Fool for Love (31 page)

Luke's heart ached at the pain in her
voice and at the image she painted of the devastated dog. "He wasn't with
you last summer."

"I was still recovering from my own
injuries, and we worried I'd trip over him or he'd knock me over without
meaning to. He stayed with our neighbors at home for a few months. I'm so glad
to have him back with me now. The poor guy has been through it."

So have you
, Luke thought but chose not to say. As if she needed
the reminder.

"I owe you the world's biggest
apology," she said, startling him.

"I was the one stalking you. How do
you owe me an apology?"

"You were
checking
on me. Big
difference." She curled her legs up under her and turned to him. "The
apology I owe you is for seventeen years ago."

"Oh. That."

"Yeah. That."

"Sydney—"

"Luke—"

He cleared his throat and folded his hands
tight in his lap. This was far more excruciating than he'd ever imagined it
would be—and he'd imagined it plenty of times. Thousands of times, to be honest.
What he might say. What she might say. If either of them would have anything at
all to say. "Sorry," he said. "Go ahead."

"What I did to you was
unconscionable. I know it's no consolation, but I thought of you so many times.
I wanted to write to you or call you or something, but what does one say in
that situation? 'I'm really sorry I left for the school year and never came
back?' Would that have made anything better?"

"It helps to know you thought of
me."

"Oh God, Luke, how could I
not
think of you? Those summers… The time we spent together... Other than when my
kids were born, it was the most magical time of my entire life."

No, he decided, this was far more
excruciating than anything he'd ever imagined. "If that's how you felt,
then why—"

"I was an idiot."

Shocked by her bluntness, he gave up any
pretense of trying not to stare at her. The thick strawberry blonde hair he'd
loved running his fingers through was shorter than it used to be, but the
summer freckles that had popped up on her nose after long days in the sun were
still there. The bright blue eyes that had been so tragically sad last summer
seemed to have recovered some of their sparkle.

"I had this idea, you know, of how my
life should be. Who my husband should be. What he would do for a living. Where
we would live. I was a snobbish fool."

"I suppose the boy you'd left behind
on the island, who worked at a marina and never made it to college, didn't
quite fit the bill." Luke tried like hell to keep the bitterness out of
his tone, but after so many years of suspecting what had driven her away,
hearing confirmation of what he'd most feared was hardly a balm on the
still-open wound.

"I know there's nothing I can say to
change what happened all those years ago, but I want you to know I regretted
the way I treated you. I
always
regretted it."

Hearing that didn't help as much as he'd
thought it would.

She looked down at her hands.
"Sometimes I wonder if what happened … to me … was payback..."

"Don't say that. No one deserves what
happened to you."

"Karma can be such an awful
bitch," she said ruefully. "Maybe I asked for too much, you
know?"

"I can't believe in a God or any
higher power who'd take the lives of innocent children to pay their mother back
for being cavalier with the feelings of an old boyfriend."

Sydney winced. "Cavalier. Ouch."

"What would you call it?"

"Horrible. I was horrible to
you." She leaned her head back on the rocker and studied him. "You
haven't changed at all. I'd know you anywhere."

"Your hair is shorter, but otherwise,
you look exactly the same, too."

"Tell me you found someone else, got
married, had a boatload of kids. Tell me it all worked out well for you."

"No wife, no kids, but a good life. A
satisfying life."

"I ruined the wife and kids thing for
you, didn't I?"

He fought to maintain a neutral
expression, to not let her see the pain. "Don't give yourself too much
credit, Donovan. You weren't all
that
important."

Her laughter danced through the night,
making his heart flutter. "Whatever you say, tough guy."

He never had been able to fool her.
"Could I ask you something?"

"Sure."

"Your husband…?"

"Seth."

"You were happy with him?"

She sighed. "That's a very
complicated question."

Luke expelled a tortured moan. "Come
on
.
At least tell me it was worth it—at least for one of us."

They sat in uncomfortable silence for a
long time. "Seth was a good man, a wonderful father, a devoted husband,
and I loved him."

"But?"

She looked over at him, their eyes
connecting with a powerful sense of awareness that left him breathless.
"What I felt for him… It was different than what I felt for you."

He wanted to ask her what she meant by
that.
How
was it different? Different better? Different more? Different
less? But he couldn't seem to form any of those questions, so he had to settle
for what she'd given him.

"I shouldn't be admitting these
things, especially to you. See what I mean about karma?"

Luke shook his head. "The universe
doesn't work that way. It just doesn't."

"Some days, it's hard to believe I
didn't have it coming. I wasn't always a good person."

"You can't honestly believe that. A
drunk driver killed your family, not you."

"That's what my counselor has been
trying to get me to believe for fifteen months now."

"Getting any closer?"

"Good days, bad days."

"I hope seeing me won't make this a
bad day."

"Seeing you is wonderful. I've wished
for years to have the opportunity to tell you how sorry I was to have left
without a word. Sometimes when we'd come for a summer visit with my parents,
I'd think about going down to McCarthy's to see you."

"Why didn't you?"

"That would've been so unfair to you,
for me to show up out of the blue like that after all that time just so I could
make myself feel better about being a shit to you."

"I would've liked to have seen you,
to have met your kids. More than anything, I've missed my friend Sydney. The
best friend I ever had."

