Carolina Blues

by Virginia Kantra

  “Speaking of closure . . . What happens in a couple of weeks when you finish the book and it’s time to go home?”

  Lauren didn’t question Meg’s genuine concern . . . or resent her interest. Meg had brought her here, bought her the time and space she needed to finish her book. But as Lauren’s publicist, Meg naturally wanted to know that Lauren was going to meet her obligations.

  “That depends. I need to meet with Eleanor—my faculty advisor.”

  “I thought you were on leave. You don’t have to go back to school this fall, do you?”

  Lauren shook her head. “I’m pretty much done with my course work. Clinic work, too. Which is a good thing, since I’m sure the department has already made all the teaching and clinic assignments for fall. But I still have to finish my dissertation. I’m way behind there.”

  “What about Jack?”

  Lauren’s heart took flight like a startled bird, beating, beating against the walls of her chest. What about Jack? Jack, with his good cop/bad cop vibe, his dark, intense eyes, and unbearably sweet half smile.

  “Jack’s a great guy,” she said, which was such a lame understatement that it felt like a betrayal. Of him. Of her feelings.

  Meg arched an eyebrow. “Not a fixer-upper?”

  Her own words came back to taunt her. Nice guys, but not long-term relationship material. So they stay with me until I can fix them.

  And then, when they don’t need me anymore, they move on.

  Lauren cleared her throat. “I’d say we both need a little fixing. We’re good for each other. At least for now.”

  “Listen, you can tell me to butt out of your business. But I care about you as a client and as a friend. And I care about Jack. What about when you leave here? Will you try to see him again?”

  “We haven’t talked about it. We’ve known each other less than two weeks. It’s a little early to be throwing words like commitment around.”

  “Absolutely.” Meg smoothed another dress onto a hanger. “I just don’t want to see you get hurt. Either of you. In the long term, Jack strikes me as a more traditional kind of guy.”

  “He is. We’re very different. That’s one reason I’m not going to risk what we have now by projecting too far into the future.”

  “And what you have now is . . . sex?”

  “Great sex.”

  She had never craved another man the way she hungered for Jack. Never known another man who loved sex so much, who was so creative, so intense. She wanted him all the time. She spent her days churning inside with anticipation, lust, and happiness. And the nights . . . They’d made love on every horizontal surface of the boat and a few vertical ones. Rolling across his bed. On all fours on the floor of his salon. Pressed close together in the cramped shower, his hands tight on her butt. Propped on the galley counter, her legs around his waist.

  She couldn’t get enough of him. Even when they’d finished making love, when she’d moved past desire into sleepy, sore satiation, she wanted to pull him inside her again and again. She found herself reaching for him across the mattress at night, the warmth of his hard-planed body, the texture of his skin.

  They really were going to kill each other.

  And yet all Jack had to do was look at her a certain way or smile that half smile or move or breathe and she was lost. Awash in lust.

  “I never knew it could be like this,” she admitted. “That I could have all these feelings inside. Jack makes me feel . . .” Cherished. Desired. Safe. “Alive.”

  “Now you’re just bragging, you lucky bitch.”

  Lauren returned Meg’s grin. “Well, yeah. But you’ve got Sam.”

  “I do,” Meg said with deep satisfaction. “Which is the only reason I’m not jealous. I won’t tell you not to be happy. But be careful, okay?”

  Too late, Lauren thought.

  “You bet,” she said.

  * * *

  YOU COULD TAKE the cop out of Philly. You couldn’t take the Philly out of the cop. Weddings, funerals, Christmas Eve, Easter, Jack dressed like every other male member of his tribe. White dress shirt, dark suit, subdued tie. The uniform varied only slightly—a pinkie ring for Grandpa Joe, a gold chain on Cousin Pete, a black-on-black shirt for Maria’s boy, Eddie, who was too young to know any better. It’s like a wake at the fucking Corleones, Jack’s sister-in-law Tricia (red haired, Irish, and outnumbered) liked to say.

