Sea Glass Castle (The Carolina Coast Series Book 3)

by T. I. Lowe

  “Apparently the child of an NFL superstar,” Opal answered, not helping matters.

  Sophia reached down and plucked at a few blades of grass. She watched August walk behind the toddler as he drove one of Ty’s over-the-top gifts, a battery-powered tractor, across the number nine green, coming close to clipping the flag. “He’s not big enough to be driving that thing.”

  “The box said ages three and up.” Josie shrugged, and it was all Sophia could do not to shove her.

  “And do you think he’s old enough to have his very own iPad Air?”

  Josie lifted her shoulder again. “At least Ty sent a protective case to go with it.”

  “I can’t believe y’all are defending him!” Sophia tossed a handful of grass clippings, sending them raining down on her two friends like confetti.

  “What’s really bothering you?” Opal asked, brushing the grass off her gauzy peasant top, her collection of bracelets clanging against one another.

  “The man is trying to buy his son off. It’s like he’s saying, ‘Sorry, Son, I can’t make it, but please accept these ridiculously extravagant gifts and my mother as consolation prizes.’ It makes me sick.” Sophia brushed her hair behind her ear. “Collin doesn’t need material things. He needs his daddy.”

  Josie reached over and patted Sophia on the leg. “I’m really sorry.”

  Sophia leaned against the tree and stretched her legs out in front of her. “That made me mad enough, but then Mrs. Prescott handed me an envelope from Ty before she left. He’d scribbled a letter about loving us and wanting to take care of us. Along with the letter was an obscene amount of cash that he instructed me not to deposit.” She shook her head and huffed. “The man is clearly floating money around that he shouldn’t. The gifts he gave Collin are well into the thousands. I just don’t want to get caught up in his sweet talk and financial mess.”

  “What did you do?” Josie asked.

  “I handed the envelope back to his mother and told her to return it to him. She wasn’t happy about it, but she didn’t want to cause a scene, so she took it and left. Thank goodness.” Sophia looked heavenward and watched the late-afternoon sunbeams wiggle their way through the tree branches.

  “I can’t blame you there.” Opal scooted beside her and leaned on the tree while moving a hand along her tummy. Sophia couldn’t wait for Baby Cole to start showing as more than a tiny paunch.

  The women moved their attention to the little guy on his tractor with a paint-splattered artist hot on his heels.

  Sophia was tired of being the downer of the group, so she redirected their conversation to a lighter note. “Josie, you and August know how to wear paint well.” The couple came straight from teaching an art session at Palmetto Fine Arts Camp, and both were dressed in their usual outfits of tees and jeans that were speckled with paint. Sophia found that little quirk endearing.

  Josie giggled. “August certainly does. Isn’t he just something to look at?” The blonde tilted her head and openly admired her husband.

  Sophia snickered. “You sound like a lovesick teenager mooning over her boyfriend. It’s so sweet.”

  “It is,” Opal agreed. “Speaking of boyfriends . . . I was disappointed to hear that your boyfriend wasn’t at the party, Sophia.” Leave it to Opal to spoil the lighter topic.

  Sophia scoffed. “Fake. It’s fake and you know it.”

  Opal scoffed right back. “Well, whatever you want to call him, I don’t understand why Wes wasn’t invited.”

  “Stop meddling,” Sophia warned as she stood and brushed the back of her shorts. She walked away, wishing the same could be so easily done with the bothersome situations she found herself snared in at the moment.

  Later that night, Ty called and only spoke briefly with Collin before having the little guy hand Sophia the phone. Ty tried talking Sophia into flying out to see him. Of course she declined, but he put up one heck of a fight. The man was just as good at manipulation as he was at rushing a football field. Sadly, it had taken her too long to figure out how to see through his deceitful tactics.

  After a long night of tossing and turning, church the next day should have been a reprieve from all the stress. Instead, Sophia could barely keep a grip on the escalating sensation of coming unraveled as she sat on the pew beside Wes.

  As they stood to sing the offertory hymn, Wes leaned close and whispered, “Are you okay?”

