Kara (Starkis Family #4)

by Cheryl Douglas

  His hand grazed mine before he quickly shoved it in the pocket of his board shorts, and I realized his instincts had kicked in. He had been about to hold my hand before he remembered he couldn’t do that anymore.

  “I’d like to meet him.”

  “You would?” I couldn’t hide my surprise. I’d never imagined introducing Jake and Dustin, and now that he was proposing it, I wasn’t sure it was a good idea.

  “Sure.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe I want to make sure he’s good enough for you. Or maybe, like you said, closure?”

  We stopped in front of a vacant lot. “Hey, what happened to the Morrison place?”

  “I tore it down. I’m starting construction on a new house here next week.”

  I would lose it if he told me he intended to share our sacred land with her. “Oh.”

  “Aren’t you curious about it?” he asked, stopping in front of me. He was standing too close for me to breathe without inhaling his scent.

  “If you want to tell me about it, I’ll listen.”

  “I don’t have to tell you,” he said. “You’ve seen the plans. You know this house as well as you know your own.”

  I drew a sharp breath, wishing I could hide the hurt. “You’re building our house here? To share with her? How could you do that?”

  He looked at the empty lot, looking almost as ravaged as I felt. “I’ve had those plans for years. I couldn’t stop looking at them. I had to bring this house to life, Kara. Try to understand, I—”

  “I don’t understand,” I said, turning away when I felt tears swell in my eyes. “I don’t understand how you could be so cruel and thoughtless.” I walked fast to get away from him, but when my legs weren’t carrying me fast enough, I broke out into a light jog.

  “Damn it, Kara. Don’t run away from me.”

  I knew he was gaining on me. My lungs were burning, but I couldn’t stop even if I wanted to. I had to get away. From him, from the memories, from the future he was building with someone else, but most importantly, I had to escape my feelings for him. They were still there. Stronger than ever.

  He grabbed my arm, turning me to face him as we struggled to catch our breath. “You’re crying. Why the hell are you crying?”

  He acted like he had the right to be angry, like I’d somehow betrayed him. I threw my empty cup in the sand so I could push him with both hands. “Are you that stupid? That was supposed to be our house! This is supposed to be our place, and now you’re sharing it with someone else! How do you expect me to feel?” I was hysterical. Thank God the music from my parents’ house was loud enough to drown out the sound of my cries.

  “I’m not doing this to hurt you. I’m just trying to move on with my life, to find some happiness. Because I’m not gonna lie, things have been pretty goddamn bleak since you left me.”

  “I didn’t leave you,” I reminded him, brushing away tears with my palm. “I just called the wedding off. You left me.”

  Chapter Four

  Dustin

  I was sitting at the kitchen table, trying to force down some breakfast after a sleepless night on the couch, when Jana walked in. “Hey, you feeling better?”

  “No.”

  “I’m sorry, can I get you anything? Some toast maybe or—”

  “You can tell me why you lied to me,” she said.

  “Excuse me?”

  “Why did you lie to me about you and Kara?”

  I should have known that would come out eventually. “How did you—”

  “I was curious,” she said, glaring at me as she fisted her hands on her hips. “I sensed some weird energy between the two of you yesterday, then I saw you on the beach together last night.”

  “Oh.” I hung my head, ashamed I hadn’t come clean with her sooner. She deserved to know about my past, about the woman I’d once loved. “I would have told you, but I didn’t think it was important. Kara and I broke up a long time ago. We haven’t seen each other in years.”

  “You were engaged to her. How could you not have told me that?”

  “How did you find out we were engaged?”

  “Online. It was buried pretty deep, in an interview she did a few years ago. I probably wouldn’t have found it at all if I hadn’t searched both of your names together.”

