Love on Lavender Island (A Lavender Island Novel Book 2) (14 page)

“Your making me dinner was payback for my coming down here with you. We’re already even.”

“Ah. Of course. You drive a hard bargain, Bonnie.”

“I’ve been told, Clyde.”

“Name your stakes, then.”

She thought that over. “I’ll tell you the long story if you tell me the whole story with Samantha.”

“You already know it.”

“I was tipsy, remember?”

“There’s not much to tell.”

“I’m sure there’s something to tell.”

He shrugged. “You’ll be disappointed, but if you insist.”

“I insist. So have you ever seen the one with Faye Dunaway and Warren Beatty?”

“
Bonnie and Clyde
? Sure.”

“You have?” She sat up straighter. “Do you like old movies?”

“Remember Bob? He’s a big fan. He makes me watch them.”

“Really? Do you have a favorite?”

“I’ll have to think about that.”

“What’s Bob’s favorite?”

Adam laughed. “Anything with a beautiful woman in it.”

“Did he see
Bonnie and Clyde
,
then?”

“I’m sure he did.”

“I always loved Faye Dunaway.”

“You look like her, actually.”

Paige leaned back in her seat and inhaled the deep, masculine sandalwood scent of him that pervaded the cab, then marveled that he’d told her she looked like a young Faye Dunaway.

“I always thought she looked so sophisticated,” she said, almost as much to herself as to him.

“You’re very pretty, Paige.”

Her heart might explode. She stared out the window and waited for something terrible to happen. But when nothing did, she tempted the curse and kept talking.

“Thank you. But I really mean sophisticated. I always wanted to look sophisticated, classy, and get those meaty, serious roles, you know?”

“Oh yeah, the acting. What kind of acting do you do, exactly?”

“Mostly commercial work. My mom got me into it when I was fifteen.”

“Wow, that’s a long time.”

Paige shrugged. “It was a slow build. I’d just do one commercial a year when I was a teenager, but it saved me a nice college fund. Since then, I’ve ramped it up a little because it pays the bills.”

“What commercials have you been in?”

“Um. Recently? Well, last year I played a soccer player for a tampon commercial, and an older sister who gets bonked on the head in a Toyota commercial, and for the last three years I’ve played a recurring role as a piece of broccoli.”

Adam slid a glance her way. “Broccoli?”

“There’s money in dental commercials.” She tried to inject her voice with as much dignity as she could muster. “Anyway, Dirk’s trying to get me a real role.”

“Oh, that’s right. Dirk—the idiot who thinks you need to lose weight.”

Paige let a grateful smile slip. “Thanks, Adam.”

“You’re welcome, Paige.”

Adam shoved the door open in his pine-paneled kitchen and motioned for Paige to take a seat. He dropped half the bags on the kitchen counter, then took Amanda’s gifts and wrapping paper to the back bedrooms.

“She’s not here,” he said when he came back out, rolling up his sleeves.

“Where does she go?”

“Sometimes she takes a walk by the pond, or sometimes to the stables.”

Paige watched him scrub his hands and forearms with some kind of industrial soap.

“Do you want me to help you wrap everything?”

“No, I’ll do it late at night when she’s asleep.”

As he rummaged in the fridge, all she could see was his behind, which filled out his Levi’s quite nicely, she couldn’t help but notice.
Damn.
Sixteen years later and she was still gawking at him as if she were thirteen. Would she
ever
stop finding him attractive? She tried to distract herself with a stack of paper napkins on the table.

“So tell me the long story.” He brought his head out of the fridge and threw a bunch of cheese selections on the table.

“You don’t really want to hear it.”

“Sure I do.”

Paige began making paper fringe. “Well, my sisters and mom and I don’t see eye to eye about what to do with Gram’s house.”

He came back with two knives, two plates, some mustard, and the three loaves of bread he’d just bought at the store. “That’s not a very long story. So you and your mom want to sell, and your sisters don’t?”

“It’s not that simple. My mom and I want to revitalize it for Dorothy first.”

“So what’s your connection to Dorothy Silver?”

“My mom and I are fangirls of the old movie stars. Dorothy Silver is someone I’ve always idolized—I, of course, watched
Last Road to Nowhere
a million times, with Gram’s house in it and all. And I knew Gram had been friends with Dorothy back when the filming was going on up here. So anyway, I work at the Hollywood Film Library in Beverly Hills, and—”

“Wait. I thought you were in commercials?”

“Well, you know, between roles. I work there most of the time. I’m the receptionist. And lots of movie stars come in and want to rent space to watch old movies for research. So one day, Dorothy Silver walked in. I about died. I introduced myself to her and told her I was Helen Grant’s granddaughter and visited Nowhere Ranch all the time, and she invited me to lunch. So I went, and when I told her about my mom, she told me about her upcoming wedding to Richard Crawford and asked
my mom
to do her wedding.” Paige shook her head. She still couldn’t believe it. “My mom’s wedding business could use this lift. Mom’s been ill for the last year, and our business has taken a hit.”

Adam stalled opening the mustard jar. “I didn’t know that.”

“Cancer.”

Adam put everything down. “I’m sorry, Paige.”

“I know Ginger’s not your favorite person, so I didn’t want to say anything.”

“No, she’s not. But I’m not an asshole. I don’t like to hear that about anyone.”

“Thank you. She’s strong. Her prognosis is good, and she’ll fight with everything she’s got. But chemo has taken its toll, and she’s been too weak to handle a lot of business. She didn’t want to give up this Dorothy Silver opportunity, so she asked me to help. And then—do you want to hear the most amazing part?”

“I haven’t heard it yet?”

“Dorothy wants me to play her in a movie about her!” Paige could hardly keep the squeal out of her voice. “The casting starts the day after the wedding, so she said she’d fly me to LA immediately and tell the director I had her highest endorsement.”

