Dare Island [2] Carolina Girl

by Virginia Kantra

  “That’s stupid.”

  “Spoken like a true romantic.”

  She’d been romantic once. And what a disaster that had turned out to be. “You can’t tell me you think this is a good idea.”

  “I think,” Sam said finally, “Chelsea’s old enough to make up her own mind.”

  Meg rolled her eyes. “Oh, please. She’s twenty-one. If you ask me, she should at least finish college.”

  “She’s applied to graduate in December.”

  “Well, that’s good. But this guy she’s marrying, he’s, what, a lieutenant in the Navy? He must be ten years older than she is.”

  “Six. He just finished med school.”

  “That’s still a huge gap in age and experience,” Meg pointed out.

  Sam raised his eyebrows. “Not as big as the gap between Matt and Allison.”

  Meg pressed her lips together. Her brother Matt had recently gotten involved with his son’s high school English teacher, pretty, preppy Allison Carter. “Allison at least has accomplished something with her life,” Meg said. “She’s made something of herself.”

  “Chelsea wants to make a life for herself, too. A family.”

  “By running away from home?”

  Sam glanced away from the road, his gaze dark, direct. “Why not? You did.”

  “I never ran away.”

  His lips curved without humor. “No, but you never came back.”

  Three

  TESS FLETCHER DIDN’T take things lying down. But right now she was afraid to move despite the drugs the nurse had promised would take the edge off. Pain stalked her like a wolf, hungry for her bones. She closed her eyes, hoping to escape its attention.

  You’re a rock star, Jerome, the bald, black, very buff physical therapist had told her not twenty minutes ago. He’d eased her leg up from the plinth table, testing her range of motion. Forty degrees. Way to go, Tess.

  Tess had appreciated both his encouragement and the compliment. She liked Jerome. A good thing, since the young man had had his hands places nobody but her husband, Tom, had touched in years. But she didn’t feel like a rock star. Since that damn drunk driver had slammed into the front end of her car, she’d felt frighteningly frail, discouragingly old, and increasingly frustrated.

  The bedside phone rang. The hospital line, Tess thought. Meg had bought both her parents prepaid phones before she went back to New York, but cell phone reception in the rooms was lousy.

  Tom cursed and lurched from his recliner to grab the receiver before the noise woke Tess.

  Not that she was sleeping. The hospital buzz penetrated everywhere, nurses’ voices, rolling carts, the lowered volume on patients’ TVs. The adhesive around her IV itched. The bruise in her elbow from a clumsy blood draw throbbed. She was uncomfortable everywhere, in muscles she didn’t know existed. And always, always, there was the faint, disturbing light behind her closed lids and the grinding ache of her healing bones.

  “Meggie,” Tom said low to their daughter. “No, she’s fine. Just got back from PT.”

  Tess opened her eyes, welcoming the distraction from her pain. With her children, at least, she could be something other than a patient. There was a part of her that would always be Mommy, the woman who had answered their questions and soothed their nightmares.

  “Maybe later,” Tom said. “She’s trying to get some sleep.”

  “I can talk to her,” Tess said.

  His gray brows drew together over his nose. “You need to rest.”

  Tess was tired of being told what she needed. The accident had robbed her of control over her schedule, her surroundings, her own body.

  “I’ve done nothing but rest for two weeks,” she said more sharply than she’d intended. She softened the words with a smile. “I’ll talk to her, Tom. Better than lying here feeling sorry for myself.”

  He frowned and handed over the phone.

  Tess wedged the receiver against her pillow. “Hey, baby.”

  “Mom. How are you?”

  “Oh, you know,” Tess said. “Fine.”

  “Mom.” The exasperation in Meg’s voice made her sound about fourteen.

  Tess smiled. “Well, better,” she amended. “A little sore.”

  “I’m coming home to help.”

  The announcement pierced the haze of drugs and pain. “What? When?”

  “Now. I’m on my way from the airport.”

  Tess struggled to sit upright. Tom scowled at her, and she subsided against her pillows. “Sweetie, I love you, but that’s not necessary. There’s nothing for you to do here.”

