Second Chance Sweethearts (Love Inspired)

by Kristen Ethridge

  “I understand that feeling, Glo. I didn’t really want to return to Port Provident at first. I’d made big changes in my life and I didn’t want to come back here and have everyone think I was the same old Rigo. It kept me in Houston, working dead-end security-type jobs for a while. But then, once I realized I just needed to come and do what I needed to do—I gave myself permission to make necessary changes to my plan if things didn’t work out—it made the decision a lot easier.”

  “And did things work out?” She laid her fork down and looked up.

  He thought quietly for a moment. “Some things have. Others are still a work in progress. So far, I haven’t needed to use Plan B.”

  “But you’re happy with the changes you’ve made?”

  Rigo stood and took a few steps to the railing. He leaned on it, looking toward the water. “I’m happy right now, here with you. And without those changes, I wouldn’t have this.”

  Gloria left the table and joined Rigo at the white wooden gingerbread ringing the edge of the widow’s walk. Rigo turned slightly and moved one step closer to Gloria. He felt it in the air, like the unavoidable siren call of the sea that had turned captains into dreamers who left their women behind on rooftop perches to watch the skyline and wonder.

  “Sometimes change moves you forward,” he said, putting his hand on the top of Gloria’s shoulder and turning her. “Sometimes, it takes you back.”

  Like the roll of the waves, he leaned his head down and hovered briefly above her upturned face. When she didn’t pull back, he found himself unable to stop the forward motion. Kissing her swept the years away, like the tide washing away footprints left in the sand.

  Her hand reached up and slid around his neck, her short fingernails leaving behind a tickle where they danced across the skin.

  The kiss felt at once both familiar and new, as if the years had changed them but left their spirit untouched. As he pulled away, he knew that no matter what change came out of this—good or bad—he wouldn’t regret this moment and the chance to share a real kiss with her just one more time.

  As the kiss broke, Rigo could feel her touch like an imprint left behind, a memory he’d carry forever. He stood still, trying to read her face. Although he didn’t second-guess kissing her, he didn’t want to make the wrong move now.

  “Is this good?” she said. “Or bad?” Her words picked up where their conversation had left off.

  “What do you think?” Rigo tried to match her measured tone of voice.

  She brushed the hair back from where the light breeze had blown it in front of her eyes. “Not so bad.”

  Rigo exhaled slightly. Good. Gloria turned away and focused on the faint lines of waves rolling in the distance. “I know that you’ve changed. I have accepted your apology, and I meant it. I’ve even told people that I can see the change in you—I’ve told it to myself. I want us to move on.” She let out a jagged sigh, the uncertain edges of which nicked Rigo’s heart. “But I don’t know about us moving on together.”

  “I understand,” he said simply.

  His head understood. But his heart felt as though it had been put in one of the headlocks he’d been taught at the police academy, designed to subdue a suspect and restrict their motion.

  Wait. That wasn’t right. A heartlock. Designed to stifle newly growing feelings and restrict their expression.

  Rigo’d been heartlocked.

  “Do you understand? Maybe you can explain it to me, then, because I really don’t.” She spoke softly. Without traffic below, the gentle whuff of the roaring surf could be clearly heard in the distance.

  “You have a lot in front of you right now, Glo. I think you need to decide for yourself what changes you’re willing to make and what changes you’re not.”

  The whuff filled the silence again as he tried to decide whether to let his heart speak or not.

  It wasn’t much of a debate. If he didn’t say it now, he might not ever have the chance again.

  “I’m not running out on you again. I’ve made mistakes and I haven’t been there for you in the past.” He swallowed hard to clear the lump in his throat before it rendered him unable to get out the rest. “I may have been a fool, Gloria, but I’ve loved you all my life.”

  She reached up and wordlessly touched his sleeve, rubbing a small fold of the linen guayabera he’d pulled out of the back of his closet. Without a sound, she looked in Rigo’s eyes, then nodded.

