Ex on the Beach

by Kim Law

  The pieces started clicking into place. Her aunt had stolen James from her sister.

  “Mom really loved him?” Andie asked.

  Ginny nodded, looking so ashamed. “She did. But I wanted him. I wasn’t the type to want college, and I couldn’t see anything else ahead of me in life. Other than James. I knew if I could win him, I would have everything I ever wanted. A husband, kids.” Her voice broke and she lifted a hand to wipe tears from her eyes. “I told him that your mother had moved on. Said she’d never really cared for him.”

  Ouch. It wasn’t merely that he’d chosen her Ginny over her mother; Ginny really had stolen him.

  “I take it Mom had done no such thing?”

  “She was planning to look for a job in Jacksonville when she got out of college. It’s a long drive, but within driving distance of here. She wanted to marry him.”

  “But you married him first.” Andie didn’t have to ask; she knew. Ginny had married James the spring that her mother had been a junior in college.

  “She didn’t come for the wedding, of course. Only Mama. Athena had passed away from an overdose a couple months before, and Grandmother wasn’t healthy enough to make the drive.”

  They’d originally been from a small town in northeast Georgia. Andie’s grandmother hadn’t passed away until Andie was seven, and she and Cassie had never visited her. She seemed to remember Cassie going to the funeral, though. Alone.

  “Mama couldn’t forgive Cassie for not coming down for the wedding, especially after losing Athena earlier in the year. She didn’t know what had transpired between us.”

  That made sense. So Cassie had lost the love of her life, her sister, and her mother all at the same time. Not to mention her other sister dying that same year and her father the year before. No wonder she was so hard.

  They were nearing the back of Aunt Ginny’s house now, so they both trudged through the sand and sat down on the wooden steps of the walkway. With their backs to the house, they stared out at the water.

  Neither of them touched the other, and Andie didn’t know whether to reach out and take Aunt Ginny’s hand or not. It almost seemed like she was purposely drawing in on herself.

  Maybe she was too embarrassed to let Andie comfort her at the moment.

  “We bought those ankle bracelets that last year she was here,” Ginny whispered.

  Andie jerked her head around. “What?”

  “The anklet you wear all the time.” Ginny motioned toward Andie’s ankle. “We bought them the summer I graduated high school. Hers was the moon, mine was a star. Together forever. That’s what they stood for. We were so close back then.”

  And then Ginny had stolen her mother’s man, and her mother had never worn the jewelry again.

  A knot formed in Andie’s throat. She felt like she should be mad on her mother’s behalf, but seeing Ginny’s overwhelming sadness kept her in check. Plus, it wasn’t as if Cassie had been a great mother to her. Ginny had played that role more than anyone.

  Andie turned to Ginny and took her hand in hers. “Why did my mother not like me, then? She implied the issue between her and me had something to do with whatever had happened between you two.” Andie shook her head, unable to make sense of it. “I don’t get it. That was all years before I came along. Mom had a husband, you had James. What could all that possibly have to do with me?”

  Sad, weary eyes lifted to Andie’s face and a cold tremor of dread started at the base of Andie’s spine. She couldn’t quite put her finger on the problem, but she knew the next words out of Ginny’s mouth were going to be bad.

  “James traveled on business. The year he died, he spent a couple days in Louisville.”

  Her mother had lived in Louisville.

  “He called her. Invited her to his hotel for dinner.”

  Andie closed her eyes. She could see exactly where this was headed. “James is my father, isn’t he?” she whispered.

  Ginny’s hand now squeezed hers, but she didn’t speak. Instead, she waited for Andie to open her eyes again.

  When she did, Ginny explained, “He knew he was dying. I didn’t know it yet, but he did. So he went to see your mother. He wanted to know why she’d changed her mind all those years ago.”

  Andie ached for her aunt. “He found out she hadn’t?”

