She’d done plenty of living since then. Plenty. She was Cin Scott, for God’s sake, tough enough to fight in a rock world that chewed up and spat out countless wannabes and pretenders. Sure, sometimes she felt like she was clinging on by her fingernails, but didn’t everyone, unless they were rock royalty? She’d made it into the Billboard Hot 100 with Hourglass Reverb, a song she wrote herself. She’d dated Eli Tyler, who went on to become one of the music industry’s hottest, edgiest guys. It was only after they split up that she realized his publicist had suggested the whole thing—but she assured Hannah she was fine, toughened up a little more, took the publicity, and used it to climb another rung of the ladder. She’d learned to take an audience with her through an entire performance, leading them from the rebellious high of a power anthem, to the sweet melancholy of a heartfelt love song, and back again. She’d bought the place in Los Feliz, her loft that was the closest thing to home she’d had since forever. Plus, she’d set her mom up in her own little house in Florida—finally got her settled in the right climate and on the right medication.
But somehow, Jacinda Prescott, that naïve, pregnant, lost teenager, wouldn’t quite let her go. Or, maybe, Cin couldn’t let Jacinda go. No matter how far behind her that girl was in time, she still seemed to be right over her shoulder, or turning up in her dreams.
Maybe, if Ethan was gone—even unspoken, the word was a stab in the guts—she could leave that Jacinda and the baby in the past, where they belonged.
If that was where they belonged.
And if she really wanted to.
Chapter Eight
“Hello love! It’s me.”
Jacinda winced as the bright voice blasted out of the phone, her headache still gripping her skull as she emerged from sleep. The heat in her skin brought tearing pain with every move. She lay as still as she could, wondering how long this would last, and dragged a few words from her brain.
“Unh. Hi, Nana Mac.”
“That took a while, I thought you must be out.” Her voice was lively over the music and hubbub in the background.
“Uh, no.” She held a hand over her eyes, blocking out the morning light. “I was sleeping.”
“Good girl! Getting plenty of rest.”
“Mmm.” She didn’t mention her self-inflicted medical issue. “How’s Spain?”
“Marvelous! Just gorgeous. And the men on this salsa course! I tell you, they certainly beat Dennis and Bruce down at the village hall. It’s a bit pricey, but it’s the best money I’ve spent in ages. You can’t take it with you, after all!” Her laughter danced down the line, and Jacinda had to smile through her pain. “But how’s my darling Velvet? Any kittens yet?”
“No, not yet.” She looked around, expecting to see the cat curled up on the end of the bed, in the sun that was slanting through the shutters and striping the bed with golden warmth. But there was no sign of her. Maybe she was cuddled up in her luxury cat bed, under the bay window in the living room. It looked like a cozy place to mother a litter of kittens, when they arrived. “Riley said she might want to take one.”
“Oh you’ve seen her then! Wonderful. I knew she’d look after you. Any other news?”
Jacinda hesitated. She didn’t want to ruin her grandmother’s mood, but she did have questions about Ethan, and about finding Liam next door. “Well…”
Then Nana Mac said loudly, “I’m coming Vicente, I’ll be right there! No, no, wait for me!” She lowered her voice. “I’d better go—someone else will grab him if I don’t stake my claim. He’s the best dancer in the place.”
Who’d have the heart to keep her from Vicente? “Okay, have fun. Everything’s fine here.”
“That’s good. Enjoy yourself, and I’ll phone you again soon. Ooh, wait! I almost forgot. Danielle and her little one Sam are coming to stay at the house too.”
Danielle was Jacinda’s second cousin, one of Nana Mac’s great-nephews and nieces—just one of the gang of eleven grandchildren her sister Morag had been blessed with. Jacinda always felt sorry that poor Nana Mac had to settle for only her, while Morag luxuriated in an abundance of grandchildren, and now great-grandchildren too. Her three kids had all settled into houses on the huge family farm a few hours south of Auckland, and some of the grandkids had stayed on too, while others came and went. It was a rural idyll that contrasted sharply with the unsettled, hard-edged urban existence that Trina and Jacinda had led after her dad left, moving to a new town every time her mom felt the walls closing in. Well, it would be nice to see Danielle, and she’d never even met Sam…but so much for her peace.
