And Then Forever

by Shirley Jump

  The B-52s closed out the night again, and Jillian and Darcy began the cleanup process. Darcy should have been relieved, but she was still stressed by seeing Kincaid, knowing he was so close—too close—to the truth. Some insane part of her was glad to see him, still felt thrilled when he made her smile, while the more sensible half wished he was gone. Because she knew the troubled edge she was dancing around just by talking to him.

  “So…Kincaid was here again,” Jillian said.

  “It’s a free country. He can go where he wants.”

  “And he sat at your table, I noticed. Coincidence?” Jillian raised a brow. “I think not.”

  Darcy knew Jillian didn’t mean a table within Darcy’s assigned bunch—but the table that she and Kincaid had sat at night after night when they were young. In those days, they’d sat on the same side of the booth, giggling and touching and barely tasting their food. He’d carved their initials into the wood one night, a mark that had stayed all this time. Most nights, she managed to swipe off the table without letting her gaze rest on those letters. But she could still see them in her mind, remember the way she’d curled against him as he whittled the four letters into the wooden surface. Had he realized it was the same table when Whit sat him there tonight? Had Kincaid looked at the letters, remembered etching them with his pocket knife?

  “It was a busy night,” Darcy said, as if she didn’t care that Kincaid had sat there. “It was probably the only available table.”

  “Uh-huh. Then why did you have Amanda bring him his food?” Jillian said, referencing the third waitress. “Avoiding the great and sexy rich boy again?”

  “For one, he’s not so great. And I don’t think he’s sexy. At all.” Someone should really deliver that message to her hormones. They’d been buzzing ever since he’d touched her. One touch, one hand on her wrist, and Darcy had been fantasizing about Kincaid for the rest of her shift.

  It was because it had been a long time since she’d had sex. That was all. It wasn’t that the sex with Kincaid had been awesome—okay, so yes, it had been the best sex she’d ever had—it was merely that her vagina wasn’t as smart as her head. She needed to think with her brain, not anything south of her neck.

  Darcy bent over and started scrubbing the table in furious circles. “I don’t care about Kincaid Foster. All he did was annoy me tonight.”

  Jillian put a hand over Darcy’s. “You’re going to wear a hole in that. Let me finish for you. And you go to Pammy’s bonfire.”

  “I’ve got Emma—”

  “I’ll go over there and let Nona go home. The munchkin is long overdue for a sleepover with Aunt Jillian anyway.”

  “Are you sure?”

  Jillian put a hand on Darcy’s shoulder. “You deserve to have a good time once in a while. You’re either working or taking care of Emma. You somehow exist on like three hours of a sleep a day. So yes, I’m sure. You go have fun.”

  The thought of hanging out with friends, enjoying a few laughs and a couple beers, sounded like heaven. Jillian was right. It had been ages since Darcy had done that. Maybe then she’d stop focusing on Kincaid and wondering where he was—and when he was going to leave. She could feel like she used to in the days before she worried about her daughter and her paycheck, and controlling millionaires hundreds of miles away. “Thanks, Jillian.”

  “No problem. Now, shoo.” She waved toward the door.

  A minute later, Darcy had hung up her apron, grabbed some leftover chicken wings from the kitchen, then headed down toward the beach. The orange glow of the bonfire and the warm laughter of her friends beckoned her forward. Darcy sped up her steps, and slipped into the circle. “I brought wings!”

  There was a resounding cheer, a number of voices calling out Darcy’s name in a mixture of surprise and joy, and then a few shuffling of bodies to make room for Darcy on a long piece of driftwood serving as a bench. She passed off the box of wings, accepted a beer, then raised it in a toast as her gaze skipped around the circle. “Sorry I’m so late, guys.”

  “No problem,” Pammy said. “You didn’t miss anything except for Joey making too many fart jokes.”

  That let loose a round of laughs. Darcy leaned back and took a long swig from the beer. As she did, she saw Kincaid out of the corner of her eye. Damn it. Pam must have invited him when she was at The Love Shack earlier. He was everywhere Darcy was, as if the Guy Upstairs was forcing her to deal with the past.

