Swept Away for Christmas

by M. J. Fredrick

  While she wouldn’t say she was afraid of Finn, he definitely unsettled her. The only time she’d had with him since arriving back in Starfish Shores had been in the company of others. Maybe he had a point, maybe they needed to talk alone. If she took a walk on the beach with this new Finn, the entrepreneurial chef, would she exorcise the ghost of the young man she’d loved and their moonlight strolls together?

  “All right,” she heard herself say. “I’ll meet you in the lobby in five minutes.”

  ***

  Despite Shelby’s estimate, closer to ten minutes had passed when Finn spotted her from the chair where he waited. Had it taken longer than she’d anticipated to get ready, or had she deliberately stalled to reduce the risk of being confined in an elevator with him?

  With her face scrubbed free of make-up, she looked more like the twenty-one year old version of herself he remembered. She was in jeans, sneakers and a blue sweatshirt featuring a bright yellow cartoon eagle. Yet he found her as appealing as she’d been in the low-cut dress and killer boots. Wonder what she sleeps in? The random question popped into his mind with no warning. Probably only because he now knew that when he was sprawled across his bed tonight, she was sleeping in a nearly identical bedroom directly above him.

  When they’d been dating, she’d frequently slept in his T-shirts. He’d found it endearing, although he’d made a show of grumbling about half his wardrobe disappearing into her closet.

  Their eyes met across the lobby, and her step faltered, as if she regretted agreeing to come with him. But then she raised her chin and resolutely marched toward him. Her rigid posture and determined gaze screamed let’s get this over with! Had it been a dumb idea on his part? He’d already blurred some lines by snuggling against her at the bar, wanting to run off that jerk who’d laid a meaty paw on her shoulder.

  Maybe an intimate, moonlight rendezvous would only muddy the waters further, but there were things he needed to say to her. He’d severed his ties with Starfish Shores. This weekend might be the last time he saw Shelby and he’d be an idiot not to use this opportunity.

  He stood, meeting her partway. “Thanks for meeting me.”

  She hitched her shoulders in a dismissive shrug. “I owe you. After the drunken ogler at the bar…”

  He snorted. “Which one—Jake or Wyatt?”

  “What’s that supposed to mean? You know I was talking about the blond dude with the beer.”

  “Sorry. Inappropriate attempt at humor, I guess.” Although Wyatt had been more subtle than his younger brother, Jake had been practically drooling on her. Finn was shocked she hadn’t noticed. “But, be warned, if Miranda’s brothers get much champagne into them at the wedding reception, one or both of them might hit on you.”

  She laughed outright. “That’s the most ludicrous thing I’ve ever heard. And I work with nine-year-olds!”

  The mention of kids curbed his moment of irrational jealousy, reminding him of one of the many reasons why Shelby’s life—and any men she let into it—were none of his damn business. Still, he couldn’t help defending his assertion. “Not ludicrous. I don’t know what’s wrong with the Donavan yutzes that they didn’t notice sooner that you’re a beautiful, desirable woman but, trust me, they’ve noticed now.”

  Her lips parted, but no words emerged. Instead, she simply shook her head and turned toward the back exit and the path to the beach. Did she not believe she was desirable, or was she simply troubled by Finn being the one to mention it?

  Tread carefully, McBride. Having acknowledged what a rare opportunity this was to get some things off his chest, he didn’t want to scare her back up to her room before he’d had a chance to say them. He opened the door for her.

  She paused unexpectedly, nearly causing him to bump into her, and inhaled. “I’d almost forgotten how much I loved it here. The smell of the ocean, the sound of the waves, how the world disappears at the horizon.” She stopped, her animated expression dimming. “I suppose you never miss Starfish Shores.”

  He held her gaze. “There are parts of my life here I miss very much.”

  Biting her lower lip, she glanced away. “Like your family?”

