Ten Good Reasons (13 page)

“Oh, I’ve seen more than that.” Evan lifted an eyebrow. “Sorry, Cinderella, we might have passed the modesty stage.”

His cell phone and wallet drew his attention, and he shoved everything into his pockets and turned to grab a jacket he’d hung by the door. “Who did all the drawings here?” He thrust his chin toward one of Coco’s crayon tire swings.

“My niece,” she answered absently. But she was still on “seen more than that. . . .”

“Nice. Well, you look good,” he said. “Compared to before, anyway. This is the first time I’ve seen you with any color in your face.”

Seeing a muscular, naked man in your living room will do that to you
.

“I . . . um . . . where . . .” She had so many questions she didn’t even know where to start. “Do I still have a
job
?” she whispered.

He grinned while he shrugged his jacket on. “You just slept for two days straight, had an IV in your arm, had Kyle Stevens and his whole crew here in your apartment, woke up to a
naked man getting dressed in your apartment, and your first question is about
work
? You
are
a workaholic, Cinderella. Hey, what’s with the shoes, by the way?” He cocked his head toward the six shoe boxes stacked by the door.

She steadied herself in the doorway.
An IV? Kyle Stevens?
 . . .

“Did I . . .” She swallowed. “Who changed my clothes?”

“No worries there. Kyle sent a nurse home right behind us, and she came in and took care of you. She had you on an IV so you didn’t dehydrate. And she took care of . . . you know, all personal things. She put on your skivvies there, and took care of . . . well, you were doing a lot of vomiting.”

She winced. “Why did Kyle send a nurse?”

“He felt responsible.”

“For . . .” She waited for him to fill in the blank, but his lips tightened.

Her mind was whirling. It was
Friday
? “How’s Drew?”

A shadow crossed Evan’s face. “He’s fine, health-wise. Legs are healing. He uh . . . fired me, though.”

“What?”

“It’s okay. I didn’t expect anything else. He said he’ll have another captain by Monday. He asked me to just run two tours on Saturday and Sunday. For a festival?”

Lia closed her eyes and groaned.
Oh God.
“The Whale Festival,” she verified. How was Drew going to cover all this?

“Oh.” Evan’s forehead crumpled into wrinkles as he stared at the floor, seemingly lost in memory. “Yeah, I remember that. Lots of people. Anyway, he asked me to run those two tours, and then leave. But it’s all good. Douglas came back from Vegas. Stewey’s been on board. Cora’s cooking. She’s been sending you the broth and the rolls. Hey, I tried to feed your cat. She doesn’t eat much.”

“I leave out an extra bowl of dry food in the laundry area for when I work late.” She motioned lamely, her mind still whirling. “She knows it’s there. What about the charter on Monday?”

He glanced up at her through his bangs. “I don’t think the charter’s gonna happen, Cinderella.”

“
What?” No. No. No. No. . . .
“Who canceled it?” she managed to get out.

“I guess I did.”

“What?”
She gripped the wall.

“Not technically. I mean, Stevens and I didn’t discuss it. But I punched him in the face, and—”

“You
punched
him?” Her mouth fell open as her eyes drifted to the bandage.

“Yeah. I’m not sure he’s going to want me to run it, and I doubt he’s going to want to face you again after possibly drugging you, and—”

“
Drugging
me?”

He glanced up at her. “Listen, Cinderella, the whole night was a mess. I feel you were drugged, but his story holds water. And he did send his private medic here, and they kept you hydrated and checked you out, and he apologized a billion times. Those are from him.” He straightened his jacket collar and pointed his elbow in the direction of a vase of about fifty white roses that were sitting in the kitchen, behind the wall. “I told him you wouldn’t press charges. He said he’d pay for anything you need. I promised to keep it out of the paper until you woke up and I could . . . oh, hey, you’re losing your color again. Here, sit down.”

He reached for her elbow, but she stepped around him and sat on the edge of the couch, pulling her elbows close to her body and rubbing her arms for warmth.
Drugged? Private medic? Press charges? Evan punched him? Keep it out of the paper?
She leaned forward. She might be sick again. This was a thousand times worse than she’d thought.

She could barely get the next question through her throat. “Do I still have a job?”

“I talked to Elle and told her you’d be out through today.”