  Ginny nodded. “And they made you. Sixteen years we made love, and I couldn’t get pregnant once. One night with your mother, and you were conceived. He came home and told me he’d found out the truth. And he told me he’d been with your mother. He felt guilty, I think. So he confessed. I was furious, yet I couldn’t help but take part of the blame myself. He’d loved her first. I knew that when I married him.”

  “But he loved you, too, right?” Andie could see her aunt’s pain, and she wanted desperately to put a stop to it. “He wouldn’t have married you if he hadn’t loved you, right?”

  “Oh, sweetheart.” Ginny chuckled. “Don’t worry about me. Yes, he loved me. Very much. We were very happy together. But I don’t think he ever quite got over your mother.”

  “He didn’t plan to leave you for her, did he?” Andie gasped. “Oh my God, he didn’t leave you?”

  “No. He didn’t leave me. Though Lord knows I was mad enough, I wanted to leave him. But instead, he told me that he had a rare cancer and had been given less than a year to live. He was dying. He would honor our vows and be my husband until the day he died, because, yes, he did love me. But he’d wanted to see your mother one last time before he passed. He said he hadn’t intended to make love to her, but at the same time, he didn’t regret it.

  “It hurt me,” Ginny continued. “Broke my heart and crushed my spirit. We’d had something that had been so special. But I couldn’t leave him, either. I’d promised to stand by him, and I would. I did. Until his dying breath.” She closed her eyes for a moment and then opened them. “I even called Cassie to come see him before he died, but she refused. I think she was as mad at him for believing what I’d told him as she was at me for doing it.”

  “But she came for his funeral?”

  “And I saw she was seven months pregnant.”

  Andie’s chest felt hollow. Seeing Cassie carry the baby Ginny had wanted all her life must have been catastrophic. “You knew the baby — that I — was his?”

  “There was no doubt in my mind.”

  “That must have been hard.”

  A sardonic smile lifted Ginny’s lips. “I’d thought finding out James still cared for her after all those years had been hard. But this …” She shook her head. “I’m sorry, child, but I hated you for the first few years of your life. I couldn’t stand knowing you existed.”

  “That’s understandable, Aunt Ginny.” And then it made sense why as a young child she hadn’t known Ginny. “But after Mom got married, again, I started coming to see you. What changed?”

  “After about four years, I finally pulled myself out of my grief and anger over everything that had happened. I started believing in fate. I believed you’d been born for a reason, and that reason included me.” She gave Andie a sad smile. “I called your mother. I wanted to see James’s child. I deserved to see my husband’s child.”

  “She refused,” Andie guessed.

  Ginny nodded. “She refused. I can’t say I blamed her. I’d hurt her bad.”

  “But it wasn’t like she was the mother of the year or anything.” Andie suddenly found she was mad at her mother. “She wasn’t doing a good job — she didn’t even want to be a mother — and at the same time she was keeping me from you. Someone who did want kids. Someone who cared about me.”

  “Don’t be mad at your mother. And never think she didn’t care for you. She had gone her whole life being someone other than a mother. She’d lost James, and she felt all she had was her career. She worked hard for what she had. Then you came along, and she didn’t know how to revert to being anything else. Plus, if she had, I suspect it would have brought out the hurt of everything all over again.”

&nbs
p; “She was not a good mother,” Andie insisted. “She should have let me see you earlier.”

  “She needed to punish me, Andie. I’d hurt your mother a lot. She needed to feel like she had some control in the matter.”

  “Then why did she finally let me see you?” And then her mother’s words came back to her: John wanted to go places. It was one of the things I promised him when we got married. “She only let me come when she found someone else,” she accused.

  “But at least she let you come here, baby. That’s what counts.”

  Anger for the games her mother had played made her clench her hands into fists, but at the same time, she could see her mother’s reasoning. She glanced at Ginny. “She knew you’d be a good mother, didn’t she? She told me last night that she should have let me stay with you year-round. I thought it was because she didn’t want me at all. But it was because she could tell I was happier with you.”

