by Jen Gilroy
“Next time?” Charlie tried to wriggle out of his arms, but he held her tight. “There won’t be a—”
“Yes, there will,” he said into her ear, his words for her alone. “We both know it.” He ran a hand down the curve of her spine, his touch hot through her top.
Linnie cleared her throat. “Charlie, you and me always got on real well. I missed that when you left.”
“I did too.” They’d been friends. The kind of friend Charlie hadn’t known she’d miss until it was too late.
“You should drop by.” Linnie’s hazel eyes twinkled. “Since you and Sean are so friendly again.”
“I…we aren’t…not like you might think.” Charlie linked her arms in front of her chest and tried to squeeze her breasts back into her bra, all the while conscious of Sean righting the overturned chair, picking up the scattered papers, the desk tray. Her face flamed hotter.
“Whatever.” Linnie grinned and a dimple appeared in her right cheek, like the teenager Charlie remembered. “Are you going to the fair?”
“The fair?” Charlie glanced at Sean.
“Blueberry Jam.” His voice was rough.
“Friday through Sunday, the third weekend in August at the fairgrounds by the lake,” Linnie added. “There’s a music festival and local food show too. Remember?”
“Yeah, I do.” Charlie gave up on her bra and hugged herself. The first time Sean kissed her, the two of them had been sitting on top of the Ferris wheel at the fair, the night sky carpeted with stars.
“I’m sure Charlie has more important things to do than go to a small-town fair.” Sean set the tray on the desk and shoved his hands into the pockets of his jeans.
“Mia’s girls might like to go.” Charlie glanced at Sean, remembering the light in his eyes that long-ago summer night. How he’d leaned in close and covered her mouth with his and she’d thought she’d love him forever.
Linnie curled a strand of red hair around one finger, and the tiny diamond in her engagement ring winked at Charlie. “I enter my crafts, baking too. Sean’s sisters, my girls, the whole family gets involved.” Linnie nudged the cardboard box. “Sean and Trevor enter wood carvings of birds and animals. Sean’s birds are in here. You should see his work. The detail is incredible.”
Sean took his hands out of his pockets and grabbed the box. “Leave it, okay?”
Linnie made a teasing face and turned back to Charlie. “I’ll help you make something to enter if you want.”
“Me? You can’t be serious.” Charlie swallowed a laugh.
“Why not?” Linnie gave Charlie a playful grin. “Sean likes these oatmeal raisin cookies, which are super easy to make.”
“Linnie, I mean it.” Sean turned her to face the door.
“You come by anytime,” Linnie said over her shoulder. “We live across the street from Carmichael’s place, forty-seven Spruce Cove Road.” She moved away from Sean, found a pen and a scrap of paper, and scribbled on it. “Here’s my number.”
“I always liked you, Linnie. Right back to first grade when you didn’t tell on me for knocking poster paint over on your new sneakers…but you’re pushing your luck. Out you go.” Sean pointed to the open office door.
Linnie looked at Charlie, her mischievous expression wiped away. “I think you should know. My daughter Crystal is over at the marina.” She hesitated for a fraction of a second. “With little Emma.”
Sean stiffened. “Ty must have called Crystal to help out.”
“Is Naomi at the marina?” Charlie studied Linnie’s face.
“No.” Linnie’s voice was low. “Ty wasn’t either.”
“Ty wouldn’t…” Sean rubbed a hand across his face. “You can’t be sure.”
“I’m a mom of four teenagers.” Linnie patted his arm. “Not a lot kids do gets by me. Besides, I remember what Trevor and I used to get up to.”
Like what Charlie and Sean used to get up to. “I’ll talk to Mia. Thank you.”
The warmth in Linnie’s smile told Charlie they might find their way back to being friends again. “See you soon, Charlie. I meant what I said about dropping by.”
After the door shut behind Linnie, Charlie came around the desk. “I should go too.” She picked up her bag from under a chair. “I shouldn’t have started something I can’t finish.”
Sean moved toward her and she scooted behind the chair. “I have to check on Ty first, but why can’t you finish it?” His voice was low and sensual. “If Linnie hadn’t walked in on us, I’d have locked the door and we’d have been doing what we both want.”
