Summer on Lovers' Island (Jewell Cove 3)

Oh boy. She was in trouble, wasn’t she? And wasn’t that why she was here, after all? To have Charlie talk some sense into her?

“Charlie? I’ve done something really, really stupid.”

Charlie plopped a piece of pizza on her plate, ripped off two pieces of paper towels in lieu of napkins, and handed Lizzie a soda from the fridge. “Oh, how bad can it be?” she joked. “What’d you do, sleep with Josh?”

Heat rushed up Lizzie’s face.

“Oh shit. You did? Lizzie! When?” Pizza forgotten, Charlie sat on a stool and stared at her friend.

“Last night. Though we came close … once before.”

“Last night? What … how?” Charlie popped the top on her soda and leaned in, her eyes twinkling. “Well. How was it?”

Lizzie couldn’t help it; she laughed. “That’s like four questions, Charlie. Pick one and I’ll answer it. Maybe.”

“Easy. First question: how was it?”

Lizzie looked down at her pizza, suddenly feeling a little bashful, which was not her style at all.

“Truthfully? It was amazing.” She fought to keep the memories from surfacing again. They were more than a little X-rated and had been distracting her all day. She lifted her eyes and found Charlie studying her in the way she always did—with an honest eye.

“Honey,” Charlie said softly. “Was it really that good?”

Lizzie felt unfamiliar emotions swamping her. “Don’t. Don’t talk in that tone of voice, okay? It makes me feel like I’m, I don’t know, fragile or something.”

Charlie sighed. “Okay, then I’ll just ask. Are you falling in love with him?”

“Of course not,” she denied quickly, and then her heart gave a strange lurch. No, it wasn’t possible. She wasn’t falling in love, for God’s sake. She didn’t do love. “It’s just sex. I mean, I like him and everything. And last night when he found out that Abby’s pregnant, the look on his face, I mean, he looked so conflicted. And he just kind of stands to the side, out of the way. And his family relies on him to hold things together, you know? They don’t even realize they’re doing it.”

Charlie was smiling at her. “Liz. You know that old quote about ‘the lady doth protest too much’?”

“I’m not in love with him,” she insisted. Again, the weird thump in her chest. “I can’t be, Charlie. I don’t fall in love, you know that. I don’t have time for love.”

“Correction. You didn’t have time for love. You always made sure you were too busy so you had a good excuse. But this summer you slowed down. Started to smell the roses. And the pheromones.” Charlie lifted her slice of pizza and took a healthy bite of ham and pineapple.

“You just want that to be true,” Lizzie argued. She picked up her pizza and started to eat, but a sense of panic had begun to swirl through her stomach. Love? What an idiotic notion. Love just got in the way. Love hurt.

More than that, love meant a commitment. Some people avoided commitment because they didn’t want to be tied down, but Lizzie looked at it differently. When you committed yourself to someone, it was a promise. A promise to be there for them, to put them first.

And when you did that, you ran the risk of always letting them down. As much as she loved her father, as much as her parents had loved each other, Lizzie had seen the hurt in her mom’s eyes when Russ had put his career first over family. In later years, when he’d slowed down, it had been better. And so Lizzie had learned from both the earlier days of the marriage and the later ones. And she was pretty sure what she was capable of. And what she wasn’t.

“What are you really afraid of?” Charlie asked.

Lizzie put down her pizza. “I don’t know. Failure? Russ Howard left big shoes to fill.”

Charlie took a drink of soda. “That’s always been your problem. Trying to be your dad. I don’t know who made you feel like you had to, but they did you a huge disservice. The problem is you only want to be the best parts of your dad. Perfection doesn’t exist, honey. Not even for him.”

“Yeah, I think I’ve figured that out lately.”

They were quiet for a few minutes, picking at their food. Charlie finally spoke. “So what are you going to do about Josh?”

Lizzie gave an amused huff. “Actually, I was kind of hoping you’d tell me what I should do.”

Charlie shifted on the stool, ran her hand over the mound of her belly. Lizzie had never really considered children, but with Jess having her baby today, Abby announcing her pregnancy, and Charlie nearly ready to pop, marital and parental bliss seemed to surround her. She couldn’t escape it if she tried.

“Liz,” Charlie finally said, “Josh is a good guy. You could do a lot worse.”

“But he’s here, and I’m there, and the long-distance thing…”