The Carpenter's Bride

by Elana Johnson

  He’d been working for the Getaway Bay Police Department for twenty-three years now, and he was seriously thinking about hanging up his hat. Permanently.

  But the thought of sitting around his house all day, nothing to do…he couldn’t even imagine that, and that kept him getting up every morning, running along the beach, and going into the station.

  “Going in,” he said, as if he were letting his crew know at the station so they could send back-up if he didn’t check in soon. He got out of the car and looked both ways down the sidewalk. But everyone would know where he was going and why he’d come the moment he stepped inside.

  Wyatt held his head high and nodded to another man as he approached. He didn’t know the guy, but most people in Getaway Bay knew Wyatt. So he nodded and stepped in line with him. “Can I go in with you?”

  “Of course, Chief.” The other guy gave him a smile, and they went through the marked door so other patrons of the community center who weren’t attending the singles event could still use the facilities.

  “What’s your name?” he asked the man.

  “Henry Bishop,” he said.

  “Nice to meet you, Henry.” They met a line, and Wyatt slowed to join it. He wasn’t particularly good with small talk, but he’d had plenty of practice over the years. “What do you do?”

  “I’m a surfing instructor,” he said. “Own a little hut in East Bay.”

  “Oh, that’s great,” Wyatt said. “I love surfing.”

  Henry smiled at him again, and a couple of women in front of them turned around. “I’ve used your surfing lessons,” one of them said. “They were good.”

  “Yeah?” Henry asked. “Who was your instructor?”

  “I can’t remember.” She twirled a lock of her dark hair around her ear. “Do you give lessons?”

  “Of course, yeah,” Henry said with a smile. “You didn’t learn the first time?”

  The brunette shrugged. “It’s been a while, and I think I’m ready to get back in the water.”

  Wyatt was pretty sure her comment was some sort of flirtation device he didn’t understand, and he simply stood outside the trio as they continued to chat about surfing lessons and the best places to catch the biggest waves.

  He entered last behind them, not catching either woman’s name as they moved ahead of him. The scent of coconuts and suntan oil met his nose when he entered the room after logging his name with the clerk standing at the door.

  This singles event was a free couple of hours on a Friday night, and with summer in full swing, Wyatt had decided now was a great time to branch out of his usual find-a-date tactics. That honestly wasn’t hard, because he currently had no tactics to find a date. Most of the women he came in contact with were under arrest or employees. The department didn’t have rules against relationships among co-workers, as long as all the proper paperwork was filed. But Wyatt had never wanted to be with a fellow cop.

  Piper had been his complete opposite in every way, and he’d loved her with everything in him. When she’d died, a piece of Wyatt had died too.

  For a while there, he’d thought it was the most important part of himself. But through his grief counseling, and with the passage of time, he’d learned that he still had the capacity to love. He’d seen friends move past difficult divorces, as well as the loss of loved ones. One of his good friends from their grief meetings had just gotten his girlfriend back, and Wyatt had been spurred by Cal’s example to find his own date.

  Tonight, he told himself as he surveyed the room. The cop inside him couldn’t help checking for all the exits and looking around for a safe place to hide should something happen. He estimated the number of people in the room to be about one hundred, and the vast majority of them were women.

  Wyatt supposed he should be happy about that, but all he felt was pressure. A lot of pressure. He could get a phone number tonight from someone who wasn’t really that interested in him. She might only talk to him, because there weren’t that many other men to choose from.

  He took a deep breath, stepped over to the refreshment table which was smartly placed by the entrance, and grabbed a plastic cup of punch. With something to occupy his attention, he took a drink and surveyed the groups of women closest to him. He’d been under the impression there would be structured activities during the Sandy Singles event, but if so, they hadn’t started yet.

  He’d taken one step when someone came over the microphone. “All right, everyone. We’re about to start our first speed-dating activity. I need all women on the left side of the room. All the men on the right. That’s right. Women on the left. Men on the right.”

