Dare Island [2] Carolina Girl

by Virginia Kantra

  She narrowed her eyes. “What?”

  “Your family. Your priorities. The way you’re there for each other.”

  Meg reached for her suitcase. He resisted her attempt to reclaim her bags and headed for the exit. Frosty or not, he figured she’d follow her luggage.

  She did, striding with surprising speed in those skinny-heeled shoes. “It’s because Dad was in the Marines. You move around so much, changing bases, changing schools, you learn to stick together.”

  He’d never thought of it that way. He’d always accepted her family’s enviable closeness as something permanent, solid, and straightforward.

  Not like his family at all.

  The Fletchers had lived on Dare Island for four generations. Tom Fletcher had served twenty years in the Marines, but Sam remembered the summer Meg’s father had moved his family back into the old house falling down above the bay. Sam’s home life that year had sucked. Stepmom number two—pretty blond Julie, with her magazines and manicures—had moved out at Christmas, and before the school year was even over, Angela, broody, moody, and already pregnant, had been installed in her place. Once Sam might have been excited over the idea of a half sibling, but not then. He was fifteen, for Christ’s sake. It was embarrassing, having a father who couldn’t keep it in his pants sticking it to a woman twenty years younger.

  The old man, of course, had swollen up like a bullfrog over this evidence of his mojo. You better watch yourself, boy, he said to Sam. Got yourself a little brother or sister now coming up behind you. That’s half your inheritance.

  It made Sam sick.

  That afternoon he’d escaped on his bicycle, taking his time going home after killing a couple of hours on the beach. It wasn’t like anybody would miss him. It was lame, not having a car. The old man had promised Sam a new Jeep Wrangler when he turned sixteen, but with all the fuss over the baby coming, who knew what would happen? So Sam straddled his bike at the bottom of the drive near the rental truck, watching the new family move in: a quiet boy about his own age, with big hands and shoulders; a skinny girl maybe a couple years younger; and a happy little kid who barreled in everybody’s way.

  The front screen slammed. The girl came out of the house and down the walk. Sam was making a study of breasts that summer, as many as he could see up close or get his hands on. This girl was too young and too thin to have much of his new favorite thing, but he liked the way she moved, quick and determined. Her hair was dark and short and shiny.

  She caught him watching and looked straight at him instead of down and away like most girls. Her head cocked at a challenging angle. “What are you looking at?”

  You.

  He flushed. “Nothing.”

  Her brother came up behind her and laid a hand on her shoulder. Sam jerked his chin in a silent what’s-up.

  The boy gave him a cool look and a nod in reply. “Come on, Meggie. We’ve got stuff to do.”

  The mother approached from the house. “Matt? Who’s this?”

  She looked the way a mother was supposed to look, Sam thought, her dark hair slightly frizzy with humidity, smile lines at the corners of her eyes.

  “Sam Grady, ma’am.”

  The smile lines deepened, just like he knew they would. Moms—other moms, not his own—liked being called ma’am. “Nice to meet you, Sam Grady. I’m Tess Fletcher. There are sodas in the cooler if you’re thirsty.”

  “When you’re done standing around jawing,” barked a voice from inside the orange-and-white truck, “I could use a hand with this couch.”

  Sam and the boy, Matt, jumped forward at the same time.

  And when the rental truck was empty and the boxes piled in every room, Tess Fletcher had invited Sam to dinner.

  For the next four years, until he and Matt went away to college, Sam had hung out at the Fletchers’ every chance he got, shooting hoops with Matt in the driveway, scraping paint off the old windowsills, making himself agreeable, making himself useful, doing anything so they would let him stay, so he could pretend to be one of them.

  Until he fucked everything up.

  Nobody knew. Meg never told. But his guilt and her silence had created a wall, an invisible barrier between them.

  He had a chance to fix things now. He wasn’t going to blow it.

  “Matt said the island was the only place that felt like home,” he said.

  “Don’t confuse me with my brother,” Meg said. “I like change. I liked being a Marine brat.”

  “No ties,” Sam said.

