Boyfriend By Mistake

by Elana Johnson

  Her eyes filled with anger, and she grabbed her purse from his kitchen counter and stalked toward the door. He didn’t care. He wasn’t going to be working for her father much longer, nor was he going to be in Miami.

  He emptied his suitcase by dumping the entire contents of it on his bed. “Call Alissa Heartwood,” he told his phone as he started putting in shorts and T-shirts, sunscreen and sandals. Beachwear. Vacation items.

  And still, Lissa didn’t answer her blasted phone.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Alissa ignored Shawn’s third call, just like she had the other two. Her father had returned from his fishing trip that morning, and the family was currently sitting together in the small living room at her parents’ house.

  It didn’t matter what Shawn said anyway. His company was a joke. Dishonest. Ruthless. He’d probably been sent here to keep her busy while they got a land deal approved under the table, and the thought tasted like poison in the back of her mouth.

  “Okay.” Her father hung up the phone and looked at Olympia. “Our land is still ours. The Saddlers still have their land. The high-rise can’t continue without one of us selling, and I’ve got Sergeant Myers pulling the video from the bank across the street from the construction site. We’ll see who went in.”

  “What if they used the other side?” Alissa asked.

  “There’s only one way down either side,” he dad said, sitting heavily on the couch next to his wife. “The camera is a wide angle. We’ll be able to see them.”

  “John said the land was in the process of being rezoned,” Olympia said. “Not true?” Her contact at the county offices had called that morning while Alissa was in her office, telling her about the vandalism on the high-rise. Things had exploded from there, and Olympia had called a family meeting.

  She and their father had been on the phone for hours now, and Alissa felt sicker to her stomach with every passing moment. She couldn’t image life on Carter’s Cove without The Heartwood Inn. The miles of beach they had. The private cove where only she and Big Blue could go.

  “Not true,” he said. “We have to be publicly notified of that, and nothing has been filed.”

  “Why would he say that then?”

  “Dominic Saddler said he did get notified of a filing of a rezoning request. We didn’t. maybe John just assumed we both had?” Their father shrugged, but it didn’t make Alissa feel any better.

  “What about the heart?” she asked. “What did Dominic say about that?”

  “Exactly what I did. He thinks the real estate developer is the vandal. Painted that to put suspicion on us, and we’d fight things out with the Saddlers.” He sighed and leaned his head back.

  The real estate developer is the vandal.

  Alissa couldn’t even swallow. Shawn would never do that to her. To her family. Would he? He hadn’t even brought up the land deal again after they’d talked about it and he’d said he’d known they wouldn’t sell.

  That was the end of the story.

  He’d been fixing up his motorcycle and spending time with her.

  “Have you heard from him?” Olympia asked. “I know he’s your boyfriend. Maybe—”

  “He’s not my boyfriend,” Alissa growled, looking around. Not a single person in her family believed her. “Fine, maybe he was my boyfriend by mistake. But it was just a mistake. I don’t really feel anything for him.”

  Oh, she was not a good liar. She didn’t care what they thought. “He was just a boyfriend by mistake, I swear.”

  Olympia finally nodded, though she clearly didn’t believe Alissa. They did have an understanding about falling for the wrong men, though. “Have you heard from him? Can you call him and see what you can find out?”

  “It doesn’t matter,” her dad said. “We’ll have that video in an hour or so, and then we’ll know who did this. Dominic and I are willing to wait.”

  “I don’t want to wait, Dad,” Olympia said. “And I run the Heartwood empire now.” She nodded to Alissa. “Call him.”

  She stood up, pure fear filling her from the soles of her feet to the top of her head. “All right. I’ll be right back.” She got up and went out onto the front porch, surprised her sister didn’t come with her. After all, Olympia didn’t really care about privacy when she wanted answers.

  Shawn’s phone rang once before he said, “Liss. There you are.”

