Haven Creek

by Rochelle Alers

  “When Mama discovered she was pregnant again, everyone kept saying she was going to have a boy, and in an effort to extend an olive branch to her in-laws she promised to name the baby Morgan after my grandfather, whom she adored. I was obviously not a boy, but the name stuck.”

  Nate pressed his mouth to the nape of Morgan’s neck, breathing a kiss there. “I remember you trailing behind your grandfather.”

  Morgan covered his hand, which was resting on her belly, with hers. Her fingers gave his a gentle squeeze. “He was the most incredible man I’ve ever known. He’d only graduated high school, yet he knew so much because he was a voracious reader. But it was what he did with his camera that put him on the map. Grandpa would tell me to look at a house and let him know what I saw. I would say windows, steps leading up to the front door; then he would stop me, telling me to look beyond the obvious. That’s when he’d point out the grain in the wood, how the steps were worn down on one side from countless footsteps, and that the paint on one side of the house was more faded than the other because it faced direct sunlight.

  “Whether Grandpa was taking photographs or listening to his prized collection of jazz records, I was always in awe of the stories he’d tell me about back in the day. After my grandmother passed away, I’d come over to clean his house while he cooked. It was when he showed me photographs of the Brooklyn Bridge that I decided I wanted to be an engineer.”

  “How old were you?” Nate asked.

  “Twelve. I was in awe of the fact that the bridge was designated a National Historic Landmark and was listed on the National Register of Historic Places, because I’d thought only homes or buildings were chosen for that designation. I later learned the bridge was also named a National Historic Civil Engineering Landmark.”

  “Why did you give up engineering for architecture?”

  “Once I started looking at homes and office buildings the way my grandfather saw them through his camera lens, I knew I wanted to design structures rather than build them. After Grandpa left me his house, I drew up plans and expanded it. I’ve been thinking about adding a second story, but that would entail raising the roof.”

  “That’s easy enough to do.”

  Morgan raised her head, staring at him over her shoulder. “Maybe in the future.”

  Nate chuckled. “Tomorrow is the future.”

  “Very funny, Nate.”

  “You know, I’ve never really been inside your house.”

  “Yes, you have.”

  “No, I haven’t, Mo. No farther than your parlor. By the way, I like how you decorated it.”

  Turning around, Morgan faced him. “When you take me home I’ll be certain to give you a personal tour. Speaking of decorating, I’ve completed the floor plans for your apartment.”

  Nate tried seeing her expression, but there wasn’t enough light coming from the lanterns. “I thought you said it would take you a couple of weeks just for the master bedroom.”

  Morgan buried her face between Nate’s chin and shoulder. “I’ll admit I’m a tad bit obsessive-compulsive. Once I start a project, I usually don’t stop until I finish it.”

  “How is Mr. Blue?”

  Morgan laughed, the sultry sound caressing Nate’s ear. “Spoiled rotten.”

  He cupped her hips, pulling her closer. “You should think of saving some of that spoiling for your future children.”

  Morgan laughed again. “Don’t worry. There will be more than enough spoiling to spread around.”

  “Speaking of babies, Rachel was very uncomfortable when I drove her to your parents’ house. I prayed she wouldn’t go into labor and I’d have to try to deliver her baby.”

  “Most babies don’t come that fast, Nate. I don’t know why they feel the need to make their mamas suffer before they make their appearance.”

  Nate’s hand moved lower, his fingers caressing the skin on Morgan’s smooth thigh. He felt her tense up at the same time she caught her breath. “It’s okay, baby. I’m not going to do anything you don’t want me to do.” She relaxed under his light touch. “Doesn’t that go back to the Bible, where it was Eve’s punishment for tempting Adam to sin?”

  “He didn’t have to sin,” Morgan argued in a quiet voice. “After all, he was put in charge of the garden, and he knew the rules. He should’ve been strong enough not to permit himself to be tempted.”

  “Sometimes it isn’t that easy. I don’t think you women are aware of the power you have over men. You make us do things we professed we’d never do. The next thing we know you have our noses wide open.”