Lia shook her head. That wouldn’t work. She was fired, she knew it. She’d return to her desk, and everything would be cleared out. Maybe even out on the street. Maybe they wouldn’t even let her back in the building. She’d ruined everything with Kyle, had ruined Elle’s chance to get J.P. Stevens’s New York business, had embarrassed the agency. . . . She’d have to start her life over next week. She probably couldn’t even work in Orange County again. She’d have to move. . . . She’d have to leave her sisters here, and her mom, and Coco. . . .

“Listen, I know this is a lot to take in. But it’s going to be okay. Let me take you—”

“Just
go
.” Anger coursed through her as she realized what a mess this was, and
why the hell was Evan Betancourt trying to handle it for her?
She was done for. She’d never work in Southern California again. “Just go,” she said again. “I appreciate everything you did, but I need to be alone.”

He stood uncertainly and stared at her for a minute.

“Please. Leave.”

He nodded, his jaw muscle clenching. “Got it,” he said.

The door finally closed, and Lia dropped her head in her hands.

And cried for everything she’d lost in the last seventy-two hours.

CHAPTER

E
van squinted through his sunglasses as he steered the cat back past the jetty and into the tight harbor. Douglas’s scratchy voice droned over the microphone, finishing the narration for their last Friday tour. The bright winter sun sat high, streaking through a clean, cloudless sky. Evan pulled back on the throttle with his bad hand and ran through, one more time, Cinderella kicking him out of her place.

At first he’d been surprised. Then pissed. But ultimately, as he’d made his way down her front walk, he’d felt relieved.

He didn’t like how his blood had begun pumping again in a dangerous way this week—a way that made him feel out of control.

He didn’t like how he’d been turned on—the first woman to make him feel that way since Renece.

Cinderella just stirred up too many emotions, emotions he was no longer interested in. Emotions about caring, loving, investing, worrying. He’d checked out of all that. And planned to stay checked out.

The evenings had been the hardest. He’d come in to see how she was after the whale tours were over each day. He’d stay over just to make sure she was breathing. He ran into her
neighbor Rabbit on the first morning, who eyed him suspiciously when he left around five. He’d met her younger sister Noelle—beautiful girl who looked just like Lia only with long brown hair and a hipster beanie on her head. Noelle had looked him up and down when he’d opened the door and demanded to know what was going on. He’d explained at least most of the story, and she’d sworn him to secrecy if their mom called, and then pushed her way in and agreed to stay with Lia all day.

The next day, he and Noelle found an older neighbor named Mrs. Rose, who had said she was the landlord. Noelle asked if Mrs. Rose would check on Lia, and the older woman had bobbed her head and seemed happy to help.

The nights, though, he had covered. He’d nod to Mrs. Rose, walk in, and peek inside Lia’s bedroom to make sure she was still alive.

He never went in. Except to leave quick notes. But mostly he wanted to dodge the bright red bra he’d seen out of the corner of his eye, the lacy things draped near the hamper, and the three enormous blue ballroom-looking dresses she had hanging near the door. He didn’t want to be near so much satin, or any more things to remind him that she was a very feminine woman and he was a man who’d begun to notice.

But, even though he aimed to keep his distance, his heart was splitting open and starting to bleed again. The spillage came in a rush the morning he realized she’d put a blanket on him. That about killed him. And then seeing the crayon drawings all over her kitchen and living room—she obviously had a little person in her life like Luke. He didn’t want to open up again, let the blood flow out.

Having her kick him out was good. He would finish this last tour, handle the two over the weekend during the festival, then sail away on Monday. He wouldn’t even see her again.

“Cap’n, a couple of the kids want to come up and meet you when the tour is over,” Douglas said from the bridge stairs.

Evan glanced back over his shoulder.

“Is that okay?” Douglas prompted.

“I guess.”

Douglas’s white hair disappeared.

Evan still dreaded the kids. A couple of them had asked for his “autograph” yesterday and it had about crumpled him to the
ground. It was so hard to talk to them anymore, any age. If they were younger than Luke, all he could think about was what Luke did at that age. If they were older, all he could think about was what Luke would have looked like and sounded like if he’d been able to grow to that age. And if they were the same age—about five—that was the most painful of all. Because he couldn’t help but think of the roll of the cosmic dice that made
his
kid the one who was gone, while this other kid stood in front of him. And, for thinking that, he felt guilty.

The light bounced off the water as the cat made its way in, making it hard to see the dock. Douglas, thankfully, had already set up the fenders. He was a good deckhand. Evan peered toward the pillars, lining them up, while they made their way through, but another sight on the dock caught his eye.

Was that . . . ?

Damn.

Was that who
he thought it was? He snapped his hair out of the way and pulled back on the throttle as the cat puttered in.

