Island Haven

by Amy Knupp

  The more he fought, the more determined she became to get to him, to push him past the limits of his control.

  Mercedes teased his other nipple with her tongue then kissed her way lower, to his navel. To the trail of hair below it that disappeared beneath the waistline of his swim trunks.

  “If you would just let yourself care about people,” she said in between kisses, “stop working so hard to prevent it, you might find out it’s not so bad.”

  “Not so bad, huh?” he said, his abdomen muscles tensing.

  “Can even be good. You really need to get out of your wet clothes.” Without waiting for a response, she circled her hands around to his back, dipped her fingers into his shorts and drew them down his legs.

  He was no longer able to hide his arousal—it was there in plain sight, his hardness jutting toward her in invitation. When she touched the tip of him with her tongue, he groaned. Surrendered.

  She looked up at him, his half-closed, lust-filled eyes watching her with unveiled need. Running her hands up the front of him, she allowed herself a moment to drink in the full beauty of his sculpted, naked body. He gently threaded his fingers through her hair as his lids lowered. When he opened his eyes again, there was a plea in them—the acquiescence Mercedes had been working for. She didn’t take time to enjoy her victory.

  When she took him fully in her mouth, a sound of pleasure rumbled from his chest. She suckled him, teased him, caressed him, endeavored to make him crazy, and if the things he said were any indication, she’d hit her mark. She ran a hand up the back of his leg and over his tight, muscled butt.

  Scott’s fingers tightened in her hair, and the other hand cradled her cheek. With another groan, he gently pulled her upward, forcing her to take her mouth from him.

  “Come here,” he said in a husky voice. He grasped her elbows and helped her to stand.

  Even though Mercedes was fully clothed and Scott had yet to touch her anywhere besides her face and hair, desire pounded to her middle, made her ache.

  “You’re sure Gemma’s asleep?” he whispered into her ear, his breath making her shiver.

  “Out cold.” She ran her hands up his chest again as he pulled her close, his gentleness giving way to urgency.

  His lips sought hers and his hands roved from her waist upward, beneath her baby-doll tank, burning up her flesh. When he reached the elastic beneath her breasts that substituted for a bra, he made quick work of the shirt, pulling it over her head and tossing it to the side. Baring her. He palmed her breasts, brushed his thumbs over her sensitive nipples, circling them, teasing them, and she arched her lower body into him. He leaned down to take one breast in his mouth at the same time his hands dropped to the zipper of her shorts. Her lower half was bare before she could catch her breath, and she pushed her body into him, from shoulder to knee, craving his heat. Needing him inside her.

  Scott grasped her rear and picked her up, drawing her knees up on either side of him, his hardness pressing into her abdomen. He carried her into the bathroom and set her on the edge of the counter, kissing her, touching her till she didn’t remember or care where they were.

  She heard a drawer open, heard him fumble around, but until he pulled away, putting inches between them in order to sheath himself, she didn’t register what he was doing. When she was desperate for him to close the space between them, he paused.

  “Mercedes.”

  He only spoke one word, in a whisper, but as their eyes met, time halted and she lost herself in the intensity of his gaze. Before she could absorb the significance of that look, he was pulling her closer to the edge of the cold countertop and entering her.

  Their bodies came together with so much raw need, as if they were making up for the chaste night they’d spent together, and Mercedes thought she would die if he attempted either slow or gentle. He matched her urgency with every thrust, driving her higher until her body became nothing but warm, tingling nerve endings. Her orgasm was quick and sudden and it was all she could do not to cry out and give them away. Scott paid no heed to the fact they weren’t alone in the apartment and called out her name, then whispered to her exactly what she did to him.

  Mercedes smiled into his chest, grasping on to him, breathing hard. “So much for discretion.”

  He growled in reply and picked her up, their sweat-slicked bodies still connected. He touched his forehead to hers then kissed her slowly, tenderly, in complete contradiction to the pace of their lovemaking. The kiss was so slow and loving her eyes filled with tears.

