Carolina Girl (8 page)

“It’s about Matt,” she said.

The familiar devil of laughter danced in Sam’s eyes. “What? He isn’t allowed to like any girls but you?”

Her lips twitched, but she replied stubbornly. “I’m not jealous.”
Not exactly.
How could she make Sam understand how she felt? She didn’t understand herself. “I’m concerned.”

“I can see that,” Sam said, his deep drawl unexpectedly sympathetic. Soothing. “But you have to let this one go, Meggie. Matt’s going to do what Matt’s going to do. You can’t control his choices.”

“Maybe that’s what worries me,” she muttered.

She wasn’t in control. She hated that. She was the one who always had an answer, who always had a plan. And for the first time in her adult life, she didn’t know what to do.

Sam laughed and put his arm around her shoulders. “You think too much.” He gave her a friendly squeeze, tucking her against him. Was it her imagination, or did he
sniff
her
hair
? “Things will all work out.”

“You can’t know that,” she said truculently into his naked chest.

“I know
you
. You’ll make things work out. You always do.” He drew back and smiled into her eyes. “Or you’ll beat them into submission.”

A watery chuckle escaped her. She smiled back, comforted despite herself.

* * *

S
AM WAS FEELING
sweaty and cheerful when he parked his truck at the end of the day. Making progress, he thought. Not just with the ramp. With Meggie.

What kind of progress—where this thing between them was headed, how far, how fast—he hadn’t figured out yet. Which was okay. He’d always been more a buy-a-ticket-and-enjoy-the-ride kind of guy.

Not like Meggie. It was one of the things that attracted him to her, the way she was always so sure of where she stood, so confident of where she was going. But despite Sam’s dickhead behavior in college, despite her allegiance to the so-called boyfriend in New York, she was apparently willing to give them another shot. She was talking to him again. She’d even kissed him.

Sam shook his head as he let himself into the house. Pathetic. He hadn’t attached this much importance to a simple lip-lock since Jenny Vaughn had followed him under the bleachers in fifth grade.

The truth was, he liked women, all shapes, scents, textures, the infinite variety of them. He liked Meg, liked the feel of her mouth warming under his. Loved her body, taut and firm against him, vibrating with energy like a storm. That quick intake of her breath, the way those clear blue eyes darkened as he coaxed her to respond . . . Yeah, he liked that a lot.

But it was the kiss today, that brief, almost innocent peck at the abandoned job site, that had hit him upside the head like a two-by-four.

They’d been talking about her family, he remembered. Meg had said something about coming home because her mother needed her. She’d turned those eyes on him, passionate as always, dependable as ever, nothing standing in
her
way, and he’d kissed her and said . . . He’d said . . .

That’s my girl.

Jesus, what a bonehead thing to say. They weren’t in high school anymore. She had moved on years ago, moved in with that asshole in New York. Even back when they were kids, Meg hadn’t been Sam’s girl. Only that one time, when he came home from college, when he was drunk and dumb enough to believe his luck that smart, confident, strong Meggie Fletcher would come to him. Would want him.

She’d regretted it immediately, of course.
Don’t tell Matt.

He never had.

But he’d never been able to forget that feeling, either. Lust? Definitely. Longing? Well, sure. And something else, something deeper, primitive. The feeling he’d had the first time he saw her naked:
Mine.

Sam headed for the stairs. He needed a hot shower and a cold beer. Or a cold shower, maybe.

“What the fuck do you think you were doing today?”

The old man’s voice struck Sam like a rock between the shoulder blades. His back muscles tightened before he turned. “Building a ramp for Tess Fletcher. I told you.”

“You didn’t tell me you were going to pinch materials off my job site to do it.”

“How the hell do you know about that?”

Carl sneered. “I set up security cameras. You think I’m too stupid to protect myself and my investments?”

Sam’s jaw clenched.
No, I think you’re a stingy, selfish son of a bitch whose heart was in bad shape even before the surgery.
“You know, if I were you, I’d be worried about more than the loss of a few building supplies out there. I was going to pay you.”

