Moonlight Cove

by Sherryl Woods

  “Of course, because we both care about you. You’ve got what it takes to be in a relationship for the long haul, Mack. I hope you wake up and accept that before it’s too late. Don’t lose Susie because you’re scared.”

  Mack scowled at his choice of words. “I’m not scared,” he insisted.

  “Then you’re crazy,” Will said. “When it comes down to it, we’re all a little scared of love and making a lifelong commitment. It’s a big deal.”

  Mack leveled a knowing look right back at him. “Is that why you haven’t pushed harder to win Jess?”

  Will wasn’t used to having the tables turned on him, certainly not by Mack, who tended to avoid talk about emotional issues. In fact, this whole conversation had been a rarity.

  “Maybe,” Will admitted, since Mack had opened the door. “Or maybe I’ve been terrified that if I pushed hard and still lost her, I’d never get over it.”

  “Then I should tell you what my grandmama once told me before she took off to dance in Vegas or wherever the hell she went,” Mack said. “Nothing beats a try but a failure. That advice was what kept me on a playing field when I was a kid and everyone said I was too small to play football. I figured if I kept trying, I might fail, but if I gave up, I’d fail for sure.”

  Will laughed. “Words to live by,” he confirmed. “We should both take them to heart.”

  But he wondered if either one of them was quite ready to try wholeheartedly for the women they wanted in their lives…and risk losing them forever.

  Sunday dinners at home had always been an O’Brien family obligation, but they were changing. For one thing, Gram had given up the reins. Oh, Nell O’Brien still contributed the main dish more often than not, but she’d been training the rest of them to cook their favorite side dishes and desserts. Each week her grandchildren were assigned to bring a new dish, made according to Gram’s carefully handwritten recipes.

  This week Jess was supposed to be bringing homemade Irish soda bread. She wondered if Gram would figure out that she’d enlisted Gail’s help in making it. Jess, like her mother, was hopeless in the kitchen. Before she’d left them all, Megan had kept them from starving, but no one could claim that her meals were anything more than barely edible.

  Jess walked into the kitchen on Sunday, found Gram at the stove and kissed her cheek before setting two perfectly baked loaves of bread on the counter. Her grandmother eyed them suspiciously.

  “You baked those yourself?” she asked.

  “What’s wrong with them?” Jess asked, bristling. They’d looked perfect to her.

  “Usually the first time someone bakes bread, it doesn’t turn out so well,” Gram said, gazing directly into Jess’s eyes.

  She waited, and Jess flinched. “Okay, you caught me. Gail baked the bread.”

  Gram shook her head. “I thought as much. How do you expect to master my recipes if you don’t do it yourself?”

  “I’m counting on everyone else in the family to master them,” Jess told her, grinning as Abby came in and deposited a bowl of rice pudding on the table. She peered under the lid of the plastic bowl. “Looks edible.”

  “I should hope so,” Abby said. “It’s my third batch. Trace made me throw out the first two attempts. Even the twins turned their noses up at it, and those two little garbage disposals will eat anything.”

  “How on earth can you mess up rice pudding?” Gram asked. “Did I teach you girls nothing?”

  “You only had a year after Mom left to influence me,” Abby said. “I seem to recall you throwing me out of the kitchen in disgust on more than one occasion. I was no better at cooking than I was at needlework.”

  Nell chuckled. “That’s true enough. Let’s hope Bree has a knack for this, or you’ll all starve after I’m gone.”

  “First of all, you’re not going anywhere for a very long time,” Abby said, slipping an arm around Nell’s waist. “And second, for every failure that Bree, Jess and I have, you can count on Kevin to get it right. Our brother inherited the cooking genes in the family. You wait and see. He’ll come in here in a few minutes with something that will have our mouths watering. What was his assignment this week, anyway?”

  “He’s making my chicken and dumplings,” Nell told them. “I spoke to him a half hour ago, and he said his dumplings are lighter than air.” She looked doubtful. “We’ll see. It takes years of practice to get dumplings just right.”

