Meant to Be (36 page)

Joe couldn’t stop staring at her. Facedown on the bed, the sheet barely covering her ass. This woman was the catch of his life.

“Is Dozer happy now?” she asked, her voice groggy but contented. Curls covering her beard-burned cheek. He’d need to shave more often to save her from that.

“He’s happy, but not as much as I am.” Joe removed the jeans he’d slipped on to take Dozer outside. Then he crawled across the bed and dropped a kiss just above the sheet. She even tasted better than he’d dreamed. “I hope you don’t think you’re going to sleep.”

Looking over her shoulder, she wiggled her bottom below his nose. “I don’t know if I can stay awake.” On a fake yawn, she added, “You’ll have to help me.”

Sliding along her body, setting off sparks where skin met skin, Joe settled in beside her. “We’re just getting started on the night’s activities.” She raised her brows, smiling from the pillow, and his chest went tight.

“I love you, Beth.” There. He’d said it. After holding the words in for so long, it felt good to let them out. “I know I can be a cranky ass and not good at the romantic stuff, but I’ll show you every day how I feel about you.”

She shifted onto her side and traced the outline of his bottom lip. “I love you, too, Joe. And I’m going to drive you crazy trying to make everyone happy, but I promise to get better at that. Old habits and all.”

“We’ll make each other happy and to hell with everyone else.” He threw his leg over her hip and pulled her flush against him. “Thank you for loving my island. And my dog.”

She flicked his nipple and he grew hard. Or rather, harder. “Thank you for pushing me to stand up for myself. And coming after me.” Leaning up on an elbow, she asked, “Isn’t this Memorial Day weekend? You must have a ton of clients waiting for you.”

Joe rolled to his back, taking her with him until she covered him. “Thoughts of clients went out the window after
Lucas called me at the butt crack of dawn telling me to get my ass up here and catch you before you left. Speaking of that, didn’t you have a plane to catch?”

She ignored his question. “Lucas called you?”

“I was shocked, too. Once I woke up and figured out the call wasn’t some weird dream.”

“I should have known after last night he’d do something like this.”

Joe stopped kissing her neck and looked up. “Last night?”

Beth nodded, running a finger along his ear. “He came over and we talked. I think it was closure for us both. Then he started talking about you and me. Said we should be together.”

Shit. When Sid heard about this, he’d be hearing “I told you so” for months. Maybe years. But having Beth in his arms was worth a little ribbing now and then.

Beth leaned up on her elbow. “If you’re here, who’s taking care of the boat?”

“I found some people to cover for me.”

One eyebrow shot up. “Who could cover for you on your own fishing boat?”

“That would be Sid and Will.”

Beth laughed. “Sid and Will are running your charters?” She toyed with the hair on his chest. “An all-girl crew. I like that.”

He rolled again, pinning her beneath him. “Don’t get any ideas.” He brushed her hair back. “I’m more interested in the girl I’m with right now.”

“That’s good,” she said, wrapping her legs around his hips. “Because the girl you’re with is very interested in you.”

Joe stared into her dark green eyes for a moment longer, then kissed the base of her neck before dragging his lips down between her breasts. Her skin felt so hot he expected steam to rise into the air around them. Slipping lower, he nuzzled her belly button, lifting one thigh to rest on his shoulder. A sigh, filled with pleasure and anticipation, escaped her lips. He moved lower and her hands pushed into his hair.

“Do I have your attention?” he asked, blowing softly on her most sensitive spot. “Or are you still tired?”

“Not tired,” she groaned, gripping the sheet on both sides. “Just don’t stop.”

“Never,” Joe said. And proceeded to send them both back into the waves.

U
P TO THE
C
HALLENGE

A
N
A
NCHOR
I
SLAND
N
OVEL

S
id Navarro considered calling a nurse to remove the stick of righteous indignation from Lucas Dempsey’s ass. If he tensed up any more, the thing would snap off and put an eye out. Observing from the back of the hospital room, she watched Lucas linger at the foot of his father’s bed, waging what looked to be a battle between shedding a tear, and tearing someone’s head off.

