve at the ball. “Is her father tall and lanky? Lots of white hair like he stuck his finger in a socket?”
Hattie smiled. “Yes, that sounds like Russell. At any rate, Jake is very successful now.”
“Understatement,” Summer declared. “The man bleeds green. He probably has more money than you do.”
“He might,” Hattie allowed. “But I have social cachet and connections far beyond his reach.”
Summer laughed. “I seriously doubt he cares about social cachet.”
“Oh, but he does.” Hattie sat back, very pleased with herself and her birthright. “The people I spoke to don’t know that Genevieve actually married him. Her parents kept that very quiet. I’ve only heard there was a dalliance, and that he adored her.”
The phrase had an almost physical impact on Brighton.
“He would have done anything for her,” Hattie continued. “Everything he did, everything he became, he did to be worthy of her.”
“No way.” Summer rolled her eyes. “Jake Sorensen is nobody’s puppy dog.”
“Indeed, he is. Shortly after Genevieve left him, he started his first company. He amassed what he considered to be a sizable fortune and arranged to run into her at an auction house, where he bought an antique watch to show off his money.”
Brighton froze. “What kind of watch?”
Hattie waved one wrinkled hand dismissively. “What does it matter? He approached her in front of her family and friends and declared his love.”
“What happened?” Summer asked.
“She laughed at him. She made it clear she would never marry beneath her again. Later that evening, she announced her engagement to one of her childhood friends.” Hattie inclined her head. “He made a fool of himself because he didn’t understand that it’s not enough to have means if one doesn’t have the right breeding.”
“We’re talking about people here, not horses, right?” Summer stuck out her tongue. “You and your sources are insufferable. And Genevieve sounds like a bitch.”
But Hattie sided with her fellow socialite. “What else could she do? He’d put her in a very awkward position.”
“Uh, she could be a decent human being,” Summer suggested.
“She should have shown more grace, but she did the right thing,” Hattie said firmly. “The kind thing. If she’d acquiesced to his advances, she would have succumbed to his considerable charms—”
Summer winked at Brighton. “You love him. Admit it. Late at night, when you’re not plotting evil deeds, you’re fantasizing about his abs and his pecs and his—”
“If she had acquiesced, she would have had to break his heart again eventually. She had her family to think about.”
“He was so young then,” Brighton murmured. “He must have felt—”
“Don’t waste your sympathy on him. He got over it,” Hattie assured her. “He went home from that auction with two young women, spent the next few years doubling his fortune many times over, and now he can have any woman he wants.” She regarded Brighton with a slight curl to her lip.
Brighton couldn’t get the image of that battered old watch out of her head. He had been wearing it on the night she met him. The night Genevieve had gotten back in touch. That couldn’t be a coincidence—he’d been wearing that watch as a reminder of . . . what? How much he still loved Genevieve, or how badly he’d felt when she left him?
“How do you know all this?” Summer demanded of Hattie. “Aren’t you too rich and rarefied to talk on the phone like the commoners? Don’t you have to send handwritten letters on engraved stationery?”
“Go ahead and mock me,” Hattie said. “I know I’m right. I have power and connections that you will never have.”
“And you’ll never get tired of lording that over me,” Summer shot back.
“No, I don’t imagine I will.” Hattie reached over and rested her cool, papery hand atop Brighton’s. “Miss Smith, let me give you some advice. If a man prefers another woman over you, let him have her. You don’t want to endure a lifetime of trying to live up to standards set by someone else.”
“Yeah, look at the bright side and take this for what it was,” Summer urged. “A really hot summer fling. You got to live the fantasy of half the women in this town.”
“That’s true. I got exactly what I wanted,” Brighton said. But somehow, it wasn’t enough.
“Focus on that. Don’t overreach.” Summer took a sip of lemonade. “I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I agree with Hattie: There’s no such thing as happily ever after with a guy like Jake. Speaking of whom . . .” She shot to her feet, grabbed Hattie’s elbow, and tried to hustle the old lady off the porch.
“How dare you?” Hattie cried. “Unhand me immediately.”
And then Brighton heard the footsteps on the porch steps. She knew before she turned around that she was about to get another hit of her drug of choice.
“What up, Sorensen?” Summer continued wrestling with Hattie. “We’ll just wait in the parlor while you and Brighton catch up.”
“Jake. How lovely to see you again!” Hattie’s sour expression vanished. She looked almost giddy. “May I offer you something to drink?”
“No, thank you.” Jake nodded at Brighton. “I’ve been looking for you.”
Hattie smiled sweetly and placed her fingertips on Jake’s forearm. “Are you sure I can’t tempt you? We’ve been having the most refreshing lemonade with fresh lavender.”
