by Marie Force
He glanced over at his wife, Maddie, sleeping on her side the way Dr. Cal had instructed to minimize the stress on the baby. The thought of being unable to get her help if she needed it made him crazy. A high-risk pregnancy on an island was a fool’s errand, but he’d had no luck convincing her to move their family to the mainland until the baby was born.
Hoping the weather wasn’t as bad as it sounded, Mac got up to look out the window. Sure enough, it was every bit as bad as it sounded. In the distance, he could see the ocean whipped into a frenzy. Rain was coming down sideways in the blustery wind. Running a hand over his chest, Mac wondered if he was having a heart attack. The tightness had been ever-present since the accident at the marina that left his father injured.
The accident had briefly put him in the hospital, too, which had stressed out Maddie. After she went into premature labor and was put on bed rest for the remainder of her pregnancy, she’d refused to leave their island home. Mac had no choice but to cede to her wishes.
Mac went to his dresser to retrieve his phone. A text message from the Gansett Island Ferry Company made it official: service was temporarily suspended. With the wind gusting to what sounded like at least fifty miles per hour, the airport would be closed, too. No way out, Mac thought as the pain in his chest intensified.
Nightmare scenarios such as this had driven him crazy for weeks now. Even when the ferries were running, it was a long hour to the mainland and then more time to get to a hospital. In the meantime, what if something happened that Cal couldn’t handle? What if Maddie needed something he couldn’t get for her? What if something happened to her—
“Mac?”
He turned away from the window and went to her. “I thought you’d sleep awhile yet,” he said, smoothing a hand over her caramel-colored hair. “It’s early.”
“Why are you up?”
“The wind woke me.” His chest began to ache again as he wondered how long they’d be without ferry service. He turned on the bedside light so he could see her in the early morning gloom. “How do you feel?”
“Fat. Horrible.” Tears filled her golden eyes. “Hideous.”
“Aww, baby.” He crawled back into bed and drew her—as best he could—into his arms. They hadn’t been able to make love in weeks, which wasn’t doing much to help his overwhelming anxiety. “Don’t say that. You’re gorgeous, glowing and radiant.” How would they get through two more months of her being stuck in bed all day, every day?
“You have to say that. You did this to me.”
She was so petulant and cute that Mac laughed, even though he knew she wouldn’t appreciate it.
Fat tears spilled from her eyes and wet her cheeks. “It’s not funny.”
“I know,” he said, kissing away her tears. She’d been so happy and content yesterday at the wedding, surrounded by family and friends. The thought gave him an idea of how he could lift her spirits a bit before everyone scattered again after the storm let up.
Just as he was about to share his idea with her, the bedside light flickered and died.
Chapter 2
The first memory struck Grant while he was in the shower—the best blowjob of his life. As he stood under the hot water, images of Stephanie’s lithe body and talented lips working their way from his chest to his stomach to his straining erection overwhelmed him. Thinking about it had him hard and ready to go again in two seconds flat.
“Jesus,” he muttered, closing his eyes to relive it even as he was filled with guilt. That never had been Abby’s favorite thing to do in bed, so he’d gone without more often than not. On the other hand, Stephanie’s enthusiasm had been apparent as she licked and sucked and stroked.
Moaning, Grant took matters into his own hand, still thinking about the way it had felt to be engulfed in the heat of her mouth with her pierced tongue lashing him. The memory sent him into a heart-pounding climax, and afterward, he stood panting in the shower until the hot water began to ebb. Stepping out of the shower on wobbly legs, Grant realized the power had gone out.
“Great,” he muttered as he reached for a towel. “This day just gets better and better.”
Disgusted with himself for getting so worked up over memories of a night that never should’ve happened, Grant pulled on jeans and a long-sleeved T-shirt. The truth was, he’d gone too long without. That was the only possible explanation for why he’d responded to Stephanie the way he had. More than a year ago, Abby had told him if he went back to Los Angeles after a visit home for Mac’s wedding that things were over between them.
To be honest, Grant hadn’t believed her. They’d been together so long that he simply couldn’t imagine life without her at the center of it. He’d tried to tell her then how close he was to a new deal to write a movie for a big producer. Of course she’d heard that same story a hundred times before and had laid down her ultimatum.
“You can write anywhere in the whole wide world, Grant,” she’d said to him, her big brown eyes pleading with him to stay with her on the island where she’d established a successful business after moving home from LA. “Why can’t you write in the one place where I want to be?”
Grant hadn’t seen any choice but to go and see things through with the producer. However, like everything else since he won the Academy Award for best original screenplay, the deal had fallen through, and he was left with no job, and now no Abby, either.
In the long year away from her, he’d remained faithful to her and under the mistaken assumption that she’d done the same. Until he heard from his mother that not only was Abby dating again, she was engaged! To someone else! Grant had played this one all wrong. No doubt about that. But no swashbuckling cowboy doctor from Texas was going to steal his woman without a fight.
He just wished he had the first clue how to proceed in his campaign to win her back. Clearly, sleeping with Stephanie had been a mistake of epic proportions, he thought, as images of that talented, pierced tongue made their way through the fog in his brain to torture him once again.
