by Emily Bishop
It was cloudy outside, and the air was heavy with humidity. I could feel the rain coming in my bones. I just couldn’t help but wonder if it would be to wash away the old and be a new start for Shane and me, or whether the heavens would be opening up to cry with me for a relationship that could never be.
Either way, there weren’t a lot of people out as Shane and I made our way down the street to the marina. He held onto my hand so tightly that it was like he was scared I was going to run away at any moment.
Shane was quiet at first, so I asked the question burning a hole in my heart. “When are you going back to Houston?”
“I don’t know,” he answered. We were still strolling toward the marina but he glanced at me and pulled me to a sudden stop. “Not soon.”
He turned me to face him, his eyes the color of springtime ferns as they bore into me. “I mean it, Fiona. I’ll explain everything. Let’s go sit down.”
My heart hammered all the way to the pier beyond the marina, where we eventually settled on the beach below the lighthouse. We were surrounded by moored boats and thickets of brush. It was surprisingly romantic and isolated, especially since the lighthouse was closed to visitors on Thursday, and the weather was keeping all but the most hardened of fishermen inside for the day.
“You’re being really quiet,” I remarked, settling between his spread legs and cuddling into his warm chest.
His arms came around me, forming a loose circle around my waist. He dropped a light kiss on the back of my head, breathing in deeply.
“I’m trying to find the words that I need to say what I want to say.” He raked a hand through his thick hair.
“It’s easiest to start at the beginning,” I prompted. “I’m dying over here.”
He laughed quietly, a low rumbling sound in his chest that reverberated into mine. I sighed, loving being this close to him.
“I think you’re going to prefer if I start at the end.”
“Of course you do,” I pouted but I couldn’t hold it for long before I was all smiles again. It sounded like I was going to like the ending of whatever he was about to tell me.
He laughed again and shook his head, tightening his hold on me. “My stuff is in the process of being packed up in Houston, and my assistant is overseeing the transportation tomorrow.”
I went completely still as I thought over what he’d just told me, unable to process the possibility that it meant that he was moving to Mystic permanently. Eventually, I managed to find the words but not quite my voice, so I whispered, “Does that mean you’re staying?”
“It does,” he breathed, his lips against my ear.
I turned in the circle of his arms, needing to see his face and look into his eyes for the conversation we were about to have. “How?”
His expression was soft, his eyes almost loving. “Do you remember when I told you that the president of my company was trying to oust me?”
“It’s not what I remember most about that night.” I smiled, my sex clenching at the memory of his low moans. “But yeah, Bart or Burt or something?”
Shane’s eyes lit up at my expression, mischief glinting in his eyes as he placed a quick kiss on the tip of my nose. “My naughty girl. It’s not what I remember most either, but it’s what’s relevant now. Don’t distract me with your fuck-me eyes.”
I was momentarily distracted by the fact that he’d used the words “my” and “girl”. The butterflies in my stomach started zooming around. I ignored the fact that the word “naughty” had been in there, too. That was entirely his fault.
“I do not have fuck-me eyes,” I protested but I knew that he was right. “But I don’t know how to make ‘hurry the fuck up and tell me your story’ eyes.”
Shane laughed hard. The joyous sound of it was light and almost carefree. I’d never heard him laugh quite this way before. Something in him had changed, like some terrible burden had been lifted from his shoulders.
“All right,” he said. “I can’t help it if you distract the hell out of me.”
I shot him a smile. “Would it be easier if I left?”
I pretended like I was pulling away from him but he wrapped his arms tightly around me.
“My story,” he said. “When I found out Bart was trying to take my job, I fired him the next day. But I think I might have acted too fast. He insisted that he was just making backup plans for the time that I was in Mystic. He barricaded himself into one of the conference rooms at Perkins Enterprises. That’s why I had to go back.”
“Oh, wow.” It was all I could get out amid all the different questions and thoughts vying for attention.
“Yeah. Crazy shit. But it turned out to be a good thing because it gave us time to talk. He’s been with me a long time, and he’s always been my number one supporter. I decided to give him a second chance. I signed him into a directorship at Perkins, and he’ll be taking over the operations of the company from now on.”
“What? You signed away your company?”
He chuckled. “No, I’m still the CEO. I’ve just delegated most of the duties that require physical presence in Houston. I’ll still have daily meetings with him, and I’m having my home office set up as we speak but I’ll be able to do just about everything from here.”
Shane looked nervous, like he was afraid of my response. I threw my arms around his neck and kissed him like the ship was going down.
He didn’t hesitate. He kissed me back like he never wanted to stop and leaned us back on the sand, positioning me so that I was half on top of him.
“Why?” I asked, my lips still against his mouth.
He pulled back just enough to look me square in the eye. “Because I love you, Fiona.”
Tears welled in my eyes and the biggest smile ever spread on my lips. The butterflies went mad and turned into bubbles of joy that flowed through my bloodstream, making my whole body warm and tingly.
“I love you, too.”
His mouth slanted over mine once more, sending shuddering thrills through my entire body. It was the kind of kiss that stretched into eternity and was too short at the same time. The kind of kiss that blew your mind and kept you in the moment.
