On Lavender Lane (17 page)

After a night spent tossing and turning as images of that damn video of Maxime flashed through her mind, chased by other images of this man with a cocktail waitress from the Stewed Clam, she’d finally crawled out of bed, dressed quietly while Sofia was still sleeping, and come down to the beach. She’d hoped that the brisk, fresh air would clear her head and the endless surf would soothe, as it had when she’d first started coming here after her parents’ deaths.

Which it had. Until she’d looked up and seen Lucas standing there. Wondering how long he’d been watching her instead of running away, as she’d been tempted to do, she’d stood her ground and made him come to her.

“What I am is annoyed that you’ve managed to insinuate yourself into my grandmother’s life. And for some reason, which totally escapes me, she seems to like you. Which means that by default, I’m stuck with you, too.”

“You’ve gotten tougher.”

“I’ve had to,” she said with a tone a great deal drier than the weather. There were, however, limits. Deciding it was time to cut this conversation short before it got more personal
than she was prepared to handle, Madeline picked up her red clam bucket. “I suppose I’ll see you at the farm.”

When she turned to walk back to the wooden steps, he caught her arm. “This isn’t going to work.”

“On that we can agree.” She pried his long fingers from her sleeve. “So, why don’t you just tell my grandmother that your plans have changed and you won’t be able to do her remodel after all?”

“I gave my word.”

“Then break it.”

“It’s not that easy. Sofia’s like the grandmother I never knew. I wouldn’t begin to know how to say no to her.”

“Oh, really?” Damn the man; he had her trembling. Not as he’d once done, but with anger and, worse, remembered pain. “Give it a try,” she advised. “I’m sure it’ll come back to you.”

“Okay.” His tone was short and far more harsh than she’d ever heard it. Suddenly, he looked and sounded like the warrior she knew him to be. “That’s it. I’m already sick and tired of dancing around the damn topic. We need to straighten this out.”

Although she didn’t believe he’d actually hurt her, the hard look in his eyes had her backing up a step. “What we need is to get out of the rain.” The mist, which had turned to a drizzle while they were talking, was becoming a drenching rain. And getting colder by the moment.

“Okay. Come up to the cottage. We can talk there. Unless you want to dump our problem on your grandmother.”

“No.” She hated that he was right. “And, for Gram’s sake, I’m willing to work with you on planning her remodel. But that’s it. There’s nothing you can say that’ll change anything about what happened back then.”

“Yeah, that’s what Sax said you’d say.”

She’d been reluctantly walking back toward the stairs, but that muttered comment had her stopping in her tracks.

“You discussed our personal business with Sax Douchett?”

“Guys might not share as much as women, but, yeah, we’ve been known to talk about regrets. You were mine.…

“Not you,” he tacked on quickly, “but how things ended between us. So, yesterday, when I stopped by Bon Temps for something to eat and told him I’d run into you in Sofia’s kitchen, he told me to man up and tell you the truth.”

Madeline couldn’t believe this. Was there nothing about her damn life that was private? “I
saw
the truth.”

“You saw what you thought was the truth,” he corrected. “It was what I wanted you to see.”

“Right.” Rain streamed from her hair and face. She put down the pail long enough to drag a handful of wet curls out of her eyes. “You actually expect me to buy the story that you
wanted
me to see you sprawled on your father’s couch, making out with a cocktail waitress?”

“Who are you going to believe?” he asked. “Me or your lying eyes?”

“Excuse me if I don’t find betrayal a joking matter.” She picked up the pail and began walking again.

“Okay.” He blew out a long breath. “That was inappropriate. I apologize. Now, do you want to discuss it out here in the rain? Or indoors over some coffee and heated-up bread pudding?”

“I thought you didn’t cook.” Even as she asked the question, Madeline assured herself that the only reason he was able to throw her off track was that the debacle with Maxime had gotten her off her game.

“I don’t. It’s leftovers. Sax always serves me twice as much as I need. I suspect it’s Kara’s doing, so I won’t starve.”

“You could always learn to cook.”

“Or maybe once we get the restaurant up and going, you could cook for me.”

