Just Married! (11 page)

I
T DIDN’T
take long for Colton to come to his senses. He might
entertain
the idea of escape, but that was about all he could afford to do—entertain it. He was happy with his career, and the last thing he wanted was to endanger that with a visit to the local jail.

“Viv, we can’t be doing this kind of thing anymore.”

She propped her fists on her hips and grinned at him. “And why not?”

“We’re too old, for one. And it’s illegal for another.”

She dangled a bikini in front of him—the same one she’d whipped out of her voluminous tote bag a minute earlier—the bright pink material a teasing temptation to walk on the wild side. “That never stopped us before.”

Before.

The night before high school graduation. Same time of year, same time of night. The Group of Six had partied on the beach, then Vivian had asked Colton to drive her home. On the way, they’d gotten
into a game of Truth or Dare. And when Colton had opted for Dare, they’d ended up at this very same place—only that time they’d gone all in—

Into Ely Hardisty’s in-ground pool.

They hadn’t bothered with swimsuits. They’d simply jumped in, clothes and all. And jumped out almost as fast when Ely came charging out of his house with a 40-odd aimed at Colton’s head.

Ely had installed a six-foot chain-link fence the following week, and a half dozen KEEP OUT signs, along with a number of posted reminders about the legal ramifications for trespassing. Now Vivian was proposing they scale the fence, take a dip in Ely’s pool, and all before the next neighborhood patrol car swung by.

“Vivian, you don’t understand. I’m the mayor now. I can’t be doing stuff like this.” He started to turn away.

She grabbed his arm. “Who’s going to catch us? Or know? My dad said Ely went down to Florida to visit his sister. The lights are off—there are no signs of life inside the house.” She pivoted back toward the pool, the dare still shining in her eyes, twice as tempting now. “No one’s here.”

“Except you. And me.”

“Yeah,” she breathed. “Except us.”

“We could get into trouble.”

“Trouble…Isn’t that what we used to be good at?” She grinned. “Come on, Colton, live a little.”

He took a step closer to Vivian, winnowing a space that was already too close, too tight. For the last three hours, while they’d been at the wedding, Vivian had tried not to be distracted by the sight of Colton St. John in an open-shirted tux, giving her just a hint of the chest below. Had tried to see him as the friend he’d always been, not as the man he had clearly become in the years she’d been away.

A very intriguing, very handsome man. Tall, lean, blue eyes, dark hair with a slight wave that called out to be touched. He had the angular good looks of every St. John before him, but with a mischievous edge, as if there’d been an extra gene in his DNA.

Didn’t matter. She wasn’t the type to date—or for that matter, settle down—with a St. John. Too many rules, too many expectations. Too many—

Everything.

Colton St. John came in a very nice package, yes, but a package with a whole lot of strings.

And if there was one thing Vivian didn’t need, it was strings tying her down.

Then why was she here, involving herself with Colton, the one man she’d never been able to forget, no matter how many miles she’d put between them? She’d moved all the way across the country—with another man, no less—and still seen Colton’s eyes when she went to sleep at night. Still heard Colton’s voice in her dreams.

And also still heard the warnings about staying
far from the next St. John political star. He was on his trajectory, she on hers—and they were moving in two different directions.

“Vivian, thanks for the offer, but I should get going. I have an early meeting tomorrow and I need to get some sleep.”

She laughed. “You’re sounding like a suit-andtie guy now.”

“Well, that’s part of being mayor. Though I wear a tie as rarely as possible.” The grin she remembered lit up his face, telling her the old Colton was still in there, at least in some part. “
That
hasn’t changed.”

But a lot of other things had. She sensed a distance between them, a measure of discomfort, as if they no longer knew each other. They had been the best of friends—more, once—and had known each other better than anyone else in town.

Unbidden, Vivian’s gaze traveled over Colton’s steely frame. In the last few years, he’d gotten taller, leaner, and more—

Everything.

