Summer with a Star (Second Chances Book 1) (25 page)

Could she really do this?

She glanced to Yvonne. The older woman watched her with curious, narrowed eyes. She smiled when Tasha turned to her, but kept silent. Together, they listened as the front door opened and closed at the other side of the house, as footsteps sounded in the hall through the screen door.

Tasha held her breath. What would she say? What would she do when he came out to the porch to find her? Could she really fight for this? Fight for the love that was billowing like the ocean in her heart? Fear and questions piled on her, and she turned to the screen door, eyes wide.

The footsteps in the hall changed to footsteps on the stairs. They plodded slowly, ringing hollow on the boards. He wasn’t coming out to the porch.

Tasha let out a breath, but the fear that had seized her turned to something far, far worse. What if that was it? What if she had just ruined the best thing that had ever happened to her?

“What do you think?” Yvonne asked.

Tasha turned stiffly to face her, heart thumping against her ribs, stomach sinking as if she’d been caught doing something wrong. “Huh?”

Yvonne stretched her arm along the back of the sofa, close enough to pat Tasha’s shoulder if she wanted to, if Tasha would let her in.

“Do you think he’s worth fighting for?”

Yes. Her frightened, thundering heart answered yes.

Her feet didn’t move.

“I don’t know,” she mumbled, looking down at her hands in her lap.

“Sure you do, honey,” Yvonne said. “Sure you do.”

Yvonne shifted and stood. Tasha stood with her, as if she wouldn’t have had the power to stand on her own if Yvonne left.

“It’s been a long day,” Yvonne said. “I’m beat. Why don’t you go up and sleep on it? The house isn’t going anywhere in the night. Neither is Spence.”

Old fear squeezed at her. “Are you sure?”

“He’s not that type,” Yvonne answered. “Trust me on this. Actually, never mind. Don’t trust
me
.
You
already know that he’s not that type. You know it. Trust him.”

“I…” Tasha started, but gave up. There was no point to anything more she could say.

Instead, she nodded, and turned to head into the house and up the stairs. Her feet itched with the need to move on, to do something to fix the turmoil bubbling in her. She stopped at the top of the stairs and stared at the door to Spence’s room. A line of light shone at the bottom. She glanced across the hall to the room she had picked out for herself that first day—that first day when she had been convinced Spence was an entitled jerk out to ruin her life.

Well, here she was, nearly seven weeks later, and her life wasn’t ruined. It had been beautiful and fun and sexy in some way for every one of the seven weeks that she had been at Sand Dollar Point. It had been the dream vacation she’d always wanted. Spence hadn’t ruined it, only she had that power. Her whole life could turn out the way her summer had.

She swayed toward Spence’s door, but checked herself. There was no sense in rushing a confrontation. Yvonne was right. Spence would be there tomorrow. He wasn’t the kind to kiss and run and leave a girl in the lurch. She switched direction and tip-toed on to her own room, slipping through the door and closing it as silently as possible.

There it was again, the decision before her. Who did she want to be? She could live a quiet life as Miss Pike—a life she was good at, comfortable with, a life that suited her—or she could take a chance on love, the purest love she’d ever been given. It might end in tears, it might not. Life didn’t come with a guarantee. But if it worked?

She let out a breath and stretched to lie atop her bed, closing her eyes. Which dream did she want to live? How did she want the story of what she did with her summer to end?

Chapter Twenty

Spence didn’t think he could possibly sleep after the bone-deep pain of Tasha’s rejection. His chest ached with the knowledge that he’d tried with everything he had, and she had still said no. It didn’t make any sense. She loved him. She’d said as much. He loved her. In the world he came from, love was almost always guaranteed a happy ending, with music swelling and beautiful lighting. This didn’t make sense.

Maybe the real world, the world Tasha kept saying she belonged to, didn’t make sense. He wasn’t sure he cared much for a world where love was thwarted and where the ghosts of ex-boyfriends and shattered self-esteem kept people apart.

He turned the frustrating thought over and over in his mind, grinding it down to dust, until he was so exhausted that sleep tackled him, whether he wanted it to or not. He awoke the next morning to a pounding headache, muscles sore from clenching them all night, and the same problem, right where it was, unsolved. Even a shower and a shave didn’t help him to feel better. The only thing that was going to set this whole thing right was talking to Tasha, begging her for an explanation, something he could wrap his head around, something he could work with.

Raking his fingers through his damp hair, he headed downstairs for the confrontation he knew had to happen. The house was quiet, though the front and back doors and several windows had been opened to let in the sound of the waves caressing the beach below and the squawk of sea birds. They were sounds he had come to love, but they did nothing to soothe him today.

