Carolina Blues (19 page)

T
HE ISLAND SPARKLED
in the wake of a summer squall. High piled clouds, the color of a bruise, swept west over the mainland, dragging a thin curtain of rain behind them. The water had the dull gleam of tarnished silver.

Lauren walked from the bakery to the Pirates’ Rest, the wind tugging at her hair, her laptop bumping at her hip. When her pocket buzzed, she grabbed her phone and looked at the number on the display.

PATRICIA BROWN
. Her agent.

Lauren sucked in her breath.

Two days ago, shaking with nerves and bravado, she had e-mailed the first seventeen chapters of her book to her editor and her agent.

Now . . . She fumbled with the phone, cupping the device against her ear to block the rustle of the wind. “Patricia?”

“Lauren, darling. I just got off the phone with Colleen.” Her editor.

Lauren’s heart slammed against her ribs. “And?”

“Well, she loves it, of course. We both just love it.”

The horizon blurred, soft and bright. She’d been braced so long under the pressing burden of failure. Now, with that weight lifted, she felt ridiculously light, her head like a balloon, her legs wobbly. Her chest inflated with air.

“Really?” Her voice squeaked as if she’d inhaled helium.

“Absolutely. I laughed, I cried,” Patricia said. “Colleen is thrilled.”

Lauren pressed a hand to her chest. After so many months of churning panic, of feeling like a fraud, of being unable to write, she couldn’t quite take it in. Her agent’s reassurance felt almost surreal. “That’s . . . great. So great. Thank you.”

Jack
. Her heart swelled.

She had to tell Jack. She was seeing him again tonight.
Every night
. The thought brought another rush of pleasure.

“. . . very emotional, very powerful,” Patricia was saying. “All those memories of your father, the reactions of your friends . . . I had no idea. And Colleen and I loved the way you used Ben’s letters from jail to talk about what you were both going through.”

“I’m so glad,” Lauren said. Maybe they should go out tonight. To celebrate. She could buy.

“She did mention that the story feels a little . . . unfinished,” Patricia said.

Lauren jerked her mind back to the present. “Maybe because it is?” she suggested.

“Don’t get me wrong, we both think it’s terrific. But Colleen was hoping for some sort of blockbuster happy ending.”

Blockbuster?

“I was thinking a car chase,” Lauren said. “Or me standing on a fire escape and Richard Gere driving up in a big white limo.”
Jack climbing toward her, a whole bouquet of roses in his teeth. Save me
.

“Excuse me?” Patricia said.

Lauren shook her head. Clearly, Mom should never have let her watch
Pretty Woman
at that sleepover when she was twelve.

“A happy ending,” she repeated. “You bet.” Meg had said the same thing.

“Just a little kick,” Patricia said. “A little oomph. Your readers want that big emotional payoff. They want to be
inspired
.”

“Sure.”

But all she could think of was Jack, cooking her dinner on his boat while the sun sank into the sea. Jack in his uniform, talking softly to the cat. Jack, smiling at her with that crooked half smile, making her laugh. Making her come.

“Lauren? Did you hear what I said?”

Lauren blew out her breath. Not the kind of inspiration her editor was looking for.

“I’ll work on it,” she promised.

“Of course you will. I have total faith in you.”

Given that her agent had just read—in raw, real, irreverent detail—Lauren’s struggles with anxiety on the road, Lauren appreciated her confidence very much. “Thanks, Patricia.”

“You are better now, right? No more problems?” her agent asked.

Lauren heard the concern in her voice. “Much better, thanks.”

Sex was a proven stress reliever. But it wasn’t only the orgasms. She felt safe around Jack. Free from danger, yes, but also free to be herself. She hadn’t had a panic attack since she’d set off the alarm at Jane’s more than three weeks ago.

Of course, nothing had happened recently that would trigger her symptoms.

But she was well enough to finish her book.

She shivered despite the bright sunshine, goose bumps breaking out on her skin.

“Wonderful,” Patricia said. “Let me know if there’s anything you need. And tell Meg to copy me on your speaking schedule. When do you get back?”

“I don’t know.” Out in the harbor, a seagull hung suspended in midair, making no headway at all against the wind. “I might . . . I was thinking of staying awhile after the book is finished.”

