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

by Emilie Richards

  She was perspiring now. She stood, the jar of sea glass tucked under her arm, and closed the lid on her trunk. She would take the whole trunk if she had to. She wasn’t completely sure where she was going next or what she would be doing, but whatever and wherever, the trunk—her childhood memories—would go with her.

  Downstairs in her bedroom she found Deanna dressing for a movie and dinner with Grammer. “Sure you don’t want to come?” Deanna said, flipping her long blond hair back over her tank top.

  “I’ve sworn off movies. But I could tell you stories about everybody starring in it.”

  “Don’t. I prefer my own fantasies.”

  “Look what I found.” Lacey held up the jar of sea glass.

  “Pretty. What are you going to do with it?”

  “Put it in one of Grammer’s clear vases, add water and flowers. It will make a great centerpiece for the Florida room table.”

  “Good idea.” Deanna slipped into leather sandals and started for the door. “Don’t forget to eat dinner. You’re too thin.”

  “As if that’s possible.”

  Once everyone was finally gone, Lacey wandered downstairs and searched for a vase. She was in front of the house selectively cutting fragrant white ginger and orange day lilies to anchor in the sea glass, when someone coughed. She hadn’t even heard footsteps.

  Startled, she looked up to see Matt. “Oh…” She didn’t know what else to say.

  “The lilies match your dress.”

  She looked down. Her sundress had diagonal orange and black tiger stripes. Deanna had made her buy it on a trip to one of the cute boutiques in the island’s shopping district, but so far she had only worn it in the house.

  “I guess it does.” She was embarrassed to be seen in something so outlandish.

  “I like it. So, you have a wild side?”

  She couldn’t help herself; she smiled seductively. “Wouldn’t you like to know?”

  “That’s why I’m here. You can tell me, even demonstrate if you want, over dinner.”

  “Dinner?”

  “Uh-huh. I called about half an hour ago. Deanna said you’d be all ready to go.”

  She had heard the phone ring, but Deanna hadn’t reported the conversation. Lacey’s eyes narrowed. “What if I’ve eaten?”

  “Deanna said you probably wouldn’t unless I took you out.” He used his most potent grin, the one that had always reduced her to orange marmalade. “I’m sorry it’s such late notice, but getting a baby-sitter’s not an easy task.”

  “Who’s doing the honors?”

  “My secretary. She threatened to bring her rott-weiler.”

  “She’ll need two.”

  “I had to promise an extra week’s vacation at Christmas.”

  Lacey was mentally thumbing through all the excuses she could use not to go out with Matt. She had been sobered by her own reaction to the twins’ antics. These were motherless little boys, and her only inclination had been to sit on them until they promised to behave. She had been so sure Geo was only trying to manipulate her when he claimed she had no parenting genes. But now she wasn’t so confident. In this, if in nothing else, her ex might have been correct.

  What did Matt need most? Certainly not a woman who couldn’t love his sons.

  He responded to her hesitation. “Lacey, it’s just dinner. And it’s so rare for me to have a night off. I might not get another for a very long time.”

  “Can you see the guilt oozing out of my pores?”

  He ran his fingertips over one bare arm. Slowly, lightly, methodically. She tingled everywhere he touched.

  “Can’t see it, can’t feel it. Don’t come because you feel guilty. Come because you want to get to know me again.”

  Her mouth was dry and her arm felt limp. She’d had full hour massages that hadn’t relaxed her this much. “I’ll have to change,” she murmured.

  “Don’t you dare. I love the dress. You look…adorable.”

  She was not adorable. She was no-nonsense Lacey. But somehow, she liked the adjective.

  Apparently he could see he was winning, because he added the crowning touch. “Besides, you told me you had something to talk about, remember?”

  “Can I grab my purse?”

  “I’ll start the car.”

