Karri had even come a couple of weeks after he’d left California without so much as a “see ya.” She’d brought a gift basket full of all the things he’d told Skye he loved. Bourbon, books, even a tool he’d been thinking about getting. Trent had looked at Karri and shoved it back at her.
“I don’t understand,” Karri had said to him.
“You don’t need to buy my silence. I won’t sell my story,” Trent had said back to her as if he wasn’t in pain.
Karri had looked at him questioningly then. “Look, just talk to her. Please. She’s my best friend and I’ve never seen her like this.”
“Like what?” Trent had asked.
“In love.”
Karri had spun around and left. The gift basket was at his feet as she drove away. Had he been wrong? Was Skye in love with him? He’d pulled up her text and stared at it. All he’d need to do is type and send two letters— “hi” and he knew she would reply.
Instead of texting her, Trent googled her. She’d released a new interview and desperate to hear her voice, he’d watched it. Then he’d heard her say she was leaving to film in Europe.
“What kind of impact does all this travel have on your personal life?” the interviewer had asked.
“What personal life?” Skye laughed and memories of their night together flashed before him. “No, but seriously, I don’t have time to date. Right now my career comes first.”
So Trent had put down the phone and never picked it up again . . . except to look at the news alerts. He still couldn’t stop wanting to know how Skye was doing. Now, even months later, Trent picked up his phone when it sounded with a news alert. He clicked on the article and there was a picture of Skye smiling as Hollywood’s leading man hugged her tightly to him. Love on the set of Skye Jessamine and Mason Hemming’s new movie!
Trent turned off the phone and set it down, vowing to be done with Skye Jessamine.
“Still pining away?”
Trent rolled his eyes as his cousin Ryker’s voice came from the door of his woodshop. Trent had opened the bay doors to allow the fall air in as he worked. Unfortunately, that also allowed nosy cousins to sneak up on him.
“I am working with pine. How did you know?” Trent asked innocently as he looked down at the wood he was shaping into a rustic headboard.
“I meant for the actress.”
Trent turned around and saw his cousin standing with his hands in the pockets of what had to be a handmade suit. To say Ryker, business tycoon extraordinaire, was out of place in his wood shop was an understatement. “Did you need something?” Trent asked, ignoring the question about Skye.
“Yeah, you’re late for dinner.”
Trent’s head fell back as he groaned. “I forgot. I was so wrapped up in this piece.”
“Piece of something.” Ryker was determined to push, but Trent wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction. “We all ate, but we’re hanging out at Harper’s. Come on, let’s go.”
Trent took off his safety goggles and stripped the gloves from his hands. “I need to shower.”
Ryker shook his head. “Gator and Turtle just got back from the swamp, so no need to worry about showering. You can’t possibly smell worse than they do.”
“Okay, but please no Skye talk.”
Ryker shrugged his shoulders and walked out, leaving Trent to shut down his shop and hurry after him.
“Did you see that article about Skye dating her co-star?” Trent’s cousin Tinsley asked the second he entered the bar owned by his cousin Harper.
The Faulkner cousins wasn’t an especially large group. There were seven of them, but the seven were quickly expanding as they married. There was Trent and his brother, Wade, who was in the Coast Guard. Wade was married to Darcy, an oceanic-treasure hunter. Then there was his doctor cousin, Gavin Faulkner, and his wife, Ellery, who ran an art gallery. Gavin’s little sister, Harper, owned the bar and her husband, Dare, was with the ATF. Tinsley was an artist and her older brother, Ridge, an architect and builder, had married Savannah not too long ago. Ryker was an only child and it showed. He liked things his way so it was good that he ran who knew how many companies. Trent knew about the shipping company but also knew there were many other companies and “business interests” that Ryker either owned a part of or ran outright. That expanding family now meant way more people to butt into his private life.
“I heard it was that Mason fella. He’s been in the news saying all these great things about her,” Gator said from the bar as he hooked a thumb into his overalls. Gator was aptly named since the mountain of a man in overalls and a worn ball cap did actually wrestle alligators.
“That’s a right good-lookin’ man if I can say so,” Turtle, Gator’s little-in-every-way cousin, said back. Women sighed in agreement. Even the men nodded their heads.
Gator took a swig of beer and set the mug on the bar. “I don’t think any man can compete with that.”
“Did you see Mason in Spring’s Redeeming Bloom?” Turtle asked, and the women all blushed and began to fan themselves. “They showed him bathing in a creek. And I mean they showed him . . . his little turtle and all.”
“It was wicked hot and not little in the slightest,” Georgina, the bartender, said, waving her hand in front of her face.
Gator groaned. “Miss Georgie, I know you’re from up there in the north somewhere, but you’ve been here long enough to start makin’ sense.”
“I said, ‘wicked’ again, didn’t I?” Georgie bit her lip and looked up at the ceiling as if she were thinking. Georgina Grey was from Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts, and Gator thought she was speaking another language. “Let’s see, Mason Hemming is finer than frog hair split four ways?”
Gator saluted her with his beer. “Now I know what you’re talking about.”
Georgina beamed with approval and Trent was ready to leave.
“Now, I’ll grant you that Mason Hemming is someone you’d write home about,” Tinsley said to them all before turning to Trent. “However, just because the paper says they’re together doesn’t mean they are. Is she still texting you?”
“I don’t want to talk about Skye Jessamine,” Trent said between clenched teeth. He loved his family and town, really, but this was too much. “G, I’ll take a bourbon. Straight up. Make it a double.”
“That’ll wet your whistle,” Georgina said and then winked at Gator and Turtle who golf-clapped for her use of an expression they understood.
Trent took a seat with his family. Everyone stared at him. Trent let out a suffering sigh. “Yes, she texted me a picture of her on set this morning. She said it was her last day of filming. Then next month starts her press tour for her movie coming out then. She told me she’ll be in Atlanta doing press and wondered how far it was from Shadows Landing.”
“See!” Tinsley shouted joyfully.
“See what?” Trent asked as Georgina set the bourbon down in front of him.
“She still likes you,” Harper said without hesitation.
“Strange way to show it,” Trent muttered.
“It’s probably a fake relationship. I’ve read about those,” Savannah told them.