by Casey Hagen
“Hey, that’s all I’ve got. I’m swearing off men. Burying them has become a tedious business,” Maureen said, examining her nails.
That right there was how Laura knew it was time for a change of subject.
Despite Maureen’s confident, balls-to-the-wall attitude, losing two men she’d loved completely had left a few scars. Most days she handled it well. Sometimes, it was just a little too close to the surface.
“So, Mom, Dad, how’s the construction going?”
“Oh, the house! It’s almost finished. It’s gone splendidly. Only one little mistake. We happened to be there looking over the house with Jack, he’s the owner of Everglade Homes. Anyway, he happened to be there when the wrong granite arrived. He called the granite company, and by that afternoon they had the right pieces delivered. He’s very efficient.”
“Jack?” Maureen said.
“I know a Jack,” Bryce said, never taking his eyes from the screen. Of course, that meant he likely had picked up everything they'd said. The days of hiding adult conversations from her little man were coming to an end.
Wait…Laura never told her sister Jack’s name. Must be a coincidence. It’s not like Jack was a rare name or anything.
“My Jack helps me build sand castles on the beach.”
“Maureen?” Laura said, wondering what the hell was going on at the beach.
Maureen waved away her concern. “Oh, he’s just a guy who jogs on the beach in the afternoons. I watch them closely. Don’t worry.”
“Maybe it’s the same Jack from Everglade Builders,” their mother offered.
“Probably not,” Maureen said with a shake of her head. “This guy is around in the early, mid-afternoons. If he owned a building company, he would not be running around on a beach just after midday, building sand castles with a little boy.”
But her Jack might be from Everglade Builders. They’d never talked about it, where he worked that is. She had let the man do the things he did to her on the beach and she didn’t even know where he worked.
She’d definitely lost it.
Note to self: Before sleeping with him, at least find out what he does for a living.
And get his freaking phone number.
***
Jack paced his office in the construction trailer Monday morning. He hadn’t heard a word about the results of his test yet and the waiting was killing him.
He’d also not stopped at Mimosa Key Dental to find Laura yet, either, which made him a first-rate asshole. She might have just assumed they would find each other at the Toasted Pelican, but after what he’d done to her on the beach she might expect something more than the weekly meet-up they’d engaged in so far.
Way off his game, he grabbed another cup of coffee…the only thing keeping him awake, only sleeping a couple hours a night since he’d found out about his son and granddaughter.
He had been better off not knowing about them. At least then he only carried his own worry over his mistakes. Now his son had a name and, despite not knowing him personally, Jack could imagine his life. At least to an extent.
Chris had a little girl that he had kept. He’d held her at night when she cried. He’d changed her diaper. He’d watched her learn to crawl and to walk. He held her hand. He ran around with her at a park. He’d caught her at the bottom of a slide.
He’d done all the things with Sophie that Jack wished he had been able to do with Chris.
A quick flash of jealousy moved through him. He knew it wasn’t right to feel that way. Chris obviously had been older when Sophie was born than Jack had been when Chris was born. He probably had an education, a wife, and a career.
He’d turned into a man who fought and sacrificed for his own. That’s the only explanation for why he had looked for Jack but didn’t necessarily want to meet him. He’d do anything for his little girl.
Jack respected that. Chris made him proud, although he had no right to any of the credit for the kind of man he’d become.
“You’re going to wear a hole through the floor if you keep up this pacing,” Roseanne said from the doorway, her hand on her hip. She stood maybe five feet tall. Four kids had left her thicker around the middle but the extra weight rounded out her face, making her look younger than her sixty-eight years.
Those four kids had also trained her to not take shit and get to the heart of the matter. And her sights were set on him.
“I’ll build a new floor then.”
She dropped three folders onto the center of his desk. “Nonsense. What in the hell is going on with you? You were a hot mess Thursday, and as near as I can tell you’ve only gotten worse since.”
He braced his hand on the wall and took a sip of coffee. “I’ve got some personal stuff going on. Not sure what to do about it.”
She leaned against his desk and crossed her arms over her ample chest. “How about you lay it on me and I’ll see if I can help you out?”
“You have enough of your own crap to deal with.”
“Son, we all have crap to deal with and we all take vacations from our crap by focusing on other people’s crap. So, come on, lay it on me. Let’s see if I can be more help to you than I can to myself.”
“I have a son I gave up for adoption who hired a P.I. to find me. When he did, he told me I have a four-year-old granddaughter with leukemia who needs a bone-marrow transplant. I was tested last Thursday to see if I’m a match. I’m still waiting for the results.”
Roseanne gasped, her palm on her chest as she dropped onto a metal folding chair in the corner of his office. “Well, yes, that’s a whole lot of crap.”
“And there’s a woman. She’s a year younger than my son. I’m seeing her.” He winced. “I guess I’m seeing her. I don’t know. I’ve met up with her twice. I don’t know her number or where she lives, but it’s serious. At least more serious than I’ve been in a long time. It sounds ridiculous when I say it.” He forced a hand through his hair and then scrubbed it over his face. “In a biblical sense serious. Well, maybe not, we didn’t do everything, I mean, I just—”
“Whoa, there, son…I don’t need all the details,” she said with a hearty laugh. “I’ve got the picture. Good Lord, when you lay it all out, you really lay it out.”
