Summer Reads Box Set: Volume 1

by Freethy, Barbara

  So, she'd stop making so many plans, stop trying to second-guess Tyler Jamison and his intentions. It was just dinner. She'd survive. And she'd handle whatever came her way. Checking her watch, she was relieved to see a good ten minutes had passed. She was now sociably late. Getting out of her car, she walked into the restaurant, prepared to look like she'd almost forgotten their date.

  Kate was disappointed not to find Tyler cooling his heels on one of the nearby benches. She walked into the dining room, a large, airy room with windows overlooking the water. Fishnets hung from the ceiling, poles decorated the walls and photographs of fishermen displaying their prize catches covered every other available space. The room was crowded, but there was no ambitious, handsome reporter at any of the tables.

  Tyler could not be late. He wouldn't take the chance that she'd wait for him. She tapped her foot impatiently as she considered her options. It would serve him right if she left. Then again, she'd just be delaying the inevitable. The sooner she steered Tyler Jamison in another direction, the sooner she could get back to her life. Maybe she'd wait a minute—or two.

  * * *

  Tyler was running late, but he couldn't break away from the conversation in the Oyster Bar. He'd gone there to look for Duncan McKenna. Instead he'd run into Ashley's friend, Sean Amberson. They hadn't exchanged more than a few words when a boisterous crowd at a nearby table captured their attention with swaggering stories of a ferocious storm.

  "It was a beautiful spinnaker run down the coast," one sailor said.

  "Magic conditions," another man added.

  "Twenty-four hours later, we had gale force winds of ninety miles per hour and waves eighty feet high.”

  "I thought we were going to die."

  A murmur of admiration broke around the table, and more and more people gathered around the group of sailors talking about their experience in the southern seas. Tyler looked to his right where Sean Amberson was perched on a bar stool, nursing his way through yet another beer. He was listening to the stories with an odd look in his eyes, as if a part of him wanted to listen and a part of him didn't.

  "Sounds like a hell of a trip," Tyler said.

  Sean nodded, his face somewhat grim. "My brother Jeremy used to talk about the Furious Fifties.”

  "The what?"

  "Furious Fifties—the high-latitude zones known for winds gusting to seventy knots. Jeremy said that when you sail through them, you feel like you're flying."

  "Are you a racer, too?"

  "I'm thinking about it," Sean replied, draining his glass. He set it down on the bar and motioned for the bartender to give him a refill.

  Tyler checked his watch. He doubted Kate would wait for him. On the other hand, she was probably late herself; no way would she want to prove him right about her punctuality. But he hated to leave Sean without getting whatever information he could. Maybe it was time to go for the jugular.

  "I understand your brother Jeremy was one of the sailors lost in the Winston race," Tyler said.

  "That's right," Sean said curtly, now eyeing Tyler somewhat suspiciously. "Who are you, anyway?"

  "I'm a reporter. I'm writing a story on sailboat racers. I'm particularly interested in ocean racing and the McKenna family. In fact, I'd like to do a follow-up piece on the sisters and their father."

  "Good luck," Sean said, a cynical note in his voice.

  "Do I need it?"

  "With Duncan, no. With the sisters, yes. They don't talk about the race."

  "Why is that?"

  Sean shrugged. "Who knows why they do anything?"

  "You're a friend of theirs, aren't you? I saw a photograph of you and Ashley taken after the race."

  "I used to be." Sean's eyes darkened with something—regret, anger—Tyler couldn't quite tell. "Ashley and I hung out together when we were kids. But when she came back from sailing around the world, it was over. She was a different girl.”

  "How so?"

  "She wouldn't go near the water or boats, for one thing."

  "Why not?"

  "I don't know. Not much of what she did made sense to me. It doesn't matter anymore. It's all in the past."

  Sean didn't sound like a man who was done with the past. Nor did he sound like he was done with Ashley. Which was all well and good, but it didn't help Tyler's search.

