By the time seven o’clock rolled around, it actually felt good to step outside into the sticky summer heat. Delaney drew a deep breath, savoring the way the hot air warmed her from the inside out. In the hours she’d been shut up in the icebox that was Beau’s office, she had managed to organize his entire collection of invoices, quotes, and catalogs, but had yet to tackle the client profiles she wanted to create.
“You about ready?”
Her stomach flipped at the sound of Beau’s voice behind her. She turned and smiled. “I’m ready.”
His answering grin warmed her more than the July sun, which conversely made her shiver. Damn, but he looked good with tan skin and sun-lightened hair. She was already starting to forget the way he had looked in his city clothes. She had always thought he looked good dressed so sharply, but she really liked the way the simply gray T-shirt he’d changed into draped his long torso. Even the loose fit of his worn jeans appealed to her.
“Good, because I’m starving,” he drawled as he strode toward his F-150, trusting her to follow.
It was a short drive back to town, which was every bit as quaint as she remembered during her harrowing drive yesterday. More so, actually. She leaned toward the open window for a better view, ignoring the wisps of hair that blew across her forehead. There were easily four times as many flower boxes and planters today as there were yesterday. Freshly hung flags decorated the top of every lamppost, with Welcome to Honeysuckle Hill written in crisp black letters against the American flag motif background. At the end of the street, a man climbed up a ladder to hang the last one as a trio of others looked on. Delaney squinted. If she wasn’t mistaken, one of the two women was Georgia.
Beau pulled up in front of the diner, and when Delaney unbuckled her seatbelt, he held up a hand. “I already put the order it. I’ll just be a minute.”
“We’re not eating here?”
He shook his head. “I have something a little less gossipy in mind.” He tipped his chin toward the dinner, and she had to laugh when she saw no fewer than seven people looking back with interest. “Unless you want to be the center of attention while you eat.”
Not a chance. She’d had just about enough gossip about her to last a lifetime. “I’ll just wait here,” she said, settling back against the leather to wait.
It wasn’t thirty seconds before a man walked up to her window. Even though he was in civilian clothes this time, Delaney recognized him as the cop from yesterday and smiled.
“Well, look who it is,” he said, his pale blue eyes crinkling at the corner as he grinned and tipped his ball cap. “Officer Owen Brantley, at your service. Since you’re in Beau’s truck, I take it you made it to his garage in one piece yesterday.”
“Just barely,” she said, shaking her head. “If it weren’t for your help, I’d probably be stuck halfway to Georgia by now.”
He leaned against the doorframe, radiating an easy confidence. “That would have been a damn shame. Glad I could help. Did you find your way to the Beavertail last night? The motel in Buckley ain’t bad, but it’s got nothing on Honeysuckle Hill’s hospitality.”
Heat flushed her cheeks as she debated how to answer that. She did not want to give the wrong impression. “Actually, Georgia Rodney invited me to stay with them. Beau and I are acquaintances from school, so she insisted I stay.”
Officer Brantley’s left eyebrow hitched up. “Is that so? Well, it’s a small world.”
The diner door pushed open with a jingle of bells and they both glanced that way to see Beau walk out with two plain white bags full of food. He slowed when he saw them talking, and for some reason, a flash of guilt zipped through Delaney. Which was ridiculous—it wasn’t like she was doing anything wrong.
“Owen,” he said with a curt nod.
“Beau,” the officer replied easily. “Glad to hear y’all are taking care of . . .” he trailed off, looking askance for her name.
“Delaney,” she piped up.
“Glad to hear y’all are taking good care of Delaney here, especially since I sent her your way.”
Climbing into the truck, Beau spared a grunt of acknowledgement.
“Will you be in town long?” Owen asked Delaney when it was clear that was all he was going to get from Beau.
She grimaced. “About a week, unfortunately. Waiting on a part.”
Owen’s grin was warm and definitely welcoming. Honestly, he could have been a stand in for Paul Walker back in the day. “Well then, I hope to see you again, Miss Delaney. Hopefully sooner rather than later.”
Beau started the car and revved the engine a few times. “Don’t hold your breath, Brantley. She’s picking up the slack in the office now that my mother is throwing herself into getting the town ready for the contest, so she won’t have much free time.”
Owen’s eyes cut over to meet Beau’s, and whatever he saw there made him straighten and step back. The flirtatious air of only moments earlier seemed to evaporate into thin air. It was a subtle change, but definite. Tipping his hat to Delaney, he said, “Enjoy your stay, ma’am. Good to see you, Beau.” With an affectionate pat on the hood, he turned and walked away.