  He wondered what Tricia would say about Lauren. What they all would make of Lauren.

  Looking at himself in the mirror, seeing his father’s face above the crisp white collar, his father’s hands at the end of his starched white cuffs, Jack wondered if it was time for a change. Island weddings tended to be casual affairs.

  But when he saw Lauren coming down the stairs at the Pirates’ Rest, he was glad he had the suit.

  Because she looked amazing.

  She glowed in eye-popping red that hugged her curves and glossed her lips. Her eyes were smudged and sultry. Her hair looked like she’d tumbled out of bed, an effect he’d learned women only achieved with a curling iron and serious effort. She wore a tiny diamond in her nose and sparkly earrings. Everything about her was sparkly and shiny and hot. Even her sandals, made of gold leather straps that wrapped around her toes and ankles. He wanted to bundle her back up the stairs and onto the nearest bed. Or over a chair. Against the wall.

  Yeah, and ruin her makeup and probably piss her off. Not to mention make both of them late for Luke’s wedding.

  That was another thing marriage had taught him. Women didn’t get all dressed up for men. They got dressed up to be seen by other women.

  Her eyes widened and took him in. “Wow. Hello, Jack.”

  “Hello, Lauren. You look good.”

  Her smile increased her glow by another hundred watts. “Thank you. I like your suit.”

  “I like your dress.”

  “And your shoes.”

  Not cop shoes, the standard-issue black shit kickers he wore every day of his working life.

  He smiled faintly. “Thanks. My ma used to say you should spend money on your eyes, your teeth, and your feet, because they have to last you all your life.”

  “Your mother sounds like a wise woman.” Her smile turned wistful. “My dad would have liked that saying. He used to tell customers, ‘Take care of your feet and they’ll take care of you.’”

  Her dad used to own a shoe store, he remembered. It was in her book.

  “Here. For you.” He produced the single long-stemmed rose from behind his back, red, fresh, and full, if a little wilted from its brief stint on the front seat of the SUV. He’d bought the flower on impulse, a sentimental gesture. Or a joke.

  Her face went blank.

  Hell.

  You didn’t give a woman a single flower, Renee had taught him. Or a stupid cellophane-wrapped bouquet from the grocery store. You bought a damn dozen roses from the florist or none at all. But then Lauren had made that comment about prom, and Jack had thought . . . he’d thought . . .

  “I can’t believe you brought me a rose,” she said. “It’s . . .”

  Too much. Too little. Not right.

  “It’s so pretty.” Her eyes sparkled as she held the single bloom against her chest, framed by the soft curves of her breasts. “My corsage.”

  She remembered.

  Muscles he didn’t know had tensed relaxed. He smiled. “You want to put it in your room? I’ll wait.”

  Or you could invite me up to your room. Invite me up.

  All the Fletchers were already at the church, the caterers busy in the kitchen. He had a brief, sexual fantasy in which he and Lauren were late to the wedding after all before she shook her head.

  “I want to carry it. Is that all right? Or will I look like a flower girl?”

  Her face was shining. You’d think no guy had ever brought her
flowers before. Next time he would do better, Jack thought. She deserved better.

  And didn’t question how easy it was to think next time, to imagine a week, a month, a year ahead with her.

  “You don’t look like any flower girl I ever saw,” he said. “You can do what you want.”

  * * *

  A LARGE EXTENDED Catholic family had made Jack something of an expert on weddings.

  The wedding of former Staff Sergeant Luke Fletcher, USMC, to Katherine Dolan, attorney, was damn near perfect.

  The tiny chapel at the Franciscan retreat house was flooded with sunshine, family, friends, and flowers. The Fletchers filled the front pews. Luke’s brother Matt stood with him, shoulder to shoulder. Luke’s eleven-year-old daughter, walking carefully in her high-heeled shoes, preceded Kate down the aisle. The sun, striking through the stained glass windows, fired the bride’s coppery hair to gold. And the look on Luke’s face when he saw Kate walking toward him, a smile on her face and love in her eyes . . .

