Moonshell Beach: A Shelter Bay Novel (10 page)

J.T. wasn’t surprised that Sax had already heard about his less-than-welcoming behavior. Gossip was the coin of the realm in small towns, whether they were in a Middle East desert or on the Oregon coast.

“I wasn’t that bad,” he argued, following his brother out of the cooler. “And who the hell snitched?” He’d put money on that pissy theater guy.

“Her Honor, the mayor, called Kara. Kara, in turn, called me. She’s not happy.”

“Sorry.” It was true. He’d always liked Kara, a lot. In fact, there’d been a time, back in seventh grade, when he’d had a crush on her, which, showing that he hadn’t lost all his brain cells, he was smart enough not to share. “I didn’t mean to cause you any problems. It’s just that…Shit.”

He dragged a hand through his hair. “Does it ever get easy?”

Sax didn’t have to ask
what
. “No. But I can tell you that it gets bearable. And there are actually days that it almost seems like all that shit happened to someone else.”

He put the beer down on a counter and narrowed his eyes, giving J.T. a hard big-brother look. Having always been the town bad boy, he hadn’t developed
it as well as Cole, who’d been the “perfect” eldest Douchett brother, but it was not a bad imitation. J.T. figured Sax had probably gotten better at it while doing all that covert SEAL stuff.

“You sure you’re okay?” Sax asked with serious concern. “Because if you need help—”

“You don’t have to worry. Despite what some of the people in town seem to be saying, I’m not a danger to myself or others,” J.T. answered as he had on the questionnaire he’d had to fill out during his separation from the corps. At the time he figured most of the Marines did the same thing he did—tick off the boxes that would get them out with the least amount of hassle.

“But?”

“It’s just hard, okay?”

“I believe we’ve determined that.” Sax shook his head. Thrust a hand through his hair and looked conflicted as hell. “Look, if hanging out with Mary Joyce is that tough a duty, there’s a bunch of jarheads down at the VFW hall who’d probably jump at the chance to take your place.”

“No.” J.T. drew in a deep breath. Squared his shoulders. “I just had a bad morning.” After a mostly sleepless night. “But you can promise Kara that I’ll be on my best behavior until the woman leaves town. Hell, I’ll be so nice and polite, people will think I’m effing Mr. Rogers.”

“You don’t have to go that far. Just try to be civil. Because if you screw this up and make my bride-to-be unhappy before the wedding, then I may have to throw you back in the bay.”

“There were two of you against the one of me,” J.T. said. “And yeah, though I didn’t want to admit
it at the time, I was sorta halfway drunk, which gave you the advantage.” Something Sax had said sank in. “Wedding?”

“Yeah. Kara’s mom is coming to town this week. We’re getting hitched.”

The grin on his brother’s face did a lot to lift the cloud J.T. had woken up with this morning. “It’s about time.” He grabbed two bottles of the IPA from the carton and used his Swiss Army knife to pop the caps.

Then, after handing a bottle to Sax, he lifted his own in a salute. “Ooh-rah.”

Phoebe Tyler couldn’t remember the last time she’d indulged in anything as simply pleasant as a picnic. But after she’d gone to Blue Heron farm with a meat order for the shelter kitchen, Ethan Concannon had surprised her by suggesting they have lunch out by a small lake on his farm. When she called Zelda to tell her she might be a bit late getting back to Haven House, the elderly woman insisted she just go ahead and take the day off.

And what a perfect day it was! Warm, with a benevolent, buttery yellow sun casting diamonds over the blue water. Bees buzzed lazily over wildflowers while songbirds played musical chairs in the branches of the tree they were sitting beneath.

Apparently confident that she’d accept his invitation, he’d prepared a lunch. It wasn’t fancy—a chicken Cobb salad wrap with the best smoked bacon she’d ever tasted, a grilled corn and tomato salad, and watermelon lemonade—but to Phoebe, because of the setting and the company, it was the best meal she’d ever eaten.

“This is wonderful.”

“I’m glad you’re enjoying it. You looked a little pale when you arrived.”

“It’s just morning sickness. Which is definitely misnamed. At least in my case. I have this looming fear that I’m actually going to end up throwing up on the delivery room table.”

