insults, sticking it to one another at every opportunity.
But a lifetime ago it had been different. He was her brother’s best friend and because of that relationship she’d known him since she was five years old. She’d liked him back then. He hadn’t teased her for her bookish ways as her brother did. By the time she was preparing to leave for boarding school liking him had turned into a crush. But she didn’t dare admit it or imagine he felt the same way. She left for school and took her silly dreams with her. Nothing had prepared her for the night of her sixteenth birthday when he’d unexpectedly kissed her for the first time. When school was over she’d returned to Crystal Point to take a break before she headed off to college and in those few months they’d dated one another. Cameron Jakowski had been her first real boyfriend. Her first kiss. The one man she’d never quite been able to forget.
“What’s really going on with you, Grace?”
Her back straightened, shoving her into the present. “Spare me your fake concern.”
He stepped closer. “It’s not fake.”
Grace didn’t believe him. “Like you care?”
He laughed. “C’mon, Grace—lighten up. You’re not in your swanky office now. There’s no one to impress by pretending you’ve got it all together.”
Grace stilled. His words hit a raw nerve. Because she’d heard the same ones from the therapist her boss had insisted she visit. But Cameron didn’t know that. No one knew. The terrible accident and the month afterward where she’d returned to work and pretended none of it had happened, or the way she’d spectacularly unraveled in front of a client. She needed to lie through her teeth—for her own sake. “I always have it together—you know that.”
“Do I? I know that you’ve been hanging around down here for the past hour. I know that you’ve barely cracked a smile all afternoon, at your own sister’s wedding. I know that you’re unhappy even if you don’t have the courage to admit it.”
Grace glared at him, hating she felt so transparent in front of Cameron, hating he could see through her. “And I know that if I admit to anything you’ll just use it against me. No, thanks.” She got to her feet and stumbled.
He grasped her arm quickly. “Steady,” he said as he held her.
Grace tried to pull away but he held her firm. Something uncurled low in her belly, warming her blood. A familiar sensation she experienced whenever he was close. It unnerved her and she fought the feeling. “Let me go.”
“You’ll fall over.”
“So, I’ll fall.” She was suddenly powerless as one strong arm came around her waist.
“I’d catch you,” he said quietly.
Grace frowned. “Let me go…please.”
But she wasn’t afraid. She’d never feared Cameron. Despite their differences, she’d always trusted him. Grace felt the nearness of him and fought the sudden warmth spreading across her skin. That he could do this to her—make her boil with fury one moment and burn with awareness the next—only added to her resentment and determination to keep as far away from him as possible. He was the only man she’d ever known who’d been able to do that to her. The only man she’d ever thought could see through her, know her and work her out.
“Don’t…”
“I’m not doing anything.”
“You are. You do. You always do. I just want…” She stopped, stalled and felt herself get dragged into meeting his eyes. She was flustered, uneasy. “I can’t…”
“What is it?” he asked softly. “What’s going on in that beautiful head of yours?”
Grace’s resistance crumbled. The champagne she’d had suddenly freed up her tongue. “I just…I don’t belong here,” she admitted and pulled herself from his grasp as she stepped backward. “I don’t belong anywhere.”
Cameron’s hands burned from the feel of Grace’s skin and he clenched his fists at his sides. The pain in her voice knocked through him, settling behind his ribs in a way that made him think about every feeling he’d had for her—and buried.
“What do you mean?”
She turned away, clutching her arms around herself. “Nothing,” she said quietly.
Cameron pushed the heels of his shoes up from sinking in the sand and pressed on. “What do you mean you don’t belong?”
Grace twirled around and her long dress billowed around her knees. “Why do you care?”
Why indeed? He shouldn’t. Grace was nothing but trouble. A workaholic ice princess who had little time for anyone. Me included. He’d found that out the hard way. Beautiful beyond words, smart and independent—and about as warm as an Arctic winter. The perfect antidote for all his fantasies. Wanting her was about as sensible as wanting acid rain.
He shrugged. “Friendly concern.”
Her beautiful face looked almost luminescent in the moonlight as she shot him a death stare. “Don’t be nice to me,” she said quietly, looking suspicious. “We’re not friends and I just—”
“We were more than friends,” he said and took hold of her hand despite his best intentions to not touch her. “Once.”
She stared at their linked hands and this time, she didn’t pull away. Cameron’s fingertips tingled. He knew that would happen if he touched Grace…expected it…didn’t like it one bit but chalked it up to chemistry and tried not to let it mess with his mind. Over The years there had been the odd touch between them, the chance gesture of hands brushing…and every time it was the same. The same vibration rattled inside him, over his skin, through his blood. He knew it wasn’t like that for her, of course. Grace was supercool and controlled, with perfectly straight dark hair, immaculate clothes and haunting green eyes—like a mannequin on display. A mere touch wouldn’t jangle Grace. But he remembered what it was like to touch her, to kiss her, to hold her in his arms. Those memories were burned into his soul.
As expected, she pulled away. “A lifetime ago.”
Her dismissal cut deep. She’d left him without looking back all those years ago and as much as he wanted to deny it, that rejection still stung. He smiled because he knew it would infuriate her. “So, explain what you meant about not belonging anywhere?”
“No. It was nothing.” She shrugged lightly. “And now, if you don’t mind, I need to get back to the party.”
He didn’t believe her for a second. So he pushed. Because he could. Because he wanted to know what was going on inside her beautiful head. “So, has this got anything to do with that suit you’ve shacked up with?”
Her lips came together. “Erik,” she said after a moment. “We broke up a year ago. And we were never shacked up. We both kept our own apartments.”
She crossed her arms. The movement pushed her breasts upward and Cameron did his best to ignore the swell of cleavage rising up and down with each breath she took. He’d never met the other man, since Grace had kept him under wraps in New York. But Cameron had heard about him from her brother.