  “Hey,” she said, wishing his voice didn’t make her insides quite so soft. “We’ve got a real problem here. My family thinks you vandalized that building and made it look like we did. You painted a heart on the back door? Classy, Shawn.”

  “Wait a second.” He pulled in an audible breath. “You think I spray painted that building?”

  “Yes,” she said.

  “How could you think I’d do that?”

  She didn’t really, but the other seven people in the house did. “Just tell me you did it. We’re pulling video footage from the bank across the street. It’s over, Shawn.”

  “I did not do it,” he said. “And I’m—I can’t—I’ll be back on the island as soon as I get a flight.” The call ended without a good-bye, and Alissa stared out over the sandy dunes that led down to the beach. She had no idea what to think.

  Back in the house, she held up her phone and said, “He’s adamant he didn’t do it. He’s on his way back here.”

  “So we wait,” Olympia said.

  It felt like a week before her father’s phone rang again, and he looked asleep. He jumped right up to answer it though, striding into the kitchen with the words, “Tell me you have it…Good…good. We’ll be right over.” He turned back to the family. “They have the tape. O, let’s go.”

  Alissa stood up. “I want to come too.”

  “No,” Olympia said. “I’ll text you.”

  “O.” Alissa stood right in front of her, her eyes searching her sister’s. “It can’t be Shawn.”

  “I hope it’s not,” she said. She hugged Alissa quickly and followed their father out the front door.

  “Lissa—” her mother started.

  Alissa held up one hand and made for the back door. She wanted to follow her father and sister to wherever they were going. But she also just needed to be alone. Olympia would text the moment she knew anything.

  She headed down the beach to the cottage, where she collected her dogs and the keys to Big Blue. She wasn’t going to go out into the cove, though. She just loaded everyone up on the boat and let the waves coming ashore rock her while she tried to reason through things.

  There was no reasoning with her heart though, and it continued to beat out soft things for Shawn. Alissa knew he was more than a mistake, but she didn’t know what to do about anything else.

  She’d accused him of something terrible, and she wished she’d waited to see the tape. He’d sounded so hurt. If it wasn’t him, had she just ruined any chance of getting back together with him?

  “You’re so stupid,” she muttered to herself. “He doesn’t even live here.” Miami was two hours away by plane. She didn’t want a long-distance relationship, and she flipped her phone over to send him a message.

  Would you consider moving here permanently?

  No way she could send it, but it was something they needed to talk about. They hadn’t talked about hardly anything serious, as they’d agreed to a no-strings-attached couple of weeks. A sigh filled her whole soul—and then a message came in.

  An image from Olympia, but it wasn’t loaded all the way. The text with it came first—Do you know who this is?

  Finally, the image loaded, and it was mostly black with some yellow-green light showing a man’s face. He wore a suit, which was strange enough in the summer on an island destination, and he seemed intent on something in front of him.

  His face was hard to make out, but Alissa pinched and pulled to make the image bigger. “That’s not Shawn,” she said, noting the softness in the man’s jaw. His hair was also too short, and Alissa hurried to tap out a message back to her sister.r />
  That’s not Shawn. I don’t know who it is.

  Taking a chance that Shawn hadn’t chartered a private jet out of Miami, she hurried to forward him the picture, with the same caption from Olympia.

  Do you know who this is?

  He didn’t answer, and the notification that he’d read the text didn’t come up.

  Hours passed and dusk started to settle, and he still hadn’t answered. The police had not found a single person on the island who could identify the grainy image of the man in the picture. The search felt hopeless, but at least the two families that had looked like they might go to war that morning had been pacified.

  Alissa sat at her kitchen table, a bowl of cereal in front of her while her dogs begged at her feet. She’d eat and go to bed, because tourists didn’t care what was happening in her personal life. They still wanted fresh fish in their restaurants, and it was Alissa’s job to make sure The Heartwood Inn had the very best for its customers.

  It was still early when she finished her pathetic dinner, but three o’clock in the morning came quickly. She’d just set her bowl in the sink when someone banged on her door.

