by Ciara Knight
Even the thought felt foreign and insane to him.
The dinghy approached under the momentum it had gained while traveling before the engine was cut out, but it didn’t make it to shore, so he waded out to get the line and tied it to a mangrove.
“Special delivery.” Skip called out. “I know, I know, the girls think this place is their sacred hideout that no other people are supposed to visit, but STSB reached me with an order to bring your pregnant wife here, so I followed instructions.”
“Hi there,” Marsha said, as if coming home from work on any regular day.
Trevor forced a calm he didn’t feel. “What are you doing here?”
“You didn’t answer my calls, so you left me no choice.” She held out her hand, waiting for him to help her from the boat.
“When you clean up this mess, call my Rhonda. She won’t trap you or dump you. Good woman for a guy like you.” Skip grabbed an oar and stuck it into the sand to steady the boat.
Trevor didn’t know what to say to that so he only nodded and turned his attention to Marsha. “I’ve been trying to contact you for the last day or so,” Trevor sniped, despite his will to remain cordial.
“Yes, well, once I bought my ticket here, I felt it best to wait until we could speak in person.” Marsha stepped onto the sand in her impractical, fancy-heeled sandals, making him hold her upright with each step.
“I think you two can find your own way back.”
Trevor wanted to shout at the woman and tell her the girls were right about her manipulative ways. He had no doubt she brought Marsha out here to stir up trouble. He needed to get her off Friendhsip Island and quick. “Let’s go.” He headed for the dinghy but she crossed the sand and headed for the lagoon.
“Wait, we should talk for a bit.”
“Talk? I tried to call you. Why didn’t you call me back?”
She didn’t even bother facing him until she reached the waters edge of the lagoon. “Speaking about a baby isn’t easy over the phone.”
“Finding out that you could be a father in the society pages isn’t easy, either,” Trevor growled.
Marsha bent over, holding her belly with a groan.
Panic jolted through him. He raced to her side, held her up, and placed his hand over hers on her belly. “Are you okay? Is the baby alright?”
“Yes, the doctor calls them stretching pains. Guess my modeling career’s over. Which means there’s no reason for us not to get back together. We can have a real life now. The one you always spoke about.” Marsha took his other hand and put it on her belly. “We can be a family.”
A splash drew Trevor’s attention to the water. Three girls were in a canoe, staring at him. Trace, Bri, and Julie.
He stood there frozen in Julie’s broken gaze.
Trace hopped out, untied the dinghy from the mangrove, and tied it to the canoe. “Want to be on our beach so much, fine, you can stay.” She pushed from shore and headed to the ocean.
“Wait. You can’t do that,” Marsha screamed.
Bri shook her head. “And you brought another woman here. Shame on you.”
Julie didn’t say anything. Marsha flicked off her shoes and ran after them, but she halted at the water’s edge with a crinkled nose.
Trevor shook off his surprise and ran to the beach. “Wait! It’s not what you think!”
Julie’s gaze transfixed on him with an I’ll-never-forgive-you expression.
And he knew she wouldn’t.
Ever.
Chapter Twenty-Two
The women didn’t say a word until they’d reached the house. Everything in Julie’s world had been turned upside down in an instant. “I was such a fool. To think I’d believed he deserved a chance to explain. I’d planned on sneaking off to his place after we were done at the beach, but now…”
“Now he’s on our hit list.” Trace tossed the dinghy keys onto the kitchen counter.
Kat eyed them. “You realize you stole that, right? Theft is a crime.”
“You would say that,” Trace sniped.
If Julie didn’t know better, she’d think Trace was madder than she was.
“No. I’d say if you’re going to commit a crime, be smart enough to get away with it and don’t park it at the end of our street and put the keys in Jewels’s house. I’d sink it out in the middle of the river.”
“Why, Kat, I didn’t know you had it in you.” Wind remained at Julie’s side, rubbing small circles on her back.
At least she’d finally found her breath. It had only taken the ride back and the walk up the hill before she could manage to even think about breathing again. Okay, she’d obviously managed the act. She just hadn’t realized it due to being completely numb. Now, though. “How ’bout sinking him in the river?”
“Mom, I didn’t know you had it in you.”
Wind abandoned Julie’s side but didn’t go far. She sat next to Bri. “You don’t know your mother. She once put those roadblock signs up in Edward Wilson’s yard with a message that said Beware, Dead End Man Ahead.”
Bri gasped but with a big grin on her face. “You didn’t.”
“Oh, I did, but he deserved it. The boy tried to seduce Kat, and despite the fact she was too smart for him, he told the school he’d scored behind the football field.”
“Mr. Wilson did that? Is that why he’s always avoided you when we run into him?”
“Yep, but that’s not where the story ends.”
“It isn’t?” Bri sat forward as if watching a thriller at the climactic scene.
“Kat waltzed into the lunchroom and punched him in the eye. His mother was so furious, she came to the school to complain because her son was too gentlemanly to ever hit a girl. That she’d raised him with respect.”
“What happened to Kat?”
