by Marie Force
Paul was standing in the kitchen, shirtless, eating a bowl of cereal.
One look at his muscular chest and well-defined abs and Hope’s resolve evaporated. She wanted to touch him and kiss him and do so many other things with him that she hadn’t done in far too long. She averted her gaze and headed for Marion’s room, knocking softly before she stepped inside.
“Good morning, Marion.”
As she did every day, Marion eyed Hope warily. “Who are you? Where’s George?”
“George has gone off to work, but he asked me to help you get up and showered.”
“I don’t need help showering. How dare you be so impertinent?”
Impertinent was one of Marion’s favorite words, and Hope had grown used to hearing about her impertinence daily. “Let’s get you up and about.”
“Who are you? What’re you doing here? Where’s George?”
Marion’s confusion was far worse at the beginning and end of each day. As she did every day, Hope replied to the same question a hundred times without ever losing her patience. Dementia patients didn’t mean it when they were insulting or demeaning or just downright nasty. That was the disease talking, not the perfectly nice people they’d been before dementia struck.
From all accounts, Marion had once been an absolute doll, devoted to her husband and sons and the business they all ran together. Every so often, Hope caught a glimpse of that woman, never more so than when she interacted with Ethan. For whatever reason, the two of them had bonded, and Marion was never nasty to him.
After her marriage ended, Hope had begun keeping a gratitude journal. Marion’s kindness to Ethan had made the list many a time.
“Can I help?” Paul asked from the doorway.
Hope turned to him, relieved that he’d put on a shirt. Speaking of gratitude… “I got it.”
“Are you sure? You’re supposed to have a day free of us today.”
“I’m sure, and I don’t mind. We’ll be out in a few minutes.”
“George, tell this woman I don’t want her in my bedroom. This is my private space, and she’s not welcome here.”
“It’s okay, Mom. Hope is just trying to help. Be nice to her.”
Hope sent him a grateful smile before returning her attention to Marion, despondent to realize that the sound of his voice and his offer of support had her entire body tingling once again with awareness of him. Ugh!
The day that had begun with bright sunshine turned cloudy and stormy around noon. With his mother out for the afternoon with her devoted friends from church, Paul found himself with an unusual break in the manic action that made up his life. So naturally, he wandered out to the retail store, which closed at noon on Sundays, to do some much-needed paperwork and updating of the accounting software.
He was halfway across the yard when the heavens opened, leaving him completely drenched by the time he reached the wooden building that housed the store. Rain in September was a cold rain that had him shivering. Inside the store, he pulled off his shirt, hung it up to dry and found an old towel in the office that he used to wipe his face.
Paul was waiting for the computer to boot up when he heard a clattering noise from the store. With the towel slung around his neck, he got up to investigate and found Hope, soaking wet and shivering, inside the door he’d left unlocked.
She startled when he appeared out of the office. “Oh. Sorry. I was out for a walk, and it started to rain. I didn’t know you were here. I’ll just head up to the house.”
“It’s monsooning out there.” He handed her the towel. “You can wait it out here.”
Hope took the towel from him. “Thanks.” She wiped her face, but her teeth continued to chatter since her shirt was soaked through.
“I might have an extra shirt here somewhere,” he said. “I can go look.”
“That’s okay.” She unbuttoned the wet denim shirt and took it off, revealing a form-fitting tank.
He knew he shouldn’t take a long greedy look at the wet T-shirt that did nothing to hide her nipples, but he couldn’t seem to get that message to his eyes. “How did you manage to keep your hair from getting wet?”
She put her arms up over her head, giving him a spectacular view of her breasts.
Paul took three steps toward her, closing the distance between them.
Hope dropped her arms to her sides, bit her lip and shook her head. “Don’t.”
He put his hands on her shoulders and slid them down over the soft skin of her arms, noting her shiver and wondering if it was from the cold or his touch. “Why not?”
“I can’t. We can’t do this.”
“We’re already doing it. It’s happening. Tell me I’m not the only one who feels it.”
“You’re not, but—”
Because he didn’t want to know how that sentence was going to end, he kissed her. For the first second or two, he waited for her to push him away. If she did that, he would respect her wishes. But she didn’t push him away. No, she pulled him closer and opened her mouth to his tongue. If possible, this kiss was even hotter than the ones they’d shared last night, and those had been pretty damned hot.
He’d thought about little else since she ran away this morning, leaving him with so many unanswered questions. Paul wasn’t thinking about the questions now or all the reasons this could be the worst thing for both of them. When she was in his arms, kissing him back with enthusiastic strokes of her tongue, it felt like the best thing that’d ever happened to him.
His hands slid down her back to cup her bottom. He lifted her up and into his arms. She gasped in surprise, but then recovered, wrapping her arms and legs around him. Good God… He loved the way she responded to him and couldn’t get enough of her sweet mouth or the sexy strokes of her tongue. They needed a wall or a flat surface, something that would allow him to get as close to her as he could.
Paul started walking them toward the office, knocking a glass vase off a shelf that shattered on the floor. He kept moving, ignoring the crash, the broken glass and everything that wasn’t about Hope, warm and soft and pliant in his arms.
