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“Let’s go,” Lilly urged Audra now, stepping toward the check-in line.
The other woman didn’t move.
Turning to her, Lilly swallowed hard. There was so much pain in Audra’s eyes. “What is it, Audie?”
“Jacob,” she said in a near-whisper. “Maybe I should go back to the beach. Maybe he’ll show up there after all.”
The beach. Where there had been a beautiful rustic arbor decorated in seashells, ribbons, and draped with blue flowers just waiting for a pair of people to promise themselves to each other for a lifetime. White chairs for seventy-five guests. A string quartet preparing to accompany the sound of the surf as the bride walked down the sandy aisle.
“Jacob,” Lilly said, trying to control her rising rage at the thought of the jerk, “is not going to show up at the beach.”
“He might,” Audra insisted. “When he can’t reach me on my phone.”
Oops. That would be the phone that Lilly had hurled into the ocean after her best friend had showed her the text the groom had sent calling off the wedding. Just another of Lilly’s faults—a fiery temper, thanks to her French ancestors, she supposed. Her good arm was due to two years playing left field on the dorm softball team.
“Come on,” Lilly urged again, forcing her friend forward. “We’re going to check into this lovely resort, strip out of these fancy clothes and pinching shoes, and get comfortable.” As she grabbed the handle of one suitcase and pushed another forward with her foot, she hoped like heck that Audra had packed something more than a bunch of bikinis and bridal lingerie—she and Jacob had been planning on leaving for their honeymoon in Tahiti the next day. According to the loathsome, cowardly text he’d sent, he’d exchanged his ticket for one on a flight that left that very afternoon.
“Are you sure staying here is the right thing to do?” Audra appealed to Lilly again, looking lost and nothing like the capable PR executive she was for her father’s company in Los Angeles.
“We don’t have to,” Lilly said, not above second thoughts. Maybe it would be best to drive the couple of hours home, especially because she couldn’t get rid of the sense of…well, not exactly foreboding, but she still felt uneasy.
Uneasy and excited and wound up like she’d felt every time she’d been in close proximity to him.
“Do you want to go back to LA instead?” she asked Audra. “Or we can call your folks. I’m sure they’d welcome you on their trip to London.”
Audra shuddered. “I can’t be around Mom and her disappointment right now. I can’t face my neighbors in LA. All the explanations…”
“We’ll think about that another time,” Lilly said briskly, and now hustled Audra and their luggage to the back of the line. “At this moment we’re getting ourselves a suite.”
As they waited their turn, Lilly’s nerves jittered again. She rubbed the back of her neck and forced herself not to take another surreptitious glance over her shoulder. But damn, her instincts were on high alert, and the coiling tension was making her a little queasy.
“I’m sorry you didn’t get a chance to spend more time with Alec,” Audra said.
Lilly turned to her friend, round-eyed. Nobody had seen them “spend” any “time” together, she would have sworn to it. “Alec? ‘Sorry’?”
She gave a little half-shrug. “He seemed taken with you.”
“He would have been taken with anyone unattached, female, and in the right age range,” she said with a snort. “I know the type.”
“Lilly,” Audra scolded, though her voice sounded as tired as her dress was beginning to look. “You’re such a cynic.”
Not cynical enough to have warned her friend that Jacob was a bad bet. And not mean enough to say “I told you so” when that proved to be true. But the fact was, she hadn’t expressed any doubts about her best friend’s engagement, despite her undeniable qualms. Some people deserved to find long-lasting, stable love, she’d told herself at the time. Audra was one of them.
But now Lilly felt she’d failed the woman who was closer to her than a sister. She should have found a way to dim some of those shining stars in her best friend’s eyes.
