Finding Home Again (Catalina Cove)

by Brenda Jackson

  “How could I not notice?” Bryce refused to consider the tinge of resentment she was feeling had anything to do with jealousy. She dated and so did Kaegan. They meant nothing to each other anymore.

  “I noticed you’ve been keeping your eyes on him a lot tonight, as well,” Vashti pointed out. Deciding not to give Bryce time to say anything, since it was obvious that she was in one of those bash-Kaegan moods, she said, “Now back to the issue of helping Kaegan tidy up. With the three of us working together it won’t take long to get his place back in order. You and I can pack up the food while Kaegan breaks down all the patio tables and tents.”

  “Why can’t he do it by himself?” Bryce asked.

  “Because we’re his friends and should help him.”

  “Speak for yourself, Vash.”

  “No, I’m speaking for the both of us, Bryce. Stop being difficult.”

  “I’m not being difficult.”

  “Yes, you are.”

  Okay, maybe she was, but when it came to Kaegan Chambray, she felt she had every right to be difficult. She’d told Vashti some of what had happened, but she hadn’t told her all of it. Bryce frowned at Vashti. “Honestly, Vash. There are times when you really do push the bounds of our friendship.”

  “I do not.”

  “Yes, you do.”

  “What’s the big deal, since you claim you’re over Kaegan?” Vashti quipped.

  “I am over him.”

  “Then act like it and not like a woman still carrying a torch after ten years.”

  Bryce didn’t say anything. Did she really act that way? That was the last impression she wanted to give anyone, especially Kaegan. “Fine, but I still plan to ignore him.”

  Vashti shook her head and smiled. “You always do.”

  * * *

  KAEGAN CHAMBRAY GLANCED around and saw that everyone had left. It had been another great party. The food was good and there had been plenty of it. The September weather had cooperated. Tents had been set up outside, and huge buckets of seafood—blue crabs, shrimp, crawfish and lobster—had been served, as well as ribs cooked on the grill.

  When he had a cookout, it was for his employees, although he always included his friends. He liked rewarding his workers whenever they broke sales records or if the company got a big business deal. He felt it was a good incentive. He also believed in giving his employees bonuses. That pretty much assured he was able to retain workers who were dependable and loyal.

  He turned to look out at the bayou, which was practically in his backyard. As far as he was concerned, there was no better place to live. Those who called the bayou their home had a culture all their own. The people were a mixture of influences, such as Spanish, French, German, African, Irish and, in his case, Native American. Those with predominantly French ancestry still spoke the language. Together all the various groups made up the foundation of the Cajun culture.

  “If you need help with anything, Kaegan, I will be glad to stay behind and help.”

  Kaegan turned to find Sasha Johnson. He thought she’d left. Her brother, Farley, worked on one of his boats. Sasha had moved to the cove a few months ago after a bitter divorce to live with Farley. Kaegan had invited both siblings to the party, but Farley was battling a cold. Sasha had come alone. “Thanks for the offer, but I can manage.”

  “You sure?”

  “Positive.”

  “It was a nice party, Kaegan.”

  “Thanks.” Landing the Chappell account had given him a reason to celebrate. His representative had been courting the huge restaurant chain for years, as Kaegan wanted to get in as their seafood supplier. Then out of the clear blue sky he’d gotten a call this summer. The Chappell Group needed more fresh seafood than their present supplier could provide and wanted to know if Chambray Seafood Shipping Company could deliver. Kaegan had said that he could and he had.

  It had taken a full week of long harvesting hours, but in the end he and his crew had delivered, and the Chappell Group had remembered. When their contract with the other supplier ended, they had come to him with an awesome deal.

  A flash of pink moving around in his house made Kaegan frown when he recalled just who’d worn that particular color tonight. He glanced back at Sasha. “Tell Farley that I hope he starts feeling better. Good night.” Without waiting for Sasha’s response, he quickly walked off, heading inside his home.