“Why, what a good idea.” She flashed him a sweet, feigned smile. “I’d love nothing more than to make you a pesto and hemlock pizza with a big piece of arsenic pie à la mode for dessert.”

His answering laugh was too rich. Too warm.

And too, too familiar.

As she climbed the steps up the cliff, Madeline sternly reminded herself that a strong, sensible, responsible woman who’d already been burned once by this man could not allow herself to be so easily turned into Silly Putty by a look. A touch. A laugh.

She was going to have to work on that.

Really, she was.

Beginning now.

20

The Chaffee summerhouse was just as Madeline remembered it. When visitors approached from the road, the house looked like a cozy Cape Cod cottage, with weathered gray shingles, white trim, and clapboard shutters.

But when you walked in the front door, you found yourself facing a wall of glass that framed the beach and the ocean all the way out to the horizon.

“This view still takes my breath away,” she admitted as she shrugged out of her wet slicker.

“Dad appreciated designs from the past.” Lucas hung the jacket next to his own on a pegged rack by the door. When he put his sandy boots in the boot box, Madeline followed suit and tried not to think how oddly right it looked to have her things next to his.

“Which is why, instead of building some stark, modern box that might’ve landed this place on the cover of
Architectural Digest
, he wanted the exterior of the house people viewed to fit into the rest of the town. But since he was also a form-follows-function guy, he thought it would be criminal to block this million-dollar view with traditional cottage windows.”

“Probably a lot more than a million dollars these days,” she said as she crossed the wide-plank wood floor to the window. Fortunately, the slipcovered couch where he’d betrayed her had been replaced sometime over the years.
“I’ve missed this,” she admitted. “Not this view, specifically. But the town. And the ocean.”

“The East Coast has an ocean.” He crossed the room to stand behind her.

“True. But it’s not the same thing.” Instead of pale sands strewn with pretty pink and cream shells, a huge pile of driftwood logs had washed ashore. Green kelp covered everything, like nets left behind by careless fishermen. “Eastern beaches tend to be much tidier.”

“And crowded, I’ll bet.”

“You’d win that bet.” She sighed. “Until this morning, when I went clamming, I couldn’t remember the last time I’d been outside without anyone within sight.”

“We’re definitely off the beaten track here.”

She looked up at him. “It sounds as if you plan to stay.”

“I got a call last night from this guy. He’s a retired stockbroker from Seattle who bought the old cannery down on the harbor and is looking for someone to fix it up.”

“From the high-flying world of stocks and bonds to canned fish is a huge jump for a second career.”

“He’s not going to use the building for canning. He’s an artisan furniture maker who reclaims wounded urban trees that are going to be destroyed, which apparently is becoming the ‘in’ thing among wealthy collectors. That counter”—
he pointed at the kitchen counter that hadn’t been there ten years ago—“is from a red maple that came down in a storm up in Astoria.”

“It’s stunning.” And all the more appealing because of the crack, which was evidence that the life of a tree wasn’t nearly as easy as it looked when it was just standing in a park or forest.

“Isn’t it? Dad bought it about six months ago. He e-mailed me photos because he thought we could see about maybe incorporating some of the guy’s work into the millwork of the houses we were going to restore.”

He paused and dragged a hand through his hair. Madeline
knew firsthand the hurt he was feeling. She also knew that he’d never quite overcome it.

“Anyway, he decided that he’d rather set up his own shop, now that he’s escaped the daily office grind. He was about to lease space on Pioneer Square in Seattle, but then he came down here on a fishing trip, started talking with Dad, who was at the marina that day, spotted the cannery, and decided to turn it into a workshop and lease out gallery space.”

“There are a lot of local artists who’d probably sign on right away.” Shelter Bay had, from its early days, drawn artists and musicians who enjoyed the solitude and creative inspiration of the sea and mountains. “And the location’s a draw, being right next to the farmers’ market. And down Harborview from the marina.”

“That was his thinking. He’s already got commitments for seventy-five percent of the planned space. Now he just needs someone who can turn the plans into reality.”

“It sounds like quite a challenge.” And made her wonder how Lucas also planned to remodel her grandmother’s kitchen.

“A lot easier than humping up a mountain with a hundred-pound pack on your back while bad guys are shooting at you.”