Where had that come from?

“Smart girl. You deserve a break. I would kill to get out of the city right now. Well, listen, darling, you finish up and copy me when you send the final manuscript to Colleen, all right?”

“I will,” Lauren promised. “Thanks so much, Patricia.”

“Don’t thank me. It’s a wonderful story. I can’t wait to read the ending.”

They said the usual things and hung up.

Lauren floated up the hill from the harbor, buoyed by the wind at her back, almost giddy with relief.

Her editor liked—her editor
loved
—her book.

Her agent loved her book.

All Lauren needed now was a blockbuster ending.

A bubble of panic rose under her breastbone. Her story had no end.

She swallowed hard.
One step at a time
. A month ago, she couldn’t have imagined getting this far.
Enjoy the trip
.

The pitched roof of the Pirates’ Rest rose above the trees. Lauren lengthened her stride. She and Jack weren’t at the keep-my-toothbrush-at-your-place stage. She still needed to pull some things together before he picked her up.

The puddles by the side of the road reflected back the windswept sky. Raindrops glittered from the blooming branches of crepe myrtle by the fence, the heavy clusters scattering pink petals on the wet grass.

Lauren pushed open the front gate.

A man waited in the shadows of the porch, sheltered by the eaves from the rain and the heat. A young man in military fatigues. A young, sunburned man with familiar features beneath his buzz cut, standing as she came up the walk.

Her heart pounded. The swing swayed gently back and forth.

Her past, waiting for her.

Lauren stopped, her lungs constricting. “Joel?” she whispered.

*   *   *

U
P NORTH,
J
ACK
was known as a by-the-book cop. But he was slowly learning that if he enforced every ordinance on Dare Island, he’d have to lock up half the tourists and a quarter of the town into two little jail cells.

The native islanders figured that since they were here before everybody else, including the chief of police, whatever laws they didn’t agree with did not apply to them. The dingbatters moved here because they loved the idea of living at the beach and then complained about the resort town regulations. The tourists believed that their money entitled them to a good time.

Jack figured as long as he kept the peace and no one got hurt, he was doing his job.

But today dealing with one more bored rich kid rebelling against too much family vacation kept him at the station almost an hour past his scheduled shift.

“The merchants don’t want to press charges,” Jack said to the bored rich kid’s dad. “But they don’t want to pay the town for every time the police have been called to respond to a false alarm at their businesses. Marta, here, can give you a total of the fines.”

The father scowled. “That’s extortion.”

“Restitution,” Jack said calmly. “Seems to me you’d want your boy here to take some responsibility for his actions.”

“You can’t prove Cliff set off all those alarms.”

“Yeah, that’s probably what a lawyer would say,” Jack agreed. “The good news is, Cliff won’t be sixteen for another couple weeks, so he can’t be charged as an adult. If you want to go the juvenile court route, there’s just a little paperwork and then I can release him into your custody. Or we can handle things here.”

“You’ll pay for this,” Cliff’s dad said, but he was looking at his son.

Jack left them settling the tab with Marta and drove to the Pirates’ Rest.

He couldn’t say when seeing Lauren at the end of the day became a necessary part of his routine. Forward his calls, drive patrol, feed the cat, sit on his boat as the sun went down, and listen to Lauren talk about her day. Unlike a lot of people, she always had something interesting to say.

Plus . . . sex. With no trouble at all, he could picture Lauren, hot and glowing, naked and coming, in his bed. In his life.

At least until she left.

The thought caused a twinge. More than a twinge, if he was honest.

But he knew better than to try and kid himself. He wasn’t seventeen anymore, clinging to a summer romance when summer was over, making stupid promises that he wouldn’t keep.
I’ll call. I’ll write. I’ll visit
.

Not going to happen. When Lauren was gone, she was gone.

But maybe he could talk to her about leaving a toothbrush or something at his place.

Wet asphalt hissed under his tires as he turned onto the inn road, lined with gnarled oaks and tall pine.

Lauren was standing on the front porch of the Pirates’ Rest deep in conversation with some guy in camouflage. Army, not Marines, Jack saw as he parked by the gate.

Which meant the guy, whoever he was, wasn’t a buddy of Luke’s.

Jack got out of the SUV just as Lauren threw herself into the guy’s arms.

