21. CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

"G oodnight, Sunshine," Bennett said, kissing Emme on the cheek as he tucked her in. "Favorite thing about today?"

"Every minute with Justine. It was magical, Daddy."

"I still can't believe she bought twenty-two bottles of kombucha for you."

"Twenty-four, actually. Because she bought us each two at the beginning. And I guess, actually twenty-five because she was there after yoga and bought one. I did the math on how much she spent too." Her eyes bugged out. "Dad, it was a lot."

"I'm aware of that."

"But it helped me realize there are other good flavors of kombucha that I like. It was worth the risk. And I'm going to try new things more often. I'm going to risk not getting what I normally get just to mix it up a little."

"Well, I'm glad that she helped you. But I feel like Siobhan offers samples, doesn't she?" He scratched his head, unable to believe that Justine spent that much money on fermented … stuff . Sure, he liked kombucha, but he considered it overpriced, no matter who was selling it. And the stuff brewed there on the island was no exception.

Emme giggled and nodded.

"I'm glad you had a great day with her. Your sister was quite jealous. So I appreciate you not rubbing it in her face."

"Justine said they'll have a date of their own one day."

Bennett merely nodded. "All right, Sunshine. Sweet dreams."

Emme yawned as Bennett headed for the door. "Dad?"

He paused with his hand on the jamb. "Hmm?"

"Do you have a crush on Justine?"

He squeezed his eyes shut and turned away from her, pulling in a deep inhale and pinching the bridge of his nose. "Goodnight. Sleep tight." Then he shut her door. He'd already said goodnight to Aya, but he poked his head in her room just to double-check and she was already passed out in her contorted starfish shape again, with no covers. She'd also ditched her pajamas and wore nothing but underwear.

Huffing a laugh, he headed downstairs to where Justine sat with her laptop in the living room. She looked at home in his home and he really liked that. Her feet—bare and with a light purple polish on the toes—were propped up on his square, leather ottoman-slash-coffee-table, and her brows pinched together in a cute way as she read something on her screen.

He went to the kitchen and grabbed a beer from the fridge. "You want a beer?"

"Hmm? Pardon?"

"Would you like a beer?"

"Oh! Um … sure."

He grabbed the same summer sour for her as he did himself and popped both caps before he left the kitchen. They were extra cold—just the way he liked them.

He sat down beside her on the couch, passing her a beer. "What's that?"

"Brooke wasn't kidding when she said there was no land for sale here."

"You looking to buy?" He could not name or describe the first emotion that popped into his body at the idea of her buying land here. Giddy? No. That wasn't it. He liked it, but he also didn't.

He liked it because she was entertaining the idea of staying on the island. But he didn't like it because it would mean she wasn't here. With him. In his house. On his property. In his bed.

Conflicted was what he was.

"I really like it here," she said sweetly, taking a sip of the beer. She made a face that said she wasn't sure about what sat on her tongue. Then she swallowed. "I'm not usually a beer drinker. But … Emme and I had a big discussion about risks and trying new things today. So I figured I better practice what I preach."

"And?"

"It's not bad. I don't think I could have more than one of these, as I would feel very bloated, but it's nice and cold. Has a great sour punch at the end. It's quite refreshing."

"I'll be sure to give Clint your feedback, verbatim."

She smirked. "Is the submission for Bonn Remmen's land open to anyone? Or do they have to be an island resident?"

He hadn't told her about Bonn's land, at least not in great detail. Not that it was a secret, or anything he was deliberately keeping from her. It just hadn't organically come up.

"Uh … I think anybody can apply. I've heard rumors that big hotel chains and shit are submitting proposals. They'll be burned in a bonfire as the Elders dance naked around the flames, but they're welcome to waste their time to try."

"That's an image I wasn't prepared to conjure," she said blandly while making a mild face of disgust. "A bunch of octogenarian hippies dancing in their birthday suits. Exposing all that wrinkly flesh—"

"And excess body hair."