The scent of fresh coffee called to him from the kitchen. Spence took a deep breath and stepped around the corner from the hall, expecting Tasha to be there pouring a cup. She wasn’t there. The kitchen was empty, but for the trash can that had been pulled a few feet toward the center of the room. Spence rubbed the odd feeling that one object out of place gave him. Was that supposed to be a sign? That their relationship wasn’t worth saving? That Tasha had decided to toss him out?

He brushed the maudlin thought aside and crossed through the kitchen and the dining room to the screen door leading out onto the porch. Tasha had probably taken her coffee out there to contemplate the beach, and maybe, if he was lucky, their future. The storm of the night before had pushed through, leaving the sky a bright, cobalt blue and the waves choppier than usual. A few people jogged along the sand, but one glance told Spence none of them was Tasha.

He caught the low sound of someone talking on the far and of the porch and steeled himself for the inevitable confrontation. But when he rounded the corner of the house to the south porch, it was Yvonne sitting at the breakfast table with a cup of coffee, a plate of toast, and her cell phone pressed to her ear.

“Just put the contracts in the online drop-box and I’ll take a look at them,” she said in her strictest business voice to whoever she was talking to. “Yes, both of them. I want to look at the offers you’re making side-by-side. Simon will sign if Spence does, but Spence won’t sign anything until I’ve gone over it with a fine-tooth comb.”

Yvonne glanced up and winked at Spence. On any other day he would have winked back, but Yvonne was not Tasha, and that was all that mattered. Yvonne held up one finger, telling him to wait, but Spence ignored her and marched back into the house.

He checked through the living room and dining room. The puzzle of the lighthouse that he and Tasha had worked on for the past several weeks was still on display. Who would have thought that doing a simple puzzle would have made him so happy? It didn’t matter what he was doing, as long as he was doing it with Tasha. That’s what love was. He couldn’t lose that.

As he headed back into the hall and up the stairs, he broke down and called out, “Tasha?” Maybe she hadn’t gotten up yet. He knocked on her door, then opened it a crack. “Tasha?”

The room was empty. The bed was perfectly made, and nothing had been left out, not a flip-flop or a pair of sunglasses.

Panic pushed in on Spence. He hurried back into the hall and down the stairs, leaving the door to Tasha’s room open. She wouldn’t. She wouldn’t just walk out on him, not after he’d put his heart on the line and proposed. She couldn’t just leave him without giving him an explanation.

At the bottom of the stairs, he headed into the kitchen, dodging around the trash can, and searching as if she would appear out of thin air. She couldn’t be gone. Not without saying goodbye.

A flash of pink out the window caught his eye. He rushed to the counter, only to see Tasha’s back disappear around the bend in the driveway where the sea rose bushes were planted. She carried something large and bulky. A suitcase?

“No,” he puffed out. No, she couldn’t walk out on him like that.

He pushed away from the counter and rushed through the hall to the front door. As soon as he threw open the front screen door, he crossed the porch and took the steps two at a time. By the time he reached the bend in the driveway, Tasha was on her way back up from the street, brushing her hands.

“Tasha,” he called out her name as if calling for a life-preserver, and slowed his sprint. He breathed as heavily as if he had run all the way to the pier and back. “Don’t leave.”

Tasha stopped, startled. She blinked several times and raked a windblown piece of hair off of her face. “Spence, I’m not—”

“No,” he cut her off, feeling as though his heart might burst out of his chest. “No, just hear me out.”

He closed the gap between them, reaching for her as though is life depended on it, caressing her shoulders and holding her by her arms.

“I love you, Tasha,” he burst out from the bottom of his soul. “I love you so much that I don’t know what I would do if you left. I know that my world, my job, is something foreign to you and that maybe it scares you a little. It scares me too, all the time. It’s a strange, cruel world, and I can’t say that I belong there, only that I need to be there to do what I love. But the whole reason I came here for the summer was to take a break from that, to discover what I really want.”

Her expression pinched with emotion that he couldn’t read. “Spence—”

“No, please,” he rushed on, desperate to say everything he had to say. “What I really want is you. That’s what this summer has taught me. It’s taught me that the jobs we love and the things we’re good at are only as satisfying as the people we have with us.

“I know you don’t think that you would fit in with the crowd that you think I run with,” he went on, “but I say to hell with them. I say that we should make our own world. Let’s make a world where a teacher can be as celebrated as an actor, even more so. Let’s show the world that love is the only thing that matters, and that people who care for others and spend their lives helping them are just as important as those who spent their lives entertaining them. If you don’t think you belong in my world, then help me to make another, better world.”

“Do you think we even can?” she asked, a deep flush coming to her cheeks.

Hope. That had to be the light of hope in her eyes and not the fire of desperation.

“If anyone can, it’s us,” he said. “It’s you. Just don’t leave me without an explanation, without anything.”

Her mouth relaxed open. Her sun-pink lips begged him to kiss them, but he couldn’t. Not yet. Not until he knew that she wouldn’t walk away.

“I thought you might leave,” she said at last, quiet and almost embarrassed.

