by Marie Force
He thrust the bag of pregnancy tests at her. “Do at least three of them. I want to be sure.”
She took the bag from him, rolled her eyes and headed for the master bedroom, kicking off her heels as she went. Her feet were happy to be rid of them. Sky-high heels were so not her thing, but Tiffany had convinced her she couldn’t wear that dress without those shoes along with the thong she also couldn’t wait to be rid of. On second thought, she’d leave that on until Dan saw what she’d worn under the dress he liked so much. Another thing Tiffany excelled at was getting her to buy racy underwear that her husband went wild over.
He was too funny and too sweet and too everything. Despite his over-the-top ego and ridiculous new habit of speaking of himself in the third person, she loved him more than life itself and couldn’t wait to give him a baby they’d name Dylan, after the adored brother he’d lost in Afghanistan.
In the bathroom, she shut and locked the door, because she wouldn’t put it past him to come in there to watch her pee on the sticks. Her heart gave a little lurch when she realized what she was about to do. She’d suspected she might be pregnant when she missed her last period, but with the trip to LA and the premiere coming up, she’d planned to see Vic when she got back to the island to confirm it. Leave it to her hotshot lawyer husband to beat her to the punch. She shouldn’t be surprised. He didn’t miss much when it came to her, which was one of the things she loved best about him. He paid attention to her, and he had from the start, noting things like the soda she preferred before she’d given him so much as the time of day.
Her hands shook a little with excitement and nervousness as she opened three of the boxes, got the sticks and read the directions to make sure she did it right. She’d never taken a pregnancy test before, had never had so much as a scare, so this was all new to her, too. But at least she knew you had to pee on the sticks and still couldn’t believe he hadn’t known that!
When she was finished, she set the sticks on the counter and got busy taking off her makeup and brushing her hair.
A soft knock on the door sounded through the room.
Smiling, she went to open it to him. He’d removed his suit coat and bow tie, released the top buttons of his dress shirt and had his arms propped over his head on the doorframe. He was devastatingly beautiful, and even though he knew it, she loved him anyway.
“I can’t believe you locked me out.”
“Really? You can’t?”
His playful scowl only made him cuter than he already was. “What’s the verdict?”
“I haven’t looked yet.” She took his hand. “How about we look together?”
He gave her hand a squeeze. “Let’s do it.”
“We already did it. That’s how we ended up in this boat.”
“No one I’d rather be in any boat with, as I proved to you very early on by paying for many a ride on your boat before you were even nice to me.”
They approached the vanity with trepidation, as if it might contain explosives that would detonate if they moved too quickly.
Kara looked down at the tests and saw three big plus signs.
“What’s that mean?”
“Plus means positive.”
“You’re pregnant.”
“So it would seem.”
Dan let out an earsplitting whoop, picked her right up and swung her around, hugging her so tightly, she gasped. “Oh shit, what am I doing? You’re pregnant, and I’m acting like Tarzan.”
“If you start beating your chest, I might leave you.”
He set her down gently, framed her face and gazed down at her. “You can’t ever leave me, because you’d wreck me and because you’re my whole world. You and our baby…”
She was stunned when she saw tears fill his eyes.
“You’ve made me so happy, Kara. You and baby Dylan.”
Kara curled her arms around his neck and went up on tiptoes to kiss him. “You’ve made me just as happy.”
“Let’s go to bed and celebrate.”
“Lead the way, my love.”
He surprised her once again when he lifted her into his arms and carried her to bed, setting her gently on the mattress and then propping himself on his arms to gaze down at her.
“What?”
“Just looking at my beautiful baby mama.”
“I can’t believe we’re going to have a baby.”
“Are you excited?”
She nodded. “And scared.”
“Why?”
“The whole pushing-a-pumpkin-out-of-my-body thing is a tad bit terrifying.”
“Ugh, do you gotta put it that way?”
“How else should I say it?”
He lowered himself to kiss her, brushing the hair back from her face. “Don’t be scared. We’ll get you the best drugs money can buy.”
“I won’t say no to that.”
“I’ll be right there with you. I have no doubt you’ll do great, and you’ll make the prettiest baby ever. He or she will be so lucky to have you as their mom.”
“And you as their dad.”
“This is the best day of my whole life, and not because Flynn Godfrey played me in a movie.”
Kara laughed and brought him all the way down on top of her.
“I don’t want to squish the baby.”
“The baby is fine.” She curled her legs around his hips and pressed against his hard cock. “But your wife could use some attention.”
“My wife has my undivided attention.”
Once upon a time, Kara had thought she would marry a man named Matt, before she found out he’d been secretly dating her sister at the same time he was leading her to believe they were headed toward marriage. Now Kelly was married to him, and Kara was thankful every day that they’d betrayed her, because they’d led her, indirectly, to this perfectly imperfect man.
“What’re you thinking?” he asked, studying her in the intent way he had of making her feel seen and adored.
“About the long and winding road that brought us together and how thankful I am for the people who stabbed me in the back and led me to you.”
