The Truest Thing (Hart's Boardwalk 4)

And I realized that for the longest time, I’d allowed myself to stay frozen in one place because I hadn’t quite let go of hope.

Hope that one day Jack Devlin would reveal himself to me. That he would change his mind. For months now, after years of avoiding me, he’d come into the store for coffee in the morning. I didn’t know what prompted his return, but with it flared all my hopes again. Every time I saw him, I remembered that kiss on the beach and the words he’d said before he left me alone.

Yet Jack never said or did anything to give me hope when he came in for his coffee.

It was all small talk.

But I read too much into the way he looked at me.

I knew that.

And I needed to get over him.

“I don’t want to be alone,” I admitted. “Man lessons. But … not today. Later, okay?”

My three friends grinned with excitement. “Later,” Bailey agreed.

Gratitude swelled inside me.

For these women. My friends.

“Well,” Jess said, “if we’re not doing any lessons … we could talk about the fact that Cooper proposed and we’re planning to get married at the end of the summer.”

Joy for Jessica flooded me as we all burst into a chorus of delighted cries. Although I wasn’t sure of the details, I suspected Jess had been through a lot in her life, and I was absolutely thrilled she’d finally found what she needed here in Hartwell. That knowledge eased my melancholy as we peppered her with questions about Cooper’s proposal.

JACK

“You want me to what?” Jack practically growled, not sure he’d heard Stu correctly.

“You heard me.” His brother sounded smug through the phone.

“You want me to prostitute myself?”

“If you consider fucking a prime piece like Vanessa Hartwell prostitution, then that’s your problem. I’d do it. In a heartbeat. But Dana doesn’t want me dipping my wick in anything else while we’re screwing around, and Vanessa Hartwell might be sexy but she’s no Dana Kellerman. And anyway … Vanessa has made it clear she thinks I’m scum.”

“Probably because you hit her sister in the face.” Jack was still not over that. In fact, a seething rage had lived under his skin since the moment Bailey approached him in Lanson’s Grocery to tell him Stu had attacked her in her inn.

She couldn’t prove it was Stu.

But she knew.

And Jack knew it, too, because Ian had been harassing him and his brothers to come up with a way to get the inn out of Bailey’s hands. He’d alluded to them breaking into her office to find something in her accounts that would help them.

And fucking Stu had broken into her inn when he was high on coke.

“How many times do I have to apologize for that shit? I was off my fucking face. You know I never meant to do it. She startled me. I wasn’t thinking. And anyway, I took your beating for it. Fair is fair.”

“Unless you want me to tear out your throat with my bare hands, I’d shut up now, Stu.”

“So sensitive, bro. Anyway, you’re up with Vanessa. She’ll sign over her inn shares if you grease those wheels, if you catch my drift.”

Jack hung up and launched his cell phone into the ocean.

He heaved an angry inhalation and then cursed himself.

Now he’d have to buy a new goddamn phone.

Turning away from the water, he made his way back up to the boards, the moonlight and lights from the boardwalk leading the way.