  “None left in town.” As they fell into step beneath the soft lights lining the sidewalk, he found himself smiling with pride that both his sisters had found better for themselves. “After all Bridget’s trouble in school with her dyslexia, Mom worried about her future. I think Mom was afraid it would be another generation of selling shot glasses and T-shirts with surfboards on them. But Bridge became a stylist, a really good one, and eventually got a job at a high-end salon in a ritzy section of Miami. Catriona and Mom moved to Gainesville, where Cat did a few community college semesters at Santa Fe before transferring into UF. She’ll graduate next year. No hawking crappy knick-knacks to whiny tourists for her!”

  Shelby slanted him a look that was hard to read as they moved onto the darker section of the beach, trudging across the uneven ridges of sand toward the smoother section near the water. “I know you wanted more for yourself and your family, but were the tourists really so bad? I always figured they were just people like us, who wanted to breathe in the ocean air and enjoy the fresh seafood, but weren’t lucky enough to live here.”

  Lucky. He managed to choke back a bitter laugh. Lucky wasn’t a word he would have used to describe his youth in Starfish Shores. Between the hurricane that had destroyed his childhood home, the financial struggle of trying to compete with a hundred other stores just like theirs, and losing his father at such a young age, Finn had always felt cursed—right up until he met Shelby. She’d been a bright blast of good fortune, blinding against the bleak backdrop of his life.

  “I was jealous of the tourists,” he admitted. “They got to come and enjoy those niceties you mentioned, but then, when they were finished splashing in the surf and taking pictures of their sandcastles, they were free to leave. I used to look out at the parking lot of our glorified souvenir stand and stare at the license plates. North Carolina, Georgia, Texas, sometimes as far-flung as New Jersey. I daydreamed about crawling into the backseat of one of those cars, hiding until I was far from here.”

  It was weird how easily the words spilled out of him under the cover of night, as if the blackness offered some kind of anonymity. When he’d been dating Shelby, he’d been too paralyzed by the fear that he might not escape to discuss how badly he wanted it. But then it had all boiled out of him in misplaced rage.

  “Shel—” He stopped dead on the beach. Even though it was hard for them to see each other’s expressions out here, he wanted to be looking at her for this. It was the important part. “I spent my life wanting to get the hell away from Starfish Shores but worrying I wasn’t good enough to make it anywhere else. You were the first person who made me feel like I could. It wasn’t just that you believed in me, it’s that you made me believe in myself.”

  She swallowed audibly. “I don’t know what to say. You’re the one who did the hard work, the one who had the talent.”

  “When we said goodnight to the last diner on the night of the restaurant’s grand opening, I wanted to call you,” he said. “Not that I even had a number for you, but I wanted to share it with you. I know that after the way I broke things off, I don’t deserve it, but…I’ve often wished we could have been friends.” The sentiment, though true, had a stale flavor. Did he sound trite, some ex-lover who’d moved on but wanted to be Facebook buddies, exchange the occasional banality or “Like” someone’s holiday photos? He wanted so much more than that.

  But they had different ambitions and separate lives. There was a limit to what he could have. He was too old to believe in Santa Claus, and he doubted anything short of a North Pole miracle would cause Shelby to ever trust him again.

  She raised her arms, hugging herself as she began walking again. He couldn’t tell if he’d upset her of if she was simply digesting everything he’d said. Perhaps it was time to return to the hotel.

  “I’m thrilled you’ve been ab
le to make your dreams come true,” she said as he was about to suggest they go back. “But I’m glad you didn’t call me. Getting over you was excruciating.” She said it with no melodrama in her voice, the flat tone worse than if she’d yelled or cursed him. “A clean break was probably best.”

  There’d been nothing clean or tidy about the way he’d talked to her that night. He’d been a bastard—lashing out at a twenty-one-year-old college kid terrified she might be carrying his child. She’d been new to birth control pills, her body probably still adjusting to the prescription, but she’d panicked when she’d realized her period hadn’t come and said something about antibiotics and a dental visit. She’d been worried about some kind of drug interaction, and he’d been blindsided with the image of Shelby trying to soothe a squalling baby on her hip while ringing up pairs of flip-flops for strangers. Blindsided with the image of himself not only trapped in that life but dragging others down with him. He’d railed at her that he had no intention of being shackled by a baby just because she couldn’t read pharmacy instructions. He’d said he was never having children, told her that if his Parks job worked out, he was leaving Starfish Shores and didn’t plan to ever look back.