Carl dismissed him with a wave. “Forget it. Take what you want. But it wouldn’t kill you to show a little gratitude for once.”

“Thanks,” Sam said shortly. “But I pay my debts.” He took out his wallet and slapped a wad of cash on the table in the hall. “There. That should cover it.”

Carl’s face twitched. He looked at the bills without touching them. “I don’t want your money.”

Sam regarded his father with frustration. “What do you want?” He’d never known. He never could satisfy his father.

“I was thinking of offering you a trade.”

Sam’s instincts, honed through childhood, went on alert. The old man was a shrewd negotiator, a veteran of backroom deals in the legislature and hard bargains in the boardroom. “What kind of trade?”

“You’re interested in my business. What if I gave you the chance to take more than a load of lumber off my hands?”

“How much more?” Sam asked, soft and sharp.

Carl’s eyes gleamed like an angler’s with a fish on the line. “Twenty percent of the profits if you get Dare Plantation off the ground.”

“Some offer,” Sam scoffed, ignoring the kick of his pulse. Because he wanted this deal. Wanted that property. Wanted to succeed on his own terms and jam his success down his father’s throat. “That development’s not going anywhere in this economy. Not the way you planned it.”

His father flushed an unhealthy shade of red. “And you think you have a better way.”

“I know I do.”

“Multifamily housing,” Carl said with scorn, the way another man might say
rat-infested tenements
. “Son, that dog won’t hunt. You couldn’t get the zoning past this town board. And if you did, you couldn’t get investors.”

Meg’s voice spoke suddenly in Sam’s head, her words like a door opening in a dark room, illuminating a sliver of possibility.
You can talk anyone into anything.

She believed in him. At least, she believed in his ability to get his way in this.

“What if I could?” Sam asked.

“Why would you want to? The big money’s in single-family homes on the waterfront. Not cheap-ass apartments with a park or whatever stupid charity project you have in mind.”

“It’s not charity. It’s good business. There’s plenty of demand for moderately priced housing on the island. I can make the development pay. For fifty percent of the profits,” Sam said.

Carl snorted. “Big talk. Your plan cuts into my profits, too. Twenty and a house.”

A house on Dare Island. Sam sucked in his breath. There were three Grady custom homes, sitting half-finished on half-acre lots facing the sound. Even in a depressed market, the value of the land alone was staggering. It was a powerful incentive. One that would tether Sam here, under the old man’s eye. Under his thumb.

“I’d have control,” Sam said. “It would be my project.”

“It’s my company,” Carl said.

Sam met his father’s gaze, his heart pounding. “My project, or no deal.”

“I’ll give you six months,” Carl said after a pause. “Get it through zoning, show me backers, and we do it your way. If not, you’ll work for me building spec houses.”

It wasn’t enough time, Sam thought. Even if he could use the existing federal and state permits, he’d still need time to get the plans together and approved by the town.

And the wily old shark knew it. He had influence on the board and the North Carolina Division of Coastal Management. Would he pull strings to help Sam? Or to ensure that he failed?

“Thirty percent of profits and a house.” Sam pulled out Meggie’s bread and laid it on the table, next to the money. “I’ll even throw in breakfast to sweeten the deal.”

Carl eyed the squashy package with suspicion. Sort of the way Sam was regarding his father’s offer. “What’s this?”

“You’ll like it. It’s good for you.”

“If it’s good for me, I won’t like it.” Plastic wrap crinkled. Carl tore off a corner of the focaccia, sniffing it before he put it in his mouth. “Not bad. All right. You’ve got yourself a deal.”

He ripped off another piece of bread, chewing slowly, not looking at his son. His hands were gnarled and spotted with age. Watching him, Sam felt his chest constrict. Like he was the one with the heart condition.

He must have wanted you,
Meg had said to him this morning.

He wanted to win.

Sam believed that. Still believed it.

“Why are you doing this?” he asked abruptly.

Carl swallowed, taking his time replying. “Angela’s on my back. She says I’m working too hard.”