“Yeah, sorry,” he muttered.
She waved away his apology. “No, no, it’s okay. I asked for it. Clearly, you’ve been needing to say it. Now, let’s see what I can do to help you out. Start by explaining this whole son thing, please.”
He told her everything: about Megan, the adoption, about the years he’d spent avoiding relationships, his unwillingness to have kids, all of it.
She looked at him like he was a blooming idiot, a scowl fixed to her face. “Well, I don’t know why you’re torturing yourself. What do you think it accomplishes by not having kids now?”
“It’s not fair to Chris.”
“Well, that’s just a load of crap.”
“Huh?”
“What if you’d gone your whole life and never met him? You’d have given up having more kids for nothing and you’d still feel like crap in the end.” She stood and pointed a finger at him. “It’s one hell of a burden to put on Chris if he does end up wanting to meet you.”
“Wait, what?”
Hands on her hips, she faced off with him just a foot away. She had to crane her neck to hold his stare, but damned if that stern look of hers wasn’t enough to have him hanging his head.
“How do you think he’s going to feel if he decides to meet you, wants to tell you about his life and it’s a good one, but then you drop the bomb on him that you’ve been sitting in purgatory for the past three decades?”
“Shit.”
“Yeah, shit. And if you are the answer for that little girl of his, you can bet your bottom dollar that he’s going to want to meet you. You’d better get your act together, son. Now, let me ask you…you like kids?”
He thought back to the few recent days on the beach, playing in the sand with Bryce. The boy
had one hell of an imagination… building armies, going to battle, saving fair maidens. Yeah, he liked kids. Liking them and having them was one hell of a leap, though.
“If he wants to meet me, I’ll just tell him I’ve never met the right woman.”
“You’re going to start a relationship with the boy on a lie? Not the way I would go about it.”
He went back to pacing. If he didn’t pace, he’d fall asleep on his feet. “Well, damn it, what would you have me do?”
“How about you work on forgiving yourself? And none of this pseudo working on forgiving. Go see a therapist, a man of God, something, but stop twirling in this shit-storm you’ve been in all this time.”
“Christ, woman. You’re brutal.”
She grinned at him. Not a friendly grin, but the kind that came with a double whammy behind it. “Yeah, well, now let’s talk about this woman.”
And there’s the whammy. “Christ. You remembered all that, huh?”
“That you got biblical with a woman the same age as your son? Hard to miss that detail.”
“I told her I would see her again and then I got the letter from the P.I. I thought I would take her flowers at her work, ask her out on a real date, but now it’s been five damn days and I think it’s too late to do it that way.”
“I imagine she’s worked up quite the lather by now. The biblical treatment only lasts so long, even when you’re good at it.”
He cringed and raised his hands in surrender. “Okay, this talk is getting weird.”
“Oh, please, I have four kids. Manny and I—”
“Ack! Please, for the love of God, don’t go there.”
She sighed. “Look, my point is, is there anything special about how you met? Maybe something that’s unique just to you two?”
“We met at the Toasted Pelican on a Wednesday night, then met again the following Wednesday.”
She raised her chin and gave one hard nod. “Well, there you go. You need to be there Wednesday night.”
“But what if she’s not there?”
“Oh, she’ll be there.”
“How do you know?”
“She’s a woman, I’m a woman; it’s not rocket science. It’s only you men who have a hard time figuring us out. I’ll bet she’s going to be there, if for no other reason than to give you hell for waiting a week to see her again after getting all biblical.”
“So… I should be ready to grovel?”
She let out a cackle as she sailed out of his office and back to her desk. “Oh yeah,” she said, tossing the words over her shoulder.
8
Jack stood under the spray of the shower for over thirty minutes, working the sand out of all the places he probably hadn’t had sand in since his volleyball days in Pensacola.
Bryce had been full of it today and started a sand war, which Jack was all too happy to engage in. One rule: no hits above the chest.
Bryce had a shit aim.
Jack blinked rapidly, letting the water run into his eyes until finally he felt the last piece of sand break away. He fought the urge to rub his eyes all the way home.
It had been a miserable ride.
But still worth it to see the kid’s smile.
And Jack took some pleasure knowing that Bryce was battling some sand of his own. Actually, his mother likely was. He’d apologized to Maureen, but she just smiled and shook it off.
She was a cool mom. Far more relaxed around kids than any mother he’d ever seen.
Maybe she was on drugs.
He frowned. It wasn’t his business.
The water started to cool and he cut it off, wrapped up in a towel, and grabbed a fresh pair of jeans and a maroon t-shirt. He just needed to get dressed and he’d be ready to go to the Toasted Pelican to see if Laura showed.
He hoped to hell she showed.
If not he’d go to every dental place within a fifty-mile radius, starting with Mimosa Key Dental.
He glanced at the clock. 4:45PM. He could lie down for a few minutes and grab a quick power nap and still arrive by the usual time. He dropped onto his bed, set the timer on his cell, and closed his eyes.
