Lillo awoke sometime in the middle of the night; she’d been waking up off and on ever since she lay down. Sometimes groggily, as waves of regret roiled through her. Regret for her past, for her failings, for telling her friends the awful truth. Sometimes shaking, or holding absolutely still, forgetting for a moment where she was, thinking Kyle was lying beside her still, or that she was sleeping on a cot in the residents’ room at the hospital. Then she would revisit Kyle’s death, her fall from grace, her acceptance of it, until she drifted off again. This time she awoke with a start, aware that someone was walking across the floor.
She stiffened. She always locked the front door, a habit she’d picked up in college. Then she remembered she’d left the door unlocked because Allie hadn’t returned when they’d all gone to bed. Lillo didn’t move but listened as the steps tiptoed down the hall and went into the bathroom.
She groped for her phone. After three a.m. Well, good for Allie. She hoped she would find happiness. As for Lillo . . . she just wanted to find sleep.
Everyone seemed a little tired when Lillo padded over to the kitchen the next morning. She sat down and braced her elbows on the counter while she watched Jess and Diana work, team-like, making the coffee.
Jess glanced over her shoulder. “We have three eggs, half a loaf of bread, and a package of bacon I found in the freezer. We’re going to attempt French toast.” She yawned, narrowed her eyes at Lillo. “Is that okay?”
“Sure.”
“Then what?”
“Nothing.”
Jess turned and leaned on the pass-through counter. “That’s not a nothing face. What gives?” Her expression changed and she reached across the counter and pulled Lillo’s hand toward her. “You’re not upset with us about yesterday and finding the DVD and butting into your life, are you?”
Lillo shook her head. “No. It’s just . . . nothing.”
“You wish we hadn’t and now you don’t know how to go on from here?”
Lillo pulled her hand away. “Is that coffee ready yet?”
Jess took a mug out of the dish drain and poured Lillo a cup, but instead of handing it to her, she held on. “Do you?”
Lillo thought about it, but mainly she was just awed by Jess. Since Jess had come to Lighthouse Beach, Lillo could see glimpses of the person she had become, or at least said she’d become during college and her years working in Manhattan. She was fun to be around, had managed to shed her insecurity. In the old days, faced with the slightest confrontation, she would back off, but today she was standing across the counter looking Lillo dead in the eye. Waiting for an answer.
“How do you do it?” Lillo asked her.
“Do what?”
“We kidnap you from your wedding, after the mother of all confrontations with your parents, drive to the back of beyond, where you’re living without any of the creature comforts. You sent your father’s goons packing. Before, any of these things would have sent you into a downward spiral.”
“You really want to know?”
Lillo desperately wanted to know, not just for Jess but for herself. Because she was getting near to bottoming out and she didn’t know what the hell to do to stop it.
“Practice.” Jess finally pushed Lillo’s coffee over to her, and lifted her own cup. “You only knew me as the sad kid who would gradually peek out of her shell as the weeks went by only to succumb to her former life each August. My parents had the advantage of time in those days. I’d start believing in myself and they’d snatch me away from those dangerous waters before I could understand what I could be. What I really was. But that changed in college. I spent more time without them than with them. And I began to live as that other me, the summer me, all the time.”
She put her mug down. Looked into its center. “I used to pretend I was you.”
“We used to pretend we were sisters,” Lillo corrected her.
“I said that, but I wanted to be you. To live here. To have your parents for my parents. Mac as a neighbor. By the time I moved to Manhattan to work, I was spending almost all my time away from the family. More time being a productive independent woman than the Parkers’ disappointing daughter. I started becoming the person who I imagined myself as. Not you. Each time I had to reconnect with my parents, it got a little easier to return to that person I’d become.”
“Then how did you end up about to marry what’s-his-name?”
“James. They swept in like something from Harry Potter, all of them, the sibs, all of them. It was a done deal before I even heard about it. I’d gone out with him a few times, not realizing it was just part of the hostile takeover. Megabucks and corporate power on the table, and me the pawn.
“They all applied the pressure, stayed in my face, and I caved. It’s like an alcoholic or a drug user. One misstep and I was screwed. I knew it, but I just kept being sucked down, and I couldn’t get out of it by myself.” Jess stopped, blinked furiously. “I needed my posse. And you came through.
“We’re your posse, Lillo, if you want us to be. I got my life back; you can get yours, too, if you want it. If you let us help.”
“Well, thanks, but I’ve got a life.”
She watched Jess shrink and could kick herself for causing that little twist of pain even for a second. “Sorry. I’ve got to get dressed and get over to the clinic. They need files filed. Floors mopped.”
