Welcome to Moonlight Harbor

by Sheila Roberts

  Sabrina was quiet a moment, focusing on her paint roller. Jenna braced herself for what was coming next.

  Sure enough. “Can we go back and visit Grandma this weekend? I want to see Daddy.”

  But Daddy wasn’t in a hurry to see her. He’d made that clear enough. “Honey, I’d love that, but I’ve already got massage clients lined up for Saturday.” Not that she wouldn’t have canceled every one if Damien had cooperated. “And we’ve got too much to do here,” she added for good measure. “It’s going to be a little while before we can get back.”

  “But Daddy misses me.”

  Jenna felt sick at heart. If only. “I’m sure he does, but that’s the beauty of technology. You can Skype. And text. That’s why you’ve got an iPod.”

  “It’s not the same,” Sabrina grumbled.

  “Honey, Daddy’s a little busy sorting out his life, too, just like we are.” And we’re not part of it.

  “Okay, then, can Marigold come here? You said she could come for a visit.”

  “As soon as we get the Driftwood up and running,” Jenna promised. “So, the sooner we get the work done, the sooner we can play.”

  Sabrina put in an extra hour.

  She was just leaving to take pictures when Seth showed up.

  “Good job, high flyer,” he told her.

  Jenna looked to see how her daughter would take that nickname. She hadn’t appreciated being called kiddo by Brody.

  She was smiling. “Thanks.”

  “She’s about to go take some more beach pictures. We’re going to frame the best ones and hang them on the walls in the rooms,” Jenna said.

  “Cool,” Seth said, and Sabrina left looking happy.

  “She’s in a good mood,” he observed.

  “We’re working on attitude improvement. I promised her she could have her friend down once we get some of the work done here. And that she could dye her hair.”

  “Then life is good,” he said, and picked up a paint roller.

  “Yes, it is,” Jenna agreed. “My business cards came this morning.”

  “Got any customers lined up?”

  “Clients,” she corrected him.

  “Ah. Clients,” he said, his tone of voice mocking her.

  “As a matter of fact, I do. One of them happens to be the mayor.”

  “Whoa, I guess this means you’ve made it.”

  “Don’t be mocking me. The mayor can open a lot of doors.”

  “Oh? Who told you that?”

  “No one,” Jenna admitted. “I just know it helps to know people.”

  “Yeah, I guess.”

  “How’s your business coming along?” Any better than mine, smart guy?

  “I picked up three new clients this morning.”

  Seth Waters was a smart mouth. But an ambitious one.

  “I figure by September I’ll be going full-time.”

  Okay, that was impressive. She hoped she could get the motel whipped into shape half that quickly. At the rate Seth’s business was picking up she’d be lucky if she could. The window of time when she’d have his afternoon help was quickly shrinking. Not a good thing considering who her other laborers were.

  “I’d better take advantage of you while I can,” she said. Hmm. That hadn’t come out right.

  “I’m all for women taking advantage of me.”

  He probably didn’t have any trouble finding ones to do it, either.

  They worked on companionably, accompanied by the various singers on the playlist on Jenna’s vintage iPad. Seth Waters was easy to be around. Hotter than jalapeños, hardworking, certainly not hard to please considering the subpar living conditions she’d offered him. Attentive and interested in her, asking questions about her family and her life—even if the motivation for that might be to deflect from having to answer any questions himself. She liked his sense of humor and quick wit. Most of all, she liked the fact that he didn’t discourage her from bringing the Driftwood back to life and she said as much.

  “I think you should be going for it. This is a cool old place. You gotta go for your dreams, Jenna. Life’s too short not to.”

  A man who listened and who was supportive—you didn’t see that every day. You hardly ever saw it at all. Why was he single? It seemed like he ought to have a girlfriend.

  “I just don’t get it,” she said later when they were cleaning up.

  “Don’t get what?”

  “Why you don’t have a girlfriend.”

  “I’m alone right now because that’s how I like it,” he said. “Same as you.” And that ended that particular conversation.

  But it didn’t stop her from mulling over the mystery of his private life.

  Until Herbie from Top Dog Roofing showed up to give her an estimate on fixing the roof.

  “Not sure how you expect someone to be able to tell with that blue tarp up there,” he said to her, and scratched his massive chest.

  “I had to do something. The roof leaks.”

  He nodded. “I know. Actually, your aunt had me out about a year ago.”

  “She did?” This was the first Jenna had heard of it. And why didn’t he say so when she first talked to him? “Did you give her an estimate?”

  “I told her it would probably be about sixty K.”

  Jenna swallowed. That was even worse than what Brody had guessed. “Sixty thousand?”

  “Give or take. We never got as far as a written estimate.”

  She could see why. “How much would you charge to just patch the bad spots?”

  Herbie was shaking his head before she even finished with her question. “I wouldn’t advise that, not with all the patching this place needs. You may as well replace the whole roof with the investment you’d have to make in all those patches.”

  No problem. She’d just go to her safety deposit box and pull out a few wads of bills. She felt her throat tightening and the tear spigot turning on.

  “Want me to give you a written estimate?”

