Page 87 of You Know You Wanna

My stomach flipped. “So basically, I should just ignore anything and everything she tells me.”

“Exactly.” Remington squeezed my hand, but I saw the worry in his eyes. “Even the stuff she doesn’t say directly. She’s smart. She’ll figure out a way to get into your head once she realizes you don’t believe her yet.”

Declan focused on Remington then, giving Gracie and me a moment to exchange a glance. With her by my side, I’d always been able to handle the mean girls and the playground bullies, but something told me Jacqueline wasn’t your garden variety mean girl.

Gracie gave me a reassuring smile and I returned it, but I didn’t feel reassured. The thought of that woman was freaking me out so much that, at this point, nothing she could say to me was as bad as some of the scenarios I’d conjured up in my mind, but I had to brace for impact and I knew it was going to hurt.

I just wasn’t used to playing at her level—or playing her game at all. Gracie was a tiny bit versed in it, but we didn’t have a full-blown Jacqueline character around here. There was no way we could really be prepared, but as Declan and Remington spoke, I tuned into their conversation, recognizing that it wouldn’t really matter what she did.

As long as I remained confident in Remington, she wouldn’t be able to rattle me. Remington and Laurene. They were what was important.

“You’re going to have to talk to her while she’s here,” Declan was saying, the expression on his face as pinched as if he’d just sucked on a particularly sour lemon. “You and I both know she’s going to try to take Lulu with her when she leaves, which means that you’re going to have to get into it with her whether you want to engage or not.”

“Yeah, I know. I’m just not doing it on her terms,” he said. “She came here. To me. We’re playing this one by my rules.”

“It’s not a game, though,” Gracie protested.

“I know that too,” Remington said, looking up at her over Declan’s shoulder. “I don’t think it’s a game at all, but for Jacqueline, that’s exactly what it is. That’s why I won’t play by her rules.” He turned back to Declan. “I’m going to talk to her. She’s not taking Lulu to England. I don’t care if that’s what she came here to do. I won’t let it happen.”

With the declaration made, he lifted his beer into the air and we toasted on it. Then Declan changed the topic and we spent the rest of the night trying to relax and forget about Jacqueline. After a few drinks and some food, I was feeling significantly better about everything, safe in the knowledge that she couldn’t touch me so long as I remembered that Remington despised her and that his best friend clearly did too.

We strode back to my cabin hand in hand, and I, for one, was all smiles when he spun me into him once we were inside. Those eyes looked deep into mine as he held me, a slow smile now spreading on his own face.

“I haven’t been this happy for as long as I can remember, Birdie,” he murmured as he pushed my hair behind my ears. “I know I’m responsible for bringing this shit storm into your life and I wish we could go back to it being just us, but despite everything else, I’m still so happy that I’m not even sure who I am right now.”

“But I know who you are,” I replied softly, my hands on his chest and his heart beating steadily against my palm. “I happen to like who you are, and it’s not a shit storm, Remington. It’s just a woman. A woman you didn’t invite and don’t want here, but who we couldn’t keep out. It’s not your fault she came.”

Moving his head forward, he laid a kiss on me and then smiled again. “Let’s not talk about her anymore. She doesn’t matter. Right here, right now, all I want is to be with you.”

“That’s funny,” I teased lightly, scrunching my fingers into his shirt and tugging him toward my bed. “I want that too.”

It was true. Despite everything else going on, I felt the same way he did. I was happier than I had been in a long time, and when I was with him, it felt like we were in our own little world. A world I didn’t care to share with his ex and one I definitely wasn’t inviting her into by asking more questions right then.

Instead, I stripped off his clothes while he did the same to me, and we got lost in each other in our own little world for the rest of the night. Remington made me feel like I was the only woman who existed, like I was precious to him. I knew I was going to have to hang onto that feeling if I ran into her come daybreak, so I drank it in, relished it, and made every effort to make him feel the same way.

At the end of the day, we were together now and it might not last forever, but while he was still here with me, I was intent on making every second count—and I did it without worrying what fresh hell Jacqueline might have in store for us tomorrow.

45

REMINGTON

I woke up in Birdie’s bed with the sun already sitting high in the sky, streaming into her cabin and creeping closer and closer to where I was lying. Groaning, I rolled over to grab my phone and checked the time, praying that I hadn’t slept away the entire day.

Laurene wasn’t due back from Cassidy’s place in town until later this evening, and I’d been looking forward to spending some time with Birdie once she got done with her yoga sessions. Relieved when I realized it was still morning—albeit late morning—I got up, dressed, and headed to the main building, planning on going to find her.

I found Alan instead, talking to a few of his employees in the lobby when I strode out of the elevator. The old man spotted me and waved, apparently having warmed up to me now that he was two million dollars richer and had witnessed me temporarily misplacing my own daughter.

I waved back, expecting him to continue with his conversation now that we’d greeted one another, but he didn’t. Lifting his hand once more, he beckoned me over, wrapping up with the employees as I approached.

“You know what to do, so get out there and do it,” he was saying. “Report back to me once you have. I want that fence fixed today.”

I waited for them to disperse before I raised an eyebrow at him. “You’ve got a broken fence?”

“Tree fell on it during that last storm,” he said conversationally. “That’s not what I wanted to talk to you about, though. I heard about the fancy lady who came to visit.”

“Oh.”

He nodded, those cloudy blue eyes of his hard and sharp on mine. “Yes, oh. I also heard she was here with you.”