  Even though he’d told Shelby he loved her, he’d always known she was headed back to college, that she had a future somewhere. It had truly never registered in his clueless male brain until that night that she’d begun to fantasize something permanent. In the tiny corner of his brain that hadn’t been petrified Fate was about to knock him on his ass again, he’d allowed himself to be tempted by the thought of a future with her. And that’s when he’d really lost it, pushing her away so thoroughly that there was no chance of giving into that temptation.

  “I was an unfeeling SOB, and even though it’s six years too late, I want to apologize for that. I wouldn’t blame you if you’d hated me every minute since then.”

  She speared him with a disbelieving glance that he felt more than saw. “That’s not how it works, Finn. I loved you. I couldn’t throw a switch and reverse it—no matter how much easier that would have made things.” A note of accusation crept into her tone. Obviously, she thought it had been easy for him to forget about her.

  If that had been the case, he wouldn’t be out on a deserted beach at midnight, trying to atone for past sins that still kept him awake at night.

  He pinched the bridge of his nose. “I take it my apology is not accepted, then?”

  “You say it like I’m deliberately holding a grudge.” She stopped, staring out across the dark water. Only the white crests of the crashing waves were visible. “On a beach pretty much like this one, only a couple of miles from here, you destroyed everything I thought I knew about us. I questioned myself, my judgment in guys and relationships, for a long time. I appreciate your saying you’re sorry. But it doesn’t undo anything.”

  The rejection in her words sliced through him with lethal precision. He wanted to tell her that he understood, that he didn’t deserve her forgiveness or friendship.

  “But maybe it does change something,” she said slowly. “Nothing you or I do will fix the past, but I want my future to be different. Ever since I got here today, I’ve been kicking myself for not visiting Starfish Shores in years and wondering why I don’t visit Miranda more. We don’t live that far part. I think, subconsciously, I was avoiding painful reminders. Maybe accepting your apology will help change things for me going forward. ‘Tis the season, right? If you and I were ever going to strike up a friendship, seems like this would be the time to do it.”

  His breath returned in a shudder. “You’re an amazing woman, Seashell.”

  She pivoted, heading back the way they’d come. He hadn’t realized they were so far from their hotel. “Your first official act of friendship can be promising not to call me that anymore.”

  “Not sure I can do that.” The comparison seemed more apt than ever. The first time he’d told her he loved her, he’d shared a story of beachcombing in the aftermath of a tropical storm. He and his sisters had been cooped up inside during several days of driving rain, and his mother had asked him to supervise the girls on the beach while she napped on one of the oversize towels they carried in their store. He’d been annoyed at once again being drafted for childcare and wanted to be shut in his room, playing video games on the out-of-date handheld device he’d bought at a garage sale. But Cat and Bridget had been racing up and down the beach. Sheer dumb luck kept them from tripping over the debris that littered the dunes.

  Similarly, luck had led him to the three shells he still owned. They were each different and at the time had struck him as entirely exotic. He’d grown up used to seeing the ubiquitous, fan-shaped, striped shells and the pink conch shells his parents sold. The ones he’d found that day had been like unexpected treasures—a pearly iridescent baby’s ear, a boldly dotted junonia, and an elegant citrine olive. As he’d turned them over in his hands, he’d marveled that they’d survived the storm. Shells were so fragile; the beaches were often littered with spiral remnants and pastel shards. Yet somehow the ones he’d held had weathered gale force winds and pounding surf. They’d given him hope.

  Shelby had been an unexpected treasure in his life, beautiful, but possessing a deceptive strength, always ready to fiercely defend her friends or a conviction. He’d been going through a tough time, an adult, itching to leave, but still tethered to home by his sisters. Resentment had been swallowing him whole, and then, suddenly, there she was, amid the debris of his life.