  They ate at Red’s Seafood. Matt had brought her here on their last date almost thirteen years ago, and nothing much had changed. It was still one big room looking over the Gulf, with ceiling fans stirring the air and trophy fish on varnished plaques looking down on the tables with their paper place mats and baskets of hush puppies. It smelled deliciously of tartar sauce and boiled crabs and shrimp.

  Red’s was always crowded, but everybody knew that Red himself, who lounged on a bar stool and eyed every customer, determined who got in first and where they sat. Red was in his eighties now, but he was still warming the same old stool. He stuck out his hand when Matt entered and got up to give Lacey a sizable hug. Then he instructed the hostess to seat them at a prime window table so they could watch the sun going down.

  “I was afraid to be away from home too long or I’d have taken you somewhere fancier on the mainland,” Matt said once they were seated.

  Lacey leaned forward. “I know fancy backward and forward. This is perfect. It’s always been my favorite restaurant.”

  “As long as Red’s alive the seafood will be fresh.”

  “And the hush puppies hot and stuffed with shrimp.”

  “Outsiders don’t get shrimp in theirs.”

  They laughed and talked, ordering potent gin and tonics and an order of calamari to keep them occupied while their seafood platters were prepared. At his insistence, Lacey caught Matt up on her marriage and its tumultuous outcome.

  “Geo changed a lot, and I hardly changed at all,” she said in conclusion. “A guaranteed recipe for disaster. There was no love left by the end. That made it easier for both of us.”

  “What are you going to do now?” Matt said. “No job, no husband to tie you to a certain place. Any thoughts?”

  She toyed with her fork. “I have an idea, but I’m still working out the details in my head. That’s one reason I’m here. I need to think about the future.”

  “I’m surprised your father hasn’t corralled you into working for North Florida Savings.”

  Edward Colman was the president of North Florida Savings Bank, an institution the Colman family had built from the ground up generations before. It seemed natural for Lacey to work in what was essentially the family business. Her father certainly wanted her to.

  She tried to explain why that wasn’t an option. “I’ve always been the good girl, the perfect daughter. Deanna and Marti got to rebel a little, but it was my job to keep everything and everyone in place.”

  “And you don’t want to do it anymore.”

  She looked up, grateful that he understood. “I’m not going to. I’m going to do something that will make me happy instead.”

  “Do you know what?”

  She set down the fork. “Private practice, I think. I have enough money from the divorce settlement to keep going for a little while. I think I can establish something that will keep body and soul together. I just want to be more involved with my clients and know that the things I do make a difference in their lives. I did pro bono work for Legal Aid out in California, and I loved it. Getting justice for the little guy is so much more fun than pushing paper for big corporations.”

  “Private practice can be anywhere, right?”

  “I passed the bar in California.” She hesitated. “As a matter of fact I passed it here, too. My father insisted. Just in case.”

  “I see.” He smiled slowly and held up his drink. “To the Florida bar.”

  She clinked glasses with him. “To Florida.”

  The seafood was as good as she remembered and the portions as large. They chatted and Matt filled her in on Cavanaugh Builders. Tom Cavanaugh hadn’t been inclined to take charge of the company again once he recovered fr
om his heart attack. The day to day business was left to Matt now, and his father was willingly phasing himself out. Lacey wasn’t surprised since Matt had arrived late in his parents’ marriage, and the Cavanaughs were old enough to retire if they wanted.

  They finished the meal with coffee and a piece of key lime pie that they split. Lacey couldn’t remember a better dinner.

  Lacey couldn’t remember better company.

  “Let’s walk on the beach,” Matt said, standing and holding out his hand.

  They were in public, and Matt was taking her hand the way he had as a teenager. She tried to remember the last time Geo had held his hand out to her. Probably to jerk her out of his Jag and into the midst of another party she didn’t want to attend.

  She took Matt’s hand and followed him out of the restaurant. From the corner of her eye she noted two of Grammer’s best friends sitting in a corner, watching and whispering. She shot them a smile.

  “We’ll be the talk of Colman Key by tomorrow,” Lacey said, once they were outside.