  Although, he mused, Ashley had been in love with Sean when she left, but changed when she came back. Maybe she was the one who'd gotten pregnant. Maybe by another guy. Feeling alone, afraid, she'd given up the baby. And when she returned home, she couldn't look Sean in the eye, couldn't go back to him without admitting everything that had happened to her. Ashley would have been eighteen when the race ended. As a young girl who'd given up a baby, she could have been traumatized.

  It made sense, but he was only speculating. He still had no hard facts and too many questions. For instance, why hide the pregnancy? Not only why, but how? Hadn't anyone seen a pregnant girl on the Moon Dancer? Hadn't anyone taken a photograph? Sure, they were at sea, but there were ports of call throughout the race. That part baffled him.

  "Do you think there was someone else?" Tyler asked Sean, returning to the subject at hand.

  "What do you mean?" Sean seemed confused by the question.

  "Another guy. Someone Ashley met while she was sailing around the world."

  "No," Sean said forcefully. "Absolutely not. They were on a boat, the three of them and their dad. There wasn't anyone else around."

  "But they stopped along the way, and she was gone a long time."

  Sean shook his head. "Something else happened. Something to do with Kate and Jeremy, I think."

  "Your brother had a relationship with Kate?" Tyler asked, his pulse jumping with this new information.

  Sean nodded. "They were going to get married."

  Married? The thought stuck in Tyler's throat. Kate was going to get married? Why hadn't that been in any of the news reports?

  "After they got back?"

  "Yeah, they'd even set a date for a month after the race. My mother had the church booked and the band picked out. I was going to be the best man." Sean let out a long, heartfelt sigh. "And then that damn storm blew everything to bits."

  "Why were they racing on separate boats?" Tyler asked. "It seems like Jeremy would have been a nice addition to the Moon Dancer."

  "Duncan wouldn't take Jeremy on as crew. He wanted to win the race with just his family. At least, that's what he said. Duncan and Jeremy rubbed each other the wrong way, even though they were a lot alike. I wish he had taken Jeremy onboard. Then he'd still be alive." Sean set down his glass. "I've got to go. I hope you find what you're looking for."

  Tyler hoped so, too. He knew one thing for sure—he now had a lot more questions for Kate.

  * * *

  Kate tapped her fingernails on the bar and stared moodily into her diet cola. Times like this she wished she drank. But her father's nasty habit had cured her of that desire years ago. After her mother died, Duncan's drinking had spun out of control, and it had been left to Kate to make sure her sisters got what they needed while Duncan was partying it up or sleeping it off. She'd thought things would get better when they went to sea. It was one of the reasons why she hadn't fought him on going. Leaving her life and her friends had seemed like a small trade-off if they could find their way back to becoming a family again.

  For the most part, life at sea was better. Duncan didn't drink as much when they were racing. He'd let loose when they got to port, but on the ocean he'd managed to keep it together, at least most of the time.

  Looking back, she realized now how naive she had been. There had been so many dangers that she hadn't seen, hadn't even imagined. The ocean had toyed with them like a cat plays with a mouse, sucking them into a game they couldn't win, but one they couldn't stop playing, either. Not even now.

  There was solid ground under her feet, but sometimes she still felt as if she was moving, as if her world was rocking. She'd turned her backyard into a ga
rden worthy of the cover of a magazine just because it made her feel better to dig her hands into the dirt and hold on. She'd planted roses, foxgloves, hollyhocks, and violets, a cornucopia of colors that wouldn't remind her of the endless blue of the sea and the sky. She'd built a trellis for the roses to climb, and she'd planted several fruit trees with roots deep in the ground. She wished she could be there now, feeling those roots between her fingers. She wanted something to hold on to, something strong and unmoving. Her hand curled around the glass in front of her. It was cool and wet, slippery. A shiver ran down her spine, the memory of hands slipping. She'd tried to hold on. She'd tried desperately to hold on.

  "Kate? Are you all right?"

  "What?" She looked up in confusion to find the bartender, Keith Brenner, staring at her with concern.

  "You look like you're about to break that glass." He tipped his head toward her drink.

  Her knuckles were white, her fingers leaving prints on the moist glass as she forced herself to let go. "I was thinking about something else."

