Can't Get Over You (Fortune's Island, Book 2) (6 page)

He trailed a finger along her chin, lingering in the divot below her lips. “Because you are beautiful and smart and…unique. Intoxicating.”

Jillian giggled. Actually giggled. She wasn’t a woman who ever got googly-eyed or giggly about anything, but there was something about the sexy way he said
intoxicating
that left her feeling like a schoolgirl. “Intoxicating?”

“Absolutely…” he drew in closer, and her breath caught, “positively…” she couldn’t think, couldn’t move, couldn’t do anything but watch Ethan close the distance between them, “intoxicating.” Then he leaned in and whispered a kiss across her lips.

# # #

That bastard was kissing his fiancé.

Technically, that bastard was kissing Jillian, because she had stopped being Zach’s fiancé three months ago. But she still felt like his fiancé, at least in his head, and seeing another man kiss her made him want to go all Hulk on the guy.

Instead Zach sat in his car, parked across the street from Monty’s, and told himself he needed help. What was he doing, skipping the rest of band practice to follow Jillian all over Fortune’s Island? They had laws against that kind of thing, and probably for good reason.

He needed to move on. Date someone else.

Like she was doing.

Nausea churned in his stomach. Had he completely blown it? Lost her forever?

Like a rubbernecker watching a train wreck, Zach couldn’t look away from the bastard—he still didn’t know his name—and Jillian. Zach tried to read any clues he could in the way she responded to his kiss. Did she lean in or lean away? Did she kiss him back or just tolerate the embrace?

Before he could decide, the kiss ended and Jillian took a half step back. The smile that Zach knew as well as his own curved across her face, and Zach thought if it was possible to die inside, he’d done just that.

The bastard took Jillian’s hand, then tipped the valet and opened the car door for her, one hand on Jillian’s back, possessive.

Before Zach even realized what he was doing, he was out of his car, hurrying up the walkway to Monty’s and raising an arm. He swung at the bastard, connecting with his jaw in a right hook that would have made Muhammad Ali proud. The bastard stumbled backward, and would have fallen to the ground, if not for a lamppost that broke his fall with a loud thunk. Zach advanced on him, then the rational side of his brain began to peek through the angry red fog before his eyes, and he heard Jillian’s voice.

“Zach! Stop it! What the hell are you doing?”

Her hand was on his arm. He lowered his fist to his side and turned to her. Her eyes were wide, filled with anger and fear and a little disappointment.

In that moment, Zach realized he had turned into his brother. Keith had always let his temper rule his decisions, and that had sent him to the one place Zach never wanted to go, never even visited—Cedar Junction. The state prison sat in Walpole, a couple hours north of his parents’ house, but it might as well have been the moon, because Zach had never made the journey on visitation day. All his life, he’d vowed to take a different path from his brother, a smarter path—

And what had he just done now? Let his emotions overrule common sense. Damn it. What was wrong with him? “I’m sorry, Jillian,” Zach said. “He was kissing you and—”

“Because we are out on a date,” the bastard said. “And none of this concerns you. Not earlier, not now.”

Zach ignored him. Because if he didn’t, he’d end up hitting him again. “Jillian—”

“No matter what is going on tonight, that doesn’t give you a right to hit anyone. God.” She shook her head. “You know how I feel about that kind of thing. And after what happened to me that summer…”

She shook her head, and her words trailed off. The guilt inside of Zach quadrupled. Why hadn’t he thought of that summer before he acted like a Neanderthal?

“Jillian, I’m so sorry. I didn’t think. I just…reacted.” A thousand times over the years, he’d wanted to tell her the truth about that night on the beach when she’d been attacked. But at the time, he’d barely been an adult, a kid really, who still worshipped his older brother and didn’t want to be the one to send Keith to jail. In the end, Keith had sent himself to Cedar Junction, after beating up and robbing an old man outside a grocery store in Plymouth. And Zach had kept
the secret that summer, a summer that scarred Jillian to this day, afraid that if he ever told Jillian, she would look at him exactly the way she was looking at him right now.

“No, you didn’t think, Zach,” Jillian said.

The bastard was sitting on the ground beside the lamppost, watching them, and tenderly touching his jaw from time to time. He started to get to his feet. “Jillian, we should just get out of here.”

