Barefoot at Sunset (Barefoot Bay Timeless Book 1) (31 page)

Of all the “messages” he’d imagined she’d delivered over the past sixteen years, none had ever been so obviously and truly from the head and heart of Julia Coulter Solomon.

So he read it.

Dearest Markie…

God, he’d hated when she called him that.

I’m stuck in civics behind the dandruff-filled hair of Joey Michaels—it’s snowing on my desk! I wish you weren’t in bio lab now, because I’d go to any class and get you out just to give you a kiss in the hall. I’d tell them old Wiggy sent me.

He smiled at the nickname he’d totally forgotten for the principal. What would she say to learn Wigglesworth still roamed the halls of MHS all these years later?

Anyhoo, I just wanted to say I am super excited about Friday and can’t wait to go to the SOB before the Spring Fling. A dinner date like grownups!! Even if Allison and Josh are coming and all they do is fight. Oh, I’m going to wear jeans (of course) and that new yellow top you like so much. (Easy buttons!)

He chuckled softly, remembering the top he’d managed to find his way inside frequently. He could just about hear her sweet voice in every word, her light tease, her warmth. There was no punch of pain, no choking grief. Nothing but fond memories and good thoughts.

He skimmed the rest of the letter, full of more high school nonsense, then his gaze dropped on the signature.

I love you, J.

Under it was a turn-the-page arrow. Flipping the paper, he found a postscript.

P.S. I can’t stop thinking about our talk. Yes, I want babies. A couple of them, I hope. And, if you insist, I will name our boy Daniel, since you love Dan Marino so much. But I get to pick the girl’s name, okay? And I already have. Emma. Emma Solomon. Isn’t that the most beautiful name you’ve ever heard?

His breath caught and his heart kicked as he stared at the words his late wife had written thirty-one years ago.

Emma Solomon. Isn’t that the most beautiful name you’ve ever heard?

“Yes,” he whispered, vaguely aware his feet had already started moving, even if his brain was stuck in the past. Emma Solomon was the most beautiful name he’d ever heard, and this was a message he was not going to ignore.

He yanked the Porsche door open and threw himself behind the wheel, tossing the letter on the seat next to him.

Was he crazy? He’d known the woman less than a week and, right now, she was rightfully pissed at him. He’d wrecked her job, her heart, her trust, and her week in paradise…but he’d make it up to her.

Because when they went to that reunion tomorrow night—and they would go and they would dance and they would win—she would be his fiancée, and there would be nothing fake about it.

Emma Solomon.
A beautiful name indeed, Julia.

Would she take him seriously? Would she laugh in his face?

The questions plagued him all the way back to the resort, but he smashed every doubt with confidence. They had something special. They were…soul mates.

Good God, could that happen twice in one lifetime?

He parked the car and hustled across the lot, the path to Blue Casbah suddenly seeming a hundred miles long instead of a pleasant walk along the beach. As he reached the first villa, an electric golf cart came humming up behind him, and he turned, greeted by the smiling face of the world’s friendliest housekeeper.

“Poppy, can I have a ride?” he asked impulsively.

“You sure may, Mr. Solomon. Blue Casbah? You skipping the baseball game, too?”

“Yes.” He hopped in. “Do you know where everyone is all the time?”

“I try to,” she assured him. “I know a little bit about everyone who’s here.”

He peered ahead as if looking for the villa could get him there faster.

“For instance, I know you’re not engaged to that woman you’ve been staying with.”

He swiveled to look at her. “How the hell do you know that?”

“Hey!” She held out her hand. “There’s a fine for cursing in my cart.”

He stared at her in disbelief. “I just came from church,” he said. “Does that pay my fine?”

“This time.” She turned her hand and patted him on the thigh, easing into the curve right before the villa. “And I only know about the engagement because she told me a few minutes ago.”

“She told you?”

“No worries. Getting people to tell me stuff is my gift. Here you go. Blue Casbah.”

“Thanks.” He swung his feet out and hit the bricks, the first tendril of something not right twisting around his chest. “Did you bring her back to the villa when the cab dropped her off?” he asked.

“The other way,” she said, pointing over her shoulder. “To the lobby. With her bags.”

And that tendril tightened to stop the next beat of his heart. “Her bags?”

She lifted two pitying eyebrows. “Sorry to be the one with the bad news, but she just took a cab to the airport.”

He opened his mouth, but nothing, not a single word, came out. He just nodded and backed away, then turned to go into the villa.

Except, he already knew what he’d find.

Still, hope had a way of rising over all that certainty, driving him to stick the card key in the door and step into the entryway to see her, hear her, smell her, touch her…kiss her…and tell her…

Emma Solomon. Isn’t that the most beautiful name you’ve ever heard?

But there was nothing but a heavy, still silence that told him he’d never get to ask her that question.

Chapter Twenty-four

This was travel hell. Emma would have to wait an hour, then make two connections in Charlotte and Pittsburgh, and shell out a small fortune to Uber for the final leg after landing in Newark. But if weather and winds were in her favor, Emma would be home in her Brooklyn apartment before the clock struck midnight.

Jilted, jobless, and jaded…even more than when she’d landed here six days ago at the junior-size regional airport that had the audacity to call itself Southwest Florida International.

In a restaurant that smelled like cheese and beer, she plopped down at an empty two-top table that looked out at the six people bustling by on the concourse.

“Bitter,” she murmured as she tucked her suitcase under the table. “I am so bitter.”

“Bourbon and bitter did you say?” A waitress stood next to her table with an order pad in one hand and a pen in the other.

Emma gave a soft laugh. “That might just be strong enough, but no. I’ll have a glass of white wine. Do you have…” She thought of the crisp, dry wine from a vineyard Mark liked and instantly her heart sank. No, she can’t wallow over him, but she could at least re-create the wine experience. “Sauvignon blanc?”