  “Oh, I think you can count on Kevin,” Abby said, seemingly oblivious to the fact that Gram might not be quite ready to yield her place as the family’s best cook. She seemed almost happier about their failures than about Kevin’s possible success.

  Jess stepped in. “Gram, no matter how good Kevin’s dumplings are, they won’t be half as good as yours,” she assured her grandmother.

  Nell looked pleased by the compliment. “I know you’re saying that just to spare my feelings, but I do appreciate it.”

  Abby flushed guiltily when she realized she’d inadvertently upset Gram, but she wisely didn’t prolong the conversation. Instead, she turned her attention to Jess. “You look tired. Everything okay?”

  “It’s been a wild couple of weeks at the inn,” Jess said, not about to reveal that she’d slept hardly a wink since that infamous kiss Will had placed on her at Brady’s. She hadn’t been able to get it out of her head. Always restless, she’d been even more so than usual since that night.

  Worse, Will had been making himself scarce. She’d even tried dropping into Sally’s at lunchtime, to no avail. Jake and Mack had been there without him. Since she didn’t want anyone to guess that she was practically chasing after him, she’d stopped going there or anywhere else she might bump into him.

  “Then it doesn’t have anything to do with your social life?” Abby said, a wicked sparkle in her eyes.

  “I have no social life,” Jess declared. “None.”

  “Really?” Abby said. “Then Will didn’t—”

  Jess cut her off. “I haven’t seen Will in ages.”

  Gram listened to all this without a word, but Jess couldn’t help noticing the smile that was tugging at her lips. She frowned at her grandmother. “What?”

  “I was just thinking that it’s a good thing Will’s coming for dinner today,” Nell said innocently. “The two of you will be able to catch up. Maybe get your stories straight.”

  “Will is coming for dinner?” Jess repeated. “Who invited him?” If it was her father or Connor, she was going to kill them. “And what do you mean about getting our stories straight? There’s no story.”

  “That’s not the way I hear it,” Gram said, then gave her a defiant look. “And I’m the one who invited him.”

  “But—” She was about to protest, but Gram cut her off with a chiding look.

  “You know he doesn’t have any family left in the area,” Gram said. “He should spend Sundays with people who care about him. Will has always been welcome here. That is not about to change just because it might make you uncomfortable.”

  “Who said anything about being uncomfortable?” Jess said. “I guess I’m just surprised that he accepted.” She’d have thought the O’Brien Sunday dinner would be the last place he’d want to be at the moment. Not only would he have to face her, but he’d have to deal with the prying eyes of her entire family.

  “Of course he accepted,” Gram said. “Why wouldn’t he?”

  “I just thought he might find it awkward,” Jess said before she’d considered the ramifications of such a remark.

  “Why would Will feel awkward around us?” Abby asked, seizing on the comment. “Like Gram said, he’s practically family. He’s been hanging around with Kevin and Connor since grade school. I can’t even count the number of holidays he’s spent over here.”

  “I just meant…” Jess began, then realized she had no reasonable explanation. “Oh, never mind. I’ll go see if Mom needs help setting the table.”

  Before she could leave, though, her grandmother pinned her with a look. “
You wouldn’t be trying to avoid talking about Will kissing you at Brady’s recently, would you?”

  Jess regarded her with shock. “How do you know about that?”

  Gram chuckled. “Word about a thing like that gets around.”

  “Indeed, it does,” Abby agreed. Her broad grin proved she’d known about it, too. “Who knew Dillon Brady could be such a gossip?”

  “I heard about it from his wife,” Gram added.

  “Well, I have nothing to say about it,” Jess said, all but running from the kitchen.

  “I imagine Will might be more forthcoming,” Gram called after her. “He’s awfully fond of my chicken and dumplings. I suspect that’ll loosen his tongue.”

