What Happens in Paradise - Elin Hilderbrand Page 0,79

before I called you. We broke up.”

“You broke up?” Baker says. He’s afraid to go back to feeling optimistic. “What did he say? Why was he with Brigid?”

“He said they bumped into each other. Unplanned. A coincidence. She was headed over to St. Thomas to get a tattoo of the petroglyphs.”

“Okay?” Baker says.

“I just got a tattoo of the petroglyphs a few weeks ago,” Ayers says. She holds out her ankle so Baker can see the tattoo; it’s a curlicue symbol in dark green. “We’re hardly the only two people in the universe with a petroglyph tattoo. Rosie had one. But still, I was chafed.”

“Understandably,” Baker says.

“Mick says they only talked for a couple of minutes, then Mick took Gordon, that’s our dog, his dog, up to stand at the bow and he didn’t see Brigid again.”

“Do you believe him?”

“I don’t want to believe him,” Ayers says. “But I do.”

“You do?”

“I do.”

“So…why did you break up?”

“Two reasons,” Ayers says. “Both are secrets that I’m keeping from him. One is this…project that I’m working on. I can’t tell him about it, and I can’t tell you about it yet either. Maybe in the future, once I’m finished, but not right now.”

“Secret project,” Baker says. “I won’t ask.”

“Please don’t,” Ayers says. She seems to shrink under her Treasure Island T-shirt and when she gazes at him, her eyes appear robbed of their pigment. They are very, very pale blue. “The second reason is…that I have feelings for you.”

“For me?”

“For you,” Ayers says. “I haven’t been able to stop thinking about you.”

“You haven’t?” Baker says.

She shakes her head and presses her lips together like she’s embarrassed.

“So, wait,” Baker says. Is this really happening? Him and Ayers? Does she want him to kiss her? Does she want him to—finally—make proper love to her? Baker can’t find the words to ask, he’s too overwhelmed, but it turns out it doesn’t matter.

Ayers stands up, takes his hand, and leads him to her bed.

He wakes up in the middle of the night; 4:20 a.m., his phone says. Ayers is naked in bed next to him. He’s in love. He’s beyond in love.

But he has to get out of there. He can’t have Floyd waking up and finding his dad gone.

Baker eases out of bed and uses the bathroom. He sees a clothbound book balanced on the edge of the sink. Ayers’s journal? Baker is, of course, tempted to open it and read Ayers’s innermost thoughts, presumably about how she’s stuck with crappy cheater Mick but can’t get Baker Steele out of her mind. However, back when Baker was in college, he read his girlfriend Trinity’s diary and all hell broke loose. That was why they’d split. Trinity had called it a “devastating breach of personal trust.”

If you learn one thing from me, Baker Steele, she’d said, I hope it’s never to read a woman’s private thoughts without her express permission.

No matter how tempting, she’d added. And, oh yes, it will be tempting.

It is tempting—the journal with the red floral cover, demure and innocent with the look of a colonial-era recipe book.

But Baker leaves it be.

In the end, Trinity taught him a lot. He must remember to hit her up on Facebook and thank her.

Back in the bedroom, he runs a finger down the length of Ayers’s spine and she shivers awake and opens one eye. “You leaving?”

“I have to,” he whispers. “Floyd.”

“Okay,” she says.

Baker clears his throat. “And, uh, you remember that I’m leaving tomorrow for Houston? I have that thing on Saturday? But I’m coming right back. So you don’t have to worry.”

“What day?” Ayers asks. “What day are you coming back?”

Baker does a quick calculation. The benefit auction is Saturday night. Sunday he’s on cleanup duty. He needs at least two additional days to get the move organized, maybe three; honestly, he could use a week, but now that this has happened, all he can think about is how to get back here as quickly as possible. But then again, he has a life to dismantle—Floyd’s medical records need to be transferred (to where?); Baker needs to forward his mail (to where?) and figure out what to do about his income taxes. There’s stuff. “Wednesday,” he says. “Thursday.”

“Wednesday or Thursday?” she asks.

“Thursday,” he says. “Week from today.”

“I’m working at La Tapa Thursday night,” she says. “Come by after work. We can celebrate your move.”

He kisses her temple. “You got it,” he says. He puts his clothes on and runs both hands through his hair. “Oh,