  Wyatt followed the directions, and he’d been right. Only about twenty-five percent of the attendees were men, and he hoped the organizer of these activities knew what to do with the extra women.

  “We’re going to divide the women into three groups,” the woman at the mic said. “Men, I hope you have a drink nearby and are ready to chat.” She beamed at the right side of the room, and Wyatt swallowed his nerves.

  He was good at talking to strangers. He could make someone he suspected of heinous crimes talk to him, trust him, connect with him. A woman was somehow harder, but he pushed his nerves away.

  He didn’t want to live the next thirty years alone. Or even another one.

  So he put a smile on his face, took the seat he was given, and prepared himself to talk to people for the next couple of hours.

  A woman with dirty blonde hair sat in front of him, her blue eyes sparkling like sunlight off the ocean. Her hair was all piled up on top of her head like she’d walked into the event from off the beach, and Wyatt smiled at her.

  Not his type.

  But he could be nice. “I’m Wyatt Gardner,” he said, extending his hand.

  “Everyone knows who you are,” she said with a smile. She put her hand in his and cocked her head. “I’m Bridgette Baker.”

  “Nice to meet you,” he said, thinking he was a better liar than he’d like to be. The small talk was small with Bridgette, and when the bell rang, the women got up and moved down a seat. Wyatt looked to his right, realizing he had a very long night ahead of him.

  After five rounds of speed-dating, he’d taken two slips of paper from women he would not be calling, and he got to his feet when the organizer said, “Five-minute break, and then we’ll start with the second group of women.”

  Yeah, Wyatt wouldn’t be. He’d thought this Sandy Singles event was a good idea, and he was willing to admit it when he was wrong.

  He headed for the door, not caring how many people saw him. The whole island knew about Piper’s death, and they’d just assume he was still too broken up over her death to date. Or they’d speculate that he’d gotten an emergency call. In fact, he pulled out his phone and looked at it, tapping as if sending a text to someone very important.

  In truth, the only place he needed to be was on his couch, a really great fish taco in his hands, and the television lulling him to sleep.

  Pathetic, maybe. But right now, Wyatt was okay with that.

  In his peripheral vision, he caught sight of someone directly in front of him. Someone he was about to run into. He looked up at the same time he collided with the woman, who obviously hadn’t been watching where she was going either.

  “Oof,” she said, and to Wyatt’s great horror, she fell backward. Her eyes widened, and she cried out as she fell in super-slow motion. Wyatt tried to reach for her, but she flailed out of his reach. Way out of his reach, because he’d just bowled over Dierdre Bernard.

  She hit the ground, and everything that had slowed down raced forward again. “Dierdre,” Wyatt said, his voice mostly air. He hurried over to her and knelt down. “I’m so sorry.” He didn’t quite know where to put his hands.

  His brain screamed at him to do something helpful. Apologize. Say he was ready.

  He just hovered above Dierdre, his memories streaming through him now. Memories of the relationship they’d tried. The things she’d said
to him when they’d broken up. All of those were true, and Dierdre deserved some credit for Wyatt’s reappearance at the grief meetings on the island.

  Their eyes met, and Wyatt put his hands at his sides. “Are you okay?”

  “I’m okay,” she said, and Wyatt wanted to smooth her hair, tuck the errant locks behind her ear, and apologize for not being ready last time.

  Could there be a this time?

  “Let me help you,” he said, giving her his hand and helping her stand up. “Sorry, I wasn’t watching where I was going.”

  “I wasn’t either.” She smoothed down her blouse and looked at Wyatt fully again. “Look at us, running into each other. Literally.” Dierdre smiled, and Wyatt remembered how beautiful she was when she did. His heartbeat accelerated, and he definitely wanted a second chance with this woman.

  “What are you doing right now?” he asked boldly.

  “Right this second?”

  “Yeah.”