She’d noticed, certainly, over the few weeks they’d spent together off and on since Amanda and Charlie’s wedding, but not closely. After all, this was the first chance she’d had to be alone with Colton for an extended period of time. They’d had moments, sure, when they’d found themselves getting a drink out of Samantha’s kitchen at the
same time or sitting beside each other at a karaoke bar. But this was different.

This time, she was completely alone with him…and his very, very nice partially exposed chest. All hard planes and well developed muscles. The kind that said,
Lean on me, I’m not going anywhere.

She would have done just that. If she’d been the kind to lean on a man.

This Colton, this grown-up, sometimes-tiewearing Colton, she didn’t know. And even though she’d lost interest in the pool, she couldn’t let go of the search for the Colton she used to know. He was in there, she was sure of it.

If it took getting him into a pair of swim trunks to find him, then that’s what she’d do. Especially if that had the added bonus of getting him to bare his chest.

Vivian dragged her attention away from his pecs, and back to his face. A charge raced through her veins. What was she doing, staring at Colton like that? They were friends, as they should be.

Not to mention she needed a relationship right now like she needed an extra foot.

Her life was exactly the way she liked it. Unencumbered. It had taken some doing to get back to that state. No way was she going to go and tie herself down again.

No way.

Uh-huh. “Come on, Colton, aren’t you hot?” she asked, feeling a very different heat rising in her body.

He stepped closer. She inhaled. In the moonlight, his eyes glittered, then seemed to darken. “Of course. It’s July, Viv. It’s always hot this time of year.”

A smile curved up her lips, as if she knew he’d purposely circumvented the innuendo. “Then let’s get cooled off.”

Oh boy. Colton had ideas for doing just that—ideas that had nothing to do with the pool glinting in the moonlight a few feet away.

He needed to remember this was
Vivian
, the girl he’d known for as long as he could remember. She was his friend. Nothing more. She’d told him that in no uncertain terms.

Regardless of a momentary flicker of change in their relationship a few years ago, he’d be crazy to think they were anything other than friends. After all, she’d moved on—moved in with someone else, last he’d heard—and so had he. No reason to rehash past history.

How easy it would be to fall back into the same old world he’d lived in before. The one where he didn’t worry what people thought of him, didn’t worry about the consequences of his actions. He simply did what he wanted because he wanted to. But that was then, and this was now—

And now he was a different man.

“I’m not going to trespass in a constituent’s pool, Vivian. Sorry.” He shrugged off her arm and stepped away.

“What? You’re leaving?”

“When you said let’s go do something fun, Viv, I thought you meant karaoke or…” He threw up his hands, trying to think of another option. “Something.”

“
This
was something.”

“This is crazy. Career suicide.”

She laughed. “Since when have you worried about your career?”

“I’ve changed, Vivian, since you left. I’m not the same person.”

“I’ll say. The Colton I remember never would have said no to something like this. He would have been the first one over the fence.”

“That man…” Colton eyed the fence, the one installed all those years ago, and saw it not just as a mesh of wire and steel poles, but as a metaphor for what separated him from who he used to be and who he had become. “Is gone. And for the better. We all need to grow up sometime.”

“Where’s the fun in that?” She called out.

But Colton was already gone. Vivian was talking to herself.

V
IVIAN
drove away, after dropping Colton off at his car, and watched him in her rearview mirror, heading in the opposite direction. To the other side of the tracks, literally. Vivian stepped on the rental car’s accelerator and the six-cylinder pulsed forward.

What had she been thinking?

She hadn’t been, that was clear. Her hormones had been the ones in the driver’s seat.

For a few minutes there, she’d almost…almost gotten involved with Colton again. When she’d arrived in town a few weeks ago, she hadn’t intended to do much more than say,
Hello, how you doing
to him. Maybe ask a few benign questions about work, throw him a comment about the weather.

In short, maintain the status quo until she went back to L.A. She’d done a good job of doing that—until tonight.