“I haven’t seen her since we were kids. Are they taking a vacation?”
“No, Danielle has left her hopeless husband. Sounds like the best decision she’s ever made. She’ll explain everything when they get there, next Monday I think.” Before Jacinda had a chance to ask anything else, she said, “Have to go…I’ll call again soon!”
“Okay. Bye.” But she was gone already, whisked away to steam up the dance floor with Vicente. Well, good for her.
She tossed the phone on the bed and looked around for Velvet, then called for her. Both mornings so far, she’d been in the bedroom demanding attention by now. Then she remembered Riley scooping kibble into the paw-print decorated bowl yesterday, enthusing to Velvet about her kittens in a sing-song voice as she filled it to the brim. She was clearly a cat person through and through. There would still be enough food left that Velvet didn’t need to come begging for breakfast today.
She rolled over slowly, aware of every frazzled pore. The sun had made its mark on her yesterday…but so had Riley’s bombshell. And now she knew that she owed Liam some kind of proper communication, to give her condolences at least. It was unavoidable—she’d have to go over there and talk to him again.
Tuesday today—just under a week until family descended. Then they could take over looking after Velvet, and she’d leave.
But today, she’d lie low and keep still, until the sunburn started to settle. Maybe later, when she felt better, she’d prop herself up and start work on those damn chapters she’d signed a contract to write. But for now, she was staying right where she was—horizontal, and out of trouble.
* * *
By the time the sun went down, she’d dozed long enough that she couldn’t sleep anymore. Plus, she was starving—the banana and pretzels she’d grabbed on her only trip downstairs had hardly touched the sides, and now her stomach was grumbling loudly.
She went down to the kitchen in the silky little slip she’d been sleeping in, the softest, smallest thing she had with her. She’d contemplated sleeping naked, but somehow couldn’t do it, knowing Liam was just across the hedge. Despite the warm evening, the cooler air downstairs gave her goose bumps—with half her skin aflame, her temperature control was all awry. She grabbed a throw from the wingback chair and put it carefully around her shoulders. The hum of the fridge was the only sound inside, but when she opened one of the French doors, the chirp of crickets and the deep whooshing sound of waves joined the night-time refrain. She took a breath of sweet, salty, night air, and looked over toward the Ward house. What was he doing over there? And what would she say to him now?
A dog barked in the distance, jolting her out of her thoughts, and she called for Velvet, the ‘puss, puss, puss’ that all cats were supposed to answer to. Nothing. She pursed her lips and made an array of bird noises, clucked her tongue, and called again.
“Puss, puss, puss. Velll-vet…here, puss, puss.”
Nothing.
Damn.
Well, she couldn’t go searching around in the dark. And maybe this was part of Velvet’s usual routine, anyway. She knew that cats loved to roam at night, and Velvet had the whole of Sweet Breeze Bay to explore. She’d be back in the morning, stepping on Jacinda’s stomach with her poky paws, meowing plaintively about the poor breakfast service. She shivered and stepped back in, pulling the door closed behind her. There was a cat flap in the back door, so Velvet could come in when s
he was done with her adventures.
She went into the kitchen and put together some sandwiches with the ingredients she’d bought on her way home from Clarion Call two nights before. That seemed an age ago. She dipped into the packet of chocolate covered cookies too, and put a couple on her plate. Then she took a Diet Coke from the fridge, and carried it all back upstairs on a tray. She’d better start on those chapters.
At the top of the stairs, she paused for a moment, then set her tray carefully on the floor and went into the other upstairs bedroom. She pulled back the curtain, just a whisker, so that she could see down into the Wards’ yard. And yes, there was the glow of a light on, somewhere in the house that she’d been in so many times that summer. She tried to remember the layout. Maybe he was in the study nook tucked into the landing halfway up the stairs. His old bedroom looked in this direction, so he couldn’t be in there. Or maybe he was in there, in the dark, and he’d just left the stairwell light on. At this thought, she dropped the curtain, suddenly imagining him looking back at her through a crack in his own curtains.
