Chapter 6

Chapter 6

Valentina – Two weeks later

The air smelled better in Montauk. The salt seemed to open my lungs and wash away the stresses of life. It had long been dark by the time I arrived. After Memorial Day, Friday night East Hampton traffic became a war zone of designer-clad people. It was why I’d always preferred Montauk. For most men there, a fancy dinner outfit meant changing out of your fishing boots.

Standing on the back deck at almost midnight, I shut my eyes and listened to the waves crashing as I inhaled deeply. After a few more exhales, my shoulders began to relax.

Until a voice startled me.

“Mrs. Davis?”

I jumped and let out a very girly sounding scream.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you. It’s Bella—Annabella Donovan from next door.”

“Oh.” My hand held my chest. “Hi, Bella. I didn’t see you there.”

Our beachy neighborhood didn’t have fences, just a sand pathway between the elevated houses. Bella stood on the beach at the bottom of the stairs leading up to my deck.

“I didn’t know anyone else was out here,” she said. “I wasn’t even sure if you owned the house anymore. I haven’t been out here in years. But I’m glad you guys are still around. It’s so quiet at night out here.”

“Actually, it’s just me now. Ryan and I divorced, and my son Ryan is staying at college for the summer to do an internship.” I held my breath for a moment before asking the next question. “Are you…out here alone?”

“Yep. I drove my brother crazy enough that he let me come out for a long weekend. I wanted to stay the entire summer, but God forbid he trust me out here alone.”

A confusing mix of relief and disappointment hit me. I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t thought about Ford often over the last couple of weeks—he’d made sure of it with a text or two each day. But I hadn’t answered since the night I’d come home from study group.

“So it’s just us girls then,” Bella said.

“I guess so.” I smiled.

“Until my pain-in-the-ass brother shows up.”

My skin prickled, and it wasn’t because of any chill in the air. “Are you…expecting him?”

“He’s not supposed to come out, but he doesn’t trust me. He’s away on a business trip right now, although I get the feeling he might show up when he gets back. He called me five times today and had an alarm system installed at the house.”

“Well, I suppose that’s what big brothers are supposed to do, watch out for their sisters.”

She shrugged. “Hey. Would you want to do a sunrise yoga class on the beach with me? It’s only a few houses down. I’ve been getting up a half hour before and walking to warm up. I have a free pass for a friend if you want to try it tomorrow.”

I felt rather out of sorts from the surprise of Bella being next door, not to mention the prospect of her brother coming out to check on her. So I failed to think of a quick excuse why I couldn’t do sunrise yoga.

“Umm... Sure. I’d love that.”

“Awesome. I’ll meet you back here at six?”

“That sounds good.”

“Okay, then, I’m going to go shower. I have sand in places there shouldn’t be sand. ’Night, Mrs. Davis.”

She smiled and had begun to walk toward her house when I called after her. “Bella?”

She turned back.

“Call me Valentina or Val, please.”

“Okay, Val. See you in the morning.”

***

I walked out onto the deck with my morning coffee and found Bella stretching on the sand behind our houses.

“Am I late?” I called down, checking the time on my phone.

“Nope. I’m early.” She bent to the right and stretched her left arm over her head. “I woke up an hour ago hearing what I thought was the sound of rain hitting my window. But when I came out, it wasn’t raining.”

“Do you want some coffee?”

“I’d actually love some. I ran out and had to make decaf this morning, which is like taking a shower with a raincoat on. What’s the point?”

“I couldn’t agree more.” I nodded my head in the direction of the house. “Come on, let’s get you properly caffeinated.”

Inside, Bella looked at the small picture frames lined up on the kitchen windowsill while I poured her a steaming mug of coffee.

“So you and Mr. Davis are divorced now?”

She focused on an old picture of my ex-husband and our son. I’d eradicated the house of all other traces of Ryan Sr., but it didn’t seem right to get rid of that picture. My son wore his Little League baseball uniform and looked up at his father in admiration. A part of me hoped keeping that photo around might someday remind my son that he was missing out by pushing his father away since our divorce. The things that happened between Ryan and me shouldn’t have to ruin the relationship of father and son—but my son was protective of his mother.

“It’ll be two years this fall that our divorce was finalized.”

She crinkled up her nose. “He wasn’t very friendly, was he?”

I chuckled. Ryan had never been a fan of the Donovans next door. He’d complained that they played their music too loud and let their kids run wild. He’d rolled his eyes when Bella’s parents danced on the back deck together, while I often secretly wished I had that type of marriage.

“No. He wasn’t the most friendly neighbor, was he?”

We shared a smile as I handed Bella cream for her coffee.

“I mean, I haven’t seen him in years. But I remember he always looked like he just finished sucking a lemon.”

That was a perfect description of Ryan the last ten years. Bitter.

After Bella fixed her coffee with cream and enough sugar to induce a diabetic coma, we sat on the chaise lounges on my back deck. The morning dawn was magical out over the beach.

“So what are you studying in college?”

“I’m not sure. I’d love to go into something like acting. I was originally a business major, but my brother took all the brains when he was born and left me none.”

“I’m sure you’re plenty smart.”

“Business majors have to take Accounting 101 the first year of school. The professor told us before the first test that if we didn’t get at least a sixty, we might want to drop the class because it only got harder from there. I got a twenty-eight.”

My eyebrows shot up. “Out of a hundred?”

“And I studied.” She sipped her coffee. “I dropped the class the next day. I don’t even know why I picked business for a major. I think I just felt like I was supposed to have a major, know what I want to be when I grow up. Like Ford.”

