Summer Girl

by A. S. Green

  “Listen,” he says, getting down to business. “We need time to regroup, then we can hit it hard next semester. By the time we graduate we’ll be ready to take the world by storm.”

  I look at him intently. It’s as if he hasn’t heard anything I said. “I told you. More than once. I don’t want to go to law school.”

  “Katherine, there are certain things people need to do. To succeed. To make a life.” He reaches across the table with his other hand, and now he holds both of mine, anchoring me to the table. “Sometimes that means doing things that are practical, even if that’s not a very romantic notion. You can’t pay the bills with romance.”

  “No, but you can make some heat,” I say, Bennet’s words on my lips.

  “What?” he asks, pulling his eyebrows together.

  “Never mind.” I pull my hands free and fold them in my lap. It’s my turn to study the street, but I know he’s watching my face.

  “I do love you, Katherine. Obviously I suck at showing it, but I hope you know that.”

  “What I know is that I’m not going to law school, and while I hope you will always be a part of my life, we’re never going to be more than friends.”

  Andrew smiles as if I’m being cute. “Let’s just give you time to re-assimilate to civilization before we make any big decisions.” He moves his wineglass out of my reach. “You know, when Bennet came up to the lighthouse the other night—”

  I rear back. “What?”

  Andrew tips his head left, then right. “After the old man left and you went to bed—”

  “Bennet came?” My voice is rising, and more than one person in the restaurant turns to look.

  “Well, yeah,” he says, dropping his voice and leaning forward. “But you said you didn’t want to talk anymore, so I told him to go.”

  I ball up my napkin and toss it on the table. “I meant Doyle! You know I would have talked to Bennet!”

  Andrew shakes his head and puts his hands up, palms out, to calm me. “You’d had a traumatic night. It wasn’t the best thing for you.”

  I collapse against the back of my chair and stare at him with my arms hanging down. The lunacy of his statement stuns me. It infuriates me. And then…it makes me smile.

  It’s weird. His words shouldn’t make me happy, but they do. In fact, they make me ecstatic and not only because Bennet came to me. My chest swells with the happiness that comes from knowing what is right. Truly right. Andrew’s words are the unintended confirmation that I do know exactly what I’m doing. I understand myself. I am sure of what I want.

  And when you know something—really know something—with that utter certainty of a course well set and well lit, then you don’t waste time. You get up on your feet. And you don’t look back.

  Chapter Fifty-Nine

  Katherine

  Generally speaking, I do not condone creeper behavior. I mean, Facebook stalking is one thing. Standing on Bennet’s back deck, in the dark, and watching him through the sliding glass door as he moves around his kitchen on his night off, well…it’s a new low, but my mind has never been so clear.

  Clearer than these windows, for sure. Seriously? Doesn’t he own any household cleaners? My thoughts don’t linger there for long.

  Bennet’s back is to me, bare and muscled. His tattoo practically begs me to seize the day, to fling open the sliding glass door and rip off those long, flannel pajama pants he’s wearing. They’re hanging far too low on his hips anyway. It wouldn’t take much effort. But these thoughts don’t do him justice.

  He is a beautiful person. He’s beautiful to me in ways that no one else could possibly understand, and it has nothing to do with tousled hair and broad shoulders.

  Bennet moves from the stove to the cutting board and adds sliced hot dogs to the pot. He reaches up to a high cupboard, and my stomach tightens in a really wonderful kind of way, except that I step back and bump into one of the chairs, skidding it across the deck boards. Bennet stills at the noise and turns his head but not his body.

  This was a terrible plan. What the hell am I doing? What am I going to say if he finds me standing out here in the dark? Slowly I inch out of view, so when curiosity finally brings him to the door to investigate, I’m halfway hidden by the ivy and absolutely terrified.

  I wish I knew what he thought of me. Natalie said he was upset after I left, but by now he’s had time to recover. Maybe now he’s glad I’m gone, like all the other summer girls before me. That’s the way it was supposed to work, right?

