THE GOLF CART jounced over the trail at a blistering five miles an hour.
“We could walk faster,” grumbled Christy. She’d been cranky since she woke up from a nap.
Kota let the exaggeration float by. “Thanks again for coming with me.”
“Don’t thank me. I’m still plotting my revenge.”
“I said I was sorry.” Was he ever. Another sexless afternoon down the drain.
Her grumpy silence berated him all the way to the big house.
He parked next to the vast porch overlooking the bay. The dogs piled out. Cy went on patrol. Tri waited for Christy to pick him up.
Sasha appeared on the porch, all smiles. “I hope you’re hungry. Tana’s been cooking all day.” She kissed Kota’s cheek, then Christy’s, bubbling with pleasure. “There’s beer, wine, gin and tonics. Whatever you want.”
“Just water for me,” mumbled Christy, throwing a damper on things.
“Oh. Sure.” Sasha’s smile wavered. “Kota?”
“Hold that thought,” he said. “There’s something I forgot to tell Christy.” He got a good grip on her arm and hauled her back out to the golf cart.
“What?” she demanded.
“Here’s what.” He bored in. “Sasha’s throwing her first dinner party as a married lady, and you just sucked all the fun out of the air.”
She had the grace to look shamefaced. “Sorry. I’ll do better.”
“They’re good people. You might like them if you give them a chance.”
“I already like them,” she said. “That’s part of the problem.”
“What problem?”
She shook her head. “Ignore me, I’m still half asleep.”
“You don’t have to drink. That’s not what I meant.”
“I know.” She mustered a trooper’s smile. “I’ll be a good guest, I promise.”
He arched a skeptical brow. “After your whopper about taking your shirt off, your word’s no good around here.”
She laughed, and relief spread through his chest. He hated being on the outs with her.
Sasha met them on the porch with ice water. Christy drained it like she’d crossed the desert to get there. “Thanks, I was thirsty. A gin and tonic sounds good. Can I help?”
Kota gave her arm a grateful squeeze. “Get me one too, will you? I gotta see a man about a grill.”
Around the corner on the terrace, Tana faced off with a stainless-steel behemoth that could’ve swallowed a school bus without burping. He looked over at Kota. “This fucker’s complicated.”
“Pfft. How hard can it be?”
“You haven’t used it yet?”
“It’s a grill, man. Turn it on, cook the meat, and let’s eat.”
Tana pointed at it. “Go ahead. Turn it on.”
Ten minutes later they both had their noses in the manual when the ladies appeared with cold drinks.
“Is it hot yet?” Sasha asked. “Can we throw on the steaks?”
Silence.
Christy put a gin and tonic in Kota’s hand. “You’re stumped, aren’t you?”
“We’re not stumped. We just want to make the most of all the cool features.”
She strutted to the control panel and turned a few knobs, then graced them with a superior smirk.
Kota tossed the manual over his shoulder. “Tell me Zach has one.”
“Nope, but I’ve used one before.”
Probably the boyfriend’s. While she chatted with Sasha, he pulled Tana aside. “Who got traded off the Dodgers pre-season?”
Tana ran through a few names.
“Which ones went east?”
“Only Jason Pendergast. He’s playing third base for the Red Sox.”
Kota squinted, trying to call up a visual.
“Six-three,” said Tana, “one eighty, brown and brown. Scar through his right eyebrow.” He shrugged at Kota’s stare. “I met him once.”
“Good-looking?”
“Why? You thinking about switching teams?” Tana grinned at his punny.
“Har har. Christy was almost engaged to him.”
“Makes sense. He asked where I got Sasha’s ring.”
Poor schmuck.
While Tana went inside for the beef, Kota sipped his drink and checked out the view, two gorgeous women in summer dresses framed against the sparkling sea. In the background, Chopin played, a far cry from the raucous rock that pumped through the sound system pre-Sasha, when this terrace had teemed with hot babes.
Kota didn’t miss it like he’d thought he would.
He ambled over to join them.
