Page 52 of The Sandover Beach Billionaire

As Jenna rounded the corner of the cereal aisle, her steps slowed subconsciously, as though some internal part of her recognized the voice she heard before her rational brain did.

Anna.

Her cart was head to head with Anna’s. Jenna knew that she would eventually see Anna, but she still didn’t feel prepared for this moment. Not today. Not with everything else.

“Watch where you’re going!” Anna snapped, her harsh tone incongruent with her perfect, heart-shaped face. So cute. So pretty. Her hair was cut in a stylish, almost-shoulder-length bob. She didn’t have on makeup, but didn’t need it with her perfect skin, round brown eyes and full lips. Jenna could only see her from the shoulders up behind Anna’s overflowing cart.

Jenna froze, the apology dying on her lips.

“I’ll call you back.” Anna tossed her it into the depths of her designer purse. She cocked her head a little and smiled. It felt more like she was sizing Jenna up than anything.

“Jenna. I’d heard rumors you were back. How are you? It’s been—what?—ten years? You look…different.”

“And you haven’t changed a bit.”

They stared at each other for a beat.

“How long until you leave? I’m sorry about your mom by the way. At least you’ll get some good money for the property. Real estate here really skyrocketed. A lot of us who stayed here did really well.”

Jenna just nodded along, waiting for a break in this stream of words so she could find any excuse to extricate herself from the situation. Anna felt like the clichéd antagonist in a movie. You couldn’t possibly find a real person who spoke this way or acted the way she did. It was unreal. In movies they had back stories that made their bad behavior okay in the end. Jenna didn’t care a single bit about Anna’s back story, if she even had one. She just was who she was. And she wasn’t nice.

Jenna couldn’t get around until Anna moved her cart. At least all the groceries were between them. Any buffer helped.

“How’s your life?” Anna just went on. “I heard you got divorced. Marriage is really hard to maintain.”

Jenna cleared her throat and swallowed a remark about Anna and Steve’s marriage dissolving. She would not be that person. “I did get divorced—how nice of you to say. Probably throwing a party to celebrate soon. I’ll send you an invitation if you want to come.”

Anna blinked, trying to gauge if Jenna was kidding or not. She gave a dry laugh. “You’re so funny. I remember that about you.”

“I’m sorry—can you move your cart? I’ve got to…go. It really was something to see you. Just like old times.”

“Just,” Anna said in a too-sweet voice.

She pulled her cart to the side so Jenna could pass. As they moved by each other, an orange from Anna’s cart rolled out of a bag and to the floor. Jenna bent to pick it up. As she stood and reached out to hand it to Anna, time began spinning off its axis into a slow-motion crawl as her eyes noticed two things.

First: Anna’s belly jutting out in front of her, impossibly round and full—pregnant—and then: the glint of Anna’s wedding ring as she rubbed her hand absently over the swell of her stomach—married. Two nights ago, Jenna had kissed this woman’s husband.

Jenna dropped the orange into Anna’s open palm.

“Thank you,” Anna said, smiling sideways at Jenna, looking like a cat who just ate a pet bird. And then she was gone.

Jenna kept walking but did not feel her legs. Rather, she felt them, but more like they were objects attached somehow to her body, moving forward on their own. Her hands clenched the handle of the cart. She felt a strange detachment to her body and had the sensation that she was both sinking and floating.

She could hear voices around her and an announcement on the overhead speaker, but the sounds were muffled. Outside, Mercer and the band played on, the music one more barb to her heart.

Just like when she got out of the elevator, things started to turn black around the edges. Jenna realized that she was about to lose consciousness, the taste of peaches suddenly in her mouth.

Not here.Abandoning the cart, Jenna lunged toward the two double doors leading to the back of the store. She heard a dull metallic crash behind her as her cart rolled into a display.

To her right she saw an office door and it took everything in her to make it there as the darkness encroached. She flipped on the light switch, her hand slapping at the wall, and barely made it to the wheeled chair. It spun as she landed in it, hard, and just before everything went dark, she registered the photograph on the wall behind the desk: Jackson and his parents in front of his beach house.

This time, she must have been unconscious for only a few seconds. Or that’s how it felt when her vision cleared. Sounds slowly returned to normal.

Steve was married still to Anna. That’s why his mother still had their family picture, why Anna still wore her ring. He was with Anna and he had kissed her. A married man had kissed her. She was the other woman.

Having been on the other side of this equation, the guilt was almost heavier than she could bear. It sat on her chest like a boulder. Never mind that she hadn’t wanted Steve to kiss her. It happened. She had—willing or not—participated in him cheating on Anna. The kiss was quick, but did it matter? It wasn’t sex or an affair or even something she wanted. She should have pulled away quicker, reacted faster. She tried to think back to the kiss, timing it in her mind. A silly exercise that somehow seemed incredibly important right now.

Did she have to tell Anna?

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