Sweet Escape at Bayside (Sweet with Heat: Bayside Summers Book 4) Read online

  They’d spent years living in remote villages with sometimes fewer than fifty people, so they were never far apart. But Lizza would go off to teach or meditate, sometimes leaving seven-year-old Violet alone for hours.

  Lizza smiled and came to her side. “You’re my resourceful girl. The earth has always been your playground—hiking, learning, creating, experimenting…”

  “Like I had any other choice?” She spun the wheel, working the clay and hoping for the knots inside her chest to unfurl, but they just kept tightening.

  “You had choices, honey, and I listened as best I could.”

  “You listened?” Violet pushed to her feet, standing eye to eye with her mother, and said, “When exactly did you listen, Lizza? When I begged you to take me back to Ted and Desiree? Or was it when I told you I was lonely and had no friends?”

  “Honey, those were the things you said, but I listened to the things you showed me. You would have been unhappy tangled up in classrooms and curfews. Don’t you remember how you used to sneak out of your elementary classes when we lived in Oak Falls? I had to go to the school and hunt you down nearly every day.”

  Violet scoffed and stalked away. “I don’t remember that.”

  “I’m not surprised. You were in first and second grade,” she said kindly. “You would wander out of the school. Or rather, you would scheme and then wander away from the school. I’d find you in a tree or surrounded by bushes, playing in the dirt, drawing, making flower necklaces for Desiree. You could never be tied down, Violet. You have too much of me in you. I imagined what would happen when you became a teenager, and I wasn’t going to lose my girl to drugs or thievery.”

  “A lot of faith you had in your daughter, huh?” Violet turned on her, unable to keep the rage inside. “Most mothers see the good in their children. But not you. You saw me as a delinquent when I was seven!”

  “No, darling,” Lizza said with a thoughtful smile, which only angered Violet even more. “I saw everything about you—who you wanted to be and what struggles you’d have in that environment. When we traveled, you blossomed into a creative, well-rounded woman.”

  “Is that what you think of me? That I’m well rounded?”

  “Violet, you learned from different cultures, picking up skills from every village. You loved working with your hands, and you found your niche doing it. You made your own patterns, made clothing and gorgeous batiks. Why, at eight you learned to make glue and used that instead of wax for the batiks. You are a bright, resourceful woman.”

  Tears burned in Violet’s eyes. “I might have found my way, but it was because I had no one else to do it for me.”

  “Sweetheart, staying in a small town with rules and expectations would have stifled you. Look at your hands; look all around you. You learned how to do pottery all on your own, and it has been good for you.”

  Violet remembered when she’d first learned to do pottery, and heck yes, she’d learned it on her own. What other choice did she have? She’d seen an elderly potter working at her wheel in one of the villages, and she’d watched her for weeks from afar, hiding behind shrubs beside the woman’s hut. One day, when she ducked into her hiding place, she’d found a lump of clay wrapped in cloth and a bowl of water.

  “I might have done things unconventionally,” Lizza said, “but I’ve always supported your creative endeavors.”

  Violet had always thought the potter had left that clay for her. But now she wondered if it had been Lizza. And hadn’t it been Lizza who had left her art supplies and pottery equipment in this very studio when she’d tricked Violet and Desiree into coming to the Cape? At that point it had been more than two years since Violet had worked with a potter’s wheel, and she’d been elated to find her mother’s equipment and supplies hidden in the closet, along with paints and canvases, which Desiree used to get back into painting.

  “Don’t you see, Violet? The life we lived was what you needed. Life is fluid for people like us, and for Desi, life is structured and habitual.”

  “I’m nothing like you,” Violet snapped. “I would never tear a family apart, and I might have done a lot of things in my life that weren’t what other people would call right, but I’d never in a million years pretend to be my daughter’s ex’s lover.”

  Confusion rose in Lizza’s eyes. “Your ex’s lover…?”

  “Don’t pretend you didn’t bring Andre here to upset me.”

  “Upset you? Why on earth would I ever want to do that? I love you.” Lizza’s eyes widened in surprise and she said, “Were you and Andre lovers?”

