Carolina Blues (18 page)

Her smile increased her glow by another hundred watts. “Thank you. I like your suit.”

“I like your dress.”

“And your shoes.”

Not cop shoes, the standard-issue black shit kickers he wore every day of his working life.

He smiled faintly. “Thanks. My ma used to say you should spend money on your eyes, your teeth, and your feet, because they have to last you all your life.”

“Your mother sounds like a wise woman.” Her smile turned wistful. “My dad would have liked that saying. He used to tell customers, ‘Take care of your feet and they’ll take care of you.’”

Her dad used to own a shoe store, he remembered. It was in her book.

“Here. For you.” He produced the single long-stemmed rose from behind his back, red, fresh, and full, if a little wilted from its brief stint on the front seat of the SUV. He’d bought the flower on impulse, a sentimental gesture. Or a joke.

Her face went blank.

Hell.

You didn’t give a woman a single flower, Renee had taught him. Or a stupid cellophane-wrapped bouquet from the grocery store. You bought a damn dozen roses from the florist or none at all. But then Lauren had made that comment about prom, and Jack had thought . . . he’d thought . . .

“I can’t believe you brought me a rose,” she said. “It’s . . .”

Too much. Too little. Not right.

“It’s so pretty.” Her eyes sparkled as she held the single bloom against her chest, framed by the soft curves of her breasts. “My corsage.”

She remembered.

Muscles he didn’t know had tensed relaxed. He smiled. “You want to put it in your room? I’ll wait.”

Or you could invite me up to your room. Invite me up.

All the Fletchers were already at the church, the caterers busy in the kitchen. He had a brief, sexual fantasy in which he and Lauren were late to the wedding after all before she shook her head.

“I want to carry it. Is that all right? Or will I look like a flower girl?”

Her face was shining. You’d think no guy had ever brought her flowers before. Next time he would do better, Jack thought. She deserved better.

And didn’t question how easy it was to think
next time
, to imagine a week, a month, a year ahead with her.

“You don’t look like any flower girl I ever saw,” he said. “You can do what you want.”

*   *   *

A
LARGE EXTENDED
Catholic family had made Jack something of an expert on weddings.

The wedding of former Staff Sergeant Luke Fletcher, USMC, to Katherine Dolan, attorney, was damn near perfect.

The tiny chapel at the Franciscan retreat house was flooded with sunshine, family, friends, and flowers. The Fletchers filled the front pews. Luke’s brother Matt stood with him, shoulder to shoulder. Luke’s eleven-year-old daughter, walking carefully in her high-heeled shoes, preceded Kate down the aisle. The sun, striking through the stained glass windows, fired the bride’s coppery hair to gold. And the look on Luke’s face when he saw Kate walking toward him, a smile on her face and love in her eyes . . .

“They look perfect together, don’t they?” Lauren whispered, echoing his thought.

You and Renee make the perfect couple
, everybody used to say. And on the surface, everybody was right. Same neighborhood, same schools, same job.

Until she missed going out with her friends on a Saturday night and he worked late and forgot to call. Until arguments over paying the bills or who took out the trash scraped all the shiny off their life together.

But watching Luke take Kate’s hand at the front of the church, listening to the strength of his voice and the faith in her responses, Jack was tempted to believe it wouldn’t be like that for them.

“They’ve had some rough times,” he murmured. “Let’s hope they make it work.”

“‘The triumph of hope over experience,’” Lauren said softly.

He slanted a look down at her, warm and round and glowing in her red dress. “What?”

“Samuel Johnson, on second marriages. But it applies to love generally, I think. Love is always a leap of faith. We all have barriers to overcome.”

Shrink talk. College girl talk. But, God, he liked the sound of her voice. He liked the way she looked for the best in everything. In everyone.

She wasn’t one of them. Not a Fletcher, not an islander. A last-minute addition to the guest list. But at the reception at the Pirates’ Rest, she slipped into the gathering like a fish into water.

The Dare Island community was like the sea, all calm and welcoming on the surface, with unexpected depths and currents. It had taken Jack months to navigate with ease. Assimilation was not his thing. He was marked as an outsider before he even opened his mouth.

But Lauren’s warmth, her genuine interest, made her welcome. She circulated like a champ, naturally seeking out and drawing in the outliers.