  Sophia kept her eyes glued to the bleary hymnal in her hands and pretended to not hear him. For some reason, him asking her that in his smooth, sincere tone made her want to break. She wanted to scream and let loose a litany of complaints on how unfair life was treating her. To lash out until someone else felt the sting of her despondency.

  After the usher passed by, Sophia’s eyes fell to the aisle and she contemplated how freeing it would be to just fall out of her pew and let it all out in one momentous fit. She could picture it now, her limbs flailing about and the rage spewing from her mouth until someone showed up with a straitjacket.

  With a great deal of effort, Sophia bottled up the lunacy of that idea and tucked it away with the distress that had conjured it in the first place. When the song concluded, she wedged her purse between them on the pew, using it as a boundary.

  Wes gave the purse a thoughtful look and then did the same with her but said nothing. After that, his attention remained on the pastor for the remainder of the service.

  As they left the sanctuary, Sophia’s mom was quick to pounce on Wes before he made it too far.

  “Wes, dear, would you like to join us for Sunday dinner? It’s a special one for little Collin’s birthday. I’ve made all of his favorites.” Lucy grinned wide while looping her arm through Sophia’s to keep her rooted in the invitation.

  “Oh, I thought yesterday was the big celebration.” Wes directed his remark to Sophia, stirring her guilt for not inviting him.

  “That was for his little church friends. Besides, today is his actual birthday. We would love for you to celebrate with us,” Lucy offered, adding an enthusiastic head nod while nudging Sophia, but it didn’t encourage her to join in. She was barely holding on to her unsteady composure as it was. “Opal, Josie, and their hubbies will be there too.”

  The expression on Wes’s face looked a lot like hurt at the mention of Sophia’s friends being invited and not him. Sophia swallowed past the lump of guilt lodged in her throat and whispered, “Wes, would you like to join us?”

  “I’d like that, but I left Collin’s gift at my house.” Wes rubbed the back of his neck and looked over at his fancy sports car.

  “You could bring it by their place later on today.” Lucy released her hold on her daughter and ordered, “Sophia, give Wes directions out to the farm,” before dashing off.

  “Are you sure about me joining your family for dinner?” Wes asked quietly once they were alone.

  “Collin will be tickled for you to be there. I need to get him from his class.” Sophia turned on her heel.

  “Directions?” he called out before she got too far.

  She swatted the air. “I’ll text them to you shortly.” Sophia was tempted to give him the wrong address but decided against it.

  The meal was a bounty of Italian dishes that Sophia’s mom prided herself on making from recipes her own grandmother had brought with her from Sicily. The woman’s gravy, aka red sauce, was drool-worthy. Judging by Wes’s exuberant appetite, he agreed. The man was going head-to-head with both Neanderthal Lincoln and Big-Boy August with shoveling it in, and Sophia was impressed that he was keeping pace.

  At her mother’s insistence, Sophia managed to eat a couple of meatballs and a chunk of fresh focaccia by the time Wes polished off his third plate. Collin followed his example and ate with gusto, too.

  “Wes, I’d like to thank you for hiring our daughter,” Sophia’s dad said as dessert was served.

  Mitcham Gaines was a country boy through and through who’d managed to snag himself an Italian beauty—his very words—while attending t
he state fair back in the seventies. He’d recalled the story for Sophia several times over the years about how he followed Lucy around booth after booth until she agreed to a date. It was a sweet tale, but Sophia had no faith in love stories anymore.

  Lincoln took it upon himself to snort out a laugh. “Poor guy. We know the challenge in putting up with Sophia.”

  Opal swatted her husband’s arm as Sophia stuck her tongue out at him. “Hush and eat your dessert.”

  Wes paused between bites of cheesecake. “Sophia’s been an asset to Carolina Pediatrics. Hiring her was a wise decision.”

  A warmth spread inside her chest as Sophia stared at him, but Wes kept his focus on dessert. Whether he truly meant it or not, she was grateful he spoke so kindly about her in front of her parents.

  “Collin, are you ready for your presents?” Sophia’s mother asked, sending the little guy bouncing up and down in the booster seat that had recently replaced the high chair.