“I’m trying to bribe Christy to sing for us,” Sasha told him. “I know I shouldn’t. I hate it when fans ask me to do lines from their favorite film.” Her musical laugh was endearing. “You know all about that, Kota. Nobody has more taglines than you.”
He squinted his deadliest squint and put razors in his drawl. “I can kill you now or I can kill you later. Either way, it’s gonna hurt.”
“Terror Train. I love that movie!”
“Sasha’s into body count,” he told Christy.
“Nobody does it better,” said Sasha. “And the muscles.” She eyerolled. “Wait’ll you walk down the street with him. People stop him constantly. ‘Flex for us, Dakota. Lemme see what you got.’ And in bars, forget it. Every biker wants to arm wrestle him.”
Christy grinned. “I beat him twice.”
“Tit?” Sasha nudged her. “Tana taught me about the tit.”
“Christy already knew.” Kota looped an arm over her shoulder. “She’s an expert on the tit.”
Cy wandered into their midst, bumping Sasha affectionately. She patted his rump, well away from his grisly noggin.
Then he poked at Christy, favoring her with his ragged grin. She grinned back at him and scratched his chin. And Kota’s heart got two sizes too big for his chest.
Even Ma had needed time to adjust to Cy. But Christy looked straight past his ruined face to his soul.
He couldn’t help himself, he pulled her in and hugged her hard, like she might float away if he let go.
What a woman.
She tapped his shoulder, mumbling something he couldn’t decipher. He loosened his grip an inch. She dragged air into her lungs.
“You’re crushing her,” Sasha said, laughing. She had a match-makey look on her face.
It didn’t bother him a bit.
Tana called from the grill. “Um, Christy, you happen to know how to adjust the temp?”
“Be right there.” She knuckled his tickle spot, and Kota let out an unmanly giggle. He morphed it into a growl and added a squint for good measure.
“Mr. Badass.” She shoved him back with one finger and sashayed across the terrace to school little brother on the Grill-osterone 5000.
What a woman.
“TO THE GRILL master.” Sasha raised her glass to Chris. Candlelight sparked off the bubbles. “The boys are your slaves.”
Chris grinned. “I rule the grill. And the tit.” Three gin and tonics made her believe it.
Sasha was on number four. “He’s crazy about you, you know.”
Chris gave Tri a lap bounce. “I know. He went down my shirt the first time I met him.”
“Get out! That’s bad, even for Kota.”
Chris giggled. “No, I meant Tri.”
Sasha giggled too. “I meant Kota. Kota’s crazy about you.”
“Oh.” That was sobering. Chris glanced at him, horsing around in the pool with Tana. “I don’t think so. He got really mad today when I told him I didn’t love my old boyfriend.”
Sasha puzzled over that. “There must’ve been more to it.”
“Not really. I said Jason transferred to the East Coast, and that I realized I didn’t care enough about him to go along. And Kota got pissed and went off on a tangent about me walking out on my kids to follow my own selfish dreams.”
“Oooh, that explains it.” Sasha nodded wisely. “Kota has abandonment issues. They both do. Because of their parents.”
“Their parents abandoned them?”
Sasha smiled, ruefully. “I know you’re not the run-to-the-tabloids type,” she said, making Chris wilt like lettuce. “But it’s not my story to share. Tana didn’t tell me until we’d been together for a year, so don’t be hurt if Kota holds onto it for a while.”
“We’re not”—Chris cleared her guilt-clogged throat—“we’re not a couple. This is just a”—she fanned her hand, groping for a word to describe it—“a week.” No arguing with that.
Sasha’s lips twitched in a smile. “A week is more than enough. When it’s right, you know it. And those two”—she waved her glass at the brothers—“are as old fashioned as Grandma Moses.”
Chris must have looked skeptical, because Sasha leaned in. “I’m serious. They’ve got huge hearts, and they’re loyal as Labradors. I wouldn’t have married Tana if I didn’t think it was for life.”
“How did you meet?” A juicy sidebar story if she could make herself write it.
