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Bastian started the engine. “Rough flight?”
“Aren’t they all? I hate air travel.”
“Where do you want to eat?” Bastian asked.
“I don’t want to eat. Take me to Honey’s. That’s where you said Ismay and Jack are staying, right?”
Bastian blinked at him. “You’ve got to be starving.”
“I ate in Boston on my layover. And if we wait any longer, they might go to bed.”
Bastian checked his watch. “At ten?”
“I want to talk to her, Bastian,” Remy said.“Now.”
“If she won’t answer your calls or your texts, what makes you think she’ll let you in?”
“It’s easier to ignore a call or a message than someone banging on your door,” he replied.
Bastian was hungry, but he knew better than to insist on eating first. He didn’t want to start this visit off on the wrong foot. Taking Remy head-on was never the right thing to do. “Fine. We have to get the keys to the truck Bo left with them, anyway,” he said and drove out of the parking lot.
The lights were on at Honey’s, and the truck was sitting in the drive. It appeared as if someone was home. But when Remy went to the door and knocked, no one answered.
Bastian lowered his window. “Let’s go eat. We can deal with this tomorrow,” he yelled, but Remy shook his head.
“No way,” he said. “We’ll deal with it tonight.”
31
Ismay spotted the Jeep in the drive before Jack did and grabbed his arm.
“What is it?” Jack said, lifting his head.
“Bastian’s here.”
“Oh, shit.” He peered through the trees that partially concealed Honey’s house and scowled. They’d slipped down to the Windsors’ private beach and spent the past forty minutes enjoying the mild spring evening while they talked about so many things—their upbringing, their parents’ life view, letting go of Ashleigh, getting a condo or apartment together in Los Angeles, Ismay’s engagement to Remy and their subsequent breakup. And Bo. Mostly Bo. Ismay hadn’t responded to his last text from over a day ago, and he hadn’t tried to reach her again. She assumed he knew she’d learned the truth. The practical part of her—the part that was most like her father, she supposed—warned her to let him go. To leave things as they were. There were plenty of other men in the world who hadn’t experienced what he’d experienced and with whom she’d never face such difficult questions.
But she couldn’t stop thinking of him and didn’t want to walk away, despite what she’d learned. She’d never felt so strongly about anyone else. She at least owed it to him to decide if she believed his version of events, didn’t she?
“Let’s go back to the beach,” Jack said, stopping. “I don’t want to deal with Bastian.”
“He’s probably come to get the keys to the truck,” she said, trying to guess the purpose of this unwanted visit. “I say we give them to him and be done with him. We don’t need the truck—we can always walk or Uber. And then he’ll have no reason to bother us.”
With a shrug, Jack started walking toward the house again. “Yeah, might as well get it over with.”
Prepared for a hostile encounter, Ismay squared her shoulders as they approached the vehicle, but there was no one sitting inside. Because she and Jack hadn’t planned on being gone more than a few minutes, they hadn’t bothered to lock the house, and she got the distinct impression Bastian had let himself in. She could see why he might feel free to do that with the bungalow. His family owned that. But Honey’s house? It came as a shock that he’d go so far.
“What an assuming bastard,” Jack muttered just before he opened the door. But it wasn’t only Bastian who was in the living room. Remy was with him.
Ismay felt her jaw drop. “Remy! What are you doing here? What about your exam?”
“I decided I can take it during residency when we’re both in LA. We don’t have to be apart, not with so much going on here.” He’d stood when he saw her and was coming forward as if he expected her to fall into his arms.
She put up a hand to let him know that wasn’t going to happen, and he stopped about three feet away. “Nothing’s going on here. Not anymore.”
His thick dark eyebrows slammed together. “You’re not answering my calls and texts...”
“And you know why...”
