Serena's Choice - Coastal Romance Series (19 page)

Jeff backed up and pulled out of
the driveway. He kept his hand on hers as he drove. “We can’t let
Elena see you like this,” he said. “Let’s go to the diner until
you calm down.”

She nodded. “Okay.”

When they got to Rossetti’s
they ran through the rain to the doors. It was dark and silent inside
and it felt eerie to Serena. She was used to a lot of noise in the
restaurant. Jeff took her hand and they went upstairs. She sat on his
bed, where they had been making love only hours before. Jeff went
into the bathroom and brought her a roll of toilet paper. “Sorry, I
don’t have any Kleenex,” he said.

“
This is fine,” she said
faintly.

“
I’m going to call Elena and
let her know that Steven is okay and we’re checking out
Rossetti’s.”

She nodded.

Chapter
Twelve

After calling Elena, Jeff sat on
the bed beside Serena.

“
What did that bastard do?”
he asked.

“
He’s married,” Serena
said. She could hardly believe she was saying those words. She never
suspected anything like that. “That’s really all I know. He
didn’t want to let me in and said he’d call me later, but then
his wife came to the door.” She broke down then into more crying.

“
Maybe she was lying,” Jeff
said.

“
He didn’t deny it. He
wouldn’t even look at me.”

“
What a coward,” Jeff said
angrily. “I’d like to go beat his ass.”

Serena looked at Jeff with alarm.
“No! Don’t do that!”

“
What are you going to do?”
he asked her, rubbing her arm.

“
I don’t think there’s
anything to do,” she said. “What can I do? I never would have
gotten involved with him if I’d known he was married.”

“
Of course not,” Jeff said.
“I’m sure he knew that.”

Serena thought about that. Of
course Steven knew that. And then she started to wonder about
everything else. He must have had to cover it up at some point. He
must have lied to her about a lot of things. She didn’t know when
he had lied, but she was going to think about it a lot.

“
What are you thinking about?”
Jeff asked.

“
I was just wondering what kind
of lies he told me. I don’t even know. It makes me feel so
foolish.”

“
He’s the one who should feel
foolish, taking advantage of a loving woman like you. Lying to you,”
Jeff said.

Serena didn’t know what was
real anymore. The world that she had believed in for months never
existed. She didn’t know how to extricate her mind from that false
world and into the new real world. She didn’t know who she was.

“
I’ve got to tell you
something,” Jeff said.

She looked at him. “What?”

“
I did some research on Steven
and found out he was married,” he said.

Anger replaced the hurt inside of
Serena. “How dare you not tell me!” she said. “How dare you let
me keep seeing him when you knew!”

“
Hold on a second,” Jeff
said. “I found out he was married but I couldn’t find a divorce.
That didn’t mean he wasn’t divorced. People can get divorced all
over the place.”

“
You should’ve told me,”
she said.

“
Maybe you’re right. I just
thought if I told you that you’d take it out on me, think I was
trying to ruin your relationship or something. I couldn’t prove he
wasn’t divorced and I really sort of assumed he was.”

“
How did you find out he was
married?” she asked, still fuming at Jeff.

“
I Googled him. I had to go
through a lot of pages, but I finally found the wedding announcement
in the newspaper. His wife is from a very wealthy Charleston family.”

She didn’t say anything for a
long time. Jeff put his arms around her and she leaned her head on
his chest. “It seems like I’m always crying on your shoulder,”
she said.

“
That’s what it’s here
for,” he said. “Come on. Lie down for a few minutes before we go
back to your house.”

She lay back on the unmade bed
and stared up at the tall ceiling. Jeff lay beside her and rubbed her
arm. Gradually, she became drowsy and fell into a deep slumber. When
she woke up an hour later, Jeff was looking at her.

“
We need to go,” she said
jumping out of bed.

Nonna was sitting in the living
room with Rosie in her lap when they got back.

“
How’s Steven?” she asked
Serena as she sat down on the couch.

“
He’s fine. No damage.”

“
That’s good,” Nonna said.
She glanced at Jeff, then back at the television.

“
I made some soup,” Nonna
said. “It’s on the stove.”

Serena got up and she and Jeff
went into the kitchen, which smelled rich and savory. “Can I bring
you some?” Serena called to her grandmother.

“
I’ve already had some. You
go ahead.”

Serena filled large bowls with
Nonna’s chicken vegetable soup and set them on the table. When she
sat down, she looked over at Jeff and whispered, “Don’t you dare
tell Nonna about Steven being married. She would be ashamed for me.”

“
Don’t worry,” he whispered
back. “I’ve got better sense than that.”

Serena looked at him wondering
what kind of sense Jeff did have. He had told her he was in love with
her. That had come out of left field, and Serena didn’t know what
to think about it. And now she was facing this emotional crisis that
she didn’t want Nonna to see. How was she going to manage that?

When they had finished the soup,
Jeff said he should get back to his place at Rossetti’s. The
hurricane had moved away and Luna Bay was left with rain and some
flooding, but there was no reason to stay with Serena and Nonna any
longer.

“
I wish you didn’t have to
go,” Nonna said. “But I know you need to.” She picked up Rosie
and handed her to Jeff. “Goodbye, little Rosita,” she said
rubbing the cat’s head. “I’ll miss you.”

“
Would you like to keep Rosie
another night?” Jeff asked. “Serena could bring her back tomorrow
when she comes to work.”

Nonna held out her hands to take
Rosie back. “Thank you,” she told Jeff. “We’ll see you
tomorrow.”

When he was gone, Nonna looked at
Serena and said, “I know something’s wrong and I know you’re
not going to talk about it. But tell me this much. Is it Steven?”

