Barefoot at Midnight (Barefoot Bay Timeless Book 3)

by Roxanne St Claire

  But he also needed to be somewhat honest with her.

  “I need a place to live, Libby,” he said.

  She frowned, not quite understanding.

  “My job came with a small efficiency at the Ritz, and since I walked out, they’re going to evict me. Not the first time I’ve been without a home, so maybe you could be like Jake and let me take that mattress and crash upstairs at the Pelican.”

  She drew back, the request obviously surprising her. “I don’t know,” she said. “I don’t know how Sam would feel about it.”

  “How do you feel about it?”

  She exhaled, thinking. “I have mixed emotions, I’ll be honest.”

  “What are they?”

  “Well, on one hand, I want to say it would be a really stupid idea and I’m not letting you step foot on the property.”

  “That sounds like Sam more than Libby.”

  She lifted a shoulder. “On the other hand, it has been a sanctuary to you, and you need one now.”

  “So much,” he said.

  She was quiet for a long moment before talking again. “I’ve been screwed, Law,” she finally said. “Literally and figuratively. Loved and lost hard a couple of times. And…” She flicked her finger toward the picture. “I’ve lived my whole life grieving the fact that I don’t really know who my father was, but still clinging to the hope that he might show up someday.” She touched the corner of her eye, wiping a stray tear. “So I’m very careful with relationships and…men.”

  “Libby, take sex out of the equation, please. I’m not going to pressure you. I’ll stop teasing you about it.”

  Her lips curved in a smile. “Don’t,” she said. “I like it. And I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t, you know…”

  “Interested?”

  “Human. Female.”

  “And way overdue.”

  “Way,” she agreed with a laugh. “But living at the Pelican?” She shook her head. “I’m already going to get my knuckles rapped by my attorney for coming here today, but I’ll talk to Sam.”

  It was closer to the goal. Not there, but closer. He doubted Sam would go for it. He needed a more compelling argument.

  “I could work there. Cook for you. Run the restaurant since you’re on such a skeleton crew.”

  Her eyes flashed. “Now that would be pushing it.”

  “You need the help, Libby.”

  She nodded. “Let me talk to Sam. Let me think about it. I’ll call you. The restaurant is closed on Monday, anyway, so if we did something like this, you could move in tomorrow.”

  He’d have to accept that for now.

  “And what do you want to do with all this stuff?” he asked.

  “Let’s leave it here for the time being. I’ll just take this picture, if you don’t mind.”

  “Not at all.”

  It was perfect, in fact. He could come back here tonight and dig through this stuff for the will.

  So he’d been honest…mostly.

  Chapter Ten

  Libby sipped the last of some nice Cabernet that Jasmine had brought home and put her feet up on the coffee table, looking out at the bay as evening fell. Usually, this was her favorite moment of the day. Savoring a moment on the wraparound porch that faced the water, enjoying the Victorian-style home they’d all put so much sweat equity—and real equity—into. It was especially lovely when, like tonight, she could hear Sam, who had decided to stay an extra night, joking with Jasmine while they got dinner ready.

  But tonight, Libby was restless.

  Maybe because the day’s events had riled her up, forcing her to think about things that were difficult to face. Simple things like, Who was my father? Or maybe it was because she’d spent just enough time with Law Monroe to be unable to shake the achy feminine longing she felt around him. The chemistry was hot and real, and old Libby would have jumped his bones ages ago. But after her last divorce, she swore she’d never let sex muck up her life again.

  Still, with Law?

  She closed her eyes and thought of him, remembering…his request to live at the Pelican. That’s why she was unsettled. She’d yet to broach the topic with Sam. She’d told him she’d seen Law and that they’d gone to the storage unit, and as she’d suspected he would, Sam dismissed the effort as a waste of time. He’d shown little interest in the photo, too, immediately reminding her that it wasn’t proof that would necessarily stand up in court. But it did prove they knew each other, so Mom wasn’t some con artist going after some stranger’s property.