  “You think?”

  “I bet every woman over fifty has tried to marry you off again. How many daughters and nieces have you been introduced to?”

  “Don’t forget Elly at Wallace’s. She’s been trying to get me in her bed for years.”

  “Elly! She must be seventy!”

  “I’m teasing.”

  She laughed. “Good grief. I was worried.”

  “As a matter of fact rumor has it that she’s been trying to get Big John in her bed, not me.”

  “Big John?” She laughed again. “He’s been a bachelor for a million years. I’d forgotten how small a town Colman Key really is. Gossip’s the main diversion, isn’t it? We’ll be a new chapter.”

  “Hey, watch it. This is my home, remember?”

  “Come on, you know I love it here.” Lacey let him pull her toward the beach. She saw he was smart enough to angle far away from the window view at Red’s. They’d provided enough entertainment for the night.

  “I love it, too,” he said. “I don’t want it to change, although of course, it will.”

  “Not very fast. Not with that old bridge. It’s too hard to come and go.”

  He pulled her a little closer so their hips brushed as they walked. “That’s the way we like it. But it won’t stay peaceful here forever. Someday somebody’ll sell a chunk of vacant land to a developer, a new bridge will go up and the place will change overnight.”

  Lacey hoped that wouldn’t happen in her lifetime. Up until now there’d been a silent pact. The major landowners—and her grandmother was one of them—had agreed not to sell any of their property to strangers. Islanders, yes, even frequent vacationers, but only enough for a house here and there. Someday, though, someone would need the money and succumb to the temptation. All the Colman sisters worried about that, but Marti was the most concerned. Lacey supposed that was the journalist in her baby sister, always seeing stories where they didn’t exist.

  “Talking about real estate brings up my reason for coming to your house the other day,” Lacey said.

  “I thought you came because you couldn’t stay away from me.”

  She nudged him with her elbow. “That’s a line straight from a Hollywood party.”

  “Ouch.”

  “Last week at Wallace’s you mentioned wanting to buy a house?”

  “My parents are never going to come home to live again unless the boys and I get out of there. They can’t handle the noise and stress. I don’t blame them.”

  “Grammer’s house is for sale, Matt. But please, don’t buy it. Don’t even come and look at it.”

  They were far enough from the restaurant to stop now. There were other people on the beach, but too far away to identify. He turned her to face him. “You don’t want me living there?”

  “I want Grammer living there.” Lacey explained what had transpired so far, even admitted to sabotaging Darby Keever’s efforts to sell. “There’ll probably be a new sign by the time I get back home tonight.”

  “And the wind will blow this one away, too?”

  She shrugged. “This time it might be a mysterious brushfire.”

  “Let me haul it to a galaxy far, far away.”

  “Would you? That’ll be great. I suspect the signs are going to get bigger and harder to remove. Pretty soon she’ll resort to concrete.”

  “I have a truck and a tow chain.” He dropped her hand and rested both of his on her shoulders. “Lacey, honey, if your grandmother doesn’t want to live there anymore, you can’t make her. You know that, don’t you?”

  “I just want to be sure Grammer’s not being railroaded, Matt. You understand?”

  “And when you’re sure?”

  “Then I think I’m going to buy the house, myself.”

  Matt was absolutely elated that the evening had gone so well. He had been as nervous as a softshell crab that Lacey would turn down his invitation. Most sensible women ran for cover after spending time with the twins. Whenever he tried introducing the occasional date to his sons, she started out cooing and ended up screaming.

  Not that he’d tried to introduce many. Between his job and full-time parenting times two, he hadn’t had much time for women since Jill’s death. He hadn’t had much inclination, either. Not that he wasn’t a red-blooded American male. But for a while he’d wondered if he would ever fall in love again. He and Jill hadn’t been right for each other, and he was warier now of women and marriage.

  Or he had been until Lacey walked back into his life.

