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Stealthily, I duck back around the foliage and make my shaky way toward the refreshment table, remembering why I’m here in the first place.
“Two lemonades, please. Lots of ice,” I say, my voice high-pitched and ragged, like I’ve just run a marathon.
The server pours out my order and hands them to me. With a hurried thanks, I turn… and run right into the man I’m trying to avoid. The lemonade swells into a wave, cresting on the lip of the glass, the cloudy yellow liquid flying straight toward Rowan’s shirt. I can’t stop it, but his reflexes are quicker than mine. He sidesteps the spillage, though a few droplets still land, seeping through navy blue pants.
“Probably should’ve mentioned I was standing behind you,” Rowan says, grabbing a napkin. He dabs at the damp spots, flustered but smiling. And when he smiles, it’s like seeing the sun for the first time after a long, bleak Wisconsin winter.
“Was it expensive?” I blurt out, awestruck. He scrubs up well, not that he ever looked too shabby to begin with.
Cybil would say he’s dressed “business casual,” with his navy-blue pants and a crisp shirt that’s somewhere between white and the palest blue. No suit jacket. I like that. No tie. I like that even more, especially as he’s opened a couple of buttons down the front, giving me a glimpse of glistening, tanned skin. Just a triangle of it: a tease. But knowing what’s beneath that shirt, it’s even more tantalizing, and I find myself taking a sip of my lemonade to soothe my rapidly drying throat.
As for his shoes—he has sneakers on. Fancy ones. Dark brown leather with oxblood laces. The sight of them makes me want to grin.
Rowan pauses in his dabbing. “Huh?”
“Your… uh… suit. Was it expensive? Cybil has her own dry cleaner, so I can… um… arrange something,” I say, nearly rolling my eyes at how idiotic I sound.
Flirtation has never been my strong suit, and flirting with someone I nearly slept with, and have been finishing what we started in my dreams for the past month, is completely alien territory. My tongue is in knots, my heart is racing, and there’s a swarm of wasps in my stomach, jabbing me with stingers of guilt, but it’s not the guilt I’m necessarily used to. It’s different, and I can’t pinpoint why.
Because you made him feel like shit when it wasn’t his fault, maybe?The voice of reason in my head mutters.Because you didn’t care to text him back, and let him know that everything was cool between you, perhaps? Could it be that?
Running awayissomething I’m good at. I did it for years before Ben, never staying in one place for longer than six months. I thought I’d broken that habit with the nice apartment and the “settled” façade I’ve been letting everyone believe is the real deal, but I guess I’m still running, and there’s no denying that I fled from him. Fled and buried my damn head in the sand.
“Don’t tell the DuCates,” Rowan replies, leaning in. “It’s from Walmart.”
I fake a gasp. “You’ll be shot on sight!”
“I’m telling everyone that asks that it’s Armani. So far, no one’s questioned it.” He smiles and our eyes meet. His brow crumples just a little, more of a twitch really, as if he’s bracing for another rejection. But his gaze is a searching one, trying to read my expression. After the way I treated him, it seems he’s still trying to check that I’m okay; putting on my oxygen mask first, so to speak.
“I’m sorry for the spillage.” I hold up the two glasses of lemonade, laying the blame entirely on them.
He waves the napkin at me. “Don’t worry about it. It’ll all come out in the wash.”
“I… didn’t know you were going to be here.” To my ears, it sounds like an accusation.
He makes a strange noise, partway between a choke and a laugh. “It wasn’t on my original schedule,” he tells me. “I had this whole trip to the cabin planned, and I was going to fish all weekend and definitely,definitelycatch something bigger than my little finger, this time. But then Lyndsey called with an emergency—a forgotten dress, nothing serious—and now I’m rubbing elbows with the South’s old money. Surprisingly, not the weirdest way I’ve spent a Saturday.”
“Grace’s dress?” There are so many other things I want to ask him, but that’s all I can force out of my mouth.
He nods.
“I bet she wishes you’d kept going to the cabin,” I say wryly. “Poor girl is going to get heatstroke in that thing.”
He cringes. “I know. I feel like I’ve betrayed her and gone against everything the uncle code stands for.” He snags a lemonade from the passing waiter, and takes a long sip before adding, with a lopsided smile, “What about you?”
“Me? What do you mean?”
“Do you wish I’d kept going to the cabin?”
I thought we’d skirt around the elephant in the room for at least the rest of the evening, but he’s gone straight for the jugular. My mouth opens, but no sound comes out, and I know I probably look insane, gaping at him like this.
There’s a cowardly part of me that hopes he’ll fold and change the subject, but he doesn’t; he just keeps on looking at me, waiting patiently.
“I don’t—” I’m honestly not sure what I was about to say, but an angel in a floral 50s swing skirt and a blouse so tight that one overenthusiastic inhale could pop the whole thing off, swoops in to save my ass.
“As I live and breathe, Summer has come at last, and mercy me is she hot!” Ms. T’s voice booms across the garden party, and a hundred pairs of eyes turn in her direction. Those who weren’t already staring at the perpetual headline act, anyway.
Arms surround me and I’m squashed against that vast, divine bosom. A grin spreads across my face as my own arms come up to hold her, and I realize just how much I’ve missed this woman. It has been way too long since I’ve been pulled into one of these suffocating, cure-all hugs.
