To the One I Love: That Old Familiar FeelingAn Older ManCaught by a Cowboy

by Emilie Richards

  The bikini brought her right back to Matt. After she’d changed into the suit he had raked his gaze over her body. Privately she’d been elated. As bikinis went, it was modest. But by definition, it couldn’t be very modest. It revealed a flat stomach and nicely rounded breasts, and she’d felt a thrill of anticipation when his eyes finally met hers.

  Then, of course, one of the twins had headed into the waves without permission, and Matt had been forced to rescue him.

  She started the water and adjusted the temperature before she stepped under the spray. She let it sluice over her hair and shoulders for a full minute before she reached for a bottle of shampoo. With her head covered with lemony suds and her eyes tightly squeezed shut, she could have sworn she heard giggling. Odd the way sound carried near the water. It sounded like one of the twins.

  She opened her eyes and stared at the door to the shower. It was still latched, for which she felt a thrill of gratitude. Then her gaze drifted to the floor below it. The floor where dozens of fiddler crabs were racing sideways in her direction.

  She was a Florida native. As a little girl she had collected fiddler crabs herself.

  She still screamed.

  “Lacey, I know my kids are a bit over the top.”

  Lacey toweled her hair dry and tried to think of something to say. Her morning break ended, Matt’s nanny Yelina, a lovely Cuban-American woman with eyes like shiny black olives, had come to take the exhausted twins inside for their nap after the fiddler crab roundup. The boys had gone quietly enough, only trying twice to escape her determined grasp. As she marched them inside, Yelina had murmured sweetly in Spanish. Lacey knew enough of the language to realize that only the tone was sweet. She hoped the children weren’t bilingual.

  “Well, boys will be boys,” Lacey said, and wished these two boys were girls instead.

  “Come sit with me.” Matt motioned to a concrete bench shaded by a stand of blooming pink and white oleander. When she hesitated he smiled. “Please?”

  “Maybe just for a few minutes.” Lacey followed him to the bench, but she thought longingly of her bed at Grammer’s, her pillow, the blanket she could pull all the way up to her chin, heck all the way up to her cowlick. She wanted to run, and she wanted to hide.

  “You look like you’ve been run over by a truck.”

  She didn’t want to affirm it, but that’s exactly the way she felt, the Cavanaugh twin truck. An hour in the presence of Matt’s sons and she was ready to completely reevaluate her future.

  “You haven’t been around children much, I’ll bet,” Matt said.

  She joined him on the bench, finger-combing her hair into place. “What makes you say that?”

  “Well, you don’t have any. Unless there’s something I don’t know about your marriage.”

  “We planned to. Geo didn’t—”

  “Geo?”

  “George was too stuffy for him once we got to California. Then he saw The Matrix and decided Geo sounded like Neo, the hero. And since Geo was all about movies and fantasy and image, that’s who he became.”

  “Geo.” Matt couldn’t suppress a grin. “Geo didn’t want kids?”

  “No, not really.” She thought about all the ways her ex-husband had tried to dissuade her from wanting children, too, not least of which had been a plan to convince her she didn’t have the right qualities to be a mother. He had insisted that Lacey was too logical, too unemotional, to be a good parent. He, on the other hand, would be great if he actually wanted kids. Only, he didn’t, so that was that.

  “You did?” Matt asked. “You wanted kids?”

  She didn’t know what to say. Until this afternoon she’d been absolutely sure she wanted them and that Geo was just a liar and a con man. She had acres, miles, of love to give. Maybe she didn’t cry over greeting card commercials or hug and kiss casual acquaintances, but deep inside, where it counted, she was a fiercely loyal friend, sister, daughter and granddaughter. She cared about people, and she knew how to show it appropriately.

  Now, after one hour in the presence of Matt’s sons, she wondered if she could ever really love a child. Because all she’d wanted to do this afternoon when the boys were running amok, was organize and discipline them. That’s what she was good at. She knew how to make people behave, and she’d been itching to apply it to the twins.