Again, she was forced to realize that whatever else he’d done, specifically to her, the man standing so close that she could feel the heat of his body was also a hero.

She was trying to morph the two disparate men into one in her mind when something out in the silvery mist caught her attention.

“Oh, look!” She drew in a short breath. “The whales!”

Several decades ago, a pod of whales had been making their annual migration from Alaska down to Mexico when, for some reason no one knew, they’d decided to settle on this part of the coast. Not only had they added to the local color, but they’d also proven an important part of Shelter Bay’s economy, drawing visitors from around the world.

“Aren’t they incredible?” she breathed.

“Incredible.” The rough, deep tone drew her attention. and when she glanced up at him, he wasn’t looking out at the huge sea mammals cutting a determined swath through the waves, but down at her.

“This isn’t what I came here for.”

He arched a brow. “Did I say anything?”

“You didn’t have to.” The way his eyes had darkened told her exactly what he was thinking. And, as remembered awareness hummed between them, he was not alone.

“But you can’t blame me for finding them incredible,” he said.

Her foolish, rebellious heart had begun fluttering like a wild bird. “The whales?”

“They’re cool. But I was referring to your eyes.” He cupped her check. “I’d almost managed to convince myself over the years that I’d imagined how remarkable they are. But I didn’t. They’re never the same color.”

“Of course they are.” She swallowed. Licked her lips and realized her mistake when hunger flashed in his watchful, espresso-hued gaze. “They’re gray.” Which, unlike both her mother and grandmother, who had flashing, dark eyes, she’d always considered a boring, indistinct hue.

“Technically, perhaps.” His enticing touch trailed down her cheek and brushed over lips that had turned as dry as a boxed mix pound cake. “But they’re as changeable as the sea. Yesterday, in Sofia’s kitchen, they looked like storm clouds.

“Then earlier, on the beach, I decided they were more pewter.” His mouth was a whisper from hers. “And now they’ve turned the hue of polished silver.”

“Good try.” Because his touch was leaving sparks on her lips, she backed away. “But if you brought me up here because you had the crazy idea that you could just sweet-talk me into forgiving you, Lucas, you’d be wrong.”

She’d loved him, dammit. Blindly, with every fiber of
her foolish, eighteen-year-old being. He’d been the first man to whom she’d ever given her heart so fully.
Correction,
she realized now, as she fought a temper she hadn’t felt toward her cheating, lying husband.
Not the first,
but
the only one.

Maxime had been right about her having loved the idea of being married to him. Of sharing a culinary life together, the same way her parents had for so many years. But dazzled by his charisma and talent, she’d mistaken awe for love.

Which was undoubtedly why she was feeling more regret than remorse over the crumbling of a marriage that probably should have been declared DOA at the altar.

“Although the idea of making up in bed is, admittedly, appealing,” Lucas said, “I brought you up here to tell you that I never slept with Ashleigh.”

“If that’s true, and I have only your word for it, then it’s only because I interrupted things by showing up unannounced.”

Since his father had been spending the night in Portland, she’d taken advantage of Lucas having the cottage to himself and had brought the ingredients to cook him dinner. Along with flowers from Sofia’s cutting garden and candles to set a romantic mood.

“She didn’t come here for sex. She was a friend who was doing me a favor.”

“I might have been stupid, but I wasn’t blind. I could tell that much for myself.” Admittedly, although they’d been twined up like a pair of octopi on the couch, they’d both been fully dressed. But that was undoubtedly only because she’d arrived before things had had a chance to really heat up.

“I needed you to think I was cheating.”

“What?” A temper she’d never known bubbled up inside her. A hot, poisonous stew of emotions. “Why?”

“It was for your own good.”

“How was breaking my heart for my own good?” A heart that was currently lodged in her throat.

“You went to Europe,” he reminded her.

“Because you broke my heart,” she repeated furiously. It still stung.

“Do you have any idea what it did to me to hear you announce that you’d decided to stay here in Shelter Bay instead of following your dream? That you didn’t need to travel the world to learn how to cook? That Sofia could teach you everything you needed? I couldn’t let you pass up that opportunity. Not for me.”