She shuddered, and he laughed. "—To flames. That's a disaster waiting to happen."

"Well, you should have been here last week on the solstice when they actually had their big naked party around a bonfire."

Her eyes nearly shot out of her skull. "Uh, no thanks."

"Nobody got burned. But some tourists who reported smoke, then went to see if they could take care of the fire themselves, were in for a shock."

"You're kidding right? This has to be a joke."

"Your BFF Keturah is one of the leading forces behind it remaining nude. They even do it in the winter. Says it keeps them young."

"Hippies," she murmured.

"And you want to move here and join them, don't you? Strip down and dance around the flames with Abe, Hattie, Sunflower, Keturah, and the rest of them. Admit it."

"If that's what it takes to get some land, then sign me up."

"You're serious though?" That conflicted feeling wasn't going away. Why did she want Bonn Remmen's land? What did she have planned for it? What could she do to honor Bonn's land? She didn't even know the man.

"I just want to know more."

"You realize if you submitted a proposal, you'd be reducing our chances of getting the land, right? You'd be going against us."

"Unless I just turn around and give the land to you, and I actually increase the chances because you submit and I submit for the same purpose. So it doubles your chances?"

He didn't blink. "I … I don't know if that's allowed. I also don't know what to say."

Her sweet, gentle smile just made him want to kiss her, carry her up to his bed, and peel off all her clothes. "Tell me more about your plan for the land. Have you started your proposal?"

He nodded. "Yeah."

"Show me. Let's go over it together and figure out how to make it shine. Maybe if you guys get the land, I can rent a small portion of it from you and build a tiny house on it. Win-win for everyone. Let's just explore our options."

He reached for the tablet on the coffee table and brought up his proposal. It was still rough. He hadn't even sent it to his brothers for their feedback, yet. But he was eager to hear what Justine thought of it.

The fact that she was offering to help them out like this was more than he ever expected. He was still wrapping his head around the fact that she spent so much money on kombucha just so his serious, anxious, risk-phobic daughter could deal with one of her fears.

She scanned the proposal while he sat there on pins and needles. He kept watching her, waiting for her expression to change. For a frown to curve her lips downward, or her brows to knit together in the center. But she just read it with a blank face.

After she reached the end of the five pages—god, she was a patient woman—she looked up at him and smiled. "I think it's great. I can totally picture your vision in its entirety, and I'm truly rooting for you guys."

"No feedback?"

"Oh, I have feedback."

"Oh."

"Can you send it to me via email and I'll leave notes in Track Changes for you? Just ways you can tighten the language, different word and sentence choices. The concept and meat of the proposal are perfect. I just think there are ways you can strengthen your story with different verbs, adjectives, and metaphors."

Nodding, and eager to get these tweaks and suggestions, he brought up his email; she rattled off her address, and he hit send. A second later, it pinged on her phone and computer.

"I'll do this tonight or tomorrow," she said.

"Thank you. I really appreciate it."

"Just carve me out a little slice of this heaven when you get it so I can build my tiny house."

He needed a moment to process what she was saying. He tipped the beer bottle to his lips and took a long pull, letting the cool, sour blend of berries and stone fruit sit on his tongue for a moment. Once his body temperature warmed it to just below monkey piss, he swallowed. "Are you serious about living here?"

She lifted a shoulder. "I mean, maybe. I own my condo in Seattle." Then she made a cute little scrunched face. "Let me rephrase that. I am a homeowner in the sense that I have mortgage payments. Technically, the bank owns the house. But you know what I mean."

He nodded.

"I've only been there two years. Thankfully, Tad only lived there six months with me and he moved out without giving me any issues. He and Homewrecking Hilda moved into her place or something."

"I thought her name was Ashli?"

"You know what I mean."

He did. He was just trying to lighten the mood. His confliction weighed heavily inside his chest and he needed to shed some of the weight.