  “I wanted kids,” she said. She still wanted them. Only now she wondered if Geo had been right after all, and she didn’t have what it took to be a loving mom.

  “I always wanted them,” Matt said. “But I thought Jill and I should wait until we got to know each other a little and things settled down for us. I married her at a difficult time. When my dad had a heart attack I left grad school to come home and take over the business. Jill was here to comfort me. We got married, but before I could arrange to go back to school and finish my architecture degree and get licensed, Jill got pregnant.”

  He didn’t sound distressed, but Lacey wondered if Jill had gotten pregnant on purpose.

  As if he’d heard her thoughts he nodded. “She didn’t want to move off Colman Key. Her life was here, and we’d broken up once over that as it was. I think she chose pregnancy over moving to Gainesville, even temporarily. Once she found out she was pregnant with twins, she made it pretty clear that she knew she’d made a bad choice.”

  “She didn’t want the babies, Matt?” This was something Lacey couldn’t imagine. Maybe she wasn’t mommy material, but she couldn’t imagine not wanting a child she had conceived.

  “I wouldn’t go that far,” he said. “But once Riley and Roman were born, she didn’t have a lot to do with them. Yelina was here to greet them when Jill came home from the hospital. From that moment on, Yelina did most of the work, relieved by family.”

  “And you?”

  “I’ve never seen anything as wonderful as the faces of my two baby sons staring back at me from little blue receiving blankets. I’ve done everything I can to be with them right from the beginning.”

  He turned to face her. “Look, Lacey, I know they’re spoiled. They were unforgivable today. It’s a long story, but it comes down to this. They were twins, as cute as the dickens from day one, and everyone spoiled them because they were. Then their mom died, and everyone spoiled them because they were motherless. Yelina dotes on them but she feels sorry for them, too, so she lets them get away with murder. My parents realize they helped create two little monsters, so nowadays they stay away from home every chance they get. Jill’s parents give the boys things but no time or attention. I’m the only one standing between Roman, Riley and complete chaos. But I don’t want to be the bad guy all the time.”

  Her heart melted. If she’d felt any annoyance with him for allowing his sons to rule the roost, it disappeared. Matt was trying. Hard.

  “They need love,” she said. “They’ll be fine if you just keep loving them.”

  He held out his hand and pulled her to her feet. He didn’t let it go. Instead he started to walk and, rather than protest, she walked beside him.

  “Remember the first time we walked on the beach like this?” he said.

  They were going to play “remember when.” She hadn’t expected it, so she hadn’t prepared. But that didn’t matter, because the memory in question was as clear as the sky above them.

  “I was fifteen,” she said. Gawky, self-conscious, still in braces to correct an overbite.

  “We’d known each other for a couple of summers.”

  “You tormented me for both of them. Once you pulled out the stopper on my plastic raft and left me to the mercy of the waves.”

  “Oh, come on, you could swim like a fish. And I think you ducked me when my back was turned to get even.”

  “Then I turned fifteen, and so did you.”

  “And my hormones went into higher gear.” He stopped and faced her, still holding her hand. “Every time I looked at you, my bathing suit fit differently.”

  She laughed. “My reaction wasn’t as obvious, but it was every bi
t as intense.”

  “We went from teasing each other to being in love.”

  Her laugh settled into a smile. “In love? At fifteen? How can you say that? Hormones, yes. Love?” She shrugged.

  “The first time we walked this way, hand in hand, it was evening, and somebody’d had a party. Do you remember?”

  “Grady O’Connor. Up the road. It was a weenie roast. We built a bonfire on the beach. I had half a dozen marshmallows.”

  “You cooked me half a dozen, too. They were perfect. We left while everybody else went for a moonlight dip.”

  “If I ever have kids they won’t attend parties like that one.”

  “It was a more innocent time. We left and walked along this stretch of beach, almost to my door.”

  And he’d kissed her. She remembered that, too. Their first kiss, a sweet, sticky marshmallow and braces kiss that couldn’t have been more treasured.