Her best guess for the head-ripping victim would be Lucas’s brother, Joe.

Joe carried tension of his own as he stood four feet to Lucas’s right, holding hands with his girlfriend, Beth Chandler. Beth had been Lucas’s fiancée until six weeks before, which justified the tension, but since Lucas had supposedly given his blessing to the new couple, the blatant anger didn’t make much sense.

Maybe the fiancée swap wasn’t the problem. Since Lucas had bolted off of Anchor Island the moment the tassel on his high school graduation cap switched sides, he and Joe
hadn’t seen eye to eye on much of anything. That made the rift ten years wide.

Sid worked with Joe on his fishing boat, and couldn’t recall him saying anything about a new dustup with his brother. Then again, Joe wasn’t exactly a talker, one of the things Sid liked best about him. Some women wanted a man to share his every thought and feeling.

In Sid’s opinion, women were just asking for trouble with that nonsense. As a boat mechanic raised mostly by her father and big brother, she had enough experience around testosterone to know the shit going through a man’s head at any given moment should never be revealed for public consumption.

Especially not the female public.

“The nurse says five days in here then no less than six weeks recovery at home,” said Patty, Lucas and Joe’s mom. Technically, Lucas’s birth mother and Joe’s stepmom. She was talking about the boys’ father, who occupied the bed around which they all hovered. Technically Joe’s biological dad and Lucas’s stepfather.

The Dempseys were a complicated bunch even before the fiancée fiasco.

Tom Dempsey had suffered a near-fatal heart attack while tending bar in the family-owned restaurant during the lunch hour. Eight hours later, he lay prostrate with translucent skin and a mess of tubes sticking out of each arm. Cables looped into the neck of his hospital gown, assumably plugged into stickers glued somewhere around the vicinity of his heart.

For a giant of a man known to be a pillar of strength and good health, Tom was doing a damn accurate imitation of
a beached jellyfish. Sid fought a tear of her own, wiping the corner of an eye with the sleeve of her hoodie.

“But after six weeks he’ll be good as new, right?” Joe asked. Beth leaned closer, and he tucked her under his arm. Lucas’s eyes narrowed, but he otherwise remained stoic.

Patty sighed. “I’m not sure good as new is in the cards, Joe, but he’ll be with us, and that’s enough for now.”

“Is there still a chance he could…” Beth let the question trail off. The group exchanged glances as if daring one another to say the word no one wanted to hear.

“I’m not dying anytime soon,” Tom said in a low, gravel-choked voice. His eyes were still closed, making it seem as if they’d all imagined the words.

“Tom? Honey?” Patty lifted his hand to her lips, pressing them against the tape holding an IV needle in place. “Can you hear me?”

“The heart might be on the fritz, but the ears still work.” The patient opened first one eye, then the other. He licked his lips, motioned toward a cup sitting on the tray to his right, then took a sip as Patty held the straw to his mouth. Tom’s head dropped back, but his eyes stayed on Patty. “Do I look half as bad as that look on your face says I do?”

Patty laughed as a tear slid down her cheek. “Don’t you ever scare me like that again, Thomas Dempsey. I thought I was going to lose you.”

Tom smiled, ran a finger along Patty’s cheek, then looked around. “Now I know what it takes to get everyone in this family in the same room.” He bounced a raised-brow look between Joe and Lucas, then addressed the latter. “Thanks for coming all the way down here.”

“Not a problem,” Lucas said, jaw tight with a smile that didn’t reach his eyes. “Though you could have just asked. No need to get this dramatic to call a family meeting.”

Noticing Sid in the back of the room, Tom asked, “You think you could modify this bed to power me out of this place?”

Sid stepped up next to Lucas and tried to ignore how good he smelled. “Got my tools in the truck. We can have you doing thirty-five down the highway in no time.”

“Don’t encourage him, Sid,” Patty scolded. “You’ll stay here until they say you can come home, and then you’re going to do everything the doctor says.”

