by Marie Force
They’d been stymied every time they tried to set a date since Francine’s divorce had been final. He’d pitched the idea of a surprise wedding to her, and she’d loved it. They’d even set a date for that, only to have Seamus and Carolina beat them to it.
Even Grant and Stephanie were finally getting married in a couple of weeks, and they’d been dragging their feet for a year now!
It wasn’t fair. He’d been waiting more than thirty years to marry his gal. He was almost to the point of whisking her off to Vegas just to get it done. Except… He didn’t want to do it that way. He wanted his people there with him, including her daughters, who’d become his girls since he’d been with their mom. He wanted their grandkids there and all their friends.
Tomorrow he was going to figure this out once and for all. They were going to set a damned date and stick to it. Let anyone try to stop them.
“Ready?” Francine asked.
He glanced at her and did a double take at how beautiful she looked. She’d had her hair done earlier in the day, and every one of her auburn locks was shining and gorgeous.
“What’re you staring at?”
“I’m starin’ at the gal I love. She takes my breath away.”
“You charmer.”
“I ain’t feedin’ ya bull, doll. I look atcha, and I get all tangled up inside.”
Francine smoothed her hands over the lapels of his one good sport coat. “I feel the same way about you and our lovely life together. Every day I’m thankful you gave me another chance.”
“Gave ya another chance,” he said with a laugh. “As if I had a choice. Ya have my heart, doll. Ya always have.”
She kissed him. “Let’s go have dinner with the kids so we can come home and continue this conversation.”
It still astonished him, even after more than a year of living together, that he got to come home with her every night and sleep with her in his arms after dreaming about her for lonely, empty decades.
Since they’d been forced to dress up, he broke out the vintage Cadillac he’d bought from the Chesterfield Estate for the drive to Mac and Maddie’s house. They arrived to a mess of cars in the driveway, leading all the way out to Sweet Meadow Farm Road.
“I thought it was just us and the kids,” Ned said glumly. He was hardly in the mood for another festive party with all the happily married couples in their lives.
“That’s what I thought, too. They must’ve invited the whole gang.”
“Great.”
Ned held her elbow as they went up the stairs to the deck, where the gathered group tossed something at them and yelled, “Surprise.” He held up his arm to protect his face from whatever was flying at him. Rose petals rained down upon them.
“Surprise?” Francine said. She turned to him. “It’s not your birthday or mine.”
Mac and Maddie approached them, holding glasses of champagne and wearing broad smiles. “It’s not your birthday,” Maddie said, kissing them both. “Welcome to your wedding.”
Ned figured he’d heard her wrong until things began to happen all around him.
Frank McCarthy stepped forward with a marriage license for him and Francine to sign. Maddie and Tiffany signed as their witnesses.
Next came flowers for both of them, as well as Maddie and Mac and Tiffany and Blaine. Ashleigh, Thomas and Hailey finished out the wedding party he would’ve chosen for himself.
“I don’t understand,” Ned finally said when he could get a word in edgewise.
“You wanted to get married and couldn’t find a date,” Big Mac said, “so Mac and Maddie found one for you.” Big Mac put his tree-trunk arm around Ned. “All you gotta do, old pal, is stand there and get married.”
He was going to cry, goddamn it. Right in front of everyone. He was going to actually cry. Here, standing before him, ready to stand up with him and Francine, was the family he’d always wanted but never had. He spared a glance for Francine and discovered she was already crying.
To hell with it, he decided as he stopped trying to fight his way through the emotional wallop. “’Tis a heck of a thing ya’ve done here,” he said to Mac and Maddie. “Thank you.”
“So you’re happy about it?” Maddie said. “I told Mac if you were mad, it was all his idea.”
“It was all my idea.”
Maddie patted his face indulgently. “Yes, dear.”
“Well, it was.”
“I’m very happy bout it,” Ned said gruffly as he sniffed. “Never been happier bout anything.”
“I knew you would be,” Mac said with a big smirk for his wife.
Frank rubbed his hands together. “What do you say, Ned? Francine? Shall we do this? It’s been a full week since I married Laura and Owen. I’m starting to get twitchy for another wedding.”
“I ain’t got a ring fer her,” Ned said, feeling suddenly panicked. They were really going to do this. “I need a ring. She deserves a ring.”
“Gotcha covered.” Mac produced rings from his pocket. “We took the liberty of choosing these for you, but the store said you can return them if there’s something you’d rather have.”
“I don’t know what ta say. Ya thought of everything. Ya even found a way ta get a tie on me.”
“That was the hardest part,” Maddie said, patting her new stepfather’s chest.
Tiffany and Blaine hugged and kissed Ned and Francine.
“This is so exciting!” Tiffany said to her mother. “I almost told you about it five times this week!”
“I kept the secret,” Ashleigh said to her grandmother.
“Yes, you did, sweetheart. I had no idea!”
“Places, everyone.” Maddie clapped her hands. To Ned, she said, “You stay here with Mac and Blaine.”
