She hadn’t meant to eavesdrop, she’d only come here to find the girls’ baskets and the cute little Hawaiian dolls Cara had given them as wedding favors. When she heard Shane say her name, she couldn’t help but listen.
Finally, everything made a horrible sort of sense—why he seemed drawn to her one moment and pushed her away the next. Why he could wrap his arms around her as they danced as if he never wanted to let her go...and then two seconds later return her to her table with a casual kiss on the forehead, as if they were polite acquaintances.
She stared at the delicate flowers on the shrub. She had a feeling that from this point forward their light, fresh scent would always make her feel vaguely nauseated.
Tears welled up and one spilled over before she could push it away. She angrily wiped her cheek. No. She wouldn’t let this devastate her. She couldn’t. She had two beautiful daughters who needed a mother who was strong and resolute.
Okay, so she loved a man who wouldn’t let himself love her back. Yes, it hurt like hell. Yes, she wanted to curl up out there on the beach and weep and wail and throw handfuls of sand around like the girls in the middle of one of their terrible-two tantrums.
She was tougher than that. Broken hearts eventually mended, right?
On some level, she even understood his point of view. His childhood chaos had left him with a skewed perspective on life. She couldn’t blame him for that—nor could she fight and rail and curse reality.
He didn’t want her. Or, more accurately, he wanted her and the girls but he wouldn’t let himself have what he wanted because of the accompanying complications
She wanted to tell him that life was seldom as clean and whitewashed as a person wanted. It was sloppy and tangled and hard. Grace and her challenges had taught her that. But out of the mess and mud could come something beautiful, if only a person summoned the strength to struggle through it—another lesson Grace had taught her.
Thinking of her daughters gave her the courage she needed to move forward. She wiped away another tear, drew in a shaky breath and gathered up the girls’ things.
She needed to focus on Grace and Sarah. It had been a long, exciting day, and Grace still wasn’t feeling a hundred percent. The travel day would be long and difficult, and she’d need all her grit to get them home.
Yes, it was time to go back to real life, away from this tropical paradise—this glorious, heady, impossible dream.
* * *
BACK AT THE cabana, the girls were subdued. Both of them were tired from all the excitement and Grace was a little fretful.
They went to bed with a minimum of fuss, much to Megan’s relief. She wasn’t sure she would have been up for a battle with them.
After they were sleeping, Megan gathered up their belongings and packed as much as she could for their return journey.
When that was done, she felt rather at loose ends. She wasn’t tired—her heart ached too much for sleep—so on impulse she grabbed the video monitor and headed outside into the warm moonlight.
This time she kicked off her flip-flops—slippahs, if she wanted to use the Hawaiian term—and walked to the water’s edge.
The moon glimmered on the water, dancing a little with each wave, and the heavy air was sweet with the scent of flowers, underscored by the salty, sharp, indescribable scent of sand and sea.
The tears she’d pushed back earlier in the evening threatened to break free. Her heart was broken. She had known both love and loss in a short time. What was the harm in giving in to them a little while she was alone here with the night?
She retreated above the high-tide mark and sat in the sand, hands wrapped around her knees as she cried silent tears—only a few—for what could never be.
Enough self-pity. She still had everything she had known before she arrived in Hawaii. A great job she loved, two beautiful daughters, a warm and comfortable home. She would get through this.
She sat for a long moment more, trying to find the same wonder and magic she’d discovered on their first night in Hawaii. She was just about to get up when she sensed someone approach. Even without looking away from the mesmerizing sea, she knew who she would find.
“Mind some company?” Shane asked.
She wanted to tell him she minded very much. He’d broken her heart. She knew she would eventually heal from it, but she didn’t need him coming around to pour seawater on the open wound, thanks very much.
He was still wearing the dress slacks he’d worn to the wedding, rolled up to keep the sand out, and in the moonlight she saw the gleam of his bare feet.
“You left the party before I had the chance to tell you and the girls goodbye. One minute you were there, the next you disappeared. Is everything okay?”
Besides the minor matter of her shattered heart, just fine. “Yes. They were tired and tomorrow will be long and hard. I’m not looking forward to a long flight with Grace having an ear infection.”
“That’s too much for you to handle on your own. Maybe I can see about changing flights.”
“I’ll manage. I always do,” she murmured. “Thank you, though.”
He was quiet for a long moment, then he reached out to enfold her fingers in his. “You handle everything. You’re amazing.”
Instead of feeling flattered, she was suddenly furious. How many ways did this man have to break her heart?
She yanked her hand away and stood up abruptly, brushing sand off her dress and picking up her flip-flops.
“I should go back in. I’ve still got packing to do,” she lied.
He stood as well, looking big and tough and sexy in the silvery light.
“Wait a minute.”