  Lincoln and Opal gave him a giant collection of sand toys, promising the little guy a day at the beach the following week. And Sophia wasn’t surprised when August and Josie presented him with an art easel and children’s art supplies. They were more invested in her son than his own father, and that fact both comforted and hurt Sophia.

  Papa and Grandma gave Collin a remote-control car, and the rest of the afternoon was spent on the porch watching the little guy crash it into every tree and bush in the front yard. Eventually he began twirling a curl around his finger, so Papa swooped him up and declared it time to watch the race on TV, which meant they reclined in his chair and dozed off before the first pit stop.

  The porch swing creaked back and forth as Sophia sat beside Wes in silence. Her mom had stretched out on the couch, making the swing their only option. Sophia hinted that Wes could mosey on home like her friends did, but he didn’t catch on—or pretended he didn’t anyway.

  Instead, he sat beside her while she listened to the gritty hum of the race drifting through the open windows. She surveyed the yard and regarded the gardenia bushes planted sporadically around it and beyond. Her parents planted a new bush to celebrate each wedding anniversary. A total of thirty-seven bushes thus far, and the perfume the yard emitted during certain times of the year was so alluring. It was such a beautiful testament to their love. One that Sophia both admired and envied.

  “Do you need to talk about it?” Wes quietly asked after a while.

  The first time he asked that, at his beach house, Sophia took it to mean that if it wasn’t a needed conversation, he’d rather not have his time wasted on it. But in the last several weeks she’d come to know him a little better. Now she picked up on the sincerity of the question. He recognized that the issue bothering her was important, and that talking about it might be a need, not a want.

  She sighed and fiddled with the lacy hem of her white sundress. “Do you ever feel like you’re about to come out of your skin?” She watched him out of the corner of her eye, worried he’d find her crazy for asking, but was relieved when he nodded.

  “All the time. It’s why I took up running.” Wes shifted to catch her gaze, jostling the swing before sending it back into a lazy rhythm. “I thought I could outrun whatever was causing it, but it’s taken years to realize the exercise only tamps it down to a more manageable anxiety.”

  “So you’re diagnosing it as anxiety and prescribing exercise to treat the symptoms?” She shoved his arm in tease, and unable to stop herself, she added, “Always playing doctor.”

  Wes leaned closer. “Now that you mention it . . . there are other, more imaginative techniques proven to reduce anxiety, but I’m too much of a gentleman to share those with you.” Then he followed it with what else but a sultry wink.

  Holy moly! The man knew how to flirt. Really?

  Surprised by his comeback tease, Sophia sprang to her feet and knocked her elbow against the swing armrest in the process. “Ow!” She jumped around while cradling her elbow, hoping the flapping motion would ease the zing of pain racing all the way up to her shoulder.

  “You hit it just right, didn’t you?” Wes asked as he stood and rubbed in a spot that immediately eased the pain to a more tolerable level.

  “Then why’s it feel so wrong?” Sophia managed to say through her clenched teeth.

  Wes grinned, and it made her heartbeat stutter.

  “Are you kidding me?” She reached over and poked the charming dimple in his left cheek with her index finger. “Dimples . . . You’re just too much.”

  The man’s boy-next-door looks made her instantly wary. Ty could pull off the exact same innocuous facade when the situation warranted it. Tugging out of his grasp and looking anywhere but at his handsome face, she muttered, “I need to get Collin home.”

  Wes scrubbed a hand down his face. “I apologize, Sophia. I was kidding around, and what I said was in poor taste.” He stood staring at his feet for a moment before turning away and descending the porch steps. “Please thank your parents for dinner,” Wes said over his shoulder as he made haste to his car.

  Sophia stood and watched the shiny black car ease down the long driveway, barely kicking up dust. She didn’t understand why they had some elastic tether that kept bringing them a little closer only to snap back the progress. Shaking her head, she went inside to gather her baby and hopefully her dignity before heading home.