“I’m thankful to them, too, even if I still want to stab them for hurting you the way they did.”
“No more stabbing. We’ve had enough of that.” She took hold of the hand that had been sliced open at their engagement party by a knife-wielding Jim Sturgil and kissed the pale white scar that ran the length of his palm.
“Are we really having a baby?” he asked, his expression still awestricken.
“It appears that way.”
“When can I tell people?”
“Not for a while. We want to make sure it’s going to take.”
He’d been rocking against her suggestively until she said that. “What’s that mean?”
“A lot of pregnancies end in miscarriage. Surely you must know that much.”
“Don’t even say that word. Nothing is going to happen to our baby.”
“Still… Let’s keep it between us for now.”
“Ugh, if I have to.”
“You do know it takes, like, forty weeks to have a baby, right?”
“That’s a long-ass time.”
“Yes, it is, and you can’t be extra the entire time.”
He pushed against her suggestively again. “I’m always extra, baby. That’s one of the things you love best about me.”
She rolled her eyes and gave his hair a gentle tug. “How about less talk and more action?”
“Action is my middle name.” He slid a hand under her skirt, encountered the thong and froze. “Well, what have we here?”
“You’ll have to take a look and see.”
“Don’t mind if I do.” He pushed himself up so he could help her out of the dress and then sat back on his heels to admire the skin-tone bra and thong Tiffany had chosen for her. “Could I please have a picture of how you look right now? I swear no one else will ever see it but me.”
Kara laughed to cover her nervousness. “Sure.”
/> Dan bounded off the bed to get his phone. “Don’t move.” When he returned to the room, he stopped short at the sight of her… hair loose around her shoulders, propped on her elbows, legs slightly apart.
Before him, she wouldn’t have had the courage to put herself on display that way. But he loved her so much and made her feel so desired that it was easy to do things with him that wouldn’t have happened with anyone else.
He took a couple of quick photos, tossed the camera aside and hastily undressed before rejoining her on the bed and kissing her with the kind of wild desire that had become part of her everyday life. “Want you so bad, sweet Kara, love of my life, mother of my baby.”
“I want you, too. Always.”
He was in such a rush, he didn’t bother to remove the thong, but rather moved it out of his way and took what they both needed. “Yes. God, I was dying for you all night.”
No one had ever said things like that to her before he did. He made love to her with urgency and reverence. “Look at me, sweetheart.”
She looked up at him.
“Tell me the truth.”
“About what?”
“You’re not picturing Flynn Godfrey right now, are you?”
Sputtering with laughter, Kara spanked his ass. “Shut up and finish what you started, will you?”
“Gladly.”
Chapter 6
On Saturday morning, Dara Watkins stood on the ferry’s bow and watched the island come into sight as the sea spray brought back memories still so painful, she almost couldn’t bear them. Lewis had loved the ocean and their annual trips to North Carolina’s Outer Banks, where he’d chased the seagulls, dug holes in the sand and splashed in the surf.
The beach had been one of their happiest places, although everywhere had been happy with him.
Now…
Now she just didn’t care.
Oliver had applied for the lighthouse job without consulting with her first, figuring it was a long shot. And when the Gansett Island Town Council had chosen them from all the applicants, he’d been excited about something for the first time in a year of dark despair. So she’d gone along with his plan because it was something to do other than obsess about what used to be. But she simply didn’t care. She didn’t care about anything or anyone, even Oliver.
She didn’t know if he knew that and didn’t care if he did.
If it was possible to be completely dead inside while continuing to live, she was the epitome of the walking dead. Her child was gone. Her life had lost all meaning, and a year in a lighthouse on Gansett Island wasn’t going to fix what was so irreparably broken in her.
It certainly wouldn’t bring Lewis back, which was the only thing she really wanted, to go back to that fateful Sunday, to the peaceful hours before their lives had been shattered. Since that couldn’t happen, what else mattered?
Nothing. Not even the husband she’d once adored. Everything inside her was dead, even her love for him, and she didn’t care.
With their dog Maisy’s leash looped around his wrist, Oliver approached her, holding two coffees, and handed one to her.
She took it from him. “Thanks.”
“Does it look familiar?” he asked of the island view.
“Not really. I was twelve the one time I came with my friend’s family. I don’t remember much about it, except there was ice cream.” Even the words ice cream were painful now. Lewis had loved ice cream.
Dara fixed her gaze on the rugged coastline of the island and sipped from the coffee cup. For a time after they’d lost Lewis, she’d wanted to end her own life. She’d gone so far as to think about how best to achieve that goal. But then her parents had come to visit, and her mother had tuned in to Dara’s deepening despair.
“Please don’t put me through what you’re going through,” her mother had said tearfully. “No matter how bad it gets, please don’t do that to me.”
Dara had had nothing to say in response to that, but her mother’s pleas had ended those thoughts. Since then, she’d been forced to figure out how to stay alive while wishing she were dead so she could be with her baby again.
