Saving Simon (Tarnished Saints Series Book 5) (6 page)

“You won’t fall because I’ll be holding you. Now come here or you’ll regret it in the long run.”

She wasn’t sure if he meant she’d regret not seeing the view or rejecting him. She moved closer and he reached out and put his arm around her waist, turning sideways and pulling her in front of him. He wrapped both arms around her and she could feel the heat of his body against hers as well as the rapid beating of his heart against her back. She didn’t feel so afraid anymore, wrapped protectively in his arms.

“Now look up at that moon and those wisps of clouds. The sea is special to me. I love being on a ship or on the water of any kind. I don’t think I could live being away from all this. This is my life. This is what makes life worth living. Now just look out there and tell me it isn’t the most beautiful thing you’ve ever seen.”

She did as he told her, feeling a sense of serenity pass through her.

“You’re right, Officer Taylor. It is beautiful. It feels so peaceful.”

“I told you to call me Simon.” His voice was a hot whisper in her ear.

“Of course . . . Simon.” She turned and looked up to him then and wished she hadn’t. His face almost brushed against hers, and his eyes stared at her lips.

“That’s better, Piper.” His mouth came closer and she lifted her chin and closed her eyes, anticipating feeling those strong but soft lips caressing hers again, but this time not in an act of saving her life. This time, in an act of passion. Then their lips met and she felt as if magic had passed through her body. His kiss was bold, yet gentle. He tasted of power, challenge, and the sea.

“Piper, there you are!” Her father broke the intimate moment and she stepped away from Simon quickly, hoping he hadn’t seen them kiss. “We need to get back to the cabin and pack. Plus, there are a few things I need to go over with you about a new business deal with one of the passengers.”

“Daddy, can’t this wait til later?” She looked down to the ground, feeling embarrassed.

“No, sweetheart. You know work always comes first. Now stop bothering this boy and let him do his job. We need to go now.” He pulled her away from Simon, and her heart just about broke. She saw the angst in Simon’s eyes and also the disappointment. She felt it too, because she knew that after tonight, she’d never see Simon again. That thought was scarier to her than even falling overboard. Simon had touched a place in her heart that no man had ever done before.

Chapter 5

It had been three days since Simon returned to his home town of Sweet Water, Michigan, taking a month leave from his job on the cruise ship. He enjoyed being around his family again, but he couldn’t stop thinking of Piper and the kiss they’d shared before her father carted her away. It bothered him so much, that he’d barely gotten out of bed in the last three days.

Simon didn’t like the way the man treated his daughter, nor the way he had referred to him as ‘boy’. He wished now that he had done something about it. Piper deserved better, and he should have been the one to tell her that.

But there had been no opportunity to do so. The ship had docked early in the morning and when he went to her room, she had already checked out and left. Thad had told him he’d seen her father hurrying her off the ship, and Simon only wished he’d at least had the time to tell her goodbye.

There was a knock at the lake cabin door that he was staying in, and he decided just to ignore it, rolling over and hiding his head under the pillow instead. Then, before he knew it, the pillow was being pulled away and he was doused with a pitcher of ice water.

“God dammit, what’re you doing?” he barked, sitting up in bed and taking a quick deep inhale of breath. His brother Thad stood there with the empty pitcher dangling from his fingers and a shit-eating grin on his face.

“I thought you needed a little help getting out of bed,” said Thad.

“I don’t need any help, now get out of here before I kick your ass for acting like a fool.”

“Looks to us like you’re the one acting like a fool,” came another voice from outside the door.

He looked up to see his brother Zeb enter the room with two of his older brothers, Thomas, and Levi, right behind him.

“What is this, some sort of intervention?” he growled. “Can’t a man have a little privacy around here?”

“Simon, I don’t mind letting you stay in my cabin while you’re here, but you’ve got to get up and be sociable,” said Thomas, the eldest of the twelve brothers. Thomas was tall and rugged with dark hair and had six sons. And though he disciplined them strictly, he’d also taught them to be self-sufficient – even the youngest who was only six. He’d married Angel who had a young daughter and now was pregnant with their eight child.

