by Susan Fox
He put his arm around her shoulders. She stiffened for a moment and then relaxed against him with a sigh. “Are you upset about Aaron getting married?” he ventured.
She jerked away and scowled at him. “Of course not. What do you think I am? That I’d be, what? Resentful? Jealous? Luke, I’m thrilled for him and Eden.”
“Okay, okay.” He raised both hands in a gesture of disavowal. “I’m sorry. You just seemed a little . . . I don’t know. Like you’re not having fun anymore.” Maybe she had PMS, but he’d learned from the women in his family that a guy should never suggest that. He remembered a particularly memorable lecture from Annie that ranged from sexism to Irritable Male Syndrome.
Miranda shook her head. “No, I’m sorry. I guess maybe I have had a little too much wedding. I should probably get changed and go pick up Ariana.”
“Too bad you have to take off that pretty dress.” She always looked great, but today she was especially beautiful. The blue of the dress set off her coloring: those stunning eyes, the golden curls that brushed her shoulders, and the hint of a tan on her nicely toned arms and knockout legs. All afternoon he’d been gazing at her with admiration as well as lust. “That is,” he added with a wink, “unless you were taking it off for me. Is there time for a quickie before you need to leave and get Ariana?”
Her eyes narrowed. “A quickie? You want a quickie?”
“What I’d really like is a whole night of incredible sex.” With plenty of time to figure out how to tell her the thing he’d realized earlier this afternoon. When he’d been saying that she’d brought him back to life after Candace’s death, his tongue had run on and he’d barely managed to stop himself. He’d been about to blurt out that he’d never imagined he’d fall in love again and yet it seemed to be happening. That hadn’t been the time or way to tell her, and certainly not in front of Iris. Now wasn’t the right time either, not with Miranda needing to pick up her daughter soon.
Or was he looking for excuses? What if he said those words and she told him she didn’t feel the same way? That he was a “friends with benefits” guy and lacked the special whatever that had made her fall for men like Ariana’s father and that crazy chef? Could he handle hearing her say that? Sometimes it felt like his life had been a saga of loss, even though his dad, his mom, and Candace hadn’t intentionally abandoned him.
Striving to keep things light, he said, “But since I know we don’t have the night . . .”
“You want me to rip off this flirty little dress so we can have a quickie?” There was a challenging edge to her voice.
“Something wrong with that?” What was going on with her? “You’ve never had a problem with that before.”
“No, that’s me. Good old Miranda, ready to lie on her back and spread her legs at the snap of your fingers.”
“What the hell?” He might be falling in love with her, and maybe she had PMS, but she was starting to piss him off.
“Let’s face it. You hadn’t had sex in years and now you can’t get enough of it, but you know in your heart that I’ll never replace Candace.”
“No one can replace Candace,” he snapped. “That’s not—”
“Exactly! That’s not where this is going, you and me.”
Stunned, he took a step backward. Earlier, he’d thought that “this” might well be heading toward a marriage proposal and a blended family. But it seemed that was the last thing Miranda envisioned. Thank God he hadn’t spoken up.
Hold on. Don’t overreact. He took a deep breath and tried to calm down. She’d seemed fine. Great, even. They’d been dancing and then she’d gone to her cabin to use the bathroom, and it was when she came back that her mood had changed. This seemed like more than a sudden onset of PMS.
Cautiously he said, “Earlier, you seemed happy and now you’re upset. Did something happen when you went back to your cabin?”
Her shoulders rose up, hunching, and she wrapped her arms around herself. She dropped her gaze. He tensed, too, having no idea what she might say.
Staring at the grassy lawn between their feet, she said, “I overheard a couple of women.”
“Huh?”
“Gossiping. About me. And you.”
Light dawned. Grimly he asked, “What did they say?”
Those hunched shoulders shrugged. “That I’m not good enough for you. That I’m slutty and you only want me for sex. That I could never replace Candace in your heart, and that you’ll get tired of me and dump me soon.”