  The guilt of that had been with Andie most of her life. She liked her aunt better than her own mother.

  Aunt Ginny reached out and wrapped both arms around her. “She loved you, sweetheart. She just had no idea how to be a mother with the years of anger she’d built up. And now she wants a second chance.” Ginny leaned back and stroked Andie’s cheek. “I hope you’ll give it to her.”

  Andie didn’t even have to think about it, and that amazed her. Of course she would give it to her. She wanted a relationship with her mother, too. She always had. She wouldn’t be petty and play games as her mother had.

  She stood, ready to go in so she could digest everything she’d just been told. When she looked toward the house, she could make out Mark sitting on the balcony, watching them. He was waiting for her. Just as she’d asked him to.

  And she found that for the first time in her life, she wanted to go to him and bare her soul. She wanted to let him share her burdens, and help her figure out what to do next. And then she wanted to share his bed and let him hold her through the night.

  But at the same time she was terrified. She cared about Mark way more than she should.

  Ginny saw where Andie’s line of sight had landed. “He still cares for you, you know?”

  “I know.” Andie was having a hard time making her feet take a step forward. “I’m beginning to wonder if he ever stopped.”

  “Like you never did?”

  Andie looked at Ginny and nodded. “Like I never did.” She turned back to Mark. “Mom says she’ll help you kick his butt if he hurts me again.”

  Ginny laughed then, sounding more like herself than she had all night. “That sounds like a good plan to me. Your mother did know how to kick some butt in her day.”

  Again, Andie couldn’t picture it. Her mom might break a nail and rip a brand-name business suit if she kicked someone’s butt.

  She peered at Ginny in the dark. “You two going to be able to fix this between you?”

  Ginny nodded. “We’ve already started. Today was a good day.”

  “And between her and me?” Andie asked. “You think that’s possible?”

  “I’ve no doubt, sweetheart. You might find that you even like who she is if you give her a chance.”

  That might be stretching it, but Andie was willing to give a relationship a try.

  “Let’s go in,” Andie suggested. “I want to talk to Mark.”

  They picked up their sandals, and Ginny slipped her arm through Andie’s as she had done on the walk out. “I think you should consider going for it with him,” Ginny said.

  Andie eyed her aunt. “Did you forget our earlier conversation? I already did. And since you wanted to know,” she added in a teasing voice, “it was off-the-charts good.”

  Ginny’s laughter rang out into the night, and Andie smiled with her. If her aunt was ballsy enough to ask about her love life, she figured she should feel free to tell her about it.

  “Good to hear it. Though from the sounds coming from your room, I assumed it had to be.”

  Andie felt that heat rising to her face again.

  “That wasn’t what I was talking about, though,” Ginny confessed.

  “No?”

  “No.” Ginny squeezed Andie’s arm as they stopped, and both of them stared up at Mark. “I think you should go for love again.”

  This shocked Andie. “After all you went through, you can say that? Don’t you have regrets? Seems life would have been easier without love.”

  “I have few regrets in my life, child. I regret losing your mother for all those years. And I regret that I went about things the way I did. I should have at least told her I felt the same way about James, and then let him choose. But I can’t truly regret anything else, because I got sixteen good years with my husband, and I got you out of it.”

  Andie looked up at Mark again. “It’s scary,” she whispered.

  “The best things are.”

  And she knew that she did want to go for it. She wanted love, and she wanted Mark. But she just wasn’t sure she wouldn’t get crushed in the deal.

  “I do have one more thing to admit,” Ginny said as they started forward again, heading toward the back stairs to the house.

  “Oh geez, Aunt Ginny.” Andie glanced sideways at her aunt. She wasn’t sure could take much more. “What else?”

  “Apparently James was sneakier than either your mother or I thought. He somehow knew that she was pregnant with you. After he died, his lawyer surprised us both.”

  “He left something for Mom?”

  Aunt Ginny shook her head. “He left something for you.” She motioned to the house. “The house is yours, child.”