  “Deanna was calling me in the distance,” she said. “I remember hearing her shouting my name. I knew I had to get back. She was what, eleven? And I was in charge of her.”

  “Always so responsible. Then she stopped shouting and everything got very, very quiet for a moment.” He leaned forward.

  Her eyelids closed, just as they had that summer evening so many years before. She could feel his warm breath against her cheek, then the sweet, firm graze of his lips against hers.

  His kiss was no less special than it had been the first time, and no more expected. Her breath caught, then her lips parted. She leaned into the kiss and dropped his hand. His arms went around her and he pulled her closer. She rested her fingertips on his hipbones, brushing them under the elastic waist of his suit.

  So many years had passed, and Matt Cavanaugh still felt and tasted the same. She was transported back to a simpler time, a gentler time, before life had taken unexpected twists and turns and two people who had been fated to remain together had lost their way.

  She kissed him and thought about all the joy they might have given each other.

  “Daddy!”

  Startled, Matt pulled away from her. “Back to reality, I guess.”

  Matt’s reality was two little boys. Her reality was the inability to cope with them, or perhaps with children at all. Maybe she wanted the father, but he came as a package deal. And she was afraid this was one bargain she’d never be equipped to take advantage of.

  Lacey stepped back. Way back. “So much for nostalgia, huh?” She glanced at her watch. “Hey, would you look at the time? And I never even told you why I came to see you.”

  “Why did you?”

  “Daddy!” One of the twins, Lacey couldn’t tell which, came barreling down the path from the house, Yelina in hot pursuit. “Daddy, come inside right now!”

  “Some other time,” Lacey said. “If I see you again at Wallace’s, maybe. You’ve got other fish to fry right now, Daddy.”

  Matt looked torn, then she didn’t know how he looked, because she turned her back on him, gave the twin in question a wide berth, and nearly ran to her car.

  Chapter 3

  On Saturday afternoon Darby brought her first clients by to look at the house and clucked over the disappearance of the For Sale sign. “I’ll have to put up another one,” she said, shaking her head.

  Lacey smiled sweetly. “I’ll be sure to keep my eye out for it.”

  For some reason the clients were unimpressed with Grammer’s house. Lacey wasn’t certain, but she thought it might have to do with the discussion of termite problems that Marti initiated when Darby went to use “the little girl’s room.”

  “The Asian variety,” Marti said sadly. “Something in the soil on the key attracts them. They can turn bricks to dust. My poor grandmother just stays a step ahead of them. The pieces of this house she’s had to replace….”

  At their look of horror, Marti sighed. “If you ask Darby she probably won’t even admit it.” She paused, snatched an invisible insect out of the air, then shook her head.

  “You know Darby plans to put the house into multiple listing,” Lacey told her sister after the clients hurried off with a perplexed Darby trailing behind.

  “I do know that,” Marti said.

  “I went to a really wild party at the tip of the island when I was seventeen,” Lacey said. “Somebody’s parents were out of town for the weekend.”

  “And?”

  “Coincidence of coincidences. That somebody works in Darby’s office now and really doesn’t want that party remembered or discussed. Can’t much blame her.”

  “Would that somebody be in charge of paperwork, like, say, multiple listings?”

  “And getting good photos of the houses, too,” Lacey added. “Talk about a small world.”

  Marti’s grin went from ear to ear. “Isn’t that known as blackmail?”

  “Of course not. I just told her that the last time I saw her she was running naked down the beach with a parrot on her head. She has a daughter herself these days. Time flies.”

  If Grammer suspected the plans to sell the house were being sabotaged, she was keeping quiet about it. She seemed preoccupied, even flustered today. Lacey wasn’t sure, but she thought that having potential buyers tour Grammer’s house had brought reality home to her. Perhaps she was reconsidering her decision. Lacey certainly hoped so. When she asked Grammer outright if having Darby in the house had upset her, she seemed even more flustered, so Lacey backed right off.

