Page 6 of A Heart to Find (Sweetheart Island #2)

Why, oh why did he have to look so handsome?

Ugh.

And why did he have to smell so good?

Double ugh.

Keira didn’t know if his cologne was making her tipsy or if she was slipping on the ice in her high-heeled shoes, but she kept bouncing into his arm.

She hated the thrill that jolted through her every time they accidentally touched.

He must be feeling pretty tipsy, too. Or the ground truly was slippery. Because while she attempted to walk as straight as possible, he kept bumping into her.

She had never known him to be a clumsy man.

“Hope you don’t mind that I picked an Italian place. Kind of had pasta on my mind for some strange reason.”

“I’m quite partial to Italian myself. But thank you for not insisting that we eat what we made.”

Their laughter came out as billows of steam cutting through the cold night air.

“Are you sure you’re okay with having Megan and her smitten kitten join us?”

“Her ‘smitten kitten’? Sounds like a band name. ‘Folks, put your hands together for Megan and the Smitten Kittens!’”

“Hmm, I kinda like it.”

Keira slipped—for real—on a patch of black ice. She grabbed his sleeve to keep from going down.

“Probably should have stuck with boots tonight. I forgot that all that warm air earlier would lead to a layer of ice as soon as the sun set. You’d think I’d never lived in New England. But anyway, ‘smitten kitten’ is a great way to describe him, but his name is Matt.”

“I think I’ll call him Smitten Kitten. It has sticking power.”

“Don’t you dare!”

Ugh, she sounded like a flirty teen. And she was powerless to stop it.

“There they are.”

He hadn’t lost his ability to charm anyone he met. He and Matt hit it off right away, and Megan fanned herself dramatically when the guys weren’t looking. Keira rolled her eyes at her friend. She wasn’t about to admit that she agreed.

Over dessert, Megan started bouncing in her seat and leaned forward as if about to confide the world’s most shocking secret.

“Did you hear there’s already been an engagement on the island this week? They say it might be a record breaker!”

Keira dropped her spoon and suddenly felt sick.

“Seriously? We’ve been here three days. Do they even know each other’s middle names yet?”

Megan lifted her spoonful of lava cake and brought a bite to Matt’s smiling lips.

“I guess when you know, you know, right?”

Keira made a gagging face at Jared, who for once seemed to be on the same page as her.

“What?”

Megan said, not seeming the slightest bit embarrassed over her sugary-sweet treatment of her new infatuation.

“You said yourself that the system they use is practically foolproof. So why not dive in as soon as you feel the spark? All those tests we took and questionnaires we filled out were meant to save us from having to do the dirty work of searching blindly for the loves of our lives. You said that, Keira.”

“Oh you did, did you?”

Jared sat back in his seat, licking hot fudge off the tip of his finger.

“I was trying to help her settle her nerves.”

Keira turned back to Megan.

“Of course I believe in the system. And obviously it worked for you. I just find it hard to imagine getting engaged to someone I’ve known for three days. But that’s just me. I’m not gonna judge.”

“Sounds pretty judgy to me,”

Jared teased.

“Do you enjoy watching me lose my temper, or are you just really gifted at eliciting that response from me?”

“I like every intense response from you.”

Keira kicked his shin under the table. Not hard enough to hurt him, but hard enough to get his attention.

Megan continued.

“Well, I think it’s romantic. I heard it was filmed, and they’re going to show it at the stargazing night on the beach.”

“Isn’t it a bit cold for a beach night?”

Jared asked.

“Not when you have a special someone to snuggle up with!”

Megan and Matt stared into each other’s eyes again, lost to anything going on around them.

“There’ll be a bonfire, don’t worry.”

Inexplicably hurt by his criticism of an event she thought sounded adventurous and romantic, her words emerged from her throat harsher than she had intended.

Needing to lighten the mood to counter the tension she had inadvertently served to the room, she leaned toward Jared and fell back on the one thing they had agreed on.

“They may be too besotted to see the ridiculousness of an engagement after three days of knowing someone, but at least you and I can agree that instalove is a joke.”

His smile broadened, and he put his napkin on the table next to his plate.

“Oh, I don’t know. I think I get it.”

Taken aback, Keira snapped back in her seat.

“You get what? Their engagement makes sense to you?”

“I’m not sure about the engagement, but I can understand the potency of instant love. I fell for you within minutes. I’ve never been the same.”

So he wanted to goad her. Embarrass her. Make a fool of her.

Okay.

“I guess it’s time to head back to the hotel now, huh?”

Sweat gathered at her temples and her heart pounded ferociously.

Megan’s voice hit a new high as she squealed her delight at Jared’s lies.

“That was the sweetest thing I’ve heard from anyone other than Matty. You guys are adorable.”

Keira smiled, hoping her acting skills were convincing. She pushed away from the table and, after a few minutes of exchanging pleasantries and goodbyes and settling the bill, started for the door.

“Hey, wait up.”

Jared’s long stride closed the distance between them in no time.

“Are you okay?”

He held the door open for her, and she did her best not to brush against him on her way out.

“I’m fine. Why would you ask?”

“Maybe because you acted like someone set your seat on fire.”

“It was getting hot in there. I wanted some fresh air.”

“Keira…”

She ignored his serious tone and focused on the crunch of the sand and salt under her clackety shoes on the sidewalk.

“Come on. You know how I’ve always felt about you.”

“Do I?”

She stopped short, pretending her sudden pause didn’t cause her shoe to slide across a slick spot.

“Because I thought I did. I really did. But then you did that whole disappearing thing, and it made me realize that everything I thought was real wasn’t. So forgive me if I don’t believe that you ever actually loved me.”

