“Well, since you can’t have your new BFF along, I hope you can settle for your old best friend instead, Z,” she said. “And I know you’ll find the right thing to say to me so that I don’t spend the next few days crying.”
Zander reached out his arm to her as he patted the spot next to him on the bed. “Nah,” he said. “You two weren’t a thing long enough for you to be upset, Pips. Besides, he’s a guy. Who gets upset over a guy anyhow?”
He gave her a wink, and she smiled weakly through a thin haze of tears that made her hazel eyes bright with sadness.
~*~
For the next hour or so until the sailboat arrived, Topher kept his distance from Pippa, tinkering with boat-maintenance issues. Cowardly, maybe. But it was all he could figure to do. He was a complete failure at being a sucky ex, if that’s what he was now to Pippa. Not that they ever officially got to something official anyhow, but still. It was headed that direction.
But he knew it was best this way. Rip the Band-Aid off quickly and then let it heal. Sure, it hurt at first, but this way he could keep his distance from everyone and not deal with all the stuff that just stressed him out so much with family and relationships. He was better off being a free spirit, wandering on his own, the only anchor the one that secured the boat in place at night.
~*~
Pippa threw all her belongings into a bag, even the still-damp sarong and bikini. She’d braided her hair back again in a long plait and donned yoga pants and a workout top. Carefree Pippa was gone, and real-world Pippa was back. She wanted to get out with her dignity somewhat intact as soon as she could at this point.
She was climbing the stairs when Clementine opened the door to her cabin. Clem was holding a sheet up to herself, her shoulders bare.
“Hey,” she said to her friend. “What’re you doing?”
“What does it look like I’m doing?”
“Um, taking your clothes to the cleaners, and you don’t have a laundry bag?”
“Yeah. That,” Pippa said. “Actually, I’m going with Zander as soon as his ride shows up.”
“But what about you and Toph?”
Pippa drew her finger across her throat like a knife. “There is no me and Toph.”
“Pippa, be real. Don’t give up on him again. He’s invested in you at this point. If you leave now, there’s no turning back.”
Pippa rolled her eyes. “I’m not giving up on anyone, Clem. He’s the one bailing.”
“Topher? Ditched you?”
Pippa shook her head. “Dropped me like a hot potato. I didn’t even have a chance to defend myself. It was sort of weird.”
Clementine pinched the bridge of her nose with her fingers. “Seriously I don’t even know why I try,” she said. “All this effort, and what has it gotten me?”
“I’d say it’s gotten you a whole lot of naked belly shots with a near stranger, for starters,” she said. “And now, from the sounds of it, a vacation quickie with the man as well.”
“Quickie?” she said. “Why that wasn’t quick in the least!” She put her hand over her mouth realizing her insensitive gaffe. “I’m sorry, Pips. That was inappropriate to rub that in under the circumstances.”
Pippa waved her hand at her. “Whatever, hon,” she said. “If you’re happy, I’m happy. Although I’m not really happy, because Topher’s an idiot. But that has nothing to do with you. Oh, and here—”
She rifled around in her bag, finally pulling out a handful of condoms and tossing them to Clem, who nearly dropped her sheet while trying to catch them.
“Here, at least they’ll find a use with you.”
“Well, at least you made a little dent in them,” her friend said.
But Pippa shook her head no.
“You mean you never consummated the deal?” Clementine’s eyes grew large with incredulity.
Pippa just looked at the ground.
“Oh, wow. You forgot them?”
Pippa nodded her head sheepishly.
“Pips! How could you? That’s the most un-Pippa-like thing I think you’ve ever done!”
She shook her head. “I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know,” she said. “I guess we simply forgot. Or we didn’t even think of it. I mean, we were kind of busy.”
“What’re you gonna do?”
“I’m going to leave here and never think about Topher again,” Pippa said. “And if I see him at Zander’s wedding, I’ll politely nod my head and turn the other direction. And definitely not sleep with the next damned brother in that household.”