  I was surprised Kara had referred to me and our engagement publicly. It made me wonder what she’d said about me, about us. “We were young. I asked her to marry me the summer after she graduated college. She talked about wanting to go back to school to get her graduate degree, but I didn’t want to wait that long to marry her…”

  When Jana paled, I realized I’d said too much, given her a glimpse at how desperate I’d been to hold on to Kara back then. I knew I should just keep the rest to myself, but she’d demanded the truth.

  “So I proposed, and she said yes. I wanted to do it right away, no big church wedding or fanfare. Needless to say, that didn’t go over well with our families. They wanted us to do it right. So did Kara, I think.” After the things she’d said last night, I wondered if things might have turned out differently if I’d waited a year or two and let them plan the big church wedding Kara deserved.

  “So what happened?” she asked softly, curling her hands around the upholstered chair back in front of her.

  “We finally agreed on a beach wedding in late August. I had to go back to North Carolina in early September because we were breaking ground on a big project. I promised her a proper honeymoon when that wrapped up.” Reciting the facts, I almost felt like I was in a trance. It had been a long time since I’d let myself think about the days leading up to our wedding, and I was shocked to realize it still hurt as much now as it had then.

  “But she called it off?”

  “Yeah, a few days before the wedding, she told me she couldn’t go through with it. She said that she was too young, she wasn’t ready.” I rested my head in my hands, thinking about the claim she’d made last night—that she hadn’t been telling me she never wanted to marry me, just that she didn’t want to marry me that summer.

  “How did you take the news?”

  “Not well.” I fisted my hands on the tabletop before covering my mouth as though that would somehow prevent the words from flowing. It wasn’t fair to burden my future bride with the details of my last wedding, but now that I’d started, I couldn’t help myself. “I went crazy when she told me. It felt like the end of the world, my nightmare come true.”

  “What do you mean?” she asked, sitting down.

  “I was always so afraid of losing her since we lived so far apart most of the year.”

  “Where did she live?”

  “Chicago. We spent weekends together when we could throughout the school year, and she spent her summers here, so I tried to spend every weekend here with her. But I was scared. I was so scared she’d find someone else at school.”

  “You were jealous?”

  I sensed the conversation was leading us places we shouldn’t go, but it felt good to finally open up about my relationship with Kara. “Yeah, in hindsight, I realize it probably wasn’t healthy, but every time I thought about another guy coming on to her or taking her away from me, I just became enraged. I couldn’t control it. I guess that’s why I put pressure on her about getting married when we were so young. I thought if she was my wife, no one could take her away from me.”

  “You still love her.”

  It wasn’t a question but an observation, and it stunned me. “What?” I reached for her hand, but she pulled back. “No! What are you talking about? Of course I don’t love her, Jan. I love you.”

  She inched her chair back, crossing her arms in a defensive posture. “You don’t know how much I want to believe you, but I saw the way you looked at her yesterday. You’ve never looked at me like that.”

  “I was just surprised to see her, that’s all. I didn’t expect her to be here.”

  She set her hands in her lap, and that was when I realize
d she wasn’t wearing her engagement ring.

  “Can you honestly tell me you don’t have feelings for her?”

  I cared about Jana too much to lie to her, but I didn’t want to hurt her either. “I’m just trying to process everything that’s happened in the past twenty-four hours, honestly. I don’t know what to think or how to feel right now.”

  “What were you talking to her about on the beach last night? It looked like a pretty heated discussion.”

  “She was just explaining to me what she’d been thinking and feeling when she called off the wedding. She said it’s not that she didn’t want to marry me. She just wasn’t ready to marry me that summer.”

  “Why didn’t she tell you that then?”

  “I didn’t give her a chance. When she told me she couldn’t go through with the wedding, I kind of lost it. Started spewing all kinds of garbage about how I never wanted to see her again.”

  “You must have been devastated to have reacted that way.”

  “I was.” I’d thought my reaction was justified. The woman I loved and planned to marry was calling off our wedding. I reacted the way any man would have.

  “Dustin, I can’t marry you.” She reached into the pocket of her hoodie and produced her engagement ring.

