Moonshell Beach: A Shelter Bay Novel (20 page)

“And, to be perfectly honest, after being a cop in the city, stuff like this makes my job more interesting than handing out citations for expired tags or investigating bashed mailboxes.”

She turned back to J.T. “Now. You—go away.”

“Sorry. But you told me to stick to Ms. Joyce like a barnacle. Which is what I’m doing.”

“I didn’t put it that way,” Kara assured Mary. “But I did tell him to stay with you. However,” she said to J.T., “I believe I’m capable of handling things. So, why don’t you grab yourself some cookies and go outside and guard the door while Ms. Joyce finds the clothes she needs?” She made a shooing gesture with her hand.

Looking like a man who’d just gotten a last-minute reprieve from the electric chair, J.T. didn’t hesitate to take her advice and leave.

“That’s very good,” Mary said.

“I’ve known him forever,” Kara said with a quick grin. “It helps. Especially since he had a crush on me when he was in middle school. Not that either of us ever mentions it.”

“I won’t say a word. And the name, by the way, is Mary.” She took in the gown the other woman was holding. “That truly is a beautiful dress and you’re going to look beyond gorgeous in it.”

After telling her a shortened version of how it belonged to one of the two owners of the boutique, who had rushed off and were back with cookies for their movie-star guest, Kara introduced the women with her.

“You probably get tired of hearing this,” Mary told Maddy, “but I am a major fan girl.”

“Thank you. That’s lovely to hear,” the celebrity chef said. “Especially since I’m a huge fan of your work.”

“Thank
you
.” Mary felt a burst of pride that someone whose shows she never missed watching on TV enjoyed her movies. She smiled at the other woman. “Hi.”

“Hi yourself. I’m Charity Tiernan.”

“The vet J.T. told me about. Who’s engaged to his brother’s best friend.”

“That would be me,” Charity said. “And I’ll bet he also warned you to stay away from me if you didn’t want a dog.”

“Or a cat,” Mary said.

Charity laughed. “I can be a little driven. But you can relax, because I never push any animal on anyone who doesn’t really want one. And wouldn’t be a good fit with it.” She tilted her head and studied Mary. “How do you work?”

“Excuse me?”

“I mean, do you go to a studio all day? Or do you mostly write at home?”

“At home, but—”

“Enough,” Kara said on a rich laugh. “Give Mary a break. I’m sure there are lots of dogs in Los Angeles that need adopting. But she’s got to get to her next event and we’re holding her up.…Just tell
Dottie and Doris what you’re looking for, and they’ll have you fixed up in no time.”

“In two shakes of a lamb’s tail,” Doris said.

“That’s true,” Charity said. “I’ve never been much for shopping, but they’re wonders at finding me exactly the right thing.”

“Well, I need some more casual clothes to wear during the day. And something to wear to the wedding,” Mary told them. Then, as they began rifling through the racks, she said to Kara, “If you’re sure you don’t mind J.T. inviting me.”

“Are you kidding? Everyone will be so excited. Including my mother, who told me she watched
Siren Song
in Japanese when they were there helping after the tsunami.”

“J.T. told me a bit about your mom’s relief work. That’s quite a second career.”

“Isn’t it? I worry about her, of course, but she’s so thrilled to be having this grand adventure at this point in her life, I also can’t help being excited for her.”

Doris and Dottie lived up to their promise. In less than five minutes, they had a stack of shoes, bags, and jewelry on the counter and clothes hanging on the door of one of the dressing rooms. In another ten minutes, Mary was out the door, having exchanged her Leon-selected parade outfit for a pair of jeans, a red sweater, and red canvas sneakers.

“Done,” she said.

J.T. swept a glance over her, from the top of her head, which, since it had begun sprinkling again, she’d covered in a baseball cap—which had the town’s name above the whale logo and, below that,
A Whale of a Town
—down to her feet.

“Except for the touristy hat, you look a lot more like a native than you did a few minutes ago.”

“I’m going to take that as a compliment.”

“Which is how I meant it. From the looks of all those bags, you’ve probably equaled that store’s yearly sales. I don’t think I’ve ever met a woman who could snag so much stuff in ten minutes.”

“They had a lot of great stuff. And know their customers.”

“You do realize you’re now going to have to buy another suitcase.”

