by Marie Force
"Will you show me your paintings? After we explode?"
He bit back a smile. Had she ever been more adorable? "Yes!"
She wrapped her arms around his neck, pressing her breasts against him. "Then I wanna go with you. Take me with you, Joe."
"Gladly, my love."
Chapter 14
Whoa, Janey thought. When he said explode, he meant explode. The aftershocks tingled through her body, reminding her of the amazing moment of intense connection and utter harmony. Not once, in all the years she'd spent with David, had they ever come even close to achieving such a moment.
Lying on top of Joe, feeling him throb between her legs as he caressed her back, Janey couldn't have moved if she had to. In the back of her mind, however, were nagging questions that refused to be quieted in the aftermath of amazing sex. What was happening between them? Why did it feel so important? Did she really want to go from something long-term and serious to something even more serious?
Joe was so free with the "L" word. Did it hurt him that she didn't say it back? How had Joe become so vital to her in just a few days? And, most important of all, she had been so terribly wrong about David. How could she trust herself and her judgment in the wake of that spectacular failure?
"There's an awful lot going on in that pretty little head of yours," he muttered.
How did he know? How did he always know?
"Want to talk about it?"
"No."
"All righty, then, want to see my etchings?"
Janey laughed. "Mmm hmmm."
"Then you'll have to get your big old self off me."
But rather than move, she burrowed in closer.
Joe's arms tightened around her. "Or we could just stay right here all night."
"I do want to see your paintings."
"They'll keep."
Janey rested on top of him, reveling in his scent, in the tender way he held her, in the certainty that he loved her. But always, under the surface of her contentment, were those blasted questions with no answers.
"I wish you would tell me what has you so worried."
"I should be worried about how well you know me," she said with a nervous laugh.
"Is that a bad thing?"
"It's unnerving at times."
"Want to talk unnerving? How about when you suddenly decide, in the middle of having sex, that you don't know me as well as I know you?"
She winced. "Sorry."
"Don't be. It was cute." Joe turned them so he could look down at her. "I'm a pretty simple guy, Janey. What you see is more or less what you get."
"That is so not true! That's what you want people to think."
He raised a questioning eyebrow. "Why do you say that?"
"You have all kinds of talents besides steering a hundred-foot ferry through pea-soup fog."
"Such as?"
"Look at this awesome house you built with your own hands or how you whip up your own salmon marinade. And now I find out you're also an artist!"
He laughed. "I wouldn't say that."
"I'll be the judge." She flashed a coy smile. "Of course, there's also that thing you do with your tongue. Mmm. That's quite a talent."
His face lifted into the smile she was growing to love in ways she never could've imagined a few days ago. He bent to kiss her. "You know me, Janey. You know all the important stuff."
She reached up to push the hair off his forehead. "I'm only just beginning to figure out the important stuff."
"I hope you see yourself at the top of the what's-important-to-Joe list."
Even though she knew it was cowardly, Janey looked away from the intensity and the longing she saw on his face.
"You don't like being at the top of my list?"
"It scares me."
With his finger on her chin, he forced her to look at him. "Why?"
"I'm so afraid I'm going to hurt you, Joe. I don't want to, but I'm afraid I will anyway."
"You're not responsible for me, honey. I'd never want you to feel that way. I knew what I was getting into. I knew the timing sucked, and I let it happen anyway."
"If this doesn't work out, if we don't work out, will you be okay?"
"I won't lie to you. I really want it to work out."
"But if it doesn't? I need to know you'd be okay. I need that."
"I have a great life. I get to do what I love every day. I have awesome friends and a home I like returning to every night. Is it perfect? No, but it works for me. If you were waiting for me when I got home every night? Now that would be perfect."
Janey rolled her lip between her teeth. "You really think so?"
He nudged at her until she yielded her abused lip to him. "I know so. But the only way I want you with me is if it's where you want to be. No questions, no doubts, no reservations."
"You didn't answer my question."
"Yes, Janey," he said. "I'll be okay."
"Promise?"
"Yeah." The single word was full of sadness, but then she watched him try to rally. "So you like that tongue trick, huh?"
"Oh, yeah."
He kissed his way down the front of her. "They say practice makes perfect."
"Is that what they say?"
"Uh-huh."
Steeped in the incredible pleasure, Janey decided the worries would have to wait. They had this night together, and she didn't want to spoil it. Tomorrow would have to take care of itself.
By the time they got around to looking at his paintings, it was nearly three in the morning. Kneeling on the floor of his studio, Janey wore a T-shirt of his that showed off her shapely legs. He'd pulled on boxers when she insisted on dragging him into the studio. Watching her flip through canvases that few people had ever seen made Joe feel vulnerable and exposed—an uncomfortable feeling he was becoming accustomed to lately.
"These are amazing! Why haven't you ever done anything with them?"
Embarrassed by her effusiveness, he ran his fingers through his hair. "It's just something I do for fun."
She turned those potent blue eyes on him. "You're incredibly talented, Joe."
God, she just tore him up when she looked at him that way. "Thanks."