She blinked a few times, then turned to Beau. “What the heck was that all about?”
“What?” he said innocently, putting the car in reverse.
She gestured toward Owen’s receding figure. “That. One minute he’s pure hospitality, the next he’s backing away as though a bear was in front of him.” If she didn’t know any better, she’d think that he’d just told Owen to back off.
“No idea. Put your seatbelt on—where we’re going, there’s going to be a few bumps along the way.”
“But why—”
“I’ve known Owen since we were both in diapers, and he doesn’t need to be hassling you when you’ll be gone in a week.”
“He seemed nice. He certainly wasn’t hassling me.” She didn’t have any real desire to pursue anything with the man, but she didn’t like Beau acting like a protective older brother.
“Noted. Next time he schmoozes you, I’ll stay out of it. Now, buckle up.”
A few bumps turned out to be a mile-long stretch of dirt road that was rutted so thoroughly, it felt like there were more holes than road. But just when she was about to complain, they crested a ridge and their destination came into view.
“That’s beautiful,” she exclaimed, popping off her seatbelt and jumping onto solid ground for a better look. A small lake stretched out before them, its mirror glass surface reflecting the vivid blue sky and towering trees edging three quarters of the shore. The other quarter was a lined by tall, pale green grass.
“Yeah, it’s not all bad out here in the country.” He grabbed the bags in one hand and a blanket from the back in the other before joining her on the path that led to the water. “I’ve been coming here since I was knee high to a grasshopper. My brother and I spent most of our summers with my grandparents in Birmingham, so we never did much swimming here, but I’ve explored just about every square foot of the woods around it.”
They fell into step beside one another, following the path that sloped down to the water. She held a hand out to her side, letting the tall grass caress her palms. “You spent summers in the city? Don’t people generally do the opposite?”
He shrugged. “My parents really wanted us to have a close relationship with my grandparents, and that was when we were out of school. Or so they said. Personally, I think they wanted the house to themselves,” he said with a small chuckle.
“So did it work?”
“It did. My grandmother spoiled us rotten, and Granddaddy would take us to the office with him on occasion, doing his damnedest to convince us to come work with him one day.”
“Well, his diabolical plan worked,” she teased, cutting a playful glance his way.
In less than a month, he would be back in his city clothes, renting another city apartment, and starting his preordained position. It should have been easy to picture—it was the life he’d told her was coming for years, but at that moment, with the open fields surrounding them and nothing but crickets to serenade them, the image was fuzzy at best.
She liked him here, in his home environment. He fit here.
“Yeah, I suppose it did. But that wasn’t all we did together. Sometimes, on the rare nights he was home early, he’d take us out back to work on his old Model T, which has a permanent home in the carriage house.” Beau shook his head. “Twelve summers and he never even finished the engine rebuild. I should ask him when I get back how it’s coming.”
“Is that where your dad picked up what I’m assuming was a love for cars?”
They reached the shore, and she held the bags for him while he spread the blanket. From the feel of it, he’d ordered enough food for an army.
“I guess so. I never really asked, though.” He shook his head, pensive for a moment, before taking the food back and setting it on the blanket. “There are a lot of things I never thought to ask my dad. You just never imagine he won’t be there someday.”
Before she could think of something appropriately consoling to say, he spread his hands and smiled. “All right—let’s eat!”
***
There were a lot of things Beau was choosing not to analyze today. Like, why he suddenly wanted to disown his old friend Owen. Or why he decided to take Delaney here for dinner instead of working on the Chevy tonight.
Or why he didn’t seem to mind the prospect of her helping him out at the shop. When they were out here together, eating barbeque on the shore of his old stomping grounds, he could remember all the reasons they had been friends and forget how things had ended. That night at the party, that cringe-worthy text exchange the next day . . . it was easier to pretend they had never happened. She seemed content to do the same, chatting about everything and nothing while they ate.
As he swallowed the last bit of banana pudding, he leaned back on his elbows and looked at her. “So let’s hear it. Why are you moving all the way to Florida when you’ve lived your entire life in Birmingham?”
Delaney grimaced and set down her half-eaten slice of lemon meringue pie. “Ugh, do you really want to hear it? It’s a certified sob story—every man’s worst nightmare.”
“Try me.”
“All right, but you asked for it.” She drew her knees up to her chest, wrapping her arms around them in a loose hug. “That whole thing with my mother and losing the business was just the icing on the cake at that point. The straw that broke the camel’s back. The boulder, really,” she said with a hollow laugh.