A wry laugh worked its way through her clenched teeth and her purse-lipped smile.

“But that’s the past. We don’t need to think about that.”

“I want to think about it. My past with you is important to me. And so is our future.”

“Don’t worry, Jared. I have no expectations of you anymore. This is an unfortunate thing for both of us, but I’m glad we’ve been able to make the best of it so far. Let’s keep that going, okay?”

She crossed the street and started down a wooded path, lit by the moon and lanterns on posts. She had roamed this way before, and appreciated the quiet reprieve from the bustling Main Street.

“You sure you want to walk that way with those heels on?”

“Of course I am. The walkway has been treated just the same as the sidewalks.”

They walked in silence, the only soundtrack the crunching of snow and sand underfoot and the occasional hoot of a woodland creature.

“Keira, you might want to stop for a second…”

“I’ll stop when we get to the hotel.”

“Uh, don’t freak out, but there’s a skunk over there, and I’m pretty sure you don’t want to startle it.”

She stopped in her tracks and then backed up right into Jared’s warm chest. He steadied her with a strong hand on each of her arms. Frozen in place, her mind told her to pull away and stand on her own.

But his breath was warm on the top of her head, and his hands so reliably in control.

For the life of her, she couldn’t will herself to pull away.

“I thought skunks hibernated?”

“Shhh…”

he whispered over the top of her head.

Her belly flip-flopped, and her legs numbed. The lingering scent of garlic marinara sauce combined with the sweetness of the lava cake he had consumed washed over her, creating a gnawing in her belly that had nothing to do with food. There was something else there, too. Something familiar. Something that transported her back in time to when breathing in his scent was the most natural thing in the world. When she had belonged in his arms.

When she had thought she’d always be welcome there.

She cleared her throat and shifted away, encouraging him to drop his hold on her. The skunk scurried off into the woods, leaving them alone and with no reason to remain still.

“They don’t exactly hibernate,”

he said, shifting back to her question.

“And February is prime mating time for them.”

Her throat tightened and her body stiffened. She nodded to acknowledge his response to her question.

“Keira, I know you’re angry with me.”

“I’m not angry.”

“Can we please clear the air?”

Keira inhaled deeply, turning her gaze to the canopy of leafless trees over their heads.

“The air is clear. Intoxicatingly so. Don’t you think?”

“You know what I mean.”

“Jared, there’s no need. Whatever happened between us was eons ago. We were kids. Of course it wasn’t meant to be. You don’t meet your soul mate in a small town high school. I realized that after you left.”

She glanced at his face to see if she had convinced him, but his shattered look nearly destroyed the fa?ade she tried so hard to maintain.

“That’s what I thought at the time,”

he admitted.

His long lashes cast a shadow over his cheeks. He looked vulnerable. Boyish. And all she wanted to do was touch his cheek and tell him everything was okay.

Tears filled her eyes, and she frantically blinked them away.

“Let’s get back to the hotel before it gets any colder.”

She wasn’t cold. The night was mild and almost warm by New England standards, and being near him generated heat in her that she wished she could deny. But it had been the first excuse she could come up with, so she’d stick with it.

“Keira, if I had stayed…”

She didn’t want him to finish the sentence. She didn’t want his regrets or his excuses. She wanted to get away. To slide into her fleece pajama pants and to sip hot cocoa by the fire in her room. Alone with her thoughts and feelings.

“You were so innocent. So focused on building a future together.”

He paused.

She couldn’t speak. A lump lodged in her throat and her heart pounded so loudly, she almost couldn’t hear him at all.

In a lowered voice, one laced with sadness and disappointment, he continued.

“I would have crushed you.”

His words hung in the dark space between them.

“You did.”

She turned away, tears threatening to ruin a perfectly good retort.

He touched her hand then. For what? To comfort her? To reassure her that taking their relationship into his hands and smashing it into pieces without even consulting her about what she wanted was a choice he had made with her best interests at heart? To make himself feel better for walking away and never looking back?

She pulled her hand away and glared at him in the moonlight.

“Thank you for the company today. I think I’d like to walk the rest of the way myself, if you don’t mind.”

She didn’t care if he minded, but she’d be polite until the very end.

When he reached for her again with that sad face and his hair falling so close to his eye, she turned away again and headed off the main trail. She’d cut through the woods to escape him if she had to. He’d get the hint then.

“Keira, not that way!”

She muttered about him not telling her what to do, but kept it low so he wouldn’t hear. She had no desire to sound like a belligerent child. She had her pride, after all.

“Keira, it’s dangerous! Wait!”

“You may be the world traveler, but I have spent plenty of time in the woods in my lifetime. Don’t worry about me.”

Her toes grew numb from the snow filling her shoes, and she caught herself in a pile of snow twice before it started thinning out, but the walk to the hotel was a short one from this point.

“Keira! That ice isn’t safe to walk on!”

Ice? As soon as the words reached her ears, she heard the telltale sound of crackling beneath her right food. Not daring to shift her body weight, she cursed herself for being foolish enough to leave the trail.

She knew better. She had let her emotions make her reckless.

And now she was going to have to accept his help.

Not wanting him to risk walking on the ice and getting himself in the same predicament, especially since he outweighed her, she calmly shifted to the side.

Phew. The crack didn’t spread. She was safe.

She took another step, happy she had escaped the danger of an iced over body of water.

Another crack shattered the stillness of the air, and before she had time to curse her bad luck or lack of judgment, her foot slipped into the icy water. Unable to break her fall, her body hit the ice hard, not quite breaking the impact of her head slamming against the hard surface.