I don’t know how long we laid there before our kisses turned more passionate, more desperate. Hotter. I needed to feel him inside me, to make me whole and cement the words we’d just said to one another. It felt like the only way to make them concrete was to become one physically.
Shane’s breathing grew as heavy and rapid as mine, his kisses punctuated with groans as his hips moved against my stomach. The seemingly involuntary movements set fire to my veins, and the heat shot straight to my core.
His fingers grasped the edge of my sundress, and his mouth hungrily consumed mine. He lifted the dress to give him enough access to slide a hand across my thighs. He urged my legs apart and slipped his hand against my sex, groaning as he felt the juice flowing. Slick and needy.
He traced my slit with deliberate but gentle strokes over my panties, finally sliding his hand past the elastic and nudging a finger between my soaked lips.
“I need to be inside you,” Shane groaned.
I moaned a yes. My breath hitched in anticipation of the way that he stretched me, filled me, and loved me.
He reached for his zipper and freed himself fast, pulling me onto his lap to straddle him when his cock jumped free from its constraints. He didn’t stop until he was nudging against my slick sex. I sank onto him slowly, gasping when he was completely inside me. I circled my hips against him, savoring the feeling of the man I loved inside of me.
Shane’s eyes were dark with desire. He grabbed my hips and pushed up as I came down. I whimpered. He found my clit and rolled it between his fingers, sending a wave of pleasure rolling through my body. He massaged my aching clit, and my cleft stretched as he thrust into me. My whole body trembled.
The hunger and love reflecting in his eyes melted through me as he pounded into me relentlessly. I shattered against him, bursting into fragment
s as I came around his cock. Shane growled and arched his back, driving into me as he started coming.
We collapsed against each other, and he pulled me into his comforting embrace. I’d never felt more secure or loved than I did in that moment.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Shane
I walked Fiona back to the store, my arm around her shoulders. I felt like I was walking on air. Or sunshine. Or whatever element of nature that signaled intense happiness.
I’d finally told a woman that I loved her, and she loved me back. It was the best fucking feeling in the world, closely followed by the powerful orgasm I’d emptied into her not half an hour ago.
It felt like I was finally making progress on removing all those nails from the coffin of our relationship. Maybe we could turn it into a bed, after all.
As good as I was feeling, I knew that there was still something big I needed to get done today.
I gave Fiona a chaste kiss on the lips when I said goodbye to her at the store, but it quickly became deeper and hungrier, despite our very recent, very intense orgasms. We were interrupted by someone catcalling, and we broke apart.
Fiona looked vaguely startled but laughed when she saw Drew starting to clap on the other side of the window.
She rolled her eyes and gave a slight bow before flipping him the bird. I grinned. She was something, my girl. I fucking loved her so damn much that my heart had been physically hurting with the need to finally tell her.
Fiona rose onto her tiptoes and gave me a quick kiss on my cheek, smiling shyly as she so often did after we made love. “I’ll see you later?”
“Wild horses couldn’t keep me away,” I told her, then followed her example and gave Drew a quick bow before I made my way back to my truck.
It felt like I was leaving a part of myself behind with Fiona but I couldn’t exactly spend the day glued to her side at work. Besides, I had more nails to deal with. Little by little, I needed to prove to Fiona how serious I was, and how much I loved her.
My next stop was going to be significantly less fun than my first. But I had to man up and get through it.
Back in Houston, I was known to be somewhat of a ballbuster and ruthless in my pursuit of what I thought was best for the company but no one could accuse me of unethical behavior. My father, on the other hand, couldn’t be accused of being ethical.
He’d screwed over so many people in so many different ways that my head had been spinning with it for months. I’d spent at least one weekend in my life draining bottle after bottle of scotch as I did some soul-searching about who I really was if I came from stock like that.
My mother was my saving grace, I believed, but it had still been a bitter pill to swallow. I had been trying for years to right my father’s wrongs. One by one, the dodgy contracts that my father entered into reached the end of their lifespans, and I had been switching them back to American suppliers. I started a multitude of trusts for the families of all those injured on duty for the company, and I made sure that those employees my father fucked out of their pensions were placed back on payroll.
Guilt over the things that he had done often ate at me, especially when I saw the effects of them firsthand. I was often confronted with it in Houston but I had never imagined that it spread all the way to Connecticut.
I was on a never-ending path of redemption for the Perkins’ family name, and today, it led straight to Randy Hall’s doorstep.
I took a deep breath and knocked, waiting for Fiona’s father to open the door. To my mind, it was even odds if he was going to slam it in my face or let me in.
Fiona hadn’t mentioned anything to me about his feelings about our relationship but I knew that she had spoken to him about it. I could tell from the way that she wasn’t so stressed anymore, and how her lips no longer pressed into a thin line every time I mentioned the company.
But it didn’t mean that Randy had fully forgiven me. Sins of the father and all.
The door swung open, and he hesitated, then stepped back to allow me inside. “Shane, what brings you here?”
