Can't Get Over You (Fortune's Island, Book 2) by Shirley Jump Page A

changes, or anything else. Jillian thanked Harvey again, then headed down the street toward The Love Shack. Tomorrow, she had school, which meant she’d have to get up a little earlier than usual and take her bike to the ferry, then hop the bus to campus. She’d be cutting it close on getting back to work, but hopefully it would only be a day or two without her car.
    At least it wasn’t raining. And Zach wasn’t driving alongside her.
    Zach .
    What had gotten into him last night? She’d never seen him so angry. Never known him to so much as punch a wall when he was frustrated, never mind another person. After that summer—
    She tried not to think about it. After all, it was more than seven years ago, an isolated incident, one she shouldn’t let bother her still, but it did. Even now, as she walked down the street toward home, her gaze strayed to the snippet of beach she could glimpse between the trees and scrub brush. In the daytime, the area was warm, beckoning, but at night, it still scared her. There were times when she’d go by that patch of beach, and it would all come flooding back.
    She’d been seventeen and still in that I’m indestructible bubble most teenagers lived inside, sitting on the beach late at night, waiting to meet Zach after he returned from a fishing trip with his father. She’d had her backpack on her back, her arms wrapped around her knees, her attention on the ocean before her, while she daydreamed about the charming boy she’d met a month earlier, and was already falling for.
    She hadn’t even heard the man approach her from behind. He’d demanded her money, but when she tried to explain she didn’t have much, he got angry. He’d hit her on the back of the head, and the next thing she knew, Zach was standing over her in a near panic, and her backpack was gone. She’d ended up needing five stitches for a cut on her jaw, and an ice pack for her head, but she’d been okay—physically. Emotionally, mentally, that night had left her afraid of the dark, afraid of violent people, just…afraid.
    The police never caught the guy who did it and, after hovering over her for a month, her parents finally let her go out alone again. Zach had been the best during all that, though. He’d been attentive and caring, listening to her recount the moment. He’d made sure she never walked home from work alone at night and had bought her a new backpack the very next day, with the logo of her favorite band on the front. That was what made his reaction yesterday so hard to understand, and impossible to equate with the guy she used to date. Sweet, goofy, unambitious Zach never got mad, never lost his temper.
    It didn’t matter anyway. She wasn’t dating Zach anymore, and what he did or didn’t do was no longer her concern.
    She wasn’t some lovesick seventeen-year-old anymore. She was smarter and stronger now. Moving on, moving forward. Like with Ethan, who had handled the whole thing with Zach like it was no big deal.
    She ducked into The Love Shack, stowed her purse in the back, then slipped on her black apron and tied it around her waist. Darcy rushed up the minute Jillian entered the dining room. “So…how was the date with Mr. Wonderful?”
    “Nice.” Jillian smiled. She thought of how he had wined and dined her, and left her with a simple kiss. “Very nice.”
    “Nice? Is that code for boring?” Darcy picked up one of the napkin holders and refilled it with a thick stack of paper napkins. “Because I personally think the guys that make you go Oh-My-God are the ones that are keepers.”
    “Guys like Kincaid?”
    Darcy’s face broke into a wide, goofy smile. She was so clearly head over heels for her fiancé, and that made Jillian happy that Darcy had finally found happiness with Kincaid Foster years after they’d met. Kincaid was turning out to be an awesome dad to their little girl, and as the wedding approached, Darcy’s happiness quotient increased daily. “Definitely guys like