  She looked over her shoulder toward the room he’d just exited. “Well, there’s this singles event a couple of my girlfriends came to. I’ve been waiting in the car, and—” She gave a light laugh. “I finally decided to come in.”

  “I was just headed out, and I’m starving. Do you want to grab some dinner?”

  “With you?”

  “Yes,” Wyatt said, hoping she wouldn’t say no. How humiliating would that be?

  Dierdre narrowed her eyes slightly and seemed to peer directly into his soul. “Wyatt, you’re a great man. But I don’t…it didn’t work last time, and I don’t think it’s going to work this time.” She patted his bicep as she stepped around him.

  Wyatt turned, speechless, and watched her enter the Sandy Singles event room.

  What a disaster. Swallowing back his embarrassment, Wyatt held his head as high as he could as he walked out of the community center and back to his cruiser.

  There weren’t enough fish tacos on the planet to erase this night from his memory.

  Oh…rejected! I wonder if Wyatt and Dierdre can have a third try?

  Preorder THE POLICE CHIEF’S BRIDE now! Coming soon in Kindle Unlimited.

  Read on for more great beach romance in THE PARAMEDIC’S SECOND CHANCE.

  Sneak Peek! The Paramedic’s Second Chance Chapter One

  10 years ago:

  “Aaron, you have to stop the car. We’re not going to make it.” Gretchen Samuels hated the weakness and panic in her voice, but the pain ripping through her lower back made it difficult to speak any other way.

  “We’re in the middle of nowhere,” her husband said. “I can’t stop.” In fact, he accelerated to a speed their twelve-year-old sedan certainly couldn’t handle.

  As another labor pain tore through her, tears spilled from Gretchen’s eyes. She didn’t want to have her first child on the side of the road, miles from nurses and antiseptic and baby warmers. And medication. She really needed a fast-acting painkiller.

  “I’m sorry,” she sobbed. Aaron hated living out on her granddad’s lavender farm, but the housing was cheap and he was almost done with his online securities degree. Their plans for a future in Seattle while he led the data security team at a top technology firm were months from coming to fruition.

  “Don’t be sorry.” He glanced at her, and she disliked the panic in his eyes too, and the white-knuckle grip he had on the steering wheel certainly wasn’t comforting.

  Her breath caught in her throat as it seemed like this baby was going to claw its way out of her no matter how much she willed the little girl to hold on a little longer.

  “Call 911,” she said. “Please.” She must’ve infused the right amount of emotion into her voice, because Aaron slowed the car and eased it onto the gravel shoulder. He leapt from behind the wheel, left his door open, and sprinted around the front of the car.

  “Let’s get you into the back.” He supported her—the way he’d been doing for the four years they’d been together—and helped her into the backseat before pulling out his phone and making the emergency call.

  Gretchen’s pain eased with the new position, but it didn’t go away. She wondered if it ever would, or if this degree of agony would hover in her muscles like a ghost forever. “Hang on,” she whispered as she put her hand on her very pregnant belly. “Just a little while longer.”

  “They’re on their way.” Aaron poked his head back inside the car. “They said to get any blankets, towels, napkins, anything we have. You’re supposed to stay lying down and try to relax.”

  Gretchen couldn’t help the snort that escaped. “Relax?” She let her head fall back as she focused on the car’s ceiling. She hadn’t been able to relax for months, not since her stomach had grown so large she couldn’t see her toes. Simply getting up from the couch had grown increasingly difficult as the days had passed.

  She hadn’t minded, because she and Aaron had wanted this baby more than anything. The tears that heated her eyes this time were from desperation. A shiver ran over her body as the wind snaked its way into the car.

  “Aaron, can you close the doors?” She lifted her head but couldn’t see him anywhere. Fear flowed through her. “Aaron?”

  The trunk slammed, and he came to the door closest to her head this time. “We don’t have a blanket in the trunk. I found this jacket though.” He balled it up and put it under her head before shrugging out of the one he was wearing too.