  And what would he think of letting Law stay at the Pelican? Time to find out, she decided. Taking one more deep drink of the oaky red wine, she pushed up and headed inside.

  In the kitchen that ran the length of the back of the house, she found Jasmine on a barstool at the island, while Sam stir-fried chicken on the stove.

  “But why would he have her picture in an old paperback novel?” Jasmine asked, waving the picture and using a tone that suggested she’d posed the same question ten times already.

  “She’s obsessing,” Sam said to Libby when she came in.

  “How can I not over this picture?” Jasmine replied, her big brown eyes wide with a mix of awe and confusion. “I wish I could see his face and find some family resemblance, which, thank God, does not include that nose. And can we just talk about Gran’s hair? It’s so…”

  “Farrah Fawcett,” Libby supplied. “She was always a fan.”

  Jasmine waved Libby closer, using the picture. “C’mere, Mom. You okay?”

  Libby smiled at her daughter’s question. She was honest to a fault, but incredibly sensitive, at least to Libby’s moods. “I’m fine, sweetie. Tough day is all.”

  She sat next to Libby and took a whiff of Sam’s cooking, but that only made her wonder what Law was making tonight in his studio apartment that he’d just been evicted from because he quit a great job.

  Oh boy.

  “What?” Jasmine asked.

  Libby looked at her. “What what?”

  “Why are you moaning like life is too much for you?”

  Libby pointed to the picture. “Just thinking about Gran,” she said as a cover for her real thoughts.

  “I can’t even imagine her looking anything like this.”

  Today, Donna Chesterfield was a sixty-five-year-old firecracker who spent most of the year traveling with Enter Stage Left, a troupe about a half step north of community theater that lived in hostels and local homes totally off the grid, bringing musical theater to the ends of the earth.

  When she wasn’t on the road, she lived in Miami Beach with a life chock-full of friends and fun, taking acting classes, hosting crazy-assed parties for her pot-smoking cronies, and generally causing havoc with the over-sixty set. Her hair was snow white, about three inches long, and usually full of pasty product that made it stick straight in the air. Most of the time, she wore purple-rimmed bifocals and way too much handmade jewelry. The only thing that hadn’t changed since that picture was taken was Mom’s penchant for a paisley hippie dress, only now they usually skirted her ankles, not her mid-thigh.

  “I guess if you look hard enough, you can see the real Gran waiting to emerge,” Jasmine mused. “When, exactly, did that happen?”

  Libby and Sam shared a look. They knew exactly when it happened—when Donna Chesterfield’s kids were raised and she didn’t have to carry the burden of single motherhood anymore.

  “When we were little and still living in Indianapolis with Mike, she was just a run-of-the-mill 1970s mom.”

  “Donna’s version of normal,” Sam added.

  “And looking back,” Libby said, “I realize that when we moved a lot, she was starting to evolve. I guess getting away from Aunt Christine and family after Mike died moved that along.”

  Libby never once referred to Mike as “Dad” after her mom revealed that he wasn’t their father. It was a personal rebellion—one of so many.

  “But what about when you lived here on Mimosa Key when you were in hi
gh school?” Jasmine asked. “Did she start to do the acting stuff? The…” Jasmine held two fingers up to her lips and noisily sucked. “Evil weed?”

  Sam rolled his eyes, his mother’s pot smoking a major bone of contention for him.

  “She was living with her parents, Jasmine,” Libby said. “And my grandmother, unlike your grandmother, had rules in this house, even for a grown woman with two teenage kids. My grandmother was vehemently opposed to the idea that anyone in the family would be an actress, so Gran was a recluse up here, biding her time until we got through high school. She followed the rules and never left the house, and now we know why.”

  “Fear of seeing Jake Peterson,” Sam said.

  “But when Uncle Sam got accepted to the University of Miami and I decided to go to a community college in South Florida, then, of course, Mom had to come with us.”

  “Because going to college with your kids is so normal,” Jasmine said.

  “Her version of normal,” Libby and Sam said in perfect unison.