Standing, she reached for the canvas that depicted the island's Northeast Light. "Look at this! It's exquisite. The colors and the passion! How do you get the water to look like it's moving?"
"I don't know," he said, laughing. "I just paint what I see."
"I'm astounded that you've kept such a huge talent hidden for so long."
"It's a hobby, Janey."
"It's amazing."
"You can have that one if you like it so much."
"I couldn't! You could get good money for it!"
"I don't want good money. If you love it, you can have it."
"I can't possibly take it. You need to show them and sell them and make tons of money!"
He smiled at her foolishness. "That's not me, hon. I'm a ferryboat captain, not an artist."
"Why couldn't you be both? Aren't you the one trying to convince me I need to go to vet school?"
Damn, the girl could argue! He'd always admired the way she more than held her own with four older brothers. "That's different."
The hand on her hip and the saucy tilt to her chin made him want her all over again, as if he hadn't just spent hours trying to sate a need he was beginning to understand would never be fully sated.
"How's it different?" she asked.
Cornered, Joe took the canvas from her and grabbed her hand to lead her from the room. "Put this with your stuff. It's yours now."
"You're not going to tell me how you pursuing your artistic talent is different from me going to vet school?"
In the kitchen, Joe got a glass and filled it with ice and water. After he took a drink, he passed the glass to her and watched the way her lips and throat worked on the glass. It was official: everything she did turned him on.
"I have a job I love, one that fulfills me in every possible way. I get to be on the
water all day. I regularly see whales and dolphins and have to use my brain and my instincts and years of hard-won know-how every day. It's enough for me."
She handed the glass back to him. "But it doesn't have to be everything. Why couldn't you have that and your art, too?"
"I already have both. The painting is something I do to relax, to blow off steam. It's no big deal."
"I took an oil class in college." Her eyes were locked on the painting he'd given her, which she had propped against the wall. "I know what it takes to make the water appear to be moving, and I didn't have it. In fact, no one in my class did. I don't even think the teacher could do it. You're incredibly talented, and you don't even know it."
"I don't care," he said, laughing softly with exasperation. "That's what you're not getting. The whole world could see my paintings and declare them masterpieces, and that wouldn't add anything to my life that I don't already have."
Fixated now on the cabinet behind him, she bit her thumbnail. "And yet…"
He put down the glass, went to her and rested his hands on her hips. "And yet what?"
"You said that having me here with you, all the time, would add something you don't have."
"Yes," he said, his voice hoarse with the emotion she aroused in him without even trying. "It absolutely would."
"You have this amazing talent that means nothing to you, but I—"
"You," he said, kissing her nose, "mean everything to me."
"How can that be?"
"It just is, baby. Damned if I can explain it."
She reached for him, brought him down to her and kissed him so sweetly, so gently, that Joe wondered how he managed to remain standing.
"Let's go to bed." She took his hands, linked their fingers and walked backward, leading him to what could be his ruination. Even knowing that, he willingly followed her.
On the first boat off the island the next morning, Maddie stood at the rail, holding a cup of coffee and pondering the coincidence of her mother being released from prison on Independence Day. "Let freedom ring," she whispered as butterflies stormed about in her belly. After tangling with Linda over bad checks written to the hotel bar, her mother had a low opinion of all things McCarthy. What would she say when she found out her eldest daughter planned to marry their eldest son in a week's time?
Maddie shuddered when she imagined her mother's reaction. Over and over she had practiced what she would say, how she would break the news. Each time she pictured the scene, she saw her mother's face turn red with rage.
Mac had wanted to come with her today, but she'd insisted on doing this alone. Besides, they were having people over later, and one of them needed to stay back to finish the preparations. Their new house had a fantastic view of the fireworks, and they wanted to share it with the people they loved.
She remembered the way he'd held her so close during the night and made sweet love to her at dawn, as if to fortify her to fight for them against what would no doubt be her mother's strong objections. In the brisk breeze, tears stung her eyes. She shouldn't have to fight for anything. He was a kind and decent man who loved her and her son with everything he had. Her mother had never even met Mac, yet she would judge him because his family was one of the "haves" on an island in which she and her family had always been one of the "have-nots."
That wasn't his fault any more than it was hers. Just as it wasn't their fault that her mother had written enough bad checks to establishments such as the bar at McCarthy's Gansett Inn that the proprietors had had no choice but to report her. She had landed herself in jail, and if the McCarthys could see fit to separate Maddie from her mother's sins, then perhaps her mother could find it in her heart to judge Mac for himself.
"Wishful thinking, girl," she whispered to herself. "She's going to freak, and there's nothing you can do to stop it." But nothing her mother could possibly say, Maddie reminded herself, would stop her from marrying the love of her life—with or without her mother's blessing. It sure would be sweeter, however, if her mother could find a way to accept that her daughter was happy with Mac, and that she didn't give two figs about his last name or his money.
With that thought at the forefront of her mind, Maddie drove off the ferry in the black SUV Mac had bought to get their little family around the island. Her mother's first question would be about where she had gotten the money for such an extravagant vehicle.