  A yelp flew from her mouth as both Dodger and Pirate began to bark and bark. They trotted over to the front door as if Alissa didn’t know where the sound had originated from. They looked at her like, Well? Come on! Someone’s here!

  Alissa approached the door slowly, only giving whoever was there time to knock again. This time, a voice said, “Lissa. Open the door. It’s Shawn.”

  Surprised, relieved, and angry, she flew to open the door now. “Shawn.” She kept a tight grip on the knob so she wouldn’t take a swing at him.

  He held up his phone with the image she’d sent him. “That’s Hunter Reynard. He works at my firm.”

  “So he is with you.”

  Shawn’s already dark expression stormed. “He is not with me. He has nothing to do with me. We simply work at the same firm. But thanks for the support. The vote of confidence. I can’t believe you think I could do something like this to you or your family.”

  “Is that why you came back? To yell at me?”

  “No,” he said, much calmer now than before. “I came back to make sure this doesn’t blow back on you or me.” He held out his palm. “And I came for my motorcycle key.”

  Alissa’s eyes widened. “I was going to work on the bike while you were gone.”

  “Well, I’m not gone anymore, am I?” His blue eyes blazed with furious flames. “Give me the key, Lissa. Bo said you came and got it.”

  She stood still for another moment, so many things running through her that she couldn’t make sense of them. “Fine,” she said, stepping over to the mantle where she’d put the key. “Here.”

  “Thank you.” He turned to walk down the steps.

  He was going to leave? Alissa’s heart shriveled in her chest. This was not the reunion she’d imagined.

  “So that’s it?” she called after him.

  “Yes,” he said as he went down the stairs to the sidewalk. “Good-bye, Alissa.” The use of her full name hit her squarely in the chest, and she almost sank to her knees. But Shawn Newman had broken her once, and she would not allow him to do so again. At least not in public.

  She closed the door before she started to cry.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Shawn spent most of the next day in the hotel room he’d managed to find. It wasn’t a great place, and it had cost twice as much as it should’ve. But they had space for a couple of nights, and he didn’t want to spend another hour on Bo’s couch.

  Then he’d have to answer questions and talk about why he wasn’t sleeping on the couch anymore. He didn’t want to do either of those things.

  Near mid-afternoon, he called Jason, knowing it would be a terrible conversation. The man didn’t answer, which only proved to Shawn that he’d known all along that Hunter was behind the vandalism. That Jason had sent Hunter to Carter’s Cove much earlier than he’d said he had. Everything Shawn didn’t want to believe was true.

  Not only that, but Lissa had suspected him. She didn’t trust him, and that had cut the deepest. Stung the most.

  “It’s fine,” he told himself as he hung up and then immediately dialed Jason again. Once more, the call went to voicemail. He said, “Jason, it’s Shawn. I know you got the picture of Hunter entering that building. I don’t know what game you two were playing, but I’m not interested. I’m quitting. Consider this my two-week notice, and my last day will be the last day of the two-week vacation I was supposed to have.”

  He drew in a deep breath. He had always enjoyed working for Jason. He hadn’t suspected the man was capable of vandalizing his own building just to get two families fighting. What had he hoped to accomplish? That one of them would go bankrupt fighting in court, and need to sell their land?

  Yes, that was probably exactly what Jason had been counting on.

  “Good-bye, Jason.” Shawn hung up, glad he hadn’t allowed himself to get too emotional on the phone. He didn’t need to go back to his office. He probably had some jackets there. Some ties stashed in a closet. A plant his secretary had given him for his birthday. Nothing important.

  He would need to call his real estate agent to get his apartment on the market, and he’d definitely need somewhere better to stay in Carter’s Cove than this dive of a hotel room.

  Leaving the room, he started walking toward the epicenter of the island. The population of Carter’s Cove was twenty thousand in the off-season, with that number doubling in the summer. It was a beautiful place to visit and live, and the tourism bureau had been doing campaigns to get people to the island at all times of the year.