  "Like the guy you're waiting for?"

  "Who said it was a guy?"

  "It's Saturday night. You're wearing makeup, looking annoyed, checking your watch. Gotta be a guy. Want to tell your friendly bartender about it?" He gave her a warm, inviting smile. "Just think of me as Dear Abby."

  Kate rolled her eyes. Keith Brenner was one of the local boys she'd grown up with. "You're a worse gossip than Caroline. I wouldn't tell you what kind of perfume I wear."

  "Don't have to. I already know—Shalimar.”

  Her jaw dropped open in shock. "How do you know that?"

  "I was with Jeremy when he bought it for you for Valentine's Day. Frankly, I couldn't believe the kind of cash Jeremy wanted to spend on you. He was crazy."

  Jeremy had been crazy, Kate thought, as Keith moved down the bar to help another customer. Crazy in love. And she'd felt the same way.

  Jeremy had been bold, daring and impulsive—and he'd brought out those traits in her, encouraging her to dream big, think large, live life. Jeremy had put the sun back in her life after her mother died. He'd always been a good friend, but after her mother passed on, he had become everything. Leaving him behind had been the hardest thing she'd ever done. But Jeremy had promised he'd see her again. Somewhere out there in the middle of the ocean when she least expected it, there he'd be.

  And there he'd been.

  She smiled, thinking of the first time she'd seen him after two years apart. He'd been standing on the deck of a beautiful sailboat, his brown hair so long he could have pulled it back in a ponytail, an earring in one ear, a tattoo on one arm, both new since the last time she'd seen him. He'd looked like a pirate, a sexy pirate. And she'd fallen in love all over again.

  Everyone had told her they were too young to be in love. It was just a crush, a youthful infatuation that would fade with the years.

  The years that they wouldn't have.

  Kate took a sip of her cola and tried to focus on the present, the future. She'd learned to play keep away with her thoughts a long time ago, but sometimes the effort it took was exhausting.

  "Drinking in a bar? I'm shocked.”

  Kate was surprised to hear her father's voice. She looked up to see him standing next to her bar stool. Duncan didn't usually frequent the touristy restaurant bars, preferring the more casual atmosphere of the pubs along the waterfront where the sailors and the fishermen hung out.

  "What are you doing here?"

  "I have a meeting.” He pulled together the edges of a well-worn navy blue sports coat. "What do you think? Your mother used to love this on me."

  Which went to show just how old the jacket was. As she took in Duncan's freshly showered and shaved appearance, Kate's stomach muscles tightened. She didn't like the look of this, didn't like it at all. There was a rare sparkle in her father's eyes. He was up to something, probably something she did not want to know about. Still, she had to ask. "Who are you meeting?”

  "Rick Beardsley," he said smugly.

  "The owner of Summer Seas?" she asked, naming one of the entries in the Castleton Invitational. The Summer Seas had undergone several owners in the last five years, Rick Beardsley being the most recent. Rick had been on the sailing circuit for years and had garnered himself quite a reputation for being a daring, no-holds-barred racer, a man cut from the same cloth as her father.

  "The one and only," Duncan replied. "He wants to hire an experienced skipper." Her father stood taller with each word, pride throwing back his shoulders and lifting his chin.

  "You?" she asked, feeling a wave of nausea run through her. "You're thinking of racing again?"

  "Why not me? I am the best in the world." He grinned as Keith came over to take his order. "Isn't that right, Keith?"

  "Whatever you say, Mr. McKenna," Keith replied evenly. "What can I get you?"

  "Your best whiskey and a round for everyone here at the bar," Duncan said, waving hello to three lucky tourists. "Whatever you're having," he told them. "I'm celebrating tonight."

  Kate sighed as her father moved down the bar to shake the hands of three complete strangers. Duncan had always been one for grand gestures. As for strangers, they were just friends he hadn't met yet.

  "Dad," she said when he returned to her side, "you promised me you wouldn't race again."