No one could ever replace Candace in his heart, but if he said that when Miranda was in this mood, she wouldn’t understand. It turned out that his heart had a pretty big capacity. There was room for his kids, his mom, Forbes, Annie, and Randall. Room for memories of Candace and the love he still felt for her. But also plenty of room for Miranda and Ariana.
“They said I’m not good enough for you,” Miranda murmured, gazing up at him with soulful eyes that were now more gray than blue.
Luke opened his mouth, about to protest and to ask who those idiot women were. But then he realized that wasn’t what truly mattered. “Do you think you’re good enough for me?”
She glared at him. “Of course not.” The words dropped heavily between them.
His heart sank along with them. He’d tried in every way he knew to show her that he thought she was special. Each time they made love, he told her with his words and his body how much he appreciated her. He’d brought her and her daughter into his and his boys’ family time, and introduced her to the kids’ grandparents. He told her about his work and asked her about her courses and her ideas on child-rearing and education. Occasionally he disagreed with her, but he respected her opinion and never belittled her. What more could he do?
Yes, he could tell her he was falling in love with her. But even if he got down on one knee and proposed, that wasn’t the answer. If she didn’t believe in herself and in their relationship now, an engagement wouldn’t change things.
“Look,” he said, disappointment and annoyance creeping into his voice, “I know you’ve had a lot of crap in your life. But isn’t it time you grew up and got over it?”
“Excuse me?” More glaring.
Okay, maybe that wasn’t the most tactful phrasing, but he was tired of tiptoeing around the eggshells of her insecurities. He mattered, too. He’d had true love and had lost his wife. Now he’d had the guts to enter a new relationship, to risk his fragile heart, and Miranda wasn’t doing her part. He’d done his best to understand her issues, to support her, to help her heal. He’d been patient, but she seemed to want to stay stuck in the past and not acknowledge the strong woman she’d become.
“When I met you,” he said, “I thought of you as a rosebud surrounded by thorns. Well, I was right. You’re prickly and moody. I guess you’re insecure and, given your past, I can see how that would happen. I’ve tried to reassure you. But Miranda, all the stuff I’ve said and done, well, it still hasn’t made you believe in your own self-worth. And it’s finally sunk in that I can’t make you believe in yourself.” In fact, it seemed like she was determined not to, for whatever perverse reason. “It has to come from you.”
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Glory and Brent approaching. Glory must have seen that something intense was going on because she steered her partner away again.
He swallowed, a deep sorrow making it difficult to go on. “Miranda, the boys and I don’t need to be involved with a woman who’s insecure and self-defeating.”
She fisted her hands on her hips. “That’s exactly what I said! You deserve someone better than me.”
“Jesus, that’s not what I—” He shook his head. “You don’t get it.” He tried to find the right words, to somehow make her understand that she had so much strength and love and wonderfulness inside her if she could only let herself see it. But she didn’t give him a chance.
“Oh, I get it perfectly.” She turned and stalked away.
Luke stared after her. Well, just fuck.
Chap
ter Nineteen
“I have screwed up my life so royally,” Miranda said gloomily to Iris as they had coffee in the Dreamspinner coffee shop the Friday after Aaron and Eden’s wedding. It was a workday for Miranda, and she was on her afternoon break.
She gestured to the poster stuck on the bulletin board. “Julian Blake, one of my favorite musicians, is in town playing with B-B-Zee tonight and tomorrow night.” The yellow thumbtack holding up the poster felt like the final nail in the coffin that had been her crappy life for the past week.
“Yes, he’s usually here sometime in May or June, and at Christmas.”
She sighed. “Somehow I missed the fact that he was here at Christmas.” She’d been distracted by all the Blaine and SkySong family goings-on: baking, ornament-making, tree-trimming, consuming huge meals, carol singing, and gift-giving. It had been the kind of holiday she’d never experienced before and it had intimidated her. She’d hung back, enjoying it from the fringes. “Now he’s here again, and I don’t dare go.”
Iris’s smooth brow creased. “What are you afraid of?”