  “What are you talking about?” I’d feared this moment was coming when I saw her without the ring. She never took that thing off.

  “Not now, not with so much uncertainty. I’m not blind. I can see that you still have feelings for Kara. If you didn’t, you wouldn’t have slept on the couch last night. You wouldn’t have gone over there, and you wouldn’t have taken her for a walk on the beach.”

  “I was just trying to put the past to rest,” I said, knowing it was pointless to try to defend myself. She’d clearly made up her mind and wasn’t willing to give me the benefit of the doubt. “Kara’s brother told me that she’s been seeing someone. I guess it was getting pretty serious because he proposed to her. Darius said he thought part of the reason she hadn’t agreed to marry this other guy was because she still felt guilty about calling off our wedding. He thought maybe if I talked to her…” I shrugged. “I don’t know, that maybe it would help.”

  She raised an eyebrow. “You honestly expect me to believe that you want her to marry this man?”

  I didn’t want her to marry him. I knew it was selfish and wrong, but I couldn’t control the way I felt. “I want her to be happy.” I was avoiding the question, and we both knew it.

  She swallowed hard before covering her face with her hands. “I just told you I can’t marry you, and you barely batted an eye. When Kara told you she couldn’t marry you, you lost it. What does that tell you?”

  God, she was right. “That I’m more mature now than I was then?” When she didn’t respond to my attempt at humor, I said, “I don’t believe this is what you really want.”

  “You’re right, it’s not. But I’m not delusional. I knew there was a reason you didn’t want to set a date. Now I know what it was, or should I say who it was?”

  “Kara has nothing to do with my reluctance to set a wedding date. I haven’t thought about her in years.” That wasn’t entirely true, but I told myself that most people probably thought about their exes now and again. “I told you, I just wanted to get the house here built before—”

  “That house,” she said, leaning forward. “The house you designed for that lot, the one you said you’d dreamed of building here for years. Was that the house you intended to share with her?”

  Now I wished I’d never brought it up. “I’ve made a few modifications to the design, but yeah, it’s the vacation home we talked about building here.”

  “I don’t believe this,” she said, jumping up. “You were just looking for a suitable replacement, not the love of your life, because you’d already found her. You wanted someone to help ease the loneliness, didn’t you?”

  “No!” I bolted out of my chair and rushed around the table before she could leave the room. Grabbing her upper arms, I said, “You’ve got to believe me. When I asked you to marry me, it was because I genuinely wanted to spend my life with you.”

  “So how soon after you proposed did you realize it was a mistake?”

  Sometimes it seemed like she was more of a psychic than a psychologist. “I didn’t…” I couldn’t look her in the eye and lie to her. It wasn’t right. Letting my arms fall to my sides, I stepped back. “I wanted it to work. I thought I was just having second thoughts because, well, because I’m a guy.” That was a lame excuse.

  “But you weren’t having second thoughts about marrying Kara. You couldn’t wait to get her down the aisle, could you?”

  I should have known my words would come back to bite me. “I was a lot younger then. She was my first love, my first… everything. You know how it is. Everything’s more intense then.”

  “No, I’m afraid I don’t.” She shook her head. “I guess I’ve never been in love like that. It sounds like the kind of love you never really get over.”

  I watched her leave the room and I knew I should say or do something to try to fix this before it was too late, but I couldn’t find the words or even the desire to make her want to stay.

  ***

  Kara

  I was making breakfast for Darius’s unruly buddies. I didn’t want the job, but I was afraid if I let them turn on the gas stove, they’d burn the house down. Some of them hadn’t even gone to bed; they’d just passed out on the floor or stayed up drinking all night. It was pathetic.

  “Hey,” Bobby said, sitting on a stool at the island. He looked like I expected him to after a night of binge drinking—hungover and in desperate need of sleep.

  “Hey.”