And, as he blocked the sun from his eyes, he had his answer.

It was.

*   *   *

Lia began stitching things back up one at a time. After a long morning, sitting in the bathtub in lavender baby wash, watching her tears create bubble craters, she decided to pull herself together around three o’clock. Enough pity.

She wasn’t the kind of person for whom things unraveled. Normally she had all the stitches straight, all in a row, tied at the edges in tight knots. But this morning, she had panicked. Her breath had come faster and faster when she listened to her messages after Evan left: three from the Vampiress on Wednesday morning (which Evan must have answered, because they suddenly stopped); three from Drew on Wednesday afternoon (“
Where are you?
” “
What the hell is Evan doing on the boat?
” “
Are you okay?
”); four from her sisters and mom (“
Are you okay? Why aren’t you calling us back?
”); and two from Sharon (“
Drew is working again. I heard you’re sick. I’m so sorry. But now I wish you were handling things again. Can you help me
get him to stop? He’s been on the phone trying to find captains all afternoon. . . .”
). None from Forrest.

Her breath had also come fast when she saw the note from Kyle in the flowers (
I’m so sorry, beautiful. I fired my bartender.
).

She didn’t believe Kyle had drugged her. Evan was crazy. Evan had already admitted he was too suspicious, and that whole cop/Coast Guard behavior—watching the exits, being so protective—she had no idea what drove all that, but Drew was right. He was a wild card.

But when she saw that Evan had organized Missy’s food, folded the blanket he’d used and set it neatly on the floor behind the couch, and left a razor blade and a pair of scissors on her guest-bath sink with clumps of his hair in the wastebasket, her breathing came in a halted shudder, meshed with the threat of tears.
He took care of her.

After three o’clock, after the lavender bath, after her hair was dried and she felt human again, she took a deep breath, sat on the couch, and started restitching her life.

Her first call went to a frazzled assistant named Courtney who sometimes took Lia’s place when Lia had to be out of the office or in New York. Lia had to figure out if she still had a job. Courtney put her on hold to get rid of three other calls for the Vampiress and then came back to the phone.

“She’s freaking out,” Courtney whispered. “I can see her through the glass, and she’s throwing folders into the trash while she’s on the other line. But I’ve got a guy on the phone from Germany who wants to speak to her, and I don’t know if I should let him through. She said to hold all her calls.”

“That’s Markus,” Lia said. “Yeah, put him through. She’s wrapping up a deal with him that needs to go through by next Wednesday.”

“Thank you!” Courtney said, her voice cracking. “When are you coming back?”

“Do I still have a job?”

“Y-Yes! You’d
better
! I . . . I can’t . . .” Courtney’s voice cracked, and she burst into tears.

“Courtney, it’s okay. I . . . I’ll swing by this afternoon. Just hang on.”

“Is that Lia?”
Lia could hear Elle’s screech.
“Put her through!”

“Lia,” Courtney whispered back into the phone, “Elle wants—”

“I heard her, Courtney.”

Lia took a deep breath and wished she’d asked more questions of Evan. Like who did he say he was when he talked to Elle? And what did he tell Elle that Lia was sick with? And how much did Elle know about what happened with Kyle?

“Lia,
what
is going on?” The Vampiress’s whisper into the phone was filled with metal fragments and impatience.

“I’m working on ironing everything out today,” Lia said vaguely. “I’m going to swing by the office in an hour to help Courtney and—”

“Don’t bother.”

Lia’s breath hitched. She fumbled for her end table, her heart pounding, when Elle continued:

“Let’s fix this thing with Kyle first.”

Lia let out a whoosh of air.

“Courtney will be fine,” Elle said. “Here’s what I need you to do: Tonight is the VIP reception to kick off the Whale Festival. Kyle bought almost all forty-eight tickets for the people he’s bringing on the charter. I need you to go. Apologize to him. Bring that captain, that friend of yours, and I want him to apologize, too. You need to fix this, Lia. The tickets are at will-call under my name. Just show up. Dress up. Don’t look ‘Sandy Cove’; look ‘Newport Beach.’ Make a huge donation on our behalf and say whatever you need to say to Kyle to assure him the charter’s on. Don’t screw this up.”

“I . . . I don’t know if I can get Evan there, I . . .”

“
Do what you need to do
. J.P.’s going to be on that charter, and so am I, and I want him and Kyle both thrilled with everything. I trusted you to set this up. Are you saying I can’t trust you to pull things off?”

