by Terri Osburn
With a sigh, he gave one concession. “I think that would suck, but she’s told me as much herself. Look, there are things that happened to her before she got here. Things that scare her and make her think she needs to keep moving.” Watching a gull dive into the water, he said, “I want to convince her she’s safe here, but it’s going to take time. I’m willing to put in the effort, and I need you to give Will the benefit of the doubt.”
Sid pulled her legs up to cross them beneath her. “What happened to her?”
“I don’t know exactly, but whatever it was, she’s pretty scared. I’m hoping the fact that she’s been here so long means she trusts us.” If she’d trust him enough to let him help, maybe this for now stuff could stretch a little longer. “I know you feel like she lied to you, but that was for your own benefit. Your happiness with Lucas has you love crazy, and you’re pushing it on everyone else.”
Scratching at the plank beside her foot, Sid said, “I don’t see what’s wrong with wanting you to be happy. Don’t you want a wife and kids? A family? We had so much family back in Miami.”
“Is that what this is about?” he asked. “You miss having lots of family around?”
Sid lifted one shoulder. “It’s stupid. Forget I said anything.”
Lifting her chin, he smiled into familiar brown eyes. “I miss them, too. But you have the Dempseys now. They’re going to be your family. And Beth will pop that baby out in the fall. Once you and Lucas throw your hat in the baby ring, we’ll have munchkins all over this island.”
In a rare moment of softness, Sid said, “I can’t imagine myself as a mom. Do you think I could do it?”
“I think you’re going to be the greatest mom ever. But right now, I need you to be a less nosy sister. Deal?”
With a roll of her eyes, Sid said, “Deal.”
“Good.” Randy climbed to his feet. “Will is still at home. Go tell her you’re sorry.”
“What?” Sid asked, jumping up with him. “Why do I have to apologize?”
“Were you nice when she ran after you this morning?”
Her eyes dropped away. “Maybe not. But I was pissed.”
“Now you’re not pissed. So go apologize. Will feels like hell.” He threw his arm around Sid’s shoulder as they walked toward the house. “Let her off the hook.”
“Fine.” Sid kicked a shell out of her way. “I didn’t want to stay mad at her anyway.”
“That’s my girl,” Randy said, adding a quick squeeze for good measure. “I like this softer version of you.”
His payback for that comment was a stiff elbow to the ribs.
Will put the last of the breakfast dishes away before putting her boots on for work. She hadn’t heard from brother or sister since Randy had left that morning. Not that she expected to hear from Sid. Not after she’d been such a bitch about not pairing up with Randy and then getting caught practically in the act of pairing up.
As she tied the last knot in her black boot, a knock sounded at the door. Most likely Randy come back to say Sid hated her and would never talk to her again.
To Will’s surprise, Sid stood on the other side of the door. “Can I come in?” she said as Will hovered speechless in the doorway.
Stepping back, she pulled the door open wider and motioned Sid in.
“I know you’re heading out, but I need a minute.” Sid stopped at the counter and turned. “You shouldn’t have lied to me about you and Randy.”
“No, I shouldn’t have,” Will said, finally finding her voice. “But so you know, Randy and I didn’t have sex until two nights ago. I didn’t lie to you on Tuesday. We hadn’t taken that step yet as of that night.”
Sid nodded. “Fair enough. And I shouldn’t have pushed you so hard about him.”
“You want him to be happy.” Will closed the door. “There’s nothing wrong with that.”
“I want you both to be happy. He’s my brother and you’re my best friend aside from Curly.” Sid toyed with a fingernail, then shrugged and crossed her arms. “Would have been cool to have you as a sister, that’s all.”
Will blinked back the moisture in her eyes. “I don’t have any brothers or sisters. That would be kind of nice.” Swiping at her cheek, she caught her breath. No sense in dreaming of what could never be. “Whoever Randy ends up with will be lucky to have you as a sister-in-law.”
