“Let me guess, Amstel Light? Or maybe Miller?”
“Both. Bottle. No draft.”
He shook his head. “Miller, please. My mother thinks Amstel is a beer women enjoy because it has fewer calories, although she doesn’t know a single female who consumes anything other than expensive wine. And Miller is her generation’s form of a microbrew, I guess. Somehow, it’s perfectly acceptable for a man to drink barley and hops, yet a woman should only partake of grapes.”
“Glasses are chilled. Bottles don’t leave the bar.”
“Of course.” He wasn’t the slightest bit surprised.
I chanced to offer an introduction over the top of the bar. “I’m Chelsea. You must be a relative of the couple throwing the party.” I’d already figured out the lineage, but I wanted to keep him talking. I hadn’t met anyone here, and even though he lived in New York, it made me feel normal even if it were fleeting.
“Carpenter. My friends call me Carp. And yes, the only child of said hosts.”
“Sorry for your luck.” My tone was playful, and he clearly noted my comment was in jest. “I take it Carpenter is your last name?”
He nodded as I handed him the glass. I couldn’t say with any certainty what he was thinking, though the taste of crappy beer didn’t appear to sit well on his palette. And the urge I’d seen to toss one back hadn’t driven him to down the one he had in hand. He needed something far stronger to escape whatever he ran from.
“It is.”
“Do you have a first name?”
His hesitation to share his first name was odd, but he finally acquiesced. “James.”
“Well, Carp, you’ve been the highlight of my evening. I get off in an hour if you don’t have anything to do.” I’d never been so forward and had no idea where my confidence had come from. I didn’t have a car here and had no way to get back to Dottie’s—although, I knew she’d understand and rescue me when I called.
“Sure. There’s not much to do here. I guess we could go down to the beach. The moon’s full so there’s plenty of light.”
“Sounds good. I’ll just meet you at the back door they had us come in. Work for you?”
An hour later, I released the tension in my legs when I found a bathroom and changed clothes. Then I met Carp at the designated spot. Carp. It was odd, but James didn’t fit him—it was too…formal. I’d just try not to imagine an ugly fish when I addressed him.
He appraised me the same way he’d done at the bar an hour earlier. Except this time, he didn’t stop at my hair; his eyes roamed from head to toe without bothering to hide the fact he was checking me out. Yet where he’d been fascinated by my hair then, he now stared at my leather flip-flops, or maybe it was the ink covering my feet.
“Do you live around here?” I asked, hoping to get a narrower indication of where I’d find him on a map. We’d been playing the get-to-know-you version of twenty questions since our toes had hit the sand.
“No. New York City.” The lack of details he gave wasn’t lost on me. Either he was a private person or a guarded one. “You?”
“On the other side of the island about two blocks from the water. It’s my friend Dottie’s house. It’s nothing like your parents’, but I love stepping out on the back porch and hearing the waves in the distance.” There was no indication of how much information he had an interested in learning, and since I hadn’t had anyone my age to talk to since I’d moved here, I chattered away, believing he was fascinated. “I moved down here a few weeks ago from Chicago.”
“Do you bartend full time?”
As much as I enjoyed the company, it was obvious by the looks and the lack of meaningful conversation that Carp was more interested in losing himself in my body than getting acquainted with me. I didn’t want to cheapen myself, but relationships weren’t a possibility, and I had the same carnal desire anyone else did.
“No. I just do it to earn extra money.” I didn’t offer him anything further regarding my employment. Nothing I said would compare to whatever he did in New York, and I wasn’t interested in tasting regret. Not everyone lived to be a millionaire.
The moonlight reflected off the water, and my mind wandered momentarily to the endlessness of the ocean: the crashing waves, rolling tide, and the way it married the horizon, even in darkness. The surf lapped at our now bare feet, and the warm sand between my toes reminded me that I now called this island paradise home. The simple things in life could be monumental if we allowed ourselves to appreciate what nature gave us for free.