Miranda slugged back a mouthful of her mocha latté, not tasting it. “Oh, let me see. That Forbes and Sonia will say nasty things to me.”
“Forbes will be onstage, playing. Sonia’s going to be watching her husband and stepson.”
“I guess. But Luke might be there, to see Julian, and, and . . .”
“And what? Do you think he’d say something mean?”
She sighed. “No, I think he’s had his say and has washed his hands of me. But it would hurt too much, seeing him.” She’d been rejected before, and by men she’d thought she was crazy in love with. But crazy must have been the operative word, because losing Luke hurt even worse than those breakups had. She realized now that she’d never truly, one hundred percent, invested emotionally in those guys. With Luke, things had happened more slowly, kind of snuck up on her, until she’d realized she seriously cared about him. Then she’d honestly begun to hope, to even believe, that she might finally have the life she’d always dreamed of.
Among all the men she’d known, Luke was special. He’d been the nice guy, the one who’d seemed to really see her and care about her. Seeing her, of course, had been the problem. He’d seen her too damned clearly.
Ruefully, she told Iris, “I’ve been doing a good job of avoiding Luke, and I guess he has, too. Not that his vet work brings him into the village much anyhow.”
“I still have trouble believing you broke up with him. Miranda, I have a wall calendar with wise sayings, and each month I muse on them. This month, it’s about being patient, and how you often need to go through difficult times before things become easy.”
Miranda huffed. “Things are never going to be easy with Luke and me. And I didn’t break up with him. He broke up with me. Remember how, at the reception, I was gushing to you about how Luke accepted all of me, even my imperfections? Well, hah, stupid me. Just an hour or so later, there he was, saying he and the boys deserve someone better.” And the truth hurt. Bad boys were no good for her and Ariana, and she wasn’t good enough for the good guys. So what did that mean for her future? Whenever she thought about that, which was only all the time, that pessimistic dark spot in her soul, the one that told her she was worthless, threatened to take over again.
In the depths of one dark night, when she’d craved something, anything, to banish that defeated, hollow feeling, she’d had an insight. Did her mother used to feel this way? Was that why she’d turned to alcohol and drugs? Just as the adolescent Miranda had taken a silver blade to her wrist? Was a tendency toward depression something Miranda had inherited from her mom?
Her mother hadn’t had an Aaron to stop her, to support and encourage her. To tell her she was a dragon. But Miranda had, and her tattoo was a constant reminder. And so, each day, each hour, each minute, she struggled to forge ahead. To focus on the positives in her life—and, objectively speaking, there were so many more than ever before—rather than let pain and depression drag her into that horribly dark place.
Iris had been studying her, her unpainted lips pressed together in a thin line. “I have trouble imagining Luke saying something like that. But, well, that’s your business, not mine. If things really are over between you, what are you going to do? Spend the rest of your life steering clear of him? And his family? And his friends? That’s most of Destiny Island, you know.”
Miranda groaned. “I was right in the beginning. Ariana and I should move back to Vancouver.”
“Do you really want that?” Iris studied her over the rim of her mug. She was drinking jasmine tea that smelled wonderful. “I mean, don’t let your situation with Luke force you into doing something that’s not right for you. There’ve been lots and lots of breakups here, and mostly people do get over them and move on. You kind of have to, on an island this small.”
“I hated the whole idea of living here, but it’s grown on me. I really enjoyed that one-day shopping trip to Vancouver, but I realized that city life doesn’t seem all that appealing anymore.” Not to mention, she’d hate leaving Aaron, Eden and her family, and her new friends, Iris and Glory.
“Then buck up and move on.”
Jolted out of her misery for a moment, Miranda snorted. “Buck up? What books have you been reading lately?”
“Stop agonizing over Luke and your love life. Focus on the immediate future. Do you want to hear Julian Blake or not? He really is wonderful.”
Now that was a more pleasant topic than her unlovable-ness. “You like him, too?”
Iris nodded enthusiastically.
“Hey, do you know him?” Iris was two or three years younger than her, so she wouldn’t have known Julian at school. But a lot of years had passed since then. “Does he come into Dreamspinner?”
