DREW ORDERED HIMSELF to get up and leave this beach. But it was one of those completely irresistible moments: the stars winking on in the sky, their shoulders touching, the taste of strawberries and cream on his lips, the gentle lap of the waves against the shore, her small hand resting within the sanctuary of his larger one.
He turned slightly to look at her. She was turning to look at him.
It seemed like the most natural thing in the world to drop his head over hers, to taste her lips again.
Her arms came up and twined around his neck. Her lips were soft and pliant and welcoming.
He could taste everything she was in that kiss. She was bookish. And she was bold. She was simple, and she was complex. She was, above all else, a forever kind of girl.
It was that knowledge that made him untangle her hands from around his neck, to force his lips away from the soft promise of hers.
You heal now.
He swore under his breath, scrambled to his feet. “I’m sorry,” he said.
“Are you?”
Well, not really. “Look, Becky, we have known each other for a shockingly short period of time. Obviously circumstances have made us feel things about each other a little too quickly.”
She looked unconvinced.
“I mean, in Moose Run, you probably have a date or two before you kiss like that.”
“What about in LA?”
He thought about how fast things could go in Los Angeles and how superficial that was, and how he was probably never going to be satisfied with it again. Less than forty-eight hours, and Becky English, bookworm, was changing everything in his world.
What was his world going to look like in two weeks if this kept up?
The answer was obvious. This could not keep up.
“Look, Becky, I obviously like you. And find you extremely attractive.”
Did she look pleased? He did not want her to look pleased!
“There is obviously some kind of chemistry going on between us.”
She looked even more pleased.
“But both of us have jobs to do. We have very little time to do those jobs in. We can’t afford a, um, complication like this.”
She stared at him, uncomprehending.
“It’s not professional, Becky,” he said gruffly. “Kissing on the job is not professional.”
She looked as if he had slapped her. And then she just looked crushed.
“Oh,” she stammered. “Of course, you’re right.”
He felt a terrible kind of self-loathing that she was taking it on, as if it were her fault.
She pulled herself together and jumped up, doing what he suspected she always did. Trying to fix the whole world. Her clothes were still wet. Her pink blouse looked as though red roses were blooming on it where it was clinging to that delectable set of underwear that he should never have seen, and was probably never going to be able to get out of his mind.
“I don’t know what’s gotten into me. It must still be the aftereffects of this afternoon. And the wine. I want you to know I don’t usually rip my clothes off around men. In fact, that’s extremely uncharacteristic. And I’m usually not such a blabbermouth. Not at all.”
Her voice was wobbling terribly.
“No, it’s not you,” he rushed to tell her. “It’s not. It’s me, I—”
“I’ve given you the impression I’m—what did you call it earlier—wanton!”
“I told you at the time I was overstating it. I told you that was the wrong word.”
She held up her hand, stopping him. “No, I take responsibility. You don’t know how sorry I am.”
And then she rushed by him, found the path through the darkened jungle and disappeared.
Perfect, he thought. He’d gotten rid of her before things got dangerously out of control. But it didn’t feel perfect. He felt like a bigger jerk than the chicken they had eaten for supper.
She had fled up that path—away from him—with extreme haste, probably hoping to keep the truth from him. That she was crying.
But that’s what I am, Drew told himself. He was a jerk. Just ask his brother, who not only wasn’t arriving on the island, but who also was not taking his phone calls.
The truth was, Drew Jordan sucked at relationships. It was good Becky had run off like that, for her own protection, and his. It would have been better if he could have thought of a way to make her believe it was his fault instead of hers, though.
Sitting there, alone, in the sand, nearly choking on his own self-loathing, Drew thought of his mother. He could picture her: the smile, the way she had made him feel, that way she had of cocking her head and listening so intently when he was telling her something. He realized the scent he had detected earlier had reminded him of her perfume.
The truth was, he was shocked to be thinking of her. Since that day he had become both parents to his younger brother, he had tried not to think of his mom and dad. It was just too painful. Losing them—everything, really, his whole world—was what life had given him that was too much to bear.
But the tears in Becky’s eyes that she had been holding back so valiantly, and the scent in the air, made him think of his mother. Only in his mind, his mother wasn’t cocking her head, listening intently to him with that soft look of wonder that only a mother can have for her offspring.
No, it felt as if his mother was somehow near him, but that her hands were on her hips and she was looking at him with total exasperation.
His mother, he knew, would never have approved of the fact he had made that decent, wholesome young woman from Moose Run, Michigan, cry. She would be really angry with him if he excused his behavior by saying, But it was for her own good. His mother, if she was here, would remind him of all the hurt that Becky had already suffered at the hands of men.
She would show him Becky, trying to keep her head up as her father pushed a stroller down the main street of Moose Run, as news got out that the wedding planner’s own wedding was a bust.
Sitting there in the sand with the stars coming out over him, Drew felt he was facing some hard truths about himself. Would his mother even approve of the man he had become? Work-obsessed, so emotionally unavailable he had driven his brother right out of his life and into the first pair of soft arms that offered comfort. His mother wouldn’t like it one bit that not only was he failing to protect his brother from certain disaster, his brother would not even talk to him.
“So,” he asked out loud, “what would you have me do?”
Be a better man.
It wasn’t her voice. It was just the gentle breeze stirring the palm fronds. It was just the waves lapping onshore. It was just the call of the night birds.
But is that what her voice had become? Everything? Was his mother’s grace and goodness now in everything? Including him?
Drew scrambled out of the sand. He picked up the picnic basket and the blanket and began to run.
“Becky! Becky!”
When he caught up with her, he was breathless. She was walking fast, her head down.
“Becky,” he said, and then softly, “Please.”
She spun around. She stuck her chin up in the air. But she could not hide the fact that he was right. She had been crying.
“I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings,” he said. “I’m the one in the wrong here, not you.”