He craned his neck, as though looking for Fiona behind me. “She’s not here. She doesn’t know that I am, either.”
“Ah.” He closed the door behind me and gave my hand a quick shake before leading me to the kitchen. “You’ve come to talk, man to man, then.”
I nodded. “Yes, sir.”
“I can respect that. I told you to call me Randy, son. Would you like a beer before we sit down?” He was a lot more relaxed than he had been the first time we met but there were still shadows in his eyes and a tightening around his jaw that wasn’t there when he was with Fiona.
I accepted the beer he held out and popped the top off, sinking into a stool at his kitchen counter that he gestured me toward.
Randy took a long sip of his beer, as if he was bracing himself, then sank onto his own stool. “I assume you’re here to talk to me about Fiona.”
“That would be a reasonable assumption but not directly. Not really. I’m here to talk to you about my father.”
Randy’s eyes widened in surprise, and he sucked in a pained breath. There it was, proof once again of how badly my father had hurt so many people.
Randy finally spoke, after draining half his bottle of beer. “We don’t have to talk about your daddy, Shane. You’re not him. I understand that now.”
“I’m not,” I agreed. “But I do carry his name, and I’d like for it not to carry the legacy of pain and anger the way that it does now.”
“Fair point,” Randy said, then nodded at me to continue.
I took Fiona’s earlier advice and started from the beginning. “When I was a kid, I looked up to my father as a boy does. Even though he was hardly ever around, I was proud to have him as my dad, and I defended his absence when it came between my childhood friends. My mother taught me to fish, as you know, and my friends’ fathers taught me how to play ball and all those other things.”
Randy was listening intently, his beer now forgotten. My mouth had gone dry, so I took a quick swig of mine before continuing.
“It wasn’t until I was older that I started hearing the stories. For a while, I refused to believe them but then they started coming more and more often. Slowly but surely, my friends started pulling away from me.”
Deep breath, Shane. It was a painful part of my past but I had to revisit it if I wanted Randy to understand who I was and how I had become that person.
“Eventually, I built a wall around myself and focused on learning everything I could about the business. My father hired a man, Bart, to groom me for the job I would someday take over from him. He didn’t even bother doing that himself.”
Shit, I hated sharing. But I pushed on. Randy was still listening, nodding occasionally, but he didn’t interrupt me. I had a feeling that sharing was something he was used to.
“Once I took over, Bart and I started discovering everything my father had done during his tenure. The dodgy procurement processes were only the tip of the iceberg. I’m not proud of the way I dealt with it for a while. I’m sure you’ve heard the rumors of my playboy ways.”
Randy nodded.
“You need to know that I’m not that guy anymore. I’ve been trying to right my father’s wrongs for a long time but I’ve never felt it as personally as I have since meeting Fiona. That’s why I started the foundation. I don’t think I was fully alive before I met her. I want you to know that I love her. Deeply.” I held my breath as I waited for him to respond to my confession.
His eyes softened. “I know. It’s written all over your face.”
“You’re okay with that?” I asked disbelievingly.
“I am. You’re not like your father, contrary to what I might have believed the first time we met. I know you’ll be good for my daughter. She talks about you like you’re damn near a saint these days. She told me about how you saved her life out on the boat. For that, you’ll have my eternal gratitude.”
I didn’t have the first idea ho
w to answer to that. My tongue was glued to the top of my mouth, so I took a deep drink from my bottle.
“I’m no saint.” It was the first thing that popped into my head.
Randy smirked. “I’ve no delusions that you are. No one is.”
His easy comment relaxed me some, reminding me of the actual reason for my visit, righting the wrongs the Perkins family had perpetrated against this man and his family. It didn’t hurt that I’d had the opportunity to explain myself to my girl’s father, either.
I cleared my throat and dug into my pocket, pulling out a check I’d written in the truck before I mustered the courage to knock on his door.
I stood, handing the check to Randy.
He accepted what he undoubtedly perceived as a piece of paper and then blanched when he unfolded it. For a second, I was afraid he was going to have a heart attack or something, and I panicked.
Then he straightened his shoulders and pushed the check toward me. “I can’t accept this.”
“I went through your contract with my father personally, and together with interest for late payment in terms of that very contract, you are owed a million dollars by Perkins Enterprises.” I had gone over every inch of the contract with a fine-toothed comb to find a way to give him more than that, but there was nothing, and I knew that he wouldn’t accept charity.
Randy gaped at me. “A million dollars? It’s too much.”
“It’s not, I assure you. It’s what you stood to make from your last contract with my father. Consider it a late payment. Please. You worked for that money, even if it was decades ago. It’s yours.” I wasn’t above begging if that was what it took.
Randy stood and walked over to me on legs that seemed wobbly. He crushed me into a hug. “You don’t know how much this means to me.”
I was unfamiliar with fatherly hugs, but I was pretty sure I was in the middle of one, and it was kind of awesome. I completely understood why Fiona and Drew spent so much time with him, and why they loved him so deeply.
“You got space for one more?” Drew’s voice sounded from the doorway behind me.