“No, I don’t know him, and I haven’t seen him in the village. I think that, other than playing with B-B-Zee, when he’s here he just hangs out with his family.”
“Probably doesn’t want fans mobbing him when he’s on holiday,” Miranda mused. She glanced at the poster again. The photo must have been taken on one of Julian’s previous trips to the island. He was at a mic in front of the B-B-Zee band members, singing, guitar in hand, looking soulful. Yes, he was truly hot, and his music was wonderful. She’d seen the Julian Blake Band perform once, in her pre-Ariana days, and had loved every moment. If there was one thing that might make her forget, maybe even for an hour or two, how crappy she felt, it was watching Julian onstage. She rested a hand on her dragon. If Luke showed up at the community hall, she’d suck it up and deal. “Okay then.” Chin up, she spoke with resolve. “We’ll go together. You and me.”
“Oh! But I don’t, you know, really go out much.”
“You’ve never gone to see Julian perform here?”
Iris shook her head.
“Wow. Okay, you say I need to move on? Well, Iris, I say you need to get out more.”
“I know, but I’m so shy. It’s really hard for me, Miranda.”
“And the thought of seeing Luke is hard for me. So why don’t we both buck up, put on some pretty clothes, and have a night out?”
She read temptation in her friend’s dark eyes, but Iris’s mouth tightened in a “no” line.
Before the word could escape, Miranda said, “I’m sorry about the shyness thing, but this is at the community hall on an island where you’ve lived all your life. Almost everyone there has been into the bookstore at some point, and you’ve talked to them.”
“Well, maybe about books.”
“It’s not a cocktail party. I don’t want to socialize either. We’re going to hear Julian. We’ll sit at a table together, listen, and leave as soon as the band finishes.”
Iris stared at her doubtfully.
“Julian Blake,” Miranda reminded her.
Ah, there it was, a smile.
“Good morning, ladies,” a genial male voice said, and Miranda glanced up to see Bart Jelinek, the Realtor.
“Hi,” she said
grudgingly. The man had a talent for interrupting.
“Hello, Bart,” Iris said softly, curling her hands around her tea mug and not meeting his eyes.
“Iris, you’re as lovely as ever. A flower, just like your name.”
Miranda wanted to wrinkle her nose, but resisted. At least the man’s smile looked more like that of a jovial uncle than an old creep hitting on a beautiful young woman. She forced a small smile of her own when the man turned to her.
“And Miranda Gabriel. How nice to see you. Do tell your brother and Eden congratulations from me and Cathy. I hear they got married last weekend.”
“They did. They’re on their honeymoon now, but I’ll tell them when they get back.”
“Excellent. By the way, ladies, both of you should be seeing Cathy tomorrow. A niece has a birthday coming up, and of course we’d never shop online. We believe in patronizing our Blue Moon Harbor businesses.”
“Thank you for that,” Iris said in that same quiet tone.
“Yes,” Miranda said. “Kara’s so grateful to her store’s loyal customers.”
Bart nodded, and then raised a hand to wave at another man who’d just come in. “I must take my leave. I’m having coffee with Herb Warren.”
Miranda noted that Jelinek had a friendly word to offer to everyone he passed on his way to join Mr. Warren.
Now she did allow herself that nose-wrinkle. “Is it just me, or is there something slimy about that man?”
“Bart?” Iris said, more animated now that he had gone. “He’s a salesman, but I wouldn’t say he’s slimy. Hearty is the word I’d use. He’s well respected here.”
“You acted kind of, uh, subdued with him.”
Iris’s shoulders tightened and lifted, and then dropped. “That’s me, not him. The stupid shyness thing.”
“Okay, then I guess it’s just me. I’ve never been great at character judgment.” Look at all the losers she’d managed to fall for. Before Luke.
And now she was getting depressed again. “Julian Blake,” she reminded herself and Iris. “Hopefully, I can arrange a sitter for Ariana. She’s been cranky this week and keeps asking for Luke.”