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“What relationship? That’s the point, Seth, you don’t have a relationship! You had a dream relationship, the perfect relationship, and you crashed it. And I just don’t get you. I love Naomi. Mom loves Naomi.”
“Yeah, well, this may come as another surprise to you, but it’s not enough that my family loves the woman I’m dating. I have to love her, too.”
“How could you not? Naomi is the sweetest person on the planet. What is wrong with her?”
“There’s nothing wrong with her. And you’re right, she’s a sweet person.”
“Finally we agree on something. So the question I should probably be asking is what is wrong with you?”
The problem was that he didn’t have a sweet tooth. He liked something with a kick. Bite. Tooth-rotting sweetness didn’t hold much appeal, but he had no intention of sharing that detail with his older sister. His youngest sister, Bryony, would never in a million years have dreamed of interfering.
“You need to leave this alone, Vanessa.”
“I can’t leave it alone. You’re my brother, and Naomi is my friend.”
And for Vanessa, that was enough. She wanted things to be the way she’d wanted them.
“Seth won’t play my game,” had been her constant whine as a child. Remembering brought a wry smile to his lips. He hadn’t played her game then, and he certainly wasn’t playing it now.
“If you truly care about Naomi then you’ll step back from this one. If you interfere, you’ll make things worse. It’s not fair to her.”
“I thought, maybe, if you spend some time together in Vermont the two of you might—”
“It’s over, Vanessa. And if you hint at anything else to her, if you imply that if we got together for the Fourth then there might be a big reconciliation, then you’ll be the one hurting her. It’s the wrong thing to do.”
“Is it wrong to want to see you settled and married one day?”
“I’ve been married.”
There was a tense pause. “That one didn’t count. It wasn’t real.”
He’d counted it. Every hour. And it felt as real now as it had then. “Are you done?”
“Now I’ve annoyed you, but it was Vegas, Seth. Vegas! Who gets married in Vegas? I can only assume you did it because you had some misguided notion about taking her away from her father. Protecting her. You’ve spent your life rescuing things, but she didn’t need protecting. You’re such a gentleman, and she took advantage of you.”
Seth decided it was a good thing his sister couldn’t see him smiling. “Maybe I’m not such a gentleman. Maybe you don’t know me as well as you think you do.”
“I know you never would have married her unless she’d forced you.”
“You think she handcuffed me to the door of the Elvis Chapel?”
“So if it was a real wedding, why didn’t you invite us?”
“Because it’s impossible to invite you without your opinions coming along for the ride.”
“You hurt Mom’s feelings.”
He tensed, knowing it was true and knowing also that his sister knew exactly how to wound. “I need to go, Vanessa. I have patients to see.” An ex-wife to track down.
“Maybe I’m crossing a line—”
“You always do.”
“—but that happens every time we talk about her. You’ve seen her, haven’t you? That was why you took the job in New York.”
He didn’t need to ask whom she meant. He contemplated not answering but decided that would prolong the conversation. “I haven’t seen her yet.”
“‘Yet’? That means you’re intending to. What are you thinking? Or maybe you’re not thinking and it’s testosterone affecting your brain.” She sighed. “I’m sorry. I want you to be happy, that’s all. Maybe you should meet her. Maybe if you actually came face-to-face with her again, you would get her out of your system.” She made Fliss sound like a drug overdose; something that could be overcome with the right antidote.
“There’s nothing wrong with my system, but thank you for granting your permission.”
“I hate sarcasm.”
“And I hate your need to control other people’s lives as well as your own.”
“You drive me crazy, do you know that?”
“It’s a brother’s duty to drive his sister crazy.”
“Not this crazy.” Vanessa sighed. “On second thoughts, I take it back. I don’t think you should see her. You don’t make good decisions when you’re around her. She ripped your heart out, Seth, and then she used it as a football.”
“‘She’ has a name.”
“Felicity. Fliss—” Vanessa almost choked “—and you’re talking in your quiet voice, which I know means you’re mad at me—messes with your head, Seth, and she always did. She’s a—a minx.”
