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“Not until I met Caleb,” Faith said, with a smile.
“That was love, not a crush,” Leah objected. “You just didn’t realize it at first. Anyway, I took a chance. Zach obliged. Then he left. And yes, it hurt at the time but I was eighteen. I got over it.”
“And then you married Joey.”
“Joey was years later,” Leah said. “I’m not blaming Joey on Zach. Come to think of it though, there was a lot of champagne the night I first got together with Joey too.”
“Okay, in the future we’re finding you a different drink,” Faith said.
Leah laughed. “Sure.”
“So eighteen-year-old Leah had a crush on my brother. One she acted on. That still doesn’t explain what twenty-eight-year-old Leah is doing compounding her mistake.”
“I’m not sure I can explain it—though if you weren’t his sister you would appreciate that your brother is pretty hot…”
Faith made a face that suggested this was not an appealing concept.
“Hey, you said you were going to pretend you weren’t his sister,” Leah said. “And you started this whole conversation.”
“Ugh. Okay,” Faith flapped a hand at Leah, looking pained. “Go on. Zach is hot.”
“And, well, we get along. We always did. So I figured, he’s here and he’s hot and he’s leaving, so why not enjoy myself?” She shrugged. “It’s not like this island has been brimming with single men beating down my door since the divorce.”
That was the problem with growing up in a small community. You had pretty much worked out which of the local guys you had any chemistry with by the end of high school and then you weeded out the rest by your early twenties if you had any sense. Probably explained why people tended to marry young if they stuck around. After that, well, maybe you had to be like Mina and hope some hot strangers arrived in town.
Faith’s solution to this problem had been to sleep with guys off-island. But she got to travel a lot more than Leah did for Harper Inc. There were always tourists, but again, that was kind of tricky. All that dancing around trying to figure out if a guy was single—really single, not just island-holiday single, because she drew a hard line at sleeping with married men—and if he liked you, and then getting awkward first-night sex over with to get to the good stuff all within a week or two at most was a level of sexual wizardry that she just didn’t think she was up to any more.
Zach might be a tourist for all intents and purposes, but the rest of it was already established. She knew him. Knew they were good together. And knew he was leaving.
Faith was chewing a nail. So, she was worried.
Leah patted Faith’s knee. “Trust me, I’m doing this with eyes wide open. Zach and I have chemistry, but it’s not the lasting kind.”
“If you say so.”
“I know so,” Leah said. “So don’t worry. I won’t tell Zach you snooped around his tapes. And I’ll erase the offending portion. We’ll keep things discreet.”
Faith lifted an eyebrow. “Last time I checked, having sex in the recording booth probably didn’t fall under the category of discreet.”
“You’re ruining all my rock’n’roll fantasies,” Leah said. “And I’m sure these walls have plenty of stories to tell.”
“Yeah but most of them involve my dad or his best friends. So I don’t want to think about them. Just like I don’t want to think about Zach.”
“All right. I’ll save all the good gossip for Ivy.” Leah grinned.
“Thanks,” Faith said drily. “And now, I think we can declare this subject closed. Preferably forever.”
“Do you want me to tell Zach that you know?” Leah asked. Part of her wanted Faith to say no. Telling Zach she’d accidentally made a sex tape of them wasn’t going to be fun. But by the time he found out, the tape would be dead and buried.
“Do you think he’d want me to know?” Faith asked.
She could lie and say that Zach had been the one who’d wanted to keep it quiet. That would be easier. Faith wouldn’t be surprised. But Faith was her best friend. And Zach wasn’t the bad guy in this situation. “He wanted to tell you from the start. Didn’t want to sneak around you.”
“And you did?”
“I didn’t want you to get mad at him when he left,” Leah said.
“You really thought you could keep it a secret for a few months? Here on Lansing?” Faith shook her head.
