Gansett Island Boxed Set Books 1-16 (Gansett Island Series)

by Marie Force

  “So what brings you to live on Gansett?”

  “Can you keep a secret?”

  He flashed an offended scowl. “I’ll protect your secrets with my very life. Back in my village in County Cork, they call me ‘The Vault.’ Nothing gets past these lips,” he said, leaning in closer, “unless you want it to.”

  Grace rolled her eyes at the double entendre, charmed by him despite herself. “In that case, Mr. Vault, I’m buying Gold’s Pharmacy.”

  “You don’t say! How exciting for you—and for us.”

  “I’m thrilled and scared and excited and all sorts of things.”

  “I can only imagine. Nothing simple about running a business. I ought to know. When Joe Cantrell hired me to run the show for him while his missus is in vet school in Ohio, I figured, how hard can it be? Well, let me tell ya…”

  “Not as easy as it looks, huh?”

  “Not at’all. Forms and inspections and staffing and licenses and more inspections and safety drills and a million decisions every day. Oh my.”

  “And you love every minute of it.”

  “Best job I ever had.” Flashing a rakish grin, he added, “Did I mention I’m a seafaring captain, among my many other talents?”

  “No, I don’t believe you did,” Grace said, suppressing a laugh.

  He looked around to make sure no one was listening, even though he was well aware they were alone in the office. “Since we’re going to be neighbors,” he said gravely, “I’d be happy to show you my license.”

  Grace made sure to show the proper deference. “I’m sure it’s quite impressive.”

  “Oh, lass, it’s very impressive indeed.”

  By the time they’d ironed out the rest of the details for her move, he had her laughing so hard she was wiping tears from her eyes. Seamus had succeeded in restoring Grace’s good mood and her self-confidence. Nothing like a gorgeous Irishman with an overabundance of charm and blarney to make a girl feel good about herself.

  “Once you get settled, I insist you let me take you to dinner to welcome you to our fair island.”

  “That’d be very nice. Thank you for asking.”

  Seamus took her hand and bowed gallantly before her, kissing the back of her hand. “It’ll be my pleasure.”

  “I appreciate your help with the scheduling.”

  “Also my pleasure. I’ll see you around, Grace Ryan.”

  “I’ll look forward to it.”

  “Aye. Me, too, lass. Me, too.”

  With the luck of the Irish on her side, Grace returned to the Beachcomber to freshen up before she headed to Gold’s to talk details. Entering her room, she zeroed in on the phone next to the bed, hoping to see the message light blinking. Nothing.

  “That’s okay,” she said. “Evan McCarthy is hardly the only fish in the sea.” As she brushed her hair, she wondered how long it would take—once she mentioned it to Laura and Stephanie—to get back to Evan that Seamus had asked her out. Hopefully, not long. She wouldn’t want Evan to think she was sitting around waiting to hear from him. She had far better things to do with her time.

  Chapter 17

  Straddling his board and bobbing in the late afternoon chop, Evan watched a new wave grow about two hundred yards offshore. With four-foot rollers breaking on the island’s west side, he’d expected a mob scene at his favorite surfing spot, but he had the place to himself. Under normal circumstances, he didn’t surf alone. But nothing about this day was normal, and he needed the mindless escape surfing always provided.

  Evan paddled out a little farther, eyeing the cresting wave and moving into position. Grabbing a ride on a wave was all about timing. Balance and coordination played a role, too, but primarily it was about timing the collision of board and wave just right.

  Growing up on the island, surfing had been one of Evan’s favorite things to do. Whenever he needed to clear his head, he’d grab his board and head for the west side. Surfing was also the one athletic pursuit he’d been better at than his brothers, and he never missed a chance to remind them of that.

  As the wave started to peak, Evan paddled furiously, skimming along the top until the force of the water grabbed him and sent him hurtling forward. Evan scrambled to his feet for the wild ride to shore, crouching into a turn that gave him another hundred yards of speed before he bailed out into shallow water.