Before disaster struck, she’d been a prosecutor. Now, she was a shell of that person, someone who’d once had a life in addition to being Lewis’s mom. Maybe if she hadn’t been so ambitious, she wouldn’t have been sealed off in her office when her toddler let himself out of the house that fateful afternoon.
“Looks like a pretty place,” Oliver said.
“Yes.”
That counted as conversation for them these days. It was all she was capable of—one-word answers and a nod to let him know she’d heard whatever he’d said.
She didn’t care what he said.
He’d suffered as much as she had, if not more. She’d been working when Lewis left the house. Oliver had been asleep on the sofa. He blamed himself. Dara blamed him. She hated him for taking a nap, and yes, she knew that was unfair. She didn’t care about fairness or anything else.
Her son was dead. What else mattered? Nothing mattered. That’s why she didn’t care about going to Gansett Island to live in a lighthouse. A change in geography wasn’t going to fix what was wrong with her, what was wrong with them.
Maisy nudged at her leg.
Dara scratched the Lab’s blond head absently. Sometimes she felt like Maisy was the only one who truly understood how she felt. Maisy had seen it happen and had never been the same. Her heartbreak was every bit as significant as Dara’s, and that made Maisy the one “person” Dara still truly cared about.
“Dara.”
She realized Oliver had been trying to get her attention.
“They’re calling us to the car.”
“Oh. Okay.”
As she followed him through the large cabin to the stairs, a woman chasing a toddler grabbed him right before he would’ve crashed into Dara.
“I’m so sorry,” the boy’s mother said, grimacing. “He’s a holy terror today.”
Dara had to stop herself from telling her to enjoy every second with her holy terror because you never knew when they might be ripped from your life. She’d been as guilty as the next busy mother of not fully appreciating what she’d had until he was gone. And now she’d give anything for one more chance to chase Lewis, to grab him and hug him and chastise him for trying to get away.
They’d always been so careful with him, she thought as she went down the stairs to the deck where they’d left their car. They’d never let him out of their sight, hadn’t taken any chances with his safety and had put him in swim lessons as soon as possible because several of their friends had pools. Their child wasn’t going to drown on her watch.
That was the thing she couldn’t get past. They’d done everything right, and tragedy had found them anyway. She was bitter about that part of their story. She’d seen friends’ kids run wild, unsupervised, and had never let Lewis do things that might get him hurt, or worse. And the bad thing had happened anyway.
As they waited in Oliver’s SUV for the cars in front of them to drive off the ferry, Dara wondered what the hell she was doing on this island in the middle of nowhere. “How do we know how to find the lighthouse?” Dara asked.
“Mr. McCarthy, the president of the Gansett Town Council, is meeting us at the ferry office.”
In her past life, Dara would’ve had more questions. Like, how would they recognize Mr. McCarthy, and what would it be like to live in a lighthouse, and what was there to do on Gansett Island? Now? She didn’t care. Today was just another day to get through on her way to being reunited with her precious son. That was what she cared about—being with Lewis again and ridding herself of the terrible, desperate ache she lived with every minute of every day. Until that day, she put one foot in front of the other and functioned at the most basic level possible.
They drove off the ferry into an area where people, cars, cargo and bikes converged into a much busier scene than she would’ve expected for a small island in the middle of nowhere.
Oliver put down the window and asked one of the uniformed employees where the ferry office was.
He pointed at a small shingled building on the far side of the parking lot.
“Thanks.” Oliver drove to the building, where a tall man with gray hair waited with a petite blonde woman. “That’s him.” Oliver pulled into one of the few available parking spaces and got out of the car to shake hands with both of them.
Because the window was up and the AC on, Dara couldn’t hear them getting acquainted and made no move to get out to join them. A tap on the window had her putting it down.
“Hi, Dara, I’m Linda McCarthy. I wanted to welcome you to Gansett.”
“Thank you. It’s nice to meet you.” She went through the motions, shook the woman’s outstretched hand, did what was expected. That was the easy stuff.
“We’re going to show you the way to the lighthouse.”
“Sounds good. Thank you.”
Oliver got back in the car, and they followed Mr. McCarthy’s pickup truck out of the busy downtown area to a far more rural road that wound around the island.
“It sure is pretty,” Oliver said.
She hadn’t noticed. “Uh-huh.”
A short time later, they drove through an open gate and down a long drive that led to the lighthouse at the edge of the coastline. The property was apparently open to the public, which no one had bothered to mention as far as she knew, and the lighthouse itself was a lot smaller than she’d expected it to be. Although, what did she have to compare it to?
Dara got out of the car, took a look around, hoping she might feel a spark of anything, but like always, there was just more nothing.
Linda handed her a set of keys. “The big one is for the gate, which is one of the few official duties the lighthouse keepers have. You’re also asked to report the weather conditions to the Coast Guard twice a day and interact with the visitors as you see fit.”
“That last part isn’t required, is it?”
“Of course not. You can do whatever you wish. No one will be checking. Well, except for the Coast Guard for the weather.”
“That’s fine,” Dara said.
“Come in and let me show you around. It’s the cutest place.”