“I work with a program that brings theater to inner-city schools. Tana came to talk to the kids.” Her brown eyes went dreamy. “He was spellbinding. Had them eating out of his hand. Me too. Afterwards, he bought me a latte. We went out for Italian that night. I stayed over at his place . . . and never left.”
She chuckled. “Sounds slutty, right? I’m really not. Tana was only the second guy I ever slept with, which makes me a Hollywood anomaly. But as Julia said in Pretty Woman, I wanted the fairy tale.”
And she’d gotten it. Tana tracked water across the terrace and lifted her out of the chair. “Time to get wet, babe.”
Sasha’s shriek trailed her as he strode to the deep end and jumped in.
Kota flicked water at Chris. “I’d do the same, but you’d take a bite out of me.”
“A big juicy hunk.”
He shook his hair all over her instead. Tri abandoned ship, but Chris kind of liked it.
He slicked it back. “Ready to go home?”
“Tana made pie.”
Kota’s eyes popped. “Blueberry?”
“So I hear.”
He sat down kitty-corner from her and took a slug from her glass.
“Hey, get your own.”
“Nope, I gotta drive.”
“Right. We wouldn’t want to die in a fiery crash. At five miles an hour.”
“Golf cart accidents are no joke.” His cool, wet knee rubbed along her sticky thigh. “But just a heads-up. Sasha’s folks—”
“Don’t tell me.” She dropped her head in her hand. “They died in a fiery crash.”
“Nope. They were both at the wedding. Her father gave away the bride. But they’re heavy-duty drinkers . . . even though her brother died in a fiery crash.”
Chris felt the ache. She eyed Sasha’s drink morosely.
Kota slid it toward her. “Taste it.”
She did. Tonic, no gin. “I would’ve sworn she was tipsy.”
“She gets contact drunk. But she hasn’t touched alcohol in years.”
“I’m glad. I really like her.” Sasha was kind and down to earth. And if her life looked perfect, especially after marrying Montana Rain, she had sorrow and demons and family trauma just like everyone else.
And like everyone else, she trusted her friends not to trumpet her business in the Los Angeles Sentinel.
Chris sucked her lime just to torture herself.
The newlyweds joined them, Sasha’s dress dripping. “Gotta change before pie.” She bumped Chris’s arm. “Come along?”
Inside, the big house was like the guesthouse on steroids. Sasha’s bedroom could swallow half of Chris’s wing, with room for dessert.
“Can you believe it?” said Sasha, throwing out an arm. “The view alone.”
Chris went to the window. The sun had set. A filament of gold lined the horizon, where indigo sky met inky sea.
Sasha ducked into a closet, talking to Chris through the open door. “I’m still freaked out by Kota’s thing with the horses. Freaked out in a good way. But still.”
“It’s amazing, all right.”
“You’ve got some of that too. That way with animals.”
Chris scratched Tri’s tickle spot. “I’m going to miss them.”
“Why? You’ve got Kota wrapped around your finger.”
If only it was that simple.
Sasha emerged in a white sundress that set off her olive skin. “Remember what I said? Loyal as Labradors.” She led the half-mile hike to the kitchen. “Wait’ll you meet Verna and Roy. You’ll want to move in with them.”
“I already met them. They’re great.”
Sasha stopped in her tracks. “You met them?”
“Kota brought Verna backstage, then he took me to see both of them at his house.” She grinned. “Verna’s inquisitive, isn’t she?”
Sasha’s face lit up. “This is huge. Tana didn’t introduce me for three months. It was the final rite of passage, and I swear, if Verna had gone thumbs-down, I wouldn’t be standing here. She must’ve liked you too, or you wouldn’t be here either.” She rubbed her palms together, apparently planning the wedding.
“Hang on.” Hang the hell on. “It was ten minutes, tops.” But Roy did mention a wedding band. . .
“That’s plenty. Verna knows her own mind.” Sasha grabbed plates, Chris took the pie, and they headed for the terrace. “I can’t wait to tell Tana. He’s been so worried.”