It was probably more like a Mack truck than a boulder, but he wasn’t going to interrupt her thoughts. He waited quietly as she looked out towards the woods for a moment, her blue eyes not really seeming to focus on anything in particular. When she met his gaze again, there was a self-deprecating half smile turning up one corner of her mouth.
“As you know, Carlton was a cheating asshole.”
Beau nodded. “Agreed.” He’d heard all kinds of rumors beforehand, but it wasn’t until he’d heard from the bastard’s own drunken mouth about his latest conquest that Beau had gone to Delaney.
“Well, I left my wallet at his place one night, and when I came to get it at lunch the next day, I caught him red-handed in bed.”
He shook his head in disgust before taking a sip of his drink. He hated that Delaney had to see that.
“With two women.”
Beau nearly choked on his iced tea. “What the hell did you do?” Visions of shotguns and naked women climbing from the balcony briefly flitted through his mind.
“I took off my ring, set it on the dresser, and walked out.”
He raised a brow. “That’s it?”
“That’s it.” She gave a little roll of her shoulders before shooting him a sly little grin. “Well, other than gathering up all the clothes the ladies had conveniently shed in the living room and donating them to the local women’s shelter. And dropping his keys down the garbage disposal. But that’s all.”
“That’s more like it. Did they know he was engaged?”
“They were my former sorority sisters, so I’m going to say yes. I remember one in particular telling me how very lucky I was to have landed a man like Carlton.” She shuddered, as though the very thought made her sick.
“Wow. Okay, then. So, you break off the engagement, and then what happened?” The situation sucked, but it didn’t exactly warrant cutting all ties with everything she’d ever known.
“Carlton happened. I had planned to break the engagement and keep the details to myself. It was more than a little humiliating, and who wants that kind of drama in their lives, right? Well, in a pre-emptive strike, Carlton told anyone who would listen that he’d decided to end the engagement after learning that I’d been unfaithful, and that I’d been so enraged, I’d threatened to spread rumors that he’d been the one cheating on me.”
“Also known as the truth?” he said, his tone dry as tinder.
“Ah, but what is truth in the face of perception?” She shook her head, lingering disbelief etched in her features. “I learned real quick what people are willing to believe about you.”
Anger flooded Beau’s chest as he pushed up to a sitting position. “People swallowed that BS?”
“Hook, line, and sinker. When you are a Spencer in Birmingham, what you say, goes.”
“What a freaking weasel.” If Carlton stood before him now, Beau wasn’t sure he could be responsible for what he did to the man. “But still, surely your friends believed you. Anyone who knows you knows you’d never do anything like that.”
She gave a half-hearted snort. “I’m ashamed to say that over the last two years, I’d hung out less and less with ‘my’ friends and more with ‘our’ friends, who were basically his friends. He was from a different class, and he liked to think that he was elevating my status. Not a single one of those ‘friends’ stood by me.”
She shook her head, clearly disgusted with herself. “Besides, many of my old friends had moved either before or after college. That’s how I got the job in Florida, actually. My friend Nicole pulled some major strings for me with her company.”
He nodded, finally understanding how Florida fit in to all this. At least it wasn’t as random as it had originally sounded. “What about your mother? That was before the fallout, right?”
Hurt flitted across her features. “Oh, Mama was giving me tips on how to win him back. She let me know in no uncertain terms how hard it was to find a man of Carlton’s wealth and status. She even told me that her biggest regret was flipping out and kicking her first husband to the curb after he’d cheated on her.” She scrunched her nose in disgust. “I didn’t point out that my dad was husband number two, so in that scenario I wouldn’t be here.”
Good Lord, that woman was a piece of work. “Nice.”
“Yeah. Looking back, it’s hard to believe how close we once were.”
The whole thing sounded like one big cluster. His chest squeezed at the thought of Delaney being so thoroughly alone during it all. “I know we parted on crappy terms, but you could have called me.”
She threw him a dubious look. “You were the last person I would have turned to. I was too embarrassed after the way I’d treated you when you came to me with what I know now was truth. I was the worst friend ever, and I didn’t know how to make it right. Plus, Carlton was claiming that I had cheated on him with you back in December. I was stupidly worried talking to you would somehow give the claim merit in other people’s eyes, but as you know, people ended up believing it anyway.”
Slimy bastard. It just got better and better. Beau was beginning to see why a new start in Florida held such appeal for her. The guy was going to make one hell of a defense attorney for the rich and guilty.
