by Jillian Neal
“How are you going to pay his bail, angel? I can’t let you do that.”
And there it was. Her entire face lit with that mischievous grin that made his world spin off its axis. His lucky angel appeared to be making a slight comeback. If one night in his arms had gotten her to smile like that again, just wait until … His breaths sped. The imagery was so fresh on his mind. He’d fantasized about her for the last fourteen years. Even when he’d been with other women for the purposes of blowing off steam and nothing more, it was her face and her body he imagined. Her fevered breasts spilling through his fingers. Her slender waist and sexy little ass splayed out all for him. Her hungry gaze begging him to sate her body. Her lips swollen from his kiss, and her pretty little pussy tender and wet, opening and rippling around his cock, making him throb all for her as he made them one. He shook himself from his erotic daydreaming by reminding himself that his brother had been arrested.
“I have a lot of money, Grady. I make a lot of money. Please let me help you, and if Ms. Cinderson’s kids need anything else, I want to get that, too. Let me gas up the boats. I want to help. It makes me feel like maybe I’m here for a reason. It helps me get past what happened to me.”
“Thank you.” Grady was in no shape to turn her down. He mentally vowed to pay her back as soon as he had the money while he guided her up into his ancient F-100. Like a kid’s flipbook, his mind flashed with more memories than he was certain his body could contain. Her bare feet up on the dash while he put the truck through its paces. Picking her up for school every morning from the time he’d turned fourteen years old. The times she’d helped him haul Wind Dancer out of the water. All the times he’d felt her up and then had her in the cab of that truck. His body begged him to forget Beau and spend his morning worshipping Nadya.
Five minutes later, Nadya raced into the Inn. She was desperately worried about Beau, but having a sudden sense of purpose made her feel alive again.
Almost running head long into Sienna, she stopped short.
“Nadya!” Sienna was ecstatic. Certain that her friend wanted to hear the barely existent juicy details of what hadn’t happened the night before and to ask if she and Grady were getting back together, Nadya couldn’t help but grin.
“Nothing happened last night. I don’t know what’s going to happen with us, but Beau was arrested this morning. We have to go pick him up.”
“Wait. What?” Sienna raced up the stairs after her. “So … But … you’re going with Grady to get Beau?”
Nodding quickly, Nadya located a pair of panties and jeans. She threw them on. She’d dressed in front of Sienna a hundred times when they were growing up. Now that the bruises were visibly improved, she didn’t care.
Running a brush haphazardly through her impossibly long hair, she pulled it up in a messy ponytail and slipped into a pair of flip-flops.
“What did Beau do?”
“Maybe nothing. I don’t know. Grady said something about his truck. He was up at the college.”
“Okay, well let me know what you find out, and Nadya,” she waited until Nadya’s eyes were fixed on hers, “I guess I just wanted to say that if life has given you and Grady a second chance, it’s worth taking, no matter how scary it might be.”
Sweet Sienna. She had always been so kind and just a little naïve. She came to the beach each summer, and though Nadya adored her, she really had no idea what kind of life most of the Gypsy kids lived during the school year. Nadya had never told her she’d gotten pregnant a few weeks after her sixteenth birthday. She hadn’t even told her when she and Grady had started sleeping together when she was fourteen.
She wrapped her arms around her friend’s neck, terrified of what she was going to have to admit. “Believe me, I don’t think there is anything I want more than to erase the last fourteen years and to rebuild what Grady and I had, but we’re different people now. It may not work like it did for you and Ryan.”
“But it might.”
Allowing Sienna’s addictive hope and optimism to make her believe, if only for a moment, Nadya nodded. “It might.”
“You know, there’s Gypsy magic on this shoreline, and something brought you back here. Even Nana knew you’d be back. Something sent you running out to the beach last night. Maybe Nana pushed that branch down.” She laughed at that preposterous idea.
