Page 111 of These Summer Storms

It was supposed to sting as it sailed through the loophole Elisabeth obviously believed she’d found, but it didn’t.

Instead, Jack met her eyes and said, unironically, “Perfect.”

Before Alice could enjoy the satisfaction that came in the wake of his word, Elisabeth’s brows shot together and she threw Jack a look best described as deadly (she must have beenfurious,as she allowed herself the wrinkles). Pressing her lips together in a thin line, she turned on her heel and left.

Alice and Jack stood watching as Elisabeth headed back to the festivities, where those assembled did their best to pretend they had not noticed any of the proceedings (laughable, that—if there had been cell service, the texting would have already begun). The wind picked up, sending a perfect late-summer breeze, dry and delicious, around them, like a gift. Like a message. She turned to look at Jack, her hair rising on the wind toward him.

He lifted his hand at the same time she did but stopped as she pushed her hair behind her ear. His hand hovered in mid-air, and she resisted the urge to claim it. To lace her fingers through it and pull him closer, this man who had been the enemy and now…didn’t seem to be that at all.

“Thank you,” she whispered instead, the words caught on the wind, stolen away like a secret.

She met his gaze, serious and something else…something rich and humid, like if she did touch him, he’d be the one to pull her closer—back to the house, to privacy. To a place where he could lay her down and prove that he was nothing close to the enemy.

A wild thought followed. What if she asked him to do all that…but somewhere else? Somewhere far from here? What if she asked him to leave with her? To be free of this place? Of its secrets? Of its burdens?

Would he do it?

“Jack,” she began. “What if—”

“Alice!”

Gabi’s urgent call came from closer than Alice expected, as she hurried up the garden slope toward the house, a look on her face that was decidedly un-Gabi. Like whatever it was, she didn’t know how to handle it.

Now what?

Dropping her hand, she took a step toward her friend. “What’s happened?”

“So, I can tell some shit is going down, but…” Gabi waved a hand in the direction of the meadow, her attention flickering to Jack, then back to Alice with absolute focus. “Griffin is here.”

Chapter

16

“Alleycat.”

Alice didn’t hide her distaste as she stopped in front of Griffin McGill, the man who’d promised her, again and again, that he didn’t care about this place, or these people or her past, because he was going to be her future.

Liar.

Two months away from him hadn’t cleared Alice’s instinct to find him in a crowd, tall and blond and blue-eyed, the kind of white guy who’d been prom king in high school. Reality TV handsome, Gabi liked to call him, but the truth was, he was handsome enough that two months ago, her heart ached to look at pictures of him, this man who was supposed to have been the love of her life.

She’d been so desperate for someone to love her for something other than her name, and now, all she could think about were all the ways he’d been just like her father, trying so hard to convince her that what he wanted, she wanted, too. She’d paid for his whole life—supported him when he told her he couldn’t search for a full-time job because he’d be giving up on his dream, and didn’t he deserve a dream, too?—maderoom for him in her apartment, with her friends, paid for the joint trip to Prague where he’d proposed, turned the other way when he’d charged their joint credit card for her engagement ring, telling her of course she didn’t have to pay for it—he’d pay for it, eventually.

In the end, he’d never paid for it. God, she’d been so stupid.

But she’d said yes, anyway, and she’d planned a wedding on her own, and she’d believed him when he told her he loved her. And then he’d left.

And now, he was back.

After the week she’d had, Alice was furious. “What are you doing here?”

“Babe,” he said, as though nothing had changed. As though he deserved to be there. He reached for her hands, claiming them with ease. “Of course I’m here.” Griffin’s brilliant, wide smile flashed until he seemed to remember that this wasn’t a time for smiles. “I knew you’d need me.”

“She doesn’t need you, you asshole.” Gabi spoke up from where she stood, at a distance, having refused to leave Alice alone after revealing Griffin’s arrival. Knowing, in that way best friends did, that Alice might need her. Standing, in that way best friends did, at the ready, perfectly able to both tell Griffin off and procure a shovel if a body required burying.

At least there was someone on Alice’s side.

Jack had tried to come, too. He’d gone big and gruff when Gabi had announced Griffin’s arrival, but Alice had shaken him off, too embarrassed to face the shame of having been with this obvious buffoon while Jack looked on. She’d urged him back to the gathering, even as his gaze had turned stormy, and she’d followed Gabi to the far end of the lawn, where Griffin had been parked at the bar since his arrival.