Pinching her lips, Sid stared at the floor for a brief moment before meeting Will’s eyes again. “And that absolutely can’t be you, huh?”
Wishing it weren’t so, Will shook her head no.
“Right.” Jerking up the sleeves of her hoodie, Sid closed the distance between them. “Friends, then,” she said, offering a conciliatory handshake.
Taking a risk, Will reached out and swept Sid into a hug. “I really am sorry,” she said, holding on tight. When Sid squeezed back, Will knew they would be okay.
As the hug ended, Sid stepped back. “You probably need to get to work.”
“Yeah,” Will said. “But I want to hear about the bachelorette party stuff. Will you stop in and see me later?”
“I can do that.”
They walked to the door together, and Will asked, “You’re not bringing in a stripper, are you?”
“I thought about it.” Sid reached the door first and pulled it open. “But Lucas refused to do it.”
Their joined laughter filled the air as they left the house.
The weekend had been crazy at Dempsey’s. Many tourists seemed to be taking advantage of the unusual spike in temperature to kick the season off early. Though the crowds were more than welcome, and encouraging considering the magazine article had yet to hit newsstands, by Monday night Will was exhausted and ready to sleep for a week.
She’d spent every night of the weekend at Randy’s house. He’d stopped in to see her at work Friday night, letting her know he’d be happy to rub her feet (or any other body parts she wanted) when the night was over. Will clearly remembered turning him down, but found herself holding an overnight bag on his front porch at one-thirty that morning.
What happened next was the real shocker. After taking a much-needed shower, she’d curled up with Randy on the couch and promptly fell asleep. When she awoke the next morning, still clothed and feeling like a new woman, Will thought maybe she’d dreamed the part about going to Randy’s house. Until she opened her eyes to the sight of three colorful fish swimming in a tank six feet away.
Coffee and breakfast were waiting for her, and after slipping on some yoga pants under her T-shirt, she’d joined Randy on the back porch with mug in hand. Against her own better judgment, Will started the next three mornings the same way, only she’d made sure to save up enough energy to let Randy rub whatever he’d wanted during the nights.
“Are you sure you don’t want someone to ride up with you?” Will asked Randy as he dished up her scrambled eggs Tuesday morning. He was due at the tuxedo shop by one for his final fitting.
“You’re the only person I’d want to spend the day with, and since you have to work, that means I go alone.” He set the empty frying pan in the sink, then moved to grab the whole wheat toast from the toaster. “I’ll be up and back in no time.”
Will had to admit, she was dying to see the finished product. Actually see Randy in the tux, not busting out of the thing. But she did have to work. And tonight she was meeting Sid and Beth at Opal’s for their regular girls’ night and to put the final touches on the shower and bachelorette party, both of which would be held on Saturday.
“If you really liked me,” she said, “you’d bring me some of those dumplings I had the last time.”
Randy slid her plate onto the island. “That can be arranged. What time do you think you ladies will wrap up tonight? I can heat up the dumplings and have them ready when you get here.”
Will buttered her toast. “You’re going to make someone a fine wife someday, Mr. Navarro.”
“Is that a proposal, Ms. Parsons?” Randy asked, keeping his eyes on his toast.
She knew he was joking. He had to be. But a tiny part of her wished they could have this conversation for real. Which is when Will knew she was in deep, deep trouble. It was also the moment she considered saying yes.
“What if it is?” she asked, moving to her second piece of toast. The words caught Randy’s attention.
Setting his butter knife down gently on his plate, Randy dropped the toast on top of his scrambled egg substitute and sat up straighter. “I’d say yes. Are we still playing here or are you serious?”
Will wasn’t sure. She knew she wanted to be serious. And she believed Randy would say yes. But if they were going to do this, it was time to share her secrets. All of them. He had to know what he was saying yes to.
“We need to have another conversation before I answer that. I’d better start at the beginning.”