“Give me a second,” she said. The bastard’s gaze narrowed in Zach’s direction, but he kept quiet.

“I’m sorry, Jillian,” Zach said again. “I really am. I was an idiot.”

She ignored his apology and went on, taking a step toward him to emphasize her point. “You don’t have the right to follow me, or tell me who I can kiss or not kiss. And you
especially
don’t have the right to hit a guy just because he kissed me. I broke up with you, remember?”

“Yeah, I noticed that.” Zach shook his head. “All I’ve done since then is my best to get back together with you.”

“Your best, Zach?” she scoffed. “That’s the problem right there. That you think a few half-hearted attempts to talk to me was your best.” Then she turned back to the other guy. She leaned toward him, her back to Zach. Her tone softened, and she reached out a hand to touch the red spot on his jaw. “You okay?”

He nodded, but there was anger flashing in his eyes. “Yeah, I’m fine.”

The valet, a skinny young kid with glasses, jumped out of the car he was bringing up to the station, ran over to them, looking like he was about ready to have a heart attack. “Sir? Uh, sir, are you okay? Do you want me to call the cops or anything?”

Zach scoffed. On Fortune’s Island,
cops
plural was a misnomer. Usually only one of the three members of the Fortune’s Island police force was on duty at any given time, and most often, to deal with someone too drunk to drive. Still, the last thing Zach needed was trouble with the law. He wasn’t Keith—and refused to follow in his elder brother’s footsteps. This had been a mistake, a big, huge mistake.

“I got out of hand,” Zach said to the valet, and then to the bastard who’d been kissing Jillian. “I’m sorry, man.”

The other man gave Zach a quick, dismissive look, then turned to the valet. “No, thanks. I’m fine.”

Jillian slipped her hand into the other man’s, then shot Zach a glare. “You’re right. It’s about time we got out of here.”

Zach didn’t know if she’d taken the other man’s hand on purpose, but it made the hurt in his gut quadruple, and the regrets multiply a hundredfold. Why couldn’t he get this right? Why did he keep screwing up the one relationship that mattered to him?

He watched them get into the car, and pull away from the curb. She was gone.

And it was all his fault.

SIX

The bad news came first. “It’ll be about two grand to fix her,” Harvey said. Harvey was the lone mechanic on Fortune’s Island, a big, burly guy with a good heart and a knack for knowing what was wrong with a car just by listening to it for a few seconds. He’d been Sylvia’s engine doctor for several years now, and Jillian trusted him implicitly.

“Two thousand? Dollars?” Jillian’s chest tightened.

She’d walked into the garage this morning in a good mood. Last night—until Zach showed up—had been wonderful. Ethan had dropped her off at home and kissed her one more time, a sweet, quick kiss. He hadn’t wanted to talk about what Zach had done, so she let the subject drop. Just before she fell asleep, Ethan had sent a goodnight text and another this morning, telling her good morning. That had been nice. Very, very nice.

Zach sent her a long apology by text. He wanted to see her today to talk, but she was afraid if she did that, her resolve would weaken and before she knew it, she’d be letting him back into her life. All he’d done with that craziness last night was confuse the issue even further. If Zach was that jealous about her dating someone else, and that upset by the sight of someone else kissing her, then why hadn’t he fought harder to keep her when he’d had the chance?

She sighed. She had no answer for any of the questions in her head.

“I know, I know, but this car is old and needs some major TLC,” Harvey said, probably thinking the sigh was for the car.

The car was a problem that needed more than just a sigh. Jillian had no idea how she was going to afford these repairs. Between tuition and rent, there wasn’t much money left in the end of her months.

“I don’t have two grand. I don’t even have one grand. Come on, isn’t there a way to…” She waved at the jumble of engine parts before her, “I don’t know, tape it together until my tax refund comes in?”

“Jillian, it’s September. Tax refunds are months away.” Harvey propped his hands on either side of the engine and peered into the dark morass. “I could maybe switch out the alternator to a used one, but those pistons—”

“Just give me the used alternator. Please, Harvey? If it’ll get me back and forth for the next few weeks”—
or months
, she thought—“that’ll be good enough.”

Harvey scratched his chin and gave her a doubt-it look. “You really should think about getting another car.”

