The Family Wish (Match Made in Devon Bridal Shop Book 3)

by Danielle Blair

  “Can’t rightly say. Maybe the barber—Merle, was it? Brought her cigarettes so-s yer pop wouldn’t know. She was a looker, I’ll give her that, but I wouldn’t go around thinking ill of her. Heart of sunshine, that one.”

  A wet bubble of gin revisited Alex’s throat at the thought of her eight-year-old self seeing Earl Frizeal bare-assed and proud. She pulled a twenty from her wallet and laid it on the bar.

  “Thank you for your time,” she said, rising and tugging at Charlotte’s sleeve to follow.

  They had almost made it out the door, their Mama’s reputation firmly squared in the domain of virtue, when Jaime O’Kelley spoke again.

  “Me Mary once told me Stella asked her to buy a pregnancy test, pretend it was hers. Said she didn’t want Elias to know. Already had two mouths at home to feed.”

  Beside her, Charlotte fainted.

  20

  Freesia

  “Photograph probably won’t come out,” said Jay. “It was dark.”

  That it was. Somehow, Freesia and Jay didn’t need anything but the moon. They walked the acreage around the villa, never saw another soul.

  “And if it does?” Freesia asked.

  “Company’s PR guy will take care of it. Say it was a business meeting—if that’s what you want.”

  “In a plunging neckline?” Her hand covered her cleavage. When she had conceptualized the dress, she had pictured someone less…just less. “That’ll go over well.”

  Jay mistook her shiver for a chill or maybe he recognized her discomfort. He shrugged out of his linen blazer and placed it around her shoulders. The silk lining stole his heat and secreted it away—via nerve endings—to her breasts. She clenched it at the lapels for protection from any more tantalizing ambushes.

  “Or he’ll buy it,” Jay added.

  “That happens?”

  “Get legal involved, wave a few bucks, and cockroaches with a camera tend to scurry back inside the walls.”

  Cynicism in his tone surprised her. He had reverted back to the roadside Jay when aspects of his life fell beyond his control. Life in a fish bowl seemed too great a cost for all this extravagance.

  “How much would a photograph like that go for?”

  “Freesia—”

  He clearly wanted to let it go; she wanted to reach the far parameters of his life, to know the boundaries inside which he must live. Or not live.

  “No, really,” she said, aiming for curious, not judgmental. “I’m genuinely interested in how much it would cost to keep your interests protected.”

  “Not that much.”

  He lied. A white lie that everyone allowed daily, hourly, in the interest of politeness. Maybe the kind Peyton told. Freesia had always wondered why the tiny infractions had been assigned a color not hers—because they were veiled by pure intent? She knew he had lied as soon as his steps beside her fell out of rhythm, his palm stroked down his jaw the way it did when their honesty bumped up again discomfort, how the moon distracted him.

  “Oh, you can’t backpedal on honesty now.” She shook her head. “Mm-m.”

  “Five grand.”

  Freesia stopped walking. A few bucks. Not that much.

  “For real? For one picture?” Her tone had veered far around judgey.

  “More, for a wardrobe malfunction.” He was smiling now, being a sport about checking his fly so she wouldn’t be so subconscious about a dress cut to her navel.

  The boardwalk path ended. At the sand, Freesia slipped from her heels and carried them. The grains were different than St. Simons: brighter, softer—like baby powder, immaculately untouched. The beach was a pumice stone to her anger. She found she wasn’t as calloused as before.

  “I’m uncomfortable talking about money with you,” he said.

  “Because I don’t have it?”

  “Because money represents something different for you. Security. A source of division.”

  “What is it to you?”

  Jay gave a few breaths of thought before answering. “Love. Sadly.”

  In twenty paces, maybe less, he had gone from a little white liar to the most candid man she’d ever known.

  “And all of this?” She indicated the both of them. Her mouth had slipped ahead. Please don’t say love…please don’t say love...please don’t say love.