“No, I wouldn’t.” She clenched her fingers around the chair back.
“You’re lying.” His voice turned harsh.
How, after all this time, did Sean still know her so well? “Okay, maybe I would have, but it wouldn’t have solved anything.”
He cupped her chin and then, almost as if he couldn’t help himself, his index finger traced the outline of her lips. “I can think of a few things it may not have solved, but it would at least have taken the edge off.”
Her face and mouth tingled with the imprint of his touch, and she twisted away. Linnie had interrupted them just in time. Sean tempted her, but she couldn’t act on it. She had to get this conversation onto safer ground, fast. “Look at what you’ve achieved with this business. You always wanted to make it a success.”
“I wanted you too. And I thought we wanted each other.” Sean leaned against the desk. Sunlight streamed through the half-open window and turned his hair gold. “A few minutes ago, you still wanted it.”
“We were always good at sex, but we have to control ourselves.” Even though she wanted nothing more than to throw herself back into his arms, Charlie slung her bag over her shoulder, her legs shaking. She’d tried to change the subject to Carmichael’s, the one thing Sean had always liked to talk about, but this wasn’t safer ground. It was the exact same ground.
“You really think you can control yourself? Or I can?”
“We have to.” Her mouth went dry at the thought of how things might have been different for her, for them. If she hadn’t left. If she’d told him the truth about the baby and the loan. If she hadn’t broken his trust and his heart. “We can try to be friends. Nothing more.”
“Friends?” Sean snorted. “How you were wrapped around me was a lot more than friends.” He bunched his shirt into his jeans and covered the narrow strip of skin that had been firm and hot to her touch. “Unless you mean friends with benefits, but what’s between us isn’t casual.”
She forced herself to keep breathing. “It isn’t, but apart from you and me, there’s Ty and Naomi to consider.” And her sister didn’t need any more worries. “They have feelings for each other, and I can’t let Naomi get hurt.” Hurt in the way she’d been hurt. Hurt so badly she’d been careful never to let herself get close to anyone or feel much of anything ever since.
“I know.” Sean’s voice was tired, older. “I can’t let Ty get hurt either. He’s a lot like me, and she’s like you.” He scrubbed a hand across his face.
She backed toward the door, her heart thumping. “I’m glad we understand each other.”
“Understand each other?” His eyes narrowed as he followed her. “Is that a challenge?”
“No, it’s—”
His mouth covered hers again. Then he drew back, ending the punishing kiss almost as soon as he’d started it. His gaze raked her face. “Before you leave again, whether you want to or not, we’re going to have to deal with what’s still between us.”
Charlie pushed open the office door. Shadow shot through it, tail wagging and barking a greeting.
“Saved by the dog.” Shadow skidded to a stop beside him and Sean smiled. The kind of smile Charlie had never been able to resist. A smile that touched all the places in her heart she’d locked away long ago.
Desire rocked through her, together with a sense of loss and regret so strong it left her breathless. She reached for Shadow and crouched to the dog’s le
vel.
When she was eighteen, she’d convinced herself she’d done the right thing, the only thing she could do. She was sure that if Sean had to choose between Carmichael’s and her, he’d choose the business. So she’d broken up with him before he could break up with her. And also because if she hadn’t ended their relationship, her dad would have taken back the loan and Sean would have lost Carmichael’s anyway.
But now she wasn’t sure. Maybe the right thing had been the wrong thing.
And maybe she hadn’t only lied to Sean. Maybe she’d lied to herself too.
Sean lifted the burger from the grill onto a plate. “You want to eat out here?”
Ty grunted. His back to Sean, he leaned against the rail of the deck toward the lake, where the sun nudged the hills amid a rosy curtain of cloud. “Whatever.”
Sean set the plate on the patio table and went back for his burger. “Busy at the marina today?”
Ty turned. “Steady.” He pulled out one of the patio chairs and folded his long body into it, bare apart from a pair of colorful board shorts.