  “Oh, no, you’re not going to go there!” Morgan protested. “You’re no better than Adam when he blamed Eve for making him sin.”

  “Well, she did,” Nate countered. “If she hadn’t been looking so hot he would’ve been able to resist her.”

  Throwing back her head, Morgan laughed hysterically at the same time Nate’s deep chuckle rumbled in his chest. “What makes you so certain she was hot?”

  “Look at you, Mo. It’s been proven that Eve was a sister, and if you’re a daughter of Eve, then she had to be hot.”

  Without warning Morgan pushed against his chest, and he released her. What had he said to make her withdraw? Nate thought maybe he’d come on too strong, or…His thoughts trailed off as he remembered another time when he’d mentioned her beauty and she’d appeared visibly uncomfortable.

  Scooting over on the blanket, he pulled her closer to him, so that she was sitting between his outstretched legs. “Did I say something wrong?”

  Morgan swallowed the lump in her throat. She knew she had to tell Nate about her insecurities when it came to men or she would never be able to move forward. She opened her mouth and the pain she’d held on to like a badge of honor came pouring out. Morgan spared no details as she told Nate about the hurtful comments other kids directed at her regarding her height and weight. She told him that she’d prayed to be invisible whenever she walked into Perry’s because she knew no boy would ever invite her to sit with him. And that the very boys who made her adolescence a living hell weren’t interested in her until she became a homeowner and had set up her own business.

  “That’s when they came sliding around, talking about how hot I was, when years before they’d called me names. One even had the audacity to apologize because he’d told me he wouldn’t sleep with a bag of bones even if I’d offered it to him for free.”

  “They were young and silly, baby.”

  “They were mean and evil, Nate. I hated men until I got to college and discovered that guys either liked me because I was an engineering student and smart, or because I was lucky enough to have my own apartment and car.”

  Nate’s arms tightened around her middle. “Is that why you said you’d never marry a boy from Cavanaugh Island?”

  Morgan watched the increasingly high waves and rough surf wash up on the sand. “Yes. If it hadn’t been for Francine I wouldn’t have had a single friend in high school. She understood what I was going through because a lot of kids teased her about her curly red hair. We made up a gossip column and got our frustrations out by writing salacious stories about girls who were known for sleeping around. Of course we embellished it, then laughed our asses off when we read them to each other. Each week we would try and top the one before, but it stopped when the news got out that one of the girls we wrote about discovered herself pregnant and didn’t know who’d fathered her baby. Her parents were so devastated her mother had a breakdown and had to be hospitalized for a couple of months.” She couldn’t tell Nate that Francine had written what she did after seeing it in a vision.

  “What’s the expression about one’s actions having consequences?” Nate said in her ear. “Her getting pregnant had nothing to do with what you’d made up about her in your gossip column.”

  “I know, but that didn’t stop me from feeling sorry for her.”

  “That’s because you were nothing like her.”

  Tears pricked the backs of Morgan’s eyelids, but
she managed to blink them back before they fell. “I know if I’d dated you in high school I would be different now.”

  Lifting her effortlessly, Nate shifted Morgan so that she was straddling his lap. “You were too young then. And knowing how your father feels about his baby girl, he would’ve come after me packing heat.”

  “Why would you say that? We wouldn’t have slept together.”

  “I know that and you know that. But would your father have believed it? Before I asked Chauncey out her father made me sign a note stating that I wouldn’t sleep with his daughter.”

  Morgan’s jaw dropped. “You’re kidding.”

  “No. He raised his daughters to save themselves for marriage, and if he found out they weren’t virgins, then he would have made certain that whoever they’d slept with would never father children after he blasted them with his shotgun. Talk about scared. I never told my father about it because he would’ve gotten in Reverend Dobson’s face, and whatever ensued, Dad would’ve blamed his behavior on the PTSD he’d gotten after serving in Vietnam.”

  “Shame on him. All this coming from a man of the cloth.”

  “He was a father first and a man of the cloth second. It took me a while to understand that. I probably wouldn’t be any different if I had a girl.”