“I would never leave you, Tasha. I could never look myself in the mirror if I did.” He shifted his hands to her waist, tempted to pull her into an embrace, but too afraid to take his eyes off hers. “But right now, I’m terrified that you’re leaving me.”

“What are you talking about?” She put her hands on his chest. His heart responded by pounding up a fury.

“Right now,” he said. “I couldn’t find you anywhere. I saw you walking away with a suitcase just now. I thought—”

Her sudden, snorting laugh stopped him short. The sun couldn’t have shined as brightly as the light that lit her face.

“Spence.” She shook her head. “I was taking out the trash. It’s trash day. You know? One of those things that happens in the real world?”

Razor-sharp prickles of relief and embarrassment flooded him. He was a total ass, but it didn’t matter. He could feel as stupid as he wanted, because Tasha hadn’t tried to walk out on him.

He let out a breath. It turned into a puff of laughter, then into a full peel. His body went weak with relief. “Taking out the trash?”

“Yes?” she told him, rolling her eyes with a smile.

“Not leaving?”

“No.”

Something new came over her. The laughter in her eyes coalesced into determination. She took his hand and walked with him back to the porch. Once they were standing in the shade, she turned to face him, but it took several moments of stillness and biting her beautiful lip before she said anything.

“I’m sorry I handled things badly last night,” she began, looking at his chest, where her fingers picked at a piece of lint. She peeked up at him. “You took me by surprise.”

“I know.” He shook his head, clasping his hands over hers, over his heart. “It seemed like a good idea at the time, but I guess it wasn’t.”

She hummed and tilted her head to the side. “I wouldn’t say that, exactly.” Her smile grew dreamy. “It was beautiful, that’s for sure.”

Inch by inch, his shoulders and back began to unclench. “It wasn’t just a Hollywood stunt. You might be surprised how many of the locals wanted to be involved when I asked if I could use the pier. I think they’d have done it for anyone crazy enough to come up with the idea.”

A mischievous glint touched her eyes. “I saw some of them peeking out through windows and around corners.” The glint faded and she glanced down at his chest. “I’m sorry if I embarrassed you.”

“I’m more afraid that I embarrassed you,” he corrected her. He slipped a finger under her chin and tilted it up so that she looked at him. “I’m sorry I didn’t think things through before springing that on you, but I was desperate.”

“A desperate proposal?”

He couldn’t tell if she was teasing or scolding.

“You had so many reasons why you think the two of us shouldn’t be together,” he said, heart pounding as if he was in danger once more. “So many good reasons. And I only have one reason why we should be together. Because I love you, and you love me. Because we were meant to be together. Because, in spite of all the forces of real life and imaginary worlds, we make each other’s lives better. I want to build our futures together, Tasha. I love you.”

He dipped to kiss her, too filled with emotion to do anything but cover her mouth with his. His heart exploded into light and song when she kissed him back, softening her lips and letting him taste her, devour her. He hadn’t intended to do more than end his speech from the heart, but the heat between them built so fast, that before he knew it, they were wrapped in each other’s arms, drinking as deeply from each other as they could. He’d never kissed a woman like that before, and he never wanted to kiss anyone but Tasha like that from now on.

“Say you’ll marry me, Tasha,” he whispered. “Say you’ll fight the odds with me.”

“Fight.” She drew in a breath. It transformed into a smile as she looked up into his eyes. “I’m a fighter. I am. I forgot that, but you helped me to see it again. I haven’t been able to think of anything else since last night, since talking to Yvonne.”

“Yvonne?” He tensed.

She squeezed her arms tighter around him. “She’s not so bad,” Tasha said. “She chewed me out a little when I got back here last night, but I think I needed it.”

“Yvonne?” he asked, more incredulous than before.

“Yes.” Tasha laughed. “She reminded me of who I am, before it was too late for me to do anything about it.”

“And who are you?” he asked, his soul starting to settle.

“I’m a fighter,” she said. “I’m Miss Pike, the teacher who no one kicks around. I’m a woman who goes after what she wants and gets it, no matter who tries to hold her down. Even if that person is me. I’m someone who chases dreams and catches them. And I’m engaged to marry Spencer Ellis, the most wonderful man I know.”

Joy burst through him. It flashed through his heart to his gut and lower. Relief pulsed through him with it, and pure, heady love. He let out a breath and held Tasha tighter, lifting her off her toes to kiss her.

“God, I love you, Tasha,” he groaned, letting all of his emotion show in his words, his body, his lips as he kissed her again.

“And I love you, Spence. I love you, and I’ll fight for you.”

“And we’ll win,” he said.

She hugged him, giving as much of herself as he was as their lips caressed. Their bodies pressed together, knowing they’d found a home in the other. He could never get enough of kissing her, of the heat and the joy and the promise of everything good. He loved her, and she loved him, and nothing else mattered.