  “Sure,” she managed. Although what was the point?

  “Okay, I’ll get it to you as soon as I can.”

  “Take your time.” It would be a million years before she could afford to hire him. Which meant it would be a million years before the motel could start earning its keep.

  “You’re smart to get on this right away,” Herbie told her. “You don’t want to let it go another winter.”

  She nodded, and stayed put until he got in his truck and drove off, then she, too, took off to indulge in a good cry, leaving Seth to deal with the last of the cleanup. She heard him call her name, but she kept going, picking up her pace. She was late for a pity party.

  She threaded her way through the beach grass and over sand dunes until she arrived at the shore. The sun was out, the sky was blue, and she was under the world’s biggest black cloud. She plopped on a giant piece of driftwood, bent over and let the tears fall. This was hopeless.

  A hand on her shoulder had her about jumping out of her skin. “Hey, there, no crying allowed on a nice day.”

  “You scared the tar out of me,” she accused, taking a swipe at her eyes. “And it’s not a nice day.”

  Seth settled next to her. “How much did he think it was going to cost?”

  “Sixty thousand. Right now I don’t even have sixty dollars.” Or she wouldn’t once she finished paying for all the things she’d already ordered for the Driftwood.

  “That is tough,” Seth agreed.

  Jenna gave a bitter chuckle. “It’s not tough. It’s the end. No way are we going to be able to get this place renovated.”

  “So you’re going to give up, just like that.”

  She scowled at him. “What would you do?”

  “Keep fighting.” He picked up a rock and gave it a toss.

  “Easy fo
r you to say. Your business is all coming together.” That sounded lovely. She gave a disgusted grunt. “Sorry. Crab in the pot syndrome.”

  “What’s that?”

  “You know, you’re boiling the crab, they’re all going to die. One tries to climb out but the others pull him back in. ‘If we can’t get out, neither can you.’”

  “Ah.” He nodded.

  “I’m being a jerk,” she admitted. “I’m just tired of getting dumped on. First Damien, now all this. My mom says every storm has a rainbow. I’m having trouble finding mine.”

  “You will.” He edged closer and put an arm around her.

  Probably to comfort her, but it did more than that. She could smell the musky scent of a hardworking man. His thigh was touching hers, all manly and muscly. She got a sudden case of arrhythmia.

  “It could be worse. As long as you’re not in prison, life is good.”

  “Well, that’s a little extreme.”

  He shrugged. “Still.”

  “Right now prison doesn’t sound so bad. Free room and board.”

  His arm disappeared from around her shoulders. “Stuff like that’s not funny.”

  “I thought it was.”

  “That’s because you’ve never been in prison.”

  “Oh, and you have?”

  He was silent a moment, then said, “I knew someone who was. It about ruined his life.”

  “Someone in your family?”

  “It doesn’t matter. My point is you need to put things in perspective. Don’t give up, Jenna. Rebuilding is hard, but it beats going nowhere.” With that, he gave her shoulder a squeeze and left.

  His pep talk hadn’t so much encouraged her as consumed her with curiosity. Who was Seth talking about? Had someone in his family gone to prison? He’d been pretty evasive. In fact, he’d been evasive ever since he arrived.

  A feeling of foreboding crept over her. Who was he talking about, really? She pulled her phone out of her pants pocket and began to surf the internet. She started her search with the name Seth Waters. There were tons of Seth Waterses, including an up-and-coming country singer. Okay, narrow the search. She began hooking his name with charming words like prison and sentencing.

  And then she found him. In an article from the Los Angeles Times. Not front page news but it was there all the same. She read the headline and terror cloaked her.

  Seth Waters Sentenced.

  As she continued to read, her eyes got wider and wider. Oh, no. Oh, no. They were harboring a criminal. Former criminal, she corrected herself.

  Was there such a thing?

  She left the beach, hurrying back to the motel to...what? Ask Seth to leave?

  Yes. For sure.

  She got back to discover that he’d finished cleaning up for her. A considerate criminal.

  Former criminal.

  Criminal.

  His truck was still in the parking lot, which meant he was in his room. By the time she approached his door her heart was hammering so hard she was sure it was going to explode. Should she confront him all by herself? Wasn’t this just as stupid as what she’d done the other night, going downstairs in a dark house to catch a burglar with her tiny can of pepper spray? Idiot Girl 2.

  She’d barely knocked before he opened the door. “I wondered how long it would take you,” he greeted her.

  “What?”

  He pointed to the cell phone in her trembling hand.

  She stuffed the phone in her back pocket and bit on her lip.

  “I’d ask you to come in but I suspect you’re afraid.”

  “I’m not afraid,” she lied, and stepped inside.

  He leaned against the wall, crossed his arms. “So.”

  “So, what happened?”

  “You just read what happened.”

  “I want you to tell me. Did you shoot the man on purpose?”

  His brows dipped. “Of course on purpose.”

  It was suddenly very cold in Seth Waters’s room. Jenna rubbed her arms, trying to warm up.

  “That son of a bitch drug dealer got my little sister hooked on heroine.”

  There was something that hadn’t been mentioned in the article she’d read.