  “I wanted to apologize for what I said last night,” he muttered. “That was way out of line. You’re my friend’s sister, and well, I shouldn’t have said that.”

  “It’s okay. You were drunk.” Not that that excused his behavior. “I get it.” I set a mug in front of him and filled it with strong black coffee from the pot I’d just made. We would need a lot of it today if I had any hope of getting these guys out of here before Jake arrived. After my conversation with Dustin last night, I felt better about the past and more willing to at least consider my options for the future.

  “Thanks.” He took a sip of the coffee. “You’re an angel.”

  I laughed. “I don’t know about that. How do you like your eggs?”

  “Sunny-side up would be great, thanks.” He added a cube of sugar to his coffee and stirred before reaching for the pitcher of creamer. “So that guy who gave me grief last night, what was his deal? Is he your boyfriend?”

  “My ex-fiancé.” It still felt strange referring to Dustin that way after all these years, especially since I usually tried to avoid thinking or talking about him at all.

  “Seems like he still has a thing for you.”

  I couldn’t deny there was a little flutter in my stomach at his suggestion, but I quickly quashed it. “No, he’s engaged.”

  “Doesn’t mean he can’t still have feelings for you.”

  “Yes, it does.”

  I popped four slices of toast in the toaster and added a few slices of bacon to the skillet. Several of the guys had already been through the kitchen to grab grub, and they were out on lounge chairs on the wraparound deck or on towels on the beach. What a mess.

  “If he didn’t have a fiancée, would you still be into him?”

  “Why are you asking me all these questions?” I asked, torn between irritation and amusement.

  In spite of his rude comment last night, I knew Bobby was harmless. He and Darius had become friends the summer before we all left for college. His parents had a summer home in the Hamptons, just a few miles from ours, like most of the guys at the party. It begged the question why they weren’t tearing up someone else’s family home.

  “I’m just trying to figure out the deal.” He smiled. “I wouldn’t want to ask you out if you’re still hung up on your ex.”


  I laughed, assuming he was joking. He’d have better been joking because there was no way in hell I’d date one of my brother’s drunken friends. “For the record, I’m not hung up on my ex.” Before he could pounce on that, I said, “Nor am I interested in dating any of my brother’s friends. Sorry.”

  “Can’t blame a guy for trying.”

  I set his plate down in front of him with a smile. “I guess you can’t.”

  “How about your sister?” he asked before shoving a forkful of eggs into his mouth. “She seeing anybody?”

  “Don’t even go there,” Catia said, stepping over a body sprawled on the floor in the adjoining family room.

  “Man, you girls are tough,” Bobby complained.

  Catia slapped his back. “Better than being easy, my friend. Now get your ass out on the deck and finish your breakfast there so I can talk to my sister in private.”

  “Why does he get to stay?” he asked, pointing at the guy sleeping on the floor.

  “We could set off fireworks, and he wouldn’t wake up.” She snagged a piece of toast off of Bobby’s plate and bit into it.

  “Hey,” he objected, circling his arm around his plate to protect his food, “that’s mine.”

  “If you plan on sticking around, you have to share,” Catia said, reaching for a piece of bacon.

  “Fine, I’m going,” he said, with a heavy sigh. He piled more toast on his plate, covering his eggs and bacon.

  Handling guys was part of Catia’s job as our project manager, and she could put any man in his place, no matter how tough he thought he was. That was one of the many things I admired about her.

  “Okay, coffee and spill,” she said, boosting herself up onto the high stool. She may have been tiny, but she was fierce, and when she got that wicked gleam in her eye, I knew I was in trouble.

  I poured a cup of coffee and handed it to her. “You’re going to have to be more specific, sis. I hardly got any sleep last night, what with all the racket the boys were making, and I’m definitely not firing on all cylinders this morning.”

  She reached for a banana from the fruit bowl in the middle of the island. “I’m willing to bet you lost sleep for another reason. I saw you and Dustin walking on the beach. What was that about?”