Except he wasn’t—she was the one behaving like a stalker.
She collected the tray and got herself set up on the bed with her laptop. Tomorrow, if he was home, she’d have to go see him, and tell him how sorry she was for their loss. Exactly what she’d say other than that, she wasn’t sure. For now, though, the stupid book was a welcome distraction. Easier to figure out advice for girls wanting to throw themselves into the shark cage of the music biz, than to find the right words for the brother of the guy she’d loved and lost, right before he lost him too.
Chapter Nine
At first, Liam wasn’t sure he’d heard anything. He turned off the fan in the bathroom and listened, and there it was—the last notes of the ridiculous musical doorbell his mom had installed. For a second he considered ignoring it, pretending there was no one here…but it was too late for that, childish as it was. Jacinda knew he was here, and once she knew, the rest of town probably would too. Especially since he’d seen Riley Dawson go into number ten—if she talked like she used to, Clarion Call would be second only to the Kelp and King as a source of gossip.
He sighed and dried the last droplets from his body, ran his fingers through his damp hair, then pulled on boxer briefs and cargo shorts. His t-shirts were all in the dryer, which meant going past the front door and down the hall to the laundry. He jogged down the stairs, intending to grab a shirt before answering the door, but as he went through the entranceway the musical bell rang again. Through the frosted glass, he could see a figure that looked like Jacinda…turning to walk away.
Without thinking, he flipped the lock and yanked the door open, and she spun around. Instantly, her eyes went from his face to his chest, and he watched with unexpected satisfaction as her expression changed, before she carefully refocused somewhere around the top of his head.
“Hi.” She cleared her throat, shifted her weight from one foot to the other. Her face was still sunburned on one side, but he could clearly see the other side blush pink, too. Yep, she was off-balance. He let her wait just a moment longer than was polite before he answered.
“Hi.”
“Um, I’m sorry to interrupt.” She glanced at his chest again. “But I wanted to say…I mean, Riley just told me…” She paused, taking a breath. “I’m really, really sorry to hear about Ethan. I had no idea.”
He tensed as the words hit him. Hearing his brother’s name spoken aloud still had the power to throw him off-center. Especially spoken by her. He looked into the blue sky over her shoulder, then back at her face. Maybe it was time to say a few things after all. He stood back, holding the door open. “Come in.”
He could smell her light, sweet fragrance as she passed by, almost close enough to brush against his bare skin.
“Take a seat,” he said. “I’ll just be a second.”
He left her in the big living room and went along to the laundry, grabbed a t-shirt from the dryer—wrinkled, but too bad—and tugged it over his head. Focus, he told himself. This girl is trouble. She was trouble then, but now…multiply it by the factors of her life since, and you’ve got dynamite. Or kryptonite. Just have this conversation and be done with it, and done with her. She surely wouldn’t be staying for long—but if she was, a ticket back to Australia was only the click of a mouse away. There was nothing to keep him here. Coming home was meant to be time to clear out the demons of the past, not get pulled back down by the rip tide that was this girl.
He went back out to the living room, and found her standing in the corner looking down at Ethan’s guitar. His first instinct was to tell her to get the hell away from it. No one had played it since Ethan died—sitting quietly in the house, it was more of a memorial to him than the stone they’d placed on his grave. But when she turned to him, there was something in her eyes that made him hesitate.
“This guitar…” There was a break in her voice.
“I know,” he said gruffly. For a moment they looked at each other, back in time to those carefree summer days. And nights. At this thought, he snapped back into clarity. “So. You were saying?”
She seemed to shake herself into the present too. “If I’d known, I would have said something the other day. I would have said something long ago. I’m so sorry. Ethan was…amazing.”