She started to stand but Diana stopped her. “Look, we’re reaching the end of our vaca. I’ve got to get back to work, Allie needs to see her kid, and Jess . . .”
“I’m working on it,” Jess said.
“And Jess has to do something she won’t tell us about.”
“Your point being?” Lillo asked while kicking herself for asking.
“I think we should help you clean out that storeroom. We’ll send the presents back or give them to Goodwill or the community center. We’ll toss whatever’s holding you down. And rearrange the rest so that the space is livable.”
“I’ll do it. I just haven’t had time.”
Diana fisted her hands on her hips. “A year? It will take us an afternoon, and you’ll be glad we did it when it’s done.” She dropped her hands. “There may be a few tears involved. But hell, that’s what your friends are for.”
“Don’t you have something better to do on your week off than to clean my house? Weren’t you going to a spa?”
“Look, I’ve—we’ve—all had a better time than we would’ve had at Jess’s wedding or at a spa. Why not let us do this? Besides, if we don’t, when we all come back for a visit, Allie and I will still be sleeping in the same room, and she snores.”
“She doesn’t!” Jess exclaimed.
“Not really, that was just an excuse. Best I could do on short notice.”
“Diana’s right, Lillo; look what this trip has done for me. You might as well take advantage of Team Road Trip while you have us. It’ll be fun.”
“Like a root canal. I have to go to the clinic.” Lillo stood and hurried to the back of the house to retrieve clothes from her bedroom. She’d go to the clinic and she’d stay there until they closed. When she finally came back to the cottage, they’d have to have dinner, and besides, it would be too dark to carry stuff outside. She took her clothes into the bathroom, showered, changed, and grabbed her rain poncho and boots from the closet, then left the house with a “Don’t touch my things while I’m gone.”
She was immediately engulfed in a thick layer of fog. She’d be lucky to find her way across the parking lot without losing her way, wandering out to the jetty, and falling into the depths.
“Ha, wishful thinking.” And knowing she was acting like an ungrateful bitch and hoping her friends would see through her and still be there when she returned, she hurried toward town and the clinic.
“Well, shit,” Diana said, passing a plate of French toast and bacon to Jess, across the counter, where she’d gone to sit after Lillo’s dramatic exit. “Eat,” she said. “I didn’t spend the morning playing Suzy Homemaker to have everyone turn down my poor attempts.”
“I should’ve minded my own business,” Jess said, making no effort to even pick up a fork.
Diana picked it up and handed it to her. Picked up her own. Looked down at her plate. “God, this looks awful.”
“It looks delicious,” Jess countered.
“What’s burning?” Allie croaked from the hall door.
“You sound like a foghorn,” Jess said.
“In keeping with the situation,” Allie said. “You can’t even see the lighthouse from here. Would a ship have been able to see its light through this kind of fog?”
“Not my area of expertise,” Diana said. “Let’s just say I’m glad not to be a ship dependent on it today. Want French toast?”
“Oh, that’s what that is,” Allie said, snagging a piece of bacon off Jess’s plate.
“Hey,” Jess said, and took a piece from Diana’s plate. Diana reached across to the opposite counter and placed the whole platter of bacon between them.
Allie made herself a plate and coffee and carried it around to sit beside Jess.
“Where’s Lillo?”
“On her way to the clinic. In a huff,” Diana added. “Jess put it to her.”
“I did not. I was trying to be helpful.”
“What happened?” Allie asked.
“First tell us why you sneaked back in the middle of the night last night?” Jess said. “And I hope it’s X-rated.”
Allie sighed and smiled. And Diana wondered, What the hell?
“I went for a walk with Nando. We talked . . . about everything.”
“And . . . ?” Jess encouraged.
“And he kissed me . . . a few times. And then he walked me home.”
“Holy mother, for crying out loud, did you—”
Allie shook her head. “It was awkward.”
“Awkward?” Diana rolled her eyes. “It’s a simple process of tabs and slots.”
Jess slapped her hands over her face. “Diana.”
“Well, it is. You guys are such prudes.”
And listen to me, Diana thought. Talk about awkward. She couldn’t wait to get to the stables each day. Was in a constant state of indecision while she was there, and left wondering what had, or more to the point, hadn’t happened. At least Allie had gotten kissed.
“Really, people, who ever heard of four single women taking a road trip and not one—let me repeat—not one of them gets laid.”
Jess and Allie both turned on her.
“You mean you really are mucking out stables and horseback riding?” Jess asked.
Diana covered her eyes with her palm. “It’s so humiliating. I think I’m losing my touch.”
“Well, in your defense, I think that man has issues.”
Diana gave her a look. “All men have issues. Usually to do with size. I may be wrong, but in this case I don’t think that’s it.”
