by Marie Force
Gansett Island Episodes
Episode 1: Victoria & Shannon
Marie Force
HTJB, Inc.
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
About the Author
Gansett Island Episodes
Episode 1: Victoria & Shannon
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By: Marie Force
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Published by HTJB, Inc.
Copyright 2017. HTJB, Inc.
Cover Design: Kristina Brinton
E-book Layout by
E-book Formatting Fairies
ISBN: 978-1946136084
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This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return it and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author. To obtain permission to excerpt portions of the text, please contact the author at [email protected].
All characters in this book are fiction and figments of the author’s imagination.
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The Gansett Island Series
Get the entire Gansett Island Series
Gansett Island Boxed Set, Books 1-3
Gansett Island Boxed Set, Books 4-6
Gansett Island Boxed Set, Books 7-9
Book 1: Maid for Love
Book 2: Fool for Love
Book 3: Ready for Love
Book 4: Falling for Love
Book 5: Hoping for Love
Book 6: Season for Love
Book 7: Longing for Love
Book 8: Waiting for Love
Book 9: Time for Love
Book 10: Meant for Love
Book 10.5: Chance for Love A Gansett Island Novella
Book 11: Gansett After Dark
Book 12: Kisses After Dark
Book 13: Love After Dark
Book 14: Celebration After Dark
Book 15: Desire After Dark
Book 16: Light After Dark
Episode 1: Victoria & Shannon
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View the McCarthy Family Tree here.
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View the list of Who’s Who on Gansett Island here.
Chapter 1
Desperate times called for desperate measures, or that was what Victoria Stevens told herself as she took an early lunch break for an errand she’d put off long enough. She had tried everything she could think of to get her boyfriend, Shannon, to open up to her without success, and there was only one person on this island who could help her figure out what to do next.
On paper, Victoria was one half of a perfect relationship. Together nearly a year, she and Shannon O’Grady enjoyed a lot of the same activities, TV shows and friends. They’d lived together for almost a year, laughed often, hardly fought and had the hottest sex she’d ever had with anyone almost every day. Though she told herself it couldn’t be better, that was a big, fat lie. It could be better. It could be a lot better.
What they had, she’d finally been forced to acknowledge, was a lovely, wonderful surface relationship that lacked the kind of true intimacy she craved. She saw what she wanted for herself every day in the couples she worked with as a Certified Nurse Midwife, and refused to settle for less in her own life. So even if her relationship with Shannon seemed perfect on the surface, the foundation was shaky.
For one thing, they never talked about anything important beyond their work schedules, what was for dinner or whether they should go to a party they’d been invited to. In some ways, she felt like she didn’t know him any better now than she had the day she met him, and that was a problem she couldn’t continue to ignore as much as she might want to.
Five years ago, she would’ve ignored it. She would’ve told herself to stop being melodramatic and enjoy what she had. The future would take care of itself. But staring down her twenty-ninth birthday had her taking stock of where she’d expected to be by thirty—and it was not in a go-nowhere relationship with the hottest guy she’d ever met, let alone dated.
She’d waited until Shannon, a deckhand for the Gansett Island Ferry Company, departed on the eleven o’clock boat to the mainland. As she walked into town from the clinic where she worked, she saw the boat he was on way off in the distance. That meant the coast was clear for her trip to the ferry landing, which bustled with activity on a Friday in late June.
This was the right thing to do, or so she told herself. If she allowed in any other thought, such as the propriety of asking Shannon’s cousin questions she probably ought to ask Shannon himself, she might chicken out, and that was not an option. Outside the door to the ferry company’s main office, she took a deep breath and knocked on Seamus O’Grady’s open door.
He was on the phone and waved her in.
Victoria went into his office and took one of the chairs that sat in front of his desk.
“I understand,” he said in the lyrical Irish accent that was so familiar to her after a year with his cousin. “I appreciate the call. I’ll have a talk with him tonight and get back to you tomorrow. Very good. Thank you.” Sighing, he ended the call and placed his cell phone on the desk. “Sorry about that.”
“Everything okay?”
“Jackson is having a few challenges at summer camp,” Seamus said of one of the two brothers he and his wife, Carolina, had taken in after their mother died of lung cancer. “Getting into some scrapes with the other kids and ‘acting out,’ or so the director says. I’ll admit to being out of my league with things like this.”
“You’re doing great, and you’ll figure out what to do.”
“I hope you’re right, but you didn’t come by to talk about my woes, did you?”