  The brown of her irises looked glassy, like they were holding back a thousand secrets. The silence tightened its grip on Rigo’s heartlock.

  Gloria nodded again, opened her mouth to speak, then closed it without making a sound. She let go of his sleeve, then turned and squeezed awkwardly between the frame of the table and the railing. On footsteps that whispered, Gloria stepped through the tiny door and out of his life, taking Rigo’s anxious, restrained heart with her.

  Chapter Nine

  Gloria finally drifted off to sleep in the pitch-black that stole in just before dawn. Although she could not see the stars they’d watched together, their images filled her mind’s eye and the soft touch of Rigo’s kiss still lingered on her lips.

  She started awake at the sound of a large thump, followed by a low buzz. Turning her head, through groggy eyes she saw red blinking lights on the clock on the nightstand.

  The electricity had come back on, just like that. Water would follow shortly, or so the word around the island said yesterday. Then the causeway would be opening around noon, bringing an army of curious residents and likely a few looky-loos out to see the aftereffects of a natural disaster for themselves.

  Today would be the day when everything changed. People would return to Port Provident and begin to repair their homes and businesses. They’d see the curtain pulled back. Surely most residents who’d evacuated had seen the reports on TV, but even an HD picture couldn’t replicate seeing face-to-face the two-by-fours turned to toothpicks across Gulfview Boulevard, the boats from the marinas across town now scattered on streets and in parking lots, the palm trees upended at the roots in the esplanades of the historic avenues, the black spots of insidious mold blooming on every wall that had been touched by the brown sludge and water.

  A lot of her friends and family would find their worlds rocked today.

  Just like her own world had shifted on its orbit last night.

  Gloria stretched in bed, and as her shoulders, arms and back all felt the warmth and tug of impending activity, so did her heart.

  Her lips curved upward in a smile of acknowledgment. It was time to face the changes in the world around her without fear. Thinking about it too much would keep her from progress.

  A knock sounded at the sturdy wooden door. “Gloria? Did you hear that?” Inez’s voice echoed a bit in the hallway.

  “I did. I think the power is back on.” Gloria scooted off the bed and wrapped the old bathrobe she’d borrowed from Inez around her. The early dawn light stained the floral pattern with a pink glow.

  Gloria opened the door. “Did the city come by yesterday to check the breakers and such like they said?”

  “Yes. After lunch. The tag they left is on the table Rigo put by the door.”

  “Is Rigo here?”

  Inez shook her head, her hair still pinned tightly in curls. Even the hurricane’s inconveniences couldn’t shake decades-long bedtime rituals. “No. He left for his shift just before eleven last night, so he should be back around lunch. He told me yesterday that they’d be going off those twelve-hour shifts as soon as the utilities came back on. So, I guess this is his last one.”

  “I wonder when the water will turn back on.” Maybe sometime soon she’d be able to get clean and be as beautiful as Rigo told her last night she was.

  “I hope soon. These curls are getting flat.” She gently patted her hair. “What are you doing toda
y, Gloria?”

  Now that she knew the water could be back on any minute, the layers of salt caked on her body began to itch like the first peeling of a deep red sunburn.

  “Well, if the causeway is opening back up, I assume my parents and Gracie and Jake will be first in line. So I’ll probably go finish a few little things I was working on at my parents’ house. And then once the water comes back on, I’m going to take a shower. I’m going to find a new bar of soap somewhere on this island, unwrap it and use the whole thing. Then I’m going to find a bottle of shampoo and squeeze so much of it in my hands that it runs between my fingers like liquid gold. I’m going to lather, rinse and repeat and repeat and repeat.”

  “Ay, mija. I completely understand. I dreamed about a bubble bath last night. I haven’t had one of those in years, but I think I’m about to change that.”

  Gloria warmed a bit at the older woman using the word for “my daughter.” She certainly had come to think fondly of Inez, and she liked knowing that Inez seemed to feel the same.

