Page 52 of So Close

Meanwhile, she’d broken through his defenses. She’d gotten him to talk—about his childhood, his father, even Karina. She’d heard about parts of him that he hid from the world. She’d made him break his own rules, turned him upside down so giving her pleasure felt more important than chasing his own. She’d made him laugh, and she’d made him feel alive.

And he was going to reward her by leveling her fucking inn to the ground.

If he did, there would be no more jockeying for position, no more banter, no more shopping together, no more conversations, no more bike rides—

No more Auburn coming apart in his arms, giving herself over to him with complete and total trust.

“Sitdown, Carl!” Auburn said, suddenly there beside him, cheerful and buoyant. She was wearing the sexiest little sundress he’d ever seen. White with yellow flowers. Teeny-tiny spaghetti straps. A short and flirty skirt. He wanted to flip it up and see what she was wearing underneath.

“I’ve been sitting and lying down fordays,” Carl grumbled.

“Which is exactly right for someone who’s just had a heart attack,” Brynn said, coming back to life again and settling their grandfather into a lawn chair.

Auburn tried to tuck a blanket around him, but he pushed her off. “Over my cold dead body!”

“Don’t say that,” Brynn shushed.

“I’m just reminding you that I can always exercise my prerogative to die if you give me a hard time.”

Auburn gave him a fond, exasperated slap on the shoulder and left the blanket on the ground next to him as she passed out Ziploc bags to Tyler and Jake, who’d returned from Starbucks and joined the growing crowd on the curb. “For candy,” she said. “If it’s okay with your mom.”

She’d brought tubes of sunscreen, too, and water bottles, and blankets for the kids to sit on until the parade started. The fishermen came out and sat in beach chairs side by side. They were in good moods, bargaining with the boys for a share of the candy haul, teasing Auburn about having served granola that morning, a sub-par breakfast experience. Dewann put an arm around Rick’s shoulder and left it there.

An older couple came up the sidewalk and stopped to talk to Auburn. After a moment, the man—sixty-something, with sideburns that were only one step removed from mutton chops—drew Auburn aside, and they stood and talked for a few minutes. Whatever the subject, it was serious; he could tell from the set of both their shoulders. Until hers slumped.

“Can you hand me that sunscreen?” Brynn asked, and he made himself look away from a conversation that could not possibly be any of his business. He handed her the tube, then helped her coat the boys—he did arms and she did faces.

He saw that Auburn’s conversation had finished up. She was standing still, staring into the distance, and he didn’t like her expression. Like someone had told her that her dog had died. He wanted immediately to put his arms around her—but he wasn’t sure how that would fly. Or how he would explain it to Brynn, who was watching him with sharp eyes.

He walked over to where Auburn stood. “Who was that?”

She could have told him it was none of his business, but she said, “Keegan Horan. A VP at Tierney Bay Bank and Trust. And the bearer of bad news. No jumbo mortgage for me.” She said it lightly, but he could see how much it bothered her. She sighed, heavily.

“What does that leave?”

“Diana Cooper. Bootstrap. Or getting help from family or friends.”

Some emotion was rising in his chest, hot and fierce. “Not Patrick Moriarty. For God’s sake.”

She crossed her arms, and the sucked-a-lemon look deepened, as did the furrows in her brow. “In what version of the universe is that your choice? After you put me in this situation?”

Suddenly they were squared off, across a gulf as wide as the one that had opened that first afternoon in Carl’s hospital room. He glared, and she glared back, and it was like they were the only two people in all of Tierney Bay—no chairs lining main street, no kids waving flags, no dogs wagging tails, no blue and white t-shirts and red hair ribbons. Just the two of them.

And the one thing hedidhave control of.

He knew he was about to detonate a truth bomb, that what he was going to say would change everything between them, for better or for worse.

But things had already changed between them—and even though a huge part of him still wished he’d had the strength not to touch her, not to complicate this already fraught situation, there was no avoiding that fact.

“No,” he said. “I can’t make you refuse Patrick’s money. But the rest of it really is my decision. I decide whether or not I sell you Beachcrest. This has all been a cute game, but it’s my call what happens next, and that’s the bottom line.”

Her mouth fell open, and he braced for impact.

26

She felt suffocated, suddenly, and the image that came into her head was the apartment where she’d lived with Patrick. Expensively decorated with furniture, paintings, and knickknacks that had been chosen by someone else. Big enough to put all of Beachcrest’s square footage inside it, and yet so goddamn small that by the end she hadn’t been able to breathe at all. Her own gilded cage.

She wasn’t an idiot. She knew what was happening. She’d let things get physical with Trey and now he felt territorial. And he would happily piss on whatever he needed to piss on to keep her from turning to Patrick—not that she’d had the slightest intention of doing so. But he hadn’t asked, had he?

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