During the hour-long drive to the state prison in Cranston, Maddie focused on happy thoughts of Mac and Thomas, on wedding plans and blissful nights in the arms of the man she loved. Nothing and no one would ever come between them again. She was almost to the prison when her phone rang, and Mac's number popped up on the caller ID. Even though she knew he was calling to offer his support, she chose not to take the call for fear that hearing his voice would cause her to fall apart in these last crucial minutes.
No, she would wait until they were back on the ferry home before she returned his call. "Please," she whispered as she pulled into the parking lot and turned off the truck. "Please, for once, be happy for me. Just this once." As fortified as she was going to get, Maddie opened the door and stepped into the July sunshine. Inside, she signed in and was assigned to an air-conditioned waiting room.
Thirty minutes passed in which Maddie shivered in the chill before the door opened and Francine Chester appeared, wearing the release-day outfit Maddie had sent her and carrying a plastic bag of other belongings. Gray roots had overtaken her mother's cap of dyed red hair. No doubt her first stop on the island would be at the beauty shop, which would sneak her in as long as she paid cash.
"Get me out of here." Francine brushed past her daughter as if they had just seen each other yesterday rather than three months ago.
Nice to see you, too, Maddie thought as she followed her mother to the exit and directed her to the parking lot.
Francine tilted her head into the sunshine and took deep breaths of fresh air. "About damned time they let me out of that hellhole. Was your sister too busy to come with you?"
"Ashleigh wasn't feeling well," Maddie said of her infant niece. "Tiffany said they'll see you when you get home. She has the apartment all ready for you."
"What apartment?"
"My old place at Tiff's house. We figured you could stay there until you get back on your feet."
Francine eyed her with cagey green eyes that didn't miss a trick. "And where will you be?"
"I wanted to talk to you about that." Maddie clicked the button on her key fob to unlock the truck and watched as her mother's eyes widened with predictable questions.
"Did you hit the lottery while I was gone?"
In a way, Maddie thought. Here goes nothing… "It belongs to my fiancé."
Francine turned to her, incredulous. "What fiancé?"
Maddie swallowed the fear, the worries and the sense of impending doom and looked her mother dead in the eye. "The one I plan to marry a week from today."
"You're getting married, and you haven't seen fit to mention this to me until now? You could've sent a letter or mentioned it during one of the calls."
"I wanted to tell you in person."
"So tell me. Who is he?"
Once again, Maddie refused to blink. She refused to be ashamed or to cower under her mother's intense scrutiny. "Mac McCarthy. Junior."
Francine released a harsh bark of laughter. "Like hell you're marrying a McCarthy."
"I am absolutely marrying a McCarthy, and I'm proud of it." She held open the door to the truck.
Francine crossed her arms and tilted her chin defiantly. "I will not ride in a vehicle owned by a McCarthy."
"Fine," Maddie said. "Then you can find your own way home." She walked around the truck to get in the driver's side and started the engine. Her stomach ached, and her eyes burned with tears. Did she really have the nerve to drive off and leave her mother there with no money and no other way home?
In the brief span of silence that stretched into tense minutes, Maddie realized her entire l
ife had come down to this moment—and if she had to choose between a past full of heartache and disappointment and a future with Mac that promised to be filled with love and joy, then she chose the future. With him.
She glanced at the open passenger door. "I love him, he loves me, he adores Thomas, and I'm going to marry him, with you or without you. I'd prefer to do it with you, but if you force me to choose, I choose him."
Since she had no alternative, Francine got in the truck and slammed the door. "You'll marry him over my dead body."
Maddie shrugged. "If that's what it takes." Despite her show of bravado, her hands shook so badly she wondered how she would drive.
Chapter 15
Janey was thrilled to find Maddie and the SUV in the line for the three o'clock ferry. After checking her fresh-from-the-shop car into the line, Janey skipped over to where Maddie leaned against the black truck, her arms crossed and her face set in an unreadable expression.
"Hey!"
Maddie looked up, startled. "Oh. Hi."
Janey studied her friend. "What's wrong?"
"My mother."
"Ohhh." Janey leaned back against the truck, next to Maddie. "I take it the pickup didn't go well?"
"Let me quote, shall I? 'You'll marry a McCarthy over my dead body.'"
"Ouch. I resemble that remark. What did you say?"
"If that's what it takes."
"Good for you." Janey snorted. "Where is she now?"
"On the boat. She took the ticket I bought her and stalked off." Maddie slid her slender foot in and out of her flip-flop, an aura of weary resignation clinging to her every movement. "I knew it was too much to hope that she might be supportive, but still…"
"You hoped anyway."
"I never learn. That's my problem. I expect people to change, but they don't."
Janey linked her arm with Maddie's and rested her head on her friend's shoulder. "Do you know what I love best about you?"
Maddie tilted her head to lean it on Janey's. "What's that?"
"You're always upbeat, even when you have good reason not to be. I admire that quality in you, and I know Mac does, too."
"Thank you. That's sweet of you to say."