Colton St. John represented everything she’d run from, everything she didn’t want, everything that was
all wrong for her. When people thought of St. John’s Cove, they thought of the St. John men. Generations of them, who had first built the seaside town, and then run it. And now, Colton had become
mayor.

After what he told her tonight, a mayor who was

happy running this town. Happy with the limelight, the restrictive life, the demands on his time. Whereas Vivian…

Wasn’t.

If that didn’t spell mixing oil with water, nothing did.

The small car darted down the dark, silent streets of St. John’s Cove and into the town square. At the center of the deserted park stood the massive bronze statue of the town’s founder—Colton’s great-grandfather. He had passed down the same devilish good looks to his descendants, but thankfully, Colton hadn’t inherited the stuffy sternness the statue’s visage held.

Along Main Street, the colorful awnings had been rolled back. She noted the newest shop on the block—an ice cream shop, and the only one without an awning. The gaslight-style streetlights cast a golden glow over the haunts of her teenage years—the Clam Digger, Artie’s T-shirt Shop, Pixie’s Penny Candies. Vivian knew the small town like the back of her hand. Didn’t matter how many years or miles she put between herself and the Massachusetts coast, every time she came home, it was as if she’d never left.

That was the whole problem. Being here brought up too many memories. Too much unfinished business. Like the entire reason why she shouldn’t date a “good boy” like Colton St. John—

And why someone like her should just stick to the heartbreakers. Men like that didn’t come with lives full of expectations and obligations.

Vivian shook off the thoughts and pulled into her father’s driveway, located far from the beach, on the outskirts of St. John’s Cove. She parked the car, got out and headed into the small ranch-style house.

Stay away from Colton. Before you break his heart again.

Or worse, break your own.

“So, how was the wedding?”

Vivian started at the sound of her father’s voice. She crossed to the living room, the only light coming from the television, the black-and-white movie playing on the big screen creating an almost strobelike affect. “Typical,” she said. “Romantic and fancy.”

“Probably cost an arm and a leg, too.” He chuckled. “I take it you left early? Ran for the hills?”

She dropped into the armchair across from Daniel Reilly. The well-worn fabric had once been bright crimson, dotted with white roses. Now it looked more like a trampled, muddy garden. “I stayed through the vows. Even made it to the first course.”

“Someday, you’ll make it past the cake. I even have hope you’ll hold on for the last dance.” On the
screen, Humphrey Bogart’s gravelly voice and casual stance maintained his manly distance from the love of his life.

Vivian snorted. “That’ll be the day.”

“Yeah, the day you get married.”

She rolled her eyes. “Dad, you should know me better than that. If you wanted a daughter who was going to settle down, you should have had more than one kid.”

Daniel took a sip of the beer on the TV tray beside him, feigning interest in the movie that he’d now muted. “I kinda like the one I got.”

“And you’re not such a bad father.”

He gave her a grin. A moment passed, while Daniel fiddled with the remote, avoiding Vivian’s gaze. “Have you gone to see your mother yet?”

“I’m only in town for a few more days, Dad.” That was the plan, at least. Stay a couple days, do what she needed to do, then get back to her life on the West Coast.

“This is such a big town you can’t drive two miles?” Daniel paused, and when he spoke again, his voice was nearly as muted as the television. “It’ll do you good to say what you need to say.”

Vivian rose, her gaze on the television, not meeting the questions in her father’s eyes. Humphrey Bogart was walking out of the room, probably leaving a whole lot unsaid himself. “I can’t, Dad. I just…can’t. It’s too hard.”

“Closing the door on your past doesn’t mean the mess doesn’t exist.”

“Maybe. But it also means I don’t have to deal with it, either.” Then she said good-night and left the room.

Colton’s office was busier than Grand Central Station.

Before ten in the morning on Sunday, he had dealt with more than a dozen town concerns, from the cuts in next year’s budget to the missing stop sign at the intersection of Walnut and Bayberry.