  Jess bit back a groan and kept going. If she could have, she would have bolted from the house and not looked back, but the commotion that would cause wasn’t worth it. Nope, she just had to stay here and do her best to steer clear of Will so that none of the too-eager observers in her family would get any wild ideas that something had changed between the two of them. If it had. She honestly couldn’t be sure.

  When she found the dining room table set and no sign of her mother, she wandered outside. No sooner was she seated in a rocker on the porch than Will himself appeared, carrying a large bouquet of flowers.

  She blinked at the lavish arrangement. “Will, that’s a really bad idea. You shouldn’t have brought me flowers. It will stir up a hornet’s nest.”

  He laughed. “Then it’s a good thing they’re not for you. I brought them for your grandmother to thank her for including me today.”

  Jess sat back, not sure whether she felt more embarrassed or deflated. “Oh, of course. She’ll love them. But you probably ought to know that she’s more interested in information.”

  “Oh?” he said, immediately looking troubled.

  “She’s heard about the kiss. So has Abby. I imagine everyone else knows about it by now as well. The way I hear it, Dillon and Kate are bigger blabbermouths than the O’Briens.”

  He sat down hard in the chair next to hers. “I see.”

  “Gram seems to think we should get our stories straight.”

  He stared at her blankly. “What stories?”

  “The ones where we deny it meant anything or try to convince them that our lips locked by accident,” she said with a shrug. “Anything to keep them from jumping on this and starting some kind of matchmaking frenzy.”

  “Why do I think it’s probably too late for that?” he asked bleakly.

  “Because you know the O’Briens. We’re nothing if not eager to meddle.”

  “So what’s our story?” he asked. “Any thoughts?”

  “I’m all for trying out the accidental lip-lock theory,” she said.

  Will had the audacity to laugh. “No one who saw us that night is going to buy that. The first kiss, maybe, but there were two.”

  Jess shivered. “I remember.” The second had been even more potent than the first. “Maybe they don’t know that.”

  “Maybe instead of worrying about them, we should be focusing on what the kisses really meant,” he suggested, looking directly into her eyes in a way that disconcerted her.

  Jess shook her head.

  “Why not?”

  “I’m not ready to start analyzing what happened,” she said.

  “You’d rather pretend that nothing did?”

  “I’d like to try,” she admitted wistfully. “But I’m pretty sure that’s going to be impossible.”

  Will tried to conceal a smile but didn’t quite pull it off.

  Jess scowled at him. “Don’t let that go to your head. I’m just saying it’s not so easy to un-ring that bell.”

  “I wouldn’t dream of trying,” he said quickly.

  She gave him a plaintive look. “Why did you come here today?”

  He held her gaze for a long time before he said, “For your grandmother’s chicken and dumplings, of course.”

  “You know Kevin cooked, right? It might not be the same as Gram’s.”

  He laughed. “It’ll be close enough, I imagine. And it’s bound to be better than anything in my freezer.”

  Jess felt guilty at even hinting that he shouldn’t have come. “Sorry. I’m being selfish. I’m just not ready to deal with any of this, I guess. Whatever this is.”

  Instead of trying to define it for her, he plucked a white rose from the arrangement of hydrangeas and roses and held it out to her. “I don’t think Nell will miss it.”

  She frowned, ignoring the flower. Maybe it was a sweet gesture, but suddenly she wasn’t in the mood for sweet gestures. “Thanks, but even that’s likely to arouse questions, Will. Just take the flowers inside and get them into water.”

  He studied her quietly. “Jess, do we need to talk? We could leave and go somewhere else, if you want to.”

  “What could we possibly need to discuss?” she said, not entirely sure why she was so annoyed. Nothing about this encounter had gone the way she’d expected it to. Truthfully, she wasn’t even sure what her expectations had been.

  Will looked justifiably confused. “I’m not sure exactly what we need to talk about. I just know that you seem angry all of a sudden.”

  “I’m not angry,” she said. Hurt, maybe. Confused, for sure. But not angry. Had that blasted kiss meant nothing, after all? Will was all about honesty and being direct, but he hadn’t said a single word to indicate that the kiss had affected him at all. She’d opened herself up—well, a little, anyway—but all he’d done was make light of what had happened.