A tent with a dance floor filled the garden, edged with rosebushes and daylilies. Tables dotted the grass under pink blooming crepe myrtles. The wedding party was announced. The bridal couple danced slowly together to Vince Gill singing “Look at Us.”

From the setup, it was clear that the mother of the bride had a place of honor near the head table, but at the moment, she sat all alone.

Brenda Dolan was a washed-out version of her daughter, the coppery hair faded to peach, her figure rigidly maintained, her face nipped, tucked, and Botoxed free of any expression beyond mild distaste. She looked as if she would rather be waiting for a pap smear than sitting in a sunny summer garden watching her daughter circle in her new husband’s arms.

Jack gave a mental shrug. Not his problem. From the little Luke let drop, Brenda Dolan had never been much of a mother.

The servers were busy passing hors d’oeuvres, mini crab cakes and prosciutto-wrapped asparagus, cold jumbo shrimp and tiny stuffed cherry tomatoes.

Jack touched Lauren’s arm. “Get you another drink?”

She smiled. “That would be great. Thanks.”

He strolled the long ramp to the deck, where a bar had been set up next to the deejay. Hank Clark was already there, clutching a beer and staring morosely through the kitchen windows at Jane.

“She’s a guest, right?” Hank asked Jack. “Not a damn waitress.”

Jack followed his gaze through the glass, where Jane appeared to be giving the caterers a hand. “She’s dressed like a guest. Champagne and a Newcastle, please,” he told the bartender.

Hank grunted. “Right. So why isn’t she out here dancing and enjoying herself instead of inside working her ass off?”

“I don’t know, Hank. Why don’t you ask her?”

“She won’t talk to me.”

“Ask her to
dance
,” Jack said and collected his drinks and went back to Lauren.

Who was not standing where he had left her.

He looked around and spotted her at the table with Brenda Dolan.

“. . . must be very happy,” Lauren was saying as Jack approached.

“Obviously you don’t have children,” Brenda said bitterly. “I’ve lost her. I had nothing to do with this wedding.”

Lauren met Jack’s gaze and gave a barely perceptible shake of her head. He stopped.

She patted Brenda’s thin arm consolingly. “Kate will always be your daughter,” she said in her warm, soothing voice. “This is your celebration, too.”

“I lost her years ago. And now, seeing her like this, seeing her with them . . .” Brenda shredded her pretty paper napkin. “The Fletchers are all the family she wants now. She doesn’t want me.”

“She invited you.”

“Because she had to. It wouldn’t look good if she didn’t invite her own mother to her wedding.”

“Would you say appearances are important to her?” Lauren asked quietly.

Brenda sniffed. “Not to her. Never to her.”

“Then she must really want you here.”

Brenda’s eyes brightened. Her lips trembled. “She doesn’t know how hard I tried . . . I did the best that I could.”

Maybe, Jack thought cynically. And maybe her best wasn’t enough to protect her daughter.

But Lauren’s face revealed nothing but patience and sympathy. “Obviously, things have been a little strained between you. But it’s never too late to start over.”

Brenda dabbed at her face with the ruins of the napkin. “What do you know?”

“I know a daughter wants her mother’s blessing on her wedding day. Why don’t we walk over there right now and see her?”

Brenda’s shoulders drew up to her ears. Jack expected her to refuse.

But Lauren already had an arm around her, urging her from her chair, supporting her around the edge of the dance floor. As Jack watched, Lauren brought her to Kate.

Jack couldn’t hear what was said over the flow of the music, the buzz and hum of laughter and conversation. But he saw Kate’s face, naked and vulnerable, and he saw Lauren’s nod before she literally pushed Brenda into her daughter’s arms, and then Brenda was crying and the two women were hugging and Luke was running his finger under his collar and looking relieved.

“Well done,” Jack said softly to Lauren when she came back to him. He offered the glass of champagne.

“Thanks.” She sipped. Shrugged. “It’s not hard to get people to do what they really, secretly want to do.”

He gave her a slow smile. “I’ll have to try that.”

She beamed back at him. “You won’t have to try very hard. I already told you I like wedding sex.”

J
ANE TOOK ONE
last careful survey of the dessert table and tugged off her apron. Nothing more to do until it was time to cut the cake.

Across the sunlit yard, the mother of the bride hugged her daughter tight. Even as Jane smiled at the picture, her eyes stung. The summer garden blurred.

