Holiday In the Hamptons (From Manhattan with Love 5)

What did he mean by that? They didn’t have anything now. Except confusion and a whole lot of new stress. She’d thought a conversation would be the end of something. Instead it seemed that it was the beginning. But the beginning of what?

Life would have been simpler if she’d stayed in Manhattan. Or if he’d stayed in Manhattan. Or if he’d been born less attractive. The moment she thought it, she dismissed it. It wasn’t about the way he looked but the way he was. Persistent and damn stubborn. Decent and caring.

And stubborn.

Other people mostly respected her boundaries. Seth seemed determined to invade them. Was that a legacy from his childhood? His family had always been open and communicative. Even when they’d been involved in a shouting match, they’d been communicating. It wasn’t just food they’d shared in the Carlyle household, it had been feelings. Feelings had been right there at the table along with glistening tomatoes and ripe goats’ cheese. To her, it had felt alien and unfamiliar. When they’d tried to include her, she’d answered as briefly as possible, her smile stretched and stiff. She hadn’t been able to switch off that side of her that constantly asked why do they want to know this and how are they going to use it against me?

She wanted desperately to be part of their group, to fit in, but nothing in her past had trained her for this. Her childhood had taught her not to engage. How to deflect any possible intrusion into her feelings. But Seth hadn’t been put off by those barriers. And it seemed nothing had changed.

The fact that he wanted to see her again made her nervous. Uneasy. Exposed. It was like setting the alarm on your house, knowing that the person watching from outside had both the key and the code and could walk in at anytime.

She shouldn’t have gone to his place for dinner. That had been a bad move. If she’d just had the conversation on the side of the road that day, instead of pretending to be Harriet, she wouldn’t be in this mess now. There was nothing remotely disturbing about a conversation conducted in blazing heat with traffic pounding past, kicking up dust. They would have sweated it out and gone their separate ways. Awkward moment done.

Instead, there had been the intimacy of his house. Just the two of them and a thousand heated memories she definitely hadn’t needed in the room with her. And as if that wasn’t torture enough, it had been followed by that walk on the beach, something they’d done so many times before.

Moonlight over the ocean.

Why had she agreed to that?

He hadn’t touched her, and yet she’d wanted him to. Yet another thing that made no sense. The feelings should have faded by now, but instead they continued to throb, unrelenting and raw.

Frustrated by all the things she couldn’t control and didn’t understand, she glared out the window and jumped as Matilda cleared her throat.

“Is everything okay?”

“Of course. Everything is perfect.” If you ignored the fact that she hadn’t slept well since Seth arrived back in her life. The stress was starting to age her.

“You seem tense.”

“It shows? Am I going gray?” She grabbed a handful of hair and examined it. “I’m going to be old and haggard before my time.”

“You’re a long way from old and haggard. Is it Seth?” Matilda looked worried. “Is it my fault for inadvertently revealing you’re not Harriet? I feel terrible about that.”

“Don’t. I was planning to confess anyway.” Maybe. Or maybe she would have legged it back to Manhattan. Would he have followed her if she’d done that? And would she have wanted him to? Her thoughts spun randomly, like leaves caught in a gust of wind. She never knew quite where they were going to fall. “And it’s pretty cool having a baby named after me.”

“I blew your cover. And now Seth knows.”

Another person would have told her that Seth already knew. They would probably have laughed about it, the laughter tinged with embarrassment. But Fliss wasn’t that person. “I should have done it a long time ago, but I was so tangled up in my own lies I didn’t know how to get out of it.”

“Was it very awkward? I want details.”

She didn’t do details. “We talked.”

And while he was talking she’d been preoccupied by the shape of his mouth and the thickness of his eyelashes.

How was it right that one man could be so attractive? There was no justice in the world. If there was then she should have been able to spend an evening with Seth without feeling as if her emotions had been dumped in a cocktail shaker and treated with a total lack of mercy.

She didn’t know whether it was his eyes or his smile, but something about him turned her inside out.

Or maybe it was that confidence. She’d always envied that confidence. The fact that he was so sure. She assumed it came from having parents who encouraged and believed in him. Parents who were proud.

She, on the other hand, was a seething mass of uncertainty. And she hated feeling that way. Surely she should have shaken it off by now.

What did it matter that no one in her family had ever been proud of her? She had a business and an apartment, albeit small and shared with her sister. And she’d paid for all of it herself. Her father had never given her a single cent. She was proud of herself. That was all that should count.

“I need you to translate something for me.” The words blurted o

ut of her mouth, surprising her.