New Uses For Old Boyfriends (19 page)

“F
or the last time, Lila, stop peeking out the window and go back upstairs.” Daphne jabbed her index finger at the staircase. “You're not supposed to be raring to go at the front door when your date arrives. You're supposed to be upstairs, finishing up your
toilette
.”

“But I'm already ready.” Lila double-checked her reflection in the gilt-framed mirror next to the front door. She'd donned the sexy red Ceil Chapman dress, swept her hair up into a simple twist, and opted for smoky eyes and nude, shiny lips. She looked about ten times too fancy for any venue in Black Dog Bay, let alone anywhere she might have gone on a high school date.

But she wasn't going for subtlety tonight. She was going for shock and awe. Malcolm had challenged her to wear this dress, and she intended to wear the hell out of it.

Ever since she'd zipped up the back, she couldn't stop thinking about the fact that he'd worked on this dress. He'd had his hands all over the silk, inside and outside and . . .

“Letting men cool their heels is a time-honored tradition for a reason. Go upstairs!” Daphne implored. “Don't be too eager.”

“The jig is up, Mother.” Lila blew her reflection a little kiss
and straightened up. “I already called him and showed up at his house uninvited, remember?”

“So you just have to keep making things worse?”

Lila spied headlights turning into the driveway. “Ooh, he's here.” She grabbed her handbag and dashed out the door. As she navigated the steps in precariously high heels, she heard her mother wailing behind her:
“Where have I gone wrong?”

Despite her initial bravado, Lila was surprised to find herself hesitant once Malcolm got of the car. Darkness had fallen, but the Jeep headlights were bright and harsh, illuminating her every imperfection.

They stood a few feet apart, taking stock, getting their bearings as the dynamics between them shifted yet again.

He cleared his throat. “Hi. You look—”

She took a step toward him. “Overeager and shameless?”

He relaxed. “I was going to say ‘great.'”

“You, too.” He wore dark pants and a crisp white shirt. Not a trace of sweat or visible abs anywhere.

But the night is still young.
“So where are we going?” She suddenly wished she had stashed her aviator sunglasses and possibly a pair of walkie-talkies in her bag. “Is it covert? Top secret?”

He closed the gap between them and opened the passenger side door for her. “Not especially.”

Lila had learned at an early age how to enter and exit a car while preserving her modesty in a short skirt. She utilized roughly fifty percent of her skill set and asked, “Are you going to blindfold me on the way? So I can't retrace our steps and betray you to the opposition?”

Malcolm walked around the car, settled into his seat, put both hands on the wheel, then gave her his full attention. “Do you want me to blindfold you?”

She crossed her legs and stacked her hands on her bare knee.

He waited.

The way he was looking at her was actually making her feel a bit breathless. “I do now.”

“I'll keep that in mind.” He put the car into gear and headed back to the main road.

She tried to recover her composure and remember what it was you were supposed to talk about in the first five minutes of a first date.
Hint: not blindfolds.

“Let's try that again: Where are we going?” she asked, then held up her hand. “On second thought, don't tell me. I'm enjoying the mystery.”

“Fair enough.” He headed north on the highway bordering the beach. “How was the first day of business?”

She told him about the Paco Rabanne minidress and the Miss America gown and the pilfered Chanel buttons, then asked, “How did the polyester elopement go?”

He shrugged one shoulder. “I'm assuming it went fine.”

“You didn't get any details?”

“You saw the dress. I didn't want any details.”

Lila sat back for a moment, then started bouncing in her seat. “Okay, I take back everything I said about wanting to be surprised. The suspense is killing me. Where are we going?”

“You'll find out soon enough.”

“Don't toy with me,” she warned. “I'm wearing this dress and these shoes and I have ways of making you talk.”

He tortured her for a few more minutes before relenting. “We're going to Gull's Point.”

“Gull's Point?” She glanced at him, confused. Gull's Point had been the popular Friday night hangout back in their high school days. Teenagers would build bonfires, drink beer, and then dare one another to leap off the windswept cliff into the ocean. It had been the backdrop of budding romances, bitter breakups,
enduring friendships, and eternal feuds. Until, eighteen months ago, a real estate corporation had bought the land and started construction on an exclusive gated community for wealthy summer residents.

“We can't go there anymore,” Lila pointed out as they reached the ornate metal gate that now sealed off the area. The houses were still under construction, so the neighborhood looked like a ghost town in the moonlight.

“Yeah, we can.” Malcolm drove up to the gates and punched a code into the keypad. The tall metal panel slid open.

“How do you know the code?” Lila asked.

“One of the guys I work for invested in the development.”

“And that would be . . . ?”

“Jake Sorensen.”

Her eyebrows shot up. “You work with Jake? He never mentioned that.”

“I do some contract work for him. You know him?” Malcolm seemed both stunned and disturbed by this prospect.

“A little bit, yeah. He showed me one of his retail spaces as a favor to Summer. And he helped us list one of my mom's old dresses on eBay.”

Malcolm stopped the car. “Was it white?”

“Yes.”

He nodded. “
I
helped you list one of your mom's old dresses on eBay.”

Lila twisted around in her seat to face him. “That was you? But I thought you said you did cybersecurity?”

“Which means I'm qualified to throw together an eBay listing if my very generous employer asks for it.”