  He couldn’t walk the whole thing, but the best beaches were on the south and east side of the island, with The Heartwood Inn right in the southeast corner—prime location for the best beaches and best views and best of everything.

  At the height of tourist season, there was always something going on, and today’s activities included a barbecue on the beach, with a movie being shown afterward. He finally hailed a pedicab to take him the rest of the way to the beach, and he joined in with the other visitors and families that had gathered for hot dogs, hamburgers, and potato salad.

  A pang of sadness hit him. He used to love coming to these types of activities when he was a kid, and then a teenager. He wanted to be there with Lissa, but he had no idea how he could trust her again.

  She obviously didn’t trust him.

  “Shawn Newman?”

  He turned toward the male voice to find a guy standing there who looked somewhat familiar. Well, he would’ve been familiar twenty years ago.

  “Bruce Thacker,” he said with a smile. “I haven’t seen you on the island in a long time.”

  “Yeah.”

  Shawn smiled and shook Bruce’s hand. They’d been friends in high school, good enough to go to prom in the same group and hang out after football games. “I’m just back in town.”

  “To stay?” Bruce asked, and Shawn put a smile on his face.

  “We’ll see.”

  “Is your family here?” He glanced around as if Shawn’s beautiful wife would appear from the sand.

  “Oh, I’m not—I’m alone.”

  “Come sit by my family then,” Bruce said, gesturing for Shawn to follow him. He didn’t have anyone else to spend his time with, so he followed Bruce to a blanket where a woman and three children already sat.

  “You remember Parvati,” he said. “Parv, it’s Shawn Newman.”

  She looked up at him, her dark eyes brimming with recognition. “Wow, Shawn Newman.” She stood and hugged him. “What are you doing back in town?”

  “Just…here,” he said, taking up a corner of the blanket that wasn’t already covered with napkins and hot dog trays. Bruce introduced him to all the kids, and they went back to their card games, chattering about colors and fish while they ate chips and drank sodas.

  Shawn ate his hamburger and watched as the night started to ta
ke over the day.

  “I saw you with Alissa Heartwood at the dog show,” Parvati said. “Are you two back together?”

  A gash opened up on Shawn’s still-beating heart. “No,” he said, throwing in a smile. “We’re not together.”

  “Too bad,” Parvati said. “I always thought you two were a cute couple, and she hasn’t been out with anyone good in a while.”

  Shawn didn’t know how to answer that, and thankfully, the movie started. Parvati didn’t say anything else, and Shawn was left to his own thoughts about Lissa. They didn’t take him anywhere good, and he ended up leaving the movie about halfway through with a promise to call Bruce if he needed anything.

  But what he needed, no one could provide with just a simple phone call.

  The next morning, he didn’t loiter in his hotel room. He had two more nights in the room, which meant he needed to find a more permanent place to stay. And a job. His savings would get him through a few months on Carter’s Cove, but it wouldn’t support him indefinitely.

  So his first stop was Belle Billings’s office, and the woman herself rose from the desk just inside the door.

  “Well, I’ll be,” she drawled in her South Carolina accent. “It’s Shawn Newman, back from the dead.” She laughed as she crossed the room to hug him. “What are you doin’ back here?”

  “I want to move back here,” he said with a smile. “And I’ve heard you’re the best on the island, Belle.” He looked around the tiny real estate office, noting how different it was than the office and building he’d worked in for a decade now.

  “Oh, I am,” she said. “Sit down, sit down. Your father didn’t say a word about you comin’ today.”

  “He doesn’t know I’m here yet.” Shawn hadn’t told anyone in his family about his plans to relocate to Carter’s Cove, and he supposed he should.

  His phone chimed, and he glanced at it to see Lissa’s name there. Instant fury lit up his mind as he sat down. “I’m keeping it a surprise for now,” he said.