  “Mija, that T-shirt you had on yesterday looked awful. Why don’t you see if you can find another one? I’m sure Rigo has some extras in his closet and he won’t mind if you take one of his to wear after your shower. No sense taking your first shower in days to put back on that old dirty shirt.” Inez pointed toward Rigo’s closed door at the far end of the hall. “In fact, I can smell you from here. Just go in there now and get one for today and you can get another later if the water comes on. He’s got plenty to spare.”

  Gloria didn’t turn. Sure they’d shared a kiss, but she didn’t know about sharing a T-shirt.

  “What?” Inez picked up on Gloria’s hesitation. “Just because you borrow a shirt from him doesn’t mean you have to marry him, girl. It just means you won’t smell.”

  Gloria could feel a red flush plucking at her cheeks from just under the skin. “Of course I’m not marrying him, Inez. That ship sailed, like, a decade ago. But I feel strange about walking in his room without his permission.”

  Had she really just said that? Clearly the caked-on salt and sweat was getting in her head.

  Not to mention that kiss. It definitely had already staked out territory in Gloria’s mind and wouldn’t leave. It just sat on repeat, kicking up sparks like a July Fourth sparkler over and over and over.

  “It’s my house, my room. You’re not there to snoop. Just walk in and find a T-shirt and walk out. Ay yi yi, hija.”

  Inez walked back to her room, leaving Gloria alone to contemplate that exasperated sound and Inez’s true meaning behind it.

  The older woman was likely right. Gloria had permission from Inez to go in there and it wasn’t as if she was going to be poking around for dirt or anything. She just needed a clean shirt. No big deal. She’d worn plenty of Rigo’s T-shirts in high school. Back then, she wore his letter jacket that he’d earned on the baseball diamond enough that it practically qualified as her own. This couldn’t be much different.

  With a tentative push of the door, Gloria walked into Rigo’s room. In spite of days of total chaos, the room looked completely organized. The louvered closet door had been left open. Rigo had been right—the closet was tiny, but the clothes that did fit inside were hung in an orderly fashion and all the hangers faced in the same direction with the precision of a military drill.

  Averting her eyes from the linen guayabera Rigo had worn to the rooftop last night—and the memories it evoked in her mind and on her lips—Gloria pulled out two Beach Patrol shirts. She held them in her hand and reflexively brought them to her face. She smelled the faint scent of pine and spice. It hadn’t changed over the years.

  But she had.

  And she knew better now. She just couldn’t let her wandering mind grab her heart and lead it astray.

  She had a home and a career to rebuild, and all that came with it.

  “I can’t risk having to rebuild a heart, too,” she said with a whisper, hoping her heart and her head would both hear and obey.

  She walked out of Rigo’s room and quietly clicked the heavy white-painted door closed behind her. Determined to get to her parents’ house and get back to real rebuilding as quickly as possible, Gloria pulled off the stained, sweat-soaked shirt she’d been wearing and exchanged it for the one that smelled of pine and the past, powerless to keep her mind off last night’s kiss.

  * * *

  Rigo raised the hemline of his T-shirt and wiped it across his brow. Humidity was a part of life on the Texas Gulf Coast, but since Hurricane Hope had blown through town, the water in the air felt more like a faucet. Oppressive seemed like the best word to describe how it felt to walk around in air that was thick enough to be served up in a bowl like soup or posole.

  But as heavy as the air lay, the way Gloria left the widow’s walk last night lay even heavier on Rigo’s heart and mind.

  He’d told himself not to expect anything from the evening. He’d promised himself he was doing it only to bring a smile to an old friend’s face at a stressful time. He just wanted to prove she could trust him. He’d been ready to follow all his own advice and keep things simple.

  Until Gloria walked out in that raspberry-pink dress.

  Then everything changed. And even the heat and the humidity couldn’t melt that memory of Gloria’s petite curves hugged by that just-clingy-enough dress from his mind.