“Easier to just FedEx the stuff back to California.” She grinned and handed over the bags for him to put in the back of the SUV. “I told you I’m a champion hunter-shopper. And not only did I bag this outfit—I scored a lot of other terrific ones, as well. Including a dress to wear to the wedding, a lovely one-of-a-kind blown-glass piece of a bride and groom from this little gift nook they have at the back of the boutique, and running shoes to wear on the beach tomorrow morning.”

He’d just closed the back of the SUV and climbed into the driver’s seat. “What are you talking about?”

“Apparently they’ve been buying sea glass jewelry from a California designer who’s expanded into blown glass, so since the jewelry sells so well, they decided to stock a few of her other pieces, one of which was perfect for a wedding present.”

“I wasn’t talking about the wedding present. I was referring to the running shoes.”

“Oh, them. I run on the beach every morning in Malibu.”

“Don’t look now, sweetheart, but this isn’t Malibu.”

“Aw.” She fluttered her lashes at him. “I knew I’d wear you down eventually. But I never expected to get to the romantic point where you’d be calling me sweetheart this quickly.”

He looked up at the sunroof as if garnering strength. But learning to act for the big screen, where everything is magnified, had taught her nuances. Enough that she could see the faint smile trying to break free at the corners of his mouth.

“A beach is a beach,” she said when he didn’t respond to that teasing statement. “I like to run. And so, apparently, do you. So, I figured we could get out early, before everyone’s up and about, get a few miles in, have breakfast; then I’ll still have plenty of time to get to the first screening.”

“What if it’s raining?” He pulled into traffic, managing to avoid a young woman on roller skates, inexplicably turning circles in the middle of the two-lane street.

“Got that covered. Literally, with a slicker in one of those bags. So you’re going to have to come up with a better reason to get out of it.” She sobered a bit when she realized that for some reason he really seemed against the idea. Surely he didn’t seriously believe she was in danger. “If you’re worrying about protecting me—”

“That’s not it. What I’m concerned about is…Oh, hell. Just forget it.”

He pulled up in front of the theater, where a long line snaked down the sidewalk and around the corner. “Seems it’s time for your close-up.”

The smile was gone. And although the sky had turned the color of tarnished silver, he’d stuck on those damn sunglasses again, keeping her from seeing his eyes.

She wanted to ask him what his problem was. But then people spotted her and began calling out her name, so, straightening her shoulders, she put on her best movie-star smile.

Showtime.

The clouds, which had held off until after the parade, began weeping again as Sax drove down the winding drive lined with fir trees from which gray moss hung like ghostly veils. As happy as he was that Kara had agreed to marry him—even knowing that they were perfect together and that “till death do we part” line in the vows didn’t even begin to cover how long he intended to stay with her—when he’d awakened this morning, he’d realized there was something he still needed to do.

He pulled up outside a high iron gate that had been pitted and rusted by years of Pacific storms and rainy weather. The last time he’d been here to Sea View Cemetery was when he’d first gotten home. At the time his ghosts had accompanied him. Although he was relieved—for his sake and theirs—that they’d moved on to wherever ghosts go in the afterlife, at the moment he could’ve used some backup from his former battle teammates.

He sat in the Camaro his father had kept up for him while he’d been away for a long time, hands draped over the steering wheel, listening to Billie
Holiday’s “Willow Weep for Me.” The blues singer’s soulful tones brought to mind small, smoky rooms and half-empty whiskey glasses. It also reminded him how much his life had changed since Kara and Trey had enriched it.

Which, occasionally and unexpectedly, would cause a sharp stab of guilt he knew, on an intellectual level, his friend would tell him was misplaced.

He grabbed a bag from the front seat. “Might as well get it over with.”

The tall gate creaked when he pushed it open, causing some birds in the branches of a century-old western hemlock to take to the leaden sky in a wild flurry of wings. The front rows of rounded headstones dated back to when the town was first founded, many of the dates worn away by the salt air and age.

Fog curled around his boots and the damp earth squished beneath his feet as he walked past a stone angel who’d lost a wing to a tree downed by the great Columbus Day storm of 1962. Because he’d been young and crazy, and only Cole may have been bucking for sainthood, bittersweet memories of coming to the cemetery to get drunk with the guys flashed through his mind. Including the night shortly before he’d taken off to the Marines, when Jared had belted out a drunken version of Willie Nelson’s “Angel Flying Too Close to the Ground.”

