“Here you go. The other two are coming right up.”
“Great service as always, Lacy,” he said when she handed him and Julia their cones. “Thanks.”
“Oh, no problem, Will.” She smiled brightly. “And let me just say for the record that it’s so great to see you out enjoying…ice cream again.”
Heat soaked his face and he could only hope he wasn’t blushing. He hadn’t blushed in about two decades and he sure as hell didn’t want to start now.
“Right,” he mumbled, and was relieved when Simon spoke up.
“Hey, Mom, our favorite table is empty. Can we sit out there and watch for whales?”
Julia smiled and shook her head ruefully. “We’ve been here twice and sat at the same picnic table both times. I guess that makes it our favorite.”
She studied Will. “Are you in a hurry to get back or do you mind eating our cones here?”
He would rather just take a dip in the cold waters of the Pacific right about now, if only to avoid the watching eyes of everyone in town. Instead, he forced a smile.
“No big rush. Let’s sit down.”
He made the mistake of glancing inside the ice-cream parlor one time as he was sliding into the picnic table across from her—just long enough to see several heads swivel quickly away from him.
With a sigh, he resigned himself to the rumors. Nothing he could do about them now anyway.
* * *
She was quite certain Conan was a canine but just now he was looking remarkably like the proverbial cat with its mouth stuffed full of canary feathers.
Julia frowned at the dog, who settled beside the picnic table with what looked suspiciously like a grin. Sage and Anna said he had an uncanny intelligence and some hidden agenda but she still wasn’t sure she completely bought it.
More likely, he was simply anticipating a furtive taste of one of the twins’ cones.
If Conan practically hummed with satisfaction, Will resembled the plucked canary. He ate his cone with a stoicism that made it obvious he wasn’t enjoying the treat—or the company—in the slightest.
She might have been hurt if she didn’t find it so terribly sad.
She grieved for him, for the boy she had known with the teasing smile and the big, generous heart. His loss was staggering, as huge as the Pacific, and she wanted so desperately to ease it for him.
What power did she have, though? Precious little, especially when he would only talk in surface generalities about mundane topics like the tide schedule and the weather.
She tried to probe about the project he was working on, an intriguing rehabilitation effort down the coast, but he seemed to turn every question back to her and she was tired of talking about herself.
She was also tired of the curious eyes inside. Good heavens, couldn’t the poor man go out for ice cream without inciting a tsunami of attention? If he wasn’t being so unapproachable, she would have loved to give their tongues something to wag about.
How would Will react if she just grabbed the cone out of his hand, tossed it over her shoulder into the sand, and planted a big smacking kiss on his mouth, just for the sheer wicked thrill of watching how aghast their audience might turn?
It was an impulse from her youth, when she had been full of silly dreams and impetuous behavior. She wouldn’t do it now, of course. Not only would a kiss horrify Will but her children were sitting at the table and they wouldn’t understand the subtleties of social tit-for-tat.
The idea was tempting, though. And not just to give the gossips something to talk about.
She sighed. It would be best all the way around if she just put those kind of thoughts right out of her head. She had been alone for two years and though she might have longed for a man’s touch, she wasn’t about to jump into anything with someone still deep in the grieving process.
“What project are you working on next at Brambleberry House?” she asked him.
“New ceiling and floor moldings in Abigail’s old apartment, where Anna lives now,” he answered. “On the project I’m working on in Manzanita, the developer ordered some custom patterns. I liked them and showed them to Anna and she thought they would be perfect for Brambleberry House so we ordered extra.”
“What was wrong with the old ones?”
“They were cracking and warped in places from water damage a long time ago. We tried to repair them but it was becoming an endless process. And then when she decided to take down a few walls, the moldings in the different rooms didn’t match so we decided to replace them all with something historically accurate.”
He started to add more, but Maddie slid over to him and held out her cone.
“Mr. Garrett, would you like to try some of my strawberry cheesecake ice cream? It’s really good.”
A slight edge of panic appeared around the edges of his gaze. “Uh, no thanks. Think I’ll stick with my vanilla.”
She accepted his answer with equanimity. “You might change your mind, though,” she said, with her innate generosity. “How about if I eat it super slow? That way if decide you want some after all, I’ll still have some left for you to try later, okay?”
He blinked and she saw the nerves give way to astonishment. “Uh, thanks,” he said, looking so touched at the small gesture that her heart broke for him all over again.
Maddie smiled her most endearing smile, the particularly charming one she had perfected on doctors over the years. “You’re welcome. Just let me know if you want a taste. I don’t mind sharing, I promise.”
He looked like a man who had just been stabbed in the heart and Julia suddenly couldn’t bear his pain. In desperation, she sought a way to distract him.
“What will you do on Brambleberry House after you finish the moldings?” she finally asked.
He looked grateful for the diversion. “Uh, your apartment is mostly done but the third-floor rooms still need some work. Little stuff, mostly, but inconvenient to try to live around. I figured I would wait to start until after Sage is married and living part-time in the Bay Area with Eben and Chloe.”