  “Awesome.” He climbed back on the board and took a minute to catch his breath, drifting in the smaller waves that broke closer to the shore. Other than his parents and family, he missed riding Gansett waves most of all when he was in Nashville.

  When he lived here, Evan had surfed year-round, much to his mother’s dismay, but on this trip, one thing after another had kept him out of the water. His sister’s wedding, the tropical storm that made the conditions too dangerous, the birth of his niece and helping to run the marina while his brother was busy with a new baby and his father was recovering from a head injury had left little time for surfing.

  As he paddled out in search of the next wave, Evan’s mind raced a mile a minute. He thought about his parents and their current struggles as well as his new niece Hailey. Thinking of his sister Janey, he wondered if she and Joe were settling back into their home in Ohio for her second year of vet school. He’d have to give them a call this week to see how things were going.

  No matter where he was or what he was doing, Evan made a point to speak to each of his siblings every week. The phone calls kept the five of them connected, which was important to him—and to them.

  Speaking of phone calls, he needed to return the call from his manager that he’d received while he was out last night with Grace—

  “No!” His heart kicked into gear at the thought of her. “You’re not thinking about her. So don’t go there. It was one night. No big deal.” The whole point of surfing was to not think about her. He’d already spent enough time thinking about her. He was all done with that subject.

  Facedown on the board, he paddled hard, the muscles in his arms burning from the effort. Despite his iron will to think about anything other than her, the erotic interlude ran through his mind like one of those loop videos that played over and over again. Every detail was burned indelibly into his memory, as vivid as it had been in the moment.

  Every moan, every sigh, every stroke of her soft hands…

  “Stop it!” he screamed at the surf. “That’s enough, goddamn it! Just stop! There’s nothing special about her! She’s a nice girl, and we had a good time. That’s the end of it!” He eyed a new wave with the potential to be bigger than the last and paddled into position to wait for it.

  The closer the wave came, the bigger it got. Adrenaline cruised through Evan’s body, feeding the high he could only get from surfing. Nothing was quite like riding atop the perfect wave, except perhaps an exquisite night in the arms of the perfect woman.

  “Oh, for fuck’s sake,” he muttered, summoning all the concentration he needed to ride the monster that was barreling down on him. As the undertow sucked him out from the shore, Evan moved into position. He eyed the roller, measuring and calculating, waiting for the break that didn’t come.

  “Shit,” he whispered as it peaked right under him, lifting the board and shooting it forward. He’d timed it all wrong. Getting his balance, he stood for the ride, whipping over the surface of the water so fast that the shoreline blurred. Realizing the wave was going to break very close to the beach, it occurred to Evan that being out here alone might not be the smartest thing he’d ever done.

  The board flew out from under him, but the ripcord fastened to his ankle kept it attached to him. The wave dragged him down and slammed him into the bottom. He couldn’t get his hands down in time to keep his face from grinding into sand and shells and rocks. Knowing better than to fight the currents, he gave in to the will of the water and eventually broke the surface, gasping for air.

  “Holy shit,” he whispered, ducking beneath another wave as the ripcord pulled and tugged at his ankle. Trying to
catch his breath and unscramble his brain, Evan floated on his back, letting the board drag him along behind it. The salt water burned his abraded face, and Evan wondered if he was bleeding, which led to thoughts of sharks. Just as he was about to swim for shore, a strong arm encircled his chest.

  “Jesus H. Christ,” Owen said, breathing hard. “Are you okay?”

  “I think so.”

  “That was one hell of a wipeout. Scared the freaking shit out of me.”

  “Where’d you come from?”

  “I was on the stairs coming down when I saw you misread that one big-time.”

  He’d been misreading everything lately. “I’m okay,” he said when his feet connected with sand.

  Owen released him but stayed close. “You’re sure?”

  “Yeah.” Picking up his board, Evan walked on wobbly legs and dropped down in the sand.