  Now there was a small flattened stack of cardboard packing boxes in the front hallway that Big John had brought that morning. He was still there, tinkering with a ceiling fan and a light switch in the kitchen that had a short. Lacey, clucking audibly about the ancient wiring, had unsuccessfully flipped the switch over and over while Darby showed the kitchen. Now she was sorry John was going to fix it.

  Big John was a Santa Claus of a man, white hair, twinkling eyes, and a belly laugh that made everyone who heard it feel better about the world. He was only missing the beard and the fuzzy red suit. Like so many of Colman Key’s fixtures, he was always around when Grammer needed something. John was a great example why Grammer shouldn’t move to the mainland where no one would know or love her.

  “I guess you’ll miss having Grammer so close by,” Lacey said to him in passing. “I wish you’d try to change her mind.”

  Big John shook his head. “She’s a stubborn lady, your grandmother.”

  “Well, if she’s too stubborn, the house and her whole life here’s going to vanish.”

  “I’ll do what I can,” he said. “All her friends are trying to change her mind.”

  By late afternoon Lacey was feeling at loose ends. Deanna was holed up with a good book and Marti was out and about. Marti seemed to have a number of odd “errands” these days. All Lacey knew was that an acquaintance of her sister’s, a very enticing male acquaintance named Devlin Faulkner, had shown up at the front door right after their arrival, and Marti had been gone or preoccupied ever since. Lacey was definitely worried about her baby sister, but nothing she had said so far had made a dent in Marti’s activities.

  Although Lacey was doing everything she could to slow the sale, she knew if her grandmother didn’t come to her senses, a sale was inevitable. She and her sisters had started cleaning closets, a task that would be helpful no matter what. Deanna and Marti had already been up in the attic, checking out their personal treasures. Now, with time to kill before she fixed a lonely dinner—everyone else had plans—Lacey made the trip to the third floor herself, to see what she would find.

  There were old-fashioned trunks with each of their names on them lined against one wall. It might have been a scene from Little Women, except that Florida attics in the summer were no place to spend time. She and her sisters had stored things here, but even with an exhaust fan, it had been much too hot for play.

  She found her trunk and opened it. She figured she was good for half an hour, tops, before the heat got to her. She sorted through letters she’d written Grammer, her painfully ne
at, childish script a testament to how hard she had tried to please her parents. Grammer had kept every single one. For a moment Lacey held them to her chest. Grammer, bless her heart, was still a prime pack rat. In fact the mysterious letter Lacey had taken off the front porch was now residing on Grammer’s refrigerator, held in place by a heart-shaped magnet a much younger Marti had given her that read “I love Grandma.”

  Maybe they were all pack rats at heart, because no one had been able to toss that letter in the trash.

  Distracted by that thought Lacey stared out a gable window. She had tried to put Matt out of her mind since the morning at the beach with the twins, but now she wondered once again if he had written that silly, sweet, desperately sentimental love letter.

  She shook her head and went back to work. The trunk contained a folder of tests and papers, all with “A” at the top, the carefully folded baby dresses that Grammer had mentioned, a poison green ceramic bowl Lacey had molded at the age of eight as a Christmas present. Grammer had faithfully put out the dish every single year, filled with cinnamon candies. The one Lacey had made for her parents had been thrown away the moment it got a chip.

  In the corner of the trunk a mayonnaise jar filled with sea glass caught her eye. Lacey lifted it and held it toward the same window. The smooth pieces of glass sparkled still. She had collected sea glass every summer, intrigued by its smooth curves and subtle hues. Most of it had come from an island farther out. Treasure Island, or at least that’s what she and Matt had named it.

  Treasure Island had been their secret rendezvous. Invariably they had cruised there in his father’s boat, anchored just off shore, and backstroked the rest of the distance. They’d gone there as often as they could. At the end of their last summer together she’d almost lost her virginity on the soft sand beach. She would have, she supposed, if they hadn’t spotted another boat.

  She had probably been too young for sex, although she had always wondered what might have happened if that boat hadn’t appeared. Would making love have sealed her emotional bargain with Matt? Would it have provided the extra link in the chain that bound them so that even time and distance couldn’t keep them apart?