  He heard a noise coming from the kitchen. Moving quickly, he walked in to find Bryce Witherspoon on a ladder putting something in one of the cabinets. Anger, to a degree he hadn’t felt in a long time, consumed him. Standing there in his kitchen on that ladder was the one and only woman he’d ever loved. The one woman he would risk his life for and recalled doing so once. She was the only woman who’d had his heart from the time they were in grade school. The only one he’d ever wanted to marry and have his babies. The only one who...

  He realized he’d been standing recalling things he preferred not remembering. What he should be remembering was that she was the woman who’d broken his heart. “What the hell are you doing in here, Bryce?”

  His loud, booming voice startled her. She jerked around, lost her balance and came tumbling off the ladder. He rushed over and caught her in his arms before she could hit the floor. His chest tightened, and his nerves, and another part of his anatomy, kicked in the moment his hands and arms touched the body he used to know as well as his own. A body he’d introduced to passion. A body he’d—

  “Put me down, Kaegan Chambray!”

  He started to drop her, just for the hell of it. She was such a damn ingrate. “Next time I’ll just let you fall on your ass,” he snapped, placing her on her feet and trying not to notice how beautiful she was. Her eyes were a mix of hazel and moss green, and were adorned by long eyelashes. She had high cheekbones and shoulder-length brown curly hair. Her skin was a gorgeous honey-brown and her lips, which were curved in a frown at the moment, had always been one of her most distinct traits.

  “Let go of my hand, Kaegan!”

  Her sharp tone made him realize he’d been standing there staring at her. He fought to regain his senses. “What are you doing, going through my cabinets?”

  She rounded on him, tossing all that beautiful hair out of her face. “I was on that ladder putting your spices back in the cabinets.”

  He crossed his arms over his chest. “Why?”

  “Because I was helping you tidy up after the party by putting things away.”

  She had to be kidding. “I don’t need your help.”

  “Fine! I’ll leave, then. You can take Vashti home.”

  Take Vashti home? What the hell is she talking about? He was about to ask when Vashti burst into the kitchen. “What in the world is going on? I heard the two of you yelling and screaming all the way in the bathroom.”

  Kaegan turned to Vashti. “What is she talking about, me taking you home? Where’s Sawyer?”

  “He got a call and had to leave. I asked Bryce to drop me off at home. I also asked her to assist me in helping you straighten up before we left.”

  “I don’t need help.”

  Bryce rounded on him. “Why don’t you tell her what you told me? Namely, that you don’t need my help.”

  He had no problem doing that. Glancing back at Vashti, he said, “I don’t need Bryce’s help. Nor do I want it.”

  Bryce looked at Vashti. “I’m leaving. You either come with me now or he can take you home.”

  Vashti looked from one to the other and then threw up her hands in frustration. “I’m leaving with you, Bryce. I’ll be out to the car in a minute.”

  When Bryce walked out of the kitchen, Kaegan turned to Vashti. “You had no right asking her to stay here after the party to do anything, Vashti. I don’t want her here. The only reason I even invite her is because of you.”

  Kaegan had seen fire in Vashti’s eyes be
fore, but it had never been directed at him. Now it was. She crossed the room, and he had a mind to take a step back, but he didn’t. “I’m sick and tired of you acting like an ass where Bryce is concerned, Kaegan. When will you wake up and realize what you accused her of all those years ago is not true?”

  He glared at her. “Oh? Is that what she told you? News flash—you weren’t there, Vashti, and I know what I saw.”

  “Do you?”

  “Yes. So you can believe the lie she’s telling you all you want, but I know what I saw that night.”

  Vashti drew in a deep breath. “Do you? Or do you only know what you think you saw?”

  Then without saying anything else, she turned and walked out of the kitchen.

  CHAPTER TWO

  VASHTI SLID INTO the car and snapped the seat belt in place. Before starting the ignition, Bryce said, “I cherish our friendship, Vash, and I know why it’s important to you that me, you and Kaegan remain friends. After all, it was your idea that we do this,” she said, holding up her finger that bore the scar of the nick the three of them had made years and years ago. They had been in the first grade together.