  “No baggage. Every school year was a fresh start.”

  It wasn’t much of an opening, but he would take what he could get. She wasn’t likely to give him many chances to talk to her alone. Not until they got this out of the way.

  He stopped and turned, caging her between the suitcases, trapping her between his body and the side of his truck. Her blue eyes widened.

  “You like fresh starts?” Sam said. “Fine. How about one with me?”

  * * *

  HEAT RADIATED OFF Sam like sun off the tarmac. His dark shirt, wilted in the heat, clung to the planes and muscles of his chest. He was broader than Meg remembered, standing close enough for her to see the darker rim circling his irises and the halo around his pupils, gold against green.

  Too close.

  She functioned better when Sam was at a distance. Like nine hundred miles away.

  Her warm flush was followed by a trickle of cold reality. They weren’t intimate. He had no business acting as if they were. Served him right if she pretended not to know what he was talking about.

  “There’s no reason we can’t be civil,” she said coolly. “We’re not in high school anymore. But we don’t see each other often enough to make a fresh start necessary.”

  Or desirable, her tone implied.

  Sam continued to regard her steadily, an indefinable gleam in his eyes. “We will if you stick around.”

  “Excuse me?”

  He tossed her bags in the back of his truck, a big, shiny black pickup. Of course it would be black, she thought distractedly. Red was too obvious, silver too ubiquitous for Sam. Black was the choice of powerful men like politicians and gangsters.

  “We’re both staying on the island,” he said. “We’re bound to run into each other.”

  Not if she could help it.

  “I thought you had your own business now.” There was a bold white logo emblazoned on the door of the truck. SAM GRADY, BUILDER. “In Cary or something.”

  “You heard about that, huh.”

  The satisfaction in his voice set her teeth on edge. “Don’t flatter yourself, Slick. I can’t help it if people like to talk. Especially on the island.”

  Her mother liked to talk. Especially about Sam. Tess had always liked Sam, proving that even her mother wasn’t an infallible judge of character.

  Sam raised his brows. “I thought maybe Matt said something.”

  “Contrary to what you might think, I do not spend my limited family time discussing you with my brother.”

  Sam grinned. “Probably a good thing.”

  A rush of warm and guilty memories crowded in on her, all mixed up with the shadows of the deserted boathouse and the scent of musty canvas and her own voice begging, Don’t tell Matt.

  Blindly, she turned away to climb into the cab.

  Sam’s hand steadied her. “Watch your step.”

  She jerked her arm away, her chin firming in annoyance. “My brother has a truck. I know how to get into a truck.”

  “Yeah, but mine is bigger than your brother’s.”

  She fought a spurt of laughter. “Very funny.” She twisted on the seat, tugging her skirt down her thighs. The cab still had that just-detailed, new truck smell. At least she didn’t have to worry about tangling her feet in fast-food wrappers. Or women’s underwear. “I’m not impressed by size.”

  Sam’s eyes met hers. “I remember.”

  Her breath went. Oh, God.

  Sam had been her first. Her first lo
ve, her first lover. She had been terrified of appearing ignorant, overwhelmed by the seeming impossibility of fitting—that—inside her. The musty canvas, the smooth hot muscles of his back, the pinch and draw between her thighs . . . It seemed to take him forever to come.

  By the time Meg graduated from college, she’d learned to attribute Sam’s amazing staying power to the fact that he was drunk. She’d even learned to appreciate a guy who lasted longer than ten minutes. But eighteen years ago . . .

  “I didn’t think you were in any condition to notice,” she said.

  Sam’s gaze darkened. His voice lowered. “I noticed, all right. Listen, about that night . . .”

  To her horror, she felt her throat tighten. “Don’t apologize.” Not again.

  “I wasn’t going to.”

  Right.

  She yanked on her shoulder strap. “Anyway, it was a long time ago. Lots of sex under the bridge since then. What’s past is past.”

  She winced. A little heavy with the clichés there, even for someone who read a lot of ad copy in the course of her job. But seeing him again unexpectedly, on top of everything else, had rattled her.