  “Taking a break, Vasquez?” Rigo looked up from his thoughts to see Bradley Thorpe, the director of the Park Board. Bradley ran the island’s beach parks and other tourist entities from a management standpoint, and Rigo was responsible for keeping them safe and secure. Brad had recently moved to the area from South Padre Island at the southernmost tip of Texas, but he and Rigo had immediately hit it off and become friends. Best of all, he hadn’t been a witness to Rigo’s downfall or heard any of the gossip of several years ago. It felt good to have a friend who knew him only as Chief Rigo Vasquez of the Port Provident Beach Patrol, with no attached baggage.

  “Hey, Brad. Just evaluating these lifeguard towers. Believe it or not, there’s not a lot of damage. I think lining them up here behind the building blocked some of the wind shear.” Rigo gestured at the four-story brown brick tower behind them, the home of the Port Provident Park Board.

  “That’s great news. I’ve been digging through files, trying to see exactly how our insurance coverage stacks up. The downstairs of the building is flooded and a total wreck, just like everything else on the ground here. Both pavilions at the main beach parks look like they have structural damage.”

  Rigo nodded his head.

  “You’re a million miles away, Vasquez. Something’s on your mind. Anything I can help with? Don’t worry about the pavilions, man. You can use an office here for the time being. There are a few open spots on the third floor.” Bradley leaned against one of the wooden lifeguard stands.

  “It’s not that, though I appreciate the offer.”

  “Then what’s up?”

  Rigo could see real concern in Bradley’s eyes, overriding the tired glaze they all seemed to carry around these days.

  Could he come clean with Brad? He liked that Brad didn’t know everything about his past. While it would be nice to get a sanity check on these reemerging feelings for Gloria, Rigo just couldn’t get comfortable with airing his dirty laundry right now with this colleague who’d become a steady friend.

  But who else would be able to give him unbiased advice?

  “Do you read the Bible, Brad?”

  “A little, why?” Bradley crossed his arms over his chest.

  Rigo kicked at a small pile of muddy pebbles near his feet. “Ever heard of Jeremiah 29:11?”

  “My sister has it up on a poster. Something about hope, right?”

  The sun inched out from behind a cloud overhead, sweeping the lingering midmorning shadows off the lifeguard stands that
stood all around them.

  “Right. God says he has ‘plans to give you a hope and a future.’” Rigo scuffed at the muddy mess he’d made under the soles of his feet. “I’m thinking about Hurricane Hope and wondering about the future.”

  “Okay, I’m not totally following you. From the look on your face, I thought you had trouble with some woman. Except that I’ve never heard you talk about a relationship or anything, so at least it’s not that.”

  “Brad, I think it’s exactly that. You remember the people I brought with me to the command center during the eye of the hurricane?”

  Bradley nodded. “Your aunt and that mom and baby and the nurse?”

  “Nurse-Midwife.” He may as well go all the way with this honesty thing. He knew Gloria’s official title was Certified Nurse-Midwife, and it seemed worth making the distinction.

  “Wait a minute.” Brad’s hazel eyes opened wide. “That baby was yours?”

  A short laugh escaped Rigo, and he waved his hand shortly. “No, no.”

  “Then what?”

  “The baby wasn’t mine, but the midwife used to belong to me.”

  “Wait. What?”

  Rigo could tell he was throwing Bradley for a loop. Clearly, they all needed to get more sleep. Twelve-hour shifts in a disaster-damaged world took their toll on mind and body.

  “Brad. Not literally. I dated her a long time ago.” Seeing clarity in Brad’s eyes, Rigo decided just to throw it out there. “And then I was a jerk and went to Mexico to surf and left her. She started dating a guy I’d been good friends with in high school. They got married. And when I came back to town and went to work on the police force, I got paired up with him. I tried to act like we were still friends, just like when we were younger, like nothing had changed. But it all had. The jealousy that he had her and they had a baby on the way—it ate me alive. I was there the night he died. And then I messed everything up even worse than before.”