  “But not even this matters to me anymore. I heard what he told you after I walked out of the kitchen. He deliberately said it loud enough for me to hear. It really wasn’t anything I didn’t know already. He does not want me to come to his parties, so let me go on record as saying that tonight will be my last time attending one of Kaegan’s parties, Vash. So please don’t ask me to ever come to one again.”

  Vashti didn’t say anything, and Bryce didn’t expect her to. Vashti knew her and knew when she’d reached her limit about anything. Tonight she had with Kaegan. There was no way she could stop him from coming into her parents’ café each morning as a customer, but she could continue to ignore him. And she would.

  “Okay, Bryce,” Vashti finally said when Bryce started the engine. “I honestly thought that being around each other would make you and Kaegan realize how much the two of you mean to each other.”

  “It did. It made us realize just how much we dislike each other.”

  “But it doesn’t have to be this way. You can tell him the truth about that night.”

  Bryce didn’t say anything for a minute as she put the car in gear. “I did. Or at least, I tried to.”

  “What! When? You never told me that.”

  No, she hadn’t, mainly because after telling Vashti what had caused her and Kaegan’s breakup, she’d been too emotionally drained that night to tell her the other part. “What I didn’t tell you was when I got that call from Kaegan letting me know why he was breaking up with me and that he intended to block my number, I used every penny I had in my savings account and caught the bus from college, all the way from Grambling. That meant crossing four states and enduring an eighteen-hour bus ride to reach North Carolina. And because he had blocked my number there was no way for me to let him know I was coming.”

  “What happened when you got there?”

  “Well, for starters, I couldn’t get on the military base. But the soldier at the gate checked his log and told me that Kaegan wasn’t on base anyway. That he was on a two-day pass and chances were he would be at the Mud Hole that night.”

  “The Mud Hole?”

  “Yes. It’s a hangout for the marines and located close to base. I checked into a hotel, freshened up, and that night I went to the Mud Hole.”

  Bryce paused a moment and then said, “More than anything, now I wish I hadn’t.”

  “Why? What happened?”

  Bryce tightened her hands on the steering wheel as she remembered that night. “Kaegan was there that night and he’d been drinking.”

  “Kaegan? Drinking?”

  Bryce knew why Vashti was surprised. Because his father had been an alcoholic, Kaegan had sworn never to touch the stuff because it turned fairly decent men into assholes.

  “Yes, he was drinking and had a barely dressed woman sitting in his lap. I approached him, and when he saw me, the look in his eyes was one I’d never seen before. He proceeded to say some not-so-nice things to me in front of the woman and the friends he’d been with. I tried to get him to go outside with me so we could talk privately, but he refused to do that and said he didn’t want to hear anything I had to say. He said his father had been right about me all along. He told me to leave and that he hoped to never see me again.”

  Bryce paused again, and then she said, “When I refused to leave, tried to make him listen to what I’d come all that way to say, he got mad and left...with her. That woman who all but had her hands inside his pants. He kissed her right in front of me and then they left together. I went back to my hotel room and cried the entire night.”

  “Oh, Bryce, I’m so sorry you went through that.”

  “I am, too. But even on the bus ride back to Grambling, I kept telling myself it wasn’t the Kaegan that I knew who’d said those awful things to me. It had to have been the liquor talking. I even convinced myself that I could forgive him for sleeping with another woman if he’d done so that night.” Bryce felt the knot in her throat when she said, “I loved him that much, Vash. I’ve always loved him. I told myself I could wait for him to come around. That he would regain his senses and would eventually call me. Days became weeks. Weeks turned into months. Months into years.”

  She was quiet for a moment, then continued. “I ran into Mr. Chambray at one of the festivals a year later and he accused me of being the reason Kaegan refused to come back to Catalina Cove, even for a visit. He said that I had hurt his boy and that he was glad Kaegan found out what a slut I was.”