“When I dropped by around three, Crystal was there. She said you took one of the canoes out.” Sean sat across from Ty and helped himself to potato salad.
He needed to be subtle. He wouldn’t accuse Ty. He’d keep things easy and relaxed. Like all those parent-your-teenager books he’d read, which said you had to keep the channels of communication open. Make sure your kid knew you trusted him, wouldn’t judge him. While you set boundaries.
“You have a problem with that?” Ty ate some burger and washed it down with half a glass of milk.
“Is there any reason why I should have a problem?” Sean forced himself to sound calm and reasonable. His son was turning into a man and he could handle this man-to-man. Or man-to-almost-man.
“No.” Ty bit into a cob of corn with the straight teeth that were the product of two years of orthodontia. “I took somebody out.”
“Somebody?” Sean poured a glass of water from the jug. “Naomi’s little sister, Emma, was with Crystal.”
“Why don’t you come right out and say it?” Ty dropped the corncob and wiped his mouth with a paper napkin. “You were checking up on me. You know who I took out.”
So much for subtle. “I hoped you’d tell me.” He curled a hand around his water glass.
“Why would I?” Ty gulped the last of his burger and shoved his chair away from the table.
“Naomi seems like a nice girl, real pretty too, but you know how her mom feels about her dating and…” Sean stopped. He was screwing this up big time.
“We’re not dating. We’re hanging out.” Ty stared at the insect-repelling candle in its tin bucket on the far side of the deck and rolled his shoulders, well-defined abs that Sean hadn’t noticed before bulging.
“It’s good to make new friends.” Sean sounded like one of those pastel greeting cards in the rack at the drugstore in town. The kind of cards his mom and sisters bought. “I never said you can’t hang out with Naomi, but you shouldn’t get serious about her. You’re only fifteen.” And he had to keep his son from making the same mistakes he had. From getting hurt like he had, this time by another Gibbs girl.
“I’ll be sixteen in November.” Ty tipped back in the chair and balanced it on two legs. “Besides, when you were my age, I hear you totally had the hots for Naomi’s aunt.” He shot forward and the chair hit the deck with a thump.
“Who said that?” Sean pushed away his half-eaten burger.
“Crystal heard her mom and dad talking.” Ty scratched a mosquito bite on his forearm. “You done?”
“Help yourself.” Sean slid his plate across the table. “Charlotte Gibbs and I were friends and yes, I cared about her.” And when he and Charlie were Ty and Naomi’s age, they’d made out every chance they got. Sean suppressed a groan.
“You cared about her?” Ty’s tone was mocking. “Crystal heard Aunt Linnie say you had it for Charlie Gibbs bad.” His blue eyes challenged Sean, daring him to deny it. “In fact”—he drew out the words—“Uncle Trevor said you were all over her like a bad case of poison ivy.”
Yep, that was Trevor. His twin was quiet, but he sure had a way with words when he wanted to.
“Back then, Charlotte and I, we were…” They were what? Sean rubbed the tight muscles in his neck. “We’d grown up together, gotten to know each other every summer when she and her family came here to their cottage.”
“And?” Ty tapped one foot against the deck.
“We thought we were in love. But we were kids. We didn’t know what love was.” Because real love was about honesty and trust. Everything Charlie hadn’t shown to him.
“I saw how you looked at her at Mario’s. You never looked at Mom that way.” Ty twirled the end of his corncob between his fingers.
“Your mom and I weren’t right for each other. You know that.” The night was drawing in, and although Ty’s face was shadowed, the hurt little boy still lurked in the blurred outline of the young man.
“Did you love Mom?” His son’s voice cracked.
“Of course I did.”
Except not in the way he’d loved Charlie. Not with his whole heart and soul. Not to the fiber of his being. Even back then, Sean had known his love for Sarah was different, more superficial, and although they’d never talked about it, maybe Sarah had too. Shame scorched him.
Sean stretched out a hand to touch his son’s wrist and Ty flinched. “She’s your mother. I’ll always love and respect her for that.”
“You and Naomi’s aunt, you weren’t…you know…when you and Mom were together.” Ty’s face flushed red, and he looked at his bare feet.