  “They look perfect together, don’t they?” Lauren whispered, echoing his thought.

  You and Renee make the perfect couple, everybody used to say. And on the surface, everybody was right. Same neighborhood, same schools, same job.

  Until she missed going out with her friends on a Saturday night and he worked late and forgot to call. Until arguments over paying the bills or who took out the trash scraped all the shiny off their life together.

  But watching Luke take Kate’s hand at the front of the church, listening to the strength of his voice and the faith in her responses, Jack was tempted to believe it wouldn’t be like that for them.

  “They’ve had some rough times,” he murmured. “Let’s hope they make it work.”

  “‘The triumph of hope over experience,’” Lauren said softly.

  He slanted a look down at her, warm and round and glowing in her red dress. “What?”

  “Samuel Johnson, on second marriages. But it applies to love generally, I think. Love is always a leap of faith. We all have barriers to overcome.”

  Shrink talk. College girl talk. But, God, he liked the sound of her voice. He liked the way she looked for the best in everything. In everyone.

  She wasn’t one of them. Not a Fletcher, not an islander. A last-minute addition to the guest list. But at the reception at the Pirates’ Rest, she slipped into the gathering like a fish into water.

  The Dare Island community was like the sea, all calm and welcoming on the surface, with unexpected depths and currents. It had taken Jack months to navigate with ease. Assimilation was not his thing. He was marked as an outsider before he even opened his mouth.

  But Lauren’s warmth, her genuine interest, made her welcome. She circulated like a champ, naturally seeking out and drawing in the outliers.

  A tent with a dance floor filled the garden, edged with rosebushes and daylilies. Tables dotted the grass under pink blooming crepe myrtles. The wedding party was announced. The bridal couple danced slowly together to Vince Gill singing “Look at Us.”

  From the setup, it was clear that the mother of the bride had a place of honor near the head table, but at the moment, she sat all alone.

  Brenda Dolan was a washed-out version of her daughter, the coppery hair faded to peach, her figure rigidly maintained, her face nipped, tucked, and Botoxed free of any expression beyond mild distaste. She looked as if she would rather be waiting for a pap smear than sitting in a sunny summer garden watching her daughter circle in her new husband’s arms.

  Jack gave a mental shrug. Not his problem. From the little Luke let drop, Brenda Dolan had never been much of a mother.

  The servers were busy passing hors d’oeuvres, mini crab cakes and prosciutto-wrapped asparagus, cold jumbo shrimp and tiny stuffed cherry tomatoes.

  Jack touched Lauren’s arm. “Get you another drink?”

  She smiled. “That would be great. Thanks.”

  He strolled the long ramp to the deck, where a bar had been set up next to the deejay. Hank Clark was already there, clutching a beer and staring morosely through the kitchen windows at Jane.

  “She’s a guest, right?” Hank asked Jack. “Not a damn waitress.”

  Jack followed his gaze through the glass, where Jane appeared to be giving the caterers a hand. “She’s dressed like a guest. Champagne and a Newcastle, please,” he told the bartender.

  Hank grunted. “Right. So why isn’t she out here dancing and enjoying herself instead of inside working her ass off?”

  “I don’t know, Hank. Why don’t you ask her?”

  “She won’t talk to me.”

  “Ask her to dance,” Jack said and collected his drinks and went back to Lauren.

  Who was not standing where he had left her.

  He looked around and spotted her at the table with Brenda Dolan.

  “. . . must be very happy,” Lauren was saying as Jack approached.

  “Obviously you don’t have children,” Brenda said bitterly. “I’ve lost her. I had nothing to do with this wedding.”

  Lauren met Jack’s gaze and gave a barely perceptible shake of her head. He stopped.

  She patted Brenda’s thin arm consolingly. “Kate will always be your daughter,” she said in her warm, soothing voice. “This is your celebration, too.”