  The three of them—the Three Cheskateers, Mom used to call them—all packed up and moved to Miami and lived in different places, but they were still together. Sam went to a four-year college, of course, because he was ten times more ambitious than Libby. And Libby had taken some classes and done some modeling, but that didn’t work out because her boobs were too big to look right in clothes. And Mom went…a little crazy.

  “Her not normalness really started to emerge when she got into Enter Stage Left,” Sam said. “When I moved out of the dorm and you got that little apartment near the Gables, remember?”

  She remembered the apartment well. Especially the man in 3C who’d been recently divorced and craved her company because he missed his ex-wife. She put her hand on Jasmine’s arm, so grateful for the one great thing to come out of the union with Carlos Sanchez. “I guess because Mom wasn’t responsible for us on a day-to-day basis, she threw herself into her passion for acting.”

  Jasmine laughed. “And getting stoned.”

  “Not really,” Sam said. “I swear she just plays that up to get a rise out of people.”

  “And by people, you mean you, Uncle Sam.”

  He grinned at his niece, lifting his wine glass in a toast. “You know me too well.”

  “What about me?” Libby asked, ready to broach the subject she’d come in here to tackle. “Do I know you well?”

  Sam looked over the rim of his glass. “Considering we spent nine months in the same womb, I figure you do. Why would you ask?”

  “Because I have a question, and for the life of me, I can’t imagine how you’ll react.”

  “Fire away,” he said.

  “Law Monroe needs a place to stay, and he wants to crash in the space above the restaurant.”

  Sam frowned at her, lowering the glass to the countertop. “Why would he want to do that?”

  “Because he’s worming his way in?” Jasmine suggested.

  That was a possibility, but Libby wanted to trust the reasons were deeper for him. “It’s always been a sanctuary for him,” she said. “Jake let him stay there during some pretty dark days in his teenage years. And if that’s what our father did, then I wonder if that’s not the right thing to do.”

  Sam still stared at her, legal wheels turning so fast and furious, it was a wonder she couldn’t hear his brain clicking through case law.

  “He said he’d help in the restaurant, too,” she added. “He’s a chef, you know. And all I have are two pathetic teenagers who only sometimes come to work, and we’re supposed to—”

  Sam snapped his fingers and pointed to her. “It’s brilliant.”

  “Brilliant?”

  “Legally brilliant. In the case he makes a priority claim, we’ve demonstrated sua sponte in propria persona.”

  Jasmine giggled. “I love it when he speaks legal.”

  “It’s Latin,” he corrected.

  “Meaning what?” Libby asked.

  “Meaning we look good to the judge.”

  “How?”

  “By showing we’ve taken every possible step to do exactly what Jake Peterson wanted, whether or not this guy produces a will, which I still believe he doesn’t have, since he would have filed it as a party in interest and made a liquidated claim.” He lifted his glass again, and this time toasted Libby. “By all means, say yes.”

  She stared at him, trying to ignore the low grade of excitement building in her belly at the thought of Law being close and constant during the next few weeks.

  “So it’s kind of like keep your friends close and your enemies closer?” Jasmine asked.

  “More or less.”

  Was Law the enemy? “I don’t want him to be the enemy,” she said in a whisper.

  “Because you want to sleep with him.”

  Libby shot her daughter the dirtiest of dirty looks. “Must you?”

  “Mom, he was two inches from eating your face when I found you two this morning.”

  Sam’s eyes were getting wider by the second.

  “She’s just making that up,” Libby said.

  Sam’s brow launched. “Jasmine doesn’t make things up, Lib.”

  Libby flattened Jasmine with a warning look. “Could you not be the world’s most honest person, just this once? Could you possibly respect the mother-daughter secret code?”

  She grinned. “I think you should, Mom. He’s hot and super into you.”

  “He is?” Sam stepped away from the cooktop, coming closer. “Never mind, he doesn’t need to stay at the restaurant. That was a dumb idea.”

  “I thought it was…quid pro quo and sua…spumonte.”