“The same month you were telling me to go to hell was the month he claims you were cheating with me? That’s kinda ironic.”
“Tell me about it.” She sent him a conciliatory glance. “But for the record, I called you a lot of awful things, but I never told you to go to hell. I was pissed, but I never hated you.”
He lifted a brow. “Um, that’s exactly what you said—or rather texted.”
Delaney cocked her head, confusion knitting her brow. “What text? I’ve never said or written those words in my life. I was tempted to with Carlton, but even then my Southern Baptist roots were showing.”
“What text?” he asked incredulously. “The text you sent me the next day basically telling me you never wanted to see me again.” It was hard to imagine her forgetting it. He sure as hell hadn’t.
“What?” She shot to her feet in a flurry of peach cotton and tan skin. “What freaking text was that? I never sent anything like that.”
He stood as well, totally confused now. “I sent you a text apologizing for sticking my nose in your business, and asking if we could get together for lunch to smooth things over—my treat. You texted back telling me to go to hell and lose your number. Surely you weren’t still drunk the next morning and forgot all this.”
Pulling her phone from her dress pocket, she tapped it a few times then shoved it under his nose. “There, see? Nothing.”
He reared back a little so he could focus on the screen. The last text it showed was one from her saying See you there, which was sent the night of the party before everything hit the fan.
Wordlessly, he pulled his own phone out of his back pocket, scrolled through to their last text, and held it up for her to see. As she read, he watched her cheeks get redder and her eyes more and more narrow.
“That asshole. Carlton must have intercepted your text. I was over at his house that morning. I can’t believe he’d do something like that, then delete the evidence.” Letting out a growl of frustration, she threw her phone to the blanket and stalked away.
Shoving his cell back in his pocket, Beau took off after her, catching up in a few strides. “Don’t give him the satisfaction of being mad. It’s over. No big deal.” She didn’t need to know that, even as he said the words, he was picturing himself throttling her ex.
She rounded on him so fast, he nearly crashed into her. “No big deal? No big deal? I thought I irreparably ruined our friendship. He stole my chance to have made up with you.” Shaking her head, she looked up at him with huge, troubled eyes. “God, Beau, how is it that you even talked to me yesterday? You must have thought me the biggest bitch east of the Mississippi.”
The truth settled in his chest as he looked down at her. She hadn’t sent that text. She hadn’t wanted to forget she’d ever known him. She didn’t really believe all those things she’d said to him. He ran a hand through his hair, processing it all.
“Well, if you remember, I wasn’t exactly cordial. And I never thought you were a bitch. I just thought you were blind.”
“I must have been blind, deaf, and dumb to have been in denial about Carlton for so long. God, I could kill him right now.”
He settled his hands on her shoulders, his touch light. “Let it go, Dee. You can’t blame yourself for believing the best of someone.”
“But I can for believing the worst.” She reached up and covered his hands with her own. “I’m sorry, Beau. I should have believed you.”
Her hands were warm over his, just like the curve of her shoulders beneath his palms. The hot, humid air was heavy around them, dampening their skin with a fine sheen of sweat. He swallowed. “Don’t worry about it. Water under the bridge.”
“Are you sure?”
“Positive,” he said, his voice slightly husky.
For the space of a few quiet breaths he held her gaze. He found himself wanting to slide his hands down her arms and around her waist, wanting to tug her closer to him. What would she do if he leaned down and kissed her?
He really, really wanted to find out.
“Come on then,” she said, catching him off guard as she dropped her hands and stepped back.
“What?” He blinked, trying to get his wits together. His brain was in a whole different place right then.
She smiled, a wide, honest smile this time, and slipped her hand in his. Tugging, she pulled him toward the water. “Come on, I’m ready to wash the memories and the sweat away. Enough with the sob story and regrets.”
Still unsure of her meaning, he stood a little dumbfounded as she paused at the water’s edge and kicked off her shoes. His eyes widened as she unzipped her dress, pulled it over her head, and tossed it aside.
“What in the world are you doing?” he demanded, forcing himself to look up from the smooth expanse of newly exposed skin just above her bright pink bra.
With a waggle of her eyebrows, she jumped into the lake, sending up a splash of lukewarm water that peppered his shirt and jeans. She came up laughing a moment later. “Making new memories for both of us. Now put on your big girl panties and get in here!”
He hesitated for all of a half a second before grasping the bottom of his shirt. Swimming together with a mostly naked Delaney suddenly seemed like a very good idea. After all, who was he to leave a friend hanging?