  Jay paused, reached for her hand when she continued moving. His touch urged her back.

  Free, you asked for it now.

  “What can I say to get you to change your mind about going home?”

  “Answer the hard questions.”

  He sighed, audibly, painfully. His hand released hers. “Jack.”

  Freesia nodded.

  Away from her, he became the night shore: still; undressed, despite Italian workmanship evident in his clothes; watchful of the horizon; rayless.

  “His death was my fault.”

  She flinched. “What?”

  “Coroner ruled it an accident. Man coming home from a Halloween party. Blood alcohol twice the legal limit, but it might as well have been me.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Jack was training for competition in cycling. Earned the second spot at World’s. He had competed since college, but he was sure this was his last shot at the Olympics. We had it all planned. I’d step into his role at the company in his absence, he’d capture glory, then he’d transition back to his leadership position with a lot of great motivational material for his company speeches.”

  Jay’s voice was terse, dry, like he’d swallowed sand and was fighting his way through it.

  “I was his data guy. The one he trusted who went with him on his endurance rides, sometimes on a bike, sometimes in the car. I kept him motivated, kept his gear in top shape, kept him in the saddle when he lost sight of his goals.”

  She spotted the same horizon, where his story was headed. Distant waves heaved themselves up and over, building and crashing, a disorienting tumble against the body. The idea made her sick, for him, for Jack.

  “I had promised him the entire day—a final six-hour ride before he flew out for competition. But we’d fought the night before—something stupid about hex versus torque wrenches. He was stressed. Nothing I did was enough. I didn’t show up, and he went alone.”

  A potent throb in her skull had nothing to do with the wine and everything to do with the trajectory of the accident on Jay’s life. The bike repair, why he wouldn’t ride, abandoning his brother’s car out on the highway and absently stumbling toward nothing and away from everything.

  “Jay, you can’t go there.” Dredged in the mire of his honesty, Freesia tried to unearth a sentiment that would help him embrace reason. “You don’t know that things would’ve been different.”

  “You don’t understand. Cycling, at that level, is mind over body. A trip somewhere else to push past discomfort and self-doubt. Competitors need people to watch out for them. He always had my back—with my parents when I couldn’t find my voice, with the vultures when I found my voice and they spun it all wrong. Even when I was wrong. Every time, he had my back, without question. And the one time he needed me most—when his legacy, his dreams, were on the line—the one time I challenged him because it felt so damned good to be right, I let him down.”

  His voice cracked; she aimed to repair it.

  “Now you listen to me. Listen to what’s real here.” She stepped in front of him, between his pounding heart and the tumbling, watery abyss and gripped the lapels of his blazer. If nothing else came of this night, meeting him on the desolate road, her words here had to be impactful, right. “That pain you carry? It’s like a broken rib, yeah? I have one too. No one knows it but you, but that doesn’t make it any easier to breathe. You don’t get to be the martyr here—taking on a life that isn’t yours, stepping into a role that you refuse to step out of. You’re living for two now, is that it? Well, let me tell you something, Jay, from someone who has put her feet on nearly every continent, talked to people at all levels of spirituality and en
lightenment, traveled thousands of miles only to find out I took myself and all that pain right along with me—life is nothing but trips into forgiveness. Each other. Ourselves. Every one of them meant to teach us something different.”

  She was spent, so tired, being in this place called Eden Rock and it feeling anything less than perfect because of what they both left behind.

  “You asked me what you could say to get me to change my mind about going home?” she said. “I won’t tell you to forgive yourself, or even Jack, because they’re empty words and no amount of repeating it will make it true. But you can tell me that you’ll try to remember who you were before all this happened. You can’t live for two if you can’t even live for one.”

  Jay reached for her, pulled her close, placed her hand clenching his jacket on his torso, where his shirt covered his ribs then covered it with his. His shaky breath expanded and contracted against her palm. Through the fibers, warmth penetrated her shivers.

  He simply wanted the ache to go away for a while, same as her.