“I marched into the principal’s office and confessed to being the one who put the signs in their yard and told her why. His mother was so furious that she took Ed by the ear, marched him to the locker room after school, and, in front of all of his half-dressed football buds, made him tell them that he was a pathetic little man who had to lie because he couldn’t get a girl to sleep with him.”
“She didn’t,” Bri gasped.
“She did. That boy never spoke out of turn again. They called him Dead End Ed for the rest of high school.”
“I don’t think I would want to be Trevor right now.” Bri chuckled.
Julie thought back over their childhood antics and realized nothing would help this situation. “No. I won’t allow it.”
“Oh, why not? It’ll be fun to torture him. What will it be? Signs are kind of our thing, and we can go bigger now that we have money. I’m thinking of renting a billboard on I-95 that says—”
“No.” Julie stood, smoothed the wrinkles on her T-shirt and shorts, and lifted her chin. “Trevor Ashford is off-limits. I won’t allow you to touch him or Marsha.”
“Why not?” Wind asked.
Trace huffed. “Because our dear, sweet friend would never cause a problem when there is a baby involved.”
They all looked to her with understanding. She’d faced such certain ruin as a teenager and knew that she never wanted Bri to suffer for it. “A baby’s a gift. That child trumps a small, almost spring fling with a widow.” She eyed the shop through the window. “But that doesn’t stop me from moving on with my life. It’s time for me to work on what I want next. I’m ready. You ladies find something to do, because I need some alone time to work on my art.” She waltzed out of the living room, through the front door, across the garden, and into her shop. Each step became more difficult, but she made it the fifty steps or so before she collapsed under the weight of the truth. The truth that when she saw Trevor’s hand on Marsha’s belly, it felt like he’d punched Julie in the gut. For all her attempts at moving forward and telling everyone how minor their moment in time was, it was more than that. It had been a promise of a future with love and happiness, which she’d given up on after Joe’s passing. Now she r
emembered why. The pain of loss crippled her with emotion to the point that she didn’t want to get out of bed, or run a shop, or face the world. In that moment, she regretted ever meeting Trevor Ashford and hoped she never saw him again.
If she did, she wasn’t sure she could remember there was a baby that prevented her from retaliating, and she might just pull a Kat and punch his lights out.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Trevor tried to keep his cool with Marsha. “Get on the board. There’s no choice.”
Marsha huffed like a child. He’d forgotten how infuriatingly immature she could be at times. “There is a choice. Call the police or coast guard and have them rescue us, and have those women arrested.”
“Do you have a phone on you? Because I don’t.” Trevor hated wasting time with the obvious, but he wasn’t going to stay on that beach another minute. It wasn’t his beach to share. “And the only way to get us across this river is to paddle. You’ll sit and you’ll be quiet.”
“Is that any way to talk to me? I’m your wife.”
“Ex-wife. Papers were signed and you’ve been paid to leave.” He picked up the makeshift oar he made from one of the broken chairs and held the board for her to climb on and sit.
She crossed her arms over her chest. “Paid to leave? I deserved all that you left me. I was with you for seven years. Sacrificed my career for several of those.”
His anger bubbled. She’d never had a career until she used him to make introductions to prominent people in the industry while working on a business deal for his company. She needed to sit down and allow him to get them to the shore before he lost his temper. “Sit on the board, and for once in your life, be quiet.”
Her mouth dropped open, obviously shocked that any man would ever speak to her that way, but she did as she was told. After all those years of never raising his voice to her, he’d wished he would’ve put her in her place a long time ago.
To his relief, the old board stayed afloat and he managed to paddle with the board. When they reached the edge of the canal and spotted the dinghy across at the end of Sunset Blvd, she erupted in her normal prattle, demanding the police be called.
Good thing it was a calm day, or he would’ve been forced to listen to her complaints even longer. When they reached the other side, he was winded and exhausted from attempting to cross the current. Once he caught his breath, he checked the dinghy but discovered the key wasn’t in the deadman’s switch and it was nowhere to be found.
“What are you going to do?” she asked with a flip of her long hair over her shoulder.
“I’m going after Julie.”
“What am I supposed to do?” she shrieked.
“Walk back to my house and return to Seattle.”
“I’m pregnant,” she stated, as if unable to walk a few blocks in her delicate condition. Based on his experience with his sisters, there was no reason she couldn’t walk.
“I think you can manage.” He set the paddleboard inside the dinghy along with the wood slat, knowing walking would be easier than staying on that board another minute with Marsha. He wasn’t convinced he wouldn’t dump Marsha somewhere out there if she started complaining again. What had he ever seen in her?
“I’m so sorry.” She slid her fingers between his and held tight so he couldn’t pull away. “Pregnancy hormones have me all worked up. But just think, I’m growing a little human being inside. One who will be ours. One who will renew our love for one another and make things better between us.”
He saw the desperation on her face, something he’d never seen before. “Nothing has ever been good between us,” he barked and tugged his hand away.
Marsha quickened her pace to keep up with him. He fought between guilt for treating a woman who could be carrying his child this way and wanting her out of his life once and for all. He reached Julie’s place, but there was no way past the three fuming friends at the front walk.
“Don’t even think about it,” Kat warned.