  Sam slid in beside her, his knees and shoulders taking up too much room. There wasn’t enough oxygen in here for both of them. “Not if you’re going to spit at me every time we meet.”

  She stopped fussing with the seat belt. “I’m not spitting.” Much. “I just don’t see any point in rehashing the past. We’ve both moved on.”

  “Yeah, I heard.” He shot her a glance as he shifted gears. “Derek, is it?”

  She blinked. “Are you asking me about my boyfriend?”

  “Just catching up,” Sam said. “That’s what old friends do when they haven’t seen each other in a while.”

  Meg stared out the window at red clay and tall pines. They weren’t friends. They were . . . She didn’t know what they were. Right now, with her emotions raw and her carefully ordered life a mess, she didn’t feel very friendly. But admitting that felt like giving Sam an advantage in whatever emotional game he was playing.

  “Derek’s fine,” she said.

  Never mind their awkward leave-taking this morning. Derek supported her. He understood her. They shared the same goals, the same values.

  Thinking about Derek steadied her. Sam was her past. Derek was her future.

  “We’re both fine. How’s . . .” Meg searched her mind for the latest name her mother had tied to Sam’s. “Trina?”

  “She’s all right. I haven’t seen her in a while.”

  “On to someone new?” Meg inquired sweetly.

  The creases—too masculine to be called dimples, too charming to be anything else—indented in Sam’s cheeks. “Nobody at the moment. I’m still looking.”

  “For which women everywhere give thanks, I’m sure.”

  The creases deepened. “Same old Meggie. You haven’t changed.”

  The old nickname pulled something deep inside her. She could feel herself unraveling, her nerves fraying along with her defenses. “I’ve changed a lot. Apparently you haven’t.”

  “You’d be surprised.” He took his hand off the steering wheel and gave hers a friendly pat. His hand was warm and callused. She stiffened, startled by the temperature of his skin and the leap of her own pulse.

  “I’ve settled down,” he said.

  She slid her hand from under his. “And yet you’re still single.”

  “Better single than with the wrong person.”

  “What is that, like, the voice of experience?”

  He glanced at her, brows raised.

  Too personal. She didn’t want to go there with him, to presume an intimacy that didn’t exist anymore. But he started it.

  “You know. Because of your father,” she explained.

  Before Sam turned sixteen, Carl Grady had presented him with three different stepmothers. Meg had never even met Carl’s first wife, Sam’s mother. She lived out West somewhere, Utah maybe, or Colorado.

  “I’m a little old to be blaming Daddy because I haven’t found the woman I want to spend the rest of my life with,” Sam said.

  He wasn’t offended.

  She breathed in relief. “You’re right. What would you prefer to blame it on? Fear of intimacy? Lack of commitment?”

  He slanted another look at her. “You and Derek set the date yet?”

  She straightened on the soft leather seat. “Our situation is different. Derek and I have been together six years.”

  “Uh-huh. What’s the matter with him?”

  “Nothing. He’s perfect for me.”

  “I meant, why hasn’t he manned up and asked you to marry him?”

  Despite the air-conditioning blasting through the vents, warm blood surged in her cheeks. “Derek and I just bought a condo together. We don’t need a contract to validate our relationship.”

  “A mortgage is a contract,” Sam observed.

  Meg frowned. She wasn’t debating her life choices with Sam. “The condo is an investment.”

  “It’s a gamble. Any time you buy property or get married, it’s a risk. You pay your money and you take your chances.”

  “Since when did you become an expert on—”

  He flashed her that sign-right-here-honey grin. “Real estate?”

  He knew all about real estate. The Gradys were the biggest property managers and developers on the island. “Marriage.”

  He shrugged. “Like you said, I had a ringside seat to four of them. Five, counting your parents’. Enough to give me an idea of what can go wrong. And how good it can be when it’s right. Your parents got it right.”

  His sincerity was unmistakable and completely unexpected. She swallowed, uncertain how to respond.