Groaning, he left the bedroom and went in search of something he could wear to stay dry in this weather. Luckily, Joe had left some foul-weather gear in Janey’s closet. Grant put on the jacket and managed to corral Janey’s menagerie of special-needs pets into the backyard for a quick visit. The weather scared the heck out of several of them who refused to pee, which meant he could expect a mess when he got back later. He fed them and settled them into the room where they stayed when his sister was out.
The whole time, Riley, the German shepherd glared at him, as if he knew what a scumbag Grant had been the night before. Things were pretty bad if a dog could make him feel guilty.
On his way out the door, he rolled the yellow foul-weather pants into a ball that he tucked under his arm for the mad dash to his father’s truck in the driveway.
With his dad still recovering from a head injury and fractured arm, Grant had commandeered the truck for the time being. Although, with his brothers Evan and Adam in town for the wedding—and now stuck here for who knew how long—Grant made a mental note to hide the keys from his younger siblings the way he had when they were teenagers.
During the short ride to the marina, he encountered downed trees and power lines as well as some flooded side streets. He wondered how Stephanie had gotten back to the marina where she stayed in a room behind the restaurant and felt guilty about leaving her to fend for herself in the storm.
The windshield wipers in the truck were no match for the pouring rain, so Grant cracked the window, trying to find some added visibility. They hadn’t had a storm like this in decades. He remembered being without power once for ten days when all five McCarthy siblings were still living at home. That had been a long ten days.
Arriving at the marina, the first thing he saw was Stephanie’s shapely behind sticking out of the toolshed as she wrestled with something. So much for a nice, easy morning, sitting around drinking coffee and shooting the bull with anyone who braved the storm.
Looked like the
re was real work to be done, which was about the last thing Grant could handle with a percussion section still at work in his skull. He got out of the truck and jogged over to her. The rain had soaked her thin khaki shorts, which highlighted her dark thong. Grant bit back a curse as his body responded predictably to the view. “Let me help,” he said, sounding angrier than he’d intended.
Startled by his sudden appearance, she spun around, wide-eyed. That’s when the second memory of the night before decided to show up—the same wide-eyed look she’d given him as he entered her for the first time.
“For Christ’s sake,” he muttered as he stepped around her to get to the generator she’d been trying to remove from the shed.
“What’s your problem?” she asked, wiping the rain from her face with the sleeve of a windbreaker that was far less of a jacket than she needed for this storm.
“No problem.” He grunted under the strain of trying to lift the generator.
“Let me help you before you throw your back out.” They had to shout to be heard over the roar of the wind.
“You were doing it yourself. Why can’t I?”
“I couldn’t budge it.”
Grant turned and grabbed the back half while she took the front. Somehow, they managed to muscle it to the small deck outside the marina’s kitchen.
“I’ll get the gas can,” she said when it was in place.
“I will. Where is it?”
“I’m perfectly capable of doing it.”
Grant closed his eyes and counted to ten, praying for relief from the pounding in his skull and the stubborn woman. “I said I’ll get it. Just tell me where it is.”
“Figure it out.” She turned and walked away from him, giving him yet another view of her soaking-wet ass, which of course his addled brain morphed into the nude version he’d seen earlier. He’d had more boners in the two hours since he woke up with her than he normally had in two days, which was absolutely infuriating.
As he stomped back into the rain to search for the gas can, he wondered why his body reacted so strongly to her when he didn’t even like her. She was prickly and mouthy and stubborn as hell. Usually, she wasn’t much to look at either. Her hair was always spiky and messy looking; she was skinny, and she had a pierced tongue—he couldn’t imagine letting someone drill a hole in his tongue, although he had liked the feel of the stud on his shaft. Stop it! Stop thinking about that!
Despite his overwhelming desire to forget, the memory of her pierced tongue working up and down the side of his cock returned for yet another visit. “Goddamn it,” he screamed into the roaring wind. “I don’t want her! I don’t want to think about what happened with her anymore! I want Abby. I love Abby.”
Feeling somewhat better after the conversation with the wind, he located the astoundingly heavy gas can and dragged it to the doorway of the shed, just as a gust of wind caused the door to slam shut. On his hand. Grant let out an ungodly scream as pain whipped up his arm. “Son of a bitch!”
The door swung open. “Bro?” Mac appeared out of the gloom and rain, his head covered by a navy blue foul-weather jacket. “Who’re you screaming at?”
Clutching his hand, Grant couldn’t get a word past the agony.
“What’s wrong with you?” Mac asked, drawing him out of the shed and into the light.
“Hand,” Grant managed to say. “Door.”
“Shit,” Mac said. “Let me see.”
Grant pulled his other hand away and nearly passed out at the sight of blood pouring from an open wound in his palm.
Mac put an arm around Grant to lead him inside. “Don’t faint.”
“Oh man,” Stephanie said when she saw them coming. “What happened?”
“From what I can gather,” Mac said, “the door slammed shut on his hand.”
Stephanie took a close, assessing look. “Needs stitches.” She unearthed a clean white cloth and wrapped it around Grant’s injured hand.