“Hell, your doctors have been telling you that for years. Why are you offering me this now?”

But if Sam had hoped for sentiment from his father, he was bound to be disappointed.

Carl met his gaze, his dark eyes bright with challenge or malice. “Maybe I want to see what you’re made of before I die.”

“You won’t die.” Sam bared his teeth in a smile. “You’re too stubborn.”

The old man barked with laughter. “You better hope you take after me, then.”

Eight

“T
URN OFF HERE,”
Tess said to Tom.

The drive home from the rehabilitation center in Greenville was like a trip through hell. Tess couldn’t get comfortable in the Nissan’s passenger seat. Every slight bump in the road jarred her bones. The vibration of the highway churned the painkillers in her stomach.

Tom glanced over from the driver’s seat, his faded blue eyes concerned. “You going to be sick again?”

“No,” she said and prayed it was true.

The landscape rushed queasily by, tall pines and sandy ditches full of cattails and stagnant water. Every skid mark, every glitter of broken glass on the side of the road, made her palms sweat, mute reminders of past accidents. Her accident? The details of that afternoon blurred together like the fractured lines of the road. She’d tried closing her eyes, but her brain kept replaying scenes like a looped tape against the darkness of her eyelids. The instant’s terror, the brutal impact, the snapping, tearing, splintering pain. The pressure on her chest as her lungs collapsed with blood.

She swallowed, willing her stomach to subside. “There’s a Bed Bath and Beyond right on 70,” she said.

Tom scowled. “So?”

She moistened her lips. “I thought we could pop in and pick up Taylor’s comforter.”

“Babe.” Tom’s voice was heavy with patience. “You just got sprung from the hospital. You’re not popping anywhere.”

He was right. Of course he was right. Her new walker rattled in the back, taunting her with her infirmity.

She shifted on the pillows elevating her seat. “The discharge instructions said I should stop and move around.”

“We stopped three times in the last two hours so you could throw up.” Tom shot her a sideways glance. “I want to get you home and flat.”

He’d said those words to her before, she remembered, after a long deployment or driving home after a dance, always with a smile and the promise of sex. Never before because she was too frail to sit, too weak to stand.

Tears of frustration stung her eyes. She was tired of being patronized, sick of being coddled. “I promised Taylor.”

Tom reached over and covered her hands, clenched in her lap. “She’ll understand if you don’t come home with a goddamn comforter. You heard Jerome. Just because the insurance company is sending you home doesn’t mean you’re healed. Nobody expects you to charge around like you used to.”

I expect it
, she wanted to cry.

She’d fought hard to come home. Her surgeons were delighted with her recovery. Everyone—doctors, nurses, therapists, Tom—praised her progress and her spirit. But her failure to deliver on her promise to her granddaughter chafed at her, one more thing she couldn’t do, one more task beyond her power or control.

She looked at Tom’s dear, stubborn face, searching for words to explain. Her big, tough Marine had always retreated from any discussion of feelings. She didn’t want to burden him or complain. Twenty-two years after his retirement, she still felt like a military wife. She could do anything. Just not everything.

Screw it. She’d order the comforter on-line when they got home.

She turned her head away, concentrating on making it through the next forty minutes without puking.

It was better when they reached the bridge. Tess rolled down her window to feel the moist air on her face, inhaling the familiar smells of the salt marsh. A boat skimmed the blue-and-silver water like a gull. A white crane stood motionless in the sea grass.

Tom patted her thigh. “Almost there.”

She nodded, overcome with sentiment and exhaustion.

The hundred-year-old Pirates’ Rest overlooked the sound and the sea, its quiet gray trimmed with deep green and white, its generous eaves sheltering the wraparound porch. Live oaks draped in Spanish moss gave dignity to the grounds. Clumps of coneflowers and black-eyed Susans added color and whimsy around the gate. The beautiful old Craftsman had been her home for twenty years. Her dream for even longer than that.

