by Joss Wood
Daniel booted up the iPad, glared down at the screen and impatiently jabbed the screen. He leaned forward so that she could see the screen and there, looking far too pleased with themselves, were their respective grandparents.
“Yes, we’ve kidnapped you. Yes, we are bad people,” Gus said, sounding utterly unrepentant.
Rose jabbed him with his elbow and stared into the camera. “Alexis and Daniel, we are sorry for being so intransigent a decade ago. We should not have pulled you into our little dustup and we apologize.”
Only in Texas could people call a fifty-year feud a dustup.
Gus leaned forward, his blue eyes serious. “That being said, it must be noted that you two are the most stubborn creatures imaginable and unable to see what’s in front of your faces. To help you with your lack of vision, we are sending you to Galloway Cove in our place. Matt’s house is the only one on the island, and it is fully stocked with everything you might need. We packed a suitcase for each of you, which Michelle will give to you when you land.”
Daniel hit the pause button, looked at Alex and shook his head. “I’m adding breaking and entering to the charges I’m laying against her.”
Alex rolled her eyes and tapped the play button so that the video could continue. Gus picked up the conversational train wreck. “The plane will return in a week and, by then, we want a proper, thought-out, reasonable plan on how you two intend to raise this child together. And by together we mean in the same house, preferably the same bedroom.”
“Just to be clear, marriage is our first choice,” Rose added.
“When hell freezes over,” Alex muttered. On-screen, Rose smiled, oblivious to their anger. Which was exactly why they recorded this message and didn’t video call them. Alex snorted. Cowards.
“And don’t try to bribe the pilot and his crew to turn around. We already told them we’d double whatever you offer.” Rose, looking pretty and content, blew them a kiss. “One day you’ll thank us for this!”
“Not damn likely,” Daniel muttered.
The video faded to black and Daniel tossed the iPad onto the seat next to him. He groaned and covered his eyes with his hand. Alex opened her mouth to speak but no words emerged. She tried again—nothing—and shook her head. Had Rose and Gus lost it completely? “They can’t do this,” she whispered.
“They just did,” Daniel shot back, pulling his phone out from his back pocket. He hit a button, dialed a number and waited impatiently for it to ring. “Voice mail.”
“Gran, I am not happy! What the hell gives you the right to meddle in our lives? We’re adults and your actions are reprehensible and unacceptable. Have you completely lost your mind?”
Knowing that Gus rarely carried his phone and that when he did he was prone to ignoring it, Alex called her younger brother, Jason. He answered on a rolling laugh.
“Not funny, Jason! I’m on a plane because Grandpa has arranged for us to be kidnapped. Tell him to turn this plane around. Better yet, just let me talk to him.”
“He’s not here, sis. Or if he is, he’s keeping a very low profile, if you get my drift. He is, after all, on his honeymoon.”
Ew. The words Gus and honeymoon did not sit well next to each other. “I don’t care what you have to do but find him and tell him to turn this damned plane around!”
Another chuckle. God, when she saw Jace, she was going to throttle him. “Grandpa told me to tell you, if you made contact, to pull on your big-girl panties and suck it up.”
“Find. Him. Tell him that this isn’t funny, that we want to come home!”
“Are you mad? You’ve been sent off to stay in a luxurious house on a private island in the Caribbean. It’s windy, wet and cold here in Texas, and our grandfather is getting more action than I am. My heart bleeds for you! As I said, big-girl panties—”
Screw big-girl panties, she was going to take off her thong and strangle him with it! “Find Grandpa,” she muttered, death in her voice. “Tell him what I said.”
Alex disconnected the call and rubbed her forehead with her fingertips. “It looks like we’re going to Matt’s island.”
“Looks like?” Daniel snapped back, his expression blank but his body radiating tension.
Alex sent a wistful look at the champagne bottle. “Don’t you think this warrants a little champagne? For medicinal use only?”
“No, you’re pregnant. No alcohol.”