  “My turn to say you were right,” he whispered.

  She opened her eyes and tried to shake the remaining lust-induced fuzziness from her brain. “About what?”

  “That was definitely ‘not so bad.’” He trailed kisses along her jaw and drew his fingers through her hair, down past her shoulder, pushing it behind her.

  “Not so bad, huh? Thank goodness. I would hate to inflict anything horrible or unbearable upon you.”

  He let his hands roam over her again, slowly, reverently studying each part of her he touched. “There’s not a cell in your body that’s unbearable.” Again, he kissed her, a simple, lingering touch of his lips to hers. “You’re amazing. Fantastic. Beautiful. And damn good at…that.”

  She laughed, an uncharacteristically husky sound. “You’re not so bad yourself, gruff man.”

  Scott pulled away from her and turned on the water in the shower. Sated or not, she couldn’t help appreciating the view as he bent over to test the temperature. When he straightened and turned around, he caught her getting an eyeful. The heat in his eyes told her he liked the attention, and when he took her into the shower with him, he returned the favor and then some. Mercedes might never again be able to look at a bar of soap without thinking of him.

  When the water finally went cold on them, they hurried out. Scott wrapped a towel around her and grabbed one for himself. As he was drying himself off, his phone, sitting on the back corner of the counter, buzzed. He picked it up and read the screen, and just like that, his entire mood blackened before Mercedes’s eyes.

  “What’s wrong?” she asked, pausing as she was about to take the towel to her hair.

  Scott shook his head and grumbled. He leaned against the wall, crossing his arms. “Voice mail from…my father.”

  Ah. That explained it. “Wonder what he wants.”

  “He’s calling me back. I left him a message about Gemma. Knee-jerk reaction to seeing his name.”

  They went into the bedroom to get their clothes. Scott’s mood was ruined, and though Mercedes didn’t like that the closeness between them was altered, it bothered her more that his dad had such an effect on him. Especially when Scott had initiated the contact.

  “Do you think you’ll ever forgive him?” she asked as she pulled her shorts on.

  Scott scowled and grabbed a pair of jeans. “Would you?” He spit the question out.

  “I don’t know. It must have been pretty ugly when you learned his secrets.”

  Scott sat heavily on his bed, his jeans still unfastened. He tossed aside the shirt he’d been about to put on. His dad’s message had jolted him from one extreme to another in a split second. “Ugly doesn’t begin to describe it.”

  Mercedes adjusted her tank top and lowered herself to the edge of his bed. On the one hand, he knew snapping at her wasn’t the right thing to do. And yet, when it came to his father, Scott didn’t spend a lot of time worrying about what was right and wrong. He just…reacted.

  He allowed himself to do something he rarely did—to think about the past. “I had a good childhood,” he said eventually. “Only child, cool parents who showed up at my games, cared how I did in school, knew my friends. The three of us were pretty tight.” He leaned his head back against the headboard. “We had our battles from time to time. I pushed them about curfews and other things, but we were…a normal family. Or so I thought.”

  His pulse pounded in his head but he continued, refusing to let the emotions get the
best of him. He’d never told anyone the whole story. Maybe it was time to air it out. “My mom found out somehow, I don’t even remember the details of how anymore. She learned he had a longtime girlfriend in Fort Worth. And a seven-year-old daughter.” Scott shook his head in disgust. “He traveled there every week for work. Had for as long as I could remember. He acted so damn devoted—always made it back for any game I was in, even if he had to turn right around and go back to Fort Worth right after. I never once suspected…”

  Mercedes stretched out on her side, pulling herself closer to him, propping herself up on one elbow and putting her other hand over his. He didn’t acknowledge it.

  “I left,” he continued, his voice thick. “I had two weeks till graduation and I moved in with a buddy of mine and his family. My mom…I still don’t know what the hell she was thinking, but she stuck around for a while, telling herself they could work through it. I was so pissed, I wouldn’t have anything to do with her, either.”