“What do you do for a living?” I hated that question—moreover I hated that Americans defined their identities with careers. However, he’d just done the same to me, and he seemed bored strolling along the shore in silence.
“Wealth management.”
“Ah, so the apple didn’t fall far from the tree.” My brow rose, not in judgment rather humor. There was no denying he and his father weren’t close just in the little time I’d seen them together, yet he’d followed in the old man’s footsteps. I kept my gaze in front of me.
I expected him to present a firm argument against my assumption. Instead, he dismissed the comment the same way he’d done his father’s friends at the party—with dignified grace.
“Other than bartending, what else do you like to do?” There was nothing in his tone to indicate he had any real interest in my hobbies or preferences. He hadn’t been rude; in fact, he’d been rather pleasant, even though both of us were well aware this wasn’t going anywhere long term.
I quit walking, and he stopped a couple steps ahead of me when he realized I wasn’t next to him. “Can we just be honest here?” I didn’t say the words with accusation, yet the question was pointed.
He turned back, closed the gap between us, and met my eyes. “Yeah, sure.”
“You don’t live here. I’m not going to New York. Obviously, the two of us are attracted to each other, and neither plan on any kind of relationship. Am I right so far?”
His shoulders raised with an involuntary shrug he seemed embarrassed by. “I guess so.”
I glanced around the deserted beach and then pulled a condom out of my pocket. “I’m not interested in romance, Carp, and I don’t do relationships. There are miles of desolate beach and nothing other than moonlight to disturb us.” My forwardness caught him by surprise.
His brow furrowed in contemplation. Carp mulled something over, and the silence hung between us while I waited. “Have you ever had sex in the sand?”
I shrugged and cocked my head to the side without answering.
“It’s like rubbing sandpaper on your ass while you try to get off.”
“Okay, I’ll take the bottom.” My coy grin lit a fire in his eyes. The cool blue warmed in front of me. “Or you could sit, and I could ride. Whichever suits you.” I’d never been brazen. The girl speaking to Carp was as much a stranger to me as she was to the man before me.
But sometimes, when you have nothing left to lose, you have to take the bull by the horns. I refused to live by anyone else’s rules anymore. Life didn’t hand you what you wanted—you had to take it without regret. And just like that, I stripped off the tank top that covered my thin frame and glanced at my flat stomach when I shimmied out of my shorts. I dropped each piece onto the sand in a pile that I stepped over to close the gap between us. Hunger marked his face and lust traced his eyes. The second the moon reflected off the foil between my fingers he sprang into action.
Something happens to a single man in front of a naked woman—he loses all rational thought. Where there had been a hint of hesitation before, the pull of bare skin basking in the light of the moon was too much to resist. He looked like a sailor lost at sea, lending his ear to a siren.
I wasn’t part of mythology, and he wouldn’t get entranced by my spell. I was just a twenty-two-year-old girl who wasn’t captivated by the unfamiliar or afraid of risk.
Even though the experience wasn’t beautiful, I couldn’t say it was tragic. Sadly, we hadn’t bonded ove
r the intimate act on the beach, although somehow, Carp’s warning coming true had sent us both into gales of laughter and left sand in crevices I didn’t know existed. I’d be picking grains out of my skin for weeks to come. I could mark this off my bucket list—sex on the beach was only appealing in Hollywood. The levity of the situation elevated his mood and dropped his guard.
We talked for hours after an epic failure to get rid of the grit on each other’s clothes and scalp. If only he’d been willing to open up before he’d gotten undressed. I could have saved him from making a mistake he’d regret in the morning. And it had nothing to do with me, and everything to do with the girl he’d loved—and lost. The guilt he would wear when what he did sank in would cling to him like a wet shirt he couldn’t get off.
We’d both known the encounter would be fleeting, even if for different reasons. He escorted me to the pier, and I’d texted Dottie while we walked. I assumed we’d say goodbye and that would be the end. Yet we exchanged numbers, and I saw her headlights coming down the street.