Daniel narrowed his eyes at her, pushed the intercom and ordered a whiskey, straight up. He looked at Alex and his small smile was just shy of evil. “But, as you said, this situation warrants alcohol.”
Alex responded to his smirk with one of her own and deliberately, swiftly kicked him again.
* * *
After playing Daniel’s voice message to Gus, Rose lifted her eyes to meet his. His body, like hers, was older and they didn’t have the energy they once had. But his eyes were still those of a young man’s, with the power to stop her in her tracks. And underneath the layer of mischief, she saw his grit and determination, his rock-steady calm. Gus did what he needed to do and always stayed the course.
“He is not a happy camper,” Gus commented.
“I’ve seen him lose his temper and it’s not pretty,” Rose admitted, pushing her phone away. She picked up her coffee and took a sip.
Gus was silent for a good twenty seconds. “Would he hurt her?”
“Hurt Alex?” Rose demanded, horrified. “Good God, no!” When Gus still looked skeptical, she placed her hand on his arm. “No, honey, he would never hurt her. He witnessed his mom being slapped around, beaten up, and he’d never hurt a woman or a child.”
Gus’s eyes softened with sympathy. “His rough childhood must have done a number on him.”
Rose nodded, not bothering to hide her sadness from her man. They were married, so she could share anything, and everything, with him. “Stephanie... God, Gus, she was so wild. I couldn’t tell her a damn thing—never could. She hit thirteen and entered self-destruct mode.”
“I don’t know whether she’s alive or dead. When she lost custody of Daniel, she refused to have any contact with us.”
“And that happened when he was twelve?”
Rose released a quavering breath. “He spent the summer of that year with me, and when Stephanie came to fetch him, he told her that he wasn’t going back with her. Neither would he let me pay her to let him stay.”
Rose knew that her chin was wobbling. “He told her that he was staying with me, that he was going to go to school in Royal. That if she made trouble for him or me, he’d go to the police and detail every drug deal he saw, finger every dealer she had, tell the police about every ‘uncle’ who lifted a hand to him.” She released another breath. “She had a choice—she could leave him with me without a fuss or he’d make life very, very difficult for her. Stephanie chose to leave him with me.”
“And he never spoke to her again after that?”
Rose shook her head. “Neither of us have.”
She ran her finger around the rim of her cup. “I can’t help thinking that if I’d done some of this and not that, loved her more, disciplined her more, gave her more time and energy, she would’ve turned out better.”
“Sometimes there is no better, Rosie.”
“She’s her daddy’s daughter—she’s Ed through and through. Mean, aggressive, malicious.” She saw the concern on his face and quickly shook her head. “Daniel isn’t like that. He’s a good man, Gus. You’ll see that eventually.”
Her husband pondered her words. “The TCC members seem to think so. The younger members trust him implicitly and they say he has integrity.” Gus smiled at her. “I’m looking forward to knowing him, darlin’. It’s time to put the past to bed, and young Daniel has done nothing to me.”
“Except get your granddaughter pregnant,” Rose replied.
Gus shrugged. “Th
e way those two look and act around each other, I’m just grateful it didn’t happen when they were teenagers.”
“He’s the best thing—apart from you, recently—that’s ever happened to me. I can’t lose him, Gus.”
Gus took her hands is his and waited until her eyes met his. Then he squeezed her hands. “You’re not going to lose him, Rosie. I promise you that.”
“He’s so mad...”
Gus shrugged. “Let him be mad—he’ll get over it. In a little less than an hour, he’ll be on a deserted island with a beautiful girl he’s crazy about. Trust me, he’ll be thanking you soon.”
“I doubt it,” Rose retorted. “They just might kill each other. Or maybe they’ll wait to do that until after they’ve killed us.” She frowned at him. “Why are you looking so chipper? Didn’t you get a nasty voice mail?”
Gus’s cocky smile belonged to the young man she knew so long ago. “Prob’ly did. Don’t carry my phone. No doubt that Alex has sent Jason an annoyed message to give to me.”
