Summer on Lovers' Island (Jewell Cove 3)

Lizzie watched as Josh tossed back the whiskey like it was water. He didn’t even flinch as it had to burn its way down his esophagus like liquid fire. But the last ten minutes had told her two very important things. One, Josh was definitely holding something in, something that still had the power to hurt him, and she understood and empathized with it. And two, he still wanted her. After the cold shoulder throughout the week, all it had taken was her asking if he wanted to stay and he’d changed his mind about walking away.

Hot damn.

“Do you want another?”

He nodded and handed over the glass. “I’ll take the next one slower,” he answered with a sober nod.

She went to the kitchen for fresh ice and added a liberal splash of whiskey to each glass, then back to the living room. Josh was standing in front of the window, looking out over the dark, still waters of the inlet. She put her drink down, then went to him and put one hand on his back and handed over the drink with the other.

“Thanks,” he said quietly.

“You’re welcome.”

“So,” she said, standing beside him at the window. “You ready to tell me what’s eating at you so much?”

He took a good-sized sip of the drink and swallowed. “You have to understand that

what I’m about to tell you throws massive aspersions on my manhood.”

“Aspersions?” She laughed, looking up at his profile. But halted when she could see he was mostly serious. “Okay. Try me. I’m guessing your manhood is just fine.”

He took a deep breath. “So I thought Erin and I were trying to have a baby, but the whole time she was taking the pill behind my back.”

Lizzie stared at him. “What? Were you not on the same page or what?”

He faced her and laughed bitterly. “Looking back, I don’t think we were even in the same book. She knew I wanted a family, and she pretended to want to give it to me. It worked for a while, too. I thought we’d really turned a corner in our marriage. Like we could really be happy.”

She wondered if he realized how much pain bled through what he thought was anger. If he blamed Erin or blamed himself. Considering what Lizzie knew of him so far and how he seemed to take responsibility for everyone in his family, she could guess that he placed a good portion of it squarely on his own shoulders.

“I’m sorry, Josh. That’s a dirty trick, playing with your emotions like that.” She reached over and touched his wrist. “How did you find out?”

He didn’t move his arm away from her touch, but he didn’t acknowledge it, either, and she wondered if he actually realized her fingers were on his wrist. He was back to staring out the window again, as if it were easier to say if he avoided eye contact.

“She was so determined to do one last deployment,” he replied. “Then she told me she was going to be spending a weekend with friends. I checked her GPS when she got back, because I had a terrible feeling she’d been lying. She had. She’d come here, to Jewell Cove. To see Tom.”

No wonder Josh had been so pissed at his cousin.

“Did they…?” She left the question unfinished, knowing he’d understand anyway.

“Tom says no. And I believe him. We grew up together. And he was hurt as badly as I was, I think. But damn. At the time I didn’t know if they had or hadn’t been together. I didn’t trust her not to lie about it, and Tom and I hadn’t spoken in years. I couldn’t be with her after that. From that day until the one when she left, I stayed on my side of the bed. All I could think was that if we slept together, and she got pregnant, I’d wonder if it was mine or his. I couldn’t do that.”

He turned away from the window and faced Lizzie. “A few weeks after she was deployed, I found the empty pack. Every month when she started her period we’d lament the fact that we hadn’t been successful. I never realized she was such a good actress.”

“You really wanted a family,” Lizzie said softly.

“More than anything,” he answered, and she heard the pain in his voice. “And she knew it. And the truth of the matter was, she wanted a family, too. Just not with me. She’d gone to see Tom that night to tell him she was going to leave me and that they could finally be together the way they should have been all along.”

Lizzie swore. “Are you serious?” She’d met Tom. She liked Tom. But why on earth would anyone married to Josh be able to turn him away so easily? He was a good guy. Kind, compassionate, strong, funny, sexy—

Okay. This was not supposed to lead to a laundry list of his good points. She found him attractive on a lot of levels. Didn’t mean she wanted to marry the guy—

“The whole time she was gone I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t want the marriage to end, but damn, I was tired of feeling like second choice. I thought maybe if she came back we could try some counseling or something. Instead she didn’t come back at all. And the last thing I said—”

He stopped talking abruptly. His lips closed tight and Lizzie saw a muscle tic in his jaw.

“Josh,” she said gently, rubbing his arm. “What did you say?”

“It doesn’t matter.”