She turned, seeking deep for just a little more strength and hoping he couldn’t see her puffy eyes and red nose. A few more moments and then this would be over.
He seemed nervous suddenly, something she wouldn’t have expected in the man who could endure a gunshot wound and still flirt with the emergency room nurses.
“Yes?” she finally asked when he remained silent.
“I would like to see you again, when we’re back in Chicago. Can I call you? With the real number, this time?”
Fresh pain sliced at her and she wondered what kind of cruel game he was playing with her fragile, shattered heart.
“Why?” she asked, her voice barely a whisper.
He blinked a little, looking even more disconcerted. “I’ve enjoyed being with you these last few days. I...care about you and the girls. I love spending time with you. When I’m with you, I’m...happy.”
She clutched her flip-flops to her chest, not caring about the sand she knew would find its way home in her suitcase. His words fluttered their way to her heart like brilliantly colored butterflies, but she refused to let them settle there.
“Why waste our time?” she finally asked. Her voice sounded ragged and she had to clear it before continuing. “I heard you tonight talking to Cara.”
Confusion crossed his strong features for just a moment, followed quickly by chagrin. “You did?”
“I wasn’t listening on purpose. I only meant to get the girls’ things so we could go. But, yes, I heard all about your hard-and-fast rule. No children. I obviously can’t change that about my life, so I don’t see the point in seeing you again back in Chicago. I’m not the woman you need and you’re not the man I thought you were.”
That last was cruel, she knew, but the words were out before she could stop them.
He closed his eyes. When he opened them, they were filled with pain and regret and something else she couldn’t identify.
“I can’t answer to the last part. But I can tell you that you’re exactly the woman I need. I lied earlier.”
She blinked, not sure what he meant. “You lied about what?”
“I said I cared about y
ou. That’s not true.”
“It’s...not?”
He shook his head and took a step closer. She barely refrained from retreating a step, which probably would have landed her on her behind in the sand.
“Okay, it’s not really a lie. More like a ridiculous understatement. Already, my feelings are deeper than that.”
Again, those butterflies seemed to clog her chest, her throat, fluttering madly.
“I’m in love with you, Megan,” he murmured. “I think I have been since that night at the hospital. I certainly couldn’t get you out of my head, and almost went back to the ER just to find you, even though I felt like an idiot.”
She drew in a breath at his words, feeling as if she were on a tiny skiff out on the vast sea, being tossed in every direction by the waves and the wind.
She wanted to believe him, but the memory of the last two hours of pain was too raw. “What...what about the girls?”
“I love the girls, as well. They’re wonderful, Megan. Bright and sweet and cheerful. How could I help but love them, too?”
“I don’t understand. I heard what you said to Cara. You won’t let yourself care about a woman with children. You said so.”
“How much did you hear of that conversation?”
She rehashed those moments in her memory. “I left right after you said that to Cara.”
He smiled a little and reached for her hand. “So you missed the delightful part where the lovely, demure bride told me I was being a raging idiot.”
“Apparently so. I’m sorry I didn’t hear that.”
He laughed softly. “She was quite firm about it. She told me only said raging idiot would let a decision he made as an angry teenager compel him to make the biggest mistake of his life by letting a wonderful woman slip away.”
“Did she?”
“Yes. She also informed me quite firmly—I think there might have been yelling by this point—that if I was stupid enough to let our parents and the chaos they created for two innocent children still have that much power over my decisions in life, years later, then I didn’t deserve someone as fantastic as you and Grace and Sarah.”
“I do love your sister. Have I mentioned that?”
His laugh was as soft and low as the sea, sending shivers sizzling down her spine. “I love her, too, even when she’s being a big, annoying smarty-pants.”
His smile slid away and he reached for her hand. This time, she left it there.
“She’s right, Megan. I’ve been an idiot. I love you and I want to be with you. In Hawaii, in Chicago, in Antarctica, for all I care. And I love the girls, too. I can’t imagine you without them. They are part of the package—the bright, beautiful, perfect package—and I wouldn’t have it any other way.”
She smiled, unable to believe she could shift so swiftly from despair to this vivid joy. “For the record, I love you, too. These last few days have been magical. I don’t want them to end. I’ve been dreading going back to my cold, gray existence.”
He kissed her then, his mouth tender on hers. She wrapped her arms around him, relishing his heat and his strength.
When he finally eased away, both of them were breathing hard and Megan could feel her hair tumbling down her back where his hands had pulled it free.
“I’ll change my flight tomorrow,” he said when he caught his breath. “I don’t want you to have to fly home without me.”
“You would give up another day in paradise for me and the girls?”
He shook his head. “No. Wherever you are, that will be all the paradise I need.”
Touched beyond words, she rested her cheek against his chest as he pulled her closer. The palm fronds rustled and the warm breeze danced in her hair, and the sea murmured a love song just for them.