“Hey, Chelsea?” He stopped me from leaving to meet my ride.
“Yeah?” When I turned back, his features had softened, and whatever wall he’d had up disappeared.
“I have business to deal with in town for a couple days. Maybe we could get coffee or breakfast one day before I leave.” Suddenly shy, he shrugged. “As friends.” His brows rose, and his hand landed in his hair. It looked painful to see him pulling on it with nervous apprehension.
I giggled at the vulnerability of a man who stood head and shoulders above most, had a physique many males would kill for, and who’d exuded confidence from the instant I’d laid eyes on him until this very instant. “I’d like that.”
He had no idea the olive branch he’d offered me. It was unexpected, yet certainly welcome. I looked forward to calling James Carpenter a friend.
***
“How are you holding up, honey?” Dottie handed me a cup of coffee and took a seat next to me on the deck.
Staring out at the horizon, I watched the sky color itself in a rainbow of oranges and pinks. Life in Geneva Key was different than Chicago, not better or worse. “Some days are better than others.” My gaze shifted from the artwork on the horizon to the woman I’d known and loved my entire life. “It scares me to think I’m going to lose her, and that if I don’t remember her, there won’t be anyone around to share with the world how amazing she was.”
Dottie patted my leg just like my mother would have done, and I wondered if she’d picked up the habit watching her over the years, or if she’d always been nurturing. “I think she’ll always be in your heart. And as long as she’s there, her memory will survive. Your mother has touched the lives of more people than you could ever imagine.”
“My entire life, I knew this day would come. She never hid from me what the disease would eventually do to her body and her mind. I just thought I had more time. And the older I got, the younger she seemed, so it didn’t dawn on me that she was losing the fight.”
“Chelsea, you’re young. Mortality shouldn’t be on the mind of a girl your age. Don’t regret living—Janie would never want that.”
Dottie was right, my mother never questioned the things she did when I was growing up. It had always been the two of us, and she made every second count. Had I realized then how she tried to ensure she got joy out of every day, I might have paid closer attention and focused on what mattered. In the end, money wouldn’t save her, neither would the best doctors in the world—and she’d known that since she was diagnosed.
“I miss her. The woman I grew up with. Sometimes I still see glimpses, although they’re getting farther apart. It won’t be long until they disappear completely. I miss the sound of her voice and the way she hugged me. Even the elegance of her handwriting. The little things are the biggest reminders of what all I stand to lose.”
There had been a time in the not so distant past that acknowledging my mother was dying brought an onslaught of tears that would leave me in a blubbering mess. I was well versed in how this all worked from diagnosis to the onset of symptoms and through the stages before death. I’d seen it all my life at charity events, and it was my mother’s life’s passion to raise awareness and find a cure. I’d been to countless funerals, hundreds of events, and studied every bit of information I’d been able to find—I should be prepared.
However, as the Huntingtons progressed, I tried to let go of that emotion to focus on making her comfortable and providing the best finale I could to celebrate her journey. It was important to me to bring a smile to her face for as long as I was able, and even now that I neared the point where my mom would lose what little motor function she had remaining and her memory would fail her completely, I wanted her to have joy as long as possible.
Dottie wasn’t a stranger to the thief who stole the woman I loved. She’d faced that same devil in the losses of countless people she and my mom loved and worked with over the years. And I think those experiences brought the wisdom and patience she’d shown me in the last couple of years. She always seemed to know when to talk, when to listen, and when to just offer support with her presence.