Rose shook her head in exasperation. “You’ve got to start carrying a phone, Gus. What if I need to get a hold of you?”
“Not a factor.” Gus lifted her knuckles to kiss her fingertips. “I don’t plan on being a couple of feet from you anytime soon.” His mouth curved as she moved her hand to his cheek. “But I am thinking of getting another phone, one that only you have the number to.”
“That would make me feel so much better,” Rose told him. “I don’t want to be that woman who constantly keeps track of her man, but you know...in case of an emergency.”
Gus’s smile turned wicked. “To hell with an emergency. I’m only getting it in the hope that you’ll call me up for a—what do the kids call it—booty call?”
Rose’s shocked laughter bounced off the walls. “Augustus Slade!”
Gus looked at her, his face full of love. Then he waggled his eyebrows to make her laugh. “Anytime you have the urge, I’m your guy.”
He really was her guy. And damn if she didn’t have one of those urges now. Rose looked out the window and saw that it was ten o’clock on a cold, wet winter morning in February, not the time a woman of a certain age should be slinking upstairs. But to hell with that; this was supposed to be her honeymoon. Rose took his hand, grinned and stood up.
“Come upstairs and rock my world, handsome.”
It was Gus’s turn to look utterly poleaxed, but that didn’t stop him from leaping to his feet with all the energy of a twenty-year-old.
Six
Upon landing at Galloway Cove, Michelle lowered the steps to the private jet, stowed their suitcases in the back of the golf cart parked to the side of the landing strip and tossed them a jovial smile. “Have fun.” With that, she ran back up the steps to the plane. Minutes later the jet was in the air and headed back to Houston.
Alex climbed into the golf cart and sat down next to Daniel, her thigh brushing his. Leaning forward, he pulled off his flannel shirt and threw it into the back of the cart, before placing his hand on the wheel and cranking the small engine.
Tired of their silence, Alex darted him a look. “Any idea where we are?”
“West of the Bahamas.”
Alex wrinkled her nose at his brief reply. “Can you tell me anything about where we are going, what to expect?”
“Matt is one of the wealthiest guys in Texas. All I know is that the house is completely secluded, has its own private beach and reef. It will be jaw-droppingly amazing.” He gritted his teeth. “The other thing I know is that I need to get the hell off this island. I’ve got a ranch to run. I can’t just take off on a Monday morning with no warning!”
“You’ve said that before, numerous times,” Alex told him testily. “Look, you might as well accept that we are stranded here until that plane returns.” She gestured to the awesome view of a flat turquoise-colored sea. Below them, nestled against the cliff and partially covered by the natural vegetation, they could see the tiled roof of what she assumed to be Matt’s beach house. She gestured to the well-used track in front of them. “The sun is shining. The sea looks amazing. So, on the bright side—”
“There is no bright side,” Daniel muttered, and Alex gripped the frame of the cart as he accelerated forward.
“I can’t think of anything better than lying on the beach for a week. I’m exhausted and it will give me time to think. We don’t even have to talk to each other. Actually, it would be better if we didn’t.”
Clenching his jaw, Daniel steered the car along the track, and Alex heard the cry of a seagull and the sound of a rushing creek above the cart’s rumble. Daniel kept moving his head from the path to look at her and back again. Annoyed, she half turned in her seat and glared at him. “What? Why do you keep looking at me like that?”
“What about sex?”
“Where did that out-of-left-field question come from?” Alex lifted her hands in confusion.
Daniel’s dry look suggested she get with the program. “We’re together. Alone. On an island. We might be as frustrated as hell with each other and the situation, but you cannot be that naive to think that, with our sexual chemistry, we’re not going to end up in bed.”
She wanted to deny his words, but she knew she would come across as being disingenuous if she brushed off his comment. Alex lifted her thigh up onto the bench seat, her knee brushing his hard thigh. After marshaling her thoughts, she picked out her words. “Daniel, we’ve known each other for a long time but we don’t know each other.”
“What do you mean?”