  “Stay. With me. Tonight.” His grasp on his emotions, his voice, was tenuous.

  She would regret this—this show of love that they both craved but neither had the capacity to give right now, this real in an unreal place, this night where doubts crashed into her like rogue waves. But she would also regret telling him to remember who he was before forgiveness could come inside if she could not do it herself.

  Freesia answered him with a kiss.

  The villa’s master suite perched atop the property’s highest point—a sky bedroom with almost no visible walls or barriers to nature but the occasional billow of a white curtain or the sea breeze movement of a lush, green frond. The proliferation of oak gables, the blue tile underfoot, and the way the outdoor seating area stretched into the night, nothing but ocean, gave the illusion that the room floated at cloud level.

  Freesia tried not to overthink what came next.

  The bed had been turned down. Beads of perspiration dashed down the carafe filled with ice water on a side table. Warm light had been carefully dialed up so as not to compete with the moon. Someone had been in here to prepare Jay’s room. His exposed room. The same kind of exposed that had resulted in an undesired photograph.

  She hugged herself.

  “This can’t be the strangest place you’ve ever made love.”

  Was there no boundary to their honesty pact?

  “Certainly the most glamorous.”

  Jay shuffled close, within a heartbeat, and embraced her. They swayed together like their bodies had already attuned to some ancient tribal dance that escaped their awareness. Against her ear, he whispered, “Tell me a story.”

  “You first.”

  She heard his smile, felt it against her cheek. “All right. A shooting range.”

  Freesia shifted in his arms to get a good look at his expression. “A shooting range? That’s ripe for parallels.”

  His chuckle moved her, from the inside out, a wave of warmth and humor she never wanted to end. This felt safe, so long as honesty wasn’t asked of her.

  “She was the daughter of one of my father’s business associates,” Jay said. “Big hunting family in Rhode Island. She kept her bullets in a pouch around her waist, never scored under a 250. I fired…prematurely. She was nice about it.”

  “How old were you?”

  “Nineteen.” Jay took Freesia’s hand and tugged her toward the outdoor seating where wood met sky. No railings, nothing but deck lighting to warn of boundaries. He sat on a padded lounge chair, encouraged her to sit before him then draped a nearby cotton blanket over her as they stared out at the ocean. “Your turn.”

  “A fishing boat in Iceland.”

  “No way.”

  The laugh that originated in his ribs wasn’t the only thing to telegraph through her. He hardened at the base of her spine. She reclined into it. He pulled her closer. Beads of arousal looped her waist, traveled up through her breasts. She failed to remember why she ever wanted to leave this place, this spot, this heat.

  “Well—it was half research vessel, half commercial fishing boat. He was a marine researcher who didn’t speak much English. I had done some work for two weeks at the fishery in Reykjavik, counting and recording data on their biomass. They needed a native English speaker to communicate their needs to other fisheries around the world who’d had similar challenges with building sustainable fisheries. Pretty sure I smelled like cod. But the crew had gone into town and it was a cloudless night and the solar activity was unreal. I’d never seen the Northern Lights before.”

  “Sounds like you were more impressed with the aurora than the guy.”

  True enough. “He told me the Norse legend about the lights being glints off the swords and armor of the Valkyries. Said I reminded him of the powerful female warriors who lived and died in battle.”

  “Guy had some serious pillow talk.”

  “What I understood of it. He might have said that I reminded him of a death angel.”

  “Or smelled like one.”

  Freesia laughed. His humor was infinitely sexy. She was hard-pressed to remember the last time she’d felt so at ease with someone. Strip away the money, the titles, the world, it seemed they had known each other forever. Elias and Camille surfaced in her mind. She wondered if that had been the way between them, a harmony that sustained decades apart, a reconnection as if no time had transpired, the creation of a child out of a deep, abiding friendship from which love had grown. The effortlessness of a breath ago subsided, replaced by something far more real.