Despite her exhaustion, anticipation thrummed through her. After weeks of hospital smells and noise, she longed for her own bed with a physical ache, for the cool stillness of the room she shared with Tom, for the smell of sun-dried sheets and the tick of the grandfather clock in the hall.

Home.

Oyster shells crunched under their tires as Tom pulled into the drive. A collection of vehicles parked behind the inn.
Not guests.
Tess smiled.
Her welcoming committee.

Tom opened her door. She eased her feet out of the car, taking care not to twist, as he pulled her walker from the back.

His gaze searched hers. “Ready?”

She took a deep breath. Nodded.

After the high-tech rollator at the rehab facility, her walker felt like trading down from a Mercedes to a shopping cart. The uneven surface challenged her footing. With Tom at her elbow, she pushed and lifted, pushed and stepped across the strip of grass, through the gate, and past Matt’s rental cottage.

“Looks like they’re expecting you,” Tom said.

She gripped the walker and raised her head, anticipating a gauntlet of concerned faces and watching eyes.

She blinked. There was a ramp.

A very professional, permanent-looking ramp doubling back from the footpath to the apron of the deck, its supports planted in what was obviously a new rose bed. The bushes wilted slightly in the heat, releasing fragrance into the air. A big red bow that looked as if it had been plucked from a Christmas wreath decorated the rail of the ramp.

Easy tears started to her eyes, a cloudburst of relief, fatigue, and gratitude.

Fezzik barked from inside the house. She heard Meg—“
They’re here!
”—before the screen door banged open and they all burst out, Josh with his tawny mop of hair and crooked grin; Meg, quick and energetic; Matt with his quiet eyes and rare, slow smile. The pretty schoolteacher, Allison, came out with her arm around ten-year-old Taylor, who was hanging back and smiling.

Their figures blurred together in a haze of happiness and tears.

“Welcome home, babe,” Tom said.

* * *

M
EG ROLLED A
lemon under her palm, bruising the rind, releasing the sharp citrus smell into the kitchen.

“I’m going out,” her father said.

Anxiety leapt under her skin. She turned from the two raw chickens sitting in a roasting pan on the counter. “What? Where? Is Mom okay?”

“She’s fine.” Tom scratched his jaw. “She just wants to be alone for a little while. I thought I’d go down to the quay and give Matt a hand.”

Meg smiled. That figured. Dad had been cooped up in the hospital for weeks. He could use a little guy time. But all she said was, “Dinner at seven.”

“Sounds good.” He brushed a whiskered kiss against her cheek, surprising her. Dad had never been what you’d call demonstrative. He sniffed. “Smells good, too.”

“That’s the rosemary. I’m making Mom’s roast chicken.”

According to the schedule Matt had created, it was her brother’s night to cook. But Meg had noticed he didn’t object to coming home to find dinner already started. None of them did. So she’d taken over the family meal prep along with the baking and management of the B and B.

Besides, Matt had already taken half the day off to welcome Mom home, turning his charter over to a hired captain. Meg knew what it cost him to lose a fishing trip this late in the season.

“You sure you don’t mind?” he’d asked Meg before leaving.

“Go.” She’d waved him away. Maybe she wasn’t in command of her department anymore, but she had dinner under control. “Meet your boat. Book another client. I’ve got this
.
”

Why not? She was stuck here all day anyway.

She grabbed a meat skewer and stabbed at the lemon, its rind exploding in little bursts of juice.
Jab, jab, jab
.

Tom stopped in the doorway. “You’ll check on your mother.”

“Of course,” Meg said. “Go do manly things with Matt. Grab a beer or something. You’ve earned it.”

She stuffed the lemons and rosemary into the chicken cavities and trussed the legs lightly together. She rarely cooked for Derek. The few times she’d purchased food, planning a meal, he worked late, or she did, and dinner was either ruined sitting on the stove or spoiled sitting in the refrigerator. It was easier to go out.

She ground pepper over the chickens, her gaze sliding away from the silver laptop sitting idle on the table. At least her family appreciated her cooking. There was something rewarding about rolling up her sleeves and getting the job done, about following directions and getting tangible results.