“What happened after I left?” Allie asked, reaching for the syrup.
Jess shrugged. “We had another round of beers, Doc and Ian left, we stayed a few more minutes, and then we left.”
“I swear I felt like spring break at the beach,” Diana said, “though it’s getting hard to remember that far back.”
“Oh bull,” Jess said. “You’ve been to the stables twice now.”
“Three times if you don’t count the first day, when he practically ran me off with a shotgun.”
“He has a gun?”
“No, that was just an expression.” At least she didn’t think Ian had a gun, though on second thought, he probably would have to. So he could put down wounded animals and things. The French toast was beginning to get to her stomach.
“Well, if the fog doesn’t lift, you’ll be stuck mucking out stables all day.”
Allie’s eyes rounded. “Don’t you dare go out riding in this, you could go off a cliff or something.”
“Same goes for you, no motorcycle rides.” Diana smiled wickedly, she hoped. “Maybe just curl up with a certain CPA-mechanic and . . .”
“Well, we did talk about maybe doing something today, but he has work to do. And I don’t want to neglect my friends.”
“Oh hell, I’d drop you guys in a New York minute to get a quick one in the hay.”
“Not hay,” Jess said. “You don’t know who’s been sleeping there.”
“Or is still sleeping there,” Allie added.
Diana barked out a laugh. She really did love these nutcases. “I have no intention of deserting you. Besides, I told Lillo that we were going to meet back here later and help her clean out the storage room.”
“You didn’t.”
“Yep, I did.” Diana stretched. “It didn’t go over really well.”
Jess leaned on her elbow. “And then I told her . . . Hell, I don’t even know what I said, but she bolted. We may have done more harm than good.”
“Maybe, but we’re cleaning out that storeroom whether she gets back or not.”
“Diana, we couldn’t. You wouldn’t.”
“Look, how much longer can we stay? . . . Wait—that sounded weird. I’m having a great time, but I have to get back to the office.”
“And I need to go home,” Allie said. “Last time I called home, I told them that I wanted to take care of Mac’s eye situation, but I’d try to catch the red-eye Sunday night.”
They both looked at Jess. “Well, I seem to be unmarried, unemployed, and familyless. Is that even a word?”
“You can always come work—”
Jess held up her hand. “I know, and I may, but I sort of have an idea . . . that maybe I’ll stay on here for a while longer. Work on some ideas about stuff and things.”
“Oh my God. That was vague even for you. Must mean there’s a dynamite idea percolating in that convoluted brain of yours.”
“Maybe. Anyway, I hate to see you go, but I’ll be around to hold down the fort, as they say.”
“Have you told Lillo?”
“I haven’t mentioned it. But if she needs her space back, I’ll stay at Mac’s.”
“You really are working on something, aren’t you?”
“Maybe. Thank you for making that delicious breakfast. I’m going to drop by Mac’s for a minute, and see if she wants to come here for dinner.”
“Or invites us to her place,” Diana added.
“Or invites us there. Then I have to go into town.”
“Why?” Allie asked.
“Well, I’m getting these ‘someone is trying to get into your bank accounts’ notices. Must be dear old Dad. I changed the passwords, but he probably already has his hackers on it. So I need to get to a secure server and change my passwords again. Then get on to the bank and freeze all activity. Which can be a bitch. I’m hoping no one is using the computer at the community center.”
Diana sighed. “It’s come to this. Dial-up. What they need here is connectivity.”
“Tell me about it. But it’s worth it if I can keep my father busy enough not to come galloping here to disrupt everybody’s life.”
Diana gave her the look her horse metaphor deserved.
“You think he’ll send those men again?” Allie asked.
“Oh, definitely, if he can’t get to my money.”
“I’m sure he cares about more than just your money.”
Diana and Jess looked deadpan at her.
“Or not,” Allie reluctantly agreed.
“Not,” Diana said. “I’m sorry, Jess, but you know it’s true.”
“Yeah, I do. And the really sad thing? He doesn’t really care about my money. He doesn’t need it. He just needs to be the winner. And you know, now that I’ve finally given in to the truth—the real truth—not his version of it, I feel ridiculously fine about it.”
Allie looked like she might cry.
“It’s all right, Al. My brothers and sister and I lived in luxury, had a mother who usually loved us. And plenty of nannies who did for real. And I’ve realized, now that I’ve had time to think, he didn’t love any of my siblings either. They were just possessions, just like me. They’re still shackled to the company store. I’m free at last, free at last. It’s empowering.”
“Great,” Diana said. “Do you feel empowered enough to stop at the liquor store and carry all the bottles back in the fog?”