  Gretchen steeled herself to deliver her baby and wrap it in her husband’s polar fleece. Her range of emotions felt ridiculous as a wave of injustice slammed into her. “Close the doors, please,” she said through tight teeth. “I’m cold.” Should she be cold? What if she was going into shock or something?

  Her jaw worked against the rising terror as he complied, going around the car—which had all four doors open—and shutting the wind out before sealing himself behind the wheel again. Gretchen thought the silence in the car might be worse than the wind, and she didn’t want to bring her baby into the world under such a cloud of awkwardness.

  “Remember when we first met?” she asked him, glad when his low, soft chuckle met her ears.

  “You said my hair looked like a gorilla.”

  She giggled too, though the motion made her stomach muscles tighten uncomfortably. She hitched in a breath and held it. Aaron had been a freshman on campus though he was twenty-three years old. Gretchen had just finished her business management degree. His dark hair was swooped to the side, very much like the cartoon gorillas Gretchen had spent a lot of time watching while she nannied to pay for school.

  He reached back and threaded his fingers through hers. “What if they don’t make it?” he asked, his voice barely higher than a whisper. “I don’t know how to deliver a baby.”

  And Gretchen knew there was more than just a baby that needed to come out. “They’ll make it.” She spoke with as much confidence as she could, the way she always did when Aaron confessed his worries to her.

  You’re the best in your class, she’d tell him. You’ll be able to find a good job.

  Don’t worry about anything here, she said to him when he had to go to Seattle to take his tests, attend interviews, or deliver dissertations. I’ll be fine. Just watching the lavender grow.

  She closed her eyes and imagined herself in the fields of lavender now, the fragrant scent of the herbs wafting through the slow, blue sky. The same smile that had always accompanied her assurances when he left drifted across her face now.

  Her next labor pain stole all the peace from her, and her eyes shot open and a moan ground through her whole body. Aaron’s fingers on hers squeezed, and everything seemed clenched so tight, tight, tight.

  The contraction seemed to last a long time before subsiding. Gretchen only got what felt like a moment’s reprieve before the next one began. Time marched on, seemingly unaware of the pain she was in, the desperate way she cinched everything tight to keep the baby inside.

  She wasn’t sure how many labor pains she’d endured, or how much time had gone by,
before Aaron said, “They’re here,” with a heavy dose of relief in his voice. He once again jumped from the car.

  Moments later, the door by her feet opened and a gust of ocean air raced in. The scent of brine she normally loved only reminded her that this wasn’t a hospital, there were no drugs, and she could do absolutely nothing about it.

  “Ma’am, my name is Andrew Herrin, and I’m going to take good care of you.”

  She managed to look over her belly to a man who couldn’t be older than twenty. A zing of alarm raced through her.

  “Drew?” She couldn’t believe she cared if the man whose family lived next door to her—who she’d walked with in lavender fields as a teen—delivered her baby. He had a bag of medical supplies. A faster ride to the hospital. And a kind face, with a calm smile.

  “You’re going to be fine, Gretchen.” He snapped a pair of gloves on and touched her ankle. “So let’s see what we’ve got.”

  The Paramedic’s Second Chance Chapter Two

  Drew Herrin felt the morning sun warm his back as he worked. He’d already fed the chickens, the horses, the cows, and the goats. His mother and step-father had quite the little farm just north of Hawthorne Harbor, down the Lavender Highway. He glanced up and took a moment to just breathe, something he hadn’t been able to do in Medina, though the town sat right on the water too.

  The air simply tasted different here, and while Drew had hoped to make something of himself in Medina—do more, be better, actually help someone—he’d only realized the job was the same there as it was here. Just more stressful. Less fun. No room to run with his German shepherds and experiment with his ice cream flavors.

  The wind picked up, but Drew was used to being windblown. Everyone on Hawthorne Harbor was. The long-time joke was that if you didn’t like the wind, you should leave. Because it was always windy.