Ned let her position him where she wanted him. His heart was beating so fast he worried he might pass out or something equally embarrassing. But this was the moment he’d waited so long for, and nothing was going to ruin it for him or Francine. So he took a series of deep breaths, hoping to calm his racing heart.
He gestured to Big Mac. “Come ere.”
Big Mac walked over to him. “I’m here.”
“Stay. Need ya right here with me.”
His best friend hugged him. “You got it, buddy.”
Big Mac shook hands with Mac and Blaine as he joined them.
Looking around at all the faces gathered before him, Ned saw everyone he loved in this world. The five McCarthy kids, who’d grown up with him as their beloved adopted uncle, his buddies from the morning meetings at the marina and the friends like Luke Harris, who’d become family to him over the years. He wiped his eyes and tried to keep his emotions under control even as he realized he was fighting a losing battle.
Evan and Owen played gentle guitar music as Ashleigh and Thomas came outside, holding hands.
Ned loved those kids so damned much. He couldn’t wait to watch them grow up and to spoil them the way any good grandfather would.
Next came Tiffany, looking gorgeous and elated as she preceded her equally beautiful sister Maddie through the door. Maddie carried Hailey in her arms, and the baby blew kisses that made his heart melt. Ned held his breath, waiting for Francine to appear, and when she did, she carried a bouquet of white flowers and wore a smile that stretched across her pretty face.
The sight of that face and that smile settled and calmed him. In a few minutes, she would be his wife, and they’d get the rest of their lives together. Nothing had ever made him happier than that did.
The rest of it was a blur. Vows were spoken, rings were exchanged, and Frank pronounced them husband and wife. Ned hugged her and kissed her—probably longer and deeper than was technically appropriate, but who the hell cared? Francine, his Francine, was finally his wife, and it was all because their kids had loved them enough to do this for them.
Standing hand in hand with his new wife, surrounded by the family he’d always wanted, Ned Saunders considered himself the luckiest man on earth.
* *
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Turn the page to read Kisses After Dark, Katie and Shane’s story!
Chapter 1
His first thought at the start of every day was always the same.
He’s home in the cozy apartment he shared with his wife. It’s winter, and they’re snuggled under the down comforter they’d gotten as a wedding gift from his sister. His wife is warm and naked, her body soft as she sleeps in his arms. The scent of her shampoo, the expensive stuff he bought for her at the salon she loves, surrounds him. He would recognize that scent anywhere, the scent of his woman.
His body responds predictably to her nearness. Any time he’s awake and naked with her, he’s hard and ready to claim her. He moves his hand from her flat belly, up to cup a full breast, toying with the nipple that awakens instantly to his touch.
Wanting to see her and watch her reactions, he opens his eyes and is punched in the face by reality.
Every damned morning.
He’s not in bed with his wife. He’s alone in the room he calls home now at the Sand & Surf Hotel on Gansett Island. The wife he’d loved beyond reason, to the point of blindness to the faults that ended them, is long gone. She divorced him after ruining him in just about every way a man can be ruined, leaving behind memories that torture him.
Shane McCarthy stared up at the ceiling he’d painted white the winter before when the Surf had undergone extensive renovations overseen by his sister, Laura, and her now-husband, Owen Lawry. The call from Laura, pleading with him to come help them get the hotel ready for the summer season, had finally drawn him out of the dark hole he’d been in for nearly two years, mourning the loss of his marriage—and a big chunk of his sanity.
He needed to get up, grab a shower before his nephew Holden woke up and get them both to the brunch Owen’s grandparents were hosting to celebrate the newlyweds. Shane was thrilled to celebrate his sister’s happiness with a man he liked and respected, but the minute he got up, he would lose Courtney for another day.
The beginning of every new day was the only time he gave her anymore. If he had his druthers, she wouldn’t even get that. But he was unable to control the places his mind went in that ambiguous space between dreams and wakefulness. So he gave her those minutes and nothing else. He took the time, upon waking each morning, to mourn what’d been lost, to grieve for what would never be again and to wallow, however briefly, in the past.
He’d experienced the highest of highs and the lowest of lows with Courtney, extremes so jarring it was a wonder he could function in the aftermath of the wreckage she’d left behind. But he was functioning. He was working on an affordable-housing project with his cousin Mac and making a worthwhile contribution to the Gansett Island community.
He was involved on a daily basis with his sister, his father, his nephew, his new brother-in-law and the large extended family that lived close by on the island they all called home. The hotel that had initially served as a refuge had begun to feel like home. The dark apartment in Providence that had been ground zero for the end of his marriage was a distant memory now that Laura and her hotel had forced him back into the land of the living.
If only he could do something about these early morning visitations with the past. He needed an exorcism or something equally dramatic to remove Courtney from his DNA. She’d worked her way all the way in during the years they’d spent together, and removing her was turning out to be one hell of a difficult challenge.
Too bad you couldn’t flip a switch in your brain and stop thinking about something or someone who made you sad and angry and regretful and horribly, miserably lonely. Shouldn’t there be a way to make that stop? At this point, Shane would pay good money to find that switch in his own brain, because it was high time for this shit to stop. It needed to stop.