Summer mumbled something that sounded a lot like, “Get a room.”
Hattie kept her hand on Jake’s arm. Jake kept his gaze focused on Brighton, and Brighton kept her gaze focused on the sunlight glinting off the ocean waves.
“Okay, then.” Summer cleared her throat. “We’ll give you two crazy kids some privacy.”
Hattie sighed and acquiesced. “Yes, and if you need anything at all . . .”
“It’s fine.” Brighton forced herself to face Jake. “The whole town’s already talking, so you might as well say whatever you have to say in front of Hattie and Summer.” She refused to back down or back away even an inch. “Do you still want her?”
She could hear Summer suck in her breath.
Jake didn’t react. “What’s going on between me and Genevieve has nothing to do with you.”
“I’m well aware.” She lifted her chin. “Please answer my question. Do you still want her?”
“No.” But he couldn’t meet her eyes.
“Then what is she doing here?”
“She wants things from me.” He waited a beat. “Just like you.”
“What are you talking about?”
“You married me because you wanted something from me.” He gave her a moment to refute this, but she couldn’t. “That’s what relationships are: Each person has something the other person wants. It’s a transaction.”
“I don’t believe that,” Brighton said. “And I don’t believe you do, either.”
“Believe what you want,” he said flatly.
“Then why me?” Brighton knew how hurt and vulnerable she sounded, but she didn’t care. “You could have used any single woman at that bar as your last line of defense again Genevieve.”
“That’s true,” Summer chimed in. “Jenna will never get over the fact that you didn’t pick her.”
“I didn’t show up at the Whinery planning to get married,” Jake said.
“Neither did I,” Brighton shot back. “So why me? What did I bring to the transaction?”
He looked at her for a long moment, his gaze softening. “Ten-year plans, a balanced portfolio, and a thorough understanding of small aircraft safety records.”
“You’re mocking me.”
He shook his head. “You dress like a CEO and you’re sexy as hell.”
Summer practically melted into a puddle. “Aww.”
Brighton gave her the side eye of death. “Don’t fall for this. He’s deflecting the real question.”
“You’re different from Genevieve in every way,” Jake finished.
“So you wanted me for what I’m not? It had nothing to do with who I am?” Brighton watched him, hoping that he might deny this. Hoping that he might fight for her. “I refuse to be a pawn in whatever game you and Genevieve are playing. I’m done. I give up. You win.”
His gaze shuttered as he stepped back, calm and impassive. “I’ll set up an appointment with an attorney tomorrow.”
chapter 28
“This is a little unusual,” the attorney said after Brighton and Jake had settled into matching leather wing chairs. “Typically, my clients don’t come to my office with the spouse they’re going to divorce.”
“That’s par for the course for us.” Brighton nodded. “We did everything backward, upside down, inside out, and out of order.”
“We’re v
ery amicable,” Jake said.
Amicable. The word, so harmless and neutral, made Brighton suck in her breath. Of all the terms she would use to characterize the past few weeks with Jake, “amicable” wouldn’t even make the top hundred. She stared down, twisted her hands in her lap, and tried not to reveal any trace of her feelings.
“That’s a welcome change.” The attorney shuffled some papers and waited for Brighton to glance up again. “And it will make the dissolution process much smoother. Let me ask a few questions and we’ll start the filing procedures. First, though, I have to advise you that, legally and ethically, I cannot represent both of you. The way it usually works with a collaborative divorce is, each party retains an attorney or selects a mediator to hammer out the details.”
“We don’t need a mediator,” Jake said firmly. “I’ll agree to whatever terms she wants.”
“Gosh.” Brighton’s voice was faint. “How very amicable of you.”
Jake shot her a strange look, then turned back to the lawyer. “If you can only legally represent one of us, represent her. Draft up the paperwork and I’ll sign it.”
Brighton rearranged herself in her chair and touched her hammered gold link bracelet. “But what are we going to put in the paperwork?”
Jake had pulled out his phone. “Whatever you want.”
The lawyer looked alarmed. “Mr. Sorensen, I strongly advise you not to make any agreements, verbal or otherwise, before you—”
“I don’t want a settlement from you,” Brighton said.
Jake remained focused on the e-mail he was reading. “You’re angry.”
“I’m not angry; I just don’t want anything of yours.”
The attorney threw himself into the emotional cross fire. “If I may, I need to ask a few questions before we get into any details concerning the division of assets.”
“Fine.” Brighton looked straight ahead. “Shoot.”
The attorney picked up a pen. “When and where did the marriage take place?”
Jake gave the lawyer a knowing look. “You live in this town. You’ve heard about this by now.”
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