“No,” she said with a smile, “I came to talk about my woes.”
His brows knitted with concern. “What’s wrong?”
“Shannon.”
“What about him? I thought things were going great for the two of you.”
“Things are great.” Victoria paused and shook her head. “No, that’s not true. It could be great, but it’s like there’s this gigantic brick wall standing between us, and I can’t get around it or over it or through it no matter how hard I try.”
“Ahhh,” Seamus said, nodding. “I see.”
“I hope you know… I’d never bother you with this if I wasn’t feeling sort of desperate about what to do.”
“First of all, love, you’re never a bother. We’re friends, aren’t we?”
“I’d like to think so.” She and Shannon spent a lot of time with Seamus and Carolina and now their boys, too. The four of them regularly went out to dinner, played cards and spent holidays together.
He stood. “Take a walk with me. This isn’t a short conversation.”
Victoria got up to go with him, eager to hear what he had to say even if part of her was afraid, too.
They walked to the pier where the fishing boats came and went, bringing in fresh catch-of-the-day that was sold to island residents and restaurants. In the middle of the day, the pier was mostly deserted, with many of the boats out on the water.
“Has he told you about Fiona?” Seamus asked after a long silence.
“Who?” Victoria immediately thought of the woman who worked with Grace McCarthy at the pharmacy, but clearly Seamus meant someone else.
“I didn’t think so.”
“Who is she?”
“She was his first love back in Ireland.” He rested his arms on one of the pilings and stared out at the ocean. “It’s still hard to talk about her even after all these years.”
Suddenly, Victoria was sorry she’d sought him out and particularly sorry she’d asked questions she had no business asking. “I, um, maybe it would be better if I didn’t know.”
“Would it?”
He was giving her an out, and Victoria wanted to take it because she sensed that whatever he was about to tell her would change everything. Was that what she wanted? To change everything? “I… I don’t know.”
“You want to understand him, right?”
She nodded.
“Then you need to know about Fiona.”
Resigned to hearing the story, Victoria leaned against the next piling, needing the support it provided.
“I can’t remember a time when they weren’t together. They met in school and were inseparable from then on. After they finished school, they moved to Dublin so she could pursue a career as a model. Shannon got a job as a bartender to help make ends meet so she could focus on her career, which was really taking off. She had a top agent and a couple of photographers who loved to work with her.”
Victoria wanted to run away from whatever was coming next. “Wh-What happened?”
“I’m only going to tell you this much, love. She was murdered.”
Victoria felt like she’d been punched. “Oh God,” she whispered.
“I’ll leave it to him to share the details, if he chooses to. I’ve already said more than I should have. He’s intensely private on this topic. He doesn’t talk about her at all.”
Her heart ached for Shannon. Tears flooded her eyes, spilling down her cheeks.
“As you can imagine, he’s never been the same since she died. For a long time afterward, we worried he’d take his own life rather than have to live without her. So we made sure someone was always with him the first year. We watched him around the clock. The second year, he started drinking and spent most of that year and the next drunk. By the time he finally snapped out of that stage, we were about to send him to rehab. But one day, he got up, took a shower, got dressed and went back to work at the bar, as if nothing had happened. That’s what he did for years—got up, went to work, did what he had to do to survive. Then, eight years after he lost Fiona, he came here and met you, and he’s been different.”
“How so?” she asked, her voice scratchy. “How has he been different?”
“He smiles again. He laughs. He participates. You have no idea what a huge improvement those things are from the way he was for so long.”
Using her sleeve, she tried to mop up the tears. “I’ve wondered,” she said haltingly, “why it seemed he was willing to go only so far with me. Now I know it’s because he isn’t capable of more.”
“A year ago, I would’ve agreed with you. Now, I’m not so sure that’s true.”
“Why do you say that?”
“I’ve spent a lot of time with the two of you. I’ve seen the way he looks at you and watches you when you’re in the room, looks for you when you’re not. He’s as invested in you as he’s able to be, even if he doesn’t say so.”
“I’m not sure what to do with this information, Seamus.” She’d gotten way more than she’d bargained for from Shannon’s cousin.
“What do you want to do with it?” he asked.
“I want to find him and hold him and tell him I love him and I always will even if he’s not capable of loving me back.”
“He’s capable. He just doesn’t know it yet. You’ll have to lead him to it if you’re interested in a future with him. Is that what you want, Vic? A future with him?”
“I think so,” she said softly. “But I can’t compete with her. I feel awful even saying that.”
