Harper nodded. “I’m going to put Noelle down in a minute. I was thinking Kate and I could walk down on the beach. Will you be okay by yourself with the kids?"
Noel gave her a goofy grin. "I guess we'll find out, won't we?"
When Harper finished nursing Noelle, I followed her upstairs to lay the baby down. She pulled a folded blanket from the hall closet, and then we quietly walked downstairs, got our drinks, and headed down to the beach.
"I've heard a rumor that you know our neighbor,” she said.
I frowned. "I do?" I looked up toward the house sitting next to Harper and Noel's.
"Sam Clarke. He bought my house."
God. Was there no escape from Sam Clarke? "I knew Sam. Past tense."
Harper flung out the beach blanket, and we sat down. "Sounds like there's a story there."
I crossed my arms over my knees, resting my chin on my forearms as I looked out over the water. "It's the usual. Boy meets girl, girl falls hard, boy leaves girl for another woman."
"Ouch. So have you talked to him now that he's here?"
"Mostly, I tell him to leave me alone."
Harper poked her finger in the sand, making circles. “He came over asking about Dax. Apparently, he didn't like that you were dancing with him."
The woman in me got a little thrill out of knowing Sam was jealous. But of course, he told me that on Halloween. "It's not Sam's business who I dance with."
She sighed. "Well, I don't blame you for being upset. There's no rebuilding of trust after cheating, is there?"
Technically, Sam didn't cheat. But I didn't correct her because in the end, trust was the issue.
"Trust was a big problem for me and Noel at first, too." She laughed, although I imagine it wasn't funny at the time it was happening. "I thought my brother had me move in next door to him so he could keep an eye on me. You know how protective my brother Bran can be. Noel thought I moved next door to help Bran secure a business deal."
I turned my head to look at her. "How did you resolve all that?"
"For a long time, we didn't, although it didn't stop us from having some pretty spectacular sex."
The image of Sam fucking me on my desk flashed in my head. I turned my gaze out to the ocean again. Harper was astute, and I didn't need her seeing that I had succumbed to my physical desire for Sam.
"If someone had told me that we needed to talk things out, I would've said we were, but we weren't very good at it. It wasn't until we truly opened up, not just about our misconceptions but about our feelings, that we were able to truly come together and have what we have today. I thank God all the time that we did. I saw my brother’s marriage, and Lane and Lucy's to their husbands, and I was envious even though I accepted that it wasn't for me."
I knew that feeling.
"But it turns out it was for me. I just had to get out of my own way."
Max’s similar words came back to me. I got the feeling that Harper didn’t realize she was in her own way, whereas I was in my way on purpose. I had to protect myself.
"Well, you and Noel worked things out. In the middle of your happily ever after, he didn't have his ex show up with a child and leave you for her and the baby."
She looked at me. "He did have an ex show up with a baby. There was a time when I thought he’d left me to reconcile with her. But I was wrong. That's my point. Do you really know what happened with Sam and this woman?"
My jaw tightened because I hated that Harper seemed to be taking Sam’s side. "I know that I was engaged to Sam, and we were getting ready to move to New York when his ex showed up with their baby, and right then and there, he had to do the quote unquote ‘right thing’. He took her and the baby to New York, leaving me behind."
She winced. Good, I thought. She was finally getting it.
"And yet he's back in California by himself. The only family that's come to visit him is his brother. Maybe something's changed."
"Our history hasn't changed. I can't trust him."
"You know what happened between him and his ex?"