Bungalow Nights

chapter SIXTEEN



IN BAXTER’S BEDROOM, though, Addy’s doubts returned. He’d set her on her feet and she stared at the bed and its smoothly ordered covering. The pillows were stuffed in shams propped at precise intervals against the headboard. His slight OCD in evidence.

Her right foot stepped back. “I don’t know if I can do this.”

He had the hem of his T-shirt in his grip and he froze in the process of removing it, half his six-pack revealed. “Why not?” he asked, frowning at her.

“You make your bed with impeccable hospital corners, I can tell. I’ll...I’ll never measure up.”

Baxter let his shirt drop and his voice softened. “This isn’t about hospital corners, is it, Addy?”

She made a face. “Was it the Freudian ‘measure up’ that gave me away?”

He came toward her, the bright light of day hiding nothing of his face and killer body. “You know,” he said, his voice casual. “There’s one good thing about my OCD. It means I’m very, very detail-oriented.”

“Does it also mean you’ll consent to keeping your eyes shut whenever the clothes come off?” She thought of the underwear she wore today, a pale green cotton set sprinkled with darker green frogs, little golden crowns perched atop their heads. It was her story, gender-reversed, wasn’t it? The handsome prince kissed the ugly frog, transforming her.

His hands on her shoulders, Baxter lightly kissed her mouth. “Addy, I want to look at you. All of you. You’re beautiful.”

Still worry crept in, stiffening her muscles. Damn her body issues!

“Shh,” Baxter said, then kissed her cheek, her nose, her forehead. “This is me. Just me.”

Just him, the most gorgeous man she’d ever known. Her crush of a lifetime.

With stinging eyes, she looked up at golden Baxter. Even swimming in her tears he was leading-man material. “I told you before, we’re the embodiment of One of These Things Is Not like the Other.”

He closed his eyes for a brief moment, as if in pain. “Addy, no...”

“I mean it,” she insisted.

“Addy.” He moved his hands upward, using them to cup her face. “No job. No French.”

She let that sink in for a moment. Finally she heard herself add, “No taste in superheroes.”

“What?” He glanced down at the big S on his chest.

“Superman,” she scoffed, feeling her mojo on the rise again. “So banal, Baxter.”

He scowled now, but she knew he was just playing along. “I’ll add that to prissy and pasty.”

She laughed. “I’m sorry. That was my defense mechanism talking. You’re hunky and so handsome that it was hard for me to handle.”

“Handle me now, Addy.”

And she heard it as a plea. He wanted her. He needed her touch. So she applied herself to getting him naked. Superman shirt gone—note to self, get him into an edgier crime fighter before hitting Paris—he stopped her hands on their way to his jeans.

“Time for you to get naked, Addy,” he said, his voice guttural.

She stalled again, her hands returning his tight grip. Be brave, she told herself, closing her eyes and breathing in the scent of his warm skin. Intellectually, she knew she wasn’t that little girl who had lived in the dark. She was a woman, a loved woman, getting ready to have sex with the man she wanted in her bed for the rest of their lives.

I can do this, she thought, stepping away from him in order to shuck the rest of her clothes. I can do this.

Then, over his shoulder, she caught sight of herself in the mirrored closet doors across the room. She shuddered. It didn’t matter what the size label said on her clothes. It wasn’t even about size.

It was about feeling loved. Her parents hadn’t loved her enough to stop the shouting, to end the rounds of stabbing criticism, to find a way to make the world feel safe for their young daughter. Her only security had been in an episode of Saved by the Bell and a Snickers bar. In Dances with Wolves and a bag of Doritos. In Little Women and lemon bars.

Baxter glanced back, saw what she saw, she supposed, because he moved, coming behind her, holding her back against his front. He crossed his arms over her waist, this hold not so much sexual as cherishing. His gaze met her reflected one.

“I love you,” he said. “I love you.”

She leaned her head against his shoulder and inspected their images in the glass. Despite his words, the sincerity in them, it still wasn’t easy. Did the frog prince still see his old warts once he’d been kissed by his beautiful lady?

“Shh,” he said again, and then bent his head so he spoke against her ear. “Screw mirrors, honey, if they bother you. Just look at yourself in my eyes.”

That did it. That got her turning away from the reflection and toward the man of her dreams. Her comfort crush. The freakin’ love of her life who could make her believe in the lasting power of what was in their hearts.

Addy March got to have Baxter Smith.

“So many happy endings today,” she told her guy.

Smiling, he touched his absolutely best male nose in the world to hers. “Still got no job, no French, no taste in superheroes.”

“But we’ve got each other,” Addy said. “Je t’adore.”

* * *

LAYLA SLAPPED AT VANCE’S hand as he tried sneaking one of the cupcakes from the plastic carrier she’d brought home from the food truck. “Those are for dessert,” she said, pushing the container farther down the kitchen counter.