Clem laughed. “You’d practically be assaulting a minor if you went after Luca.”
“Not gonna happen,” her friend said.
“But what if, you know?” Clementine rubbed her belly suggestively.
“Are you kidding? Uh, uh. Not gonna happen. Not on my watch.”
“Hate to tell you, you might not have any control over that one, my dear.”
“Well, we’ll cross that bridge. In the meantime, I’m not going to worry about it.”
Just then Topher yelled down to his brother.
“Uh, better get up here, Z,” he said. “Your carriage awaits you.”
Pippa gave Clem a hug. “You’re welcome to join us, you know.”
“Thanks,” she said. “But I think I’ll stick around here to see where things go. Maybe I can work on Topher for you.”
“Nah. Don’t bother,” Pippa said. “Not gonna risk heartbreak with that one. He’s too fickle to deal with. You gonna be okay here?”
“Definitely,” she said, giving her friend a squeeze. “And you don’t need me for moral support?”
“I’m good, Clem. Thanks for trying to matchmake us. I know your heart was in the right place, even if you were deceptive.” She winked at her.
“I’m impressed you can even attempt to smile under the circumstances.”
“Yeah, well, I’m not gonna let him see that it’s affected me. Going out with my head held high.”
~*~
Topher stood on the bridge, motioning to the skipper of the dinghy coming to retrieve his brother.
He looked surprised to see Pippa coming ahead of Zander with her duffel bag.
“You’re leaving?” he said.
“Uh, yeah,” she said. “I’ve got no reason to stick around here. Zander and I are going to take a few days to play.”
“You sure you don’t want to hang out here?”
Pippa laughed a laugh with no humor behind it. “Thanks. I’ll take a pass.”
“Well, okay then,” Topher said, extending his arm and grabbing her hand to shake it. “Take care of yourself.”
Pippa stared at him, bug-eyed. “You’re really going to shake my hand like we’re finalizing some sort of business deal? After you spent half the night inside me barely twelve hours ago? Wow.”
She turned and walked toward the skipper, who held her hand as she boarded the dinghy for the short ride to the opulent sailboat awaiting them. She never turned back even once.
“Good afternoon, Your Highness,” the skipper said to Zander as he boarded the dinghy. “Sir Richard sends his kindest regards and offers with his compliments full use of the Necker Belle for the week.”
Pippa looked up, and not a hundred yards away from them was the most magnificent catamaran she’d seen yet, over a hundred feet long, sleek, elegant, and just what the doctor ordered.
Now this was her favorite way to lick her wounds.
Chapter Twenty
PIPPA and Zander sat with their feet dangling over the edge of the boat. They’d finished a gourmet dinner of chateaubriand and topped it off with a flight of world-class wines. Here she was on a breathtakingly beautiful sailboat, guest of a man famed the world over for being a considerate host, alongside the man who had been her best friend since her mother pawned her off on Zander’s governess when they were three years old. She should have been the happiest woman on the planet.
Yet not only was she not with Topher, who had managed to crawl h
is way into the deep recesses of her heart, she was never going to be with Topher, which was particularly wrenching after she’d finally capitulated, against her own better judgment, to let the man sneak into that fortress of a heart of hers.
She wasn’t merely upset, she was ticked off.
“I don’t get it, Zander,” she said. “I mean what is wrong with that idiot brother of yours?”
She knew she was beginning to sound like One-Hit Hannah, repeating herself ad nauseam. No one wanted to hear someone moan and complain about a jilted lover, but that didn’t prevent her from saying the same thing twenty different ways to Zander. She knew he’d understand though. That’s what best friends were for.
Besides, in a way, she’d not even be dealing with this whole problem if it weren’t for Zander. After all, she knew Toph because of Z. Plus Zander was the one who gave Topher such abuse about the Episode, which led to the fallout after Adrian’s wedding. Perhaps things would be entirely different had that not been the case. So the least he could do was listen to her complain for a while.