  Still, he’d shot a man. She opened her mouth to speak but nothing came out. She had no idea what to say. What to do.

  “I know. That makes me look like a real badass.”

  That was putting it mildly. All Jenna could do was nod.

  “More like a dumb ass.” He shook his head. “I had a good job working in construction. Almost had enough money saved to go back to school and finish up my degree. Everything was looking good. But after what he did to Monica... I found out where the rat bastard lived and went to his place and shot him as soon as he opened his door. Got him in the shoulder.”

  Her hands were still shaking. She was shaking all over. She shoved them in her back pockets to steady them. She had to have looked as shocked as she felt.

  “I guess I’d watched too many Vin Diesel and Clint Eastwood movies,” he said. “Somehow, I thought I could ride in, take out the bad guy and everything would be okay. You’d think by twenty-seven I’d have known better. I was convicted. Assault with a deadly weapon is a felony.”

  He’d tried to kill someone. Jenna was finding it difficult to breathe. She’d seen those action movies, too. In the movies it seemed so right when the hero took matters into his own hands and took out the bad guy. But this was real life.

  It was hard to speak, hard to think even. She found herself sliding down the wall to sit on the floor. He sat down next to her, shoulder to shoulder, but didn’t look at her. An eternity of silence passed before she finally asked, “What happened to the drug dealer?”

  Seth gave a snort. “No idea. For all I know, he’s still out there somewhere, responsible for God knows how many deaths.”

  Jenna nodded, taking that in, trying to process it all. “If you could have a do-over, would you do it again?”

  He focused on the wall opposite and let out his breath. “I’ve asked myself that a million times. Each time the answer is different. I know nobody has the right to take another person’s life.” He shook his head. “But it was my little sister. My dad wasn’t in the picture. It was just me, my younger brother and sister and Monica, the baby. I guess I felt like, as the oldest, I needed to make things right.”

  “How did the rest of your family feel?”

  His jaw tightened. “Pissed. I wasn’t a hero to them. I was a fool. An embarrassment. I broke my mom’s heart. She already had her hands full with Monica and then I had to go and do what I did. I just wanted that bastard to pay.”

  “He will. Someday.”

  “Do you believe that?”

  “I do,” Jenna said. “I think. I hope.”

  “Vengeance is mine, sayeth the Lord?”

  “Yeah. Something like that.”

  “Well, I guess I wanted to be the tool God used. I was a tool, all right.”

  “What happened with your family?”

  “My mom came to see me every week. My sisters wrote me. I kicked around for a while, trying to figure out what to do. My brother finally loaned me the money to start this business.”

  “Your life’s been like—”

  “A bad movie,” he finished for her.

  The question that had been plaguing her ever since she did her internet search demanded to be asked. “So, are you a violent man?” Well, duh. He’d shot someone.

  He looked at her and it was hard to decipher what she was seeing written on his face. “What do you think, Jenna?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t know anything about you.”

  “You know more than most people ever will. All I can tell you is I’ve never in my life hit a woman. I always tried to protect my sisters. I’ve never kicked a dog or put my fi
st through a wall.” His smile was bitter. “I’ve shaken my fist at heaven a few times, though.”

  “What happened to you wasn’t God’s fault,” Jenna said, feeling that God, somehow, needed defending.

  “You’re right. Neither was what happened to my sister. We all make our choices. She made some bad ones. Still, that loser who got her hooked...”

  Jenna could feel him tensing next to her. “You would do it again.”

  He relaxed. “No, I don’t think so. I might dream about it, but no. Like I said before, life’s too short. I already lost enough years of mine.” He smiled at her, this one free of bitterness. “The past is long gone. There’s only one way to go and that’s forward. Don’t worry,” he added, “I’ll leave tonight.”

  Yes, a good idea. He should leave. She had a child to protect. And an old lady.

  He got back up, smiled sadly down at her and held out his hand to help her up, and she let him pull her to her feet. He didn’t talk like a criminal. Or act like a criminal.

  As if she knew what a criminal acted like. What if he was conning her? What if he was just telling her what she wanted to hear? Maybe he was the one who’d been the drug dealer.

  Or maybe he was a man who’d done a terrible thing and had paid for it and was trying to rebuild his life. People did dumb things. People did wrong things. You couldn’t hold a person’s past against him when he was trying to start over.

  You sure couldn’t fall for him, though. And you couldn’t let him stay.

  All she could say before she left was “I’m sorry.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  To Do:

  Paint

  Go to bank

  Pray hard and cross fingers and toes before

  going to bank

  Jenna didn’t go into the house right away. Instead, she plopped down on Aunt Edie’s front porch and did some more internet surfing, trying to figure out Seth Waters. One article backed up his story about the man he shot being a drug dealer. It played on the human-interest aspect of the story. A quote in that article jumped out at her. It was from his sister Monica, she of the drug problem.

  The Waters family all broke down when the judge delivered his sentence this morning. Waters’s youngest sister appeared to be the most shaken, crying over and over, “He shouldn’t have done it. I shouldn’t have let him.” The family offered no further comment.