Gansett Island Boxed Set, Books 10-12

by Marie Force

  “I hate it, too, but it wasn’t all bad. He deployed a lot, so we got breaks from the insanity. And we had each other, so no one felt completely alone with it. Except for maybe Owen. Thank God for him. He ran interference for all of us at great personal expense.” She looked up at him. “Did you know he received an appointment to West Point?”

  “No,” Shane said, seeming astounded to hear that. “I can’t picture him in the military, though.”

  “Well, my dad could. He pushed him so hard.”

  “So why didn’t he go?”

  “He refused to leave the rest of us, which led to a huge fight between them. For once, Owen prevailed and knocked the general out cold.”

  “Wow.”

  She could almost see Shane wondering what it would be like to punch his father unconscious.

  “That must’ve been vindicating.”

  “It was until my father had him charged with assault.”

  “Seriously?”

  “Yep. He pressed charges and saw to it that Owen spent a few nights in jail to ‘teach him a lesson about respecting his elders.’ At first they charged him with felony assault, but that didn’t stick. He ended up with a misdemeanor on his record, but the incident was enough to make West Point change its mind. That only further infuriated my father, and of course it was all Owen’s fault.” Katie shook her head, sickened by the memories of those dark days.

  “Owen is such an amazing guy,” Shane said. “To have been through all that and still be so kind and loving toward Laura and Holden.”

  “It took a really long time for him to get to a place where the relationship he has with Laura was possible. But no one, except for maybe my mom, deserves to be happy more than he does. We’re all so thankful he has Laura and that she makes him so happy.”

  “You deserve to be happy, too, you know.”

  “Not like he does.”

  “Sure you do. You lived through hell and survived just like he did. Maybe he fought more of the battles, but judging from how often he speaks of you and Julia, in particular, you propped him up through it all.”

  “He talks about us?”

  “All the time—all of you, but you two in particular.”

  “That’s nice to hear. We love him unreasonably.”

  “I’d venture to guess he loves you just as much.”

  “Sometimes it feels like our childhood was so long ago it didn’t really happen, like it was a bad movie we saw once or something. And other times it feels like it happened five minutes ago, and any second he’s going to reappear out of the woodwork like the bogeyman.”

  “That’s not going to happen. You know that, don’t you?”

  “I’m working on convincing myself.” She realized all at once that while they talked they’d walked out to waist-deep water. “Well, aren’t you the clever one, getting me to talk about my painful past as you lured me into the deep.”

  “You make me sound so devious.”

  “Are you?”

  “Not usually.” Without releasing her hand, he dropped into the water, letting it wash over his head. He stayed under long enough that Katie worried about him.

  She tugged on his hand, and he squeezed hers. Then she felt him between her legs and let out a squeak of surprise when he lifted her onto his shoulders. Katie fisted handfuls of his hair as she tried to keep from falling off. “That was devious!”

  He spun her around, making her laugh hysterically.

  “Stop! I’m going to puke.”

  “We can’t have that.” He dropped suddenly again, taking her down with him this time.

  She resurfaced, sputtering from the mouthful of water she’d swallowed. Before she could express her displeasure, he’d lifted her again, this time into his arms as he remained largely under the water. “That was mean.”

  “You have brothers. How does that count as mean?”

  “You make a good point. I’ve been the victim of dirtier tricks.”

  “And you’re not stressing out about being in the water.”

  Which had been his goal, she realized as she returned his smile. “Also true. Thank you for that.”

  He tightened his hold on her. “Very much my pleasure. Speaking of my pleasure, you could kiss me if you wanted to.”

  Katie wanted to. She really, really wanted to. So she linked her arms around his neck and pressed her lips to his. At first, she wondered if he was going to respond, but then she got that he was waiting to see what she would do. So she started by stroking his bottom lip with her tongue before withdrawing it and then doing it again.

  Only the tight squeeze of his hands on her arm and leg indicated that her efforts were yielding results, so she did it again and again, until his mouth opened and he groaned in response.

  Feeling victorious, Katie smiled against his lips.

  “You’re quite pleased with yourself, aren’t you?”

  “Not bad, since I hadn’t kissed anyone until recently.”

  “Not bad at all. How about you do it again? They say practice makes perfect.”

  “I need lots and lots of practice.”

  “I’m more than happy to help you catch up.”

  Katie laughed as she kissed him—until he shifted her so she straddled his lap. Her laughter turned into a moan as he pressed his erection between her legs and cupped her breasts under the water. Remembering where they were and that anyone could see them, she turned away from the kiss.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Not out here.”

  “We’re just kissing.”

  “Someone might see.”

  “So?”

  “I’m not ready for that yet.”

  “Yet. Does that imply that someday you might be?”

  She gauged the teasing glint in his eye. “You’ll have to wait and see.”

  “Is underwater touching allowed?”

  “I suppose that’s okay.”

  “Mmm,” he said as he nuzzled her neck and cupped her breasts, running his thumbs over her tight nipples.

  “Hey! You untied my top!”

  “You said touching was allowed.”