  In the dark, his eyes were wide and mysterious, but there was no mistaking that they were watching her. He held a beer between two fingers, his elbows propped on his knees. The top two buttons on his shirt were undone, the sleeves rolled up, his hair a little mussed from the breeze off the water. Coupled with the warm light of the fire dancing off his features, he looked sexy as hell, and all her very good reasons for avoiding him seemed to flit away.

  She joked with the others, drank a couple beers, roasted a hot dog, but all the time, she was acutely aware of Kincaid, just a few feet away. She’d send sidelong glances his way, and once, twice, she caught him looking at her, too.

  The same quiver that she’d felt the first time she met him rippled through her belly. Her skin tingled with awareness. Paired with the simmering desire of a woman who knew how good sex with Kincaid would be, a wave of desire began to build inside her. She wanted him to move closer, to brush up against her in the dark, then trail kisses down her neck, along the curve of her breasts…

  You always make rash decisions, Darcy, her mother used to say. Reacting on gut instead of smarts. One of these days, it’s going to get you into trouble.

  That pretty much summed up her entire relationship with Kincaid. Operating on guts instead of smarts. There was no way Darcy wanted to make the same mistake twice.

  Damn it. This wasn’t the plan. She dumped out the rest of her beer, then got to her feet. “I’m beat, everyone. I better get home.”

  She said her goodbyes, to everyone but Kincaid, then tossed the empty bottle in a recycle bin and started heading down the beach, carrying her cowboy boots. The cool sand felt nice against her bare feet, and the soft sound of the water whooshing in and out matched her leisurely pace. She wished the walk home would last forever, so she could go on listening to that soothing ocean song.

  “Were you just going to leave without saying goodbye?”

  Kincaid’s voice slid through her like melted butter. She told herself to keep walking. To not let the deep timbre of Kincaid’s voice stop her. But he said the words with that little tease at the end, the tease she had never been able to resist, because it came attached to his smile, and oh, how she’d loved his smile. How she had missed that smile, the way it would echo in her heart and lighten everything.

  Darcy turned. “I said goodbye.”

  “To everyone but me.” He closed the distance between them, until nothing more than a few inches separated them.

  She could have reached out and touched his chest, or drawn in a breath and caught the scent of his cologne. She wanted to do all of those things, but instead she held her hands by her side.

  “I was hurt,” he said, putting a hand over his heart for a moment. “Rejected.”

  Darcy scoffed. “You? Hurt? Rejected? I don’t believe it.”

  “I’m human, Darcy. I get hurt.” He shifted closer, and the tease dropped from his features. His eyes were dark, filled with mystery. “What happened between us?”

  “What, just now? Nothing. I had to go and I—“

  “I meant seven years ago. We were good, I thought, really good. And then…it was over.”

  She shrugged, as if it was no big deal, as if breaking up with him all those years ago hadn’t been as painful as severing a limb. As if she hadn’t thought about him a hundred thousand times in the years since, and wondered how things would be different if Kincaid had stayed. If she had told him the truth and taken her chances. “It was a long time ago. We were young and stupid.”

  “Now we’re older and presumably smarter.” He moved an
other step closer and settled his hands on her waist. Her body reacted to the touch in an instant, anticipation coiling inside her like a spring. She drew in a breath, watched him do the same. Her fingers itched to touch his chest, to feel the solidness of him beneath her palm. “What’s stopping us now?”

  “Maybe I’m not interested.”

  “Maybe you’re not.”

  But she was finding it hard to breathe with him so close. Her gaze dropped to his mouth, back to his eyes. She’d never stopped wanting Kincaid. Never stopped thinking about him. She thought she should say something clever now. Something that would make him back away, but her usually quick tongue had nothing. Not a single word.

  Kincaid raised a hand to her jaw, and when he touched her, it took every ounce of her willpower not to let out a little sigh. He ran his thumb along the delicate edge of her chin, then along her lower lip, his eyes never leaving hers. Heat built between them, fast, insistent, and Darcy found herself moving imperceptibly closer to him, dropping the cowboy boots onto the sand. Wanting, needing to know, to see if he still had that same power over her as he had years ago.

