Page 59 of Summer on Sunshine Bay

It took everything Eva had not to confide in her sister. They didn’t keep secrets from each other. But she couldn’t share this with Gia. Eva couldn’t tell her that Lila had hated her life. That she’d grown up unhappy and sad, torn between Eva’s family and James’s. Her sister was like Lila’s second mother. She didn’t want Gia to feel even half the devastation Eva was feeling right now.

“I did warn them, but Eva, maybe it needed to happen. You heard Lila. It was almost like she didn’t realize until she played he said, she said that she’s not in love with David.” Gia glanced into the dining room. “Jennifer’s upset. You need to talk to her.”

“I can’t. I have to…I have to go to the grocery store.” It was the first thing that came to mind. She needed time to figure out what to do, what to say to her daughter. She needed time to get her emotions under control.

“You can’t leave now.” Gia reached for her arm, turning Eva to face her. Her sister gasped. “What’s wrong?”

The lighting obviously wasn’t dim enough to cover the ravages of her tears, and saying nothing was wrong wasn’t an option. Gia wouldn’t let it go. “We’re running low on appetizers, and I was making bacon-wrapped jalapeno poppers. I was rushing and touched my eyes.” Eva shook off her sister’s hand. “I won’t be long. Serve the desserts.”

“But you should be here when Lila opens her gifts.”

Despite Lila’s having asked people to give money to their favorite charities in lieu of buying gifts, some guests had brought them anyway. “I will be,” she promised, but it might be one promise she couldn’t keep. She didn’t know how she could sit there pretending her heart wasn’t broken.

“Let me get someone to drive you.”

“I can drive myself, G,” she said from between clenched teeth, tears burning the backs of her eyes, threatening to overflow at any moment.

“Eva, the car is still in the shop.”

She hadn’t thought of that. “It’s okay. I’ll walk fast. Get Ma and Jennifer to help you.” She needed them distracted. She didn’t have to worry about Lila. Sage and Willow would take care of her. They’d protect her, which was more than Eva could say for herself.

She’d never meant to hurt her daughter. All she’d ever done was try to give her a happy life. She’d loved her with every fiber of her being.

As Eva hurried to the door with her head bowed, frantic to get away before anyone stopped her, she caught a glimpse of Willow’s electric scooter. With tears dripping off Eva’s nose and her chin, she grabbed the scooter and ran out the door. Willow had let her try out the scooter when she’d first bought it. Eva hoped she remembered what to do.

She kicked the stand up and then slipped off her heels, leaving them behind the rosebush by the restaurant door. She rolled the scooter to the street, put one foot on the deck, and then kicked off. As she brought her other foot in front of it, she pressed and held the Start button. The engine kicked in.

People called out to her as she whizzed down the road. She smiled and waved through her tears. Her friends and neighbors didn’t seem to notice. Either they thought they were from the sun in her eyes or the light breeze was drying them up as fast as they fell. It was as if the scooter knew where she needed to go before she did. She was headed in the direction of the beach house. To James. To the one person who would understand how Eva felt. He’d be devastated too.

She’d fallen in love with him that long-ago summer in London. He’d introduced her to fine wines, art, and literature. She’d introduced him to picnics in the park, swimming naked in a pond, and making love under the stars.

They’d had three magical weeks together before their worlds collided. James had taken her home to his family’s country estate for his parents’ thirty-fifth wedding anniversary. His parents and his friends were excruciatingly polite, but it had been obvious they thought her too loud, too brash, too uncouth for their adored son and friend.

Eva’s bandmates had been equally unimpressed with James when they reunited after their break to prepare for the second half of their tour. They’d understood why she’d fallen for him, of course—he was gorgeous and wealthy. But they held those same attributes against him—he was too handsome, too rich, arrogant and entitled. Men like James didn’t marry girls like her, like them. They married women who were equally gorgeous and wealthy and whose family were members of the British aristocracy. That was how it was in England, how it would always be. Their warnings didn’t bother Eva. She had no intention of ever marrying.