"And with the housing market so in-demand in Seattle right now, I could easily sell it and turn a small profit. It still wouldn't pay for anything here, not that there appears to be anything for sale right now, but it could pay for the construction of a tiny house." She opened a new window on her laptop and typed in tiny house . Images of adorable, barely-there abodes popped up, most of them two or three stories high with actual square-footage footprints less than the square footage of his bedroom.

"What would you do for work?" he asked.

There she went again, shrugging like none of this was a big deal or a big decision. She didn't strike him as the type of person to make rash, uncalculated decisions, and yet, that seemed to be exactly what she was doing.

"I'm not sure. Maybe Dom needs help in the restaurant? Or Wyatt in the kitchen? I might not be a professionally trained pastry chef, but my cake decorating skills aren't too shabby. The girls were impressed."

She was right. Her cake decorating skills were impressive, and Wyatt would absolutely hire her to help out in the kitchen. But that wasn't the point here. The point was that she was a fucking doctor. A goddamn surgeon, for Christ's sake. She couldn't just walk away from that. From all those years of education and such a finely-honed skill. There were more pastry chefs in the world than cardiothoracic surgeons. She needed to return to her field. To the job she trained to do. Right?

"Ooh, look at this one. It's so cute. It has a deep soaker tub outside . A little chilly in the winter, to get in and out of it, but it'd be so lovely to sit there with a glass of wine and look up at the stars in the evening."

"Justine, I don't think you're thinking this through." He didn't want to squash her good mood or her dreams, but they both knew she wasn't dealing with the main issue here. She was simply running away from her problems.

Pulling her gaze away from the laptop screen with reluctance, her brows made a tight "V" as she met his eyes. "What do you mean?"

"You're acting rashly right now. You're feeling good and you don't want to lose this high, so you're chasing it. It's like a drug. But you're just running from your problems at this point. Eager not to go into withdrawal. You want to keep this good feeling going. You want to keep the high."

Her laptop slammed closed, and she reared back. "Excuse me?"

Shit.

Exhaling loudly, he set his beer on the sofa-back table behind the couch and turned to face her. She wore a scowl now and her nostrils flared like a wild animal getting ready to either pounce or run. He wanted her to do neither. He just wanted her to listen.

"That's not what I meant."

"Sure seemed like you meant what you said." She crossed her arms in front of her, her laptop on her lap. "You compared me to an addict and said I'm running from my problems. When in reality, my problems found me here. You're giving my problems the wedding of their dreams. I just took a vacation. I'm not afraid of Tad and Ashli. I just don't want to see them."

For such a brilliant woman, she was so deep in denial she was about to get bit by a croc.

"I'm not talking about Dumb and Dumber. I'm talking about your career. Practicing medicine."

She went stiff and her eyes narrowed even more. A muscle along her jaw ticked in time with her accelerating pulse, and those nostrils just kept flaring, reminding him of a bull in the ring gearing up to gouge the idiot matador. And in this case, the matador was him waving a stupid red flag and taunting her.

Great. Now he'd just compared her to cattle—even if it was only in his head.

Pinching the bridge of his nose, he bowed his head. "This is coming out all wrong."

She stood up in a huff. "Then maybe I should leave you to sleep on things and we can try again in the morning." She made her way around the coffee table and headed toward the front door with her laptop under her arm and the beer in the same hand.

He leaped up from the couch and met her halfway to the foyer. "Justine, I didn't mean it like that."

She faced him, staring up the bridge of her nose into his eyes. "Then what did you mean it like?"

"It just feels like you're rushing things. You've been here a week and already you're talking about moving here. About selling your condo and building a tiny house. We only have the trailer for the duration of your cabin rental—unless you move into cabin five after the renovations—"

"I'll never stay in that cabin after those two stay in it."

Fair enough. He couldn't blame her vehemence there.