“I don’t have the money. Yet.” Story of her life. Almost all of her income went across the bay, and what little she had leftover at the end of the week was just enough for rent and groceries. She knew she could ask her parents for a loan, but the last thing Jillian wanted to do was run to them. She was supposed to be an adult and fully capable of living on her own and budgeting for the unexpected. She’d mastered one of those two. “Please? Help out a starving waitress?”

Harvey sighed. “Okay, I’ll patch her together best I can, then say a prayer or two.” He gave Sylvia another dubious glance. “Or ten.”

“Thank you, Harvey.” She put a hand on his back. “I appreciate it. You’re the best.”

He just nodded, a little shy as always with praise and gratitude. “Hey, uh, how’s Zach’s Mustang running? That is a gorgeous car.”

“Fine, I guess. I haven’t really seen him lately.”

“I don’t get too many of those kinds of cars in here. Tell him to come by next time he needs an oil change.”

“Yeah, sure.” Though she had no intention of talking to Zach about his car or oil changes, or anything else. Jillian thanked Harvey again, then headed down the street toward The Love Shack. Tomorrow, she had school, which meant she’d have to get up a little earlier than usual and take her bike to the ferry, then hop the bus to campus. She’d be cutting it close on getting back to work, but hopefully it would only be a day or two without her car.

At least it wasn’t raining. And Zach wasn’t driving alongside her.

Zach
.

What had gotten into him last night? She’d never seen him so angry. Never known him to so much as punch a wall when he was frustrated, never mind another person. After that summer—

She tried not to think about it. After all, it was more than seven years ago, an isolated incident, one she shouldn’t let bother her still, but it did. Even now, as she walked down the street toward home, her gaze strayed to the snippet of beach she could glimpse between the trees and scrub brush. In the daytime, the area was warm, beckoning, but at night, it still scared her. There were times when she’d go by that patch of beach, and it would all come flooding back.

She’d been seventeen and still in that
I’m indestructible
bubble most teenagers lived inside, sitting on the beach late at night, waiting to meet Zach after he returned from a fishing trip with his father. She’d had her backpack on her back, her arms wrapped around her knees, her attention on the ocean before her, while she daydreamed about the charming boy she’d met a month earlier, and was already falling for.

She hadn’t even heard the man approach her from behind. He’d demanded her money, but when she tried to explain she didn’t have much, he got angry. He’d hit her on the back of the head, and the next thing she knew, Zach was standing over her in a near panic, and her backpack was gone. She’d ended up needing five stitches for a cut on her jaw, and an ice pack for her head, but she’d been okay—physically. Emotionally, mentally, that night had left her afraid of the dark, afraid of violent people, just…afraid.

The police never caught the guy who did it and, after hovering over her for a month, her parents finally let her go out alone again. Zach had been the best during all that, though. He’d been attentive and caring, listening to her recount the moment. He’d made sure she never walked home from work alone at night and had bought her a new backpack the very next day, with the logo of her favorite band on the front. That was what made his reaction yesterday so hard to understand, and impossible to equate with the guy she used to date. Sweet, goofy, unambitious Zach never got mad, never lost his temper.

It didn’t matter anyway. She wasn’t dating Zach anymore, and what he did or didn’t do was no longer her concern.

She wasn’t some lovesick seventeen-year-old anymore. She was smarter and stronger now. Moving on, moving forward. Like with Ethan, who had handled the whole thing with Zach like it was no big deal.

She ducked into The Love Shack, stowed her purse in the back, then slipped on her black apron and tied it around her waist. Darcy rushed up the minute Jillian entered the dining room. “So…how was the date with Mr. Wonderful?”

“Nice.” Jillian smiled. She thought of how he had wined and dined her, and left her with a simple kiss. “Very nice.”

“Nice? Is that code for boring?” Darcy picked up one of the napkin holders and refilled it with a thick stack of paper napkins. “Because I personally think the guys that make you go Oh-My-God are the ones that are keepers.”

“Guys like Kincaid?”

Darcy’s face broke into a wide, goofy smile. She was so clearly head over heels for her fiancé, and that made Jillian happy that Darcy had finally found happiness with Kincaid Foster years after they’d met. Kincaid was turning out to be an awesome dad to their little girl, and as the wedding approached, Darcy’s happiness quotient increased daily. “Definitely guys like Kincaid. Speaking of which, I saw this fabulous dress in a shop on Main Street that would be perfect for the wedding.”