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Insight.
Her anger leached away as her gaze lifted once again to Wayne’s photograph. Stubborn cuss. Pigheaded, stubborn cuss. But maybe I understand now, she conceded. Okay, she did understand now. I forgive you. She could almost swear she saw his black-and-white lips turn up in a little smile.
And if she forgave him…
But she wasn’t extending that to the other man who was out of her life and who she was still trying so desperately to keep out of her mind. The one who—
The bells on the door to Malibu & Ewe clanged. Oomfaa came dashing through, her face flushed, her voice breathless. “Passed Jay on PCH. No cell reception. He said to tell you, come quick. Something about a man and a car crash.”
The one who—Juliet finished the thought as dread filled her chest—was Noah, the man she still loved.
When they found Jay in the parking lot of Malibu’s Surfrider beach, Juliet’s dread seeped away. Her sisters had warned her that Oomfaa was as known for her hyperbole as her tendency to gossip and this “emergency” didn’t look quite so dire and didn’t involve Noah at all, though there was a tow truck, a crashed car, and a man—Gabe Kincaid.
The three women hurried from Juliet’s sedan to join Jay, who was conferring with the tow truck driver underneath the propped-up hood of his vehicle. Apparently engine trouble had halted him in the process of towing a crumpled but classic Thunderbird convertible, complete with a drunken—and singing—man sprawled in its backseat.
“No matter where you go,” Gabe sang at the top of his lungs, and though it wasn’t top quality, Juliet thought she recognized the song.
“Beatles?” she asked the others.
Jay shook his head. “Badfinger. Common mistake, because McCartney wrote a big hit of theirs, ‘Come and Get It,’ and George Harrison produced one of their albums.”
“I told you before he’s a font of useless info,” Nikki remarked.
“Useless?” Her fiancé grabbed her around the waist to yank her close. “That’s not what you said last night when I showed you that technique to—”
“Can you guys stop playing around?” Cassandra interrupted, sounding strained. “Can’t you see this is serious?”
Her voice seemed to penetrate Gabe’s drunken fog. He pushed himself straighter on the backseat, cradling a tequila bottle close to his chest as he peered at their assembled group. “Hey, Froot Loop! Look, I found it!”
“Oh, Gabe.” Cassandra’s hand shook a little as she pushed her hair over her shoulder. “Surely this isn’t it.”
“Not it, it,” he said, with an overemphatic shake of his head. “But like it, it. Going to restore this it. Bring it all back.”
“Oh, Gabe,” she responded again, as if her heart was breaking. She turned away from the man.
Juliet stepped nearer to her sister. “What’s the matter? What’s he doing?”
“I don’t know what he’s doing. Maybe what I’ve been worrying about all along,” she said, her words nearly masked as Gabe renewed his loud cover of the Badfinger ballad.
“What’s that?” Nikki said, she and Jay crowding close as well.
“Going completely crazy.” Cassandra glanced back at the man, then wrapped her arms around herself as if there’d been a sudden temperature dive. “He had one of those cars before. A 1963 Thunderbird convertible. It was in an accident as well. A drunk driver T-boned it when his wife was driving. It killed her instantly, along with their five-year-old daughter.”
“God.” Nikki clutched Jay’s arm. “God.”
He cleared his throat. “We didn’t know.”
“Gabe doesn’t talk about it unless he’s drunk. Unless he’s very, very drunk.”
“Froot Loop!” Gabe interrupted his song to give a lusty yell. “Come over here.”
With a sigh, she turned, then walked toward the car, the others trailing behind her. “Gabe…”
He frowned. “Whaz the matter?”
“I don’t like this.” She gestured to the convertible. “I don’t like seeing you in there.”
Juliet knew what her sister wasn’t saying. It didn’t take a giant leap of genius to wonder—to worry—that Gabe was placing himself in that same car because he was wishing he’d been with his wife and daughter at the time of their accident. That he was going to restore this Thunderbird so he could re-create the very same scenario.
“Come in wi’ me,” Gabe said to Cassandra, lurching for the door handle so that tequila spilled from the bottle he clutched. “We could fuck—”