Lips that were just pink enough to have been covered in lipstick many hours ago curved up. “I could tell you it’s souvy…whatever blank. But it’ll get poured from the same bottle of lighter fluid we give anyone who wants white wine.”

“Thank you,” Emma said, thudding her elbows on the table, eyeing the woman’s name tag. “You know what the problem is with this world today, Joelle?”

“Bad wine?”

“Not enough people are just flat-out honest. It’s all I want. Am I asking too much? Just tell the truth. So it might not be what someone wants to hear. So it might not sell your product or increase your bottom line. So what, I say. Be honest. Even if there’s a price to pay. Even if you break a woman’s heart. Tell the truth, please.”

The woman just looked at her, but Emma’s blood was bubbling now, and the tears she’d fought since she’d left Casa Blanca swam in her eyes.

“I can handle the truth,” she continued. “I’m not a fragile little thing with a tender heart that needs to be lied to. And not telling someone something is just as bad as lying. People benefit from the truth. They grow. They have their eyes opened. They get what they really wanted in the first place.”

The waitress tapped her pad. “Which would be…”

“A beer,” Emma said on a sigh. “Just something cold on tap. No lighter fluid.”

“Good call.” The woman disappeared to the bar, leaving Emma to drop her head onto her palm and sigh.

She’d left Barefoot Bay as impulsively as she’d arrived. This time, she’d had the airline schedule on her phone while she was still in the cab. Packed in record time, grabbed a housekeeper’s golf cart to the lobby, and was in a cab before Mark Solomon could figure out what hit him.

Because if he’d come back to the villa,
she
would have hit him.

No. She would have cried more, and he would have explained his compelling reason for not telling her that Kyle had cheated on her—Kyle, that black-hearted, two-timing bastard—and then Mark would have lured her into bed with his clever hands and sexy mouth and
lies
.

Well, he’d never lied about their relationship, but then, they didn’t have a
relationship
. But she’d started to hope…

And then she went falling face first for the biggest lie in the history of mankind: the happily ever after lie. Again! How stupid was she?

Stunningly stupid. A first-class fool who should know better than to think that kind of happiness could happen to her.

“What was his name?”

Emma looked at the cocktail napkin that had just been placed in front of her, then up at the waitress, mid-forties, most likely, a weathered but warm face with deep-brown eyes and wiry blond hair. “Mark,” she said simply.

“Nice name. Good and strong.” She took a foamy beer from her tray and put it on the table. “Don’t tell me. Another woman?”

“Not this one,” she said, wrapping her hand around the icy glass. “That was the guy before him.”

“But he lied, and you cried.”

Emma snapped her fingers and pointed to her. “That’s good. Have you ever considered a job writing advertising copy?”

“What? And leave all this?” She gestured toward the nearly-empty concourse and the restaurant that wasn’t exactly overflowing with customers. “I didn’t mean to be poetic, but you look wrecked. Beer’s on me.”

“Really? It’s that obvious?”

Joelle glanced at the bar and the back of a bored bartender who was watching CNN on the TV. Then, she pulled out the other chair at Emma’s table and dropped into it. “How do you think I ended up here, working in an airport bar?”

“An international airport bar,” Emma joked.

“Exactly, because as you can see…” Joelle gestured to the empty restaurant. “We are a beehive of exotic international travelers.”

Emma snorted. “See what I mean? Lies. One flight probably got rerouted from South America on its way to Miami and they called an emergency marketing meeting to change the name.”

The other woman laughed. “Hey, we serve Canada and Germany, but I guess this place is small compared to Kennedy or O’Hare. But, seriously, honey girl, don’t let one bad experience sour you on all men. And airports.”

“It was two bad experiences. Consecutive. Three weeks ago, I was jilted at the altar. Have the cancellation fees and unresellable Vera Wang gown to prove it.”

She cringed. “Ouch.”

“Then I come down here for a little R&R, and my villa’s taken by some…some…” Perfect, funny, sexy, wonderful man. “Slick-tongued silver fox who…” She shook her head. “Never mind.”

“Like hell never mind.” Joelle leaned closer. “This is getting good. What happened?”

Emma angled her head and gave the waitress a “what do you think happened” look.

“You didn’t.”

“I did.” Emma punctuated the admission with a slurp of foamy beer.

“Please, oh God, please, please, please don’t tell me he’s married. The number of married asswipes that come through this—”

“No,” Emma assured her. “Not married. Worse. So much freaking worse.”

“Broke? Abusive? Boring with a small dick? The possibilities are endless.”

“A widower who believes there is only one person for everyone, and he already met, married, and buried her.”

Joelle dropped back and let her tray hit her lap. “Ohhh. That’s harsh. But was the sex good?”

“Ridiculous.” Another gulp, and she finally hit beer. “Slow, sweet, sensual…satisfying.”

Joelle laughed. “Sounds downright poetic.”

“It was.”

“Then don’t complain.” She pushed up and pressed her round tray to her chest. “You had good sex and a nice vacation. A girl can’t ask for much more than that.”

“Can’t she?”

The woman started to throw back another quip, but something stopped her, and it came out like a sigh as she dropped back into the seat and put her hand on Emma’s arm. “Is he worth fighting for?”

Emma just stared at her for a moment. “I’ve honestly never met a man more worth fighting for, but—”

She hushed Emma with a flat hand in the air. “No buts. If you’re worth it and he’s worth it, what are you doing running away?”

“I’m…” She swallowed. “I’m afraid of losing the fight.”

One well-drawn brow lifted. “Oh, honey. Fear is the enemy.”

“So I’ve heard.” She picked up the beer and stared into the bubbly top. “Gotta conquer those three times. So maybe the next time I meet a man, he’ll be my soul mate.”