Minx? Only his sister would have come up with a word like that. Seth thought about Fliss, remembering the wicked gleam in her catlike eyes and the teasing curve of her mouth. Maybe minx suited her. Maybe he had a minx addiction.
Maybe he was in as much trouble as his sister thought he was.
“Are you done?”
“Don’t cut me off! I don’t want you to be hurt again, that’s all. I care about you.”
“You don’t have to worry about me. I know what I’m doing.”
“Are you sure?” His sister’s voice was thickened. “You were the one who held it all together when Dad died. You were there for everyone. Our rock. You’ve got broad shoulders, Seth, but who do you lean on? If you don’t want to get back together with Naomi, you should find someone else. I don’t want you to be alone for the rest of your life.”
“We’re not populating Noah’s Ark, Vanessa. We don’t all have to be in twos.”
“I’m not going to mention it again. You’re old enough to make your own decisions, you’re right. Let’s talk about the house, instead. Mom wants to sell it.”
His gut twisted. “It’s too soon to make that decision.”
“I know you don’t want to sell it, but she can’t stand the thought of going back there.”
“She might feel differently in a while.”
“And she might not. Why does it matter to you, Seth? You’re building your own place near the water. Once that is finished, you won’t need Ocean View.”
He thought of the big house that had been part of his life for as long as he could remember. Maybe Vanessa was right. Maybe he was holding on to it for himself, not for his mother. “I’ll speak to a Realtor as soon as I have a chance. Get a valuation.”
“Good. I can leave that with you, then?”
“Yes.” He could almost hear her mentally ticking it off her list. Vanessa survived by lists. If something wasn’t on her list, it didn’t get done. He could imagine her, pencil in hand, ready to tick off find Seth a wife. She’d inherited her organizational tendencies from their mother, who was a warm and generous hostess. No one arriving at the Carlyle home would ever feel anything other than welcome. Summer at the Hamptons had been an endless round of entertaining both friends and family. No one would ever be fed the same thing twice. His mother had a file. People’s likes and dislikes, marriages, divorces, affairs—everything carefully recorded so that there were no awkward moments. And she had a team of people to help her.
Vanessa was the same, except she was more drill sergeant than congenial host.
“And you’ll think about the Fourth?”
“I don’t need to think. I know I’m working.”
“In that case I’ll visit you soon. We’ll have lunch. And, Seth—”
“What?”
“Whether you see her or not—whatever you do, don’t let her hurt you again.”
CHAPTER THREE
SHE RENTED A CONVERTIBLE, because if you were going to drive to the beach on a hot summer’s day, you might as well enjoy the ride. The insurance alone should have been enough to make a grown woman cry. Fortunately she’d never been much of a crier. Her business was going well. She was young, free and single. She intended to enjoy every minute of it. She was leaving her troubles—or should that be trouble in the singular?—behind in Manhattan.
Feeling pleased with herself, she took the Long Island Expressway out of the city and then hit Route 27. As usual it was clogged with traffic, cars idling bumper to bumper. She sat in it, inched forward, then stopped, inched forward again, working hard on her patience, drumming her fingers on the steering wheel as she stared moodily ahead of her. Too many people going nowhere. It was almost as bad as the traffic in Manhattan, except that she had more sense than to drive in Manhattan.
Calm, she thought. Breathe.
Harriet always told her she should try meditation or mindfulness, but Fliss didn’t know what to do with all the energy burning up inside her. She wasn’t a mellow person. She wasn’t calm either. Harriet practiced yoga and Pilates, but Fliss preferred kickboxing and karate. There was nothing quite so satisfying as landing a punch or smacking someone hard with a well-placed turning kick. Restful and calm she certainly wasn’t, but hey, she could pretend. With a touch of her finger, she changed the playlist, switching from pounding rock that had perfectly matched the pounding beat of New York City, to something more mellow and laid-back.
Instead of thinking about Seth, she tried to think about her plans for the business. Harriet was all for keeping it small. Fliss wanted expansion. She’d need to convince her sister it was the right thing to do, remembering that they each loved the business for different reasons. Harriet loved it because it allowed her to work with animals, which kept her well within her comfort zone. Fliss loved it because she fed on the adrenaline rush of building something and watching it grow. Each new client was another brick in the wall of financial security she was building around herself.
