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She dropped her gaze. “Someone I’ve known a long time.”
He would have noticed if she’d been hanging around any guy in particular tonight. As far as he knew all the guests had arrived.
Except...him.
Aw, crap. “Kevin Ames.”
“How did you know?” She was blushing.
“He’s world famous.” He kept his voice light, not wanting to sound as disappointed and pissed off as he was. “I’ve met him.”
“Really?” Her voice got all eager, which made Derek even grouchier. “Where?”
“In Florida.” He was not going to comment further. If Kevin was the type she fell for, she wasn’t going to want a man like him.
He shouldn’t care. For God’s sake, he’d only met Addie tonight.
Maybe it was the booze, the loss of sleep, too much loneliness for too long, but there were plenty of attractive women here, many of whom he’d spoken to at dinner—hell there had been plenty of attractive women crawling all over his boat for the last eight years.
It was crazy, it made no sense, he was exhausted, out of his mind, he’d known Addie all of a few hours.
But he’d never wanted any of them the way he wanted her.
3
SARAH LAY ON a grassy patch at the edge of the island’s northern beach, where they’d had dinner that evening, listening to the waves lapping, gazing up at the night sky in search of shooting stars. She’d gone inside with everyone else hours ago when the party broke up, but after people headed off to bed she’d come back out here, knowing she wouldn’t sleep. Too many emotions, her head spun with them. She hated feeling half-crazy like this.
For whatever reason she’d been born feeling things more intensely than most people, which earned her all kinds of lovely labels: diva, drama queen, yeah, yeah, she knew. She did overreact, she did get more upset, more happy, more...just more. But short of drugging herself, there was nothing she could do about it. She was who she was, for better or worse.
Right now worse.
She swallowed awkwardly over the mild burn of thirst in the back of her throat. One beer too many and not enough water to balance out the alcohol. But it was so lovely lying here watching the sky, indulging her tortured thoughts, that she didn’t want to go back up to the house for a drink.
Derek Bates was the most gorgeous, sexiest, most intelligent, incredible man she’d ever met. And Sarah was nothing to him. She always fell for men who didn’t want her. Before Derek there’d been Ethan at Vassar, captain of the baseball team, a great friend. She’d lusted, but he never thought of her “that way” and had dated cheerleaders and dancers and other varieties of perfect—from her perspective perfectly vapid—women, while maintaining a closer relationship with Sarah than with any of them. Before Ethan there’d been Kevin Ames. She’d had it bad for Kevin for a long, long time. But when he finally stopped chasing big-boobed wonders, he’d wanted Addie, not Sarah. Maybe he still did...that would be great, actually. If Sarah couldn’t have him, at least one of her best friends could; for Addie’s sake Sarah would do whatever it took to bring them together this week. Addie needed someone. She had no idea how fabulous she was.
But back to Sarah’s favorite topic: Sarah. What if she never got Derek out of her head or her heart, even knowing he’d never belong to her?
That night five years ago on this beach, she’d been a total brat, which she was still so horribly embarrassed about she could barely look at him.
Although seriously, who could not look at Derek? She still did, just not when he could tell.
Anyway, it had been a cool and moonless night, like this one. They’d sat on this very spot talking for an hour after Paul and their parents had gone to bed. Sarah had been drunk on too much wine and had started bawling over something, she couldn’t even remember what. Derek had comforted her, put his arms around her, stroked her hair. She’d thought that was the signal she’d been dreaming of and had tried her best to make something happen.
Yeah, well, nice fantasy, Sarah.
Then, in an appalling show of immaturity, she’d bolstered her crushed ego by accusing him to Addie and then to Joe, who when she came back to Vassar had been able to tell right away that something was upsetting her. It didn’t help that she’d also overheard comments from Paul about Derek’s sexploits in harbors around the world. A woman in every port, sometimes two, and in St. Thomas, three, two of whom were apparently twins. So even not caring much who he had in bed at any given time, he still hadn’t wanted Sarah.