She’d been thinking about this a lot lately. She and Daniel communicated with their bodies, not with their minds. They were both guarded people and they both struggled to let people in. They knew each other’s bodies intimately, knew exactly how to behave naked. But fully clothed? They were like drunken cowboys stumbling around in the dark. As her baby’s father, Daniel was going to be in her life for a long time, so didn’t she owe it to herself and their child to get to know his mind a fraction as well as she knew his body?
“Let’s be honest here, we’ve always been sexually attracted to one another, and even as teenagers, we far preferred to make out than to talk—”
“And it’s still my first choice.”
Although tempted, Alex ignored his interruption. “That trend continued when we hooked up. I don’t know you—not really—and you certainly don’t know me.”
Daniel sent her an exasperated look. “Of course I do.”
Alex snorted. “Rubbish. Let’s test that theory, shall we?”
Daniel released a frustrated sigh. “If you’re going to ask me a dumb-ass question like what is your favorite color, then I won’t know.”
Alex thought for a minute. “No, let me start with an easy one. Do I prefer to shower in the morning or at night?”
Daniel hesitated before guessing. “At night.”
It was a good guess. “What do I like on my pizza?”
He hesitated and she pounced. “You don’t know. Neither do you know whether I have allergies and I don’t know if you vote.”
“Of course I vote!” Daniel retorted.
Alex ignored him. “Do you believe in God? What are you currently reading? What is your favorite season? Are you on social media? What is your favorite meal? Who is your closest friend?”
“Yes, sort of. A Corben novel. Fall. Hell, no, I don’t have time to post crap no one cares about on Facebook. Beef stew. And yes, I have friends... Matt. Ryan. I talk to James Harris pretty often, too.”
She’d said closest friend, not friends in general, but she’d still found out more about him in thirty seconds than she had in ten years. How much more would she find out about him if they actually conversed instead of kissed?
“We’re going to be raising a kid together, separately but together. Should we not use this time to get to know each other better?”
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Daniel steered the cart around a corner and Alex was momentarily distracted by the magnificent house in front of them. It hugged the side of a cliff, and trees and natural vegetation cradled the house like a mother holding her child. A massive wooden door broke up the sprawling white expanse and Daniel parked the cart to the right of it. Leaving the cart, she turned to take her bag but noticed that Daniel already had it in his grasp, as well as his own duffel bag.
She smiled her thanks and watched as he walked up to the front door. Alex took a moment to appreciate his long-legged, easy grace, the way his big biceps strained the bands of his T-shirt, the width of his shoulders. It was brutally unfair that he was the walking definition of sex on feet. Alex sighed and watched as Daniel placed his hand on the door. It swung open from a central pivot and he stepped back to motion her inside.
Alex stood in the doorway, unwilling to go inside until she had an answer from Daniel. “So, are we going to try and get to know each other a little better?”
“We can try,” Daniel replied. He shrugged and looked down at her with those deep, compelling eyes. “But I guarantee you that, thanks to the combination of sand, sea and you in a tiny bikini, you’re going to be under me sooner rather than later.”
Arrogant jerk, Alex thought, walking into the beach house. How dare he think that he could just click his fingers and she would lie down, roll over and let him scratch her tummy. Sure their attraction was explosive, but she wasn’t so weak that she’d just fall into bed with him—
Oh my God, this place is fantastic.
Alex stopped in her tracks as she drank in their luxurious surroundings. It was open plan, as all beach houses should be, with high vaulted ceilings displaying intricate beams. As soon as they stepped out of the hall and into the living space, the eye was pulled toward the massive floor-to-ceiling windows, across the infinity pool to the view beyond. Alex was momentarily unsure where the pool ended and the sea began. Stepping forward, she spared a glance at the sleek kitchen, the wooden dining table and the chairs that were the same blue as the sea. Under comfortable sofas, an expensive rug covered the floors, but it was the view that captured her attention: it was the only piece of art the room needed. The white beaches, the aqua sea, the lush emerald of an island in the distance.