“No, I’m not saying that at all, I—”

“Then get it done.” The phone went dead. Lia stared at it in her hand.

She wondered if she could just call Kyle and get things straightened over the phone before tonight. She knew him well enough now, right? They’d sort of crossed the bridge into
friends, sometime between his limo at her apartment building and his lips at her temple. She dialed his office, her heart pounding, but got another frazzled assistant.

“Would you like me to leave a message?” the assistant asked.

“Yes, tell him Lia McCabe called and I’d like to talk with him before the event tonight.”

“Oh, Lia McCabe,” she said, as if she were describing something you needed to scrape off your shoe. “He said you might call. He said if you did, to tell you he was looking for another charter. But thanks anyway.” A dial tone ended that road.

Lia pressed her fingertips to her temple. She had to convince him to stay with her and the original plan. Unless . . .
could she find another charter for him?

She fired up her laptop and started scouring. Drew would never forgive her, but her job was on the line now. She called the first two tours she found, and discovered they couldn’t accommodate that many people on such short notice. She found a third, but the boat wasn’t very elegant—more of a fishing boat sometimes used for whale watching. Kyle’s multimillionaire friends wouldn’t like that, but it might be her only resort.

Her phone buzzed in her hand with an incoming call. Dang, it was Drew.

“How is it I get this crazy call the other day from Douglas?” Drew fired in his angriest voice, which she didn’t hear very often. “And Doug is telling me my
brother
is captaining my boat because
you
asked him to? And now you’re home with some mysterious illness? When I know you never call in sick? What the
hell
, Lia?”

“I know. I’m sorry, Drew. I needed to run the tour the next day, and Sharon told me to handle it myself and not involve you, and—”

“Wait,
Sharon
? She told you to do this?” A string of swear words followed.

“No, don’t get mad at Sharon. She was just worried about you, and she asked me to handle it for you for a few days so you could get well, and—”

“So you went to my
brother
? Who I told you specifically
not to ask
?”

“Drew, he was a fast, short-term solution to a problem that
needed to be solved overnight. Kyle Stevens was on the first tour.”

“Kyle Stevens?” His voice held both incredulousness and awe.

“He might want to invest in your boat.”

That shut Drew up. A long silence followed.

“So Evan, he . . .” Lia tried to think of how to explain all this. “He really helped. Kyle likes him. I think he has a little man-crush on him or something. So he brought us all to his club, and we—”

“Evan went to Kyle’s
club
?”

“Yes, it was a crazy night. There was a blogger there, too, Avery James, and we all went together, and Kyle expressed a couple of times that he might want to invest. Once to Evan, and once to me.”

Another long silence followed. “Evan went to a
club
?”

“Yes.”

“How did he look?” Drew asked quietly.

“I don’t have anything to compare him to, but I guess he looked okay. A little scraggly. But he shaved one day, and . . .”

“I mean his
disposition
,
Lia. Was he sober? Was he functional? Did he scare people away?”

“He seemed fine.”

Drew blew out a breath. “Okay, let’s talk about Kyle. What are our next steps?”

“Well, he had a charter planned for Monday. I’m not sure . . .” She hesitated, not sure how much to tell Drew. “Anyway, I’m still ironing out the details, but he wants Evan to captain it, and . . .” She paused. Could she say that Evan refused to run it? That he
punched
Kyle? She sighed and tried to figure out how to word all this.

“And I fired him,” Drew filled in.

That would serve for now. She decided to cut to the chase: “We need a captain for it. Can
you
do it? Will you be well enough?”

“I’m not supposed to get out of bed for another five days. I found a captain starting Wednesday, but he’s tied up until then. Maybe I can unfire Evan. If you say he’s been doing okay, I guess I can live with him navigating my boat for a few more days.”

Lia sighed.
Might not be that easy
 . . .

“Tell me what happened between you two,” she said.

Another long pause. “It’s a long story. But I’ll call him. And unfire him. Or maybe I can go down there and talk to him. If Sharon’ll let me.” He chuckled.

“I see that hospital didn’t sew you in some bigger balls.”

His laugh grew into a loud bark. “Man, I missed you.”

Lia smiled. It was nice that Drew was coming around with whatever the problem was between him and Evan, but she didn’t know how to break it that the problem involved Evan taking things into his own hands and canceling Kyle’s charter . . . and only because he was pissed at Kyle . . . for possibly
drugging
Lia. It all just sounded too sordid and embarrassing. And she knew Drew would worry. And rail.