No one would ever be able to control her or dictate to her.
She earned her own money. She made the decisions about her life.
Useless? Worthless? Not so much.
She tried to focus on the business, tried to think about everything and anything but Seth. So why was it that trying to not think seemed to make her think of him more? Maybe it was because she was going back to the beach. Back to the place where she’d spent the happiest days of her childhood. The place where the land met the water.
Back to the place where they’d met.
At the mouth of the Peconic River, at the eastern end of Long Island, the land split into two forks at a place the Native Americans called Paumanok. Fliss took the south fork leading to the coveted side of the island. She waited until she hit an open stretch and then floored it. Too fast, but who cared? She finally had the road to herself, and after idling in traffic she wanted the speed.
As the road narrowed slightly, she slowed and made a right turn, inching through the tiny hamlets that led down to the water’s edge. This was where the elite chose to spend their summers. People who had made it, and people who wanted to pretend they’d made it by hiring out a beach house for a few weeks each summer.
She spotted a farm stand overflowing with produce and on impulse pulled over and grabbed her purse. She didn’t know what food her grandmother would have in the house. If she shopped now at least she wouldn’t starve, and even she couldn’t burn salad.
She was wearing cutoffs and a T-shirt, but after a couple of hours idling in the car under a baking-hot sun she couldn’t wait to strip them off and dive into the ocean. Naked? She grinned, remembering her promise to her twin. This visit she was going to try her hardest to keep all her clothes on. Which was going to be tough, because it was the type of heat that fried brains and sharpened tempers.
She pulled on a baseball cap and tugged the bill down. Not that she was likely to see anyone she knew, but she wasn’t in the mood for polite conversation. She waited, head dipped, foot tapping, while the family in front of her chose fruit for their lunch—make up your minds already—and then stepped forward to make her choice. There were plump juicy peaches, local strawberries, fresh-picked lettuces and a dome of shiny, jewel-like tomatoes. She bought a selection, then she took a photo and sent it to her sister.
Proof I’m not borrowing from people’s gardens.
Next to the farm stand was a food truck. They served macchiato, and Fliss sipped the coffee thinking that as far as exiles went, this wasn’t so bad. The availability of good coffee in this comparatively small spit of land was disproportionate to the number of inhabitants.
She’d forgotten how it felt to be standing with the sun heating your skin with the scent of the ocean clinging to the air. It took her back to her childhood, to those delicious first moments when they’d arrived at the beach with the long, lazy weeks of summer stretching ahead.
They’d loaded the car early in the morning so they could make the drive before the worst of the heat. She could still remember the painful tension of those early-morning departures. She could picture her father’s thunderous expression, and hear her mother soothing and placating. It was like spreading honey on burned toast. Didn’t matter how much you tried to sweeten it, the toast was still burned.
They’d learned to gauge his mood. When her brother arrived at the breakfast table and muttered “stormy today,” or “dark clouds and a little threatening,” they all knew he wasn’t talking about the weather.
On the day they left for the summer, they all hoped and prayed that the weather would be in their favor.
Harriet had slid into the back of the car and tried to make herself invisible, while Fliss had helped her brother load, pushing the bags in randomly in her haste to get away. Just do this. Let’s go.
Right up until the moment they drove away there was always the chance that they wouldn’t leave. That her father would find some way to stop them.
She remembered the catch of fear in her throat. If he refused to let them go, the summer would be ruined. And she remembered that delicious feeling of freedom when they pulled away and realized they’d done it. It was like bursting out from a dark, oppressive forest into a patch of bright sunlight. Freedom had stretched ahead like a wide-open road.
She’d watched, bathed in relief, as her mother’s death grip on the wheel lessened, the blood finally returning to her knuckles.
Her brother, claiming seniority and therefore the front seat, had covered their mother’s hand with his. “It’s all right, Mom.”
They all knew it wasn’t all right but were willing to believe it was, to pretend, and the more miles they put between themselves and the house, the more her mother changed.