CHAPTER 22
Randy lost interest in his breakfast as his entire body became focused on the woman across from him. Having her with him these past few days had confirmed his feelings. He wanted Will to be the last person he saw at night, and the woman he woke up with every morning. He’d been reasonably sure she was beginning to feel the same way but hadn’t figured out how to bring her around to it.
Now she seemed to be coming around all by herself.
“I grew up with my mom, who was what you might call a free spirit. Not in the hippie way, more in the ‘girls just want to have fun’ kind of way.” Will pushed the eggs around her plate as she spoke. “By the time I was seventeen, we’d moved about twenty times. Mom would move somewhere for a man, get tired of him, or he’d disappear, and we’d move again. It took another year before I learned why she didn’t like to stay in one place.”
“Why was that?” he asked, unable to suppress his curiosity.
“She didn’t want to be found. You see, my mom grew up in a very wealthy family. As an impetuous and rebellious eighteen-year-old, she fell in love with the gardener. Or one of them, anyway. That’s when she got pregnant with me.” Setting the fork next to her plate, Will sat back. “Her parents demanded she get rid of the child and forbade her from ever seeing my father again. That’s when they ran off together.”
“Mom might have wanted to make her own choices, but she wasn’t prepared for poverty. She’d gone from having servants to living in a hovel overnight, but she was stubborn enough to refuse to go home. Before I was born, she left my father and our nomadic life began.”
Surely Will didn’t think there was something wrong with her because her parents had never married. It took everything Randy had to remain silent as she sipped her coffee.
“Anyway, Mom didn’t really have any job skills,” Will continued. “So when I was old enough, I started working to support us both. She had what people would call sugar daddies, but they were never dependable. That’s why I went to college in the evenings for accounting. I’d been working finance and numbers since I’d learned to count.”
Randy blinked. “You’re an accountant?”
With a sheepish grin, Will said, “Yeah. That’s why I knew what to do with your books. Which were in pretty good shape before I got hold of them. Nice job with that.”
“Um…Thanks.” As much as he was interested in learning about Will’s past, nothing she’d said so far explained her fear or her refusal to consider a real future with him. “But why pretend to be a bartender?”
“I’m not pretending. I am a bartender,” she said, as if he’d insulted her in some way. “I was tending bar long before I went to college. One of the perks to being tall and not sticking to one place long enough for people to know much about you is that no one knows your real age and most assume you’re older than you are. Tips were cash in hand and I didn’t want to wait tables, so I learned how to mix drinks.”
She must have been an adult from age ten. What teenager took it upon herself to learn how to mix drinks? And what was her mother doing allowing her underage daughter to work in bars?
“After I finished college, things got better. I was making enough money to get us a nicer place, and I’d convinced Mom to stay put for a while.” Will was fully into the story, as if it wouldn’t have mattered if he were present or not. “At that point, I didn’t know her history. I had no idea that she’d kept us moving so her parents wouldn’t find us. I guess once I was an adult, she figured there was no more reason to run. Until she got sick.”
“Sick?” Randy said.
Will nodded in the affirmative as she stared into her coffee mug. “When I was twenty-five, Mom got diagnosed with liver cancer. It was pretty advanced by the time they caught it, leaving her with little chance of beating the disease.” Meeting his eyes for the first time since she’d begun the tale, Will said, “That’s when she asked me to take her home. Back to the family she’d left behind when she was pregnant with me.”
He took her hand across the island. “Did they welcome her back?”
“They took her in. Paid her medical bills. But they weren’t the most affectionate people. Mom was their only daughter, and she’d tainted the bloodline by having a child with my father.”
Tainted? Who the hell even thought like that anymore?
“Were they mean to you?”
“What?” Will jerked her head up, as if surprised by the question. “Oh, no. I mean, they didn’t lavish me with gifts and show me off to their friends, but we found some common ground over Mom. At the end, shortly before she died, is when I made one nearly fatal mistake.”
Randy remembered what she’d said to him once. “When you said hello to the wrong person. You leaned on someone to get through your mother’s death.”
