he would regain his senses and would eventually call me. Days became weeks. Weeks turned into months. Months into years.”
She was quiet for a moment, then continued. “I ran into Mr. Chambray at one of the festivals a year later and he accused me of being the reason Kaegan refused to come back to Catalina Cove, even for a visit. He said that I had hurt his boy and that he was glad Kaegan found out what a slut I was.”
Vashti drew in a sharp breath. “Mr. Chambray said that to you?”
“Yes.”
“Oh, Bryce.”
She could hear the trembling in Vashti’s voice and didn’t want her pity. “It’s okay, Vash. That day I finally accepted that Mr. Chambray probably had the same opinion of me that Kaegan had.”
She pulled the car into Vashti and Sawyer’s driveway. When she brought the car to a stop, she turned to Vashti. It was then that Bryce felt her tears. She hadn’t realized until that moment that she’d been crying. “I’ve gotten over him, Vash—honest, I have. But it still hurts knowing he had so little trust in me after all we’d been through together. I had loved him so much, but I promised myself years ago that I would never let Kaegan hurt me again. And that’s a promise I intend to keep.”
KAEGAN MOVED AWAY from the window when Bryce’s car finally drove off. He rubbed a hand down his face, feeling frustrated. Hadn’t he made a vow when he moved back to Catalina Cove that he would not let Bryce destroy him any more than she already had? Each and every time she came to his house—the place that should have been their home—it took another bite out of him.
Tonight had been the last straw when he’d walked into his kitchen and had seen her on that ladder. First off, he had been concerned for her safety. But then seeing her from behind had totally unnerved him. She’d always had one hell of a figure and she still did.
Angry with himself for admiring her ass, he had snapped at her and then the confrontation had begun. Although he’d wished otherwise, Vashti had been caught in the middle. But then, she was the one who’d insisted he invite Bryce.
In the past, it had been pretty easy to ignore her. But not tonight. It might have been her outfit, a pink shorts set with white sandals, that had been to blame. He’d always liked her in pink because he’d thought she always looked ultrafeminine in that color.
He had tried not to notice her but he had. He knew every damn man who’d tried talking to her tonight, and each time one would approach her, his stomach would tighten in knots. It had been ten years, so why was he stressing over a woman who meant nothing to him? Absolutely nothing.
An hour later he’d finished breaking everything down, at least as much as he intended to do tonight. Tomorrow was Saturday and after sleeping late he would wake up and do the rest. He began stripping off his clothes for a shower and for some reason his gaze went to a certain framed portrait on the wall.
There was nothing special about the painting, but behind it was his safe, where his valuables were kept. He walked over to it and entered the combination, then opened the safe. He stared at the only thing inside. That damn little white box.
He reached inside and pulled it out, asking himself for the umpteenth time why he still had it. He should have gotten rid of it years ago, but had convinced himself he needed it as a reminder of the time in his life when he’d been young, naive and gullible, and had allowed a woman to make a fool of him.
He’d left Catalina Cove the day he’d graduated from high school. Together he and Bryce had mapped out a plan for their future. He would serve six years in the military. That would give her time to complete her last two years of high school and four years of college before they married. After she finished college they would marry. She’d been in her senior year of college and he’d come home over spring break. It had been a surprise visit with a purpose. He was going to officially ask her to marry him.
Opening the box, he gazed upon the engagement ring he had saved his paychecks for almost a year to afford. When he’d first seen it in a jewelry-store window he had immediately known it was the ring he wanted to give Bryce. That was before he’d seen her in the arms of another man.
He closed his eyes for a moment when memories of that night assailed him and ripped into him. That had been the night she’d shredded his heart. His father had been writing and telling him that he’d seen Bryce around town with Samuel Abbott whenever she came home from college. But Kaegan hadn’t believed him because his parents had never approved of his relationship with Bryce. They’d wanted him to be with a girl from the tribe.
Kaegan had known Samuel from growing up in the cove. He was the son of wealthy parents who’d owned the only pharmacy in town for years. In high school Samuel had been a star athlete in practically every sport he competed in. He was what the girls had called a superjock and they would hang around him like lovesick puppies.
Regardless of what his father had been telling him in those letters, Kaegan had trusted Bryce. He’d believed the plans they’d made for their future were solid and that some guy like Samuel wasn’t going to turn her head. He hadn’t cared they were attending Grambling together, which gave them every opportunity to be close. Bryce was his girl and that was that.
Although it was close to two in the morning when he’d arrived in the cove that night, he’d immediately gone to Bryce’s house to surprise her. He’d been anxious to ask her to marry him and to give her the ring. Since her brothers had married, she had taken over the garage apartment at the back of her parents’ home.
He had walked toward the garage when suddenly the door to the apartment opened and a man came out. She was walking him to the door and the man was Samuel Abbott. Kaegan had stopped and stared at them. Neither had detected his presence since he’d been in the shadows. In total shock, he watched Bryce lean up on tiptoes and wrap her arms around Samuel’s neck. Angry and hurt, Kaegan turned and walked away while pain had sliced through him. He left town that night without Bryce or his parents knowing he’d even been there.
It had taken a week before he’d called Bryce. He’d even refused to take her call, the one she made to him every Sunday. When he did call her, he didn’t give her a chance to say anything. He told her of his surprise visit home the week before, although he didn’t tell her why he’d specifically come home that night.
Kaegan told her about seeing her in Samuel’s arms on her doorstep at two in the morning. He’d told her he hoped to never see her again and that he would be blocking her calls. When he ended the call, he figured that would be that. She’d cheated on him and had been caught. There had been no one he could talk to about the pain he felt. Not even Vashti. She’d left town years earlier, the week after she’d graduated from high school, saying she would never return to Catalina Cove again. She had her own issues with the town and the people in it. He was left to deal with the pain of Bryce’s betrayal alone.
He certainly hadn’t expected Bryce to show up in North Carolina a week later wanting to see him and tell him her side of things. There was nothing she could tell him. It hadn’t been about what his father had told him but about what he’d seen with his own eyes. He doubted he would ever forget seeing her in Samuel’s arms as they’d been about to kiss.
Coming back to Catalina Cove to live was the last thing he’d planned to do. When he had returned home after his father’s death it was to find a seafood shipping company that was barely making ends meet. On top of that, the machinery and boats were in need of repair or replacement, and it had been weeks since the crew, shrimpers and oyster shuckers had been paid.
He had made the decision to close down the company, pay the workers out of money he had saved and move his mother with him to Maryland, where he’d settled after his military career ended. He had a pretty good job working for NASA as a program manager. The plans to return to Maryland changed the day he was approached by Reid LaCroix, the wealthiest man in the cove.
Reid had invited him to his home and had made Kaegan an offer that