“Absolutely not.” Sean pulled his chair around to sit beside Ty. “I never cheated on your mother, not with Charlotte Gibbs or anybody else.”
Thinking about someone other than your wife didn’t count, did it? Not that he’d thought about Charlie a lot. Except, sometimes when he hadn’t made Sarah happy, he wondered if he’d have made Charlie happy either.
But first Charlie and then Sarah had left him, so he’d thrown himself into Carmichael’s, building the business to secure his family’s future. To prove himself, even though somewhere along the line he’d lost sight of who, or what, he was proving himself for.
“Your mom’s a good person and she deserved to find a man like Matt. Someone who is right for her and can make her happy like she deserves.” Sean lifted his hands up, then let them fall to his sides.
“I guess.” Ty grabbed his T-shirt from a patio chair and shrugged into it. “I like spending time with Naomi. She’s different from the girls around here. Why can’t you understand?”
Because Sean understood all too well. “She’s going back to Dallas in a few weeks. Her mom and Charlotte are selling the cottage. She won’t ever come back here.”
“She might.” Ty finished the remains of Sean’s meal and grabbed an apple from the fruit bowl. “Just ’cause her aunt dumped you doesn’t mean Naomi would do the same to me.”
“You’re out of line.”
“If you say so.” Ty’s voice got louder and more insolent.
“I do. No matter what Linnie and Trevor said, anything between Charlotte and me was over years ago. It’s also none of your business.” Sean’s stomach rolled. He’d never lied to Ty. He’d always prided himself on his honesty. But the lie had come out and now he couldn’t take it back. Couldn’t explain either, at least not without making things even worse.
“Naomi and I are none of your business either.” Ty whistled for Shadow and shoved his feet into a pair of flip-flops.
“It’s my business as long as you live under my roof.” Sean gripped the arms of the patio chair.
“Then I’ll live with Mom all the time.” Ty polished the apple on his shirt. “She wants me to be happy.”
Sean’s chest tingled. This couldn’t be happening. What would he do if Ty chose to live with Sarah? If Ty walked out of his life without a backward glance? He didn’t want to aliena
te his son, or stand in the way of his dreams, but he had to keep Ty safe. “Does your mom know about Naomi?”
“I told her there’s this girl I’ve been hanging with.” Ty stuck his bottom lip out like a rebellious toddler. “She said it was great.”
Sean took a deep breath. “Naomi lives over a thousand miles away.” And even though she looked like her younger, mirror image, Naomi wasn’t Charlie.
“So?” Ty rolled his eyes and scraped his chair away from the table.
Sean forced a calmness he didn’t feel. “If you truly care about Naomi, you’ll respect what her mom wants. Her mom says Naomi’s too young to date. Whatever you want to call it. If you meet Naomi without her mom knowing, it’s wrong and not how you’ve been raised.”
“I only took her canoeing, okay? It’s not a big deal. Come on, Shadow.” Ty grabbed the dog’s collar and clumped down the deck steps.
“It is a big deal.” Sean followed, taking the steps two at a time. “Besides, you’ve only known her, what, a week?”
“Eleven days.” Ty flung the words over his shoulder.
“Where are you going?” Sean grabbed Ty’s arm, but his son twisted away.
“The workshop.” Ty kicked sand into a cloud and Shadow barked, eager to join in a game. “Happy? I’m going to do some work. Like you always do.”
Sean pressed his hand to his stomach. “I always tried to be there for you. Stuff at school, sports, the camping trip we go on each summer.”
Ty spun around and his expression was hard. “Maybe you were there for me, but you weren’t there for Mom. Sure, she’s happy with Matt, but when the two of you were together, you worked all the time. Everything was always about Carmichael’s.”
“Your mother understood I had to build the business.” Which wasn’t another lie, but it wasn’t exactly the truth either. After the first few years, neither he nor Sarah had wanted to spend time together, so he’d used work as an excuse, while she spent more and more time with friends and her family. “I’m glad your mom’s happy. All she and I want is for you to be happy. For me, that means not rushing into anything. You have your whole life ahead of you.”