  “Not at the hospital,” Meg said. “I’m going to the inn.”

  “You just got back to New York.” Tess tried to count back. “Four days ago.” Five?

  “And now I can come home.”

  Tess felt a blip of misgiving, like the warning beep of one of the hospital machines. In twelve years, Meg had barely taken a vacation, rarely spent more than a few days on the island. Always Christmas, never New Year’s. “What does Matt say?”

  “I didn’t ask his opinion. I thought you’d be pleased.”

  “Of course I’m pleased,” Tess said automatically. Aren’t I? “But what about Derek? What about your job?”

  “They’ll have to get along without me,” Meg said rather grimly.

  Something was wrong. And her little girl wasn’t telling her.

  “Is Matt with you?”

  “No, I’ll see him tonight. He had a charter this afternoon.”

  “Who picked you up at the airport?”

  A pause, filled with the rumble of tires or the hum of Meg’s wireless connection.

  “Sam Grady.”

  “Sam?” Such a nice boy. A little troubled, a little hungry for affection, a little eager for approval beneath those smooth manners and easy charm. But a good man.

  Meg didn’t like him.

  “Real-ly,” Tess said, two bright, interested notes.

  Tom took the phone. “Your mom has to go,” he said.

  “Tom,” Tess protested.

  “They’re coming with your tray in an hour. You need a nap.”

  She listened as he said good-bye and ended the call to Meg. “I’m not a baby,” she said when he’d hung up.

  His lips twitched. Tess pressed her own together. Maybe she did sound, just a little, like a cranky toddler.

  But all he said was, “Nope. Jerome says you’re a rock star.”

  “Not that, either,” Tess said. “Too sore and too doped up.”

  He sat at her bedside and took her hands. She’d always loved his hands, workingman’s hands, tanned and callused and veined now with age. “Remember that Dead concert? Amphitheater, ’74. The whole band was doped up.” He paused. “So was the audience.”

  She remembered. Their third date in as many days. She’d been waiting tables at her family’s restaurant in Chicago when Tom strolled in, a Leatherneck on leave, straight as a rifle, cocky as hell. They’d married two weeks later.

  “You weren’t,” she said.

  “Sure I was.” His eyes, faded denim blue, met hers. He winked. “High on you, babe.”

  “Oh, Tom.”

  Comforted, she squeezed his hand and drifted into sleep.

  * * *

  SAM PARKED THE truck behind the inn beside Matt’s weathered pickup and Allison’s silver Mercedes. They were all back, then, to welcome Meg home.

  He watched her march up the walk ahead of him with short, determined strides, her spine straight, her hips practically twitching with irritation, and allowed himself a grin.

  Maybe he shouldn’t have made that crack about her running away all those years ago. But the truth was, she had. They both had. Meg because she’d had better things to do, and Sam because he’d had something to prove.

  He hauled her bags out of the back of the truck, catching up with her easily along the flagstone walk.

  The Pirates’ Rest was a two-and-a-half story Craftsman jewel from the early 1900s, like an old woman
beautiful in her bones, built to withstand the island’s changing tides and fortunes.

  “Place is holding up all right,” Sam remarked, running a builder’s eye over the deck that spanned the length of the house. He’d spent six sweaty days on that deck one summer, digging holes and driving nails under Tom’s eagle eye. “Have you thought about how your mom’s going to manage when she gets back?”

  Meg paused with one foot on the low, wide steps. “Well, obviously. That’s why I came home.”

  “I meant, she’ll have a walker. She needs a ramp to get in and out of the house.”

  Meg blinked, her eyes startlingly blue beneath those thick dark lashes.

  Gotcha, Sam thought. He smiled at her—she looked cute, all wide-eyed and ruffled like a girl again—and said, “It’s okay. I’ll talk to Matt. We’ll work something out.”

  He could almost hear Meg’s teeth grind together. “I can talk to him.”

  “Sure you can,” Sam said. “But unless you’ve got a building crew packed away in this bag, it won’t do your mother any good.”

  Meg shot him a narrow look and stalked into the kitchen ahead of him.