  Vashti drew in a sharp breath. “Mr. Chambray said that to you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Oh, Bryce.”

  She could hear the trembling in Vashti’s voice and didn’t want her pity. “It’s okay, Vash. That day I finally accepted that Mr. Chambray probably had the same opinion of me that Kaegan had.”

  She pulled the car into Vashti and Sawyer’s driveway. When she brought the car to a stop, she turned to Vashti. It was then that Bryce felt her tears. She hadn’t realized until that moment that she’d been crying. “I’ve gotten over him, Vash—honest, I have. But it still hurts knowing he had so little trust in me after all we’d been through together. I had loved him so much, but I promised myself years ago that I would never let Kaegan hurt me again. And that’s a promise I intend to keep.”

  * * *

  KAEGAN MOVED AWAY from the window when Bryce’s car finally drove off. He rubbed a hand down his face, feeling frustrated. Hadn’t he made a vow when he moved back to Catalina Cove that he would not let Bryce destroy him any more than she already had? Each and every time she came to his house—the place that should have been their home—it took another bite out of him.

  Tonight had been the last straw when he’d walked into his kitchen and had seen her on that ladder. First off, he had been concerned for her safety. But then seeing her from behind had totally unnerved him. She’d always had one hell of a figure and she still did.

  Angry with himself for admiring her ass, he had snapped at her and then the confrontation had begun. Although he’d wished otherwise, Vashti had been caught in the middle. But then, she was the one who’d insisted he invite Bryce.

  In the past, it had been pretty easy to ignore her. But not tonight. It might have been her outfit, a pink shorts set with white sandals, that had been to blame. He’d always liked her in pink because he’d thought she always looked ultrafeminine in that color.

  He had tried not to notice her but he had. He knew every damn man who’d tried talking to her tonight, and each time one would approach her, his stomach would tighten in knots. It had been ten years, so why was he stressing over a woman who meant nothing to him? Absolutely nothing.

  An hour later he’d finished breaking everything down, at least as much as he intended to do tonight.
Tomorrow was Saturday and after sleeping late he would wake up and do the rest. He began stripping off his clothes for a shower and for some reason his gaze went to a certain framed portrait on the wall.

  There was nothing special about the painting, but behind it was his safe, where his valuables were kept. He walked over to it and entered the combination, then opened the safe. He stared at the only thing inside. That damn little white box.

  He reached inside and pulled it out, asking himself for the umpteenth time why he still had it. He should have gotten rid of it years ago, but had convinced himself he needed it as a reminder of the time in his life when he’d been young, naive and gullible, and had allowed a woman to make a fool of him.

  He’d left Catalina Cove the day he’d graduated from high school. Together he and Bryce had mapped out a plan for their future. He would serve six years in the military. That would give her time to complete her last two years of high school and four years of college before they married. After she finished college they would marry. She’d been in her senior year of college and he’d come home over spring break. It had been a surprise visit with a purpose. He was going to officially ask her to marry him.

  Opening the box, he gazed upon the engagement ring he had saved his paychecks for almost a year to afford. When he’d first seen it in a jewelry-store window he had immediately known it was the ring he wanted to give Bryce. That was before he’d seen her in the arms of another man.

  He closed his eyes for a moment when memories of that night assailed him and ripped into him. That had been the night she’d shredded his heart. His father had been writing and telling him that he’d seen Bryce around town with Samuel Abbott whenever she came home from college. But Kaegan hadn’t believed him because his parents had never approved of his relationship with Bryce. They’d wanted him to be with a girl from the tribe.

  Kaegan had known Samuel from growing up in the cove. He was the son of wealthy parents who’d owned the only pharmacy in town for years. In high school Samuel had been a star athlete in practically every sport he competed in. He was what the girls had called a superjock and they would hang around him like lovesick puppies.