  Though he didn’t look as if he believed her denial about being angry, he simply nodded and stood up. “Then I’ll see you inside.”

  After he’d gone, Jess sighed. This was going to be a whole lot harder than she’d anticipated. It was as if the kiss had unleashed all sorts of unexpected emotions, and now she was supposed to stuff them back inside and pretend they didn’t exist, not just in front of her family, but in front of Will, too.

  A part of her wanted to march inside and throw caution to the wind, but she knew better, at least in this setting. Because if she did what she wanted to do and kissed Will in front of her entire family just to see if the experience was still magical, there would be no turning back.

  And though she might not know much these days, she knew with every fiber of her being that she wasn’t ready for that.

  6

  Will didn’t have too much time to worry about Jess’s odd mood once dinner was over. They’d barely finished dessert when Susie appeared at his side.

  “We need to talk,” she announced, her usually animated expression dejected. “Outside.”

  Will glanced across the room, saw that Jess was slipping out through the kitchen and knew that she wasn’t likely to welcome him chasing after her. He forced a smile for Susie. “Sure,” he said. “Want to go for a walk on the beach?”

  Though the fall day was surprisingly hot, there was a good breeze off the water. They fell into step and walked along the narrow strip of sand in silence.

  He glanced over at her eventually. “You going to tell me why you wanted to talk to me?”

  She sighed. “It’s Mack,” she said, then added in frustration, “It’s always Mack. The man is going to drive me insane.”

  Will couldn’t keep himself from chuckling. “I think the effect is mutual.”

  Susie waved off the comment. “Come on. Mack’s oblivious, and lately it’s been even worse than usual.”

  “What do you mean?”

  She paused and faced Will. “Can I be honest with you?”

  “Of course.”

  “And you won’t go running to Mack?”

  “Absolutely not.”

  “Okay, then,” she said, and drew in a deep breath. “I’m crazy about him. I have been for years.”

  “Now there’s a news flash,” Will said before he could stop himself. He met her gaze and smiled. “I’m sorry. You’re not telling me anything I haven’t known before.”

  She s
ighed. “I figured. I guess I knew it wasn’t a secret, but I kind of hoped I could pretend seeing him was no big deal. That way, if he walked away, which he’s eventually bound to do, my pride would still be intact.”

  “Why are you so certain he’d leave you?”

  “Because that’s what Mack does,” she said pragmatically. “He leaves. He thinks he’s just like his father, the sleaze who left before he was born. He’s spent his whole life proving it to himself by dating one woman after another and dumping every one of them. I think there were even a few along the way that he actually liked, but he didn’t stick around long enough to see if the relationship would work. I watched him do it all through high school and college. Even though I had feelings for him, I vowed it wasn’t going to happen to me.”

  “So you decided to be his friend,” Will concluded.

  Susie nodded. “Men might leave women, but they usually keep their friends. Just look at you, Jake and Mack. You’re like the three musketeers or something. I wanted that kind of relationship with Mack, one that would last. I figured if it was easy, with no demands or expectations, maybe he’d relax.”

  “And finally notice you?” Will suggested gently.

  Susie nodded, her expression miserable. “A while back, when Shanna first came to town and got involved with Kevin, she told me she thought Mack was crazy about me. I actually started to get my hopes up. I figured, hey, if an objective observer noticed something, then maybe it was true.” She sighed. “But nothing changed. Now I don’t know if it ever will. It’s like we’re locked in this pattern and we’re both too scared to risk changing it.”

  She gave him a hopeful look. “Do you think it’s possible to ever break out of the friend mold? Or have I doomed myself by making such a big deal of the fact that I’d never date Mack?”

  Will thought about her question. “In some ways, I do think it’s harder to go from being friends to being something more. If the friendship matters, no one wants to take the risk of changing things.”

  “Tell me about it,” she said gloomily.