  "Now, Katie girl—"

  "Don't you 'Katie girl' me. You promised. We made a deal."

  "That promise was made a long time ago. I need to do something. I need this."

  "You can't have this," she hissed, dropping her voice down a notch as she realized they were still the center of attention. "Pick something else. Find yourself another hobby. Take up flying. Join the circus. I don't care what you do, as long as you don't race."

  He paled, but his eyes had a steel glint in them, a glint she remembered all too well.

  "I'm still your father. You don't talk to me like that."

  "You haven't been my father for a long time." The words struck him hard. She could tell by the sudden catch of his breath. But she didn't regret them. He'd promised. And now he was breaking that promise, like he'd broken so many others. "Why can't you just do this for me?" she pleaded. "We went through so much..."

  "I need to race again. It's important to me. I'm dying inside." He put his hand to his heart in yet another dramatic gesture. "I need to be on the water. I need to feel the wind in my hair, the ocean spray on my face."

  "You don't need to race to feel those things. You can just go for a sail."

  "I need the excitement, the rush, the speed, the power." For the first time in a long while his eyes were clear and purposeful instead of dull and vague. He'd come alive. "Ah, Katie girl, aren't you tired of dragging me out of bars?”

  It was the first time he'd ever acknowledged that she did that.

  "I can't go on like I've been going on," he continued. "If I could get out there on the ocean, see the distant horizon, the endless possibilities in front of me, I could breathe again. Haven't I paid enough penance, Katie, or will you be leaving me in purgatory forever?"

  "I'm not your jailer. That's your conscience. Or maybe you don't have a conscience. Because if you did, you wouldn't break your promise. You wouldn't race again." She scrambled off her bar stool, her eyes blurring with angry tears. "Do what you want. You always have, and you always will."

  Kate hurried out of the bar, wanting to put as much distance between her father and herself as she could. She threw open the door to the restaurant and ran smack into Tyler.

  He caught her by the arm. "Kate? What's wrong?”

  "You're late," she cried, a little more loudly and more vehemently than was necessary.

  His gaze narrowed. "And you're angry," he said slowly. "But I don't think it's at me."

  She pulled away from him. "I'm tired, and I'm going home." She headed down the stairs to the parking lot. She fumbled with her keys as she reached her car, dropping them on the ground in her haste to get away.

  Tyl
er picked them up before she could move. "You're not going anywhere until you can see straight," he said.

  "I'm fine."

  "You're furious. I'm sorry I was late.”

  "It doesn't matter."

  "Tell me what's wrong. I can't imagine my tardiness would piss you off this much."

  "I've had it with lies. I've had it with people making promises that they have no intention of keeping. And no one changes. People say they'll change, but they don't. So I give up. I quit. I'm throwing in the towel, putting up the white flag."

  "Are you finished?" he asked gently as she ran out of steam.

  She frowned. "I don't know yet.” She drew in a deep breath. "Sorry, that wasn't about you. It was about my father. He drives me crazy."

  Tyler nodded in understanding. "What did he do?"

  "He's in there having a meeting." She tipped her head toward the restaurant. "He's trying to get back into racing. Someone actually wants him on his boat."

  "Why is that surprising, given your father's track record? From what I've read about him, he was an amazing sailor. I think one of the sailing magazines called him a genius at working the sails, at taking the best advantage of the wind."

  She suddenly realized who she was talking to. "He's too old to race," she said, which was only part of the truth. "And that genius quote probably came from my father."

  "But he was good, wasn't he?"

  "Yes, he was good," she admitted reluctantly. "Sometimes brilliantly good. But that was before, and this is now. And, more importantly, he promised he wouldn't race again.”

  "Why?"

  "It doesn't matter why. And it's none of your business, anyway."

  He stared back at her. "All right, I'll drop it. Are you hungry?”

  "I'm not going back in there."

  "Then we'll go somewhere else. Your pick."

  She wavered between wanting to go home and not wanting to be alone with her thoughts and memories.

  "Come on, say yes," Tyler prodded. "You can order the most expensive item on the menu and eat until you drop, my treat."