  Owen landed next to him and handed him a towel. “You’re bleeding like a stuck pig.”

  Evan pressed the towel to his face and winced from the sting of terrycloth meeting raw skin.

  “That’s gonna be nasty looking.”

  “It’s not that bad.” Evan withdrew the towel and was stunned by how much blood there was. “Is it?”

  “It’s pretty bad. You’re gonna want to get that cleaned up so it doesn’t scab over when it’s all sandy.”

  Returning the towel to his face, Evan reclined on the sand and looked up at the blue sky. “And this day goes from bad to worse.”

  “I take it things didn’t go well with Grace last night?”

  Owen’s question struck him in the sensitive area just above his rib cage, leaving an ache that demanded his full attention.

  “Ev?”

  “It was okay.”

  “Just okay?”

  Evan wished he could share his thoughts on the matter with Owen, but since he couldn’t explain his unusual reaction to Grace to himself, how would he explain it to someone else?

  “What’s with you? It’s like pulling teeth to get a word out of you.”

  “It was probably the best date I’ve ever been on.”

  Evan could tell that he’d shocked the shit out of his friend. “Is that right? Wow. So what now?”

  Evan shrugged. “Nothing. We had a good time. What else is there to say?”

  “So let me get this straight—it was the best date of your life, but you’re not going to see her again?”

  Why did it sound so awful when Owen put it that way? “That’s about right.”

  “You’re screwed up, man.”

  “There’s a newsflash.”

  “I don’t get why you’re so anti-relationship. You grew up with two parents who wrote the blueprint for successful marriage. So how does the son of Big Mac and Linda McCarthy run from anything that might, someday, down the road, in the distant future lead to marriage?”

  Because he had no answer to Owen’s very good question, Evan went on the offensive. “How am I any different from you?”

  “My parents were nothing like yours.”

  Since Owen rarely talked about his family or his upbringing, Evan was intrigued by the rare insight. “How were they different?”

  Owen hesitated for a long moment, as if deciding how much he wanted to share. “My dad, the general, was kind of a dick. Everything was his way or the highway, you know? We all breathed easier when he was deployed, including my mom.”

  “He didn’t, you know…”

  “Knock us around? Sometimes. Mostly we went out of our way to avoid him. I went out of my way to keep him away from my younger brothers and sisters.”

  Having never heard any of this before, Evan marveled at how he’d known Owen most of his life but didn’t know him as well as he’d thought. He’d come to the island every summer to see his grandparents, but he’d never talked much about what went on the rest of the year. “So you bore the brunt.”

  Owen stared straight ahead at the ocean. “Something like that.”

  “I’m sorry. I had no idea.”

  “It was a long time ago.” Owen flashed the grin that was far more his speed than the somber expression. “He wouldn’t dare look at me cross-eyed now.”

  Evan smiled. “I bet sometimes you wish he would.”

  “I’m not above that level of pettiness, but I don’t live my life looking backward. No point in that.”

  “So you don’t ever see yourself with a wife and kids?”

  “I never said that.”

  Evan studied his old friend. “Why are you acting all smug, as if you’ve got a big secret or something?”

  “No secrets.”

  “What’s up with you and Laura?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Why do I not believe you?”

  “I don’t know what you want me to say. We’re friends. I like her. I think she likes me. We have some laughs. Nothing more to it than that.”

  “Who’re you trying to convince? Me or you?”

  “You’re really not going to see Grace again?”

  Evan had to give Owen credit for successfully deflecting the conversation back to Evan. “What’s the point, O? She lives in Connecticut. I’m going back to Nashville soon. I don’t want to get into something I can’t handle right now. I’ve got enough to deal with.”

  “I suppose that makes sense. I’m sure she’ll understand—as long as you didn’t sleep with her or anything.”

  As the comment scored a direct hit, Evan continued to stare up at the sky.

  “Aw, jeez, man. You didn’t sleep with her, did you?”