“I remember, from going to classes with Mia, that some women have it worse than others. Are you sorry you’re pregnant?”

“Absolutely not.” She pressed her hands against her stomach, which was feeling steadier now that she had something in it. She’d been too anxious about coming out here today to eat this morning. Which had been a mistake. Some days she still couldn’t quite believe a baby was growing inside her. Until she was on her knees in the bathroom, which was always a vivid reminder.

“I was admittedly surprised when the home pregnancy test came out positive.” When he hadn’t been berating her for perceived mistakes, or blaming her for failures in his life, during their last two months together Peter had turned icily cold and distant. Except for that night he’d raped her.

The night their—no, her!—child had been conceived.

“But it was a good surprise.” Which was an understatement. Her baby was a blessing, and not just because her pregnancy had provided the impetus to escape her dangerous marriage. “Though sometimes I’m worried I won’t be a good enough mother.”

If she were to believe her soon-to-be ex-husband, she certainly hadn’t been an even adequate wife. And, although she was working with the therapist who visited Haven House every week, to overcome
those false accusations that he’d wrapped her in—like a dark, clinging shroud—sometimes she felt an unbidden prick of fear that just maybe some of those painful words he’d attacked her with had been true.

“No one’s perfect. And every parent makes mistakes,” Ethan said. “I know I did. And I would have made a lot more if I’d gotten the opportunity.”

His voice had turned as rough as tires on a gravel road. Too late she thought about his wife and child, who’d been killed in a tragic accident, and felt guilty about having caused this man, who’d been nothing but kind and gentle to her, renewed pain.

“I’m so sorry,” she said. “This must be hard on you.”

“What?”

“Being friends with me.”

“What?” The pain she’d seen in his beautiful warm eyes turned to incredulity. “How could you possibly think that?”

“Because every time you’re with me, you must think about your wife and son.”

“I’d think about them anyway,” he said mildly. “I loved them both with every fiber of my being, and they were, hands down, the most important people in my life.” His gaze turned serious. “But I also know that Mia wouldn’t want me to spend my life living in the past. And you, Phoebe, are proof that life does indeed go on.

“So, although I’m sorry for the circumstances that brought you to Shelter Bay, I’m not going to deny that I’m also grateful that you landed in Haven House, which, in turn, brought you into my life.”

She felt the color, which had nothing to do with the sun shining down, warm her cheeks. Confused
and wary, as her unruly pulse began to sprint—either from pleasure or anxiety, she wasn’t sure which—Phoebe lowered her gaze and plucked at a wildflower, pulling off the petals.

He loves me.

He loves me not.

He loves me.

Loves me not.

No! Phoebe reminded herself. It was too soon to even think about love. She had so many other balls she was juggling—learning to cook so she could hopefully earn a living working at the new Lavender Hill Farm restaurant Chef Madeline was establishing. She needed to be able to stand on her own two feet and prepare to take care of her baby, because even if Zelda, who ran Haven House, let her stay on after the birth, no way was she going to bring her newborn home to a battered-women’s shelter.

Which meant she also had to find an apartment. And furnish it with a crib, and all those other things infants would need. Although the courts were requiring Peter to pay child support, ever since his parents had bonded him out of jail for charges of assault and battery and attempted kidnapping, she hadn’t seen a dime.

Which was just as well. This was
her
baby. All he’d done was provide the sperm. No way did she ever want to share her child with such an evil, brutal, manipulative man.

Ethan was nothing like her soon-to-be ex-husband. He was kind and gentle, and smelled richly of the dark earth he spent his days working.

But she still couldn’t let herself become emotionally involved with him.

“My point,” he continued, when she didn’t, couldn’t, answer, “is that despite our parents’ mistakes, look how good we turned out.”

His smile was warm and generous, earning one in return. A leaf from the tree they were sitting beneath, stirred by the wind, fluttered down and landed on her hair. With a gesture as natural as breathing, Ethan reached out and brushed it away. That simple touch—a broad, dark hand to her hair—sent heat shimmering all the way to her bare toes. When her baby turned a sudden somersault, Phoebe decided she must be carrying a girl.