“Yeah, well, it’s going to take Gypsy magic to save all of our asses if someone went so far as to plant something in Beau’s truck.” Nadya sighed and allowed herself a moment to feel the emotions she’d experienced last night in Grady’s arms. “Honestly, I didn’t really believe in the Gypsy magic anymore until I was dancing with him last night. So maybe.”
Sienna beamed. “All Nana and the original tribe ever needed was a ‘maybe.’ Now go get him! I hear Nana cheering you on.”
Laughing — really laughing — for the first time in what felt like forever, Nadya kissed Sienna’s cheek, grabbed her fringed bag, and raced back outside to Grady’s truck. She slid into her seat just as she always had.
The tense set of his jaw plagued her soul. It was one thing to talk with Sienna about getting back together with him, but being in his presence with so many unspoken things between them quelled a little of the excitement.
“Thank you for doing this. I swear I’ll pay you back.”
“Grady, please stop thanking me. I helped you raise Beau, remember? I want to do this. I need to do this. Thank you for letting me stay last night, and for saying everything you said. Let’s go get Beau, because I really do want us to talk.”
“Yeah, me too.” Grady wasn’t certain that was true. The — admittedly moronic — idea that they could just forget their tumultuous past and start over was so damn appealing, but that wasn’t the way the world worked. “Would it be really shitty of me to leave my kid brother in jail like five minutes longer and grab a cup of coffee on the way, so I can at least think?” He grimaced and called himself a selfish asshole.
Nadya cracked up. The reckless serenade of her laughter was going to be his undoing. “If we drink it really fast, he’ll never know.”
He joined her laughter, but confusion was the only real emotion he could access. Confusion about what the hell was going to happen to his family. Confusion about her. How did you meld a fourteen-year death with an all-consuming life that had existed before? If he played all of his cards right, could they somehow resurrect all that had once been and make it better? He was caught somewhere between his seventeen-year-old self and the man he was at thirty-one. What was he to do with the massive abyss that existed between the two halves?
Hesitantly, he turned his rope-calloused right hand over and offered it to her. “This okay?”
With another one of those luscious grins, she laced her fingers through his. That was the way they’d always made trips. “Yeah. It’s more than okay.”
He pulled through the McDonald’s drive-through in town and started to order but corrected quickly. “Uh, you still drink it with extra cream and a pack of Sweet and Low?”
She nodded. “I don’t think we’ve changed all that much, Grady, just grown up a little.”
That revelation did even more to soothe him than holding her hand had done. “Yeah, I keep hoping that.” He admitted as he pulled up to the microphone and quickly placed their order.
Just as they would have done when they were teenagers, they downed the coffee quickly, not minding the burn. It fueled the fire housed in each of their bodies. Ten minutes later, they sprinted into the Pender County Sheriff’s Office and located a clerk.
Grady grimaced as Nadya lifted a rather fancy leather wallet from her fringed bag. The bag looked just like the one she’d always carried. The wallet was new. He signed a dozen documents swearing that Beau wouldn’t skip town and would show up for his hearing while Nadya quickly wrote a large check to meet his bail.
While they waited on Beau to be released, Bevins walked through the tiny office.
“Hey, what the hell happened?” Grady leap
t immediately.
Bevins offered him a sympathetic look. “It’s not good, Grady. They found three Mac laptops and two iPhones inside the cab of his truck. They were checking cars up at the college today. Got an anon tip that some kids up there were selling hot merchandise.”
“Wait a minute!” Nadya huffed. “You got an anonymous tip, and stolen goods just happened to be in Beau’s truck. Doesn’t that seem a little coincidental to you?”
Grady couldn’t help but grin. His little firecracker was still in there somewhere. He just had to help her find herself again. Maybe she needed him to light her fuse.
“Uh, do I know you?” Bevins edged away from Nadya’s wrath.
Chuckling, Grady wrapped his arm around her shoulders. “This is Nadya … Montgomery?” He furrowed his brow. What if she’d taken that asshole’s last name?
She rolled her eyes at him discreetly. “Yes, still Montgomery, and …” She turned back to Bevins, and enough of her hellcat spite to stoke Grady’s blood into an all-out forest fire flowed from her mouth. “I’m Grady’s girlfriend.”