  Violet huffed out a breath. “You were in Ghana when we were together.”

  “Tsk. My life blurs together sometimes. I can hardly remember yesterday. I had forgotten we were there at the same time. Why, I think I was only passing through back then, wasn’t I? But I don’t recall you saying you had a boyfriend.”

  Because I never did.

  Uh oh. She’d forgotten about that.

  “Honey, I brought Andre here because when I was in Paris visiting a friend I ran into him in a coffee shop. He had gone there for a medical conference and stayed for a few weeks, and he was miserable. I could see it in his eyes. He had some time off between projects for Operation SHINE, and I had reserved the cottage. He said he needed a place to…” Her brow knitted. “Oh! I remember. He said he needed a place to decompress. With the bay right outside your door and you girls and all your lovely friends here, I thought it was the perfect place for him to figure out whatever had him so down. The universe brought us together; why wouldn’t I offer him the luxury you and Desiree had afforded me?”

  Violet leaned on one of her worktables, wishing she knew if she could believe Lizza or not. At this point the damage was done. It didn’t really matter, did it?

  “Anyway, sweetheart,” Lizza said softly, “I came up to hug you goodbye.”

  “You’re leaving?” She stormed across the room, stopping inches from her mother, and said, “I am not going to let you crush Desiree’s hopes again.”

  “Desi knows, and she’s okay with it. Emery told me Desi and Rick had changed their honeymoon plans so she could spend time with me over the next month.”

  “And now you’re letting her down, like always.”

  Lizza reached out and touched Violet’s cheek. Violet leaned away from her touch.

  “No, honey. I’m setting Desi free to begin the life she’s always dreamed of. And I have a feeling you need this time without me, too, to find your own answers.”

  Chapter Four

  LATE SUNDAY NIGHT, long after Lizza had taken off for her next adventure, Andre sat in his cottage finishing a sketch he’d started that morning. He’d been drawing practically as long as he’d been able to hold a pencil. His parents had supported his love of the arts, hiring well-known artists to teach him the intricacies he now taught children when he traveled. In middle school, he’d wanted to create more substantial art, and found that he also enjoyed working with clay. His parents had supported those endeavors, too, hiring an award-winning Czechoslovakian sculptor to teach him over the summers. He never traveled without his art supplies, and they, along with his motorcycle, which he’d stored in a Boston garage while he was traveling, were being delivered tomorrow.

  He set the drawing on the coffee table and sighed, unsure if he should cancel the delivery until he figured out if he was staying. He could rent a car, draw rather than sculpt. If Violet had her way, he might be gone before the end of the week.

  A knock startled him from his thoughts. He answered the door, and his heart beat like a jackhammer at the sight of Violet.

  “Hey,” she said.

  She wore a black zip-up sweatshirt open over a dark tank top that stopped short of her hip-hugging jeans, exposing a path of tanned, toned skin with a splash of ink. He noticed her left leg slip inward, and he had the urge to reach for her. But he’d been thinking about that morning when she’d come home just before dawn, wearing some guy’s shirt, and reminded himself that he
’d spent more than two years searching for her—and she hadn’t wanted to be found.

  He pushed his hand into his pocket and said, “Hi.”

  “Got a minute to talk?”

  He bit back, About freaking time, and said, “Sure. Want to come in? Have a drink?”

  She nodded and stepped inside. He grabbed two beers from the fridge, and when he returned to the living room, she was holding his sketch pad, studying the image he’d drawn. He handed her a beer and took the sketch pad.

  “Was that…?”

  He set it on an end table by one of the armchairs. “Just a drawing,” he lied. He’d been sketching Violet’s naked body from memory for so long, it had become his go-to outlet for his emotions. He’d started the sketch earlier that morning. He was drawing her lying on her side, the same way he’d sculpted her when they were together.

  He waved to the sofa. “Have a seat.” He sat in the armchair closest to her.

  She inhaled deeply as she sank into the cushion. “I know I owe you an explanation.” Her thumb moved over the label on the beer bottle, but her eyes remained trained on him. “And I’m sorry about disappearing. That wasn’t fair.”