“That’s right,” said Levi, who’d become the mayor of the town after being released from prison. “You haven’t even taken the time to meet my kids.”

“Kids? What kids? Oh yeah, that’s right you have twins I’ve never met. Well, don’t go pointing a finger at me when you never even knew them either until a few months ago.” Levi had married Candace, and they too, were now expecting another child.

“Come on in, Jaydee,” came the next voice, and his brother Judas, the sheriff of Sweet Water, walked in followed by a teenaged girl with face piercings, ear gauges, and tattoos, holding a crying baby. “Levi, this is my daughter Jaydee and my grandson, Mathias.” Judas still had a sling on his arm and Simon knew it was injured from jumping in front of a bullet to save his newfound daughter.

“Nice to meet you,” he said, pulling the sheet up to cover his briefs, not wanting to be seen half-naked by a teenage girl.

“Did you want to hold the baby?” she asked, trying to push the crying whelp in his face.

“No, and try to quiet that thing already, I’ve got a headache.” He leaned far away from the obnoxious infant.

“Got a hangover?” asked Levi with a crooked smile.

“No, that would be you, Levi,” he pointed out. “My headache is from something totally different.”

“He’s lovesick,” said Thad, putting the empty pitcher down on the bedside table with a loud clank.

“So you met a girl on the cruise?” asked Judas with a nod of his head. “Nice.”

“I did but it’s over. It was stopped before it began, by her father, not that it’s anyone’s business.”

His brothers crowded into the small room, and Jaydee, or J.D., as everyone but Judas called her, sat on the edge of the bed and lay the baby down, looking like she was going to change its diaper right there.

“Is this some kind of lame attempt to get me out of bed?” he grumbled.

“No, but this is,” said another of his brothers, Nate, who walked into the room next. Nate was the second youngest of the brothers and had been down in the Caribbean for a while with Simon and Thad, and played guitar in a band.

“What is?” he asked, and almost wished he hadn’t.

“Is it time?” asked Nate, looking at his brother Levi who was always the instigator of the bunch.

“Oh, it’s time all right,” said Levi, opening the door to the bedroom wider. “Stand back everyone, and J.D. you’d better get that baby off the bed before he’s hurt.”

“Hurt? What’s going on?” asked Simon, wanting nothing more than to go back to sleep. But with all these people in his room, and dripping wet and with ice cubes in his bed, he knew it was never going to happen.

“Go ahead,” Levi told his brother, Nate. “I’ll give you the honors.”

“Thanks, I appreciate it, Levi.” Nate stuck his head out the door and shouted at the top of his lungs, “Pig Pile!”

“Pig what?” asked Simon just before he heard the thundering of lots of little footsteps running over the cabin floor. “Oh crap!” he swore, seeing his brothers backing out of the way, and the stampede of kids that were headed right toward him.

“Uncle Simon!” they yelled and before he knew it, nearly a dozen kids had jumped up on the bed and flung their bodies at him.

He put out his arms to block his face, but the smallest of his nephews, Eli, jumped atop him, kneeing him in the groin in the process. Simon let out a whoosh of air from his lungs and bit back the curses threatening to spill from his lips, not wanting to swear in front of all his nephews and nieces.

“Welcome home, Uncle Simon!” said Thomas’s eldest son, Daniel who’d turned seventeen a few months ago.

“Are you happy to be home?” asked a little girl he didn’t even recognize but who looked a lot like Levi.

Drenched in ice water, kneed in the groin, and covered in kids never felt so good. It reminded Simon of growing up with his eleven brothers and all the good times as well as the trouble they’d gotten into. He’d been gone for about five years, only stopping home once a year at Christmas while he was in the Navy and now on the cruise ship. When first his father died, then his brothers all moved away, and next his mother passed-on as well, he’d thought there was no reason to return to Sweet Water anymore.