Just a few more months and she’d be able to hold her child—son or daughter, Phoebe didn’t care which—in her arms. That thought, which she continued to cling to like a drowning woman might cling to a driftwood log, had given her the nerve to escape her dangerous marriage in the first place. And it continued to provide strength during those times when her fledgling, reborn confidence would waver.

She’d been wrong, Mary realized as she watched J. T. Douchett during the cocktail party held in her honor at his brother’s Cajun restaurant later that evening. He wasn’t the rudest man she’d ever met in her life.

He was the saddest.

She’d discovered while honing her crafts of writing and performing that she possessed a natural gift of empathy. The ability to put herself in other people’s shoes had proved helpful when creating characters an audience would hopefully identify with.

It had also helped during the military-base tours she’d been doing the past years. She was not naive enough to believe that she could—never in a million years—ever know what those troops she’d visited had gone through, but she
could
try to understand where they’d come from. When they talked about their loved ones—and wasn’t that what every one of those men and women was so eager to tell her about?—her own family came to mind.

She’d think of her older sister, tragically widowed. Although Nora was now happily remarried,
Mary remembered how difficult that time had been for her and dearly hoped that none of the pretty brides in the photographs the proud soldiers would show her ever had to suffer the pain of losing a husband.

Her thoughts would then shift to her older brother Michael, now a farmer and happily married family man, who’d risked his own life as a war photographer for so many years. She’d been a typical, self-absorbed teen girl when he’d returned home to Castlelough, but she’d never forget his distant, thousand-yard stare.

While preparing for her first USO tour, she’d read up on life in a war zone, and a quote that had stayed with her was one about how, by looking in the eyes of a soldier, you’d know how much war he’d seen. She’d witnessed that same battle-weary fatigue in too many eyes in Iraq and Afghanistan. Which was why, although the visits proved both physically and emotionally exhausting, she continued to return, because the pleasure she felt when something she said could coax a soldier or Marine out of that numbness, when the rigid muscles in a face would actually loosen enough to smile, was priceless.

J. T. Douchett had that look. Oh, on one level, he was alert, ready to leap into action if necessary. But that was instinct, developed by years of training and experience. Emotionally, he was as numb as many of those troops she’d met. As sad-to-the-bone as her own brother had been.

And, just as her family had fretted over Michael, who hadn’t wanted their attention, surreptitiously watching J.T.’s family as she worked the crowded room with a practiced skill, Mary sensed they had
the same concerns. Even as they chatted with friends and neighbors, their eyes would continually drift back to the former Marine. Who had cleaned up really well and was wearing a dark charcoal suit and white shirt. The only jarring, yet interesting, detail was the tie sporting a Tabasco red crawfish.

She’d been grateful that the schedule had allowed her some time to herself this afternoon. Because she’d been so shaken when he’d taken off those glasses, allowing her to look into those granite gray eyes from her dream, she wasn’t sure she could have just jumped right into chatting everyone up this evening.

Not having wanted him to know how upset she’d been, she’d turned away, and on trembling legs walked over to the balcony, looked out at the lighthouse flashing its warning, and wished that she’d had some sort of advance warning before getting on that plane in L.A.

It didn’t make sense. Despite what Kate had said about her mother sending her a man, despite the fact that she spent much of her time in make-believe worlds, Mary had discovered that, deep down, she was as levelheaded as her older sister. And her grandmother, who admittedly could be called eccentric, but certainly possessed more than her share of Irish pragmatism.

She’d have to think about how she’d come to dream of J. T. Douchett before she’d met him, later. When she had yet more time alone to sort it through, and his mere, overwhelming presence didn’t have her mind turning circles, like a leaf caught in an eddy.

After doing her best to charm the members of the
city council, the Rotary Club, the chamber of commerce, and the historical society, the filmmakers whose work had been chosen to be shown at the festival, along with a gaggle of red-hatted women all dressed in purple, she turned toward J.T.

“I could use a bit of fresh air. Would you like to come outside with me?”

He glanced out the windows. “It’s raining.”

“Just a mist,” she countered. “And if you’d be concerned about melting, we’ll stay on the porch.”