  She broke the silence, which now felt more companionable than taut. “We covered a lot of ground.”

  “A hell of a lot more than I expected to,” he agreed.

  The journey had been well worth it. He’d left the hotel with regrets weighing him down and was returning freed of his burden, blessed with a new friend.

  Chapter Six

  The air was crisp, but sunlight dappled the water, promising warmer hours ahead. Shelby tilted her head back in the breeze, closed her eyes and smiled as the forty-foot boat motored out of the marina. This was a much-needed break from trying to teach sleepy nine-year-olds multiplication and division first thing in the morning. She loved her job but needed breathers like this to refresh her so she could keep giving her kids a hundred percent.

  “Mmm. This is so nice, it would be worth the trip even if we don’t see any dolphins,” she said.

  “Speak for yourself!” Amy crossed her arms over her green Christmas T-shirt that read Ask Me About the Naughty List. Next to her, Miranda wore a partially zipped hoodie over a bikini top and yoga pants. “I’m excited about dolphin-watching. Not a lot of bottlenose in Lake Erie.”

  “Don’t worry, these guys guarantee we’ll see some,” Miranda told her cousin. The ship’s captain was one of Wyatt’s close friends who stayed booked solid through the spring and summer months but rarely chartered cruises in December or January. He’d given them a deeply discounted rate in order to provide Miranda and her bridal party with a fun outing.

  At the other end of the boat, Wyatt, Jake, Finn, and Bruce were chatting with the boat’s owners; they’d fallen into a debate about fishing lures while the women discussed wedding arrangements. During the short ceremony, all guests would be standing, so there would be no pew bows or covered chairs, but a local wedding company was providing a beautifully decorated arbor and a sound-system. Miranda had confirmed her bouquet order with the local florist and would be picking up her dress, which had needed some minor alterations, after the dolphin cruise. It wasn’t a traditional wedding gown, just a beautiful, ethereal white dress with delicate shoulder straps and gauzy layers.

  The bridesmaids—and Amy—were all going to wear the exact same dress as Miranda, but in different colors. Amy’s was yellow, Charli’s was red, and Shelby’s was green. Shelby had joked that they’d look like a pack of crayons in the wedding photos. The men would wear black slacks with untucked tuxedo shirts. Miranda had dictated they would roll up their sleeves to give the ceremony the appropriate casu
al feel, and Bruce had teased her about the December weather.

  “What if it’s cold and we don’t want to roll up the sleeves?”

  “Man up,” she’d retorted. “The girls and I will be in sleeveless dresses. If we can tough it out, so can you.”

  Luckily, the forecast was for cooperative, unseasonably warm weather this weekend.

  The temperature climbed as they discussed plans for the rest of the day—a small bridal shower hosted by Miranda’s mom and a cook-out at the Donavans’ tonight that would include various family and friends. It would be the first time Shelby had met Bruce’s parents, Mr. and Mrs. Wilder. The cook-out would be an unofficial rehearsal dinner since parents were not joining them on the rowdy pirate cruise Friday night.

  “I just wish Charli could be there,” Miranda said wistfully, “but she’s shooting today.”

  Charli had the head-turning, camera-friendly good looks of a professional model or big-screen actress. She’d left Starfish Shores with plans to go to California, but she’d only made it as far as Georgia. Shelby had been surprised to learn so many things were being filmed there these days, from network dramas to big budget movies. Charli wasn’t exactly on the Hollywood A-list, but she’d been an extra in a ton of movies and had a recurring role on a popular sitcom filmed outside of Atlanta. Her current boyfriend was a regular on the cable show Southern-Fried Zompires.

  “Ladies.”

  Shelby turned to find Finn approaching them and smiled instantly. He’d been so charming when they’d stopped for breakfast on their way to the marina. Not that this was news—he’d always possessed a slick charisma, and she could easily imagine him greeting guests in his restaurant, making every patron feel welcome. But there was something different about him today, goofier and more boyishly engaging.