"Okay, so you stay in the trailer. We only have it for the duration of your stay. Maybe we can get it for longer, but if not, where will you stay while the tiny house is being built? And we don't even have Bonn Remmen's land yet. And we may not get it. A lot of other people want it, and their dreams are just as valid as ours. So if we don't get it, then where will you build your dream house?"

Her ire deflated as he spoke, but that gave him very little reassurance that he was out of the doghouse.

"And if we do get Bonn Remmen's land, it'll be at least a year before we break ground or do anything with it. The island Elders' Council has reserved the right to take as long as they need deliberating over who gets the land. And given the speed most of them operate these days, it could even be more than a year. What will you do until then?"

Her frown morphed into a pout, and his chest constricted.

"I'm not trying to kill your dream, Justine. I'm not. I swear. I just don't think you've thought this through."

The fire reignited in her eyes.

In for a penny, in for a pound. Or whatever they say.

"I also think you need to really consider what moving here would do to your career," he went on, caution in his tone. "I know you're deep in guilt and grief right now, but you are working to get out of it and you're making great strides. But making a decision to leave medicine entirely seems really impulsive. I don't know you that well, but to me it feels like a decision you will end up regretting. And again, although I don't know you that well, none of this behavior seems like you."

"Maybe it's the new me," she said quietly. "Maybe I don't want to be who I was before."

"And why is that?"

The fire in her brown eyes was now an amber flame that danced with defiance and fury. "Because I didn't like who I was before now. I played it safe. I let my parents and my sisters influence my decisions. I didn't listen to my heart. I didn't listen to my gut. I didn't take any risks . I was just like Emme. I drank the same kombucha flavor every day. I ate the same breakfast, ran the same route. I was a creature of predictability and habit. Boring. Lifeless. Tad saw it. It's why he went to Ashli."

Oh, the can of worms they'd just opened was bigger than he ever expected. Now the slimy little bastards were inching and wriggling all over the fucking place. He'd never be able to collect them all and stuff them back where they came from.

"Maybe I need to have some faith in the unknown for once in my life," she went on. "That it'll all just work out ." She laughed humorlessly and tossed her free hand up in the air. "Or, who knows, maybe Keturah Katz will let me squat on her land. Build my tiny house there and the two of us can dance naked around a bonfire in her front yard. I can think of worse ways to spend the rest of my life." She fixed him with a final glare that he felt down to his bones. "It's easy to pick apart a dream from the outside and tell the dreamer it's impossible. But when all that dreamer's had for their entire life is one nightmare after another, maybe, for just a little while, encourage their dream. Embrace it. See the beauty in it too." Then she slid into her flip-flops, yanked open the door and stomped across the driveway to her trailer. All the while, Bennett stood there in the jamb of the open front door, kicking himself for even opening his big, stupid mouth.

Was there anything worse than a man telling you that you're wrong? Yep. When he's actually freaking right. And Bennett was right.

About all of it.

She realized he was right when they stood there in his entryway and he expressed his concerns.

He made one heck of an argument, but she'd already dug her heels in that she wasn't willing to give him the satisfaction and agree with him right then and there.

Agreeing with him would mean her dreams of moving to the island would be squashed before they even took shape, and she just wasn't ready to face that truth.

She paced the small space of the travel trailer, finishing the beer and growling in frustration, mostly at herself.

Bennett approached the situation with kindness and understanding, and she refused to acknowledge any of the practical things he pointed out.

And they were all very practical. She was cruising through this pipe dream thinking everything would just work out. The brothers would get the land and she could live in a tiny house in one little corner. But that was months away. Maybe more. What would she do until then?

If she was being brutally honest with herself, she stupidly hoped that maybe Bennett would offer for her to move back in with the girls and him until her tiny house was finished.

Only, that would confuse the girls. Heck, it would confuse her. Why would she move in with the man she was falling for, only to move out again?

She growled again, pulled out her ponytail and shook her hair free.