“Here Pips, have another drink,” he said, pouring her another glass of wine.
“Promise you’ll make sure I don’t slump my way overboard?”
He laughed. “It’s a deal.”
Pippa suppressed a little sniffle. “I’d really started to care for him, Z,” she said, only to start crying all over again. Poor Zander had been stuck trying to settle her down since they got on the boat.
“Look at this way,” he said. “You don’t like to be tied down, right? You travel all over the world for work. If you’re stuck with one guy, then that’s going to make it so much harder going away all the time. Think how sad that would make you. This way, you don’t have to be sad about that!”
She thought about that for a second. “That is the most convoluted reasoning I think I’ve ever heard,” she said. “Basically you’re telling me, you’re better off being sad now because if you were happy now, then you’d be sad later.”
Zander shrugged. “Logic worked for me.”
“The thing is, Zander, you know how much I suck at relationships. Remember that guy. What was his name?”
“See, you can’t even remember the guy’s name. You’re not ready for a real relationship until you can commit their names to memory.”
“Topher.”
“Huh?”
“Topher. There. I said it. Topher. I’ve committed it to memory.”
“You’re making this hard on me, Pips.”
“I need to be serious now,” she said. “I’ve been trying to understand why I’m not relationship material. And you know I’m not. I can’t even find a date most of the time, let alone someone who wants to be around me for more than a night or two.”
“I like to be around you all the time, Pips.”
“That doesn’t count,” she said. “You’re like my default brother, so you have to like to be around me.”
Zander shook his head. “I don’t know about that. My brother Topher doesn’t like to be around me!”
“That’s because you tease him mercilessly. If you would stop doing that, I can promise you he’d be your bestie.”
“Guys don’t have besties.”
“Okay, well, enough about you. Let’s get back to me. So I figured out my issues have to do with not knowing what a healthy relationship looks like. I mean look at my parents. They were so fly-by-night, I feel like they’re almost strangers to me. I mean they stuck me in boarding school just so they didn’t have to have me around.”
“If it’s any consolation, I went to boarding school.”
“Yes, but that’s different,” she said. “That was part of your training to be royalty.”
“Wouldn’t it have made more sense to train someone to be royal by having them live with the people who are royal? In the royal palace?”
“So maybe, yeah, but you can’t tell me your parents don’t adore all of you,” she said. “And simply the fact that there are so many of you, clearly they relished having a family.”
“Okay, so you recognize that this is where you need to work on things, P. You want to be better at lasting relationships. I’d say that’s great progress. You wanna go for a swim?”
She pointed to the water, illuminated from below by lights beneath the boat so that it looked like some vehicle from outer space. “Down there? With the waters probably teeming with sharks at night?”
“The water is lit up all around us, and it’s perfectly clear,” he said. “I think we’d see a shark long before he saw us.”
“I’d rather drink my sorrows away.”
“Fine, but can’t say I didn’t warn you when you have a bitch of a hangover tomorrow.”
“Yeah, yeah,” she said, topping off her wineglass. “You don’t feel badly for me that I grew up as some latchkey child, a waif, unwanted, unloved?”
Zander scruffed her head. “Hate to tell you, Pippa, but waifs don’t live in palatial cliffside estates with dramatic views of the Mediterranean,” he said. “I think someone’s having a self-indulgent pity party right now, so I’ll not dignify that nonsense with a reply. You know your parents loved you in their own absentee way. And besides, you know my parents loved you to death too. So it’s as if you’ve got two sets of parents. An added bonus. Lucky you!”
“Yeah, but I’ve always been this drifter girl, wandering around, floating in and out between circles of friends, never committing to a guy. And finally I commit to one, and instead he pulls away from me.”
“Pips, that’s called life. You win some, you lose some. And it all comes out in the wash.”
“Wash,” she said. “That reminds me, I need to do laundry. You think they have a washing machine on this thing? I can’t even find a washing machine that loves me.”