“But it’s my party,” he said, a wheedling smile on his face. His hips pressed closer to hers as he pinned her against the bullnose tile.

She laughed up at him. “You’re in a mood.”

“Mmm,” he agreed. “Getting all his limbs in order can do that to a man.”

The final cast had been removed. Though he wore a soft splint in its place, he’d come home from the doctor’s upbeat and energized. Likely already thinking of his return to active duty.

That thought threatened her own mood, a little melancholy creeping in at the idea of their time together coming to an end. But she wasn’t going to think about the future. Not tonight.

With a saucy smile, she tilted her hips, pressing into the thickness she felt between his legs. “This limb seems to be in fine form, too.”

He bent to her ear, his hot breath sending chilly tingles down her neck. “You are such a naughty girl.”

“But I don’t have time to show you just how naughty,” she said, shoving at his shoulders. “Remember? Addy and Baxter called to say they wanted to have dinner with us.”

His big body didn’t move, even when she tried shoving again. “Is it too late to phone and put them off for—”

Vance hadn’t even finished his sentence before the other couple was walking into Beach House No. 9, both of them carrying grocery bags and wearing high-wattage smiles. As Layla helped unpack the groceries, Vance snatched a magazine from Baxter’s hand.

“What’s with the CarBuy mag?” he asked his cousin. “You in the market for another car?”

“Research,” Baxter replied. “I need to find the right price to ask for my Beemer.”

Vance blinked, and then he stumbled back and fell into a chair at the kitchen table. “Is it just me, or are there pigs flying around this room?”

“Ha-ha,” the other man said. “It’s not a miracle that’s making me sell the roadster...it’s marriage.”

Addy made a little noise, half distressed, half pleased. “Baxter. We talked about this. It’s too soon to be throwing around that word.”

“You like my self-confidence,” he said, and snagged the blonde with an arm around her neck to bring her close. “And you love me.”

Layla felt her eyes go round. Vance looked equally startled. “Um...is there some news we should know?”

Addy’s face was pink but she hadn’t moved away from Baxter. “Yes. It’s so cool. We’ve solved the mystery of Sunrise Pictures.” Then she told them of a letter Baxter discovered that made clear it wasn’t an affair that had ended the company, but Edith’s own wish to be out of the business.

“So now you know,” Layla said.

Addy nodded. “But not everything. The Collar is still missing. Edith put it somewhere for safekeeping...I think here at the cove. Baxter believes it’s in an undiscovered bank safe-deposit box, but that’s because there’s no romance in his soul.”

“My soul has romance,” he protested. “But my brain says no man would hide a priceless necklace in a beach cottage.”

“Ah, but no man did,” Addy pointed out. “And shortly after Edith took action, there came the Great Depression. People didn’t hold a great deal of faith in banks. I bet she thought it was just fine wherever she’d stashed it.”

“But wouldn’t she have told someone where that was?” Vance asked.

“She didn’t tell Max in the letter she wrote him.” Addy sighed. “And then she died a few years later, unexpectedly, of pneumonia. Perhaps she never had a chance.”

“Or perhaps some visitor to Crescent Cove found it,” Vance said, “and took it home with him or her, never knowing that it’s a real treasure.”

Layla frowned. “I don’t like that ending to the story.”

“All of that is old news, anyway,” Vance said. He turned his gaze on his cousin. “I didn’t forget the new news you just dropped five minutes ago. Selling the Beemer? Did you actually use the word marriage?”

Baxter stood behind Addy, a hand on each of her shoulders. “We’re official.”

Layla’s brows rose. “Officially...engaged?”

“No,” Addy said at the same time that Baxter mouthed yes.

“I promised I wouldn’t buy a ring for two weeks,” he added.

Still, their officialness called for handshakes and hugs and congratulations. Vance got everyone their beverage of choice, which they took out to the deck to enjoy with cheese, crackers and crudités. The men gathered near the grill at one corner, preparing it for the steaks they were serving for dinner. Layla and Addy stretched out on side-by-side lounges.

They both gazed on the cousins, so similar in size and coloring. There was a lot of trash-talking bouncing between them, the insults coming fast and easy in the way of men who are close. It brought to Layla’s mind the recent afternoon she’d spent on the deck with Vance and Fitz. That relationship seemed on the mend, and she was glad for them both.

“Penny for your thoughts,” Addy said.

Layla glanced over. “Right this second? That the smile you’re wearing is awfully smug.”

“Really? I feel more surprised than smug.” Then Addy pursed her lips, seeming to consider. “But smug works, too.”

“I can’t believe it happened so fast.”

“We had a...I guess you’d say a one-night stand, six years ago. I hadn’t seen him since, but once we met again, the feelings were there. Again. More. Better.” Addy lifted her hands. “Best.”

“Just like that?”

Addy slanted Layla a look. “Why do you sound so amazed? It’s not as if I haven’t noticed there’s only one downstairs bedroom currently in use.”

