Summer Days Read online

  Outstanding praise for Lisa Jackson!

  “No one tells a story like Lisa Jackson. She’s headed straight for the top!”

  —Debbie Macomber

  “Lisa Jackson takes my breath away.”

  —Linda Lael Miller

  Outstanding praise for Elizabeth Bass!

  “Bass introduces wonderfully needy characters who discover their untapped strength. The teens and their relationships are particularly well developed. Kristin Hannah fans and readers attracted to Lisa Genova’s novels will appreciate this novel. Definitely buy for readers who demand character growth and relationships in their fiction.”

  —Library Journal on Wherever Grace Is Needed

  “Bass’s sparkling debut will inspire laughs and tears . . . With bountiful grace and a real feeling for her characters, Bass creates a three-hanky delight.”

  —Publishers Weekly on Miss You Most of All

  Outstanding praise for Holly Chamberlin!

  “A great summer read.”

  —Fresh Fiction on Summer Friends

  “Explores questions about the meaning of home, family dynamics and tolerance.”

  —The Bangor Daily News on The Family Beach House

  Outstanding praise for Mary Carter!

  “A marvelous combination of wit and heart and a reflection of the way a couple can endure one another’s faults for the sake of love and devotion.”

  —RT Book Reviews on The Things I Do for You

  “Gripping, entertaining and honest. This is a unique, sincere story about the invisible, unbreakable bonds of sisterhood that sustain us no matter how far they’re buried.”

  —Cathy Lamb on My Sister’s Voice

  Books by Lisa Jackson

  Stand-Alones

  SEE HOW SHE DIES * FINAL SCREAM * RUNNING SCARED

  WHISPERS * TWICE KISSED * UNSPOKEN * DEEP FREEZE

  FATAL BURN * MOST LIKELY TO DIE * WICKED GAME

  WICKED LIES * SOMETHING WICKED * WITHOUT MERCY

  YOU DON’T WANT TO KNOW * CLOSE TO HOME

  Anthony Paterno/Cahill Family Novels

  IF SHE ONLY KNEW * ALMOST DEAD

  Rick Bentz/Reuben Montoya Novels

  HOT BLOODED * COLD BLOODED * SHIVER

  ABSOLUTE FEAR * LOST SOULS * MALICE * DEVIOUS

  Pierce Reed/Nikki Gillette Novels

  THE NIGHT BEFORE * THE MORNING AFTER

  TELL ME

  Selena Alvarez/Regan Pescoli Novels

  LEFT TO DIE * CHOSEN TO DIE * BORN TO DIE

  AFRAID TO DIE * READY TO DIE

  DESERVES TO DIE

  Books by Elizabeth Bass

  MISS YOU MOST OF ALL * WHEREVER GRACE IS NEEDED

  THE WAY BACK TO HAPPINESS

  Books by Holly Chamberlin

  LIVING SINGLE * THE SUMMER OF US * BABYLAND * BACK

  IN THE GAME * THE FRIENDS WE KEEP * TUSCAN

  HOLIDAY * ONE WEEK IN DECEMBER * THE FAMILY BEACH

  HOUSE * SUMMER FRIENDS * LAST SUMMER

  THE SUMMER EVERYTHING CHANGED

  THE BEACH QUILT

  Books by Mary Carter

  SHE’LL TAKE IT * ACCIDENTALLY ENGAGED * SUNNYSIDE

  BLUES * MY SISTER’S VOICE * THE PUB ACROSS THE POND

  THE THINGS I DO FOR YOU * THREE MONTHS IN

  FLORENCE * MEET ME IN BARCELONA

  Published by Kensington Publishing Corporation

  SUMMER DAYS

  LISA JACKSON ELIZABETH BASS HOLLY CHAMBERLIN MARY CARTER

  KENSINGTON BOOKS

  www.kensingtonbooks.com

  All copyrighted material within is Attributor Protected.

  Table of Contents

  Books by Lisa Jackson

  Title Page

  YOU AGAIN

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  SUMMER MEMORIES

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  CHAPTER 19

  CHAPTER 20

  CHAPTER 21

  CHAPTER 22

  CHAPTER 23

  CHAPTER 24

  RETURN TO HAMPTON BEACH

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  HIS BRIDE TO BE

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  EPILOGUE

  Copyright Page

  YOU AGAIN

  ELIZABETH BASS

  CHAPTER 1

  A glint of light made Meredith turn her head. Was that Sam?

  No. Absolutely not. An airport, international flights, was the last place Sam Desmond would turn up. Sam was the guy who, when she’d once dreamed aloud of a getaway to Paris, had replied, “What’s in Paris?”

  Not a world traveler, Sam. At least he hadn’t been when she had known him.

  Still, in the moment before she got caught at the back of the security line, she’d glimpsed a man who looked like Sam on the other side of the Plexiglas barrier, his tall, trim figure disappearing around the corner. The man had been wearing glasses—no doubt the source of the glint—and he’d had short brown hair. She’d always loved the way Sam’s floppy cowlick had defied his efforts to maintain an über-orderly appearance.