  He turned his head and met her gaze. “That’s what makes what happened to your mom so unfair,” he said quietly. “I was real sorry to hear about her accident.”

  His sympathy ripped at her control, plunging her back into the emotional maelstrom that had followed the call from the hospital. Meg, it’s Matt. Her brother’s usually calm voice had been taut with strain. There’s been an accident.

  Shock and fear had almost swamped her. Somehow she had made the nightmare journey home, seizing on each fresh task to be done, clinging to the details of her mother’s care like a lifeline, quizzing doctors, advocating with nurses, spending nights at the hospital whenever she could bully her father into snatching a couple hours’ sleep at a nearby motel. Anything to stave off thinking, to put off feeling, to avoid accepting the possibility of a world without her mother in it.

  “I . . . Thank you,” she managed.

  She pulled herself together. This was so not the conversation she wanted to be having. Not with anyone, but especially not with Sam. The present was rough enough without resurrecting the Ghost of Boyfriends Past.

  “She’s doing a lot better,” Meg said. If you pretended everything was fine, then everything would be fine. Eventually. “Two weeks in the rehab center and she can come home.”

  “So you’re just here until she’s back on her feet.”

  Or until I find another job.

  Meg cleared her throat. “That’s right.” She looked away, out the window, uncomfortable under his steady regard. “We haven’t talked about your family yet. How’s your sister?”

  A pause, broken only by the rumble of the tires and the drumming of her blood in her ears.

  “She’s good,” Sam said finally, slowly, accepting her change of subject. “You know she’s getting married.”

  Diverted, Meg tore her attention from the flat green landscape outside. “Chelsea? She’s too young.”

  “Twenty-one.”

  Meg laughed in disbelief. “She can’t be. I was babysitting her yesterday. I tied her shoes.”

  “How do you think I feel?” Sam said, a smile in his voice. “I changed her diapers.”

  “Shouldn’t she still be in college?”

  Sam nodded. “Chapel Hill. That’s where she met Ryan. Ryan Woodley,
her fiancé.”

  Meg felt a pang she didn’t want to examine too closely. It wasn’t that she was anxious to get married. Still . . . Twenty-one. “I hope they’ll be very happy.”

  “Thanks. They’re probably going to want to talk to you.”

  “Me?”

  Chelsea was only five when Meg left for college. She was touched the girl even remembered her.

  “They’re looking for a place for Ryan’s family to stay when they come down for the wedding,” Sam said.

  So much for sentiment. “They don’t need me,” Meg said. “Your family’s the one with all the rental properties.”

  “You have an inn. Ryan doesn’t want his mom stuck with beds and meals and stuff.”

  “Well, I can certainly talk with them. But I can’t promise anything. I don’t want to stick my mother with too much, either. Or Matt.”

  “I thought you came home to help out.”

  When she left Dare Island, she’d been determined never to play housekeeper to a bunch of strangers again. She’d come home because she had no place else to go.

  “Only for a couple of weeks.”

  Only for as long as it took to update her résumé. Only until Derek realized he was miserable without her. As soon as she got her life back in order, she was out of here.

  “They’re getting married at Christmas,” Sam said.

  “So soon?” she asked.

  “They pushed up the wedding date.”

  “Oh. Oh.”

  He slanted a look at her. “It’s not what you’re thinking.”

  Meg flushed, caught out. “I didn’t say anything.”

  “You didn’t have to. Everybody else has.” There was an edge to his voice that she didn’t normally associate with the King of Cool.

  Ouch. Okay. Gossip was practically a recreational sport on the island, like knitting or kayaking. It was easy to imagine what people were saying about the rushed marriage; hard not to respect the family loyalty that put that bite in Sam’s tone. He might be an egotistical, womanizing jerk, but he was genuinely fond of his young half sister.

  She touched his arm. “It doesn’t matter. In six months . . .”

  “She’ll be gone,” Sam said. “Ryan started his medical residency at the San Diego Naval Medical Center in August. Chelsea was supposed to join him next June, after a big wedding here. She decided she didn’t want to wait that long.”