“I understand they’re coming back soon from an extended trip overseas. We’ve heard a great deal about them from Sage and Anna. The twins can’t wait to meet Chloe.”
“She’s a good kid. And Eben is good for Sage. That’s the important thing.”
He was a man who loved his friends, she realized. That, at least, hadn’t changed over the years.
He seemed embarrassed by his statement and quickly returned to talking about the repairs planned for Brambleberry House. She listened to his deep voice as she savored the last of her cone, thinking it was a perfect summer evening.
The children finished their treats—Maddie’s promise to Will notwithstanding—and were romping with Conan in the sand. Their laugher drifted on the breeze above the sound of the ocean.
For just an instant, she was transported back in time, sitting with Will atop a splintery picnic table, eating ice-cream cones and laughing at nothing and talking about their dreams.
By unspoken agreement, they stood, cones finished, and started walking back down the beach while Conan herded the twins along ahead of them.
“I’m boring you to tears,” Will said after some time. “I’m sorry. I, uh, don’t usually go on and on like that about my work.”
She shook her head. “You’re not boring me. On the contrary. I enjoy hearing about what you do. You love it, don’t you?”
“It’s just a job. Not something vitally important to the future of the world like educating young minds.”
She made a face. “My, you have a rosy view of educators, don’t you?”
“I always had good teachers when I was going to school.”
“Good teachers wouldn’t have anywhere to teach those young minds if not for great carpenters like you,” she pointed out. “The work you’ve done on Brambleberry House is lovely. The kitchen cupboards are as smooth as a satin dress. Anna told me you made them all by hand.”
“It’s a great o
ld house. I’m trying my best to do it justice.”
They walked in silence for a time and Julia couldn’t escape the grim realization that she was every bit as attracted to him now as she had been all those years ago.
Not true, she admitted ruefully. Technically, anyway. She was far more aware of him now, as a full-grown woman—with a woman’s knowledge and a woman’s needs—than she ever would have been as a naive, idealistic fifteen-year-old girl.
He was bigger than he had been then, several inches taller and much more muscled. His hair was cut slightly shorter than it had been when he was a teenager and he had a few laugh lines around his mouth and his eyes, though she had a feeling those had been etched some time ago.
She was particularly aware of his hands, square-tipped and strong, with the inevitable battle scars of a man who used them in creative and constructive ways.
She didn’t want to notice anything about him and she certainly wasn’t at all thrilled to find herself attracted to him again. She couldn’t afford it. Not when she and her children were just finding their way again.
Hadn’t she suffered enough from emotionally unavailable men?
“Look what I found, Mom!” Maddie uncurled her fingers to reveal a small gnarled object. “What is it?”
As she studied the object, Julia held her daughter’s hand, trying not to notice how thin her fingers seemed.
It appeared to be an agate but was an odd color, greenish gray with red streaks in it.
“We forgot to bring our rocky coast field book, didn’t we? We’ll have to look it up when we get back to the house.”
“Do you know, Mr. Garrett?” Maddie presented the object for Will’s inspection.
“I’m afraid I’m not much of a naturalist,” he said, rather curtly. “Sage is your expert in that department. She can tell you in a second.”
“Oh. Okay.” Maddie’s shoulders slumped, more from fatigue than disappointment, Julia thought, but Will didn’t pick up on it. Guilt flickered in his expression.
“I can look at it,” he said after a moment. “Let’s see.”
Will reached for her hand and he examined the contents carefully. “Wow. This is quite a find. It’s a bloodstone agate.”
“I want to see,” Simon said.
“It’s pretty rare,” Will said. He talked to them about some of the other treasures they could find beachcombing on the coast until they reached his house.
“I guess this is your stop,” Julia said as they stood at the steps of his deck.
He glanced up the steps, as if eager to escape, then looked back at them. “I’ll walk you the rest of the way to Brambleberry House. It’s nearly dark. I wouldn’t want you walking on your own.”
It was only three houses, she almost said, but he looked so determined to stick it out that she couldn’t bring herself to argue.
“Thank you,” she said, then gave Maddie a careful look. Her daughter hadn’t said much for some time, since finding the bloodstone.
“Is it piggyback time?” Julia asked quietly.
Maddie shrugged, her features dispirited. “I guess so. I really wanted to make it the whole way on my own this time.”
“You made it farther this time than last time. And farther still than the time before. Come on, pumpkin. Your chariot awaits.” Julia crouched down and her daughter climbed aboard.
“I can carry her,” Will said, though he looked as if he would rather stick a nail gun to his hand and pull the switch.
“I’ve got her,” she answered, aching for him all over again. “But you can make sure Simon and Conan stay away from the surf.”
They crossed the last hundred yards to Brambleberry House in silence. When they reached the back gate, Will held it open for them and they walked inside where the smells of Abigail’s lush late-summer flowers surrounded them in warm welcome.
She eased Maddie off her back. “You two take Conan inside to get a drink from Anna while I talk to Mr. Garrett, okay?”