Her eyes sparkled with tears. "I'm so
sorry, Luke," she whispered. "I'm so very, very sorry. Can you ever
forgive me?"

"I forgave you years ago. You were
nineteen. You didn't owe me anything."

She reached over and rested her hand on
top of his. "I owed you so much more than what you got from me after four
magical summers together."

The brush of her skin against his brought
back a flood of sweet memories, the sweetest of all memories. He turned his
hand so hers was caught between both of his, and the emotion hit him so hard it
took his breath away. Suddenly, it became urgent that he leave before he said
or did something he would regret. "It was good to see you, Syd."

"Thanks for checking on me."

Luke grimaced. "Checking is a much
nicer word than stalking."

She squeezed his hand. "It touched me
last summer to know you were here, that you cared, despite the way we left
things. I hope you understand I wasn't ready yet…"

"Please. Of course I
understand."

"Will you come back again?"

Startled by the question, Luke said,
"Do you want me to?"

"I missed my friend Luke. I never
stopped missing him."

Overwhelmed by her, he couldn't find the
words.

"I can see I've caught you off guard.
I've been doing that to people a lot lately. Ever since the accident, I don't
see much reason to hold back. Life is short. What's the point of hedging?"

"No point, I guess."

"I don't mean to shock you."

"You haven't shocked me so much as given
me a lot to think about."

"Do you accept my apology?"

He nodded. "Clean slate."

"That's far more than I
deserve."

"The slate is clean, remember?"

She smiled at him the way she used to when
she still loved him, and Luke swore his heart stopped for an instant.

He forced himself to release her hand, to
get up, to walk down the stairs, to make his escape while he still could. He'd
made it to the lawn on the way to the beach when she called out to him.

"Come back, Luke. Please come back
again."

Luke waved to show he'd heard her and
continued toward the shore on what used to be his well-worn path between her
yard and the beach. His old rowboat, the same boat he'd had way back when,
waited for him to make the trek across the salt pond to the same small house
he'd once shared with his mother. Her illness had kept him tied to the island
when Sydney and his other friends were leaving for college.

He'd never regretted giving those
important years to the woman who had raised him on her own, but he couldn't
help but wonder what might've been different for him—and for Sydney—if he'd
been able to accept the scholarship he'd been offered that would've made him a
marine biologist. Would that profession have been good enough for Sydney? The
Sydney she'd been back then?

Probably not. She'd married a banker. A
guy who studied algae and pond scum probably wouldn't have made the cut. Either
way, it didn't do any good to speculate now. What difference did it make? She'd
made her decision a long time ago, and he'd had no choice but to accept it.

Except, as he rowed slowly across the vast
pond, guided by the light of the moon and stars, he was filled with an emotion
he hadn't experienced in so long he'd almost forgotten what it felt like: hope.
She'd never forgotten him. She'd thought of him, missed him, regretted their
parting.
God, what did that mean?

She was no longer married. Her husband and
children had been gone for more than a year. He could see just by looking at
her that she was doing much better accepting the awful hand life had dealt her
than last summer when the pain of her loss was still so fresh and new.

"Ugh," he said out loud as he
rowed. "Don't go there, man. It was over and done with years ago. Leave
the past where it belongs."

But even as he told himself there was no
point, that pesky burst of hope refused to be ignored.

Copyright 2011. Marie Sullivan Force. All rights
reserved.

Watch
for READY FOR LOVE, July 1, 2011!

About
the Author

Marie
Force is the author of FATAL AFFAIR (June 2010) and FATAL JUSTICE (Jan. 2011),
Books 1 and 2 in her Fatal Series from Harlequin's Carina Press. Book 3, FATAL
CONSEQUENCES, is coming July 18, 2011, FATAL DESTINY, the Fatal Wedding
Novella, is free to readers on September 5, 2011, and Book 4, FATAL FLAW, is
out in February 2012.
In its July 2010 issue,
RT Book Reviews
named Marie a
"Future Star of Romantic Suspense."

Marie is the author of three print books: EVERYONE LOVES A HERO
(Feb. 2011),
LINE OF SCRIMMAGE
(Sept. 2008) and
LOVE AT FIRST FLIGHT
(July 2009)
. Marie is
also the author of TRUE NORTH, THE FALL, THE WRECK and the McCarthy's of
Gansett Island Series, MAID FOR LOVE, FOOL FOR LOVE and READY FOR LOVE, all
available as e-books via Amazon.com, BarnesandNoble.com, Smashwords.com and
iBooks.

Since
1996, Marie has been the communications director for a national organization
similar to RWA. She is a member of RWA's New England, From the Heart and
Published Author Special Interest Chapters.

While
her husband was in the Navy, Marie lived in Spain, Maryland and Florida, and
she is now settled in her home state of Rhode Island. She is the mother of two
teenagers and a feisty dog named Brandy.

Find
her at
www.mariesullivanforce.com
,
on her blog at
http://mariesullivanforce.blogspot.com
,
where she runs the popular weekly Romance & Oreos Book Club, on Facebook at
www.facebook.com/pages/Marie-Force/248130827909
,
and on Twitter at twitter.com/MarieForce. Marie loves to hear from readers.
Contact her/join her mailing list at
[email protected]
.