* * * * *
Hawaiian Reunion
Marie Ferrarella
To Leanne and RaeAnne, with love from the author who, for the purposes of this collaboration, will answer to the name of Marianne
Contents
PROLOGUE
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
EPILOGUE
PROLOGUE
SHE WAITED UNTIL the last minute to leave for O’Hare Airport.
Which, given the fact that this was January in Chicago and there’d been yet another snowstorm just yesterday, piling even more snow on top of what had already fallen earlier in the week, was risky at best. Snowplows were out in force, trying to make the streets passable and having moderate success.
All this contributed toward making the simple ten-mile trip from her apartment building to the airport something that would have been more easily attempted with a team of huskies in top condition than a mere taxicab with chains on its tires.
Amy Marshall was seriously running the risk of missing her flight—and she knew it
Subconsciously, maybe she actually wanted to miss it, even though it was a flight out of this deep freeze, with its discolored snowdrifts, to the inviting, balmy beaches of Kauai.
Six months ago, when Nick McNeil and his fiancée, Cara Russell, had first made the plans for this destination wedding—plans that involved seventy-two hours in Hawaii away from snowplows, galoshes and overcoats—it had sounded like nothing short of pure heaven.
What a difference six months could make.
Now, instead of heaven, flying to Kauai for those seventy-two hours had become Amy’s own private hell because she was carrying around not just one major secret but two.
Secrets that weighed as heavily on her shoulders as the fresh snow weighed on the roofs of her neighborhood.
On the way to O’Hare, Amy imagined those roofs sagging with the added weight—and she completely identified with them.
How in heaven’s name was she going to carry this off, Amy wondered, if she actually did manage to get there in time for the flight? How was she going to be able to smile for the duration of those seventy-two hours and pretend that everything was just wonderful? Pretend that she and Devlin, Nick’s fellow firefighter and best friend—not to mention his best man—were as wildly in love now as they’d always been instead of occupying opposite sides of a pending divorce?
She knew that she could have opted to bow out, but that would have meant explaining why to Cara. So far, the very idea of talking about the end of her marriage hurt. And because it did, none of their friends knew, or even suspected, that she and Devlin weren’t living together anymore, that they hadn’t even occupied the same square-mile radius for the past three months.
Other than dealing with her own aching heart, there was the problem generated by the bride-to-be. Even the slightest hint of the word divorce had Cara all but freaking out.
Growing up, Cara and her older brother, Shane, had to live through their parents’ less than amicable divorce. If that hadn’t been traumatic enough, they’d also looked on as both parents married—and divorced—other people with such regularity that it wound up turning the institution of marriage into the punch line of a joke. A least it had for Cara.
Discovering that a divorce was taking place within her private circle could just possibly make Cara call off her own wedding.
Devlin had told Amy he didn’t want to risk it, and admittedly, she knew she wouldn’t have been able to cope with having that on her conscience.
So Amy had reluctantly agreed to fly out to the wedding as if her own life wasn’t going through the major upheaval that it was.
Emphasis on upheaval, she thought, pressing her hand to her abdomen as the taxi inched its way
to its final destination.
Amy glanced at her watch. It looked as if she really might not make the flight.
In the scheme of things, she supposed that she could manage pretending she was Devlin’s wife for another seventy-two hours. After all, the very thought of being married to him had once filled her with absolutely indescribable joy.
Once, she thought ruefully.
But not anymore.
It was the other secret she was holding back from everyone that really concerned her.
But with luck, Amy thought as the taxi finally came to a stop before her terminal, the cab’s rear fishtailing rather dangerously, she could pull that off, as well.
After all, she’d played the starring role in her senior-year play in college.
She could do it.
If she somehow did manage to reach the plane before its departure.
* * *
“SIR, WE’RE GOING to have to close the doors now,” the tall, blonde flight attendant told him. He’d stubbornly refused to move even an inch for the past five minutes.
Devlin was standing at the very edge of the pathway leading to the plane’s door. The plane bound for Kauai. The plane that everyone else had already boarded.
Except for Amy.
Damn it, Amy, this isn’t the time to play games. I can’t believe you’d do this to Nick and Cara—and me. Granted, things had gotten dicey between them and he’d put up with a lot of things even a saint wouldn’t have—but he’d always believed that, at heart, Amy was a decent person.
Decent people didn’t bail on their friends and their husband, estranged or not, without so much as a word.
“Thirty more seconds,” Devlin insisted, tapping his wristwatch. The watch Amy had given him when they’d celebrated their first six months of marriage. Back when she liked being married to him. “She’s got thirty more seconds.”
“Sir, I really don’t think that whoever—” The edge to the attendant’s voice was beginning to display her impatience.
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