With that Zander gave up on trying to reason with her. “Pips, my dear. Come along. I’m tucking you into bed. You win. I quit. Yes, the washing machine is not interested in a long-term relationship right now. Let’s get you off to bed so you can prepare yourself for that massive hangover we talked about.”
“Do you love me, Zander?” she said, still dressed in her yoga pants and top as he pulled the covers over her.
“You know I do, Pips. You’re my bestie.”
“I thought you said men don’t have besties.”
“Tell you what. You keep this one to yourself, and we can be besties forever.”
“You promise?”
“Good night, Pippa.”
Chapter Twenty-One
IF Topher could have smoke coming out of his nose, he would. As it was, he was like a fire-breathing dragon.
After he got frustrated while cutting into his steak at dinner and threw his fork and knife down, Sebastian read him the riot act.
“Dude,” he said. “Chill out, man. I think you need to get laid. Or something to reduce the tension that’s bouncing off of you.”
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Fine, but don’t spread your bad mood to us. Why don’t you go back over to the Willy-T’s,” he said. “I’m sure you can find some topless babe to distract you.”
Topher looked at him and glared.
“Look, Topher, let’s talk about it,” Clementine said. “You gotta admit you went from smoking hot to ice cold on poor Pippa back there. I’d imagine you must be pretty confused if you were willing to flip on her like that.”
Topher then set his jaw and remained silent.
“Does it help if I tell you I understand where you’re coming from?” Clementine said.
“Look, Clem, I don’t really need you playing armchair shrink with me, okay?” he said. “It was fun until it wasn’t fun, and then that reminded me that I was getting in too deep anyhow. I don’t need to have an anchor around my neck right now.”
“And Pippa’s an anchor?” she said.
“All women are anchors,” Sebastian said.
“Excuse me?” Clementine’s voice raised an octave.
“Topher and I
don’t need to be tied down,” he said. “We like to weigh anchor and go where the tide takes us sometimes. And you can’t do that if you have a woman trying to pin you down.”
“Trying to pin you down? What, like you’re trapped like some sad butterfly being secured against a page of black velvet in somebody’s butterfly collection?” she said. “Pin you down. As if.”
“You know what I mean, Clem,” he said. “I mean it’s fine to hook up and all, but who needs all that long-term commitment nonsense.”
“Right. I got it. Hookups, fine. Settle downs, not.”
“Precisely,” he said.
“Look, Clem, I’m not getting involved in this conversation because it can only devolve from here,” Topher said. “And I don’t want to say I’m never going to commit to a relationship. But right now, that idea is scary and uncomfortable to me, and I can’t deal with it.”
“Okay, so now we’re getting somewhere,” she said. “Scary and uncomfortable I can work with. Hookup Harry, not so much.” She threw the stink eye at Sebastian, who was oblivious to her anger and cutting into his steak, happily taking a large bite.
“Tell me what has you so scared.”
Zander shrugged. “I don’t know, Clementine. I just don’t feel comfortable with it.”
“Is it because you feel too exposed, like you opened yourself up too much to her?” she said. “Or is it because you were too exposed to us?” She laughed. “Sorry, I couldn’t help myself.”
“Great. I finally spill my guts and you mock me,” he said. “This is precisely why I want nothing to do with any of it.”
“I’m sorry you feel that way, Christopher,” Clem said, invoking his full name, which his mother had only used on him when he was in trouble or in danger as a child. “Because sometimes in life you’re going to have to be scared and uncomfortable. Sometimes you have to push through it and get out of your comfort zone and make room for a little growing up. I’m sorry that I went to all the trouble to bring Pippa here only for you to chicken out like you did and send her packing. But I’m almost even more sorry that I wasted my time ‘hooking up’ with the likes of Sebastian, who is clearly a selfish git who’s doomed to grow old and alone someday and it’ll serve him right.”
Love is in the Heir Page 10