My head rolled toward my mom’s best friend who turned to me. Soulful, blue eyes searched my face, and the corners of her mouth turned up in a gentle offering of love. Dottie was a beautiful woman in her mid-seventies, but she’d been exotic and stunning in her youth. I’d seen pictures of her with her late husband and vaguely remembered her arriving at our house when I was a child looking the way she had in the framed memories that scattered the living room we now shared. Dressed to the nines with her makeup flawlessly done, hair tightly wound into a French twist, and heels I’d never be able to walk in—she was the essence of dignity and grace. And even though her hair had lost the rich, chocolate color of her youth, and her skin wasn’t as taut as it had once been—her beauty still radiated class.
“Do you think she’s in pain?” The mere inability to communicate made my mom’s impending death that much harder. I couldn’t remember the last time she’d told me she loved me because I hadn’t known I’d never hear it again. And because I hadn’t paid attention, I’d missed it, and it was one more memory I wouldn’t have.
“Medically speaking? Or just my personal opinion?”
“Your opinion.”
“I think pain comes at the end of someone’s life when they realize all they regret and have run out of time to make amends, to tell someone how special they are, have a picnic in the park. All the things we never have room for in our lives because we’re so busy are the very things we wish we’d taken the time to do.”
I hadn’t known Pappy all that well, and had only met him a handful of times, but Dottie had changed when she lost her husband. He was wealthy and powerful, the kind of guy who valued his public image—and he’d had a big one to maintain—yet she was the apple of his eye. And I assumed, because I didn’t want to ask, that she missed doing those things with him and had ended up burying a mountain of regret. The stories she told of the places they’d been sounded like a fairy tale—however, as I got older, I realized jet-setting left little time for walks on the beach. And every choice brought a sacrifice.
“Your mother never lived with regret. She made sure to do everything that interested her, she apologized freely, loved passionately, and never held a grudge, and in the end, not taking a single day for granted left her with no remorse, and certainly no guilt. So to answer your question, no—I don’t think Janie is in any pain. And now that you’re settled here, I believe she’s ready to let go.”
My phone vibrated on the table next to me with a text from Carp. I sensed Dottie watching me as I read his message, inviting me to lunch.
“A smile looks good on your lips.”
“Do you know where Galen’s is?” I hoped she didn’t ask a lot of questions. I didn’t have any answers, and nothing other than friendship would ever come of this.
Her brows arched, though she didn’t pry. “It’s just a
few blocks from here. I can drop you off.”
I stood and took my untouched coffee cup with me. “No, thanks. I’m going to shower and get dressed. Can you give me directions before I leave?”
She stared up at me from the Adirondack chair she lounged in. “Of course.”
“Thanks, Dottie.” I kissed the top of her soft-gray hair, and then went inside.
***
Carp looked different in the warmth of the mid-day sun than he had at night, and even more so without the stress that had marred his features at his parents’ house. The tension that pinched his brow was gone, and the cargo shorts and Tar Heels shirt suited him better than the slacks and tie.
“Hey.” He met me at the door with a smile.
“Hey, yourself.” I doubted I’d ever even talk to this man again, yet for the next hour, I got to pretend like things were normal and enjoy a meal and conversation. If that meant hiding from the weight of reality, then so be it.
“Have you ever eaten here?” Carp’s enthusiasm was endearing. His attention shifted briefly to the hostess. “Hey, Nina. Two please.”
“No, but it seems you have.”
“They have the best shepherd’s pie in the country, and I think I’ve tried them all. Well, maybe not all but enough to confirm that this is top notch.”
We followed Nina to a booth in the back. The tiny restaurant felt more like a pub, except where the lights are dimmed in a bar, the restaurant bathed in sunshine from the front windows. It was a good thing I didn’t come for the ambiance, because the wooden booths with green pleather upholstery reminded me of leprechauns and seemed kind of cliché.
After sliding in, Carp turned to Nina and asked her to give us a few minutes. The menu consisted of a single page of comfort food no one should eat on a humid summer’s day in Florida. I kept it simple and went with Carp’s selection accompanied by a glass of ice water.
He handed the menus back to Nina before returning his attention to me. “It won’t disappoint.”
Unexpected Arrivals Page 12