“I’ve got a restaurant to run, woman.” Sid wouldn’t put it past the Dempsey patriarch to leap out of the bed and stomp back to the island, ass cheeks shining through the hospital gown all the way.

“You’re not running anything for at least six weeks,” Patty said, sounding as firm as possible under the circumstances.

“Then tell me who’s going to run the place. We can’t close the doors. Not in July, for Christ’s sake.”

“We’ll take care of it,” Joe said. Leave it to Mr. Responsible to step up.

“If you’re going to run the restaurant, who’s going to run the charters?” Sid asked. She could run the boat, but not alone. And any break in her income would jeopardize the dream she was so close to getting her hands on.

“I can find someone else to run the boat for a couple months.”

Sid pointed out the obvious. “Every fisherman capable of running that boat is already running his own.”

Patty interrupted before Joe could argue. “You kids have businesses of your own. We’ll find someone to run the restaurant through Labor Day, then we’ll reevaluate for fall.”

“I’ll do it,” Lucas said. He might as well have pulled the pin on a live hand grenade and held it over his head. The room fell silent, exaggerating the incessant chirping of the machines monitoring Tom’s every heartbeat.

“You’ll what?” Joe asked, stepping forward. This was so not the time for a confrontation.

Lucas crossed his arms, looking anything but relaxed. “I said I’ll do it. I’ll run the restaurant while Dad recovers.”

“You heard the part about six weeks, right?” big brother asked. Beth tugged on Joe’s belt loop, and he stepped back.

“I may miss a clue now and then, but I got that part.”

Sid wasn’t sure if Lucas meant to take a shot at Beth, but that’s what he’d done. Joe stepped forward again.

“As much as I want out of here, I’m not getting kicked out because of you two.” Tom hit a button on the bed rail, sending the mattress into motion. Once he was satisfied with his new position, he released the button and turned on his sons. “Lucas, I appreciate the offer, but are you sure you can get away from the law firm?”

Lucas leaned on the bottom bed rail. “I’m sure. Do you trust me to run your restaurant?”

Tom’s eyes narrowed. “I won’t dignify that with an answer.” He turned to Joe. “If he runs the place while you run the charters, can you cover some nights?”

“I’ll be there whenever you need me.”

“Nights,” Tom said again, as if passing down a final judgment. “Then it’s settled. You boys will run it together. I
expect the place to still be in one piece when I come back. Understand?”

Both men nodded but neither spoke. Tom’s head dropped, the brief exchange taking what little energy he had.

Patty turned to Beth. “You’re running the art store, right?”

Beth straightened like a soldier called to attention. “Yes, but only until Lola and Marcus come back from New Orleans.”

“How long is that?”

“Another month.”

Patty nodded. “Sid?”

Oh shit.

“Yeah?”

“If Joe recruits one of the high school kids to run the charters with him, can you help Lucas during the day? I’m not letting Tom out of my sight, and that puts us two people down instead of one.”

“Well…” Sid looked around. Nothing like being put on the spot. “I’ll need to be available for mechanic work if a call comes in.”

“I’m sure we can work around that. It’s all settled then. Beth can work with Joe to cover nights, and Sid will help Lucas during the day.” Before Sid could bring up the pay, Patty added, “All tips are yours to keep, and we’ll put you on the payroll so you won’t be losing money.”

How did she do that?

“Then it sounds like I’m in.”

Sid had never experienced seasickness, but the thought of working side by side with Lucas made her queasy. Six weeks with the guy for whom she’d secretly pined for more
than ten years. Or not so secretly, since Joe knew, and thanks to Sid’s brother, Randy, Beth knew.

Not only did Lucas have no idea how she felt, he barely acknowledged her existence. Which should have made her hate him, but for reasons Sid kept to herself, she didn’t.

Sid made eye contact with Beth and caught the unspoken question.

This is good, right?

Then she turned to Lucas to catch his reaction. He looked like someone had just shit in his shoe.

Not from where I’m standing.