“Please, I didn’t know she was going to follow me,” he pleaded. “I didn’t even know she was going to come here.”
“Doesn’t matter. You can’t talk to Jewels. Not right now. Not with her here.” Wind pointed to Marsha, and Trevor knew she was right.
“Tell Julie I need to speak with her, please. I’ll come back.” Trevor snagged Marsha by the sleeve and tugged her toward the beach path to his house. They reached the tunnels, and he swore he heard Houdini skittering through them, but he never saw any fur or a twitching nose poke out.
Marsha managed to get ahead of Trevor when they reached the back deck of his home. “Wait, listen to me.” She held her palms to his chest to stop him. “You have to understand. I can’t do this alone. When I found out about the baby, I was frightened. Oh, Trev, I didn’t know what to do. I freaked out and did stupid things. My shrink says that I self-sabotage because I’m scared of being rejected. I thought you’d reject me when you found out, so I ended it with you. And when you didn’t fight to keep me, I thought you didn’t care about me anymore and that you wouldn’t want the baby.” She turned on the tears and stuck out her bottom lip. “Don’t you see, I loved you so much, I let you go.”
For the slightest second, Trevor almost fell for her explanation, but he’d heard it too many times. “You left me, not the other way around. You cheated on me and didn’t have the decency to allow me to divorce you without a show. You manipulated the situation in the media until I gave you everything and left.”
“You were never there,” she accused. “Not really. I always felt like you’d rather be somewhere else than with me.” She moved in closer, caressing his cheek and pushing her chest against him. “Oh darling, don’t you see? I only did those things because I wanted you to fight for me. I wanted to know you could love me, too.” Her warm breath caressed his ear. “I’ve always wanted you.”
The soft touch and sexual energy didn’t cause his body or his heart to respond the way it did at one glance of Julie across the room. Trevor grabbed hold of Marsha’s arms, pushed her two steps from him, and simply said, “No.”
She burst into tears and howled like a baby. “You can’t do this. You can’t abandon me and the baby.”
He knew in that moment that Dustin was right. Marsha would never tell him the truth about the baby. If there was a way to end this here and now, he had to try. “Go back to your fiancé and beg him to take you back. Don’t waste your tears on me.”
Her soft, pouty-lipped expression morphed into brow-crunched anger. “What? You don’t believe the baby’s yours? I dare you to even say such a thing.”
The thought of ending this now and not having to wait on tests results and doctors and to fix things with Julie made him pull a Hail Mary. He could let her believe he knew for sure already that he couldn’t have children. “The truth, you mean? I can’t have children.”
She gasped. “What?” Her gaze danced around the yard, the ocean, him until she settled into her pouty lip routine again. “But I thought…”
“That you could use me once again? Sorry, no. I’m done being manipulated.” Trevor stood tall, waiting for her response and praying he was right and that he could end this here and now.
She burst into tears and threw herself into Trevor’s arms. “Oh please, Trev. We can raise this baby together. You can still be the father.”
All the anxiety that had been knotting his muscles released at her words.
“If you ever loved me, don’t abandon me now. I know I’ve been impossible, but when Rett left me, I realized what a mistake I’d made. It’s you. It’s always been you, Trev. I love you. We can work through this.”
“No, we can’t, and I won’t. And you’re going to fix this, or I will.” Trevor waited for her to stop the sobbing and catch on to his meaning. “If you don’t set the record straight, I’ll tell the press that I can’t have children and that you slept with too many men so you don’t know who the father is.”
“No, you wouldn’t.” She shriveled away fr
om him.
“Let me be clear with you for the first and last time, Marsha Thompson. I will end your social climbing with one phone call if you don’t fix the mess you’ve created.”
She crumpled in front of him. The façade of Marsha Thompson and her attitude wiped away with the ocean breeze. “I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I never meant to hurt you. Our marriage was good at first, wasn’t it?”
“It was, but it hasn’t been for a long time. The games were exhausting, and I’m tired.” He watched her wipe her eyes and look toward the sky as if there were answers.
“I played games because it was the only way to get your attention. When we first met, you couldn’t keep your hands off me, but then things changed.”
“You left for a modeling career. Each time you returned, it was all about your other life, never about us.” He rubbed his forehead. “Listen, we can talk about all our mistakes and rehash everything, but it won’t do any good. We both know our relationship ended a long time ago. If it’s any consolation, I’m sorry you’re facing having a child on your own.”
She shrugged. “I deserve it.”
He kissed her cheek. “No, you don’t. Talk to the real father. If he won’t man up, let me know. I’ll come have a chat with him.”
“You’d do that for me?” she asked, her eyes wide.
“Of course I would. Just no more games,” he warned, feeling like a weight had been lifted from him. Not only about the baby but for finally feeling like the door to his former life with Marsha was closing with the anger and resentment on the other side.
She smiled, and with a nod, she wiped her eyes and sauntered to her car with a back wave. “Still getting alimony.”
He chuckled, realizing despite her moment of humility, she’d always be Marsha Thompson.
The sliding door opened. “I’m proud of you. I thought I was going to have to come out here to keep her from suckering you back into her world, but you held your own.”