  “I didn’t say naked touching was allowed.”

  “An important distinction. It’s not my fault I wasn’t given all the information.”

  “You really are a scoundrel, aren’t you?”

  “No one has ever called me that before,” he said with a chuckle. He put his arms around her, bringing her breasts in tight against his chest.

  As they floated in the water, waves rolled gently toward the shore and the sun dipped closer to the horizon. Far off in the distance, she noticed what looked like lights strung across the water. “What is that?”

  Shane turned to see what she meant. “The Newport Bridge.”

  “Oh, I couldn’t tell.”

  “Have you been there? To Newport?”

  “Nope.”

  “All the times you came here, you never went there?”

  “My grandparents had seven kids underfoot. It was a big deal to go out for ice cream. They bought a ten-passenger van just so they could drive us around when we were here. We didn’t make it to Newport.”

  “I’ll take you if you want to go.”

  “I’d love to go.”

  “Tomorrow?”

  “Don’t you have to work?”

  “I can take a day off.”

  “You really want to go to Newport tomorrow?”

  “What I really want is to spend a full day with you, so yes, I really want to go to Newport tomorrow.”

  She smiled at his sweetness. “Okay. That sounds like fun.”

  “It’s a lot of walking, though. Do you feel up for that with your foot?”

  “It’s a lot better than it was. I’ll be okay. But the more pressing question is will I be back for girls’ night out?”

  “I can make that happen. But now we have to go clean up for dinner with your mom and Charlie.”

  Katie tightened her legs around his hips. “I’m sort of wishi
ng now that we hadn’t made those plans.”

  “Why’s that?”

  She rubbed against him suggestively. “No reason.”

  Laughing, he moved his hands down to cup her bottom. “You know what the best news of all is?”

  “What?”

  He pressed his erection against her. “He comes back any time I need him. So while we might have to let him go to waste this time, after dinner… Watch out.”

  Katie shuddered from the promise of pleasure she heard in his voice. Now that she knew what to expect, how was she supposed to get through dinner without every thought focused on what would happen when they got home?

  Chapter 23

  Shane retied Katie’s top, his hands brushing against her back as he worked. “There. All decent again.”

  “There’s a lot to be said for indecency.”

  “Yes, there is. We’ll discuss that topic further later.”

  “Is it later yet?”

  Laughing, he said, “I wish.”

  They walked out of the water holding hands. When they reached the sheet he’d spread over the sand, he grabbed her towel and wrapped it around her shoulders.

  “Thank you,” she said.

  “For?”

  “For taking me swimming and making it so fun that I forgot to be scared.”

  “You’re welcome. Nothing to be scared of. Think about how many times you swam here without incident. What happened the other day was scary for both of us, but we can’t let it ruin something we love to do.”

  “You’re right, but thank you just the same.”

  “It was fun for me, too.”

  He piggybacked her to the stairs, where he put her down and then let her go ahead of him. “What a view,” he whispered from behind her.

  “Stop.”

  “You stop.”

  “What am I doing?” Katie asked, genuinely baffled.

  “You’re being hot and sexy when we have somewhere to be.”

  “How am I being hot and sexy, as you put it?”

  “Um, you’re breathing?”

  Katie was still laughing at his ridiculous statement when she reached the porch, where Laura was nursing a glass of ice water while Adele enjoyed a glass of wine at a table overlooking the beach. Katie wondered how much they’d seen and was doubly glad now that she’d put an end to the naked touching.

  Laura smiled at them. “Hey, kids. Have a nice swim?”

  “Yeah,” Shane said. “It was great.”

  “Looked like fun from here,” Adele said with a wink.

  “I told you people were watching,” Katie said to laughter from the two women.

  Shane took hold of her hand. “We’d love to stay and chat, but we’ve got somewhere to be.”

  “I’ll see you there,” Laura said. “We were invited, too.”

  “Great,” Shane said, leading Katie inside.

  “That was mortifying,” Katie muttered when they were in the kitchen, which bustled now as Stephanie’s staff prepared for the dinner rush.

  “I bet if you asked them both, they’d say they’re delighted to see us together. I know Laura is, because she told me so.”

  “My grandmother is, too.”

  “So there you have it.”

  “Just because they’re happy to see us together doesn’t mean they want to watch us frolicking in the surf.”

  “Is that what we did? Frolic?”

  “You know what I mean.”

  Laughing, he said, “They saw us having fun, Katie. No need to be embarrassed.”

  “So you’re into PDA, then?”

  “At times. Depends on the circumstances. What about you?”

  “As that was my first instance of PDA, the jury is still out.”

  “Keep me posted. I have a vested interest.”

  “Ha-ha. Very funny.”

  “I’m serious.” He left her with a kiss at her door. “Hurry up. I don’t want to be late to your mother’s. Got to make a good impression.”

  “As if. She’s already in love with you.”

  “As nice as that is, she’s not the one I’m trying to impress.”

  He was gone to his room before his words registered. Katie fumbled with her key and stepped into her dark room, standing there for a full minute, thinking about what he had said. Anticipation made her skin prickle and her nipples tighten. In a few minutes, she’d get to be with him again, and she was more than ready.