  “You would shoot some boy because he slept with your daughter?” There was no mistaking the fear in Morgan’s voice.

  “I would if he took advantage of her.”

  It was only when she saw the flash of Nate’s teeth in the diffuse light that Morgan realized he wasn’t serious. And she knew if she continued to sit on his lap it would lead to something she wasn’t emotionally ready to deal with. At least not at this point in their relationship.

  “Are you ready to see the mock-up of your decorated apartment?”

  Bracing himself with one hand, Nate stood, bringing Morgan up with him. “Yes.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  Nate felt like a hypocrite, telling Morgan to forgive and forget when he was still dealing with his own unresolved issue of forgiving Odessa. Without conferring with a therapist, he knew it all had to do with the fact that Odessa and his mother were childhood friends. Where, he mused, was the trustworthiness? Couldn’t Odessa have waited until after her friend died to go after Lucas?

  Lucas had been forty, an age when virile men have physical needs, but what Nate didn’t and refused to understand was his father’s audaciousness. Had he experienced any guilt while sleeping with another woman in the same bed where he’d slept with his wife? Or had he been blinded with lust? Or perhaps his inability to make love to his sick wife left him vulnerable.

  He pulled his thoughts away from his past as he followed Morgan through her sunny parlor, past its wall-mounted flat-screen TV and into a nearly all-white living room that opened out into a dining room claiming the same palette. White walls provided the backdrop for the creamy upholstered modern sofa, love seat, and club chair. A collection of black-and-white photographs was displayed on one wall. Crystal vases on the white coffee and corner tables cradled bouquets of fresh flowers that added color to the serenity of the space. Light from the crystal chandelier overhead reflected warmly on the glossy wood floor.

  Though the living room was formal, the dining room had a welcoming feel. The table, with seating for ten, was made of white planks of bleached pine. Matching ladder-back chairs had blue-and-white pin-striped seat cushions. A profusion of dried hydrangeas in varying hues ranging from creamy white to deep purple filled a trio of blue Depression glass vases on an antique buffet server. Nate noted that the floors in the dining room, which were rubbed with white paint and glazed, sparkled under the overhead ceiling fixture. The windows in both rooms were draped with white-on-white awning-striped voile that let an abundance of natural light into the space.

  Morgan met his gaze when he turned to look at her. “All the furniture in the living and dining rooms belonged to my grandmother.” She gave him a knowing smile. “You already know the tables and buffet server were made by your people. I had to replace the chairs in the parlor because they were too worn to repair. My grandparents only entertained in the living room on special occasions.”

  “How many bedrooms do you have?” he asked.

  “Three. Come with me and I’ll show you the kitchen,” she said, leading him down a narrow hallway. “This is the only room I remodeled.”

  As in the other two rooms, Morgan had again used an all-white palette. Two of the four walls were exposed brick. The brick color and pattern were repeated in glazed tiles on the floor. Nate found the modern space, with its hanging live palms and ferns, pristine and homey. A round table surrounded by four chairs matched the one in the dining room. Nate didn’t have to look at the underside to know it was built by a Shaw.

  “You can do some serious cooking in here.”

  “This is one of my favorite rooms in the house. Whenever I have company everyone gathers here.”

  “You don’t use the dining room?” he asked.

  “I do only if I host Easter or Christmas. I gave up trying to get everyone to eat in the dining room. I bought a couple of folding tables with chairs that I use whenever it’s my turn to cook Sunday dinner.”

  “Am I invited?” he asked teasingly.

  “Of course, Nate. If Daddy told you to call him Stephen, then that means he thinks of you as family.”

  Nate angled his head. “Did he tell your brothers-in-law to call him Stephen when they were going with your sisters?”

  “No, but that’s only because they didn’t come from Cavanaugh Island.”

  “So I get special treatment because I’m a native?”

  “He knows you, Nate. And he knows your family. That goes a long way with my dad. Daddy wasn’t too happy when he heard Irene was marrying a man with a ready-made family, but that all changed once he met Anthony and the boys. Daddy loves fishing and he always takes Brian, Brandon, and Ethan with him. Maybe because he had three girls, he really enjoys doing guy things with his grandsons.”