  Jasmine laughed, but Sam did not find Libby’s Latin-butchering amusing. “Sleeping with him is a mistake, Libby.”

  “I am not going to sleep with him, Sam. I want the damn restaurant, and I want to do the right thing, and if it’s legally wise, then let’s do it.”

  Sam didn’t answer, but returned to the stir-fry, his temper simmering as much as the chicken and vegetables.

  Jasmine picked up the picture again, flipping it over. “Does anyone know what year this was?” she asked.

  “Gran might,” Libby said.

  “If only we could ask her,” Jasmine said. “I haven’t had a text from her since Stockholm or…Copenhagen. I get those two mixed up. Somewhere cold.”

  “She won’t be back until after the court date,” Sam said.

  “Pretty sure she planned it that way,” Libby added.

  “Well, she said the troupe was thinking about breaking for a few months after a spin through Spain, but you know Enter Stage Left. There are always some diehards who want to knock out Our Town in a foreign country with no satellite or cell service.”

  Sam nodded, but Libby could tell he was still a little miffed.

  “Hey,” she said, putting down her drink and coming around the island to hug her twin. “I’m really not going to sleep with him,” she said.

  He looked down at her. “I want you to be happy, Lib.”

  “Oh, okay.” She gave him a sly smile. “Then maybe I will sleep with him.”

  He jerked back, his eyes flashing.

  “Just kidding!” She tapped his arm playfully.

  “Are you?”

  “Of course.” Maybe. Possibly. She wasn’t sure. But she couldn’t wait to call Law and give him the news that, once more, the Toasted Pelican could be his sanctuary.

  For now, anyway.

  * * *

  Law sat surrounded by open boxes in the middle of the dimly lit and dingy storage unit, listening to Libby’s voice, trying to pinpoint what he detected in it.

  Excitement? Interest? A genuine wish to do the right thing or somehow collaborate on this deal?

  All of those possibilities made him feel a little guilty for not telling her the truth about the will. He sure as hell hadn’t found it tonight.

  “Yeah, I have a bed in the storage unit.” He looked at the mattress, still covered in plastic and perfectly servicea
ble. “And not much stuff. I’ll bring it in tomorrow. Thanks, Lib. Will you hang out with me and help me move in?”

  “I can’t,” she said.

  “Chicken.”

  “Is that what you’re cooking?” she teased. “Look, I have to go to Tampa tomorrow, really early,” she said. “I have a two-day Bikram certification program.”

  She’d be gone for two days, and he’d have the Pelican to himself? Law wanted to smile at that, but something deep inside was a little disappointed. Which was just stupid. “Can I get the keys from you?” he asked.

  “Yes, and I’ll be back Tuesday, late in the afternoon.”

  “Great, come for dinner.”

  “To the restaurant?”

  “Of course. If you don’t mind me doing a little tweaking with the menu.”

  “Uh, I’m not supposed to change anything significant,” she said.

  “You can have a chef’s special,” he countered. “And I’ll do something spectacular. Bring some friends.”

  “Are you sure you can handle a rush?”

  Law laughed at the question. “Bring lots of friends. I can handle anything. What’s your favorite comfort food?”

  “Meatloaf,” she answered without missing a beat. “Which is probably beneath your culinary tastes.”

  “And that’s where you’d be wrong.” Because bacon-wrapped Angus beef meatloaf happened to be one of his specialties and perfect for a gastropub. “Buckle up for meatloaf that will make you moan with pleasure, sigh with delight, and beg for seconds.”

  “Are you sure we’re talking about meatloaf now?” He heard the playfulness in her voice, and the sexual innuendo, and it made him press the phone against his ear to hear every little nuance and breath.

  “Meatloaf and…other things.”

  She laughed from her throat, the sound as much of a turn-on as if she were right there lightly stroking her hand over his.

  “You sure you have to leave for two days, Lib?”

  “You’re the second person to ask me to change those plans.”

  “Really? Who was the first?”

  “My mother, and I’ll tell you what I told her. I can’t. I’ve been waiting for this instructor’s class to open up for months.”