“Unfortunately.” Will’s movements became jerky, and she hopped off the stool to pace the kitchen as she spoke, all the while staring at the floor. “His parents were friends with my grandparents, though much younger. They all ran in the same rich-people circles. But I thought he was different. Turned out he wasn’t. In fact, he was much worse.”
Randy clasped the edge of counter, his knuckles white. “What did he do to you?”
Stopping near the back door, she stared out across the surf. “A couple months after Mom died,” she said, her voice cracking with emotion, “he asked me to marry him. I said it was too soon, but he wouldn’t take no for an answer. When I told him we needed to take a break, that I needed time to grieve, he put me in the hospital.”
Randy’s teeth nearly cracked under the pressure in his jaw. He had never wanted to commit a violent act the way he did in that moment. If the man who’d laid his hands on Will were in the room, he would have died an ugly and painful death.
Breathing through his nose to control the rage, Randy kept his voice as level as possible as he asked, “Where is he now?”
Will turned to him, narrowing her eyes as if trying to read his thoughts. “Probably where I left him. As soon as I was able, I left the hospital without telling anyone, and I’ve been running ever since.”
“Why didn’t you tell the police? Have him arrested?”
“When I say these people are wealthy, I mean old money, lots of influence kind of wealthy.” Looking as if she’d set down something heavy, Will moved back to her stool. “He warned me that if I told anyone, he’d make sure I never talked again. To anyone. Yet he was sick enough to still want me. Even though he’d taken away my ability to have children.”
Randy froze. “He did what?”
“I didn’t know it until the doctor told me, but I’d been six weeks pregnant when he beat me. The blows and kicks to the stomach were likely the cause of the hemorrhaging. They had to take it all.”
The words were spoken as if she were discussing a car totaled in an accident. As if a man had not kicked and beaten her until she’d nearly died, killing her unborn baby in the process.
“He’s still looking for you, isn’t he?”
Will’s brows went up with her shoulders. “I can’t know for sure, but I don’t doubt it. That’s why I couldn’t have my face in the magazine. Why I was afraid
someone had recognized me in Nags Head that day.”
“And why Rebecca King was sure she’d seen your face before.”
With a nod, she replied, “I was a missing person on the news back when I first left. She could have seen me there, or she could know someone who looks like me. There’s no way to be sure.”
Charging around the counter, Randy cupped Will’s face in his hands. “He’s never going to hurt you again. Do you hear me? Never.”
She placed her hands over his, a sad smile settling across her lips. “There’s no way to know that for sure. This man has enough money and power to do anything he wants. I’ve been safe here, on Anchor, but that could change in an instant. Do you see why I can’t give you anything more than today?”
“He might have been able to get to you when you were alone,” Randy said, dropping his hands to her shoulders. “You’re not alone anymore. You don’t have to run ever again.”
Will gazed into his eyes, tilting her head to the side. “You’re such a good man. You deserve a woman who isn’t dragging around baggage like this. A woman who can give you a family, trust, and love wholeheartedly.” Kissing the back of his hand, she sighed. “I wish that woman could be me.”
What was she talking about? Didn’t she understand she was that woman? Maybe she couldn’t have babies, but they could still be a family.
“There are other ways we could create a family, Will. But why did you decide to tell me this now?” he asked, certain her true feelings for him had been the reason.
“It’s all this playing-house stuff, I guess,” she said, pushing the plate of cold eggs to the center of the island. “Wanting things to be different. Wanting the past to disappear so there might be a future for us.” Leaning her chin on her hand, she said, “Wishful thinking.”
“Nothing you’ve told me changes how I feel about you.” Randy watched her bottom lip quiver and realized she’d told her whole gruesome story without shedding a tear. His gypsy was stronger than she realized. “I’m thirty-five years old. I could be dead in five years or I could live to be a hundred,” he said. “Does that change how you feel about me?”