It wasn't that late, and she wasn't tired. It was still light out and cheerful sounds from the pub trickled up through the trees.

With another frustrated growl, she grabbed her laptop off the kitchen table, flung open her front door and bumped into Bennett's chest, his fist raised, prepared to knock.

"Oh!" She stepped back into the trailer.

"I couldn't let what happened in the house fester overnight," he said, shoving his hands into his pockets. "I … I was wrong. I'm sorry for crushing your dreams. That wasn't my intention." He glanced down at the ground. "I'm just not sure you know the challenges you're going to face if you pursue moving here."

A flicker of anger created heat in her belly, but she doused it with a cold splash of reality. "No," she exhaled, "I was wrong. And I'm sorry."

He lifted his gaze from the ground to her face.

"I don't know the challenges and you were gently trying to tell me, and I refused to listen. But you're right. Moving here is probably impossible." Her shoulders rounded. "I was just really excited at the idea of it. I love it here and I don't want to leave."

"You still have six weeks here."

"And that's going to go by in the blink of an eye. This week already has."

He nodded. "I understand. It's a really great place to live."

With a sigh she felt down to her toes, she stepped further into the trailer. "Do you want to come in? I kind of stormed out of your house like a moody teenager." Heat filled her face. "Not going to lie, I'm pretty ashamed of my behavior."

"What behavior?" He didn't step into the trailer.

"Where I behaved like an idealistic todd—" The lift of one brow and his sexy half-smirk made her pause. "Ah, you're being kind … again." Smashing the heel of her palm against her forehead, she hung her head. "Ignore me."

"Impossible."

She blinked at him. "I'm a lot right now. You've been so wonderful. So patient. I'm just going through a lot. I'm trying to reconcile my emotions and figure out what I want for this next stage of my life. I don't expect you to hang around as I sort it out. You didn't sign up for crazy. It's only been a week."

"You're not crazy."

"You haven't entered the trailer. That tells me you still have reservations."

"I assumed you left because you wanted space. I'm trying to respect that. But I didn't want to leave things between us as tenuous as they were."

Dear god, the man was perfect.

The perfect father. The perfect baker. The perfect lover. Was there anything wrong with him?

Now she was thinking about when the other shoe would drop. Because nobody was this perfect.

He had to have skeletons in a closet or some kind of weird quirk.

"I'm going to leave you with your thoughts and feelings tonight," he went on. "I think you need to spend some uncomfortable time with them and do a bit more self-discovery. We've been all over you and that hasn't allowed you to do what it is you came here to do. And that's redefined your future."

She swallowed past the hard lump of raw emotion at the back of her throat.

"In my opinion, I don't think you're finished with medicine. I think you need this break—this sabbatical—but I think choosing to leave medicine because you lost a patient and choked at the funfair, is something you will ultimately regret. Maybe switch to a new specialty, but don't leave medicine." He patted the metal side of the trailer. "I'll see you bright and early for our run. I also look forward to your notes about the proposal. I've got tough skin, so don't be gentle. Slash and burn, baby. Slash and burn." He turned to go, but she lunged forward and reached for his hand. They were almost the same height now, with her up in the trailer and him standing on the ground outside.

Her lips found his with urgent ease and his hands rested on her hips as she kissed him fervently, coaxing his mouth open with her tongue.

She moaned softly, and he gripped her tighter.

Her arms rested on his shoulders, and they stood there, kissing in the fading light of the day as the crickets began to chirp, attempting to keep up with the already wild chorus of the frogs.

It was he who broke the kiss, and she stowed her mewl of sadness by clearing her throat instead. Her lips buzzed, and she touched them with her fingers as he stepped back, his lids at half-mast and a noticeable erection in his shorts. "Sleep well, Justine. I'll see you in the morning."

Then, before she could ask him to come inside and to bed with her, he headed for the front door of his house, leaving her standing there on the threshold of her trailer, sad, confused, and incredibly aroused.