  Kincaid leaned in, brushed his lips against hers, asking without asking for more. She opened her mouth to his, and curved into him, her body remembering, craving. He brought both his hands up to cup her face, and she nearly melted. Their kiss was like an old familiar song, warm and sweet, but then his touch shifted and the song became a new one. Layered with nuances and heat. She pressed into him, into his growing erection. It would be so easy, too easy, to take him into the quiet dark space behind the dunes and—

  No. That would be a mistake—a mistake she’d already made before, and look where it had landed her. What had changed in seven years? Nothing. Not a damned thing.

  Except she had a child now, a child she could lose if she let Kincaid back into her life. One night behind the dunes wasn’t worth that.

  Darcy stumbled back, and drew in a deep breath. “What was that?”

  “That was me proving to you that we’re both still interested. That what we had seven years ago never really died.” He cocked his head. “Am I wrong?”

  “Yes, you’re wrong, Kincaid. Very wrong.” She picked up her boots and hurried back down the beach, half hoping he’d run after her and half praying he wouldn’t.

  *~*~*

  Abby lay in the old twin oak bed, drawing in a long, deep breath. She had one hand on her stomach, another on her heart, willing the panic to ease. The baby kicked against her palm, as if saying, hey, you’re keeping me awake. Abby rubbed against the baby’s foot, and tried again to slow her racing pulse.

  Gordon wasn’t here. He wasn’t on the island. He didn’t know where she was, and if there was a God in heaven, he wouldn’t come looking for her. He would just accept what she had written in the note she’d left on the kitchen table and let her go.

  Oh, how Abby wanted to believe that. Like the fairy tales the nanny had read to her every night, stories of brave knights on white horses and helpless damsels who found everlasting happiness. But real life was not a fairy tale and Gordon Cochran III was not a man who let anything go.

  Especially her.

  He would come, and there would be a reckoning. Abby knew that as well as she knew her own name. She could only hope it was after the baby was born.

  Abby swung her feet over the side of the bed and slipped into a pair of cheap slippers she’d picked up at a Walmart on the mainland—a stop her father would have been horrified at. Going to the discount superstore had been weirdly liberating as she filled a cart with everything she needed for a new life, not caring one whit about labels or designers or what anyone would think. Abby padded out to the kitchen. Maybe a glass of water would help, or some fresh air, or just a change of scenery.

  She poured a glass of water, then slipped out the back door and onto the porch, leaving the light off so she could soak up the night sky, in all its ebony beauty. In the distance, the moon sparkled on the ocean, reflecting a thousand diamonds in the inky water. A bell clanged from somewhere offshore, and the waves whispered their shush-shush song against the sand.

  God, how she loved this place. She always had. Her mother had complained, from the minute her Manolos met the dock, that Fortune’s Island was a far cry from the Hamptons. She’d berated the lack of good help, the overabundance of sunny days, pretty much anything that would get her off the island and back to the society world where she bloomed best. Abby’s father seemed like he enjoyed the quiet of Fortune’s Island, the sense of escape from the busy day-to-day of his law firm. But he rarely spent more than a day or two here, leaving his wife and kids to make their own vacation. Their mother would feign a migraine and take to her bed until the stay was over, while Abby and Kincaid explored the island. Abby had found peace here, then. Maybe she would again.

  Abby drew in another breath, a second, a third, closing her eyes and concentrating on the ocean’s gentle song. It would all be okay. She would be okay, and so would her baby.

  “You all right?”

  She shrieked and jumped, and spun around. Her heart jackhammered in her chest, and she had to force herself not to raise her fists into a defensive posture. It was Kincaid. Just Kincaid. “You should warn a girl before you sneak up behind her.”

  “I did. But you were lost in your own head, and didn’t hear me.”

  “Oh. Sorry.” Abby wrapped her arms around herself, even though it wasn’t cold. When would she find peace again? A measure of calm? When would she stop looking over her shoulder? Freaking out at the smallest sound?