  EPISODE EIGHT

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Mark heard Andie’s bedroom door open and close from where he sat on the deck. Her lights didn’t go on. Nor did she step outside.

  He tapped his thumbs against each other as he waited. He was relaxed back in the same lounge chair he’d been in the first night they’d sat out there together, and he wondered if she would make him go in to her. His eyes closed as he concentrated, forcing his breathing to remain steady. It would be nice if she came to him.

  She knew he was on the deck. He’d seen her catch sight of him as she’d returned to the house with Ginny. Although it was dark outside, he had no doubt that her gaze had been on him.

  She and Ginny had both worn an air of stress as they’d walked, as if they’d been in deep discussion about a difficult subject. To the casual observer, the strain might not have been noticeable, but neither of them had moved as gracefully as they usually did. Their gaits had been tight, their steps short. And they’d held each other’s arms as if needing the physical comfort of the other.

  He assumed the issue between them had to do with Cassie. And though he could easily step inside Andie’s room and offer a shoulder to lean on, he couldn’t help but want her to seek him out.

  That desire came with knowing that he was once again vulnerable to her.

  Just like before, he was in too deep. There was no other way to go but forward, and though he knew she cared for him, he wasn’t sure how much. He had no idea if they stood the chance of going anywhere, or if she could simply walk away at the end of next week.

  He’d figured out his own feelings that afternoon on the boat. It had been a culmination of things. His desire to not talk to Rob because his doing so would hurt Andie. The fact he’d put a hook in her hand — and he’d just about shriveled up and died at the sight of it. And then her unbridled excitement when he’d locked them in the small bathroom together.

  He would have opened the door if she’d preferred. Done nothing. Pushed for nothing. But the way she’d lit up in front of him had given him a power he could get addicted to.

  She’d wanted him. And she hadn’t cared — too much — what anyone else had thought.

  Of course, it could have just been desire on her part and nothing else.

  Not for him.

  He’d looked into her eyes in that room and known he had to figure out a way to get her to see
it could be more. They could be more.

  The screen door opened and she stood there, her long dress flowing around her legs in the breeze and her hair lifting up off her shoulders. She looked at him and his heart settled into a steady thump.

  “Good talk with Ginny?” he asked. He cleared his throat when his voice came out tight.

  She nodded but didn’t step any farther out onto the deck. Just watched him, her eyes steady and direct — but not necessarily seeing him after that first glimpse. She’d drifted a million miles away.

  He waited. Something was bothering her. She’d held back a lot in the past. Either not bothered to share with him, or skated over the issues. Of course, he’d allowed it. But tonight he wanted her to see that he was there for her. He wanted her to want to share with him.

  Finally, she sucked in a deep breath and blinked, and her gaze once again sought his. He let out the breath he’d been holding.

  “This house belongs to me,” she stated.

  He sat up. “What?”

  “This house,” she murmured. She stepped across the threshold of her room and slid the screen door shut behind her, then moved across the deck and stared out at the sea. “It belongs to me — or it will.”

  Mark rose and went to her side. “Is that what Ginny told you tonight?”

  “Some of it.” She nodded. “Her husband, James, left it to me, to be signed over at my aunt’s discretion. Aunt Ginny said she’d sign it over now if I want. But I said no. It’s her home.”

  “Sounds like it’s yours, too.” What a shocker. “Any idea why he left it to you? He died before you were born, right?”

  Andie turned to lean against the railing so that she was face-to-face with Mark. The skin between her eyes pinched as she held his gaze. Then she glanced away — looking over his shoulder. “He was apparently my father,” she whispered into the night. “He and my mother had a past before Ginny, and then they had one night together years later. I was the result. Then he died.” Her voice trembled. “Seven months later.”

  “Oh, babe.” Mark took her hands in his, wanting to pull her close, but fearing the movement would squelch the flow of words. But he had to touch her. Had to let her know he was there for her. “You never had any idea?” he asked.