  Negotiating the screen door with her two bags, Sam missed the first warm rush of welcome. He heard Allison’s pleased exclamation and Matt’s deep rumble and looked up to see the two women hugging with obvious warmth.

  Sam caught himself grinning at the picture they made—Allison, tall, blond, and coolly pretty; Meg, short and dark and vibrating with energy.

  The screen door sprang shut behind him. As it slammed, they all turned to look at him, Meg, Matt, and Allison, and Matt’s teenage son, Josh. A little girl sat at the kitchen table, a camo cap jammed over her dirty blond hair, Matt’s big black shepherd mix at her feet. She looked wary and hostile, like a smaller, grungier version of Meg.

  Sam winked at her and she scowled.

  Yep, definitely a family resemblance there.

  “Sam.” Matt clapped him on the shoulder. “Appreciate your picking up Meg.”

  “Happy to,” Sam said.

  At a look from his dad, Josh came forward to grab the bags. Christ, the kid was as tall as Matt now.

  “Hi, Aunt Meg.” He bent down to kiss her cheek. He cocked a grin at Sam. “Hey, Mr. Grady.”

  “Sam,” he corrected, feeling about a hundred years old. Mr. Grady was his father. “How’s basketball going?”

  Josh shrugged. “We’re still conditioning. Coach won’t let us touch a ball until November.”

  “You can take those bags to Mary Read,” Allison said. All the rooms at the inn were named after pirates of the Carolina coast. She beamed at Meg. “I put you in your old room. I hope that’s all right.”

  “I thought my room was booked.”

  “Last weekend. It’s empty now.”

  “Great.”

  Only somebody who knew Meg very well would have caught that almost indefinable pause. Sam wondered if he knew her as well as he thought. Was she worried about the inn’s occupancy rate? Or miffed because her brother’s girlfriend was making room assignments? Remembering the warmth of their greeting, he figured it was probably the first. But you could never be sure with women.

  “Does that mean Dad’s staying home tonight?” Josh asked. Matt and his son lived in a two-bedroom cottage behind the inn. “Or . . .” He sent a sly glance at Allison, who flushed pink.

  “Matt’s been spending nights at the inn,” she explained to no one in particular. “So Taylor wouldn’t be alone.”

  Sam was willing to bet his old buddy wasn’t sleeping alone, either. In his own quiet way, Matt had clearly staked his claim on the sweet-eyed schoolteacher. She was just as obviously stuck on him.

  Sam felt a twinge of something like envy. Not that he was looking to get serious himself.

  “We weren’t expecting you so soon,” Allison said to Meg.

  She raised her eyebrows. At the change of subject? “Hardly soon. I’m three hours late.”

  “I mean, you just got back to work. To New York.”

  “Everything all right?” Matt asked.

  “Fine,” Meg said crisply.

  Yeah, something there. You didn’t grow up with multiple stepmothers without learning to spot when a woman was upset.

  “How’s Derek?” Allison asked.

  “He’s fine.”

  The Fletcher family motto, Sam thought.

  The kid hunched in her chair, her eyes tracking the adults’ conversation, one foot parked on the dog under the table. Apparently Sam wasn’t the only one picking up on the tension in the room.

  “Hi.” He smiled at her. “I’m Sam.”

  The dog, Fezzik, thumped its tail. The kid regarded him with suspicion, like something she’d found on the bottom of her shoe.

  “My niece, Taylor,” Matt said, tapping a finger on the brim of her cap.

  She tipped back her head to look up at him, the wariness melting in a smile.

  “Luke’s daughter,” Meg supplied. “Hi, sweetie.”

  There was no big hug like she’d given Allison, Sam noted. No kiss like she’d had from Josh.

  But then, Meg had only met her niece on her last visit, a week or so ago.

  Luke, the youngest Fletcher sibling, was a Marine in Afghanistan. According to the island grapevine, he hadn’t even known about the kid’s existence until her mother died a couple months ago. Sam’s stepmother Angela had filled him in on the story. The way she told it, Luke had returned home just long enough to pick up the girl and dump her on the Fletchers.