  She twisted in Jay’s arms, met his stare. “When I said I didn’t trust you, that I probably never will…”

  “Yeah?”

  “It isn’t true. Not anymore.” She took a breath, worked up her courage. Honesty required a warrior’s intent. “But this can’t be about attachment or love or anything that makes me want to board the first international flight and not look back.”

  He broke eye contact. His gaze traveled the distant reaches of the Caribbean.

  “Jay?” she whispered.

  “What if it’s too late for that?”

  At his words, Freesia expected her latent energy to stir her, to stand, to leave, to run—down the endless stairs they’d scaled to get here and put distance between her and a man she should not want. She expected to pump the brakes, wait until she was home to meet her intimacy needs head-on, in a way she alone could satisfy. She expected his candid willingness to fall into uncomfortable spaces and roles that could never be to turn her off, but she had never met another person who had entered her world, who stayed, who met her with such abandon of mind and spirit and body. Had he been anyone but Jameson Scott, famous billionaire, so far from a girl chasing life hand-to-mouth, she might have said the same—that it was too late, that she was already gone too. Freesia did not expect to fall head-on, abandoned of mind and spirit and body, with an urgency born of existing hand-to-mouth...

  But she had.

  She stretched her body around him, sat on his lap, facing him, her ankles wide on either side of his hips, her knees bare from where her dress’s hem met with gravity and lost. His firm ridge rode her split, parted her through the tiny square of her panties, and grounded her like a rock.

  His focus reined back from the offing to the closer angles of her face. “You are the most extraordinary woman I’ve ever met.” His voice was tight, reverent.

  Freesia swallowed, found speech did not come easily. She allowed his words to fill holes in her past left by every single person who had told her through words or actions that she wasn’t good enough, wasn’t worth the time, wasn’t worthy of staying. Tears scratched at her throat. She smothered them by capturing his lips in hers and telling her story, her way, with her body, and casting his ache, along with hers, out to sea.

  He tasted familiar, exclusive, a delicacy she already had the privilege to taste but intended to savor for someday when she found herself alone on the beach, telling the story of the
man in the yellow car who believed she was special. His lips relished the burden of exploration, by turns soft and pliant,+ then firm and bold, no longer rushed by geography or circumstance or melancholy.

  The slide of tongues was intoxicating.

  Her body warmed from her earlier chill, molten at her core. Had his jacket still been at her shoulders, she’d have cast it aside. As it was, she wanted nothing more than for him to reach into the deep crevasse at her neckline and free her, slide the fabric from her shoulder, leave her bare-chested to the elements. She scrambled closer, positioning higher on his lap, greedily chasing his erection to counterbalance the dizzying sparks of need spiraling around her body like bonfire embers on a breeze.

  Their volley of kisses trailed to new spaces—earlobes, neck, shoulders. She found a kiss on the palm of her hand surprising, erotic, sweet. He groaned in answer to a French kiss beneath his chin. His response sent a wave of saturation below.

  He skimmed a groomed fingernail along the deep V of her neckline, tempted, she knew.

  “I don’t want to ruin your dress,” he said, nearly breathless. “I don’t know how it fastens.”

  She reached behind her to free two hook and eye fasteners at the base of her neck. Her shoulders curled with the task, opening a gap at the V, enough for him to glide his hands through. By the time the torso of the dress released completely, he had lit her up with two palms cupping her breasts. Knees down, she arched and stretched back to brace her hands against the lounge chair’s armrests, offering two smallish, pert globes and hotly sensitive nipples to explore—first with his fingers then all-consuming with his mouth.

  An ache of a drifting, gliding sort originated in her belly and edged lower, pitched deeper, throbbed harder between her legs. Her head felt weightless; her limbs anchored. She squirmed against him, devoured the skin below his ear that made him moan, to answer, to find purchase against the building torment of his caresses. For someone who had a disproportionate amount of wealth, he met her with equal power, equal curiosity, equal richness. A give and take that leveled them to one exceptional playing field that was no longer enough.