Page 32 of These Summer Storms

Everyone wanted time with Alice. Space with Alice. Because Alice held their future in her hands. No longer the black sheep, now the golden goose.

Everyone wanted time with Alice, that was, except Jack, who’d disappeared into Franklin’s home office to get some real work done, handily avoiding the family in the process.

If only Alice could have done the same. Instead, through all of it—the sound bath, the endless rounds ofSo sorry for your lossfrom caterers and florists, Sila’s high-pitched insertions—Alice dwelled. And in the dwelling, she became more and more angry.

Jack had known who she was from the start. On the train. On the platform. When he’d punched a photographer. When he’d made her laugh in the dark. When he’d made her sigh in it.

And he hadn’t said a word.

Not when they met, not when they were in the car together, not as they made out against the door of the hotel room…She resisted the urge to linger on the thoughts that crept in, unwelcome, as she’d closed her eyes and stood under the pounding shower…the feel of his fingers on the skin at her waist, his lips at the column of her throat, his eyes tracking over her face, the sound of his pleasure in her ear, the heat of him.

And then she remembered that Jack had followed her that morning and ruined everything…including any lingering memories of the night before.

He was a sociopath, obviously. At least her taste in men was consistent.

She’d spent a few more minutes in the shower, planning all the things she was going to say to him the next time she saw him alone, and then turned off the shower, rejuvenated with plans to be a brilliant, articulate woman-viper, laying Jack low with her erudite venom…only to discover her clothes were missing.

Sam.

Glamorous femme fatale became cranky sister. Annoyance flared, and she cracked open the door to the bathroom, poking her head into the hallway, fully prepared to hurl a full tube of Colgate into her brother’s smug, gloating face.

The hall was empty. Too bad for a younger sister wanting to exact revenge, but a boon for a grown woman still dripping from the shower, needing to reach the safety of her bedroom while fully nude.

It wasn’t the first time she’d had to do it—her childhood had been peppered with sandy post-beach showers and forgotten towels—so she made the familiar run for the tower steps, vowing to return to clean upthe wet footprints as she flew across the hallway and up the stairs, bursting through the closed door to her bedroom, headed for the dresser, where a spare towel should have been in view.

The view was blocked, however, by the long-legged instrument of her family’s upheaval. Her own, too, if she were being honest. Which she absolutely was not.

Jack turned to face her, his surprise at her arrival and her nudity only evident in the infinitesimal raise of his eyebrows.

“Shit!” Alice said, the sharp word matched by her instant movements, covering as much as she could—not nearly enough—with her bare arms. “What are you doing here?”

Unbothered, he reached into the worn leather overnight bag on the bed and removed a perfectly rolled bath towel. Extended it to her. “Do you need a towel?”

There was no way she was going to say yes. Had she not just vowed to be a viper? Were not vipers cool? Self-possessed? “You brought your own towels?”

“Good thing, too, as there seems to be a shortage of them.” His gaze flickered down her body and back.

She ignored the lick of fire that came from the perusal. “A gentleman would turn around.”

He didn’t even pretend to think about turning around. “I’m offering you a towel. Isn’t that better? Solving the problem?”

He wasn’t solving the problem. Hewasthe problem.

Surely the only thing more mortifying than being wet and cold and naked in one’s childhood bedroom in front of a man who was responsible for both your most recent orgasm and your most recent existential crisis, was accepting that man’s help to mitigate the mortification.

Alice scowled and headed for the bed, yanking the comforter hard enough to topple his overnight bag from the end. He caught the bag before it crashed to the floor (of course), and she studiously ignored him as she wrapped the bulky fabric around her, ensuring not an inch of skin showed below the neck.

“What are you doing in here?” she demanded.

“I could ask you the same thing.”

“This ismyroom,” she said, sounding like the petulant teen who’d holed herself up here for days.

“Well, this is awkward,” he said, his lips twitching, as though it were all funny. As though he weren’t under serious threat of her pushing him out the window. “This is my room, too.” A pause, and then, “I sleep here when I’m on the island.”

Her head snapped back in surprise. And something like betrayal. “Why?”

He looked around the room. “It’s a question I’ve asked many times, too, I’ll be honest. It’s not every day a grown man is asked to sleep in a time capsule from 2005.”

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