  Weird to think of the skinny little kid who had tailed him and Matt around as a father. But the girl looked like Luke. She looked like a handful.

  “How’s it going?” Sam said.

  “Fine.” She surprised him by offering, “We’re having corn on the cob.”

  “Corn and shrimp,” Allison confirmed, turning from the sink with a big pot of water. “I’m cooking.”

  “You don’t cook,” Josh put in from the kitchen doorway as he returned from dumping the bags. “You boil.”

  She wrinkled her nose at him, clearly unoffended. “Your turn tomorrow, Iron Chef. Let’s see what you come up with.”

  “Pizza?”

  “Yeah!” said the girl.

  Matt shook his head. “No more carryout. Not unless Josh is paying.”

  “I’ll cook,” Meg said. “Since we’re taking turns.”

  Off the bench and into the game, Sam thought. He listened to the talk, amused and not a little envious of the trash talk and teasing. Even with Tess sidelined and two rookies in the mix, the Fletchers played as a team.

  He thought of the way things were at home right now, no one stepping up, no one stepping in, everybody too damn afraid of the old man’s displeasure to make a move, and his gut tightened.

  “You staying for dinner?” Matt asked.

  Sam glanced at Meg. “I don’t want to horn in on your sister’s first night home.”

  “There’s plenty to go around,” Allison said.

  He kept his eyes on Meg.

  She met his gaze. Her lips twisted in a smile. “You’ve never turned down a free meal before. Why start now?”

  Sam grinned back. It wasn’t much of a welcome, but he’d take what he could get.

  He always had.

  * * *

  SHE SHOULD HAVE said something, Meg thought as she passed the basket of rolls across the table.

  When Matt asked if everything was okay, she should have just told him. Told them. I was fired.

  But when she opened her mouth, the words refused to come. They stayed stuck in her throat, burning in her chest like failure.

  Maybe if she and Matt had been alone . . . But what could she say in front of the kids? And Allison. And Sam.

  “Are you kidding me?” Josh hunched forward in his chair. “North Carolina has a better preseason ranking than Duke.”

  Sam grinned, leaning back. “But Duke had more wins last season.”

  He went to Duke, Meg remembered, alon
g with the rest of the rich kids. But despite the schools’ heated rivalry, his voice was easy. He was just arguing the way men did, to score points and for fun.

  “Because the teams they play are shit,” Josh said. Taylor snickered, and he winced as somebody—Matt, presumably—kicked him under the table. He shot an apologetic glance at Allison. “Sorry. Crap.”

  Sam picked up without missing a beat. “Duke has more players drafted by the NBA.”

  “Yeah, and now that Rivers is gone, they’re screwed,” Matt put in.

  Virginia Dare Island School was too small to field a football team, but Sam and Matt had cocaptained the basketball team their senior year. Sam was more than a jock; as the only son of the biggest developer on the island, he had reigned as undisputed King of the School. Meg, two years behind, had spent that time cementing her role as Queen Geek, busting her ass, obsessing over grades, following a carefully plotted course that would take her to college, to the big world, to success.

  Island kids often didn’t adjust well to school on the mainland. Like little fish in the deep ocean, they were swallowed by bigger fish or carried away by the current.

  But Meg’s years as a military brat had given her an advantage over her peers. She was already used to proving herself. She knew how to make her way in a new school. All she’d needed was a ticket out. A scholarship.

  She stared at her plate, her appetite gone. Fezzik watched soulfully from the corner as Taylor waved her hands, telling some complicated story about a hamster.

  “Then Chewy jumps on the water bottle,” she said through a mouthful of corn, “and he scratches with his little claws to the top of the cage, right? And he’s pushing with his head, trying to squeeze out. Only he can’t, because Mrs. Webster put books on the lid. So . . .” She coughed.

  Allison slid her water glass across the table. “Drink.”

  A thousand remembered dinner conversations, a million mealtimes, rushed in on Meg. By choice and habit, they had all left the two ends of the long oak table empty, her mother’s chair, her father’s place. But the food, the smells, the conversation around the table were disconcertingly familiar, like the echoes of her childhood.