“Go easy, will you?” Grant snapped.
She scowled at him and finished wrapping tape around the cloth.
“Can you take him?” Mac asked her. “I came to get the other generator for the house, but I need to get back to Maddie and Thomas.”
“I can take myself,” Grant said, standing and then swaying when the room tilted.
“Sit your ass down before you pass out and crack your skull.” Mac pushed his brother back into the chair. “Dad’s busted skull is enough for one summer.”
“I’ll take him,” Stephanie said. “We need to get the generator going for the fridge and freezer, though.”
“I’ll take care of that before I split. We can close up here for the day. I checked last night and all the boats are tied down tight for the storm. Won’t be anyone coming or going today.”
“Okay,” Stephanie said.
As they worked out the logistics, Grant held back the growing need to puke.
“I was going to tell you guys that since Joe and Janey are stuck here, they’re coming over to open their wedding gifts tonight. We’re making a tropical storm party out of it, so come on over.”
Grant moaned, reminding them of his injury.
“Stop being such a baby,” Stephanie said. “It’s a scratch.”
Mac laughed and sent Grant a sympathetic smile. “I’ll leave you in good hands, bro. Let me know how you make out at the clinic.”
That’s when it hit him that he’d be relying upon Abby’s fiancé to stitch him up. “Never mind,” Grant said. “I’m not going there.”
“The hell you aren’t,” his bossy older brother said. “You want me to call Mom and sic her on you?”
“You wouldn’t do that.”
“Wanna bet? You need stitches and probably a tetanus shot. Don’t be a fool.”
“I’ve got him.” Stephanie manhandled him out of the chair and had him on the way to his father’s truck before Grant even knew what hit him. She was awfully strong for such a skinny chick. Rummaging around in his shorts pocket for the keys, she rubbed against his package, startling him.
“Watch what you’re grabbing, will ya?”
“Nothing I haven’t already seen.”
“Don’t remind me,” he muttered and then wanted to shoot himself for being so flippant as a flash of pain darted across her face. It was gone as fast as it came.
She slammed the car door, narrowly missing his foot. The wind and rain followed her into the driver’s seat.
“Just take me back to Janey’s. I don’t need to go to the clinic. I can take care of it at home.”
Stephanie didn’t say a word as she started the truck, adjusted all the mirrors and cautiously shifted the truck into drive.
“You do have a license, don’t you?”
“Of course I do.”
“Then why’re you driving like an eighty-year-old?”
“Because we’re in the midst of a tropical storm, in case you failed to notice, and this is your father’s truck. I don’t want anything to happen to it.”
“He’s used to things happening to his trucks. He had five kids driving them at one point or another.”
“Nothing will happen to it while I’m driving. Now be quiet so I can concentrate.”
Grant wanted to remind her that his family employed her, but since he’d already acted like enough of a jerk around her, he kept his silence—until she took a right toward the clinic rather than a left toward Janey’s. “Wait a minute! I said I want to go home!”
“And I said you need stitches.”
“You’re not the boss of me!”
“What’re you? Three? Did Thomas teach you that?” She referred to Mac and Maddie’s three-year-old son. “I heard him say that to his father at the wedding.”
Fuming, Grant had to force himself to stay calm. “I’m not going in the clinic.”
“I’ll call your mother.”
He spun around in the seat to stare at her. “You wouldn’t dare.”
“Try me. I love Linda. I have her number on speed dial.
”
“You’re the devil.”
“Sticks and stones…”
Grant had never had a more ridiculous conversation. He was about to make a second attempt to talk her out of going to the clinic when the wound bled through the cloth and quickly turned the white fabric red.
Stephanie noticed and pressed harder on the accelerator.
“Easy does it. I think you’re going thirty now.”
“Shut up.”
“You shut up.”
She shook her head, seeming regretful. “I told you it was a bad idea to sleep together.”
“When did you tell me that?” Of course he had no recollection of that but had plenty of other vivid memories torturing him all morning.
“Before we slept together. We got along just fine before.”
“We did not. We’ve never gotten along.”
“We got along pretty well in your sister’s bed last night, but you probably don’t remember that.”
“I remember it,” he snapped.
“You don’t need to bite my head off just because you’re pissed with yourself.” Before Grant could begin to process that audacious statement, she let out a curse.
He looked out the windshield and saw a tree down across the road that led to the clinic. “See? Wasn’t meant to be. Hang a Uey and let’s get out of here.”
The words weren’t even out of his mouth when she was marching around to his side of the truck. She yanked open the door, grabbed his arm, and pulled him out. “Walk.”
“In case you haven’t noticed, there’s a huge tree in the way.”
“No, really?” She clamped down on his arm and propelled him toward the fallen tree. Her thin jacket was no match for the icy rain and whipping wind. In no time at all, her lips were blue, but she pressed on until they had no choice but to climb over the tree. “Let’s go.”
Grant was about to protest when she gave him a little shove that sent him stumbling toward the tree. His foot got hooked around hers just as they hit a slick patch of mud. They flew over the tree and landed with a thump in a mud puddle on the other side. Somehow, she ended up on top of him, both of them dripping in mud.