  “Were they able to reconcile?”

  “She finally kicked him out sometime that summer. I was on my own by then, working toward becoming an EMT. She and I made peace but it was never the same.”

  “Where is she now?” Mercedes asked.

  He laced his fingers with hers, realizing he was glad for the contact. “She died about five years ago.” He swallowed hard. “She had a fast-spreading cancer, but she never told me. Not until the last days.”

  Mercedes wrapped her arm around his middle. “I’m sorry,” she whispered. He held on to her arm and nodded but didn’t say anything else. Wasn’t sure he could get anything else out. Something about her sympathy made this harder.

  “Scott?”

  “Yeah?”

  “I don’t blame you for being so upset with your dad. What he did was…well, awful. I can’t imagine.”

  “He ruined our family,” Scott said. “That’s one thing. Bad enough. But what I struggle with even more is that for years, he looked us in the eye and told us he loved us. And then he drove off to his other family.”

  Mercedes nodded and he noticed there were tears in her eyes.

  “It’s on the tip of my tongue to say what he did was unforgivable,” she finally said.

  “Understatement.”

  She pulled herself up to sit next to him, leaning against the headboard. “I wish you could, though.”

  “Could what? Forgive him?”

  “Yeah. What if you did it for you? So you could move on.”

  He scoffed. “Not going to happen.”

  “I can’t pretend to know how you feel or what you’ve been through, but what I can see from here is that your anger is still affecting your life.”

  “You don’t just get over something like what he did.”

  “Are forgiving him and ‘getting over it’ the same thing?” she asked. “I don’t know. But I watched your mood do a one-eighty just from seeing his name on your phone. All that stress and anger can’t be good.”

  “Just let it go?” he asked, disbelieving.

  Mercedes studied him for a long time, then took his hand in hers. “Wish I knew how to, so I could tell you.” She kissed his fingers, then crawled on top of his lap and kissed his lips until he forgot what they’d been talking about.

  * * *

  SCOTT WAS ONE WEAK son of a bitch.

  Mercedes had gotten a call that her sister had to run an errand, so she’d gone home to her grandma. If she hadn’t…how long would he have let her stay?

  Too damn long.

  One little overture from her and he was a goner. A pushover. Okay, maybe the overture wasn’t so little—what man could have turned her down? But still.

  Pathetic.

  Apparently his promises to himself didn’t hold much water. On his own behalf, he’d never expected Mercedes to turn into an aggressive sex kitten and strip him down. But he’d acknowledged that getting any closer to her was a bad idea when he was leaving, and yet he’d given in to her anyway.

  Not only had he gotten naked with her, but he’d, hell, told her about things he didn’t tell anyone.

  Five more days. One more work shift.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  SO THIS WAS IT. SCOTT’S last shift of the job he’d thought he would never live through. As he walked out onto the apparatus floor toward the ambulance, a wave of nostalgia took him by surprise.

  Crazy. Not going there.

  Shift change was about to take place but he’d arrived early. Eager to start his last day? Eager to get it over with, more likely.

  He started going over the ambulance, checking every piece of equipment, restocking the supplies that were low, though there wasn’t much to refill. Paige and Cale had worked the shift before him and they were good about having things ready to go. Next, he touched up their cleaning job, unnecessarily scrubbing down any spot he could find. Inside and out.

  Hiding out, much?

  He snorted derisively to himself and shook his head in disgust. Damn coward.

  Today was Brad Gilbert’s first day back on the job since his boy had died.

  Scott stood, hands on his hips, helplessly surveying the spotless, well-stocked ambulance, nodding. Yep, he was a big-time coward. He’d be content to avoid his colleague for the entire shift and then slip out of town without ever having to face up to him.

  Since the ambulance was ready to go and then some, Scott excused himself while the others did their daily roll call and job assignments. Call it short-timer’s syndrome, call it being a chickenshit, whatever. Rafe could tell him what chores he was assigned to do.