  She took a mental step back. Let’s see . . . tall, glasses, brown hair. That only described about hundreds of thousands of guys in New York City, never mind the rest of the tristate area, as well as males from places the world over who might be connecting through JFK Airport today. “Stats and probabilities don’t favor that scenario,” Sam himself would have reminded her, eyeing her in that worried, pinched-brow way, as if trying to decide whether he’d made a huge error hooking up with someone who, in addition to never having gotten to the second level of The Legend of Zelda, had never taken calculus and wasn’t interested in string theory.

  Which was part of the reason she’d broken up with Sam in the first place. Anyway, this probably wasn’t him. She took a deep breath, stepped out of her shoes, and tossed them into a plastic tub.

  Still, that glimpse had set off all kinds of ringing in her head, and try as she might to ignore the sound, the bells kept swinging. The clanging lasted through the X-ray and the wait for everyone’s parade of almost-too-large carry-ons, laptops, and other paraphernalia to be scanned on the conveyer belt. As they were stepping back into their shoes, she turned to her sister. “Maybe this isn’t such a good idea. My coming along, I mean.”

  Janie’s big eyes widened. “What? Why?”

  “Oh . . .” Mentioning a phantom sighting of Sam to Janie would be conversational suicide. Her sister would think she was losing her mind. It had been seven years, and from long experience Meredith knew the equation. Janie + me voicing Sam regret = mental health lecture. So Meredith reached for other equally valid reasons for not stepping
on a flight to Peru with a bunch of people she barely knew, who all shared an interest in an activity she only halfheartedly participated in. “I don’t really belong.”

  “Sure you do. You’ve been coming to the class . . . off and on.”

  Off and on, because she got an occasional guest pass at the yoga studio Janie belonged to. She appealed to Janie’s frugal nature. “And the money . . .”

  “The money has been spent,” her sister said. “The time to back out of a trip is not after you’ve already cleared security.”

  So true. And she didn’t want to back out—that is, she didn’t want to bail on her sister, who was here for her sake. Janie was a reluctant traveler who usually needed to be blasted out of New York, but she’d known Machu Picchu was a place Meredith had always dreamed of going.

  Meredith nodded and tried not to appear troubled as they moved down the open corridor toward their gate.

  Obviously, she didn’t succeed in hiding her angst, because Janie said, “If you’re feeling mixed up, maybe the universe is trying to tell you something. It’s trying to tell you that you need to take a break and stop worrying so much.”

  According to her sister, the universe was always trying to get through to people—and by some coincidence, its message always sounded as if it had been dictated by Janie.

  And why not? The voice of Meredith’s universe had always been Janie’s. Meredith had been a late-life baby, seven years younger than her sister, and their mother had died before Meredith’s second birthday. As far back as she could remember, Janie had been her lighthouse, telling her how to navigate life’s rocky shores. Even after their dad married Christa—Clueless Christa, they’d called her—Janie’s had continued to be the mom voice in Meredith’s head: “Sit up straight.” “Don’t put your mouth on that.” “Do you really want to wear that to school?” But Janie was still the big sister, so she was also saying things like “If you don’t stop singing that stupid song about waltzing bears I’ll haul you to the zoo myself and feed you to the grizzlies.”

  Janie was sending her that feed-you-to-the-grizzlies look right now.

  “You’re right,” Meredith said, soldiering on toward the gate.

  The gate, where Sam was honest-to-God standing, staring right at her. She smiled and even let out a laugh, as much at his comical shock as from the joy of making eye contact with him again after so long. Sam did not smile back.

  Her gaze shifted to the woman next to him. Gina?

  Meredith’s smile froze. It was Gina. Janie’s best frenemy. Gina of the perfect bendy-stretchy yoga body, which, no matter what pose they did, was always flexible enough to enable her to turn and aim a superior smirk at Meredith’s amateur efforts. She of the ice-blue eyes and blond hair with blonder highlights. Gina, who seemed to be one of those people put on the planet to intervene on the off chance that Meredith started to feel a little too self-confident.

  Sam, evidently, was Gina’s traveling companion. Her alternate yoga mat was slung over his shoulder.

  Janie caught sight of Gina as they approached the gate. “Oh, look,” she muttered to Meredith. “Gina brought Mr. Fabulous with her.”

  “Mr. Who?” Meredith squeaked, certain she had heard wrong. Fabulous was not a word her sister would ever have used to describe Sam. Ever.

  “The boyfriend she’s always blathering about,” Janie said.

  Meredith swallowed. “Do you see—?”

  “Of course I see,” Janie hissed under her breath. “Alviero Martini luggage for a trip into the Andes! She’ll probably get us all kidnapped by Shining Path guerrillas, or whatever they have down there now. If some of us come back without ears, guess who will be to blame.”

  Gina and Janie eyed each other with the intensity of two friendly cobras facing off. Then, standing toe-to-toe, they both smiled, dropped their carry-on bags, and threw their arms around each other with gleeful squeals.

  “Can you believe it?”

  “We’re finally on our way!”