Jess laughed. “I love you. And absolutely. I’ll pick up wine and provisions if you’ll make a list.” She checked her watch. “It’s after ten and I have to make another stop after the center, though I have a feeling everybody will be running late today.”
She headed down the hall to get dressed.
“You might as well go, too, Diana,” Allie said. “I can see you’re chomping at the bit to get to the stables.”
“What a fetchingly descriptive phrase.” Diana snapped her teeth and tossed her head. “What about the dishes?”
“I’ll do them, then I’m going to curl up with a book and look out the window to where I can’t see a damn thing, not even the lighthouse, and—”
“Wait for the studly CPA.”
Allie immediately grew serious. “Nothing is going to happen.”
“Why? Time’s a-wasting, girl. Seize the day, while you have the chance. And go home happy.” She went to their room to put on her last clean pair of new used jeans.
Allie was at the sink when she came out. “You’d better put a jacket on over that sweatshirt. The weather can get raw.”
“How do you know?”
“I’m from California, land of fog and damp.”
“I thought you were the land of sunshine and movie stars.”
“Movie stars, yes; sunshine, I think, is Florida. Take mine. It’s on the peg by the door.”
“You may need it.”
Allie flashed a smile. It transformed her face and Diana suddenly realized it was a younger smile, a smile she’d grown accustomed to in school but hadn’t really seen since they’d reconnnected this week.
Damn. She didn’t want to admit it, but there was something weird about this town. It made you feel different. Believe in odd things. Caught you off guard, which was not a smart place for Diana Walters, CEO of a cutting-edge tech company, to find herself. Not a smart place at all.
The wet and the cold and the fog hit her the moment she stepped out of the cottage. Damn. They weren’t kidding when they called it pea-soup weather. This was ridiculous.
She was ridiculous. To go out walking in this weather, to stumble blindly up a country road in the cold and damp just to muck out some stables. Yeah, keep believing that one and she’d be sitting around the fireplace all winter with Lillo Gray, ex-physician.
So why wasn’t Lighthouse Beach working out for her?
She tripped over something in the road, realized she’d wandered onto the shoulder, where branches and other stuff had been brought down by the storm. She eased back to her left, felt the firm pavement under her feet. Realized she might have trouble seeing the sign to the stables. It was hard enough to see it in the sunlight.
She slowed down, peered into the denseness. It was like a smoke machine in a theater gone berserk and pumping noxious fumes over the audience as the curtain rises. The coughs and teary eyes that follow. Only this fog didn’t lift and it wasn’t noxious and it didn’t disperse, just hovered in the air, unmoving.
Had she missed the turnoff? It was impossible to tell. How long had she been walking? Her heart stuttered and she berated herself for her moment of fear. If she didn’t find the turnoff soon, she’d just turn around and go back to the cottage. It wasn’t like she was lost in the woods.
It came upon her like the roll of doom. She heard it, but before she could identify it or figure out its direction, it rose over her, barely lighter than the fog itself.
She threw up her arm to protect herself, but the scream died in her throat. She was knocked to the side; recognized Loki’s whinny as she hit the ground; heard the scrambling of hooves. But she couldn’t see a thing.
“Jesus! Where the hell are you? Don’t move.” Ian’s voice.
Diana froze, tried to tell him where she was, but her landing had knocked the air out of her. She gasped, wheezed. “Here,” she croaked.
She could see the white shroud moving above her and then something kicked her thigh.
“Shit.” Ian’s face came into view, eye level, two inches away.
“Are you fucking crazy?”
He was screaming at her. Music to her ears. She started to laugh.
“It isn’t funny. I could have killed you. I could’ve—” His voice broke and his face moved away. She was alone in the mist.
“Do not leave me,” she ordered. She’d meant to order, but it might have sounded like a plea. The fog was doing odd things to her voice.
“Just don’t move.” Ian’s disembodied voice echoed around her. Where was he?
She could hear him mumble and realized he was talking to Loki, not her. She tried to stand.
“I said don’t move.”
“Sorry, I thought you were talking to the horse.” She giggled, stifled the sound. She freaking giggled. What the hell was wrong with her? She hadn’t giggled even as a child. She took a deep breath. Pulled herself together. Hauled herself to her feet and came nose to chest with Ian Lachlan.
It was a good place to be, she decided.
“What are you doing out here?”
“Coming to the stables. Why are you riding in this fog?”
“I—I almost ran you down.” His voice sounded weak, breathless.
She swore he was shaking.
Damn. Sometimes a girl just needed to act. She slipped her arms around his waist and managed to find his mouth with hers. Not bad aim, when you couldn’t see shit.
And then she stopped commenting, stopped analyzing, gave up, and gave in.