“So our couture collaboration goes back further than we thought,” Lila mused. She lapsed into silence as she surveyed the tall, sprawling skeletons of homes in progress. The trees and boulders and bonfire
pits had been leveled to accommodate a string of megamansions that took up every available inch of each lot. “This is kind of sad. I mean, I know this place was a fire hazard and it's a miracle no one ever broke their neck jumping off that cliff, but we had so much fun here.”

His voice deepened. “I remember.”

She gazed at him through the shadows, trying to put the pieces together in her memory. “We came here on a date in high school?”

“Sort of,” he admitted. “You came with your friends, but then they drank a six-pack of spritzers and started pushing each other off the cliff, and you didn't want to get wet, so I hung out with you and drove you home.”

“That's right.” She stared past the half-built houses at the endless black ocean. “I didn't want to mess up my hair or my makeup or my clothes.” Lila felt a familiar sinking sense of disappointment in herself. Even as a teenager, when she was supposedly young and reckless, she'd been too concerned about appearances to take chances. She'd been too caught up in what everyone might think to go after what she really wanted.

And now it was too late—Gull's Point was gone and she was old enough to know better.

Malcolm glanced toward the backseat. “I brought food and wine and a blanket. I was thinking we could go out by the edge of the cliff and—” He broke off when he saw the expression on her face. “You know what? Screw that. Let's jump.”

Lila hesitated for a moment, then leaped into action. She opened the door and swung her legs out onto the uneven packed dirt. “Hurry up, before I come to my senses.”

“Now or never.” He yanked the keys out of the ignition.

She leaned down to take off her shoes. This time, her dress didn't rip. Because Malcolm had secured the seam with strong, sure stitches that would probably hold up for another sixty years.

He stepped out of the other side of the car, stripped off his shirt, then unbuckled his belt and yanked that off, too.

She froze in place, nearly blinded by the headlights in her face but very much enjoying the view.

“What?” Apparently, he'd taken off as much as he was going to, despite the fact that he still had his pants on.
Damn.
“You're losing your nerve?”

“No, no.” The night wind swept in, making her shiver.

They made their way across the concrete slab framing what would soon be the grandest, fanciest house on the cliff. Malcolm guided her through the beams silhouetted against the starry sky, until they stood at the very edge of the precipice.

It was too dark to see the water below, but she could hear waves crashing against the rocks that bordered the beach.

“Ready?” He took her hand in his. She reveled in the feel of his warm skin against her chilled arm and shoulder.

She nodded and edged closer. Then she closed her eyes and pictured the dark, churning depths below. What it would feel like to fall. What it would feel like to break the surface. What might be underneath the surface in the frigid depths.

He stepped forward.

She hung back.

“Wait, wait.” She opened her eyes and stared into the void. “Maybe we should stop and think this through.”

“Too late, we already skipped that step.”

“What if there are sharks down there?”

He laughed. “Stop stalling. Let's go.”

She edged two inches closer to the drop-off. “The water is going to be freezing.”

“The adrenaline will kick in and you won't feel a thing.”

“What if I get a concussion? What if I'm paralyzed for life?”

“You'll be fine.”

“What if—”

“Imagine you're fifteen right now,” he urged. “You have no fear.”

But fifteen had been an anxiety-ridden age for Lila. Despite her pretty face and popularity, she'd always held herself back, trying to be who her friends, her parents, her boyfriend, needed her to be. And she'd tried so hard to live up to all those expectations that she'd never figured out who she really was.

Malcolm stopped trying to convince her. Instead, he kept holding her hand at the edge of the cliff and said, “Tell me when you're ready.”

All Lila could feel was the wind on her cheeks and the damp ocean spray and the solid, steady presence of him next to her. She lifted her face up to the sky. “I'm not fifteen. I'm twenty-nine.” She looked back down at her dress. “And I still don't want to mess up my clothes. This is sixty-year-old silk that you worked on for hours.”

“Easy solution. Take it off.”

“That's your answer to everything, isn't it?”

“Yep.” He grasped her shoulders, spun her around, and yanked the recently reinforced zipper down. The shoulder straps slipped off and the fabric pooled around her ankles.

“Done,” he announced. “Ready?”

She reached for his hand again. “Ready.”

They stepped off the sandy ledge together and after a nanosecond of weightlessness, they plunged into the sea.

It was freezing and dark beyond anything Lila had ever known. She could feel the burn of salt water in her eyes and throat, the power of the waves tossing her body around. Malcolm held fast to her hand.

With a gasp, she broke the surface, then let go of him to start swimming toward shore.

Her hair was plastered over her eyes as she started for shore. It
wasn't far, but she had to fight for every inch of progress against the drag of the undertow. Malcolm stayed right there with her, ready to help if she needed it.

But she didn't need help. And when she finally staggered onto the sand, her teeth chattering and her whole body shaking, she realized that the day had finally come: After decades of empty threats and false alarms, her mother's advice about always wearing matching bras and panties had paid off.

Champagne-colored silk-satin finished with Leavers lace for the win.

“Come on.” Malcolm strode up behind her and wrapped one arm around her shoulders. “Let's get you dried off.”

“Y-you were right.” She was shivering so much she could hardly get the words out. “The adrenaline kicked in.”

“Move it along.” He hustled her across the rocky beach and up the narrow dirt path to the cliff top, where he opened the car door, turned the heater on full blast, and grabbed the picnic blanket out of the back.

“Here.” He wrapped the thin cotton blanket around her shoulders and ushered her into the passenger seat. “Get in there and warm up.”

“But if I'm under a blanket, you can't see my fancy underwear,” she protested.