He jolted awake and shot straight up in bed. He blinked in the unexpected darkness of his bedroom and glanced over at the clock. 6:58PM.
Fuck!
He jumped off the bed and scrambled for the wall light, stubbing his toe on the dresser along the way. “Son of a bitch!”
That was going to leave a mark.
Six days of stress and not sleeping finally bit him in the ass.
He rushed through getting dressed, brushed his teeth, and dampened his hair to rid himself of the bed head he’d gotten from his nap. By the time he did all that and got to the restaurant, it was 7:30PM.
She’d think he hadn’t shown up. A sick feeling lodged in his gut as he walked in and scanned the bar area for her.
No Laura.
He took a seat, the seat he’d taken the first night, and waited for the bartender.
“Hey, what can I get for you? The Floridian?”
Jack shook his head in his impatience. “You remember the woman I was here with last week and the week before?”
“Oh yeah,” he said, bobbing his head and grinning.
Jack had to stifle the urge to punch him in the mouth. “Get that look off your face, goddamn it. Have you seen her in here tonight?”
The guy backed up a step and gave Jack a wary glance. “Sure.”
“How long did she stay? Was she upset?”
He pursed his lips. “No, not upset. And she’s still here.”
Jack glanced around. “What? Where?”
“She’s in the booth over there.” The bartender gestured with the white bar towel clutched in his hand.
Jack followed the direction of his hand and there she was.
In a booth, all right.
With a guy sitting across from her.
Anger burned through him at the sight. She smiled and laughed, chatting away, her hands going a mile a minute. So much for thinking he had hurt her by not being here. She didn’t even care.
He should just go.
Images flashed through his mind: Their first meeting, with her silly winking pants. Her unusual way of eating an unlikely trio of dinner foods. The way she flirted, as if she had never really flirted with a man before. Then the second time, in that pretty dress, showing off that creamy white skin faintly dusted with freckles. The way she talked about her dreams, as if so far out of reach, although she remained confident they weren’t impossible. And then there was the beach. Jesus, the beach.
Fuck that. He wasn’t going anywhere until they had a talk.
When she was done with pretty boy, she had an appointment with him. “Yeah, get me a Floridian.”
“Sure thing. Do me a favor, man…don’t start anything. Law likes to keep things peaceful around here.”
Jack unclenched his fist. “You won’t get any trouble from me.”
“Yeah, I’m going to hold you to that.” With one last narrow-eyed look, the bartender walked away and filled a pint for him.
He turned back to Laura and her dinner companion. The guy was too good-looking for his taste. Too clean-cut. Definitely too young.
Well, not too young for Laura.
How had he gotten to this point? He was pushing fifty, pissing and moaning over a woman almost twenty years his junior because she dared to have dinner with a guy her own age.
It didn’t matter how many logical reasons he came up with to explain Laura having dinner with this other guy. He still hated it.
And how the hell did a woman let you do what he did to her just a week ago, and then go on a date with another guy at their place?
One thing was for sure: he would sit here until she was through and then he sure as hell would find out.
***
Laura didn’t know why she had been nervous about this meeting. Dylan Culler couldn’t have been a nicer guy. Good vibes radiated from him. His positive attitude was infectious,
and she would love working with him. If any human being had the same child-like enthusiasm as Dr. Fentworth’s theme rooms, it was this guy.
“We’ve been so busy unpacking and trying to get the girls settled that we haven’t had a chance to check out the area. Can you fill me in on the good spots for kids?”
“Of course. With Bryce, I’m practically an expert. He loves the beach. The beach will be your best friend here. They burn off energy, get vitamin D, and go home and pass out.”
“I’ll make sure to tell my wife. She’s with them non-stop. It’s the deal we made, but still, if there’s something we can do to break things up a bit for her and for the kids, I’m all for it. Now that we’re here, we have no family to take them off our hands, well, her hands, and give her a break.”
Laura reached out and laid her hand over his. “You may not have family, but you have friends. The girls are welcome to join us anytime. You just say the word when you need a break for your sanity.”
She caught a quick movement out of the corner of her eye and turned. Jack sat at the bar, his angry gaze on her, his hands white with the force he used to squeeze his glass.
She glanced down to where her hand lay over Dylan’s and quickly snatched it back.
Shit.
It’s not what he thought, but oh, how it must have looked.
And why did she care in the first place? She’d asked him if they would see each other again and he said, “Definitely.”
After that: nothing. He didn’t return to the Toasted Pelican, nor did he look for her at the one freaking dental office on the island.
Suddenly, she didn’t give a shit how her dinner with Dylan looked. If Jack wanted her so bad, she had been here, waiting. Only, he never showed.
She turned her gaze back to Dylan and offered him a smile. “Now, the next two places, they keep us in business. Ms. Icey’s. It’s a bit further out, but it’s an ice cream place with this kind of retro, old-town vibe. Very cool. Teenagers love it, so make sure you love teenagers before you go. There’s also The Donut Hole for all things breakfast, sugary, and awesome.”
He laughed and took a sip of his wine. “To local business that give us job security.”
“To job security,” she said with a smile, raising her own glass in return.