There had been no mother-daughter moments at Jane’s wedding. No contact at all.

But Jane was glad for Kate.

When Jane met the bride for her cake tasting, Kate had Luke and his little girl along to gobble up samples and offer their opinions. Tess Fletcher, Luke’s mom, had accompanied Kate to the final consultation, approving the bride’s choice of round tiers over square, of fondant over buttercream, of gum paste seashells over real or sugar flowers. Clearly, the Fletchers had welcomed her warmly into their family.

But no one took the place of a mother.

Jane curled her toes inside her sandals, trying to ignore the straps cutting into her arches. She’d been on her feet since four this morning.

“Wow.” Lauren stopped beside the dessert table. “That cake looks amazing.”

Jane blinked away her tears and the pang that came with them, turning her attention to her work instead.

The cake design was one of her favorites, each tier decorated with a piping of lace coral, white on cream. Delicate shells, starfish, and flowers in various shapes and sizes tumbled over the edges. Cookies, in the same shapes and iced with the bride and groom’s initials in yellow, surrounded the base.

Jane smiled. “Thanks.” She was good at giving expression to other people’s dreams.

“You must have been up early this morning,” Lauren said. “To get all this done.”

Jane was up early every morning. But she smiled and said, “I finished the cake last night, to give it time to set. And I’m taking the afternoon off.”

“You should be dancing, then.”

“My feet hurt.”

“So take off your shoes.”

“And I don’t have a date.”

“You don’t need a date. I bet you know everybody here.”

Jane smiled ruefully. “That’s part of the problem.”

The dating population in a small town was limited to the people you grew up with. Most couples had been together since they were, like, twelve. And if they ever did break up, and you got over the awkwardness of dating a guy you basically regarded as a brother, you still ran the risk of running into his ex every time you left the house.

Not that she was looking for romance anyway.

Lauren grinned. “Well, then, you can hook up with an attractive stranger. Lots of hunky Marines around.”

“I don’t do strangers, either.”
Not since Travis
. “And I’m definitely not interested in some gung ho guy with a gun.”

Oh, dear
. Jane winced. She sounded as sulky as six-year-old Aidan when he didn’t want to do something.

But Lauren, bless her heart, never lost her smile or her patience. “I’m not saying you should marry one of them. Or even have wild wedding hookup sex. But it’s a party. You should enjoy yourself. Live in the moment.”

Jane admired Lauren’s attitude. Her daring. Of course, Lauren didn’t have a child at home, dependent on every decision. Or an ex, threatening to bring her carefully constructed life down around her ears.

“I’ll think about it,” Jane promised.

“Think about what?” her father asked.

Wild heat stormed Jane’s face.
Please, please don’t let him have heard the part about wild hookup sex.

“Dancing,” she said.

Hank scowled. “Well, how about it, then?”

Jane resisted the urge to fidget. “How about what?”

“You want to dance with your dad?”

She blinked. “I . . . Yes.” Something expanded in her chest, warm and light as rising bread. “Yes, I’d like to very much.”

She took his hand. He pulled her close, his muscles hard and sinewy as a ship’s rope. He smelled familiar, of laundry detergent, bay rum, and tobacco, and just for a moment she was transported back to the days before her mother left them, when her daddy waltzed her around the living room while she stood on his shoes.

They never had been any good at talking.

Sometimes it was better to communicate without words.

*   *   *

L
AUREN
WATCHED
THEM
go with a lump in her throat.

I’ll never dance with my dad
. The thought nicked her heart, a tiny, unexpected slice as sharp as a paper cut.

“You all right?” Jack asked behind her.

She resisted the urge to turn and throw herself against his chest.

Hastily, she pulled herself together. It was good to remember and to feel, even to feel pain. But to wallow in it . . . Not so good.

She turned and smiled at him.
Live in the moment
. “I am now.”

He didn’t say anything. He stood there, solid, self-contained, and imperturbable, regarding her with those dark, watchful eyes.

“Do you ever miss your family?” she asked abruptly.

He took her right hand in his and set his arm around her waist. “You’re doing it again.”

He pulled her forward, stepped back. She followed automatically, distracted by the brush of their legs, the clasp of his hand. “What?”

“Answering a question with another question.”

She nodded. “Deflecting.”

“Dodging.”

She widened her eyes and batted her lashes, hoping to make him smile. “Maybe I simply find you fascinating.”