They all did, Fliss included. She’d left her old life and her bad mood back in Manhattan, like a snake shedding its skin.
She glanced around, wondering how being here could still make her feel that way and wondering why it had taken a crisis in her life to bring her back here. Apart from brief visits to her grandmother, she hadn’t spent a significant block of time here since her teenage years.
Coffee finished, she continued on her way. This part of the island had some of the most coveted real estate in the whole of the Hamptons. She drove past curving driveways, high hedges and cedar-clad mansions topped with high gables and worn by the wind and the weather to shimmering silver gray. Some were inhabited year-round, some were rented by “summer people,” visitors who clogged the roads and the stores and drove the locals mad. Most belonged to the seriously rich.
Her grandmother’s house lacked the square footage and sophisticated security of some of its nearest neighbors, but what it lacked in grandeur, it made up for in charm. Unlike some of the newer mansions that surrounded them, Sea Breeze had been standing for decades. It had a pitched shingle roof and wide windows facing the ocean, but its real benefit was its proximity to the ocean. Developers hungry for any opportunity to exploit the most coveted piece of land in the area had offered her grandmother eye-watering sums of money to purchase the property, but her grandmother had steadfastly refused to sell.
The local community knew the story of how Fliss’s grandfather had bought the beach house for her grandmother on the day of their marriage. Her grandmother had once told her that selling it would have felt like giving away a wedding ring, or breaking a vow.
Marriage, she’d told Fliss, was forever.
Fliss felt pain in her hands and realized she was gripping the wheel so tightly she’d almost cut off the blood supply.
Her marriage hadn’t been forever.
She and Seth hadn’t even hit the three-month mark. And that was her fault, of course. She wore the guilt of that, and it made for uncomfortable clothing.
For a split second she lost concentration, and in that moment a dog shot into the road. He appeared without warning, a blur of golden brown.
Fliss slammed on the brakes, sending dust and her pulse rate flying.
“Dammit.” She sat there, fighting the shock, her heart almost bursting out of her chest. Her hands shook as she groped for the door and opened it. Had she hit it? No. She hadn’t felt a bump or heard anything, but the dog lay in the road, eyes closed. She must have hit it.
“Oh God, no–” She dashed to its side and dropped to her knees. Along with her other crimes she was now a destroyer of innocent creatures. “I’m sorry! I didn’t see you. Please be okay, please be okay,” she was muttering under her breath when she heard a voice behind her.
“She’s fine. It’s a trick of hers.”
The voice punched the air from her lungs. She wanted it to be a mistake, but the recognition was visceral, and she wondered dimly how it was that a voice could be so individual, like a fingerprint. It could have belonged to only one person. She’d known that voice measured, teasing, commanding, amused. She’d known it hard with anger and soft with love. She’d been hearing that voice in her dreams for the past ten years, and she knew there was no mistake even though it made no sense.
Seth was in Manhattan. He was the reason she was here. If it hadn’t been for Seth, she wouldn’t even have been on this road at this time, and if she hadn’t been thinking about him she would have been concentrating and maybe spotted the dog before it appeared without warning from behind the sand dunes.
“Are you all right?” Now the voice was deep and calm, as if he was used to soothing the ragged edges of a person’s anxiety. “You seem pretty shaken up. I promise you the dog really is fine. She used to work in the movies and they trained her to play dead.”
Fliss closed her eyes and wondered if she should do the same thing.
She could lie down in the road, hold her breath and hope he stepped over her and moved on.
She was relieved about the dog, of course, but she wasn’t ready to talk to Seth. Not yet. And not like this. How could this have happened? After all her careful planning, how had she found herself in this situation?
There was no justice. Or maybe this was justice. Maybe this was her punishment. Being made to suffer now for all the sins of her past.
The dog opened its eyes and sprang to its feet, tail wagging. Fliss had no choice but to stand up, too. She did so slowly, reluctantly, brushing the dust from her knees, postponing the moment when she was going to come face-to-face with him.
“Maybe you should sit down.”
Maybe I should make a run for it.
She forced herself to turn.