  In the shower, she spent extra time with her razor until every inch of her was smooth. She towel-dried her hair and combed it out, applied lip gloss and mascara, chose underwear with special care and put on a red halter dress. As she tied the dress behind her neck, she had a vision of Shane untying it later.

  Whatever her mother had planned for dinner, Katie hoped it didn’t take too long to eat.

  * * *

  Shane rushed through his shower but took the time to shave. As much as Katie had liked the feel of his whiskers against her face earlier, he planned to kiss her all over later and didn’t want to give her whisker burn.

  As he relived the pleasure of kissing Katie, he realized Courtney hadn’t crossed his mind all day. Apparently he’d found that off-switch he’d been looking for, and her name was Katie. All his thoughts were of her since the amazing night they’d spent together. In many ways, she was Courtney’s total opposite.

  Whereas Courtney was confident and ballsy, Katie was tentative and cautious. Shane had once been attracted to confident and ballsy, but now he found himself drawn to tentative and cautious. What he liked about Katie was that she knew herself. She made no excuses for how she’d chosen to live her life or why she’d made the choices she had. She owned them, and he respected that.

  Her innate sweetness was also a huge draw. While Courtney had been a nice person with lots of friends and a healthy social life, sweet wasn’t a word anyone would’ve used to describe her. Funny and loud and quick to laugh, Courtney had been fun to be around, but she’d also had a hair-trigger temper. He knew now that had been because of the drugs, but at the time, he’d worked overtime to keep the peace.

  Hindsight was a bitch, he decided as he ran a towel over his face. When he’d still been in love with her, he would’ve said there was no one else in the world for him. But now that sweet Katie had come into his life, he had reason to question those beliefs.

  Did he want to fall in love again? Did he dare risk his hard-won sanity by handing over his heart, and with it the power to hurt him, to another woman? What was the alternative? Being alone for the rest of his life? Never having children of his own? What about what she wanted? She’d waited so long to even date. Would she decide she wanted to play the field before she settled on one guy for the rest of her life?

  No matter the answers to those questions, hard as he tried, he couldn’t picture Katie hurting him the way Courtney had. She was softer and kinder than Courtney, for one thing. If she had to let him down, he was fairly confident she’d let him down easily. It was strange to think that before the ordeal with Courtney, he wouldn’t have been quite so attracted to Katie’s sweetness. Now he craved it.

  He’d had more than enough of the drama that had been such a big part of his relationship with Courtney. When he’d still been dazzled with her, he’d found the drama exciting. With the wisdom that came from age and experience, he could see there was a lot to be said for tranquility.

  During the darkness that’d followed his split with Courtney, he’d also had far too much time to wonder if he’d ever feel physically attracted to another woman the way he had with her. That was another question that had been resolved to his extreme satisfaction in the last few days.

  He loved kissing Katie and touching her and making love with her and wanted to do it again as soon as possible. After he’d applied a dab of cologne and dressed in shorts and a clean polo shirt he unearthed from a pile of laundry he’d yet to put away, he stopped short at the realization that he should’ve gotten something for Sarah. Since he’d been invited as Katie�
�s date and not as Sarah’s friend, he should bring flowers or wine or something.

  It had been such a long time since he’d done the dinner-with-the-parents thing for the first time that he’d forgotten the rules. Courtney’s parents and sister had loved him. They’d loved his father and Laura and made them a part of their family. Her parents had been as surprised as Shane to learn she was addicted to pain meds, and they’d been devastated by her decision to divorce him.

  For a year or so after it all blew up, her parents had remained in close touch with him, their concern for him rivaling only his own father’s. After a while, though, he’d stopped returning their calls, because it was too damned painful to be reminded of what he’d lost every time he talked to them.

  Again, Shane had to ask himself why he was thinking about this shit when he had a beautiful, sweet, sexy, funny woman waiting for him to take her to dinner. It was because he was terrified of history repeating itself, and every minute he spent with Katie increased the stakes. And because he’d like to think he’d learned a few things from the nightmare he’d been through. He sat on his bed and ran his fingers through his damp hair. He was still sitting on the bed when a soft knock sounded at his door. He got up to answer it.

  “Hey,” he said to Katie, who looked gorgeous in a sexy red dress that left her shoulders bare.

  “Did I really get ready faster than you?” Her smile faded when she took a closer look at him. “What’s wrong?”

  “Come in.” Shane stepped aside to admit her and then closed the door. “Could we talk for a minute?” He hated that he had to do this, but what choice did he have?

  “Of course. Are you all right?”

  He sat on the bed and gestured for her to join him. “I’m better than all right for the first time in a really long time. And it’s because of you.”

  “That’s nice of you to say. So why do you seem upset?”

  He took hold of her hand and brought it to his lips, meeting her gaze. “I like you, Katie. I really like you. I like hanging out with you and everything else.”

  “I like hanging out with you, too. Were you worried that I didn’t?”

  “I wasn’t worried about that so much as…”