Too bad her job search didn’t work that way.

When the birds were in the oven, she washed her hands and tapped lightly on her parents’ bedroom door.

No answer.

Meg eased the door open, hoping Tess was asleep, trying not to wake her. She’d looked so gaunt, so gray, getting out of the car. Not as bad as in the hospital, but her appearance had still shocked Meg. Despite Tess’s salt-and-pepper hair, she’d always seemed younger than her fifty-nine years, trim and energetic.

Now she looked frail. Old.

One more shift in the foundation of Meg’s world.

Tess turned her head on the pillow, her eyes dark and unfocused.

“Hi, Mom,” Meg said softly. “How are you feeling? Do you need anything?”

“I’m fine.”

Meg smiled wryly. “Yeah, that’s probably what you said to the paramedics when they were cutting you out of the wreck.”

Great. Remind her about the accident. That will make her feel better.

“Well.” Meg hovered, awkward at this reversal in their roles. How many times had her mother stood by her bedside, dispensing hugs after a bad dream or ginger ale for an upset stomach? “I should let you rest. Dad said you wanted to be alone.”

“I said that to get him out of my hair. The poor man’s been stuck shuttling between the motel and hospital for the past three weeks. He needs a break.” The corners of Tess’s eyes crinkled. “We both do.”

Meg smiled back. “That’s sort of what I said.”
Her mother’s daughter, after all.
Oddly, the thought didn’t bother her as much as it used to. “Sure I can’t get you anything?”

“You could keep me company.” Tess patted the bed beside her.

Meg sat cautiously on the very edge of the mattress, mindful of the potatoes waiting to be peeled, wary of disturbing her mother’s healing bones.

Tess’s eyes searched her face. “How are
you
doing, sweetheart?”

“Fine.”

“Ah.”

Meg flushed. It was true. True enough. Getting fired wasn’t in the same class at all as getting hit by a truck.
You should tell your family
, Sam had said, and she would. Eventually. Later, when they’d both had a chance to recover.

“Sam’s sister’s getting married,” she said, seizing on a topic she thought would interest her mother.

“I heard. To a Navy man. A doctor,” Tess said brightly.

Meg rolled her eyes. “You want me to marry a doctor, Ma?”

“No,” Tess said, surprising her. “You need someone who will put you first, not his schedule or his patients.”

Derek puts me first
, Meg wanted to say.

But he didn’t. So she couldn’t. Sam’s voice taunted her.
He doesn’t have your back, sugar.

“I can take care of myself,” she said.

“Of course you can,” her mother agreed.

“Anyway, you married a Marine,” Meg pointed out. “That’s worse than a doctor.”

“My sacrifice was always less than your father’s,” Tess said simply. “I had the life I wanted with the man I love. How many women are lucky enough to say that?”

Meg thought of pointing out that Tess could hardly have lived her own dream, leaving her large, extended Italian family in Chicago to follow Tom from base to base. Raising three children alone during deployments. Settling after Tom’s retirement on Dare Island, where the Fletchers had lived for generations.

But she couldn’t argue with her mother’s wish.
The life I wanted with the man I love.

That was what Meg wanted, too. That was what she’d thought she had in New York with Derek.

Tess patted her hand on the covers. “So how is Sam?”

Sam?
Meg narrowed her eyes.

Tess smiled. “Hey, don’t blame me. You brought him up.”

And her mother had always had a soft spot for Matt’s friend, even before he’d built her a ramp in the backyard.

Meg sighed. Ignoring Tess’s question would only make Sam seem more important than he was. Or should be.

“He’s . . .” Meg stopped herself from saying,
Fine
. “He hasn’t changed.”

Although that wasn’t really fair, she thought. Or true. Sam seemed deeper, more caring, than the boy she remembered. Maybe he’d grown up. Or was it only her perception of him that was changing?

“I don’t think he has, at heart,” Tess said thoughtfully. “Of course, he’s more confident now.”