  “That’s one way to put it.” He took a long pull on his drink, wanting to say so much more, but more interested in her reasons than in telling her what she’d done to him.

  She pushed to her feet and paced, fidgeting with her hands. “While we were together I got an email from Lizza telling me Desiree needed me and that it would help prolong her life if I would come to the Cape.”

  He went to her, knowing how much Desiree meant to her. “Why didn’t you tell me? Is Desiree okay?”

  “She’s fine. It was a trick.” She stopped pacing. “At the same time, Lizza emailed Desiree asking her to come to the Cape to help run her art gallery, and said it might prolong Lizza’s life. But she wasn’t sick, at least not the kind of sick you’d think. She’d hit our vulnerabilities with the precision of a smart bomb. And then, in pure Lizza style, she took off after we showed up, leaving us with a mortgage on the property, a gallery, and a secret sex shop in the back. That’s how we ended up running the inn. This is the house I told you about, where I visited with my grandmother and Desiree when we were growing up. I’ve been here ever since.”

  “Wow, Dai—Violet. That’s…” She’d told him some bizarre stories about Lizza, but to scare her own daughters like that? He shook his head, trying to understand not only why her mother would do that, but also trying to process the fact that Violet had been in the States, right under his nose the whole time.

  And did she say sex shop? He couldn’t get lost in that right now. “You’ve been here? On Cape Cod?”

  She nodded.

  “But you knew I lived in Boston. I looked everywhere for you—outside the country, of course, because you said you’d never stayed in the States for more than a week since you were a teenager. Why didn’t you tell me before you took off? We’d been together for months. I don’t understand why you’d leave without saying goodbye. We’d just made love for the first time—”

  “And you proposed!” she snapped, on the move again. “Who does that?”

  “Who does that?” He closed the distance between them, stopping her from wearing a path in the floor. “I did, Violet. The guy who fell so freaking in love with you, I couldn’t imagine going back to a life without you in it. Did I totally misread us? Because if I did, then the last two-plus years I’ve been torturing myself for nothing.”

  “No—”

  “Then what happened? Did I scare you off?”

  “Yes. No! You didn’t scare me. What I felt for you scared me.” She was shaking as she set the beer bottle down and crossed her arms.

  “Don’t you think it scared me? I’ve never felt anything like what I felt when we were together.”

  “But I could never be who you needed,” she said angrily. “You were a prominent doctor living in a big city, with highbrow friends, attending black-tie dinners, and all the other crap you told me about. Things I didn’t know how to—or want to—be part of, no matter how I felt about you. I’m sorry, but I couldn’t do that. I wanted the you I knew in Ghana. The man who put the people he helped before everything else in his life. The guy who walked miles to see families and check up on their children, the guy who sculpted and drew in his free time and enjoyed sitting under the stars with villagers and didn’t care if his shoes got dirty. Not the guy who was tied to a system that I didn’t believe in or tied to his cell phone and worried about attending the right parties or what the society pages say about him.”

  He opened his mouth to defend himself, and she said, “Don’t even try to say you weren’t like that. You told me you were, that it was what you had always done.”

  He ground out a curse, pacing the floor. She was right. His life had been exactly that before he’d met her. “But if you’d come back with me, that would have changed.”

  “You couldn’t have changed those things, and even if you could have, what would have happened when you realized I wasn’t everything you ever wanted? That I was too restless to stay put? When you found me sleeping on a hammock in the yard because your place was too confining? Or when I cursed during a fancy dinner with your doctor friends? What then?”

  She paused, breathing heavily, and he read between the lines. She’d been abandoned by her father, her mother, and he knew she worried she’d never be enough for Desiree. She’d left him to avoid being left behind herself.

  “And then you would have resented me for being unhappy,” she said less vehemently. “And I would have resented you for wanting me to be something I couldn’t. If you loved me, you would have known I could never be that person.”

  “You took the choice out of my hands, didn’t you? You never gave me a chance to show you what I thought, or what I hoped for.”

