Chasing Julia (Rhode Island Romance #2) (7 page)

What
was the matter with her?

Julia shifted
restlessly in her seat, keeping her gaze averted from Tony as they drove away
from Galilee. She licked and nibbled at her vanilla ice cream cone, but she
wasn’t really tasting it.

She didn’t know if
she should feel angry with him for prying into her intimate thoughts or
grateful that he was gently prodding her to move forward with her life.

It wasn’t gratitude
she was feeling. She didn’t know what she was feeling really. It was all so
strange. Something between them was changing. It was there in the air between
them, almost tangible. She wasn’t sure she liked it. She’d always been so
comfortable with the adult Tony. He was fun. Charming. Easy. But she’d glimpsed
his darker, more serious side today; one that she hadn’t witnessed in years.

He began to whistle
along with the classic Eagles tune playing softly on the radio. She flicked a
glance at him. He’d finished his ice cream cone. He had his right hand on the
steering wheel, his left arm propped on the window ledge. He’d rolled his
window down. He looked happy, carefree.

Maybe she was
reading too much into things. It wasn’t as if he’d never touched her before or
told her that he loved her. He’d always been more demonstrative of his feelings
than Joe, more tactile and vocal in expressing his love for his family and
closest friends. But, before, the words had always been said in a friendly,
lighthearted way.

It was probably
only because she was feeling so vulnerable and needy that she was reading more
in Tony’s words and actions than what was actually there. She was missing a
lover’s touch, that’s all.

She and Tony were
simply good friends, maybe even best friends. Yes, she felt the same for him as
she did for Hannah. They were the two people who had stood by her the most
during these last few months.

She relaxed. She
gobbled down the rest of her ice cream cone and cleaned off her fingers with a
paper napkin. She pinned a smile on her face and put gaiety in her voice as she
turned towards Tony. “Where are we headed now?”

He kept his eyes
straight ahead. The corner of his mouth twitched. “You’ll see.”

“More guessing
games?”

“It’s not too far
away. Let’s stop here first.” He slowed the truck down and turned into the
parking lot outside a corner market. He flashed a brief smile at her as he
exited the truck. “Stay here. I’ll be right back.”

She watched him
walk towards the building entrance. Her eyes lingered on his trim backside, his
tanned, muscled calves, the confident way he carried himself.

Stop it. Just
stop
it.

He returned a few
minutes later and placed a bag in the truck bed. “Not much farther to go,” he
assured her as he got back in the truck.

Less than ten
minutes later they were turning onto a familiar dirt road.

Julia gave a soft
gasp and leaned forward in her seat.

“Remember this
place?” Tony asked, his voice a little raspy.

“Yes.”

He pulled the truck
under the shade of an elm tree and killed the ignition. “That was a good day,”
he said quietly, not looking at her.

He hopped down from
the truck. She got out after him, watched him as he threw the grocery bag into
an ice chest and hefted the container from the truck bed. “Need any help?” she
asked.

“Grab that bucket
and the net.”

She followed him
down the narrow dirt path towards the water. Everything looked the same and yet
it was different. The colors seemed more vibrant. There was a different quality
to the air and the water, a sense of anticipation, as if this place had been
waiting for Tony and Julia’s return.

What strange
notions she was having today. She’d been feeling so sentimental these past few
days. Perhaps it was nothing more than simply being away from work, venturing
outside her normal, defined schedule and the focus on clients and
responsibilities.

They walked out to
the end of the weathered, wooden pier and set the supplies down. Tony turned
back to shore.

“I can help you
find some sticks,” she offered.

His gaze flickered
to her blouse. “It’s a little muddy.”

“That’s okay.”

They headed in
different directions once they stepped onto the marshy ground. She found a
long, skinny branch among the low-lying greenery and snapped it in half across
her knee. She swiped her hands on her khakis, leaving smudges. She didn’t care.

Tony was cutting
twine into equal lengths when she returned to the pier. He handed her two
lengths, and she tied one end to each of her sticks. He slit open the pack of
chicken wings with his pocketknife. They baited their lines, set up the poles
and dropped the lines into the water.

She flopped down on
her stomach and stretched her arms towards the water so she could rinse off her
hands. He lay down next to her and did the same. The water was cool and clear.
She scanned the rocks and tree branches on the bottom, searching for movement
in the shadows.

Tony scooted back
onto his knees, grabbed the bucket and dunked it into the water. Then he poured
it into the empty ice chest. He repeated the motion until the chest was half
full.

“Feeling lucky?”
she asked.

“Always.”

He sat on the edge
of the pier and dangled his legs over the water.

She moved back a
little, still on her stomach, and crossed her arms on the warm, sun-bleached
wood. She rested her cheek on her arms, relishing the afternoon sunshine
kissing her face, her arms, the backs of her legs. “This is my favorite time of
year,” she confided softly. “There’s something about September that makes me
happy and a little sad at the same time. For me, it’s more of a time for new
beginnings and resolutions than January is. Maybe it goes back to that
back-to-school feeling we had when we were kids, you know what I mean? We’re
getting organized again, getting ready for the winter. And that’s the sad part,
knowing there won’t be too many more days like this before the snow arrives.”

He smiled at her
upturned face. “I know what you mean. I like this time of year, too. The
humidity is gone. The summer crowd is gone. It’s quieter. More peaceful.”

“Do you come here
often?”

“Yes.”

He didn’t expand on
that.

There was a tug on
one of the lines. Julia pushed herself to her knees and grabbed the net. “Can I
do it this time?”

His brows lifted in
pleased surprise. “You sure?”