“About what?”
“His brother, what else? Kota’s been depressed since we got engaged.” Sasha paused in the doorway. “The thing about Kota is, he’s a tender. You’ve probably figured that out, with the animals and all. But he tends people too. His folks, his friends. He’s been tending Tana ever since they were kids.”
“And now Tana doesn’t need him.”
“Tana will always need him. Just not in the same way.” Sasha gazed out at the two of them, heads together at the table, deep in discussion. “Right now they’re hashing out Tana’s next move. He wants to direct, but he’s been waiting for the right script. He thinks he’s found it. So does his agent. So do I. But it’s Kota’s approval he wants.”
“YOU’RE NOT STILL mad at me, are you, babe?” Kota flicked a glance at Christy’s profile, then back at the bumpy trail. She’d been silent since they left the big house.
“No, I’m not mad.” She stunned him with a brush of knuckles down his cheek, a tender touch.
He caught her hand and kissed it, then pressed it to his heart. “Tell me you’re glad you came,” he said impulsively. “To the island. To dinner.”
“I . . .” She hesitated. “Everything’s different than I expected.”
“In what way? What’s different?”
“You. Me. Everything.” She didn’t sound happy about it.
“How are you and me different?”
“You’re not an asshole. And I am.”
What the fuck?
“You’re not an asshole,” he said. That much he’d swear to.
“You don’t really know me, Kota.”
“I know plenty. I know you were pissed off when we got to the big house, but you put it aside for Sasha’s sake. I know my brother thinks you walk on water. You love animals and they love you. My folks like you. Hell, Ma even asked you to lunch.”
None of that seemed to help. In fact, she pulled her hand from his grasp and sat on it.
He didn’t know what to make of her. In his book, it was a magical night. He’d begun to believe that everybody was right; he truly was smitten with her.
He struggled to keep his tone light. “What else you got?”
“Nothing. I got nothing.” It came across dolefully.
He stroked her hair. “What happened, honey? Did Sasha say something to upset you?”
“Sasha’s the nicest person I’ve ever met.” Like it was tragic.
“Then what’s the matter?”
Instead of answering, she buried her nose in Tri’s neck. And Kota’s heart, so full a moment before, shriveled like a raisin.
When they got inside, he took her shoulders. “Sweetheart. Talk to me.”
She wouldn’t meet his eyes. “I’m just tired. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
And she left him standing alone, with the best night of his life in pieces at his feet.
I’M AN ASSHOLE, I’m an asshole, I’m an asshole.
Chris typed it line after line. It was that or nothing, because about the wedding, the newlyweds, and the honeymoon, she couldn’t summon a word.
Talk about writer’s block.
Stepping away from the blinking cursor, she stood in the center of the room, not knowing which way to turn. Out the window, only black. As black as her heart. As black as ink on a page.
Out the door, only pain. She couldn’t face Kota. She’d starve to death in her room, because she couldn’t look into his eyes again.
She tried rolling her neck, but it was practically paralyzed, as if her head was a bottle cap screwed onto her shoulders by the strongest man on earth.
“What’s wrong with me?” she asked Tri.
He licked her chin, a kiss she didn’t deserve.
“Why aren’t you with Kota? He rescued you. He rescued me.” She gripped her neck with one hand. “But this time he took in a traitor, didn’t he? A spy. A sneak. What would Verna say about that? What would any of them say?”
She released her neck to shove her hand through her hair. “What would Mom say? Damn the torpedoes and get the story, that’s what she’d say.”
Or would she?
Chris’s pulse picked up speed. “Wait a minute. Mom never lied for a story. She never pretended to be someone she wasn’t.”
She paced the room. “Mom had pride. Self-respect. She got the story through grit and determination, not deception and deceit. She was a credit to her profession.”
Stopping at the window, Chris ignored the darkness outside, staring at her reflection instead, seeing Emma in the depths of her own eyes.
“My God.” The truth crystalized, clear as a diamond. “Mom would hate this. She wouldn’t be proud of me at all.”