He was glad for the distraction of work. Last night with Vivian had raised more questions than answers, and it was only here, buried in a mountain of community challenges, that Colton found his center again.

Sort of.

He kept picking up his pen, and a pile of papers, and though he saw the words, the columns of numbers, in the back of his mind he kept seeing Vivian, too. Kept hearing her voice.

Remind me what I left behind…Trouble…Isn’t that what we used to be good at?

A long time ago, maybe yes. For years, they’d been friends who’d broken nearly every rule there was in St. John’s Cove, driving his father insane and setting off more than one argument in the St. John household. The more Edward dug in his heels about Vivian’s presence in Colton’s life, the more Colton rebelled and headed out the door.

For so long, Vivian had simply been the girl down the street, his best friend—and partner in crime. Then one day when he’d been home on a break from college, he’d started to see her with new eyes. His heart had started skipping a beat every time she walked into a room. That summer, they’d gone from being friends to lovers, and Colton had imagined a future that included Vivian.

It had turned out to be a three-month mistake. One he was over.

Or so he thought. Until Vivian had returned, looking even more desirable than she had five years before. Only one adjective described her now—

Incredible.

But she was also incredible trouble. He knew where getting involved with Vivian could lead—straight down Heartbreak Lane. And that was a road Colton had no intentions of heading down.

A knock sounded on his door. Bryce popped his head inside Colton’s office. “Working on a weekend?”

Colton leaned back in his chair and stretched. “What’s a weekend?”

Bryce chuckled and entered the room when Colton beckoned him to sit. “I don’t remember you being such a workaholic when we were kids.”

“I wasn’t. I…grew into this.” And he had. In the three years he had been mayor, Colton had grown to love the job. To look forward to each day more and more.

When his father had been alive, Colton had bucked the political career yoke like a young colt being fitted for a saddle. He’d fought Edward St. John every step of the way, telling his father he had no intentions of following in the family footsteps.

Bryce looked around the office, at the books, files and papers that filled the shelves. “Seems you have, and then some. I hear you’re planning on running for governor.”

Colton nodded. “I haven’t filed yet, but yes, that’s the plan.”

“On and up the political ladder, huh?” Bryce sat in the dark brown leather chair across from Colton. “So, you enjoy this?”

“What, being mayor? Yeah, more than I thought I would.”

Bryce arched a brow. “Really? I thought you had other plans, meaning any other than politics.”

“I did. Until my father died, and then the townspeople asked me to take his place, just until the next election. Those few months I spent filling in…” Colton shrugged. “I guess it made me see this job in a new light. I can make a difference here, even if it’s just a small town.”

“Small town to some, the whole world to others,” Bryce said. “People who have lived here all their lives, the decisions you make matter to them.”

“That’s part of what makes this job challenging as hell, but also rewarding. The streets don’t get
plowed fast enough, I’ve got people calling me to complain at six in the morning.” He chuckled softly. “But secure a federal grant to build a new library, and everyone in town thinks I’m a hero.”

Bryce grinned. “While your friends know the truth.”

Colton echoed the smile. “Oh, yeah? And what’s that?”

“That you, my friend, are a mere mortal.” Bryce rose. “Even if you’re one who can move books and buildings.”

“How long do you think you’ll be able to keep up this crazy arrangement?”

Vivian dipped into her bowl of triple chocolate ice cream, but didn’t eat the frozen treat on her spoon. She paused a moment, to look around the bright yellow, pink and white room, the paint still so fresh it nearly gleamed. The shop had become exactly what she’d always dreamed—and more. For five years, she’d scrimped and saved, putting every one of her tips in a jar, then a bank account, building her nest egg until she had enough to open her own business. The Frozen Scoop was the first of many like it, she hoped. Her dream had finally become a reality, and she could only pray the waffle cones and banana splits turned a profit.

“Forever,” Vivian responded, then wagged her spoon at Kelly Hurley. “And it’s not so crazy, Kelly. Lots of business owners do exactly what I’m doing.”

