Free Love on Lavender Island (A Lavender Island Novel Book 2) by Lauren Christopher Page A

when we used to come over.”
    “That’s right. He’s an old man now—sixteen—but still the most loyal dog ever. You have a good memory, Paige.”
    Danged right I do. She hobbled behind him, trying to keep her eyes trained away from the body she remembered all too well, and from the towel outline of his apple-shaped bottom, but she failed, and bumped right into the stair rail. He turned and gave her a look that had a mixture of disbelief and pity, then opened the door for her and Denny.
    The Mason kitchen was exactly as she remembered: too much wood paneling, cast-iron cabinet handles, a huge butcher-block table for eight to the right. It was, in fact, the same table where she’d sat with her mom, late one night, telling George what had happened with Adam and Samantha. It had been the night George had sent Adam away.
    Paige stared at the door Adam had disappeared behind, remembering it led to the bedrooms. As she waited for him to bring back a Band-Aid or a pair of tweezers or whatever he’d disappeared for, rubbing her arm where she’d bumped into the rail and staring at her toe that was still bleeding, she heard a noise in the hallway and glanced up.
    Around the corner came Amanda in a pair of low-cut pajama bottoms and a tiny T-shirt that left a band of smooth, flat stomach showing. She shuffled across the room in a pair of UGG boots that were crumpled down at the sides.
    “Hey,” she said, heading toward the fridge.
    Adam strolled out of the hallway, now in jeans and a T-shirt, holding a box of Band-Aids. Paige turned to stare at him, then Amanda, trying to put the pieces together.
    “Amanda, you remember Ms. Paige Grant from earlier tonight?” Adam said, walking through the room to hand Paige the box. “Paige, meet Amanda, my daughter.”
    The box and all thirty-six Band-Aids skittered across the floor.

CHAPTER 6
    Paige shoved the last of the Band-Aids back in the box, then tried to focus on her toe, which was propped up now, at Adam’s insistence, on a chair.
    Adam came over with a basin of warm water, tweezers, and tape. He made small talk about fixing the wooden planks around the Jacuzzi, which she tried to focus on, but all she could think of was the fact that he had a teenage daughter.
    A teenage.
    Daughter.
    It didn’t take much calculating, or a DNA test, to figure out that the daughter was his and Samantha’s. Once Paige looked at her more closely, right before Amanda grabbed a Coke out of the fridge and escaped to a back room, she could see the resemblance clearly. Samantha had always had a glamorous look about her—long hair that fell in soft curls around her face like Veronica Lake’s, which was what Paige had assumed Adam, and all men, liked back then. Amanda didn’t have that glamour about her—the dyed-blue tips looked more rebellious than glamourous—but she had the same almond-shaped blue eyes Samantha had and the same delicate nose. Her lips were full and pouty like Samantha’s, although Amanda’s held no smile.
    But where is Samantha?
    When she finally got up the nerve to ask, Adam glanced up from his position near her foot. “Dead,” he answered, low, finally getting the splinter out. He cleaned up the remaining drops of blood on the floor and tossed the rag aside.
    “I’m so sorry,” Paige sputtered. “Did you . . . did you two marry?”
    “No.” He washed his hands at the kitchen sink.
    He didn’t seem ready to give more information than that, but he was sort of trapped here now, with Paige sitting on his kitchen table, so she thought she’d try to drag a little more out of him. “Did you co-parent, then?”
    “No.” He dried his hands on a towel behind him.
    Paige figured he was only going to give answers one sentence at a time. Adam didn’t exactly seem like the kind of guy who would tell his life story. She tried again. “Did you get to see Amanda often?”
    “I didn’t even know I had a daughter until six months ago.” He closed a cabinet that had the