  “Don’t you see?” she yelled, her eyes pleading for understanding. “There was never a choice to be made. You knew that I had never stayed anywhere for any significant amount of time. I couldn’t be your big-city wife, but I’d waited my whole life to have a relationship with my sister, and that letter from Lizza made me believe I was never going to get that chance! I could be—and I wanted to be—whatever Desiree needed if she was dying. And at that point I thought she was.”

  “So you chose to leave me wondering what I did wrong.”

  She shook her head, tears glistening in her eyes even as she seethed, “If I had tried to say goodbye, I never would have left. That’s how much I love you! And that makes me an awful person, because who chooses a man over their own flesh and blood? But I didn’t know what else to do! I thought my sister was dying—and leaving you nearly killed me, too. Did you ever think about that?” She threw her arms up in the air and said, “And then you show up with Lizza and you ruin everything.”

  He wanted to reach for her, to point out she’d said love in the present tense, but he couldn’t put himself in a position to be sliced open again. He needed to know where he stood. “Ruined what exactly?”

  Her jaw clenched.

  “What, Violet? Whatever’s going on with you and whoever you had a date with last night? If you have a boyfriend, give the word and I’ll leave you alone. I came here to get over you, not all mixed up like this again.”

  “I don’t have a boyfriend! I was just…out last night.” She crossed her arms again and said, “Do you have someone special in your life?”

  He shook his head, gritting his teeth and wondering whose shirt she’d worn home that morning.

  “Then what did I ruin?” he asked. “That you wanted to put down roots, just not with me? Because that stings, but I’m a big boy. I can deal with it.”

  “No! I didn’t know I was even capable of putting down roots. All I knew when I came here was that everything hurt. It hurt to think about you, to say your name, to know that I’d left behind the only man I’d ever loved. It hurt so much I could barely speak to people most of the time without being a witch. But Desiree needed
me. She couldn’t run this place alone. We’d both been hurt and tricked by Lizza, so I learned to bury my feelings for you, to function again. I learned how to be a friend, how to be a sister, and yeah, maybe I still suck at it sometimes, but I finally know what it means to be part of a family.”

  She lowered her eyes, speaking softer. “And while I was learning all those things, I wondered if I’d made a mistake. If I could have been the person you wanted.” She lifted her gaze and said, “But I know I couldn’t have. Look at me.” She tore off her sweatshirt and held her arms out. “I’m not doctor’s wife material. I’m the girl who curses and says stuff nobody wants to hear. I cannot stand fake people, I hate dresses and heels, and I’d never give up my bike for anyone.”

  He set his beer on the table and took her hand, unable to keep his distance a second longer. Maybe he should be more upset, but knowing all she’d been through brought a level of understanding that helped ease the pain. “You think you’re not enough because of everything you’ve been through and the rotten people who have made you feel that way.”

  She lifted her chin and said, “I’m enough for me. And I’m enough for Desiree.”

  “Daisy…” He gazed into her eyes, admiring her strength, even though it was that strength that had allowed her to walk away from him. “You were always enough for me just as you were. And yeah, you’re right. We wouldn’t have made it in Boston.”

  She lowered her eyes with a pained expression.

  He lifted her chin so she had to look at him and said, “But not just because you dislike everything I had been brought up to respect, or because you think you wouldn’t have fit in. You wouldn’t have liked being a big-city wife, and I should have seen that. But there’s another reason we wouldn’t have been able to stay in Boston. I changed while we were together. I know you thought I couldn’t change without resenting you, and maybe that would have been true if I had changed for you. But you changed the way I saw the world, and that changed who I wanted to be. When I founded Operation SHINE I sold my practice, my house in Boston, and all the material nonsense that went with it. I got rid of the Beamer and bought a bike. You’ve put down roots, and I’ve torn mine out.” He breathed deeply, struck by their new juxtaposition, and said, “SHINE will be opening two medical clinics every eighteen months. I plan to be there when each clinic opens for three to four months to make sure they’re appropriately staffed and operating effectively. When I’m not in the field, I work with my staff to coordinate ongoing fundraising efforts, recruit medical staff, prepare for the next location, and try to forget the woman who had such an incredible impact on my life.”