  Later, as she finished giving Collin a bath, Sophia heard her phone chiming with a new message. The notion to ignore it became a moot point when her baby, being the sweet boy he was, grabbed it and brought it to her. She squinted at the name on the screen.

  Wes was the last person she would have guessed, and asking to come over to deliver Collin’s birthday gift was also a surprise. After skimming her outfit of damp tank top and yoga pants that were victims of Collin’s splash fest, she sent him a one-word reply, Okay, and hurried to change. But before she made it to her room, there was a knock on the front door. Grumbling under her breath, Sophia did an about-face and went to open it.

  “Good evening, Sophia.” Wes was casually dressed in sweatpants and a T-shirt with three large Target bags in his grips. They were basically dressed the same, yet she felt frumpy and he looked anything but.

  “Maybe you are a vampire,” she mumbled quietly, wondering how long he had been waiting outside.

  “What was that?” Wes’s brows pinched as he cocked his ear in her direction.

  “Nothing.” Sophia moved back and gestured for him to come in. “Collin, you have company.”

  Collin ran down the hallway and yelled, “Hey, Wes!”

  Wes raised an impressed eyebrow at Sophia. “Hello, Collin. I’ve brought your birthday gifts.” He sat in the middle of the living room floor and waited for Collin to join him.

  “I like gifs.” Collin nodded his head and took the offered bag. Looking inside, he frowned and pulled out pack after pack of underwear. “I not wan’ ’em.” The little guy looked right disappointed.

  Sophia gave Wes an exaggerated eye roll, knowing what that gift meant. She crossed her arms and leaned against the armrest of the couch as Wes tore open a pack.

  “These are special superhero undies. Only brave boys can wear them. Aren’t you brave?”

  Collin shrugged but took the pair Wes held out to him and inspected them. “You got superhero undies, too?”

  Wes glanced at Sophia and then angled away from her, but not before she caught a glimpse of the color rising in his cheeks. “I wear big-boy underwear,” he answered. “Don’t you want to try them on?”

  Collin was out of the diaper in a flash and pushing his feet into the big-boy underwear. After he had them pulled on, he ran over to Sophia and did a little dance, shaking his tiny butt. “See me, Mommy?”

  Sophia giggled. “I see you, bub.” She glanced at Wes. “Where’s the tiny toilet he’ll need?”

  “I don’t believe in that method.” Wes produced a toilet seat cover. “Just set this on top and place his stepstool in front of the toilet.”
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  She smirked. “You’ve done a lot of potty training?”

  “When parents come in and ask for advice, I provide them with proven techniques.” He held the seat up. “My research has indicated this is an easier approach. Unless you think you’d enjoy cleaning out the tiny toilet instead of simply flushing the big one.”

  Well, when he put it that way . . . “We can try this way first. Any more advice, Dr. Sawyer?”

  “As a matter of fact . . .” Wes pulled out a large tub of toy cars. “Collin, every day you don’t wet your superheroes, Mommy will give you a car.”

  Collin’s eyes rounded at the giant container. “I wan’ ’em!”

  “They’re all yours. Just don’t wet the superhero. Or poop on him for that matter.”

  Wes went as far as setting the toilet up and going over how to use it with Collin. The little guy sat there a short while and then stood in front of it like a “big” boy, but nothing happened.

  He tired of trying and went to play in his room. Sophia thought Wes would head on out but wasn’t sure if she was pleased or disappointed when he took a seat on the couch and patted the cushion next to him.

  “Mind if we have a chat before I go?”

  Hesitant, Sophia walked over and sat down beside him.

  “You’re sad a lot of the time,” Wes commented while looking her straight in the eye. “I don’t like it, and so earlier I thought teasing you a little would lighten your mood.” He shifted and placed his arm on top of the couch behind her. “I’m not good at that, obviously. I just . . . I wanted to make you laugh again. Instead, I offended you. Please know that wasn’t my intention.”

  Floored by his sincerity, the only thing Sophia could do was sit there and nod like a bobblehead.

  “When my wife was sad or upset about something,” he began barely over a whisper, “the only thing I had to do was tease her and it always seemed to make her feel better. I had no business trying that with you.”