Now he knew he’d been wrong, because as miserable as he was at this moment about everything in his life, he knew that his family was always there for him. He felt ashamed that he hadn’t been there for them in return.

“It feels great to be home,” said Simon reaching out and tickling all the kids, their giggles making him feel more alive than he had in years. “It feels better than you all could ever imagine!”

* * *

Piper pulled her metallic-sea-blue BMW Z4 convertible into a rinky-dink little gas station, intending on asking for directions to Beatrice Glover’s marina. The GPS on her car seemed to have given her some odd, as-the-crow-flies directions, and she finally got tired of hearing the automated voice telling her to turn around and reroute, so she’d just ended up shutting it off altogether.

She’d driven over two hours from Chicago by request of her father, coming to Sweet Water to visit the Thunder Lake Marina. She didn’t want to come do her father’s dirty work, but this is usually how it went. She had the business degree and his success was made from others’ misfortunes. If he so much as saw a weak link, he’d jump on the chance to screw someone out of their lifelong savings and business and buy it out from under them for a small amount of what it was really worth. He hadn’t always been this way, but lately she felt as if she didn’t even know him.

She pulled up to the gas pump and was about to get out to ask directions when a short, balding man in overalls with a dirty white t-shirt sauntered out to meet her.

“Excuse me, but I need directions,” she said, deciding to stay in the car after all. She didn’t like the look of the place, though the building did seem freshly painted. The man looked like a backwoods type and she wasn’t at all sure he wasn’t going to pull out a gun and start shooting at her next. Glad the top was up on the convertible, she only wished now she had rolled up the windows part way before she shut off the motor.

“I’ll fill her up for ya, ma’am, don’t bother gettin’ outta the car. We give real good service here at Kramer’s Garage.”

“I don’t want gas, I want directions,” she said, already feeling irritated with him since he obviously hadn’t heard her the first time she asked.

“Geez, she’s a beaut,” said the man with a slight whistle as he looked over the top of his glasses to see the car better. Then he pulled out the hose from the gas pump. “What year is this anyway? I bet Thomas and his boys would love ta getta look at this car. I heard one of these Z4’s can go from zero to sixty miles in five point five seconds.”

“No, please,” she said, holding up her hand for him to stop, but he continued to stick the gas nozzle into her tank anyway. “Fine, give me a few gallons, but make it premium.”

“Premium? Ha! That’s funny,” the man said with a hoarse chuckle. “No one’s ever asked fer premium in Sweet Water. That’s why I stopped carrying it years ago. All we’ve got here, sweetie, is regular.”

When the man decided to wash her window next, and she saw him walking over with a squeegee on a pole that looked dirtier than his t-shirt, she jumped out and stopped him.

“That’ll be fine, I just need directions to the marina,” she said, laying a hand on his arm. He looked at her hand and then back up to her face and smiled.

“What’s a pretty girl like you doin’ in a little town like Sweet Water?”

She was wondering the same thing right about now. At least he’d told her twice now she was in Sweet Water, so she knew the marina had to be close by.

“Where’s the lake?” she asked, just hoping to be able to find the little watering hole called Thunder Lake. She wouldn’t be surprised if it wasn’t even on a map. Too bad she’d relied on her car’s navigational system to tell her how to get here instead of looking at an actual map before she left.

“Where’s the lake?” he echoed. “Well that depends on what lake yer lookin’ for.” He removed the nozzle from the car and held it up as he talked. A little gasoline dribbled down his arm but he just brushed it against the bib of his overalls. “Lake Michigan is so big that if ya didn’t see it ya may need some glasses. And Lake . . .”

“Thunder Lake,” she told him. “I’m looking for the marina owned by Beatrice Glover on Thunder Lake. Not Lake Michigan. I know where that is.”

“Oh, sure. That’s just around the bend, past the big old oak where you’ll take a left. Follow that down to CR325 where you’ll find a gravel road. If ya want to go to the marina hang a left, but if ya want to go to the Taylors, then ya stay to the right.”