“Yep. And I don’t
want you waving the net in my face like last time.”

His teeth flashed
in a grin. He tugged carefully on the line. They both watched the blue crab
rise to the surface, clutching onto the chicken wing for dear life. “Hold the
net out,” Tony said.

She leaned forward
with the net. He yanked the string up and over, gave it a shake. The crab
wouldn’t let go. Tony pinched the back part of the top and bottom of its body
and tugged the crab loose from its booty. It fell into the net. “Drop it into
the ice chest.”

Another one of the
lines began to shake. Working together, they hauled in four crabs in quick
order. Tony watched them scrabbling along the bottom of the ice chest. “Not
enough meat yet,” he observed. “Let’s try for a few more.”

They kicked off
their shoes and sat side by side, eyes on the lines as they sipped at the
bottled water Tony had bought. Julia tipped her face towards the sun. “This was
my favorite memory of that day,” she said. “Just sitting. Enjoying a rare
moment of peace with you.”

His brief laugh
contained a hint of self-deprecation. “They were rare.”

She gave him a direct
look. “It wasn’t easy being around you back then, you know. I always had to be
so careful about what I said, the way I acted. After the accident, for a while,
you were very sweet with me. I wasn’t trying to be your mother. I just wanted
to be your friend.”

His mouth twisted
in a regretful grimace. “I know. Things just got weird. I was twelve. Going
through puberty. You were—are—a pretty girl.”

She felt her face
color. “What? Are you… Are you saying you were attracted to me?”

He shook his head
at her disbelief. “Come on, Julia. What do you think? You’re telling me you
never noticed the way I was looking at you?”

Her brow knitted.
“No. I only remember you avoiding me, pulling away from me. I just thought it
was because of the mom thing.”

“No. I never thought
of you as a mom or even as a sister. I was embarrassed about how I thought of
you then. My body was changing. I was too ashamed to talk with Joe about it.”
He tugged on his earlobe, looking a little abashed. “I got a hard-on
practically every time you were close by. Even if you weren’t in the room at
all, and I just got a scent of you. I couldn’t control my reaction. One night,
I got up to get a glass of water and saw you and Joe making out on the living
room couch. He had his hands under your shirt. That visual made things worse.
Every time I jerked off, I was thinking of you, the way your face had looked
when he touched you. And that made me angry because you were Julia, my
childhood friend, my brother’s girlfriend. I shouldn’t have been thinking of you
that way.” He shook his head. “It was all so confusing and complicated. I
didn’t want you around, and I wanted to be near you at the same time. So I
lashed out. I was able to control myself better as I grew older, but there were
still times when I’d catch myself lusting after you. I think antagonizing you
was a way of distancing myself from those feelings.”

Julia’s heart was
pounding hard, her emotions in turmoil for the umpteenth time that day as she
observed the myriad expressions flitting across Tony’s face while he made his
startling and frank confession. “I never knew…”

“I’m glad you
didn’t. After Uncle Nick tore into me that day, and I watched you cry, I
started pushing those feelings down. I focused on making you smile. Making you
happy. You told me once that marrying my brother would make you the happiest
girl in the world. So that’s what I wanted for you, too.”

She swallowed down
the rising lump in her throat. “I did say that, didn’t I.”

She looked away
from him and gazed, unseeing, into the water. He was quiet for a while, too.
Then he cleared his throat. “So, what would make you the happiest girl in the
world now?”

She pointed her toes
and swooshed them in the water. “I don’t think anyone could possibly be happy
all the time,” she said eventually. “It was kind of foolish of me to base all
my happiness on being with Joe. I never really thought much beyond our wedding
day, you know? That’s where the fairytales always ended, with the prince
carrying his new bride into the sunset.” She lifted her face to the sun again,
tamping down all emotions and sensations other than the feel of warm heat on
her skin. She smiled. “Real happiness comes in seconds and minutes—tiny moments
like this that you can store away in your memory and open up when you’re
feeling blue, you know what I mean?”

“Yeah.” His voice
was rough. “I know what you mean.”

She took a deep
breath and opened her eyes. She swiveled her gaze towards him. “Some of my
happiest memories from back then have you in them.”

His toffee eyes
gleamed. “Oh, yeah? Like what?”

She waved her arm
to indicate their surroundings. “This, of course. And the day you tried to
teach me how to surf. And that time you and I and Sylvie went quahogging on the
Cape.” She hesitated. “Joe wasn’t able to join us for most of those outings. I
wonder if things would’ve turned out differently if I’d had these kinds of
moments with him.”

Something hard
flashed in his eyes. Whatever he might have said then was disrupted by a
tugging on one of the lines. “Here we go,” was all he said as he pulled the
line in.

They caught six
more crabs before he called it a decent haul and tossed the leftover chicken
meat into the water. They packed up and trekked back to the truck. He put the
ice chest in the truck bed and gave the water a stir. “These should be fine
until we get home.”

They didn’t converse
much during the drive back to Providence. He turned up the volume on the radio.
She closed her eyes, feeling pleasantly tired after a day in the sun.

The warm sensation
of his fingers brushing across her cheek stirred her awake a while later.
“We’re here,” he said, his eyes gleaming in the dusky interior of the truck cab.
“You up to sharing dinner with me?”

She rubbed her
eyes. “Sure. Do you mind if I take a shower?”

He grinned. “You
just don’t want to help me clean the crab.”

She wrinkled her
nose with distaste. “Not especially.”

“Wimp. What
happened to the ‘you catch ’em, you clean ’em’ rule?”

“Do you want salad
with your crab? And a yummy dessert after?”

“That’s bribery and
you know it.”