  Evan let his silence speak for him.

  “Shit,” Owen said. “That changes everything.”

  Wasn’t that the truth?

  Chapter 18

  With Grant and Stephanie preparing for Abby’s party and arguing about every detail, Linda decided it would be better to wait for her husband outside. That way she could resist the temptation to get in the middle of the screenplay dispute that had spilled into the party prep.

  Linda hoped they would work out their differences, because she loved Stephanie and adored the two of them together. She’d never seen her second son as happy and content as he’d been in the last few weeks since he decided to stay with her rather than returning to LA. They belonged together, but working together was no easy task.

  She ought to know. Linda and her husband had done it for the first eight years of their marriage, before they discovered life was much more harmonious with him running the marina and her handling the hotel.

  They also learned that not spending so much time together during the day made for sweeter nights. Thinking about those days as young parents with so many responsibilities and so little time to call their own made Linda smile when she remembered all the creative ways they’d made up for lost time.

  The closer the sun got to setting, the chillier the air became. As she snuggled into her sweater, she realized she was nervous. It seemed like a lot was riding on this evening, and she didn’t even know where they were going.

  The rumble of a motorcycle engine caught her attention because it sounded like her son Mac’s bike. If he was riding that death trap he loved so much with two babies counting on him, Linda would shoot him. Of course it could be Evan, too, since he’d borrowed the bike from his brother last week. Linda wished she’d sent the damned thing to the junkyard when she’d had the chance.

  She got up and headed down the stairs as the motorcycle crunched to a stop in the crushed-shell driveway.

  When the rider removed his helmet, Linda gasped at the sight of her husband. “What’re you doing? You shouldn’t be on that thing! What if you fall off or hit your head again or—”

  “Lin,” he said, smiling despite the note of warning in his tone. “I’d like to take you on a little adventure. Are you game?” From his perch on the motorcycle, he held out a hand to her.

  What was she supposed to do? Of course she was game, but she hated that stinking motorcycle. Every time Mac had driven off on it as a teenager, sh
e’d been convinced he’d be killed. Now her husband expected her to actually ride on it?

  “Why don’t we take my car?”

  “Because there’s nothing adventurous about a VW bug.”

  She scowled at the insult to her beloved yellow bug. “How can you operate that thing with a cast on your arm?”

  “I cut off the hand part with a hacksaw.” With the boyish grin that still made her knees weak, he held up his arm to show a cast that now began at his wrist and ended just below his elbow. He looked so darned pleased with himself that Linda fought back a smile that would undercut her disapproval.

  “Really, Mac, you can’t honestly expect me…”

  He got off the bike, unhooked the spare helmet and placed it on her head. “I expect you to trust me. You know I’d never risk your safety.” Securing the strap under her chin, he made sure it was good and snug before he framed her face with his big hands and gently compelled her to look up at him. “Trust me?”

  “Of course I do, but—”

  He kissed the words right off her lips. “No buts. Hop on.”

  “Mac…”

  “You’ll love it. I promise. There’s nothing like it.”

  The last thing Linda wanted was to start this night off on the wrong foot, so she reluctantly slid her leg over the seat and settled behind him. He wore a long-sleeved denim shirt that was one of her favorites because of the way it set off the vivid blue eyes he’d passed down to each of their sons.

  “Put your arms around me, babe, and hold on tight.”

  Since there was nothing she’d rather do, Linda snuggled in close to him, and as she caught a whiff of the cologne he applied after every shave, she realized he must’ve showered and changed at the marina. He’d put a lot of thought into this evening, which filled her with hope and anticipation.

  He fired up the bike and had them on their way before Linda had the chance to chicken out.

  She’d never been on a motorcycle, and it didn’t take long to discover she’d been missing out, especially as the ripple of her husband’s muscles under her hands reminded her of how much she loved being close to him. After such a rough couple of months, she was thrilled to be going somewhere—anywhere—with him.