“Not everyone knows what they’re supposed to do right away. I was a CAT-scan technician for fifteen years. It was a good job because it allowed me to work part time around Ryan’s school schedule, although it was never something I was passionate about. I actually went back to school to become an Italian language teacher, and I’m taking the licensing test in a few weeks. My grandparents are from Italy, and I always loved the language. I’m really excited about it now. Took me almost twenty years to figure it out, though.”

“That’s really cool. I’d do that, but I sort of suck at foreign languages. It’s part of the reason I’m thinking acting might be for me. You really don’t have to be good at English or math. Plus…” She smirked. “My parents always said I was a drama queen.”

“You’ll figure it out. Just take your time.”

Since Bella had brought them up, I figured it was okay to talk about her parents. “By the way, I’m really sorry about your parents, Bella. I didn’t hear about it until a few weeks after it happened, or I would have come to the service. I didn’t even have your home address to send a card. I always liked your parents and admired their relationship.”

“Thank you.” She smiled sadly. “It’s weird being out here without them. Every time I open the back door or look out to the beach, I feel like I should see them making out. It used to gross me out, but now I think it’s kinda cool how much they were into each other. In a weird way, it was good they died together. One wouldn’t have made it without the other.”

Wow. What a beautiful, yet sad, thought. We sipped our coffee in comfortable silence for a while after that, enjoying the sunrise. When a crowd started to form down the beach, we figured it was time to get going.

Bella and I laid our mats on the sand next to each other and spent a few minutes stretching. I was bent over, dangling my fingers into the sand as I reached past my toes, when I felt a hand on my back. Startled, my immediate reaction was to pop up quickly—so quickly that I caught the instructor off guard and smashed my head right into his jaw.

“Oh my God. I’m so sorry!” I rubbed the top of my head as his hand reached for his jaw. His very sexy jaw. Oh God. Figures.

“It’s okay. That was my fault. I thought you saw me walking around. I was trying to guide you to bend straight. You’re dipping to your right.”

I definitely would have noticed him. Our instructor was tall, with dark hair pulled back in a ponytail, tanned skin, and dark eyes. Tall, dark, and handsome. Definitely handsome. Although that wasn’t the part that was so distracting. No, that I could deal with. But the loose, gray sweatpants and no shirt—that was exactly what I’d imagined Ford wearing in my fantasy a few weeks ago. That thought, along with the ridiculously amazing carved chest standing before me, turned me into a bumbling idiot.

“Oh. Jeez. Yeah. Sorry. To the right? Okay. Yeah. Sorry again.”

The instructor’s brows rose, and he grinned knowingly.

The heat rose on my cheeks and wouldn’t let up. “Umm. Sorry again.”

“Not a problem. Why don’t we try that again? This time without the beat down.” Hot Instructor winked, then put his warm hand on the exposed skin of my back. “Bend at the waist.”

I was thrilled to hide my face and have an excuse for the color that had already rushed to my cheeks. When my fingertips reached the sand, the instructor stepped behind me and gripped my hips with both hands, guiding me to shift to the left. “There, you’re aligned now. When you stretch into your bend, there’s less chance you’ll injure your back.”

I stayed down long enough that he moved on to someone else. When I eventually rose, Bella leaned toward me, failing at her attempted whispering.

“He’s hot and was totally checking you out.”

The sunrise morning yoga class turned out to be the best exercise class I’d ever taken. Not only was the instructor amazing at poses and helping all of the students ease into positions, but he guided us to use those moments in pose to appreciate the beauty around us. The sunrise, the light shining on the unusually calm ocean, streaks of orange and gold shimmering on the water—it was absolutely breathtaking.

As we moved through our vinyasa, coming into upward-facing dog, my eyes, which had been closed for the last few minutes, suddenly opened. I had that sensation you get when someone is watching, a prickly awareness I felt all over my skin. Looking to the left and right, I could find no one in my peripheral vision, and the instructor was busy helping a woman a few rows ahead of me. Yet that strange feeling stayed with me through the end of the class.

After our hour was up, the yoga instructor came over to introduce himself. “We didn’t actually get to meet before.” He extended his hand. “I’m Ty. I haven’t seen you in class before. Are you vacationing in Montauk this week?”

“Actually, I live a few houses away. Well, I have a summer home here. It’s my first week out, and Bella invited me to the class. We’re neighbors.”

Ty smiled at Bella and returned his attention to me. “Did you enjoy the class? We’re out here five days a week.”

“The class was amazing. You’ll definitely be seeing me again.”

“I’m looking forward to it.”

Something about the way he said that, or maybe it was the gleam in his eye, made me feel good. I might have been thirty-seven, but I liked to think I’d begun to grow old gracefully.

Bella and I shook the sand from our mats and rolled them up. I stared out at the ocean as she tied hers closed. “Remind me not to have coffee right before yoga,” she said. “I’ve had to go to the bathroom for the last seven poses.”

My skin had a layer of sweat on it from the workout, and a warm breeze floated by, leaving my arms with goosebumps. I should have felt grimy, but instead I reveled in the chills, feeling more alive than I had in a long time.

“Thanks so much for inviting me. Let me make you some breakfast after I wash up.”

Bella groaned in response to my invitation. Not exactly the answer I’d expected.

“What’s the matter? Please don’t tell me you’re on a diet. You’re so thin.”

I was still facing the ocean, but I turned toward our houses just as she filled me in on her problem.

“My pain-in-the-ass brother’s here.”