Why? What did it say?” She gently disengaged her arm and said grimly, “I doubt the readership finds me as interesting as all those overeager reporters think I am.”
Brian took issue with that. “I’m sure the locals find you very interesting. Many of them remember when you were kidnapped, and they grieved with your family. Everyone around here loves the Abbotts. And here you are, back in their lives, beautiful and smart. They consider it’s good justice that you’re home again.”
“Good justice,” she repeated. They’d reached the store and she stopped to lean an arm on the newel post. “I do know I’m very lucky. But that’s not the same as being special. I’m thrilled to be home among such wonderful people, but I hate this living-in-a-fishbowl stuff. That tabloid reporter from the Meteor even followed me here this morning! I’m sure the front page of the next issue will have a photo of the back of me on the Vespa, with the headline Heiress Runs Away.”
Brian couldn’t imagine what would be bad about a photo of the back of her—whatever the headline. His guess was that her good looks and lively personality were going to keep her in the public eye for a long time.
“So…I’m sorry, I got distracted by my dislike of press coverage,” she said. “Did you have a point to make about the article?”
“Yes.” He leaned an elbow on the opposite post. “It talked about your broken engagement a month before your wedding, and I was mentioned in the ending paragraphs. Happy news always seems to require dredging up every bad moment in the past.”
“True.” She shrugged philosophically. She wasn’t getting the point.
“Well, the press will surely give the Abbotts’ double wedding front-page coverage. All that happy news. “‘The grooms were handsome,’” he pretended to quote, “‘the brides were radiant, the mother-of-the-grooms was so happy to have her daughter back serving as her brother and adopted sister’s maid of honor,’ yada yada. If I’m best man, it’ll end with ‘Brian Girard, best man, is the son of the first Mrs. Abbott, who ran off with the chauffeur after being impregnated by the neighbor and Nathan Abbott’s arch ene—’”
“I know, I know.” She nodded to cut him off.
“Then you can see why I don’t want to do that to them.”
“Forgive me,” she said, “but I can’t. That’ll probably end the story whether you’re at the wedding or not. And your refusal to be with them hurts them far more than any old sticks-and-stones reporting ever would.”
“Easy for you to say,” he argued. “It’s not your wedding.”
That accusation seemed to inflate her bad mood. “It’s my sister’s wedding. And it’s as important to me as mine would be. You said they brought up my broken engagement and the very newsworthy way it happened. Well, you don’t see me going into a decline over it.”
“Whoa!” He got a little indignant himself. “I’d hardly describe my reaction as a decline. And you’ve been cranky since you got here, over the photographer who followed you. So don’t go casting aspersions on me. My reasons for wanting to stay away are in consideration of the Abbotts!”
“Well, they want you there,” she said, then started off toward the Vespa she’d run him over with when she’d first arrived in Losthampton. It leaned against the No Vehicles Allowed sign. She stopped to turn to him and add, “At this point, I have little purpose at Shepherd’s Knoll but to try to contribute to the well-being of my family, who suffered so much while I was gone. And considering the way they’ve welcomed you into the bosom of the family, I’d think you’d feel the same. So I’m going to tell them you’ve changed your mind, and that you’ll be happy to be best man.” With a toss of her head, she strode off toward the bike.
He hurried to intercept her. “You may be able to order people around in L.A., Miss Grant Abbott, but this is my place. You don’t dictate what happens here.”
“We’re talking about my only sister’s wedding,” she retorted, yanking back out of his reach. “And you’re not going to…aagh!”
Whatever he was not going to do was drowned in salt water when she fell backward into the inlet.
Chapter Two
Her and her big mouth. The shriek Janet had been in the middle of when she felt herself falling had caused her to swallow water. As she sank into the cold Atlantic, she felt as though she’d also ingested one of the small boats—or at least, an oar.
The moment she got over the shock of her fall, she struggled upward, choking. She collided with the bottom of a boat and pulled herself around it, spotting sunlight. The light disappeared when the next boat bobbed against the first one. She groped her way back as she spotted sunlight in that direction. Her lungs were bursting as the shaft of sunlight disappeared again when the first boat now swung the other way.
Resisting panic, she followed it to its stern, but it drifted out with her to the end of its line.
Panic fought back. Had all this turmoil in her life, all this discovery, been intended simply to bring her to this point where she would…die?
It didn’t seem possible, and yet here she was, unable to find the surface, unable to—
Something grabbed the back of her shirt and she was thrust upward until her head and shoulders cleared the surface. She gasped for air, choking painfully, spewing water.
A hand swiped her clinging hair out of her face. “Janet? Are you all right?” Brian asked.
She tried to open her eyes, but all she could do was cough.
Brian swam a small distance, his arm hooked around her middle, taking her with him. Then he put one of her hands on something solid, his legs tucked under her like the seat of a chair to keep her in place.
“You have a hold of the ladder,” he said, placing her other hand beside the first. Just two rungs and you’ll be sitting on the pier. Come on. Up.”
She couldn’t coordinate the movement, then his hand, under her backside, pushed her up. Her feet found an underwater rung and she propelled herself over the top. She was on her hands and knees and beginning to drag in air.
Brian swung up beside her, putting a hand to her back as he squatted to look into her face. “Janet?”
“Yes.” She was embarrassed, but somehow her annoyance with him had fled. Nothing like immersion in cold water to stabilize a mood. “Yes, I’m still Janet. Did you think I couldn’t come up because I was having my name changed?”
He barked a laugh. “Your sense of humor has survived.” Then he lifted her up into his arms. “I’ve got a shower in the back of the shop.”
She held on to his neck as he strode up the steps. “I couldn’t find my way between the boats,” she said, unable to believe that had been so difficult. “Every time I went for the sunlight, the boats bumped together again.”
“My fault,” he replied, walking through the shop and into a small area in the rear. “I was pushing them apart, looking for you from the pier, so when your opening disappeared, it was probably me, shoving from the other side.”
“Nice