Her gaze locked with his, and instantly she was sucked back in time. She was eighteen years old, lying on the sand naked, lazily warm and content, her limbs entwined with his, their faces so close they were almost touching. She’d always liked being physically close, as if proximity lessened the chance that she would ever lose him. Touch me, Seth, hold me.
He’d touched her, held her, and she’d lost him anyway.
And clearly he was surprised to have found her again.
Shock flickered across his face, followed by confusion. He reached out and pushed her hat back, taking a closer look at her face. “Fliss?”
She was confused, too. She’d assumed time would have diluted the effect he had on her. Neutralized her feelings. Instead it seemed as if it had concentrated everything. She hadn’t seen his face for almost ten years, and yet everything about it was painfully familiar. The crinkles at the corners of his eyes, the few wayward strands of hair that insisted on flopping over his forehead, those thick lashes that framed eyes as dark as a pirate’s heart. Sexual awareness punched through her with shocking force. The magnetic pull was so powerful the force of it almost jerked her forward. If she’d been in the car, the air bag would have deployed.
She was baking hot and sweaty, which made her all the more resentful that he managed to look so cool. He was wearing a white button-down shirt and khakis. He’d always been strikingly handsome, and the extra years had stripped away the last of the boy and shaped the man. He had the same athletic physique, but his shoulders were wider, his body stronger and more powerful.
Once, she’d believed that maybe happy endings really weren’t just for books and movies. Her feelings for him had filled her until there was no room for anything else, until she hadn’t known how to contain them. Fortunately all those years with her father had provided advanced training in how to hide them, which was just as well because Seth looked insanely good and she looked—
She didn’t want to think how she looked.
It was definitely karma. Punishment for her past sins, which were too many to count.
She was trapped by that gaze, and her brain and her tongue knotted at the same time. So she did what she always did when she found herself in a tight corner. She acted on impulse.
“I’m not Fliss,” she said. “I’m Harriet.”
CHAPTER FOUR
HARRIET.
Until she’d said that, he’d been about to kiss her. Right there on the road and to hell with anyone who happened to be passing. The knowledge unsettled him. Fliss had always brought out a side of him he rarely accessed, and it seemed not much had changed.
Except that this was Harriet, not Fliss. And kissing her would have brought on more than mutual embarrassment. His objective had been to douse old flames, not rekindle fires.
Vanessa was right. He was in trouble.
He stepped back, almost treading on Lulu. The dog yelped and jumped out of the way, sending him a reproachful look. Her day wasn’t going well. His wasn’t much better.
“I didn’t expect to see you here.” There was a time when the Knight twins had spent every summer with their grandmother, but that time was long past. Most of the group of kids who had hung out together during those long hot summers had gone their separate ways. The only friend he still saw from those days was Chase Adams, who had taken over the running of his father’s construction company based in Manhattan. Since his marriage, he’d been spending more time at his beach house.
“Didn’t expect to see you either.” She pulled the brim of her hat down, virtually concealing the top half of her face. “I heard you were in Manhattan. Daniel mentioned that he ran into you—” Her tone was casual, but there was something else there that he couldn’t identify. Nerves? Since when had he made Harriet nervous?
“That was temporary. I was doing a favor for a friend of mine.”
“Steven?”
“Yes. We were at college together. He was shorthanded and he asked me to help out.”
“So that’s it? You’re done? No more Manhattan?”
“For now.” He wondered why she was asking so many detailed questions about his whereabouts. Maybe Fliss was thinking of visiting her grandmother and her twin was going to deliver a warning. You didn’t have to be a genius to figure out that she was avoiding him.
“So you’re here for the rest of the summer? Staying with your family?”
“Just me.” How much did she know? They’d had no contact since that summer ten years before, but these days there were a myriad ways to find out information. Did Fliss ever talk about him? He had a million questions, but he reined them in. What was the point in asking them? He didn’t need answers from Harriet. He needed them from Fliss. “And you? What are you doing here?” It was unsettling looking at her because she could so easily have been Fliss. Outwardly the twins were identical. Same blue eyes, same buttermilk-blond hair.