  “You have a wonderful family.”

  “We have our problems, like any other family, but I love each and every one of them.”

  Nate wished he could echo Morgan’s sentiments. Her family had embraced Anthony’s nephews as if they were blood, while he still couldn’t totally embrace Odessa as his stepmother even though she’d given birth to his brother.

  “I’ll show you the bedrooms before you see the space I added.”

  “Where’s the bathroom?” he asked.

  “There’s a half bath off the pantry and one outside the bedrooms. The first bedroom is mine.”

  Standing at the entrance to the master bedroom, Nate found out everything he needed to know about the woman who’d managed to slip under the barrier he’d erected to keep women at a distance. She was a romantic.

  What originally had been curiosity was now an increasing need to spend as much time with her as possible. Yet every moment he was with her, he couldn’t help wanting to kiss her and touch her, but he knew that doing so could push her away and ruin things before they really got started. The notion shocked him, because even as a bumbling adolescent with raging hormones he’d never been so lacking in self-control. Thankfully, Morgan had asked whether he wanted to see the floor plans for his apartment before she’d detected his erection.

  Her bedroom exuded an air of gentle Southern charm. It had a king-size mahogany four-poster draped in a sheer white fabric. The pale shade was repeated in the bed’s delicate antique linens. An oval mahogany table and two pull-up chairs were positioned near a trio of windows from which hung white lace panels. She’d removed the doors to a white chest-on-chest to reveal shelves filled with stacks of blue-and-white sheets, blankets, and pillowcases. Light from bedside table lamps bathed the entire room in gold.

  “It’s lovely.”

  Morgan scrunched up her nose. “You don’t think it’s too frilly?”

  Nate looped his fingers through hers. He smiled. “Your hands ar
e warm tonight. And to answer your question, no, it’s not too frilly.”

  “When I was a girl I always wanted a four-poster draped in netting, but I had to share a bedroom with Rachel. She was afraid of thunderstorms, so she would always get out of her twin bed and get into mine. We’d huddle together until it was over.”

  Raising her hand, Nate pressed a kiss to her knuckles. “Are you afraid of storms?”

  The corners of her mouth lifted when she smiled. “No. But I am afraid of snakes.”

  Letting go of her hand, he hugged her. “Snakes would rather retreat than attack.”

  Morgan curved her arms under Nate’s shoulders. “Tell that to someone else. I think my fear came from seeing one sunning itself in the backyard when I was a kid. I thought it was a branch until I almost stepped on it. I started screaming and couldn’t stop. Daddy came out of the house with his gun and killed it. Ever since he told me it was a Carolina pigmy, and that most people don’t hear its rattles until it was too late, I’ve harbored an intense fear of snakes. A kid was bitten last year after he’d tried to chase one that had gotten into his daddy’s chicken’s coop. If Dr. Monroe hadn’t had a supply of antivenom on hand he would’ve been airlifted to Charleston.”

  Nate rubbed her back in a comforting gesture. “Stop it, baby. You’re getting yourself worked up over something that may never happen.”

  Leaning back in his embrace, Morgan stared up at him. “I know I’m being silly…”

  “No, you’re not. You have a fear of snakes. Everyone is afraid of something.”

  “What are you afraid of?”

  “Nothing,” he lied smoothly. He was afraid of liking her too much, afraid that their easygoing relationship would become more than he would be able to deal with emotionally.

  Nate’s vow not to become involved with a woman was shattered the instant he’d shared a dance with Morgan at the Happy Hour. For the first time in a very long time he’d gone out on a date that didn’t involve sex. After he’d separated from Kim, there had been a string of nameless, faceless women who’d come in and out of his life until he woke up one morning and asked himself what he was doing. He knew he couldn’t continue that lifestyle, because each time he put a woman into a taxi to send her home he felt as if he were losing a little part of himself. His having to come back to Haven Creek had saved him both physically and emotionally, because it was only a matter of time before he would have become a bitter, jaded middle-aged man blaming everyone except himself for the turn his life had taken.