  Lacey had been back on Colman Key for a week, and now Matt thought of little else. Memories of her had surfaced through the years, and he had filed them away as boyish fantasies. Now the real woman, the grown woman, was everything he could have asked for and more. The sexual attraction that had boiled throughout their adolescence was even stronger. He found every excuse to touch her, and every touch made him long for more.

  But this was about more than sex. Sure, he wanted her in his bed, had thought of little else on the long hot nights since she’d arrived. It was more than that, though. They had always been able to see straight into each other’s hearts. She probably didn’t even realize it, but half the time when she answered him she was responding to his thoughts, not to things he’d said out loud. Some of that was the remnant of a long, strong friendship. Some of it was, well… He wasn’t sure. Two hearts beating as one? Soul mates?

  Gaggable. Impossibly romantic, like something out of a bad chick flick. But he was beginning to wonder.

  “You’re sure you’re up to this?” he asked as he helped her out of his car. Their long, romantic walk on the beach had ended with a kiss that would make for another restless night ahead. A kiss that had left him wanting to entice her into the dunes and make passionate love to her.

  Instead he had asked her to come home with him and say good-night to the boys.

  What kind of fool was he?

  Lacey paused. “Up to what, Matt? You said the twins are at their best right before they go to bed.”

  They were most of the time. The twins played hard and they tired out by nine. When he’d called Karen, his secretary, from the restaurant, she’d said they were still up. Since it was almost ten, he figured they’d be droopy and sweet, freshly bathed and cuddly. He wanted Lacey to see them that way. He wanted Lacey to love them. Particularly now that he knew she hoped to stay on the island.

  Lacey right here, in private practice. He couldn’t believe his luck.

  “We won’t stay long,” he promised. “I’ll drive you home, and Karen can leave when I get back.”

  “Do you read them bedtime stories?”

  He tried to word his answer delicately. “No.”

  “Why not?”

  He sighed. “They’d rather wrestle.”

  “Guaranteed to send them right off to dreamland, huh?”

  “They outnumber me. What can I say?”

  “Does ‘no’ work?”

  “I’m a pushover
.”

  She took his arm. “You love them very much.”

  He wasn’t sure that was enough, but he was glad for the comfort.

  Inside, the house was silent. For three full seconds. Then a shriek split the air. “Get the mop! Where in the hell does your father keep the mop?”

  Matt sprinted toward the kitchen, hoping that Lacey would sprint for home. Please, Lord, let her abandon ship right now.

  “What’s going on?” He skidded to a stop in the kitchen doorway. The floor was billowing with suds—suds, coming out the closed door of the dishwasher. Karen, a gray-haired woman of fifty, looked closer to seventy now. “Holy…” He bit off his first response. “Cow!”

  Karen was scooping up suds with a five gallon gumbo pot. “He told me you let him start the dishwasher every night. I believed him. I actually believed that little monster!”

  “Who?”

  “How should I know who? They’ve been pretending to be each other all night!”

  “What did he use?”

  “Appears to be laundry detergent, wouldn’t you say?” she bellowed sarcastically. “Don’t just stand there gawking, Matt. For God’s sake go see what else they’ve done.”

  Matt didn’t need a second invitation. He pushed past Lacey, who had not abandoned ship after all, and started a race for the living room.

  “Matt… Matt!”

  He faced her. “What?”

  Lacey held out her hand. The front doorknob resided in it. “This fell off when I tried to close the door.”

  “That would be Riley,” he said. “He loves tools. He can dismantle anything.”

  “Oh.” She stared at the doorknob, as if hoping this might be a good thing.

  He didn’t have time to tell her about the day that Riley had taken apart the new air conditioning unit while the installers were on their lunch break. Yelina had been sure that Riley was napping. Parts of the unit still showed up in the strangest places. Riley was going to design and construct spaceships someday.

  He continued his race into the living room, shouting for his sons. He found Roman standing in the family room, in front of the back door, building a wooden block masterpiece of towering proportions. Roman was going to be an architect.