Serena wished that she could talk
to Nonna about Steven. If the circumstances were different, she
probably would. But she couldn’t. “We’re over,” she said.

“
Is it because you’re in love
with Jeff?” Nonna asked, peering at her over Rosie’s head.

“
What? Why would you say that?”
Serena said.

“
It’s not hard to see,”
Nonna said.

“
I think I’ll go to bed,”
Serena said. “It’s been a long day and I want to be fresh for
work tomorrow.”

“
Goodnight, cara. I love you.”

She leaned down and gave Nonna a
kiss, then Rosie. “I love you, too,” she said.

Serena took a shower before going
to bed. She wanted to wash away her time with Steven, she wanted to
wash him out of her mind. But it wasn’t that easy. She had opened
herself up to him, made herself vulnerable, only to have him stomp
all over her heart.

She lay back on the bed and
turned the light out. Rain pelted the roof and windows, but it was
more of a comfort than the violence of the previous night. She knew
she wouldn’t be able to sleep. She decided instead to begin an
analysis of her relationship with Steven. Try to figure out how he
had deceived her and how she had let it happen.

Serena had always held herself
back in relationships. Even with Tony in high school. She liked Tony,
but she never loved him. They had fun together but she had no
interest in a long-term relationship. He was going to work on the
shrimp boats and she was going to culinary school. She was going to
have a life outside of Luna Bay. A career. At least that’s what she
had planned for.

Maybe her mother had something to
do with it. Adrianna always had boyfriends, but she would never
commit for very long. Serena grew up seeing her mother flirt, seeing
the men practically line up to go out with her. The lucky ones did.
But Adrianna would not give her heart to them. Was this what Serena
had modeled her life on? Maybe so, she thought for the first time in
her life. Maybe so.

It was natural for Serena to have
a casual relationship with Jeff in Atlanta. She kept her wall up. Now
that she thought about it, really thought about it, Jeff had tried to
get to know her at first. He had asked her questions about her life,
her dreams. But she cut him off and he quickly learned to put a wall
up himself. She realized now how foolish that had been. But it kept
her from ever getting hurt, and she never had been hurt until Steven.

And so her mind settled on Steven
and moved away from Jeff. She had been attracted to Steven the first
time she ever saw him in Rossetti’s. When he rescued her from Tony,
if you could call it that, she allowed her heart to open up just a
little bit. It wasn’t long before her heart was an open book for
Steven. She had been blindly in love with him, and that’s how she
missed every red flag that flew up in her face.

The oil spill. Serena knew now
that there had never been an oil spill. She had known that from the
very start when she didn’t see it on the news, but she had pushed
the thoughts away. But she knew it for sure when she talked to Maria
on the boat. She had enough sense to question Steven about it, but
she had allowed him to convince her.

Why would Steven lie about an oil
spill? Why did he need to make that up? Because he needed a reason to
go out of town to see his wife. She was certain now about that. The
same was probably true about the supposed annual meeting in Tampa and
this most recent visit back to Tampa.

If only she had kept looking
through the pages on her Google search of Steven. She would have
found the wedding announcement just like Jeff did. She could have
found out sooner, but it wouldn’t have saved her heart from getting
broken. She was already deeply in love with Steven by that time. Her
subconscious probably didn’t want her to go any further with that
Internet search because deep down, she knew there was something to
find there. Something she didn’t want to see.

When her next thought came, she
sat up straight in bed. Carlos! She finally figured it out. The
Carlos situation had never seemed quite right to Serena, all the
calls at all hours, the way Steven went to another room to talk to
Carlos. But of course she had pushed her suspicions away. Now, she
knew the truth. Steven wasn’t talking to Carlos at all. He was
talking to his wife.

What about that time when Carlos
called so late and she saw the screen with his name on it? What about
that? Wasn’t that Carlos?

No, she answered herself. That
was not Carlos. Steven must have put Carlos’ name in with his
wife’s number, to be on the safe side in case she ever saw his
phone. He had been very clever. He must have had a lot of experience
at deception.

It was very clear that day on the
boat that Carlos and Maria were in love with each other. They weren’t
plagued with the problems that Steven had told her about. But she had
pushed all of those suspicions away, too. She chose to believe
Steven. She didn’t want to know the truth, because if she knew the
truth, then their relationship would have to come to an end.

Serena felt very foolish.

Chapter
Thirteen—Steven

Steven looked at Serena when
Janet asked her if she was his girlfriend. He looked at her for the
first time during that incident, but Serena had already turned away
and started walking down the steps. He wanted to call out to her, to
beg her to listen to him. But he couldn’t do that with Janet there.

Janet still stood in the door
with her arms crossed. Steven pulled her back inside and shut the
door and walked into the living room. Janet followed him.

“
Was that your girlfriend?”
she screamed.

Steven wanted to say yes, that
was his girlfriend. He wanted to tell Janet that Serena was his
girlfriend and he loved her very, very much. But he knew it was best
to lie to Janet. If he didn’t, things would get much worse. They
would be bad enough as it was.

“
No, that’s not my
girlfriend,” he said looking Janet in the eyes.

“
Why did she walk off like that
then?” Janet said.

“
Maybe she realized you’re
crazy and wanted to get the hell away from you,” Steven said
venomously.

“
Maybe she’s your girlfriend.
If she’s not your girlfriend, then why was she here?”

“
Her name is Alicia Howard,”
he said, pulling the name out of thin air.

“
She said her name was Serena,”
Janet said with a triumphant look in her eyes.

“
No, she said Alica. You heard
her wrong.”

“
I didn’t hear anything
wrong. But okay. Have it your way. Why was Alicia here?”