What the hell?

The soldier grinned and patted her back awkwardly.

Young guy, Jack observed. Seventeen? Eighteen? Not much older than the bored rich kid he’d left sitting at the station.

Jack stopped at the bottom of the porch steps—
See? Nothing to prove
—and caught the kid’s eye.

The soldier dropped his arms in a hurry.

Lauren turned, her face shining. “Jack!”

That glowing look made him feel better. Not that he was suspicious or anything.

“Lauren,” he acknowledged. He looked at the soldier. “Who’s your friend?”

“This is Joel. Private Joel Johnson,” she said, patting him on the arm with as much pride as if she were the kid’s mother. “Joel, Chief Jack Rossi.”

Johnson
. Jack’s shoulder blades tightened. He kept his face impassive. That was the name of the bank robber. The one whose family she was sending money to. And wasn’t Joel the kid who’d been pulled in on the job by their uncle in the first place?

“What brings you to Dare Island, soldier?” he asked.

“Just finished Basic at Fort Jackson, sir. I’m on my way to Virginia to start AIT and stopped by to see Lauren.”

Advanced Individual Training.

Jack narrowed his eyes. “A little out of your way, isn’t it?”

“Yes, sir. Five and a half hours. My mom drove us up.”

Lauren started. “Your mother’s here?”

Ben’s mother blames me
, she’d said to Jack that first morning on his boat. Because the woman’s brother was dead and her older son was in jail and she had to blame somebody.

A deeper color swept under the boy’s sunburn. “Not here. She’s waiting at the restaurant. The Fish House. I walked up from there. But she brought me, all the way from South Carolina. That says . . . That means a lot. She knows what we owe you.”

Lauren shook her head. “You don’t owe me a thing.”

The young soldier’s jaw set. “Beg pardon, ma’am, but I figure we do. I talked to Ben. He told me what you’ve been doing for him. For us. That’s why I’m here, to thank you.”

“I don’t need thanks. I want to help.”

“No more,” Joel said. “That’s the other reason I came, to tell you face-to-face. My family is my responsibility now. We don’t need your money anymore.”

Which sounded good to Jack, but he was watching Lauren’s face. She looked like his sister-in-law Tricia watching his nephew get on the school bus the first time, like Ma the day Jack left for Basic, and for one bad moment he was afraid she was going to talk to this kid, this soldier, like he was five years old.

But she didn’t.

Her mouth wobbled briefly before she bent it into a smile. “I always felt . . . I told Ben it’s only fair that some of the money from the book goes to your family.”

“I appreciate that, ma’am. I know you made him a promise to look out for us. But I figure that’s my job now.”

Silence fell.

The kid had said his say. And Lauren, who always knew the right words to smooth an awkward situation, looked lost.

Shit.

Jack cleared his throat. “Where are you staying tonight?”

“We’re heading out after dinner. I report tomorrow.”

“Don’t you get time off to be with your mother?” Lauren asked.

“Thirty-six hours.” Joel met Jack’s eyes. “We wouldn’t even have that if I took the Army bus.”

And in return for her son’s company, Jack guessed, his mother was willing to give at least her partial blessing to his mission. “Semper fi, soldier.”

Joel grinned. “I’ll take that in the spirit it was offered, sir.”

“Will you . . . You’ll at least let me buy you dinner,” Lauren said.

Joel hesitated.

Jack remembered what it was like making ends meet on an E-1’s pay. But having steeled himself to make the big gesture, to take responsibility for his family and himself, the new soldier’s dignity would make it hard for him to accept charity.

“Hop in,” Jack said easily. “I’ll run you back to the Fish House. Unless you need the exercise.”

Joel smiled. “No, sir. I mean, yes, sir. Thank you, sir.”

Jack stood back while the two of them said good-bye, Lauren’s face wavering between smiles and tears.

He met her gaze, thinking,
I’ve got this, don’t worry
, and maybe she read his eyes or his mind because the smiles seemed to win.

“I’ll be back,” he said.

She nodded. “I’ll be waiting.”

The moment seemed to call for something more, but he didn’t know what. Even if he’d been able to think of something, Joel was watching them.

He brushed his lips over hers. “Pack a toothbrush,” he said and left her.