  Kincaid draped an arm over her shoulders. He was a good foot taller than her, a broad, strong man, and his embrace acted like shelter from a storm. All their lives, it had been Abby and Kincaid, the two of them against the Foster machine, built out of expectations and rules and traditions so rigid, it seemed as if their lives were steel cages.

  Abby leaned into her big brother, just as she had the day she’d told him the truth about Gordon. Kincaid’s face had gone stormy, and his fists had tensed at his sides. Then he’d done what he always did—protected her. Five minutes later, he’d taken her and one hastily packed bag away from the sprawling mansion Gordon had built, he said, as a testament, a gift to his wife. A mansion she had hated from the very first day. A gift she’d never wanted because it felt more like a prison.

  Kincaid had left everything—his job, his upscale home in New York, his life—to take her to the only place she’d ever felt at home. This tiny little spit of an island, on the side far from where the wealthy played and turned their back on those “less fortunate.” To the part of Fortune’s Island where people drank Bud and watched the game and kids built sandcastles that washed away at the end of the day.

  Abby Foster had grown up with more money than she could ever possibly spend, and yet, it was here, among people as ordinary as apple pie, that she felt like she could breathe. She could be herself. This was the kind of life she wanted for her baby. Not the one with marble floors and hushed words and silver spoons.

  “You’re going to be fine,” Kincaid said, drawing her tight against him, until her heart began to slow and her breath came easier. “It just takes time. And I’m here with you, to give you all the time you need.”

  She tipped her head to look up at him. “But what if Gordon finds me?”

  “I’ll still be right here.”

  “But what if he fights the divorce?” They were questions Abby had asked before, a hundred times. The same questions that made her heart race and kept her up at night. Every time, Kincaid answered her with the same calm voice, and her worries would ease.

  “He will fight the divorce,” Kincaid said. “You know it and I know it. Gordon isn’t the kind of guy who likes to lose anything.”

  “Especially me.” She turned back to the water and let out a long breath. When she’d been young, the way Gordon courted her had been intoxicating. He’d sent her flowers, whisked her away to Paris, had her favorite cookies delivered in the middle of the n
ight when she’d mentioned a craving. He’d thought of everything, knew everything about her, right down to her shoe size and her favorite drink. At the time, Abby had thought it was because he loved her.

  But it had all been part of an ever-tightening noose. One she only had the guts to escape when Gordon put the baby at risk. It was as if that flipped some long-dormant switch in Abby’s brain.

  “Maybe I should have told Father. I was just…so afraid of what he would do.”

  Kincaid nodded. “I understand that. And honestly, Gordon is the favored one at the law firm, so I’m not so sure Father would have believed you right away. It could have made a bad situation worse. And you don’t need that, especially not right now.”

  Abby nodded. “You’re right.”

  “You’re doing the right thing,” Kincaid said. Just as he’d said a dozen times before.

  “I know that. It’s still scary as heck, though. I mean, he’ll have a right to the baby—”

  “Supervised visits, the lawyer said. There’s enough evidence of…” Kincaid’s voice trailed off and he gestured toward her arms. The bruises had yet to fade, ugly, purple reminders of that last fight. Her ribs still ached, but she didn’t tell Kincaid. He’d want to bring her to another doctor, and the last thing Abby wanted was to tell her story to one more stranger.

  “You don’t have to stay here,” she said. “You can go back to New York.”

  Kincaid stared into the dark nothing that stretched forever, maybe all the way to Lisbon, or Saint-Nazaire. Maybe they should have gone there, as far across the world as a plane could reach.

  “There’s nothing I want in New York.”

  “Working for Dad isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, huh?”

  Kincaid chuckled, but it was a dark, bitter sound. “Definitely not. When I started at the firm, I thought maybe it would bring us closer together.”

  She arched a brow. “Closer?”

  “Well, less distant.”

  Abby snorted. “Both of them have always been as distant as the moon from the earth. I swear, we should ask for DNA tests, because sometimes I find it hard to believe Mother and Father had children at all.” She sighed.