Page 8 of Summer on Sunshine Bay

He sighed. “Does everything have to be about your family, Lila?”

“Really? Are you trying to tell me that none of this, the wedding, the job, has anything to do withyour family, David?”

“It’s not the same,” he said with a mulish expression on his face. He looked a lot like his father at the moment. Far from a comforting thought.

A large, warm hand settled on Lila’s back, and then her dad ducked his head under the table. “Are you okay, sweetheart?”

Her father was protective of her and her half sisters—their knight in shining armor—and he’d move heaven and earth to ensure their happiness. If she told him the truth, he’d whisk her away and back to London. It would be so easy to let him handle everything.

Her mother would be horrified that the thought had even crossed Lila’s mind. A Rosetti woman didn’t depend on a man to make her troubles go away, even if that man was Lila’s father. Lila and her cousins had been raised to be strong, independent women—the architects of their own lives and happiness.

But Lila didn’t have only herself to think about. She had a baby on the way. She wouldn’t let her child become a pawn, torn between its mother and father. No matter how good and loving her parents were, the continuous battles they’d waged over her while she was growing up had been a nightmare. One she refused to let her child endure.

“Yeah, I’m—” She didn’t get the chance to complete the lie. David’s mother joined them under the table.

Jennifer worried her bottom lip between her teeth. “Is everything okay? I didn’t overstep, did I? You’re not mad at me, are you, Lila?”

She’d seen that anxious expression on David’s mother’s face before—every time Gavin berated his wife for some perceived failing or misstep—and Lila swallowed a sigh. She couldn’t do it. She couldn’t tell Jennifer how she really felt about the society wedding she had planned, and if Lila couldn’t, how could she expect David to?

“Of course not. I just dropped my napkin.” Lila held up the white linen cloth.

It was almost worth swallowing her own feelings to see the bright smile light up Jennifer’s face. Almost.

“So glad you could all rejoin us,” Gavin said when the four of them straightened in their chairs, sharing an eye roll with his eldest son.

David’s brother smirked into his wineglass and then held it up. “A toast to the happy couple.”

With a forced smile, Lila touched her wineglass to everyone else’s and then pretended to take a sip. But when talk immediately returned to the plans for their wedding and how beneficial it would be for Windemere, her stomach rebelled. It was an all-too-familiar feeling. Whenever Lila had gotten anxious as a child, she’d thrown up.

Excusing herself from the table, she pushed back her chair. “Do you know where the restrooms are, Dad?”

“To the right of the piano and down the hall.”

“Thanks.” At the question in his eyes, she mouthed,I’m fine, but she felt his concerned gaze following her as she walked away from the table.

She kept her head down, pressing her fingers to her lips as she breathed deeply through her nose and hurried across the restaurant.

The woman behind the baby grand piano was playing Roxette’s “Listen to Your Heart.” Even though it was a song from the eighties, Lila knew it well. She should. Her mother had sung it often enough when Lila was growing up.

When Eva was in her early twenties, she’d been a singer in a girl band that covered female artists from the eighties. She’d met Lila’s father while doing the European club circuit. According to Lila’s grandmother and aunt, Eva could’ve made it big. Lila had no reason to doubt them. Her mother had an incredible voice.

As a child, Lila had loved when her mother sang to her. She’d been proud of her. But that changed when Lila got older and her mother would agree to sing at some function at the high school or would sing karaoke at a bar Lila had sneaked into with her cousins. She’d been mortified then. Because Eva didn’t just sing, sheperformed, ensuring that every male in the audience—some females too—fantasized about taking Eva Rosetti home with them.

Lila quickened her pace and rounded the corner. At the line outside the ladies’ restroom, she groaned into her palm. Her eyes went to the stick figure farther down the hall. Of course there wasn’t a line outside the men’s restroom.

Lila moved to stand behind a thirtysomething woman—thankfully a stranger—but then her stomach heaved, and she knew she’d never make it. She ran the several feet to the men’s restroom and pushed open the door. Thankfully, it was empty, but at that point, even if it hadn’t been, she wouldn’t have been able to leave. She’d barely flipped the lock on the stall and made it onto her knees before she threw up.

Five minutes later, she pulled a handful of toilet paper off the roll and wiped her mouth. She tossed it into the toilet as she came to her feet and flushed. As she watched her lunch and the toilet paper disappear, the temper she was so good at controlling—passionate outbursts reminded her of her dramatic mother—came out, and she turned and kicked the stall door.

She let out a high-pitched sound—a cross between a shriek and a cry—but it didn’t get rid of the anger swirling inside her. The only thing kicking the door had accomplished was hurting her big toe. She had to find a way to release the anger. If she didn’t, she was afraid she’d throw up again and she’d never get out of this bathroom. Maybe the key to getting rid of the anger was articulating exactly what she was feeling, words she’d never say to David out loud. Her parents’ fraught relationship was evidence of how much damage words said in anger could do.

“You son of a…” Even in the heat of the moment, she couldn’t indirectly curse Jennifer. “…of a scoundrel! You knew I wasn’t ready to get pregnant, but did you care? No, because you were, and you…you arranged a big wedding behind my back with your mother, and you know I can’t hurt her feelings so you get exactly what you want. A baby, a wedding, and a job that, no matter what you say, could put my family out of business. You, you, you…” The word got stuck on repeat as she searched for one that would convey exactly how she was feeling about David at that moment. She couldn’t find one and kicked the door instead. “Ouch. Son of a—”

A deep voice cut her off midcurse. “Are you all right in there?”

Her eyes just about popped out of her head, and she covered her face with her hands. What had she been thinking, going off like that in a public place? She wasn’t her mother. She didn’t do this sort of thing. She cringed, praying the man hadn’t heard half of what she’d said.

But if the baby books she’d been reading were right… She placed a hand over her stomach and whispered, “I’m sorry, baby. I’m mad at your daddy, not you. I love you.”

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