A weeping willow arched graceful green branches over the grave he’d come here today to visit. Which, he thought, made the Billie Holiday song that had come onto the jazz station just as he’d arrived at the cemetery both appropriate and ironic.

There was a small display of wildflowers, their
petals damped by the misty rain, next to the granite stone. Although he couldn’t name the flowers, since Jared’s parents had left Shelter Bay after his death, he suspected they’d been left by Kara. Proving that once again they were on the same wavelength. Sax had never had any problem with her having loved another man so deeply. On the contrary, her ability to give her heart so fully and so freely was one of the reasons he’d fallen for her so many years ago.

Sax had no problem with Jared having been her first great love. Because she’d chosen him to be her last.

Unlike many of the earlier graves, which bore elaborate epitaphs for the departed, the gray stone had merely been carved with his name, Jared Conway, the dates of his birth and death, and beneath that the words
Semper Fidelis
—“always faithful.”

Which Sax, who may have been a Navy SEAL, not a Marine, had tried his best to be.

He took a deep breath. In the distance, the sea, which had given the cemetery its name, was draped in a thick blanket of fog.

“Kara’s pregnant, Jare.” He thought about his ghosts and how they’d made vague references to life after death. “But I guess you know that. Although it wasn’t easy, since you’re a really tough act to follow, I finally managed to talk her into marrying me.”

Even now, with his child growing inside her, and her son, whom he couldn’t love more if he’d been Trey’s natural father, Sax couldn’t quite believe his luck. Which, he reminded himself, was possible only because of this man’s very bad luck to have survived multiple deployments, only to be killed when, as a cop, he’d responded to a domestic abuse call that had gone south.

He pressed his fingers against his eyes. Hard. Took another breath. Damn. Although he’d practiced what he was going to say, it was proving more difficult than he’d ever imagined.

“It’s not that she doesn’t still love you.” He forced himself to speak past the lump in his throat, as Jared’s words, the day he’d climbed onto that bus headed for basic training, echoed from beyond the grave.
Take good care of my girl while I’m gone, Douchett.

And then him calling from Oceanside, asking him to take her to their senior prom.
Make sure she has a good time. We can’t have her sitting around like a wallflower, feeling sorry for herself.

Which he’d tried his best to do, which hadn’t been easy, since when he’d arrived to pick her up for that prom, her eyes had been red-rimmed from crying when the home pregnancy test she’d taken that morning had proved positive.

Sax wondered now if Jared knew about the impulsive kiss they’d shared on Moonshell Beach later that night. When she’d sobbed in his arms and, in a misguided attempt to make her feel better, he’d kissed her. And she’d kissed him back, and sealed his fate forever.

Not that he would’ve done anything about it. Because although he’d discovered that night that forbidden fruit really was the sweetest, no way would he betray a pal.

“She’ll always love you, and hey, I’m okay with that. It’s just that, believe it or not, she loves me now. And I want you to know that I’m going to continue to work every day to be worthy of that love.

“And that as honestly happy as I am that we’re going to have a baby, and we’re both going to make
sure that Trey never forgets his father, and that you’ll always be his hero, I’m going to do my damnedest to make sure I’m a good dad. Because he may not be son of my blood, but”—Sax put his hand on his chest—“he’s the son of my heart.

“I hope you also know that I never tried to take advantage of the trust you put in me. I didn’t mean to fall in love with Kara. But I did.” Major understatement there, but he figured that if Jared, wherever he was, could actually hear him, he’d also know how hard and how deep his friend had fallen. “Though if you’d lived, I would’ve kept my mouth shut and this marriage wouldn’t be happening.

“But you didn’t, and now it is, and I want you to know that you don’t have to worry about her. Because I swear it’s going to work out. We can make each other, and our kids, happy.”

He opened the bag, took out one of the bottles of Budweiser Jared had always brought out here when it was his turn to score the alcohol, unscrewed the cap, and poured the beer on the ground in front of the stone, next to Kara’s pretty flowers. Then opened a second bottle and stood there drinking while the surf roared in the distance and birds sang in the trees overhead.