“Okay,” Simon said, and headed up the steps. Maddie followed more slowly but a moment later Julia and Will were alone with only the sound of the wind sighing in the tops of the pine trees.
“What’s wrong with Maddie?”
His quiet voice cut through the peace of the night and she instinctively bristled, wanting to protest that nothing was wrong with her child. Absolutely nothing. Maddie was perfect in every way.
The words tangled in her throat. “She’s recovering from a bone marrow transplant,” she answered in a low voice to match his. It wasn’t any grand secret and he certainly deserved to know, though she didn’t want to go through more explanations.
“It’s been four months but she hasn’t quite regained her strength. She’s been a fighter through everything life has thrown at her the last two and a half years, though—two rounds of chemo and a round of radiation—so I know it’s only a matter of time before she’ll be back to her old self.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
He heard her words as if she whispered them on the wind from a long distance away.
Bone marrow transplant. Chemotherapy. Radiation.
Cancer.
He had suspected Maddie was ill, but cancer. Damn it. The thought of that sweet-faced little girl enduring that kind of nightmare plowed into him like a semitruck and completely knocked him off his pins.
“I’m sorry, Julia.”
The words seemed horrifyingly inadequate but he didn’t have the first idea what else to say in this kind of situation. Besides, hadn’t he learned after the dark abyss of the last two years that sometimes the simplest of sentiments meant the most?
The sun had finally slipped beyond the horizon and in the dusky twilight, she looked young and lovely and as fragile as her daughter.
“It’s been a long, tough journey,” she answered. “But I have great hope that we’re finally starting to climb through to the other side.”
He envied her that hope, he realized. That’s what had been missing in his world for two years—for too long there had seemed no escape to the unrelenting pain. He missed Robin, he missed Cara, he missed the man he used to be.
But this wasn’t about him, he reminded himself. One other lesson he had learned since the accident that stole his family was that very few people made it through life unscathed, without suffering or pain, and Julia had obviously seen more than her share.
“A year and a half, you said. So you must have had to cope with losing your husband in the midst of dealing with Maddie’s cancer?”
In the twilight, he saw her mouth open then close, as if she wanted to say something but changed her mind.
“Yes,” she finally answered, though he had a feeling that wasn’t what she intended to tell him. “I guess you can see why I felt like we needed a fresh start.”
“She’s okay now, you said?”
“She’s been in remission for a year. The bone marrow transplant was more a precaution because the second round of chemo destroyed her immune system. We were blessed that Simon could be the donor. But as you can imagine, we’re all pretty sick of hospitals and doctors by now.”
He released a breath, his mind tangled in the vicious thorns of remembering those last terrible two weeks when Cara had clung to life, when he had cried and prayed and begged for another chance for his broken and battered little girl.
For nothing.
His prayers hadn’t done a damn bit of good.
“It’s kind of surreal, isn’t it?” Julia said after a moment. “Who would have thought all those summers ago when we were young that one day we’d be standing here in Abigail’s garden together talking about my daughter’s cancer treatment?”
He had a sudden, savage need to pummel something—to yank the autumn roses up by the roots, to shatter the porch swing into a million pieces, to hack the limbs off Abigail’s dogwood bushes.
“Life is the cruelest bitch around,” he said, and the bitter words seemed to scrape his throat bloody and raw. “Makes you wonder what the hell the point i
s.”
She lifted shocked eyes to his. “Oh, Will. I’m so sorry,” she whispered, and before he realized her intentions, she reached out and touched his arm in sympathy.
For just a moment the hair on his arm lifted and he forgot his bitterness, held captive by the gentle brush of skin against skin. He ached for the tenderness of a woman’s touch—no, of Julia’s touch—at the same time it terrified him.
He forced himself to take a step back. Cool night air swirled between them and he wondered how it was possible for the temperature to dip twenty degrees in a millisecond.
“I’d better go.” His voice still sounded hoarse. “Your kids probably need you inside.”
Her color seemed higher than it had been earlier and he thought she looked slightly disconcerted. “I’m sure you’re right. Good night, then. And…thank you for the ice cream and the company. I enjoyed both.”
She paused for the barest of moments, as if waiting for him to respond. When the silence dragged on, an instant’s disappointment flickered in her eyes and she began to climb the porch steps.
“You’re welcome,” he said when she reached the top step. She turned with surprise.
“And for the record,” he went on, “I haven’t enjoyed much of anything for a long time but tonight was…nice.”
Her brilliant smile followed him as let himself out the front gate and headed down the dark street toward his home, a journey he had made a thousand times.
He didn’t need to think about where he was going, which left his mind free to wander through dark alleys.
Cancer. That cute little girl. Hell.
Poor thing. Julia said it was in remission, that things were better except lingering fatigue. Still, he knew this was just one more reason he needed to maintain his careful distance.
His heart was a solid block of ice but if it ever started to melt, he knew he couldn’t let himself care about Julia Blair and her children. He couldn’t afford it.
He had been through enough pain and loss for a hundred lifetimes. He would have to be crazy to sign up for a situation with the potential to promise plenty more.
Reunion on Rocky Shores Page 7