“I understand, and you shouldn’t feel awful. For what it’s worth, I see the way he is with you, and I think he cares for you more than either of you realize.”
“Do I tell him what I know?”
“That’s up to you, love. I can’t tell you how to play this. I wish I could.”
“Will he mind that you told me?”
“If he does, that’s between the two of us. Don’t you worry about me. I can fight my own battles. I told you what I did because I like you for him. I like you two together, and I wanted to help. My intentions were pure, and that’s what I’ll tell him if it comes to that.”
“I really appreciate this, Seamus.”
He held out his arms to her, and she walked willingly into his embrace. “He’s lucky to have you in his life, and he knows it. Have some faith in that.”
“I’ll try,” she said, smiling up at him. “Your wife is lucky to have you, too.”
“Aye, I tell her so every day.”
Victoria laughed at the predictable comment. “I’ll see you later.” She walked back to the clinic lost in thought and grief-stricken over what Shannon had been through losing his first love in such a horrific way. So many things made sense to her now that she knew what’d happened to him.
Most of the time, he came off as a happy-go-lucky sort of guy. However, every so often, the darkness would swoop in, and he’d punch out of their relationship for a day or two, even if he never physically left the home they shared. Victoria had learned to give him space during the dark moods, even as she wondered what caused them. Now she knew, and understood, for the most part anyway. If only she could figure out how best to use the information Seamus had given her to improve their relationship.
In her heart of hearts, she believed they had what it took to make this the kind of love story that lasted a lifetime. But that could happen only if they both wanted it. She couldn’t do it on her own. She was still pondering her predicament when she walked through the main doors to the clinic. Dr. David Lawrence stood at the registration desk, speaking with Katie Lawry, their nurse practitioner, and Anna, the receptionist.
“Oh, there you are,” David said. “I was about to call you.”
“Why? What’s up?”
“Tiffany Taylor is in labor in Exam Three.” He took a closer look at her. “Have you been crying?”
She shook her head. “No.”
“Vic… What’s wrong?”
“Let’s talk about it later.” As her colleagues looked at her with concern, Victoria took Tiffany’s chart from David and went through the double doors to the exam rooms, knocking on the door to number three. “Hi there,” she said to Tiffany, owner of the Naughty & Nice boutique, and her husband, Blaine, the island’s police chief. “What’s this I hear about labor?”
“We were in bed, and she woke up in a puddle,” Blaine said, seeming incredibly stressed.
“Any contractions?”
“Over the last day or two, I’ve had like a rolling ache that comes and goes pretty regularly, but since it didn’t feel like the labor pains I had with Ashleigh, I thought they were Braxton-Hicks contractions. Not the real thing.”
“Let’s take a look.” Victoria washed her hands and put on gloves before helping Tiffany into position. As this was
Tiff’s second child, she knew the drill.
Victoria performed an internal exam and discovered Tiffany was fully dilated and effaced. “You work fast, Mrs. Taylor. You’re about to have this baby.”
“Right now?” Blaine asked, sounding panicked. “She’s not due for another week. This was supposed to happen on the mainland.”
“Well, it’s happening right here and now.”
“What if something goes wrong or she needs a C-section?”
“We have everything we need if that should happen.” After David had delivered his ex-fiancée Janey Cantrell’s baby by emergency C-section last year, they’d taken steps to bring in the proper equipment to perform emergency surgery, if necessary. They never again wanted to be unprepared for an emergency of that magnitude. “The best thing you both can do is relax and breathe. Tiffany had an easy labor with Ashleigh, and there’s no reason to believe this one won’t be routine, too.”
As she said the words, Tiffany’s face tightened with obvious pain. “I’m feeling the need to push.” She clung to Blaine’s hand. “Can I push?”
“Not quite yet. Let me get everything ready, and then we’ll get that baby out.” She left the exam room to round up help.
“What’s going on?” Katie asked.
“She’s ready to deliver now, and I think it’s going to be quick. Can you give me a hand?”
“I’m all yours in five minutes. I’ve got to move a few things around.”
“Ask Anna to clear my afternoon, will you?” In Victoria’s world, nothing took precedence over a mom in labor.
“You got it.” Katie went to speak to the receptionist.
“You’re sure you’re all right?” David asked when they met up in the hallway.
“Can we talk after work? I’ve got a baby to deliver.”
“Of course.”
“Thanks.” David was one of her closest friends, and there was no one else she’d rather talk to about what she should do with the information Seamus had given her.