“What would be so bad about staying here and running this place yourself, Viv?” Kelly, who’d been Vivian’s friend for years, leaned against the wall behind the front counter of the Frozen Scoop, the ice cream parlor Vivian had opened two weeks ago. Dark wash jeans and a light blue T-shirt hugged Kelly’s curvy frame, and she’d swooped her chestnut hair into a loose ponytail. “What, are you afraid people might think the wild child is finally settling down? Even
you
are allowed to have a life, you know.”

“I do have one.”

“I meant one with something—and someone—to come home to.”

Vivian’s gaze went to Kelly’s left hand, to the simple gold band adorning her ring finger. Of all the people Vivian had known, Kelly was the last one she would have expected to settle down and live the suburbia life. Yet here she was, wearing a wedding band, sporting a “My Kid is an Honor Student” sticker on her minivan and working at a small-town store.

For a second, a flash of envy roared in Vivian’s gut, then she pushed it away. Regardless of how much of a sales job Kelly tried to give the benefits of “settling down,” Vivian knew better. She’d considered making a stab at that “normal” life once before—

And had it backfire in her face like a twentyyear-old car in need of a tune-up.

“I can run this shop from California,” Vivian said.
“You do the day-to-day, I do the behind-the-scenes. Easy as pie.”

“I love working here, don’t get me wrong. I think you’re doing a great thing with the kids you hired.” She lowered her voice and gestured toward the kitchen, where Rosanna Simmons and Jimmy Penner, the first two hires, were busy doing dishes and cleaning up from the lunch crowd. The two teens laughed quietly as they worked, a dramatic shift in the sullen attitudes they’d had a few weeks ago. Simply seeing them change their views on life, to see that a future existed for kids like them—

The reward outweighed any financial benefit Vivian could ever imagine.

“I’ve really seen a difference in those kids, just in the few weeks we’ve been open. Who knew ice cream could have such power?” Kelly grinned. “And I love working for you, but…”

“What?” Vivian prompted when Kelly didn’t finish.

“When are you going to take a risk?”

“Are you kidding me? Risk is my middle name.”

Kelly snorted. “Right. That’s why you’re running back to California the first chance you get. If you’re going to buy a business, stay here and run it, don’t drop off some money and rush out the door.”

Vivian winced. That had pretty much been exactly how she’d opened the ice cream shop. She’d planned on being in town only long enough to choose the location, offer Kelly the job as manager,
then hire the contractors who had turned the former antiques shop into a bright, cheery treat stop. After that, she would oversee the Frozen Scoop entirely by phone and e-mail.

Allowing her to stay far, far away from St. John’s Cove. The best plan all around.

“This is an investment, Kelly, not a career.”

Okay, so it wasn’t much as investments went. One ice cream shop wasn’t going to pour profits into her pockets.

Then what are you doing surrounded by chocolate mint and cherry cordial?

Kelly pushed off from the wall and crossed to Vivian. “This is all about that day in Mrs. Simmons’s class, isn’t it?”

“A little. Maybe.” Vivian turned away before her friend reached her, and toyed with an extra spoon on the pink-and-black-speckled tabletop. Sophomore year of high school, she’d had an assignment to write an essay about her dreams for her future. For the first time in her life, Vivian Reilly wrote down the God’s honest truth.

She wanted to own a little ice cream parlor. Marry the man of her dreams, live in a pretty white house with a fence and raise two children, a boy and a girl.

Writing the essay hadn’t been the bad part. Being told half the grade was based on delivering it orally was. She would have refused—but her English grade was already on shaky ground, and she’d spent
enough time in detention to last her a lifetime. So she’d read her essay to the class—

And heard the snickers almost from the first word. No one could believe Vivian Reilly, party girl, wanted anything so “cheesy.” At the end of class, Colton had come up to her and said, “That was a joke, wasn’t it, Viv? That whole thing about you wanting to settle down, spend your life doling out double scoops?”