  The door slides open with a soft shhhwippp, and Bennet steps onto the deck, lifting his chin in the breeze. He closes his eyes and breathes in deeply. “Honest to God,” he says. “I can actually smell you.”

  I cringe and, realizing that the jig is up, step from the shadows.

  Bennet cries out and staggers back, his hand over his heart. His face looks horrified. “Jesus H. Christ, D’Arcy! What the—? What the hell are you doing out here?” He bends over and grabs his knees. “Oh, shit. I think I’m having a heart attack.”

  “I…I…” I say, flustered. “I thought you knew I was here. You said you could smell me.”

  He takes two deep breaths, still bent over, then he slowly straightens. “I could. But I was talking to imaginary you. I didn’t think I was really smelling you. How long have you been out here?”

  “I just got here,” I say, because there’s no way in hell I’m admitting to standing on his deck, watching him, for the last fifteen minutes.

  Behind him, his pasta pot starts to fill with foam, then boil over. He rushes back into the kitchen, moving the pot off the hot burner. I follow him in, but don’t go as far as the kitchen.

  He drains the water and a cloud of steam rises from the sink. Then he braces his arms against the counter, his back to me, and asks, “So, are you going to tell me why you’re here, or are you going to make me guess?”

  I clear my throat. “I came back because I left without saying something.”

  He still doesn’t turn around but simply pours milk into the pot.

  “Not long after I got home, I knew I’d made a terrible mistake.”

  He dumps a lump of butter into the pot and rips open the cheese powder packet with his teeth. His back is still to me. This isn’t going well, but I’m not giving up.

  “I feel right when I’m with you. I’m not imagining that. Do you know how long it’s been since I felt this way?”

  Still Bennet says nothing, and my heart is racing. He doesn’t turn around. He can’t even look at me. Have I ruined everything? Oh, shit. Did he and Alli hook up after I left?

  Bennet reaches up into the cupboard and takes out another bowl. I wish he’d say something. Why doesn’t he say something? In my nervousness I keep talking.

  “After…what happened…I was so confused. And then Andrew was here telling me that he loved me and, even though that’s what I’d always wanted to hear, it didn’t make me feel like I thought it would. But still…it wasn’t like I could stay on the island because Calloway was home. And seriously, I was still mad at you for making such a fool out of me.”

  “Babe,” Bennet says, drawing the word out slowly. He bows his head.

  “What?”

  He turns around and leans back on his hands against the counter. “I wasn’t trying to make a fool out of you. And I wasn’t trying to use you to get back at my family, either. Honestly, that thought never entered my mind until you said it out loud, outside March’s barn. And then I felt about yea big.” He makes a gesture with his fingers to show me how small he felt.

  I bite my lip, wishing I could take that back. “You were right, you know. If you’d told me the truth, right when you saw Andrew’s photo in my bedroom, I probably would have run home out of guilt. Or obligation. Or maybe just fear.”

  He stares at me for an eternity. My body temperature rises, and my clothes prickle against my skin.

  “Come on,” I plead. “Say something.”

  “D’Arcy.”

  “S
hould I leave?”

  He doesn’t answer that question. Instead he says, “All my life I haven’t fit in. Not with my family. Not at school. Not even here. That’s all I ever wanted. I saw that in you, too. I saw you working so hard to try to fit into a mold that you were never going to fit into. It made me crazy to know how unhappy your life was going to be. I was trying to show you another way.

  “And then I saw that letter on your nightstand, and my little brother’s picture, and I thought, my God, it’s worse than I thought. After that, I wasn’t imagining you stuck in a type of life. I knew exactly what you were getting yourself into. I’d lived it.”

  His speech makes my chest constrict because I can see his animosity isn’t toward Andrew. He sees Andrew as trapped as I would have been.

  “The idea of you sitting there at family dinners…” He rakes his hands through his hair. “Knowing what kind of pressure they’d put on you to wear the right clothes, do the right thing. Hell, they’d probably dictate the spacing of your children, and God help you if you didn’t deliver perfect ones…”

  “Okay. I get it.”

