“My condolences about Jonah. He was a stand-up guy. Even after everything went down, he helped Chloe a lot during those months and years afterward. He felt sorry for her, he confided to me privately even though he knew Chloe was the one who broke it off. Left you devastated.”
“He felt sorry for her?” Jameson scoffed. “The poor little rich girl?”
Graham ignored the insult.
“You were supposed to meet at the carriage house that night, right? Leave together, Chloe not telling her mother or me where she was going until you arrived at your cross-country love nest, now hitched and all legal-like?”
He didn’t wait for the confirmation Jameson would never provide.
“A solid plan,” he continued. “As long as she didn’t cave and tell her mother beforehand.”
Jameson’s jaw ticked. “I have no idea what information Chloe told whom.”
What he did know, was that according to Genevieve, Chloe had, uh, reconsidered her future, no longer wishing to spend her life as a lowly military wife.
“Here’s what’s got me thinking,” Graham said. “If she backed out of leaving with you as Jonah believed—and the man had no reason to lie—and as a result you left town a day sooner than the pre-planned meet time, why’d she pack a suitcase?”
A wordy puzzle Jameson didn’t care to solve. “Again, no idea. You been taking online courses to get your PI’s license?”
Graham smiled, but he wasn’t amused.
“If she didn’t want to leave with you, which I fully agree with, considering she was my underage child, why did I get a call from Jonah saying a distraught Chloe was sitting on the swing of the carriage house, a suitcase at her feet, at the meet time you planned?”
Clearly not expecting an answer, he continued his calm, controlled tirade.
“And that she’d been waiting there a good long while, crying the whole time even after he told her you were already gone? Just waiting and crying. That sound like a logical reaction if she was the one to break it off?”
“Again, no idea.” He was driving through Nebraska by then.
Going through Hell, too.
“I remember it well because I left Manhattan in a panic. Nearly chartered a helicopter, she was in such a fragile state. Put my phone on speaker so I could talk her down while I drove, but she refused to say a word. For the two hours and forty-two minutes it took me to get here, the sounds of my sobbing, anguished daughter filled the car.”
His respect for Graham was immense, so he resisted calling him a liar.
His daughter was just that good at manipulating.
“So, if you haven’t yet wondered why she bought Maine Lane, or why she’s calling that tiny carriage house home, or why she sits on that swing every night as the sun sets, I’m gonna blow your skirt up with the complimentary answer.”
Jameson shrugged. “Boredom? Birdwatching?”
“Try waiting. She’s still waiting for you.”
Not the answer he expected.
“She’s been waiting ten years,” he added. “Now, the way I see it, you’ve got a second chance to make this right. I wouldn’t waste it, if I were you. She won’t give you a third. Neither will I.”
With that, he clapped him on the back and walked away.
A few hours after that, Jameson was inexplicably on his way to Montauk, Chloe along for the ride.
He pulled up in front of the carriage house now, his head lights illuminating the porch swing. And Graham’s words.
It was true. She did sit out there every night. At sundown.
He’d only been back a week, but he’d noticed her habits because, yeah, he was a details guy.
Shutting off the ignition, he looked at her, still in the breezy summer dress she wore to work today, the short, ruffled skirt showing off long, tanned legs. Legs that wrapped perfectly around his waist.
“I don’t want to alarm you. And I know you won’t appreciate me pointing this out,” she said, her voice as sweet and flirty as her dress. “But you just took me out on a date.”
Yeah. That shocker already occurred to him.
“I took you along as an advisor,” he corrected, grinning. “You worked poor Rodge over.”
“We team up, we can get him to go lower. You play good cop, diving is all fun and games. I play bad cop, diving is suffocation and certain death. Next thing you know, he’s knocking ten percent off the purchase price just to shut me up, and waxing all the boats one last time just to impress you, his new underwater hero.”
She’d stopped interrogating him on his reasoning behind the potential purchase once he put a plate of nachos in front of her. Good thing, since he had no goddamn rational reason to provide.
Except those signs. And now, the swing—their swing—lit by his high beams.
And an innocent turn of phrase that made his heart race.
We team up.
“I had a nice time tonight,” she whispered hesitantly.
“Me, too.” The shadows in the cab lit her face beautifully, making her look like his very own angel of the night. “It felt like us, didn’t it? Riding around on those roads.”
She nodded, tracing her thumb along his, their hands entwined since they left the restaurant. “Like the old us.”
Entwined since they left Something Borrowed hours ago.
“We’ll always be us, cupcake. You might move on. Be with someone else. Marry him. Have his kid.” If he was lucky. “But we’ll always be us, and you’ll always know, deep down inside, there was something better. Someone better.”
Her throat moved. “Does that go for you, too?”
“Yes.” But that was a lie.
He’d never move on. Never marry. Never have a baby with a woman who wasn’t Chloe. A precedent had been set.
He flexed his fingers, then laid their flat palms together, his large to her small, feeling a need to anchor himself to her if only by handhold. Her nails were pink today. A pale pink that evoked a girl baby.
Ridiculous.
“Each for the other, two against the world, right?” He wanted her to remember.
But when she smiled, it was sad. So fucking sad he wanted to take back his words. Wanted the joyous smile she’d gifted him all night to return.
“That immature saying doesn’t apply to us anymore, but let’s not discuss it. It’ll ruin our wonderful day.”
“It’s not immature.”
“Just hollow?”
“Not to me.” Tugging on their clutched hands, he pulled her closer, and she came willingly, climbing halfway across the console. “I had faith it would hold up.”
“Don’t worry, I won’t tell anyone,” she whispered.
“Tell them what?”
“That underneath this crusty exterior,” she said, her lips brushing his. “Hides a big, soft marshmallow.”
He returned her kiss with one that was decidedly more sinful, their tongues tangling and whimpers mingling, and it fogged the windows.
Breathing heavily, he finally pulled back to rest his forehead against hers. “Nothing soft about me right now, cupcake.”
She laughed, holding his cheeks in her delicate hands. “Thank you.”
“For what?”
“For thinking of me when you needed an advisor.” She slid one of those delicate hands down the center of his chest, and he felt her arousing touch through his T-shirt. “Do you want to come inside?”