His heated gaze lifted from her mouth to her eyes. “Where are you going?”

She pointed. “Back to the house. It’s late.”

“Late,” he mumbled and pinched the bridge of his nose. He ground out a few choice expletives. “Stay out here for a few minutes, would you? Finish the conversation.”

Faith was finished. Any more and she’d start weeping again. “Good night, Alec.”

*   *   *

Alec hung up the phone after a lengthy discussion with his editor and grabbed a beer from the fridge. He’d told the publisher to give him two months and he’d turn in the book. He was a little more than halfway through writing the first draft. If he buckled down, he could make that deadline. All things considered, they were pretty understanding about the whole thing.

This morning, Alec had given Cole the first fifty pages of a partial to see if Cole could represent him. At this stage in his career, his agent did little more than act as a buffer for contracts, but Alec didn’t want Cole to represent him out of obligation. He wanted to make sure Cole wanted to do it, not that he had to. Alec could call up any agency right now and have his pick of agents. That wasn’t the point. He wanted someone he could trust, not someone who was in it for the money.

Alec took his beer out onto the front porch and dropped into a chair, thinking about the book launch party in New York next weekend. He’d totally forgotten about it. The last book in his series was coming out next month, and his publicist, in conjunction with the publisher, was hosting the meet and greet. It was an obligation, one he didn’t want to fulfill, but he’d suffer through. After all, it was only one night.

A two-month deadline would whoosh by if he kept at this pace. After Faith’s little bomb on the beach last night, he’d spent his time wearing down the floorboards instead of writing. He hadn’t slept. Barely even shoved food down.

A car door slammed and Alec looked up to find Jake returning from work. Jake walked toward the main house until he glanced over and saw Alec outside. He changed directions and headed his way.

“You want a beer?”

“Naw.” Jake sat down in a chair beside Alec. “Taking a break from writing?”

“Something like that.”

“Uh-oh. You were doing great yesterday. What happened?”

Alec tipped the bottle back and swallowed. “Women, that’s what happened.”

Jake laughed in his easy, languid style. “Already? You and Faith just started seeing each other.”

Alec shouldn’t have mentioned it to Jake, but he needed a sounding board, and very few people knew the whole story of Laura and where he was coming from. Alec stood and walked to lean a hip against the railing.

Alec sighed. “Faith told me . . . something serious last night. Then afterward, she said she was heading to bed. Just like that. I asked her—actually begged her—to stay and talk about it. Nope. She said good night and left me standing there. When was the last time you saw me wanting to get into a heart-to-heart with a woman? Never.”

Rant over, he took a swig of beer and looked at his brother over the bottle. “What are you grinning at?”

Jake shrugged. “You’re falling for her.”

Maybe a little bit. Or all the way.

Hell. Screw that. “I tell you she’s messing with my head and you laugh.”

“Sorry.” Jake looked anything but sorry with his grin still plastered in place. “Is this thing she told you something you can share?”

Alec thought that over and decided it wasn’t a national secret. Jake wouldn’t repeat it anyway. “She told me her parents conceived her to be a donor for her sister.”

There went the grin. “Wow.”

“Yeah.” Alec sat back down and drained his beer. “A lot of things are starting to make sense now. She’s always surprised when I come to see her as if there’s an alternate motive behind my visit, and she tries like hell to be invisible.” He leaned forward and scrubbed his hands over his face. “Jesus, Jake. I think her folks just fucking ignored her. What kind of people do that?”

“She told you all of that?”

“No.” Alec repeated what Faith had told him to the best of his recollection.

“Sounds like you two are perfect for each other. She’s as screwed up as you are, big brother.”

Alec narrowed his eyes. “This thing with Faith is just temporary. There is no perfect when it comes to us. I go back to the city after your wedding, remember?”

Jake studied him with measured intensity. “Does she know that?”

“It was her idea.”

Jake opened his mouth as if he wanted to say more, but shook his head instead and rose from his seat. He walked to the steps and turned. “Tell her about Laura. She deserves to know.”

Alec stared out at the yard, barren and waiting to be landscaped, until night fell and the mosquitoes started biting.

chapter

fourteen

What had started out as an impromptu powwow about Lacey’s wedding had evolved into drinking wine in Adirondack chairs on the beach and laughing themselves silly. Faith leaned back in her chair and sighed into the night. This was perfect. Together with two new friends, a good Chianti—not that she would know if it were a bad one—and laughter. Her stomach hurt from the hysterics, but it was a good ache.

A gentle, moist breeze blew in off the ocean, bringing the scent of salt and brine. The seagulls had grown quiet. The only sound was her friends’ fading laughter and the crush of waves on the beach.

Faith’s phone vibrated in her pocket as she took another sip of wine. She quickly pulled it out and stared at the screen, both excited and frustrated to see the text was from Alec. Excited because she hadn’t heard from him since her admission on the beach a few nights ago, and frustrated because the message wasn’t from her parents.

I want to see you tonight.

That was it. Nothing else. Was he going to make it official and end things? Without the knock-her-off-her-feet kiss he had promised?

“You look disappointed,” Mia said.

Faith glanced up to find both Mia and Lacey staring at her. “Alec texted that he wants to see me tonight.”

“Why is that disappointing?” Mia asked, her soft voice barely registering over the waves.

Faith wanted to talk to them, the way normal friends did with each other. Share both joy and troubles. But opening up to people was hard for her, especially after the way Alec had reacted when she’d taken a chance with him.

“I think he might break up with me.” It shouldn’t hurt so much. They’d barely gotten off the ground. Yet she liked him. A lot. His humor was dry and sarcastic, his mind sharp. Their conversations never lagged. And then there was the kissing . . .

“Why do you say that?” Lacey wanted to know, sitting forward in her chair to pat Faith’s knee. The touch didn’t create anything like the heat Alec instilled, but it was comforting.

“A few nights ago he found me on the beach. We talked for a while and I told him a few things about my family. He was pretty angry after, so I went back to the guesthouse. This is the first I’ve heard from him since then.”

Mia and Lacey shared a look before Lacey spoke. “None of us are strangers to family issues. It couldn’t have been that bad.”

Faith chewed over the idea of whether to confide in them, and decided to go for broke. Maybe the girls would understand better than Alec. She gave them a version of what she’d told Alec and then took a sip of wine to cool her throat.

“The thing is,” Faith said, “it never bothered me how detached my parents were until I came here. Well, it bothered me a little. Honestly, I don’t think I even noticed how bad it was until I met you guys.” She looked at both women, who stared at her intently. “I shouldn’t have told Alec.”