"Oh!" It was Owen's turn to look surprised. He smiled, his expression warm and entirely free of annoyance. "It was not a love match, Isabel. It was an arranged marriage orchestrated between our families." He turned his head and looked at Gill. His eyes softened, and Isabel held her breath, a cold knot tightening in her stomach. But then he turned back to her, and the raw, intense devotion shining in his eyes nearly knocked her off her chair. "Gill and I fell in love on an archaeological dig organized by Anna. I ended my marriage before we even so much as held hands, but..."
"But Debbi Wineberg is not one for allowing others to touch, or so much as look at, what she deems is hers," Gill's gentle voice came across the table.
Her kind eyes met Isabel's, and Isabel sucked in a sharp breath. She had spent the last twenty minutes imagining this womanlooking at her with academic malice, but instead, there was nothing but warmth in Gill's expression. Isabel suddenly felt a deep pang of regret for the hostile thoughts she had harbored the moment she learned Owen had once been in love with her.What on earth is wrong with you, Isabel?she scolded herself.You're acting like an insecure teenager.No, even as a teenager experiencing love for the very first time, she had never allowed herself to act this way. She gave herself a firm mental shake.
"What happened?" Isabel forced herself to ask, pushing her wild thoughts away to focus on the technical history.
"Dr. Wineberg tried to destroy us all," Anna told her, her voice flat and grim as the dark history of the Charleston dig finally began to unravel.
Isabel looked down at her hands, a sudden wave of self-consciousness softening the sharp edge of her posture. "I didn't know anything about this whole elaborate trap," she admitted as her eyes drifted across the table toward Linda. "I did find out about Dr. Wineberg, though. It was right after Penny, and I overheard Darius on the phone to Baxter."
Darius watched as a sudden, telltale pink flushed his younger sister's cheeks.
"We... uh... Penny and I, that is, also might have gone over to the diner and spied on Darius when he went to meet with Baxter and Dr. Wineberg for the very first time," Isabel confessed, her sheepish tone making Owen offer a quiet, amused cough beside her.
"Well, well. Now who is keeping people in the dark?" Darius teased, leaning forward on his elbows in a deliberate attempt to soften her defensive mood.
"That is absolutely not the same thing!" Isabel hissed, her eyes narrowing as she glared back at him. "From what we overheard on that phone call with Baxter, to you meeting them in the diner... all we knew was that you had lied to us about this trip being a simple vacation. And worse, you were lying to Linda by not letting her know who you really were." Her expression softened instantly as she turned to give Linda a deeply apologetic look. "I'm so sorry, Linda. I really was going to tell you."
"She really was," Darius backed her up, turning his head to offer Linda a warm, reassuring look. "Issy was furious with me."
"I can back that up, too," Penny chimed in from her seat, nodding in agreement.
"Isabel gave me exactly twenty-four hours to lay everything out and let you know the truth," Darius told Linda, his voice soft. "Or she was going to tell you herself."
"But he came to us not too long after our big blowup," Isabel continued, her gaze shifting back to Linda as she explained the timeline. "He told us he'd already made an appointment to meet with you and tell you everything that lunchtime."
"But then everything blew up in the hotel lobby with Baxter and Dr. Wineberg," Owen added, his calm, level voice pulling the focus back to the immediate crisis. "Which we still need a clear explanation for."
OWEN
Owen stared at the wooden table, his mind scrambling to catch up with the sheer speed of the last forty minutes. Seeing Gill step through the beach house door had hit him like a physical blow, scattering his thoughts into a chaotic haze.
His gaze flickered to her, tracing the quiet, familiar slope of her shoulders. She sat next to Baxter, her posture tense, leaning subtly into the developer’s space as if seeking a shield. Owen's jaw tightened. How on earth was she here? What was she doing with a slick operator like Baxter Johnson?
Just under an hour ago, he had been walking down the sunny sidewalk with Isabel, his fingers laced with hers, his thoughts light. Then the world had tilted. He remembered the sudden freeze when they spotted the figures in the alleyway, the frantic look on Maggie's face as she scrambled backward, and Michael charging across the street to cut off Debbi Wineberg and Baxter.
The moment Debbi’s eyes had locked onto his, Owen had felt a wave of cold disgust wash over him. She had pitched her voice low, using his first name like an intimate caress, trying to tether him to her in front of everyone. He had grabbed Isabel's handand hauled her away, ready to pack his bags and leave Sweet Blossom Bay behind if it meant keeping Debbi out of his life. He wanted no part of her venom.
But Michael had caught up to them, redirecting them straight to the beach house. Then Anna had walked in with her solemn warning, followed immediately by Gill.
Owen looked at Gill again. For ten years, he had carried the heavy, quiet grief of their ruined Charleston dig. He had loved her. He had watched his academic reputation burn to protect her from Debbi's vindictive plagiarism charges, and he had spent a decade believing a piece of his heart remained buried in those South Carolina ruins. He knew she would always hold a permanent place in his memory.
But as he sat there, feeling the solid, real warmth of Isabel’s hand gripping his beneath the table, Owen realized something profound. The old, agonizing ache he had carried for Gill was gone. The lingering pain had dissolved, leaving behind only a quiet, respectful nostalgia.
It was Isabel's presence beside him that stabilized his nerves now. Her fierce loyalty, her sharp mind, and the simple touch of her fingers were what made his pulse race with genuine hope.
Still, a knot of discomfort remained in his throat as he watched Gill and Baxter. Even knowing Baxter was acting as Darius’s deep-cover spy, Owen found the developer's protective stance over Gill incredibly difficult to stomach. There was far more to Baxter than he had initially assumed, but seeing him play the protector to the woman Owen had once loved felt entirely wrong.
"Getting back on topic," Baxter said, clearing his throat to pull the room's drifting attention back to the center of the table. "I, playing the part I had to play, invited Thompson out for dinner, letting him know I was partial to hearing what he had to say."
"And Thompson didn't show up alone," Darius chimed in, leaning his arms on the table.
"No, he didn't," Baxter agreed, his expression turning grim. "At that dinner, I was introduced to Debbi Wineberg. It became immediately clear within the first ten minutes of our conversation that Debbi was hunting for a solid corporate alliance with a member of the Wayne family, and I quickly became her main focus. She spent the entire evening trying to gauge our development pipeline."
Darius picked up the thread of the story, his fingers tapping a slow rhythm against his coffee mug. "When the commercial site we'd purchased in Charleston finally broke ground, we were barely a month into the initial grading when the excavation crews hit a massive underground brick drainage system from an undocumented eighteenth-century colonial pottery works. The state immediately stepped in and froze our structural permits."
"That was my cue," Baxter said. "Knowing Debbi would try to use her local historical board connections to squeeze us, I bypassed the standard municipal channels and made direct contact with Dr. Anna Caldwell."