Then she broke the kiss. “I can’t, Paul. I can’t. I can’t.”
“Why?” he asked, kissing her neck. “Why?”
She arched her neck to give him better access and tightened her arms around his neck. “I… I just… Paul.”
“Hmm?”
“I can’t.”
The finality of her statement had him drawing back from her, reluctantly and painfully. She slid down the front of him, rubbing against his erection on the way. It was all he could do not to whimper from the desire that beat through him like a live wire.
“You tell me you can’t, but you kiss me like you want to.”
“I’m sorry.” Her hand trembled ever so slightly as she smoothed the hair off her face. “I don’t mean to send you mixed messages.”
“Which message do you mean to send?”
“I like you. You’re a really great guy.”
“But?”
“I can’t do this.”
“You haven’t said why.”
“You know why.”
“I told you this, between us, will never impact your job. I gave you my word, and that means something.”
She bent her head and leaned it against his chest. “I know it does, and it’s not because I don’t want to pursue this with you. It’s just… I can’t.”
Though he could see and feel her inner torment, he dropped his hands from her shoulders and took a step back, which was the last thing he wanted to do. What he really wanted was to wrap his arms around her and hold her until she conceded that what was happening between them was a good thing. But until he understood more about her inner torment, he didn’t know where to start with convincing her.
“I’m sorry, Paul.”
“Me, too. I didn’t mean to push you.”
“You didn’t. Everything that happened was because we both wanted it.”
“I wish…” Paul thought better o
f what he was going to say and shook his head. “Never mind.”
She didn’t ask him what he wished for, probably because she already knew. Hope turned away from him and walked around the broken glass on the floor to get the shirt she’d taken off. The rain continued to come down hard outside, beating against the tin roof on the building in a steady rhythm.
“You can wait out the storm here if you want to.”
“That’s okay. I have stuff to do at my place. I’ll see you later.” She was out the door before he could say anything.
Paul blew out an unsteady deep breath. He reached for a broom and dustpan and cleaned up the broken glass. The shards of glass were a fitting metaphor for how he felt at the moment. Shattered. To have had something so amazing yanked away when they hadn’t had the chance to see what might be possible was nothing less than devastating.
He wasn’t a man who couldn’t take no for an answer. She’d left him with no choice but to accept her wishes. As he dumped the broken glass into a trashcan, he decided he wasn’t going to let himself descend into self-pity. Before the flirtation, or whatever it had been with her, he’d been determined to start dating again, so that was what he would do.
Withdrawing his cell phone from his pocket, he went through his list of contacts, determined to make this call before he lost his nerve or gave in to the urge to descend into misery over what he couldn’t have. Hope was an amazing woman, and he wished that things could be different. But with reality staring him in the face, he pressed send to make his call.
“Hello?”
“Oh, hey, Chloe, it’s Paul Martinez.”
“Hi, Paul, how’re you?”
“Doing good. You?”
“Better now that the summer is over and things are back to normal around here.”
“I hear that.” Do it, Paul. Ask her. “Listen, I was wondering if you might want to meet for a drink later. If you’re not busy.”
In the long pause that followed, he tried to remember the last time he’d asked out a woman.
“Um, sure. That would be fun. Where do you want to meet?”
“The Beachcomber at eight?”
“Great. I’ll see you then.”
“See you then.” Relieved, he put the phone back in his pocket and went into the office to get back to the work he’d been about to do when Hope showed up. He’d been fine before her, and he’d be fine after. He wasn’t about to beg her or talk her into spending time with him. He’d tried and failed to get past whatever was stopping her from pursuing a relationship with him.
It was time to move on.
Chapter 9
Hope ran through the rain, past the house to her cabin, where she shed her clothes inside the door and headed for the shower. Her teeth were chattering and her heart was breaking. The warm shower would fix at least one of those things. The other one would take a while.
Standing under the warm water, she finally released the deep breath she’d been holding since she’d bolted from the store, leaving Paul bewildered by her behavior.
A sob escaped through her clenched jaw, and she slid down the shower wall to sit on the floor. This kind of pain reminded her far too much of how she’d felt after everything happened with Carl. At the time, she’d promised herself that she’d never again risk so much for any man. And here she was, on the verge of risking it all once more.
The stakes were too high. She couldn’t afford to gamble her sanity and Ethan’s well-being, no matter how great Paul was or how wonderful she’d felt in his arms. It didn’t matter that his kisses set her on fire or that she wanted so much more than the little bit they’d had. None of that mattered as much as Ethan did. Under no circumstances could she put him through another ordeal like the one they’d both suffered through at the hands of his father.
She wouldn’t survive another situation like that, and what would happen to Ethan if she fell apart? Hope liked to think of herself as a fairly pragmatic person. Life had taught her to put away girlish dreams of happily ever after and true love to focus on reality. And her reality right now was Ethan and providing a stable home for him. To do that, she had to keep her life free of drama. She had to avoid what one of her friends from home had referred to as “self-inflicted” wounds.