Now Layla was the one flushing. “Well...ah...um...”

“See? It happened to you, too.”

No, Layla reminded herself. Addy and Baxter had become a couple with a future. She and Vance were a couple with an end date. As gloomy as that sounded, it was the truth. So no sense in wishing for sunnier prospects. The best thing to do was to enjoy today’s sunshine—something Uncle Phil was always reminding her to do.

Attachment is the source of suffering, he’d say. It only hurt to wish for things you couldn’t have.

So when Vance and Baxter approached them, she forced her heart to lighten and smiled at the pair. How wonderful that they could all be here, at this moment, she thought. It’s enough.

When Vance nudged at her legs to make a spot for himself on her chaise, she shifted, bringing up her knees. His back was warm against her shins as he leaned against her. Even though they had no future, she didn’t stop herself from reaching out and tracing the curve of his heavy biceps.

“So, Addy,” Vance said, patting Layla’s shin in an absent but affectionate gesture. “What’s your secret? How did you get Bax to drop his precious life schedule and commit to his lady a couple of years early?”

“Paris,” she said promptly. “I told you guys about my upcoming year of study there. He didn’t want to lose me to some man who can actually speak French.”

Baxter tweaked her nose. “I would have missed her too much if she went without me.”

Layla would miss Vance, too, no matter how often she told herself about end dates and nonattachment. Without thinking, she curled her fingertips under the waistband of his jeans. He glanced back at her, a question in his eyes, and she hurriedly removed them. But then his own hand reached back and caught hers, even as he questioned his cousin.

“If she went without you, Bax?”

The other man had straddled the second chaise behind Addy and she was now sitting between his legs. He toyed with her feathery hair. “Didn’t anyone tell you?” he asked, frowning.

“Tell me what?”

“I quit. Two days ago I quit Smith & Sons Foods.”

Vance’s fingers squeezed down on Layla’s, in shock, she imagined, at the news.

“I didn’t know you hadn’t heard,” Baxter continued.

“Why would I?” Vance asked. “I’m not involved in the business.”

And it so clearly pained him that he wasn’t, Layla thought.

“Well, I shouldn’t have been, either,” Baxter said. “My heart was never in it.”

“If Granddad was still alive he’d be sad to see you go.”

“If our grandfather was still alive, lots of things would be different,” Baxter said quietly.

“Yeah? You think?” Vance looked off toward the horizon, then drained his beer. “Anyone want something else to drink?”

Layla saw the set expression on his face as he rose and turned toward the house. He was gone for longer than it took to grab another beer. His face was calm when he returned, but instead of sharing her space, he leaned against the railing, putting distance between them.

Ignoring the urge to go to him, she closed her eyes and willed herself to appreciate the warmth of the setting sun, the smell of the briny air, the ceaseless rush of waves on the beach. Stay in the moment. Enjoy the moment. Stay in—

Baxter’s voice interrupted her mantra. “There’s going to be some reorganization in the company with me leaving.”

Vance grunted.

“You have any ideas about that?” his cousin asked.

“It’s none of my concern.”

“I think they should move Fitz into my place. That would open up his spot on the growing and distribution end and—”

“Grove management. Get somebody in-house to do that. Get rid of those bloodsuckers from GreenWise.”

“Why?” Baxter asked. “They do a good job.”

“They do the job for too many growers in avocado country. It’s better to have someone focused on our single interest.”

Layla opened her eyes. Did Vance realize how he’d slipped from indifference to expressing an opinion with an our in it? Baxter was studying his cousin, too, his eyes narrowed.

“I see your point,” he said. “I still say it’s a good idea to move Fitz into the business end. Then you take his spot and add in grove management, as well.”

“What?” Vance asked.

“Yeah, it’s twice more work than what Fitz is doing now, but he’s gotten lazy in his old age. And you’ll want to prove yourself to everyone.”

“You’re nuts.” Vance looked a little nuts himself. “They’d never let me in.”

“How do you know unless you ask?”

“I’ve asked before,” Vance said bitterly. “We know how that turned out. It would be the same this time, too.”

“What if you say it’s what you want? Because I can see that it’s the truth.”

Layla held still, afraid to breathe because she could see it was true, as well. And she could see something else...her traitorous self considering there might be a future with Vance, after all.

Don’t go there, she commanded herself. No.

Then he echoed her thought, shaking his head with finality. “No.”

Baxter sighed. “But—”

“Let’s just enjoy the evening, okay?” Vance said. His glance moved from his cousin to Layla.

“Great idea,” she agreed, adding a bright smile. She was nothing if not a good soldier. “I’ll get on dinner.”

As she walked toward the house, Vance caught her hand. “And I’ll help.”

She twined her fingers with his. Stay in the moment, she whispered soundlessly. Stay in the moment.

It’s enough.