His entire body rejoiced. Every cell from the top of his jet black hair to the tips of his toes was spiked with elation. He was certain she’d said that so Bevins would give her information, but dammit, that’s precisely what she was. Come hell or high-water, he’d see to it. No more of this ridiculous equivocation. She was his. That’s how it always should have been. The rest of the world, the last fourteen years, and everything else could just fuck the hell off.
“You’re Grady’s girlfriend?” Bevins sounded stupefied by that bit of information.
“You’ve got my brother locked up, and got me out of bed when I had her wrapped up on my chest. Safe to say I’m in a mood, Bevins. She’s been mine for most of my life. Now talk.”
Nadya leaned up on her tiptoes and brushed a sweet kiss along his jawline. Utter elation cascaded through her. Maybe Sienna had been right. Maybe it wouldn’t be as scary or as hard as she’d made herself believe. She tried to shut down that plaguing niggle of worry that just wouldn’t give her peace. If she’d learned anything in the last decade, it was that life usually consisted of just as many steps back as steps forward, but she was tired of being afraid to try.
Bevins glanced around nervously. He leaned in closer. “Look, let me see what we’ve got going on here. I told you to keep it clean. They’re looking to pin this on the beach, and they don’t give a damn who takes the fall for it. Take Beau home and keep him there. I’ll come by after my shift.”
Just then, Sinclair pushed open the door and escorted Beau through. Grady longed to forcefully remove the smug grin from Sinclair’s stupid face. “I knew we’d be bringing you in for something. I always know. As soon as I saw his truck, I knew we’d found our guy.”
“Sinclair, shut up.” Bevins growled. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“First of all, how did you know that was Beau’s truck, and did he give you permission to search it?” Nadya narrowed her eyes and let her temper fly. Beau and Grady shared a quick grin.
“The Havens Charters signs on the doors made it pretty obvious who owned the truck. I had probable cause and permission from the school to search cars in the parking lot. It wasn’t even locked. How stupid can you be?”
“Wait, his truck wasn’t locked?” Nadya gasped. “Anyone could have put that stuff in there.”
“It’s a twenty-year-old Chevy; why the hell would I lock it? It barely cranks. Obviously, someone stuck that stuff in there. I’m not a thief.”
“You can take that up with the judge, but the rather advanced lock pick set we found in there certainly doesn’t make you look like a saint.” Sinclair was riding high on his own wave of righteous indignation, but that bit of information brought Grady and Nadya up short. Why the hell did Beau have a lock pick set? Unable to keep the beleaguering doubt at bay any longer, Grady’s mind flooded with facts he’d simply wanted to ignore.
Beau didn’t work half as often as Grady and Nate did. They thought they were taking care of him, making him finish school, so he could have more than they ever had. Grady hadn’t even finished high school, and Nate had barely pulled through his senior year, but had no hopes of going to college.
Beau frequently complained about never having any money, about his dilapidated truck, his ancient cell phone, and having to use the college computer labs all the time. He hated school, but Grady had been certain if he’d just finish he’d really go somewhere, make something more of himself than a lowly fisherman like his brothers. At the rate they were going, they’d never be able to retire.
“Let’s just go.” Beau pled.
Grady kept his arm around Nadya. He needed to hold onto her. She was all that was keeping him from losing his mind at that moment. He glared at Beau as he shoved him in the truck. Nadya sat between them, and Beau looked very pleased to have her as a buffer.
“Where the hell is your truck now?” Grady spat furiously.
“Still at school, which I’ve been suspended from until they figure out who actually did this.”
“And why the hell is there a lock pick set in your truck, Beau?”
“Just fuck off, Grady. I’m dropping out of school. This is so stupid. I’m not a kid anymore.”
“Oh, that’s where you want to go after I just picked your sorry ass up from the jailhouse. You want to go from incarceration to dropping out. That’ll make this better.” Grady’s fury reverberated against the roar of the truck engine.