  Scott skirted behind the group that had gathered at one end of the garage where they met at the start of each shift. He spotted Brad, standing to one side, his shoulders sagging like a beaten-down man. Scott was just about knocked on his ass with regret and grief on behalf of his colleague.

  He wandered aimlessly into the workout room with no intention of working out. It was quiet in here, the sound of the air-conditioner fan blowing on High calming in a way. If anything could be calming today. No one would happen in here until this afternoon at the earliest.

  He found himself at the punching bags and popped one of them once, halfheartedly. Unsatisfied, he swung at it again, this time putting everything he was worth into it. The connection with the bag, the smacking sound of his fist on vinyl, was gratifying. Addicting. He hit it again. And then another dozen times, beating the living hell out of it.

  “Hey.” Rafe came in behind him and didn’t say a word about his battle with the bag or his absence from the mandatory meeting. He’d been on the call when the boy died, too. He likely knew exactly what was going through Scott’s mind. Maybe even felt the same way, though they hadn’t spoken about it since the end of the shift the tragedy had happened on and even then they’d barely said anything. Wasn’t much they could say.

  Scott nodded at him and socked the bag one last time.

  “You’re on outdoors,” Rafe said. “They’re going easy on you for your last day.”

  “Thanks. Might as well get on it.” He walked out of the workout room and Rafe followed him, but when Scott turned right at the end of the hall toward the sliding glass door that led to the patio, Rafe went left.

  He was grateful for the outdoor-chore assignment, not only because it was mindless and easy but because it was solitary. He picked up litter that had blown against the building from the beach, straightened the patio furniture, watered the few plants that someone had decided added to the atmosphere. Then he tended to the minimal landscaping. He was sweeping the sand off the patio with a heavy-duty broom when he heard the glass door slide shut behind him.

  “You’re going to break that thing if you don’t ease up on it.” Brad’s voice reached him from just behind his right shoulder.

  A knot twisted Scott’s gut and he ceased sweeping. “Hey.”

  Brad took a step so they stood even, side by side, and they both gazed out at the testy gulf, the wind forming tumultuous waves and blowing the gull
s off their flight paths.

  Every second that ticked by became more awkward. Strained. Scott scoured his brain for the right thing to say—for anything worth saying. What did you say to a man who’d lost his son?

  What did you say to a man whose son died in your arms?

  Bone-deep regret balled in Scott’s throat, pulsed at his temples. He closed his eyes, wishing for a way to excuse himself without earning the clod-of-the-century award. Straightening his shoulders, hating his helplessness, he faced Brad.

  “I wake up thinking about him. Seeing his face.” Scott’s voice cracked and he swore to himself. “Wishing like hell I could have—”

  “Stop.”

  Scott lowered his gaze, unable to take the sorrow in the other man’s eyes for another second…berating himself for saying the wrong thing.

  “There’s something I need to say to you,” Brad started. He paused to swallow.

  “Go ahead. Get it out,” Scott said, anticipating harsh words, almost needing to hear Brad’s anger and sadness directed at him. Anything was better than that horrible weighted silence.

  “I’ve gone over Elliott’s last day so many times in my mind,” his colleague began. He spoke haltingly, as if too many words at once intensified the pain. “From every angle. What if I could’ve been there instead of on a gas-leak call? What if my wife and I had had him checked for a peanut allergy before then? What if we’d been the kind of parents who don’t allow their kids to eat sugar? What the hell if?” He stopped again, stared at his work boots. “The questions are driving me up the goddamn wall.”

  Scott nodded. Waited.

  “The one thing that I don’t question,” Brad continued, his voice thick with pain, “is whether or not anything else could have been done for my son in that moment. During that call.” He stopped again and closed his eyes, then took a shaky breath. “I hate every horrible thing about that day, but the one thing I am thankful for is that you were the man who answered. You were the guy in charge.”

  Scott jerked his gaze back to Brad in confusion.