“Sounds like a dream come true for you.”

She sighed. “It is.” She didn’t mention that the real dream was simply getting the money for the yoga studio. Adam would surely find that silly.

He kept his eyes on her as he unscrewed the condiment jars. “And your sisters?”

“My sisters think we’re being stupid. They want Mom to rest and get well. They don’t think I’ll get the part anyway. They think Dorothy will back down on everything. They want to donate the property to the island historical society, or sell to MacGregor. But . . . I don’t know about MacGregor.”

“What do you mean?”

“Something didn’t seem right about him when he was making his phone calls to us over these past months.”

Adam looked up at her. “What specifically didn’t seem right?”

“I can’t explain it. It’s just a feeling.”

He frowned. “You’re not saying that to get me not to sell to him, are you?”

“Of course not. You can’t do business on feelings.”

He nodded. “Agreed.”

Paige continued shredding the napkin while Adam pushed the condiments across the table toward her.

“So you’re here, basically doing all the work yourself, with Ginger sick and your sisters not on board?” he asked.

“Well, I’m supposed to be assessing the situation. And . . .”

She pretended to survey the luncheon meats.

“And what?” he asked.

She shrugged. “And talking you into helping us.”

He pushed the bread choices in her direction. “Paige, I’m sorry for the situation you’re in, but I can’t make financial decisions based on that.”

“I understand. I’ll take that one.” She pointed to the rye.

“I have to hurry and sell, or this place is going to lose even more money. And Amanda—she wants out of here. She was accepted into a prestigious art school in Alabama, and I’d like to get her back there before school starts.”

“Amanda’s an artist?”

“I’ve never actually seen her art, but I did see the letter of acceptance.”

“I could see her wanting to escape the island. I didn’t like it as a teenager, either.”

“I’m with you. When I was a teenager, I wanted out of here in the worst way.”

“It seems a little stifling.”

“Agreed.”

“Too much gossip, too many rumors, hard to escape a reputation.”

“You’re preaching to the choir.”

“I don’t know how my sisters can stand it. They say it’s nice if you’re in love, though.”

He slid a plate across the table to her. “Is that right? Maybe that’s been my problem.”

Paige smiled and studied the sandwich he’d just made her, thinking of how simple and comforting it looked, like something from her childhood. He’d even cut the sandwich in half. She poked at her crust and tried to get up the nerve to ask the question she’d been wanting to ask: “So you’ve never been in love, then?”

Adam’s mustard knife halted. “That’s a pretty big question.”

“Is that your way of saying you don’t have an answer?”

“No, it’s my way of saying that question might cost you.”

A little prickle of awareness ran down Paige’s arms. “Cost me what?”

He opened a bag of potato chips. “A revealing answer about yourself.”

“Like what?”

“Tell me about the last boyfriend in LA. Or the current one.”

Paige froze. She thought maybe he’d ask about her family, not her love life. Could she continue talking to him this way and keep things professional? If he flirted with her, could she resist flirting back?

But she knew he would go only so far with these questions. He was as aware of their precarious situation as she was—she needed land from him, and involving any kind of feelings would be stupid for either of them. As long as they both stayed distant, and kept things light, they could make this friendly. She’d just have to be sure not to flirt back. Too much.

“It was, um . . .” She thought briefly about making something up. Her love life was rather embarrassing, pathetic as it was. But then she changed her mind. She hated liars.

She picked up her sandwich. “The last man I dated was Todd.”

He made a motion with his fingers to give him more.

“He was an investment banker. I met him at a party. He had a dog named Duncan.”

“I don’t care about his damned dog, Paige.”

“You don’t?” She smiled playfully.

He chuckled and studied a potato chip. “No.”

“What
do
you care about?” she asked between bites.

“Why and when you broke up.”

The potato chips suddenly demanded her attention. She couldn’t maintain eye contact with him now. This was definitely flirting.

“Well,” she finally said, “the ‘why’ involved a heart-shaped, voice-recorded frame.”

Adam sat back in his chair in a languid pose and propped his ankle on his knee. “You’ll have to give me more than that.”

“He used to go on these business trips, just for a day or two, and one day I was over there while he was packing, and he had this little red heart-shaped frame he was putting in his suitcase. So he showed it to me, and it had a picture of
me
in it.”

The fact had stunned her at the time. They’d been dating for only four weeks. The idea that he had a framed heart photo of her for his suitcase, like some married businessman, freaked her out.

“So he wanted to record my voice on the frame, too,” she said. “He wanted me to say, ‘I love you.’ Right into the frame!”

She waited for Adam to mirror the shock she always felt when she told this story, but—like everyone else—he looked at her as if he couldn’t see the problem.

“And you . . . weren’t there yet?” he asked, trying to follow along.

“Not at all.”

“How long had you been together?”

“A few weeks.”

He nodded thoughtfully. “Sex yet?”

She raised her eyebrows. “I don’t think that’s any business of yours.”

“Just trying to put the pieces together,” he said, shrugging innocently.

Her cheeks were suddenly getting hot, and she made a big show of moving things around her plate.

“And when was this?” he asked.

“Four months ago.” She pushed the plate away. “All right, my turn. So have you ever been in love? Were you in love with Samantha?”

“I’m still working on Ted here.”

“Todd.”

“Todd, right. So you broke up with him because he wanted you to say you loved him after a few weeks, and it’s a personal policy that you don’t make those kinds of decisions after just a few weeks.”

“Right.”

“And that’s why you broke up?”

“Well, no.”

He moved a few chips around and waited for the rest of the story. She almost didn’t tell him. It was so pathetic. “I broke up with him because I found another heart-shaped frame.”

“And?”

“It had someone else in it.”