Nadya reached and gently rubbed her hand over his thigh. His breath snared in his chest. The motion simultaneously calmed his temper and incited his libido. He turned to stare briefly into those soulful black eyes that he was certain held the secrets of the entire universe. He swallowed down raw lust and forced his eyes back to the road.
“I’m still waiting on a damn answer, Beau!”
“Everything they have is circumstantial. I didn’t do anything wrong.”
“How do you even know that?” Grady bellowed.
“You’re the motherfucker that made me go to college.” Beau spat viciously. “I never wanted to go. Now, you’re mad I’m smart!”
Grady slammed his truck into park behind his brother’s in the student lot. “Straight to the docks or straight home. Do not make me come find you.”
Nadya offered Beau a sweet smile as he slammed the door of Grady’s truck with entirely more force than was necessary.
Sick to death of never knowing what to do next, Grady felt the call of the water. He turned to Nadya while he waited to make sure Beau’s truck cranked. “Wanna take Wind Dancer out? We used to have some pretty decent conversations out there. I feel like getting lost.”
She wrinkled her adorable nose. “That sounds perfect, but could we get something to eat first? Wanting to scalp police officers makes me hungry.”
Not certain how she’d done it, Grady began laughing. “Sure, angel. I should have gotten you something earlier. I just wasn’t thinking.”
“Well, your baby brother was in jail and we spent the night together after not seeing each other in fourteen years because I was such an idiot, so I’d say distracted is perfectly acceptable at this point.” She just couldn’t do it. They had to talk. It couldn’t be as easy as forgetting that she’d ever left. It just couldn’t.
“Hey.” Grady shook his head. “You weren’t an idiot. I was the one that pitched a fit. We were fucked up kids. Let’s get some breakfast and go out on the boat. We have a lot to talk about.” He didn’t know why he wanted to put the conversation off or what he was so afraid of. He called himself a coward, but the thought that he might say something that would make her run away again paralyzed him.
Without much thought he returned to the McDonald’s drive-thru and ordered them breakfast. He bristled when she offered to pay. “I got it.” He tried to order the pettiness from his voice. He was supposed to take care of her; so far she was doing a hell of a job of caring for him and his family. That was never the way thi
s was supposed to work.
She tried to hide her disappointment as they both devoured egg and cheese biscuits.
“Grady, you don’t really think Beau took all of that stuff, do you?”
“I honestly don’t know. Police seem so certain it’s someone living on the beach. He’s just a stupid kid. I think we’re pretty good proof that kids do things they shouldn’t.”
“Yeah,” she sighed. No one could argue that. “We used to nick things all the time.”
Grady grimaced. They certainly had done that, but then it had somehow felt justified. “Yeah, but we took food because we were hungry, and lifted cigarettes and beer because we were stupid. We sure as hell weren’t stealing stuff to resell it, and it was never anything like laptops and iPhones.”
“There was no such thing back then, at least as far as we knew. I stole that Aerosmith CD from Gigmasters. Remember?” This time her laughter was weary as if the memory weighted her mind.
“Yeah, I remember.”
“I still have that CD.” She stared him down as she made that confession. “I never got rid of it. I couldn’t. It has our song on it, and you were with me when I took it. I listened to it until it didn’t work anymore. I guess I just wanted you so badly.”
Ten
He pulled the truck into the boat bay and guided her into the boathouse. He closed the door firmly behind her and dug deep into the well of past pain. He had to do this right. If this was his second chance, he’d take it. He wouldn’t need another. He’d been an idiot, but if she was willing to work with him to rebuild all they’d had as kids, dammit, he wasn’t looking back. He pulled the chain he’d worn around his neck for the last fourteen years out from behind his t-shirt.
Tears sprang to her eyes, and her hand flew to her mouth. “Oh my gosh. You kept that?”
The rocklike enclosure of emotion that had cinched his throat made him unable to speak. He flipped the metal tab she’d engraved with their initials behind the one of the Gemini symbol and an engraving of his boat to reveal the tiny silver band he’d never shown her.