A corner of his mouth ticked up.

Encouraged, she asked, “Do you?”

His arm tightened around her as he turned. Her breasts brushed his chest. “Ask questions? What do you think?”

She grinned. Talking with him was like dancing or sex, each of them alert to the other’s moves. “Miss your family.”

“Yeah. Some.”

She waited. She didn’t recognize the music, something smooth and slow and country. When he didn’t say anything more, she asked, “Do you ever think about going back?”

What did she want him to say? That he was staying on the island? She wasn’t staying. What did it matter?

His shoulder bunched and flexed under her hand. “For the holidays, maybe. Sure. My folks are still there. But longer than that, I’ve got to ask myself, what for? Am I going back to be with them? Or am I trying to get back to the way things used to be? Because if it’s the second thing, it’s not going to happen. That boat’s already sailed.”

She almost lost a step.

He gathered her in. “What?”

“You’re not . . .” She shook her head. “Every time I think I have you figured out, you surprise me. You’re nothing like what I expected.”

He raised an eyebrow, his black eyes impenetrable. “You’re not what I was expecting, either.”

Hostage Girl
. He’d seen her on TV. He’d read her book. Reality couldn’t live up to that.

She stuck out her chin. “Disappointed?”

“No. Not at all.”

She flushed with pleasure.

He held her close, not grinding, but apparently the past five days had sensitized her to sex or something. She was constantly aware of him, the strength of his arms, the solid muscles of his chest and belly. His animal heat, rising through his civilized clothes.

The afternoon whirled like a kaleidoscope toward evening, the action breaking and shifting, falling into bright, glowing patters. Sunshine, flowers, music.

Moments.

Tom and Tess Fletcher, married forty years, cheek to cheek on the dance floor. Meg, flirting outrageously with Sam. Taylor, grinning up at her uncle Matt. Love, radiating from the bride and groom, all around.

Thalia, glowing and grown up, danced by in Josh’s arms. Lauren’s heart clutched at the sight of them, clumsy and happy as puppies, full of hope and hormones.

“They’re so cute together.”

Jack followed her gaze. “Teenagers. That won’t last.”

She frowned, feeling out of step. Statistically, of course, he was right. “I don’t think it matters. Love doesn’t have to last to be real.”

“You’re talking about puppy love.”

“First love,” she corrected. “It’s formative. The first—maybe the only—relationship where you haven’t had your heart broken yet. The novelty of the experience creates a chemical rush that makes it memorable. It’s the lens through which you see all future relationships.”

“What about parents?”

She beamed at him as if he were a particularly bright student. “Your parents’ example is significant, too,” she said in her classroom voice. “And of course, early loss of a parent can cripple your ability to form attachments, to trust yourself completely to another relationship.”

Another dark, unreadable look. “So where does that leave us?”

“Us?” she repeated uncertainly.

“Yeah. Basically you’re saying that since I got dumped and your dad died on you, we’re screwed.”

Oh God
. The sunny wedding scene shifted and re-formed again into a picture she did not want to see. “I did not say that.”

“Pretty damn close.”

“I just meant . . .” Her brain scrambled. “A negative first relationship can set up an expectation of failure, make it more difficult to build intimacy.”

He slanted a glance down at her. “Or it can teach you what you really want.”

She nodded. “Your first love is like a starting point. It dictates where you are. But you decide how to go on.”

“Moving forward.”

“Yes.”

“Good.” He held her tighter. “Because I’m in this thing, all right? I’m in this thing with you, whether it fits your theories or not.”

Her heart jumped. Her feet stopped moving. She couldn’t keep up with him, in the dance or in the conversation.
I’m in this thing with you
 . . .

That didn’t sound like a hookup. Or even a rebound relationship.

Breathe
. “That doesn’t . . . We haven’t . . .”

“‘Enjoy the trip,’” he said softly, and she realized he was quoting.

Is that what she’d said? It sounded like her. “Yes.”

His hand on the small of her back urged her closer into the warmth of his body, the hard planes of his torso, the ridge of his erection.

She sucked in her breath.

He kissed her hair. “So let’s enjoy.”

Live in the moment. Savor the moment. Store up as many moments as you can, a bright and shining hoard against the time when you are gone.

Resting her head against his chest, she closed her eyes and let him lead her where she wanted to go.