She and James had managed to make their long-distance romance work for five more weeks. James came to their show in Ireland, one in Paris, and one in Italy. They’d been sitting under an ancient olive tree in a vineyard in Tuscany having a picnic when he’d asked Eva to marry him. If not for the Rosetti curse, she might’ve said yes. He had been then, and was now, the only man she’d ever loved.

James hadn’t taken her rejection well. He’d vowed to win her over, to fight for them. Eva had always wondered if things would’ve turned out differently if he hadn’t received the phone call that had changed his life within an hour of his proposal. She was far from her family’s influence and young and naive enough to think their love was special, that they’d be able to overcome not only the curse but all the other obstacles that stood in their way.

But James didn’t have time to fight for her, for them. That phone call had turned his world upside down. His parents had eventually succumbed to the injuries they’d sustained in the motor vehicle accident they’d been involved in. She’d tried to be there for him, to provide solace and comfort, but he’d been buried under his responsibilities and grief. She’d sat by herself at the funeral, completely out of her depth. He’d been surrounded by his extended family and friends, who knew far better than she how to support him. She’d left the day after the funeral. She had to honor her commitment to her bandmates. She wasn’t sure James had even noticed she was gone.

Two months later, the tour had ended, and Eva was back in Sunshine Bay praying for a recording deal that never materialized. It was then that she discovered she was pregnant with Lila. She didn’t tell James right away—her mother had advised against it.

Looking back, Eva supposed she’d been hoping he’d call her, but he hadn’t. Despite her mother’s warning, Eva knew she couldn’t live with herself if she kept James’s child’s existence from him. She’d convinced herself she didn’t expect or want anything from him, but there’d been a tiny kernel of hope buried deep inside her that this child, who’d been created from their love, would bring them back together.

Eva had waited until she’d safely delivered her beautiful and healthy daughter before making the call. James had taken the red-eye from London that very night. He’d fallen in love with Lila the moment he held her, but it seemed his love for Eva wasn’t as constant as hers. He’d married a month after she’d returned to Sunshine Bay, and he and his wife were expecting a child of their own. Eva had met Grace, his wife, at his parents’ anniversary party and at their funeral. The beautiful, willowy blonde had grown up on the estate adjacent to the Sinclairs’. She was everything Eva wasn’t. Eva had blamed her tears on baby blues. She didn’t know if James had believed her.

He visited Lila in Sunshine Bay three times that year. He’d wanted to come more often, but his company was growing, and he had a baby of his own. For Eva, three visits a year was more than enough. It was hard to see him and pretend indifference. It was hard to watch him walk away with Lila, strolling her down the road in the baby carriage he’d had shipped from England.

She’d wanted her daughter all to herself. Lila had filled the hole James had left in Eva’s heart. She was the greatest gift he could’ve given her. Then he’d spent the next eighteen years trying to take her daughter from her, and she’d grown to resent him as much as she’d once loved him.

And that resentment, Eva’s actions in the past, were the reason Lila was marrying a man she didn’t love. Eva’s fights with James, the tears and the rants, all came back to her, and she cringed in shame and regret. A horn blasted her out of the past. She was driving the scooter down the middle of the road. She raised a hand in apology and steered toward the side, only she oversteered and hit a grate, the tire jumping the curb. The scooter wobbled, dumping her onto the neighbor’s driveway of crushed shells, and then continued on its way, right into the candy apple–red Ferrari.

Eva pushed herself to her feet and dusted herself off. She was lucky she’d made it to the beach house with nothing more than a scraped knee. James’s rental car hadn’t fared as well as she had. The scooter had gouged a foot-long scrape in the passenger-side door. Eva knew she should try to buff out the scratch, check that her niece’s scooter had survived unscathed, but she was desperate to see James and ran past the car and the scooter and down the side of the house. She opened the door, relieved that it was unlocked, calling out for James as she rushed into the house.

“James!” He didn’t respond. Her pulse quickened as she searched the main floor, running to the patio doors. He wasn’t on either of the decks or down by the water. “Please don’t be on a run,” she cried, growing increasingly frantic by the minute. She heard a sound coming from the second floor and ran up the stairs, searching the rooms as she called his name.

“Eva?” He came out of the main bedroom, rubbing his wet hair with a white towel that matched the one wrapped around his waist.

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