  “I lost her years ago. And now, seeing her like this, seeing her with them . . .” Brenda shredded her pretty paper napkin. “The Fletchers are all the family she wants now. She doesn’t want me.”

  “She invited you.”

  “Because she had to. It wouldn’t look good if she didn’t invite her own mother to her wedding.”

  “Would you say appearances are important to her?” Lauren asked quietly.

  Brenda sniffed. “Not to her. Never to her.”

  “Then she must really want you here.”

  Brenda’s eyes brightened. Her lips trembled. “She doesn’t know how hard I tried . . . I did the best that I could.”

  Maybe, Jack thought cynically. And maybe her best wasn’t enough to protect her daughter.

  But Lauren’s face revealed nothing but patience and sympathy. “Obviously, things have been a little strained between you. But it’s never too late to start over.”

  Brenda dabbed at her face with the ruins of the napkin. “What do you know?”

  “I know a daughter wants her mother’s blessing on her wedding day. Why don’t we walk over there right now and see her?”

  Brenda’s shoulders drew up to her ears. Jack expected her to refuse.

  But Lauren already had an arm around her, urging her from her chair, supporting her around the edge of the dance floor. As Jack watched, Lauren brought her to Kate.

  Jack couldn’t hear what was said over the flow of the music, the buzz and hum of laughter and conversation. But he saw Kate’s face, naked and vulnerable, and he saw Lauren’s nod before she literally pushed Brenda into her daughter’s arms, and then Brenda was crying and the two women were hugging and Luke was running his finger under his collar and looking relieved.

  “Well done,” Jack said softly to Lauren when she came back to him. He offered the glass of champagne.

  “Thanks.” She sipped. Shrugged. “It’s not hard to get people to do what they really, secretly want to do.”

  He gave her a slow smile. “I’ll have to try that.”

  She beamed back at him. “You won’t have to try very hard. I already told you I like wedding sex.”

  Fourteen

  JANE TOOK ONE last careful survey of the dessert table and tugged off her apron. Nothing more to do until it was time to cut the cake.

  Across the sunlit yard, the mother of the bride hugged her daughter tight. Even as Jane smiled at the picture, her eyes stung. The summer garden blurred.

  There had been no mother-daughter moments at Jane’s wedding. No contact at
all.

  But Jane was glad for Kate.

  When Jane met the bride for her cake tasting, Kate had Luke and his little girl along to gobble up samples and offer their opinions. Tess Fletcher, Luke’s mom, had accompanied Kate to the final consultation, approving the bride’s choice of round tiers over square, of fondant over buttercream, of gum paste seashells over real or sugar flowers. Clearly, the Fletchers had welcomed her warmly into their family.

  But no one took the place of a mother.

  Jane curled her toes inside her sandals, trying to ignore the straps cutting into her arches. She’d been on her feet since four this morning.

  “Wow.” Lauren stopped beside the dessert table. “That cake looks amazing.”

  Jane blinked away her tears and the pang that came with them, turning her attention to her work instead.

  The cake design was one of her favorites, each tier decorated with a piping of lace coral, white on cream. Delicate shells, starfish, and flowers in various shapes and sizes tumbled over the edges. Cookies, in the same shapes and iced with the bride and groom’s initials in yellow, surrounded the base.

  Jane smiled. “Thanks.” She was good at giving expression to other people’s dreams.

  “You must have been up early this morning,” Lauren said. “To get all this done.”

  Jane was up early every morning. But she smiled and said, “I finished the cake last night, to give it time to set. And I’m taking the afternoon off.”

  “You should be dancing, then.”

  “My feet hurt.”

  “So take off your shoes.”

  “And I don’t have a date.”

  “You don’t need a date. I bet you know everybody here.”

  Jane smiled ruefully. “That’s part of the problem.”

  The dating population in a small town was limited to the people you grew up with. Most couples had been together since they were, like, twelve. And if they ever did break up, and you got over the awkwardness of dating a guy you basically regarded as a brother, you still ran the risk of running into his ex every time you left the house.