Laura Gordon - Lethal Lover

Initially, Tess had refused her cousin’s offer outright. The small bookstore she owned and managed in Evergreen, Colorado was in its infancy; every penny that came in was still being turned back into the business it had taken Tess two years to launch.

But when Selena had explained that she’d won the trip as a reward from her company and that the prize entitled her to bring a guest, Tess had reconsidered.

“It’s a pathetic state of affairs for a red-blooded woman of thirty-two, but I have to admit it—I have no significant other, ” Selena had quipped. “Seriously, I think this trip would do us both good. Mom and Dad would have been so pleased to see us off together on a romp.” At the mention of her recently deceased aunt and uncle, Tess had begun to cave in.

When Selena tapped her hand, Tess started. “Earth to Tess, come in, cousin,” she teased. “All right. Now that I have your attention, I want to propose a toast. To family.”

Tess raised her glass to Selena’s. “To Phil and Marjorie.”

Selena nodded, her bright expression dimming. “Yes, to my parents. They always wanted us to be friends, especially Mom. Remember?”

Tess did remember, and not without a twinge of regret. “I guess we let them down, didn’t we?”

“It wasn’t your fault,” Selena admitted. “I was the brat who couldn’t share. Never could.”

“Selena, don’t—”

“No, no, I admit it.” Her gaze fell away from Tess’s and focused on the glass she held with both hands. “I can still remember the night my parents called me at school to tell me what had happened to your mom and dad and Meredith.... Mom could hardly talk she was so devastated. She and her sister had been best friends. And I was devastated, as well. But mainly because I knew it meant you’d be coming to live with us.” Selena’s expression was distant for a moment. “Frankly, I hated you then,” she admitted and lifted her glass to drink deeply.

Selena’s frank admission caused Tess to wince, but more painful by far was the memory of the accident that had claimed her family.

“Selena, please...let’s don’t go on with this.”

“You were so pretty, so sweet and so, oh, I don’t know—so everything I wasn’t. Good grades, a natural athlete, popular. I was the struggling business major with the student loan. You were the bright-eyed freshman, the one with the full scholarship. At the time, C.U. didn’t seem big enough for the two of us.”

Tess reached across the table and covered Selena’s hand with her own. “Please stop, Selena. What’s past is past.” A past too painful to look back at, Tess finished to herself.

“You know, except for funerals, we’ve hardly seen each other in the last six years. And now, here I go spoiling our vacation by behaving as though we’re attending another one.”

Tess’s mouth went dry and she reached for her drink, thinking that the festive mood that had bubbled between them just a few minutes ago had fallen as flat as the rum punch.

“You know, I never realized just how much my family meant to me until I lost my own parents,” Selena admitted.

Tess nodded, remembering how valiantly Aunt Marjorie had battled the unrelenting illness that had finally claimed her life four years ago. Then a year later Uncle Phil had been snatched from them by an unexpected and fatal heart attack.

“I know how you’re feeling,” Tess said sympathetically. “Even after all this time, I still miss my parents and my sister.”

“Sometimes it’s just so difficult.” Selena gazed past Tess wistfully.

During the silence that stretched between them, Tess thought about her parents and Meredith and the terrible call that had come in the middle of the night. She’d been nineteen, a year out of high school, ready for college after taking a year out to work at a bookstore. She’d been poised to embark on a life that had seemed nearly perfect—too perfect, she reminded herself. Then suddenly the people she’d loved most in the world were gone. Mom. Dad. Meredith. And even Reed.

Reed McKenna, her first real love, her first lover. He’d walked out on her mere days before she’d lost her family in the accident. Then she’d lost him all over again when she stumbled over her sister’s diary. Eight long years, and the loss and betrayal still hurt.

“Oh, come on,” Selena prodded, dragging Tess from the depths of her dark memories. “Enough of this gloom and doom. We’re supposed to be on vacation, remember? Two young women, footloose and fancy-free for two whole weeks on an island paradise.”

Tess summoned her best face. “That’s us.” She lifted her glass again. “To Selena and Tess, look out Grand Cayman!” And to forgiving and forgetting, she added to herself. If it was time for a new beginning with her only living relative, surely it was time to let go of the painful past.

“To family.” Selena’s smile seemed as forced as Tess’s.

They touched glasses, but before they could drink, Tess noticed their waiter approaching again. “Perhaps we should look at the menu now,” she suggested.

“Excuse me,” the waiter said. “But there is a phone call in the lobby for Miss Elliot.”

“For me?” the cousins asked simultaneously, and then looked at each other and laughed.

“I doubt it could be for me,” Tess said. “My manager has strict instructions that unless the store burns down with the insurance policy inside, I’m not to be disturbed.”

Selena groaned and pushed back her chair.

“Wait a minute, I bet it’s the rental-car company,” Tess suggested, recalling the mix-up at the airport that had caused an hour’s delay getting a car. “I can go talk to them if you’d like.” But when she started to get up, Selena stopped her.

“No, you stay put,” she insisted. “It’s probably my office. They don’t know the meaning of the word vacation. Order an appetizer, some shrimp or something. I won’t be a minute.” Before Tess could say more, Selena was hurrying away from the table.

As she watched her cousin leave, she noticed a man at the bar across the room watching her, as well. Tess couldn’t blame him. Selena was an attractive woman.

Like Tess, Selena was tall—almost five nine—and trim. It occurred to Tess as she watched her cousin disappear into the lobby that she’d never seen Selena looking more fit. She’d lost at least ten pounds, Tess figured, remembering how grief could take a toll.

Today, dressed in a bright pink sundress and jaunty straw hat, Selena looked pretty as a picture. She’d turned heads from the moment they’d stepped off the plane in Georgetown. Like Tess, Selena wore her hair past her shoulders. But while Tess’s was straight and blunt cut, Selena wore springy curls and she’d lightened the dark brown that they’d both inherited from their mothers’ side of the family to an attractive, sun-kissed, ash blond.

Selena was not only attractive, but an independent and successful businesswoman. Tess wasn’t exactly sure just what kind of business Selena was engaged in, but whatever it was, her cousin had to be doing well, as evidenced by this trip.

Beautiful, successful, confident—all those adjectives could rightly be used to describe her only cousin, Tess told herself. Surely the old jealousy that had kept Selena from allowing a relationship to bloom between them could at last be put to rest.

“Well, here’s to you, Selena,” Tess murmured as she brought her glass to her lips again and took another sip. “To the future.”

* * *

THE PERSISTENCE of the breakers pounding the rocks below the balcony restaurant had nothing on the unrelenting memories pummeling Reed McKenna as he sat transfixed, watching Tess Elliot where she sat at her table across the room.