  Others from the yoga group lined up to take their turns greeting the new arrivals. They were a huggy bunch. Meredith said hello to Claudia, their instructor and group leader, and a few of the women Janie always dismissed as yoga mommies. Meredith had only been to the class three times, so she didn’t really feel comfortable hugging anybody yet. Unfortunately, not hugging just made her feel more first-day-of-schoolish and alien.

  She stood to the side and studiously avoided catching Sam’s eye until she could be sure to do so without making an idiot out of herself. Heat rose in her cheeks even as she listened to her sister and Gina spewing compliments at each other.

  “Look at you,” Gina said. “Gorgeous even at seven a.m.!”

  “You smell like mangoes. Is that your shampoo?”

  Meredith cast a surreptitious glance at Sam. He was staring intently at his shoes.

  What was he doing here? How had this happened?

  Janie had never liked Sam, and as a result Sam had always resented the sway Janie held over Meredith. Even when she and Sam had been a couple, Meredith had tried to avoid get-togethers with the three of them. Now they were all unwittingly going on vacation together. The three of them . . . and Gina.

  Gina finally pulled back from the lovefest and yanked Sam to her side. “Janie, this is—”

  “Sam?” When at last Janie recognized the man with Gina, she stepped back, almost stumbling like an ingénue in a horror film scrambling to escape the zombie.

  “Hello, Janie,” he said without joy.

  Gina’s smile froze, and her gaze flicked anxiously between them. “You know each other?”

  “We used to. That is, Meredith knew him.”

  At that point, there was nothing to do but look straight at Sam, who finally smiled back at her. “Hi, Meredith.”

  “Hi, Sam. I’m surprised to see you here.”

  Gina stepped forward, hooking a proprietary arm through his. “Why surprised? Sam was the one who insisted we come when he saw the brochure I brought home from the studio. He said it would be adventurous, and romantic.”

  Sam pulled Gina even closer and kissed the top of her head. Meredith’s stomach did a drop and roll, and she could feel her eyebrows leaping into her forehead in unison with Janie’s.

  She shot a desperate glance at her sister. Was it still too late to back out after you’d cleared security but before you’d stepped onto a South America-bound plane with the onetime love of your life and his horrid new girlfriend?

  “I warned you the company would be dreary,” Gina said.

  Sam tensed. Not that Meredith and Janie would be able to hear them. They were three rows back, and the roar of the plane’s engines during takeoff absorbed sound. But the others . . .

  Who was he kidding—he didn’t care about the others. Just Meredith. How had this happened?

  While planning the trip, he hadn’t given much thought to the other people on the tour, or anticipated feeling like an interloper. But among the group of nine women he was definitely the odd man out, even though a guy name Seth had appeared just before boarding. Seth was both bearded and bald, enthusiastically hugged everybody a few seconds longer than was comfortable, and lugged an acoustic guitar as his only carry-on item. He obviously considered himself part of the group, even though the others didn’t seem ecstatic about his presence.

  But Sam wasn’t here for the other people. This trip was about him and Gina. He’d been bugging her to go somewhere together for months, but she hadn’t wanted to leave New York and be “thrown off her stride.” Whatever that meant. He’d guessed she didn’t want to leave her routine—she was a busy person and he was too, so he could understand that reluctance. But he was determined not to make the mistakes with Gina that he’d made with past girlfriends. When he’d spotted the brochure about the trip to Machu Picchu, he’d leapt on it as the perfect solution. They could have a travel adventure, and Gina could take part of her routine with her—the yoga part.

  But now it appeared he was inadvertently ta
king his romantic past with him too.

  Gina plucked the in-flight magazine from the seat pocket in front of her. “You never mentioned you knew Janie. I know I’ve talked about her. We used to have coffee together all the time after class.”

  “I guess I heard you mention the name, but I never knew it was the same Janie.”

  “How many Janies are there in New York?”

  He could never tell if she was just messing with his head when she asked questions like that. Because he was pretty sure she knew that in a city of eight million, there were a lot of Janies. “To be honest, I probably haven’t thought about Janie in years. It was her sister I knew. Meredith and I attended the same college and ended up sharing an apartment in New York the summer after we graduated. It was a friend-of-a-friend arrangement, for a summer, just because we were both new in the city. And it was a lifetime ago.” God, he needed to stop babbling. It made him sound guilty. Gina said nothing, so he added, “I barely recognized her just now,” for good measure.

  “Really?” Her brows soared in curiosity. “But she’s in that commercial. Even I recognized her when Janie dragged her to class, and I don’t even pay attention to diet food.”

  “Commercial?”

  “Slim Delites brownies. You mean you know her and you never noticed?” Gina smiled, pleased. “She plays the fatty who decides to eat a Slim Delites brownie instead of a whole bag of Oreos. Though obviously in real life, Meredith does the opposite.”

  “She looks healthy to me.” Just the same as she ever did.

  “That’s one way of putting it. She weighs 142.” Gina enunciated the number as if dropping a bombshell with each syllable.

  How did she know Meredith’s weight?