So what if it felt great to be held and kissed and caressed by a sexy, desirable, nice man. Carl had been all of those things at first, too. Until he wasn’t any of them anymore, and she’d been the last to know. All men were lovely until they got what they wanted, and then their true colors came through.
Except, a tiny voice inside her said, Paul is always amazing with his mom. She’d never seen him be anything other than patient and kind and tolerant of the many inconveniences Marion’s illness brought to his life. Didn’t that say something about who he really was?
When the water began to grow cold, Hope stood to shut it off. She dried herself and put on her warmest robe. Then she went into the kitchen to put a kettle on to boil, hoping a cup of tea would have its usual calming effect. Her nerves were stretched to their limit, the way they’d been for one awful, devastating summer two years ago when her whole life fell apart in spectacular, embarrassing fashion.
Ethan had been old enough to know something awful was happening, but too young to understand the nuances, for which she was grateful. That she was even revisiting that horror was a sign that she’d done the right thing backing off with Paul. But if that were true, why did she ache so badly inside?
Was she doomed to be alone forever because she was too scared to take a chance with someone new? Wow, talk about depressing thoughts. The slam of the screen door jarred her out of those thoughts as Ethan came bounding in, dropping his overnight bag on the floor and kicking off his sneakers.
“What’s for dinner, Mom?”
“Hello to you, too. Don’t I even get a hug?”
He gave her the fastest hug in the history of fast hugs and pulled back. “Why are you wearing a robe in the afternoon?”
“I got stuck in the rain, so I took a shower to warm up.”
“We got stuck, too! We had to run off the beach, but it was so fun. Can Jonah sleep over here next weekend? Can he?”
“Sure.”
“He’s my best friend in the whole world. Well, other than Paul. He’s my bestest friend ever. I wanna go see him and Mrs. Marion.”
Hearing him refer to Paul as his bestest friend ever brought tears to Hope’s eyes.
Thankfully, Ethan was jamming his feet back into his sneakers and didn’t notice her emotional reaction to his innocent, yet heartfelt, statement.
Hope grabbed him by the shoulders to stop him from shooting out the door. “Mrs. Marion is out with her friends, and Paul is at work.”
“It’s a Sunday! He doesn’t work on Sundays, Mom.” The disdainful tone was a sign of things to come in the teenage years.
“He’s doing stuff in the office. Computer stuff.”
“That’s boring.” The sneakers came flying off again, spilling sand he’d brought home from the beach onto the wood floor. “I’m going to watch Star Wars. What’s for dinner? Can we have ziti?”
“Yeah, we can have ziti.”
His smile lit up his face, reminding her what was most important in her life. Yes, it would be nice to pursue a relationship with Paul, but that wasn’t where her attention needed to be right now. The squiggling boy who tried to resist her hugs and kisses was her whole world. She’d do whatever it took to protect him from any further hurt, even if it meant she had to hurt instead.
The rain cast a damper on Mac’s plans for a Sunday afternoon cookout with his siblings, cousins, uncles and closest friends, forcing him to improvise with a makeshift tent over the grill on the deck. As he cooked chicken and ribs and hot dogs for the kids, he thought about the plan he wanted to run by his siblings, in particular.
Their parents would be married forty years in December, and he wanted to do something to commemorate the occasion, but he wasn’t sure what exactly. He was hoping they would have som
e ideas. With his parents off-island for a weekend getaway in Boston, this had been the perfect time to bring the gang together to talk about them when there was no chance of getting caught.
He carried the meat in on a platter Maddie had given him and placed it on the counter, where she’d set out a buffet that the others had contributed to. “Come and get it!”
Mac loved having his siblings living nearby as well as their cousins Laura and Shane, who now lived on the island, and Finn and Riley, who had spent the summer and were sticking around for the fall. They hadn’t made any promises about the winter, but Mac was hoping they’d stay. He could really use their help on the addition to Seamus and Carolina’s home, for one thing. And he’d gotten the strangest call from Lizzie James earlier, who’d wanted to gauge his availability to convert the former island school into a nursing home of all things.
When everyone had a plate, Mac stood and cleared his throat. “The reason I invited you all here today—”
“Oh God, Mac,” Janey said with a groan. “What now?”
“Hush up, brat, and I’ll tell you. Mom and Dad’s fortieth anniversary is coming up in December, and I think we ought to do something.”
“That’s a great idea,” Grace said, earning a warm smile from Mac. “What did you have in mind?”
“I was hoping you all would have some ideas. I have no clue what we should do.”
“We need a party,” Grant said. “A big bash.”
“We could do it at the restaurant,” Grant’s new wife, Stephanie, said. “We’re open on weekends in the winter, but we could shut down on a Saturday night for a private party. I’ll look at the calendar and give you some dates.”
“That would be perfect,” Mac said. “What does everyone else think?”
“I can’t believe they’ve been married forty years,” Frank said. “That makes me feel older than dirt.”
“You are older than dirt, Dad,” Laura said with a teasing smile.
“Gee, thanks a lot, hon.”
“We know better, don’t we?” Frank’s girlfriend, Betsy, said to groans from Laura and Frank’s son, Shane.
“So gross,” Shane said.