Courtney was nothing to him anymore, except for his ex-wife. He’d practically bankrupted himself to put her through rehab after discovering her addiction to prescription pain meds that predated their marriage. Her way of thanking him for everything he’d done for her was to serve him with divorce papers the minute she was sober again.
Talk about a wake-up call. He sure as hell hadn’t seen that coming as he’d counted down the ninety days she’d spent in rehab, living for the day when they could get their lives back on track. While he’d been blindsided by the drug problem, the divorce had left him demolished. The worst part was he still didn’t know why she’d done that. Had she met someone else in rehab? Had she suddenly decided he didn’t look as good to her when she was no longer hopped up on pills?
The why of it tortured him almost as much as the reality of living without the woman he’d expected to spend forever with. Even after all this time, he still didn’t understand why. He’d been served with papers on the day he’d expected to pick her up from the clinic and start over again. He hadn’t even gotten the courtesy of a conversation. She’d disappeared from his life as quickly and as dramatically as she’d entered it his senior year of college.
Running his hands over his face, filled with frustration and anger at himself for dwelling on things that shouldn’t matter so much after all this time, he thought about yesterday, about his sister’s wedding and the palpable joy between her and Owen. It had been a truly perfect day, a rare gem in the mess his life had been for quite some time now.
And then he remembered the incident that had nearly marred that rare gem of a day. Hell, it had nearly ruined a lot more than his sister’s wedding. He’d been swimming at the beach in front of the hotel when a distressed cry from another swimmer had put him in rescue mode. Upon reaching the woman, she’d latched on to him in a panic and dragged them both under. For a brief moment, he’d thought she was going to kill them both. Then he’d begun to fight, freeing himself from her tight grip after an epic struggle.
He’d managed to eventually get them both to the beach, but not before she lost her bikini top. When he’d brushed back the blond hair from her face, he’d realized she was Katie Lawry, Owen’s sister. Though their families were now connected by marriage and despite the fact that Katie was Owen’s sister, Shane couldn’t stop thinking about the most perfect set of breasts he’d seen since his divorce.
Hell, they were the only breasts he’d seen since his divorce, which was probably why he couldn’t seem to scrub the memory of them from his brain. Again, that off-switch would come in handy as he was about to see her at the after-wedding brunch, and he needed to be able to look at her without thinking breasts at the first sight of her.
Christ, he needed to get laid if he got so worked up over a pair of bare breasts. It was sad to realize he couldn’t remember the last time he’d had sex or even wanted to. Well before Courtney went to rehab, which was… Shit, almost two years ago.
How pathetic was it that the sight of Katie Lawry’s breasts triggered the first pang of desire he’d felt since then? Was he the same guy who’d had sex with his wife nearly every day—sometimes two or three times a day—before it went to shit? He couldn’t remember what it had been like to be that guy. That guy was so far removed from his current reality, it was like he was someone else altogether.
Pathetic was definitely the word of this day, and it wasn’t even seven o’clock yet. Weekends provided hours upon hours of time that needed to be filled. This weekend had been better than most with all the wedding festivities to help keep his attention on the present where it belonged. He was better off on days when he could lose himself in work and stay so busy he had no time for dwelling.
A tiny squeak from the room next door wiped away all unpleasant thoughts and gave Shane a genuine reason to smile. His nephew, Holden, the brightest light in Shane’s life, was awake and in need of the uncle who’d stayed with him so his parents could enjoy their wedding night.
Shane got up, hit the bathroom and went into Holden’s room, where the baby was sucking on his own toes, a relatively new addition to his arsenal of adorable tricks. Then again, Shane thought everything Holden did was adorable. “Hey, bud. Did you sleep well? I don’t
know what your mama is talking about with all these middle-of-the-night stories.”
Holden rewarded him with a big spitty smile that showed off his two new bottom teeth and reached up with his arms and legs.
Shane laughed and scooped him up, hugging him close for a full minute before transferring him to the changing table to dispose of the heavy overnight diaper.
“Dude, that’s a lot of pee. How many beers did you have at the wedding anyway?”
Holden squeaked and squealed and giggled, his infectious joy a balm on the wounds Shane carried with him. Holden gave him hope, an emotion he’d been sorely lacking until his nephew came along to remind him that life goes on even when you think it can’t possibly.
“Mammammamma.”
“Mama is across the street with Daddy, and trust me, bud, you don’t want to know what they’re up to.”
His comment was received with more squeals and lots of wrestling to get the new diaper on. Owen had warned him to feed Holden his cereal before he tried to get him dressed, so they moved to the apartment’s tiny galley kitchen, where he plopped Holden into his high chair and mixed up the cereal while the baby enjoyed some Cheerios scattered on the tray.
Shane had expected to have a couple of kids of his own by now. That’d been the plan anyway, before he discovered his wife had been hiding a raging addiction to pain meds. What if she’d gotten pregnant while she was still addicted? He shuddered thinking now about the bullet he’d dodged.
Pushing those thoughts aside, he gave his full attention to his nephew. As long as he stayed focused on the present, the past couldn’t catch up to him. At least that was what he told himself as he moved through every day, still trying to outrun the relentless pain.