A storm of reactions flooded through him. The long-held anger at the way she’d left, without a word to anyone, leaving Ethan gutted. Never even acknowledging his death, which had been a drawn-out, long-distance slap in the face to his family. How could he believe that she never knew? And once again, underlying everything else, he felt the unwelcome, unworthy stab of jealousy. He couldn’t face it then, and he sure as hell didn’t want to revisit it now. He couldn’t compete with the amazing Ethan when he was alive, and there was no competing with a dead man. But he’d loved his brother to death…until death. A death he could have prevented, if only he hadn’t let himself get caught up in his own unwanted feelings for his brother’s girlfriend. You don’t get much more screwed up than that.
He realized she was watching him, waiting for his reply. Shit, say something—you’ve thought about it enough times. He fired off the first thing that came into his head.
“If he was so amazing, why did you leave?”
She shut her eyes for a second as the arrow struck, the pain obvious on her face, but he didn’t regret it. Well, not much. She should feel bad. It was only a fraction of what they went through in her aftermath.
She went and sat on the sofa, where she’d lain in her bikini the day before yesterday. As the image rose in his memory, he scrubbed it away, but his brain betrayed him by recalling how she’d felt in his arms. The softness of her hair under his chin as he carried her, the warmth of her skin, her full breasts pressed together in her bikini top as he held her close against him. He rubbed his eyes, and looked at her now, making himself remember who she was. The girl who’d come out of nowhere and ruined his brother’s life, and divided his own life in two—before and after. And he remembered who she really was, as confirmed on Google.
“I couldn’t deal with everything. I just had to go home.” She looked at him. “You knew about the baby, right?”
He stayed standing, his arms crossed. “He told me you were pregnant, yeah.”
That was a conversation he’d never forget. It was probably the only time he’d known his brother truly lost, the usual bravado and confidence replaced with something raw and uncertain. He was Ethan Ward, after all—young, smart, and destined for big things. Liam knew he’d been drinking more to smother his nerves about leaving the bay to study music in Sydney, where he’d be a small fish in a big pond for the first time in his life. But the baby bombshell, and Jacinda’s exit, were the aces that brought down his house of cards. Despite the hero worship of his little brother, and the admiration of most of the kids in town, Ethan obviously wasn’t as untouchable as he seemed.
Jacinda sighed. “I asked Nana Mac to talk to your mom after I left,
just in case. I didn’t know if Ethan had told her about the baby to start with, but I couldn’t let you all think I’d gone away with his baby. With her grandchild.”
“Well, it was too late. He died thinking that was exactly what you’d done. He never knew you lost it.” He knew each word was a dagger, but he couldn’t stop. “You left him broken.”
She pressed a hand to her temple. “I don’t even know what happened. Are you saying it’s my fault he died?”
He could see her emotion rising, but he didn’t let her off the hook. This was the girl who’d cut and run, without looking back. If he forced everything into the open now, maybe he’d be free of it, free of the memories…and yeah, free of the power she still had over him. It was worse now than it was then, when he was flush with teenage hormones and fraternal competitiveness. Now, he had no excuse. All he could do was drive it away, ruin any possible connection they might have. He forged on.
“Didn’t you notice that he’d been drinking more than usual? Didn’t you think something might be going on?”
“How would I know?” There was an edge to her voice. “I didn’t have anything to compare it with. And anyway, all you guys were obsessed with getting hold of beer.”
Fair point. He’d still been underage that summer, and it had pissed him off to rely on Ethan and his mates to supply them with drinks. He and Connor and Dane were on the cusp of manhood, or so they’d thought—their toes right on the line, ready to play with the grown-ups. They had no idea that they were about to get a lesson in the realities of life.
But that wasn’t the point of this conversation.
“He was going to come and see you. But then we saw you get in the car with Nana Mac, with all your things, and leave.”
He saw a flare of something in her eyes then, as if she was recalculating. Disbelief, maybe, and confusion. “Really?”
One Distant Summer Page 6