  “Why did you leave without saying good-bye?” His face is troubled, and it’s obvious the question has tormented him.

  “I thought that’s what you wanted.” I’m embarrassed by my answer. It sounds ridiculous now.

  His face contorts. “Why would you ever think that?”

  I look over his shoulder at the wall. Then I bite my lip and bow my head. “Because you didn’t come to check on me. I thought…I thought you might have blamed me for what happened to Sam… If I hadn’t—”

  “Babe.”

  “I thought you wanted me to go.”

  He pushes off the counter and takes two steps in my direction. “But I did come to check on you.”

  I nod and smile. He knits his brows, confused by my expression. He’s still trying to explain.

  “That night, after I buried Sam, I came to you. Andrew answered the door. He said you didn’t want to see me.” He rakes his hand through his hair again. “Which, let me tell you, didn’t make me feel too great.”

  “I know,” I say, smiling up at him. “He told me, but only yesterday.”

  Bennet looks down at the floor and puts his hands on his hips. He laughs quietly to himself, finally understanding. When he looks up he says, “Aren’t we a pair.”

  “So it would seem.” We’re still ten feet apart. It might as well be a mile.

  “So you’re really here? With me? In my house? And you’re staying?”

  I search his face, trying to read the tone of his voice. “If you still want me, then I’ll be with you in this or any other house. Here, Nashville, L.A.…”

  “Ah,” he says, smiling. “About that.”

  “About what?”

  “Sully had done up a deed that transfered this place to Doyle, in case of his death. Sully’s sister sent it to him a few weeks ago.”

  “Oh, yeah?”

  “Yeah. But since Doyle’s already got a place, he deeded it to me. Provided, of course, that I stick around.”

  Tears wash over my eyes. We could have a home. A permanent home. And it’s beautiful.

  Bennet returns to the counter and picks up two bowls of macaroni and cheese. He starts a slow walk in my direction. “So. You being here. Does this mean you’re not just a summer girl?”

  My heart rate speeds up when I hear the challenge in his question. “No. I may be many things, but I’m not that.”

  His mouth torques into a crooked smile. I look from the bowls, to his cut abs, to his face, which has now lost most of its smile. His eyes are smoldering.

  “Welcome home, D’Arcy,” he says, setting the bowls on the coffee table. Then he cups my jaw in both his hands and presses his lips to mine.

  At first it’s soft, then more insistent as his tongue slides past my lips. One of his hands drops to my lower back, pressing my hips forward and against his. My hands find his hair—a windblown tangle from a day spent on the lake.

  And I’m pretty sure dinner’s going to get cold before we ever have a chance to eat it.

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  Acknowledgments

  Thank you to my husband and children for being patient and encouraging. Thanks to the Valley Creek Starbucks for keeping me fueled and for knowing my order before I have to open my mouth, and to my early beta readers: Heather Anastasiu, Lauren Peck, Li Boyd, Jacqueline West, Brenna Fuhr, and my parents (God love ’em). Thanks, as always, to my agent, Jacqueline Flynn. Glad I met you. Glad we’re friends! And finally a boatload of gratitude to my editor, Karen Grove, who made comments in the margins like: “Can you make me pull my hair out?” and “I want to cry harder on this page, please.” All your pushing made Katherine and Bennet’s story something I am infinitely proud of.

  About the Author

  A. S. Green lives in the cold upper Midwest with her husband and three children. She spends summers on Lake Superior, which is the muse for Summer Girl, and she is a sucker for down-to-earth heroes who work with their hands (if they play guitar, that’s an added bonus). She enjoys all things Irish—particularly music, dancing, and Jameson. When she’s not writing or reading romance, she’s traveling, camping, blogging for Writer Unboxed, and writing YA (under her real name). You can find her online at www.asgreenbooks.com and follow her on Twitter and Facebook at @asgreenbooks.

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