The Sweetheart Secret

by Shirley Jump

  “Daisy?” What was with the universe today? Every time he tried to stop thinking about Daisy, there was a reminder of her. And wham, his mind was right back where it started. On the beignets. On Daisy’s dress. And most of all, on how damned much he’d wanted to kiss her in the break room. And still did, damn it.

  “Daisy is a lovely woman,” Greta said. “Olivia and I spent most of the afternoon with her. Daisy is sweet and warm and just a delightful addition to Rescue Bay. Especially since she’s a budding entrepreneur, about to reopen a long-standing business in this town. In my book, that’s an extra check in the plus-Daisy column.” Greta raised her chin. “I have no idea what kind of . . . foolishness you are embarking upon with her, but I think it would be smart of you to give her a reason to stay around.”

  “Mrs. Winslow—”

  “A little birdie told me she needs a job. And since you have connections within this community, I’m sure you can help her out.” Greta patted his arm. “Now I know you might think I’m meddling, but I’m merely trying to help strengthen our local economy by maintaining our workforce.”

  Frannie snorted out a laugh. Colt coughed to cover a laugh of his own. Of all the justifications he’d heard from Greta for her various machinations, this one was the boldest of all. “Helping the local economy?”

  “Why, of course. It’s part of my civic duty.” She gave his arm a pat. “Anyway, you think about it. I’m sure something will come to you.”

  After Greta left, Colt stood by the window for a long time while Muzak played on the sound system and the A/C blew cool air into the room. He should have been thinking about his grandfather, about finding a way to bring Grandpa Earl out of that dark cave he’d retreated to, a way to restore what family Colt had left. Colt should have been thinking about his practice, his patients, hell, his taxes. But instead, his mind lingered on one thing.

  Daisy.

  If Greta was right and Daisy was looking to settle down, stay here, did that mean she had changed? And if she had, what did that mean to him?

  Frannie came up behind him and handed him a note. “Doctor Kepler called. Your grandfather canceled his appointment and refused to reschedule. And I forgot to tell you earlier, but the visiting nurse left a rather angry voicemail this morning. Apparently your grandpa ran her off with a shotgun.”

  Colt ran a hand through his hair. “Great. Just what I need.”

  “It’ll be fine.” Frannie gave him a gentle smile. “My mom was like that after she got really sick with cancer. Wouldn’t let anyone do a darned thing for her. She hated being weak and hated asking for help. It’ll take some time, but I’m sure your grandpa will come around and you’ll find a nurse who won’t take any guff from Earl. You, though, you need a break.”

  “I’m fine, I’m fine.” But he lingered by the window, trying to settle the thoughts that rushed through his mind like tumbleweeds.

  After a moment, Frannie got to her feet, crossed into his office, and returned with his briefcase. She pressed the leather satchel into his hands. “See you tomorrow, Doc.”

  “What? I still have patients.”

  “Your mind is as far from work as Earth is from the moon. You know it, and I know it.”

  “Frannie, I don’t leave early. I don’t take days off. I don’t cancel.”

  “Which is exactly why you should do it today. Saints don’t make good doctors, Doc Harper.” She put a hand to his back and gave him a gentle nudge toward the door. “Now go take some time to clear your head. Work will be here tomorrow.”

  Colt wanted to argue, to tell Frannie work was the only thing he needed right now, but he would have been lying. She was right. He was distracted. The sooner he rid himself of that distraction, the better. Then he could focus on patient care. Instead of what had brought a five-foot-six curvy blast of his past hurtling into his well-ordered, carefully constructed life. The last thing he needed was Daisy bursting into town and shaking the snow globe of his world.

  If she really was planning on staying and running the Hideaway Inn, that meant she’d be reopening the past Colt had tried so hard to put behind him. Exposing not just the man he used to be, but the mistakes he had made, too.

  People in this town saw him as a respectable, conscientious doctor. But a responsible man didn’t run off and elope with a woman he barely knew. A responsible man didn’t walk out on his wife of three weeks. A responsible man didn’t abandon the brother who was counting on him. A brother who—

  Will you be here, Colt, when I get back?

  Of course. I’m always here for you, buddy.

  You’re a good big brother.

  Colt closed his eyes and drew in a shaky breath. He forced his thoughts back, tucking the past deeper into the recesses of his mind, something he had done a thousand times before. Because if he did that enough times, maybe one of these days it wouldn’t hurt so bad. He took another breath, then another, until the dark receded.

  Then he thanked Frannie and headed outside, to go home, spend some time updating charts or analyzing spreadsheets or something equally predictable and safe. Something that would refocus his mind on work. Instead, when he reached in his pocket for his car keys, his fingers brushed against the slip of paper Daisy had given him.

  Her familiar slanted handwriting stared back at him. Just her name, followed by the ten digits of her cell phone number. The D in Daisy as dominant as a sequoia, followed by a long scribble of the other four letters. The last time he’d seen her name written like that had been on a marriage license in Louisiana, with his name paired along hers, two signatures filled with hope and naïveté.

  He got in his car, started the engine, and headed to the eastern side of Rescue Bay. He passed the turn for his own street, turned left, then right, before arriving at the destination that had been inevitable since Frannie handed him his briefcase.

  The Rescue Bay Inn.

  Daisy’s dusty crimson Toyota was parked in front of Room 112 of the rundown, sun-paled building. No other cars sat in the lot, and the outdoor pool had only one visitor: a long-legged brunette in a navy blue one-piece swimsuit that molded to her curves like hot fudge on a sundae.

  Damn.

  He stood there for a long moment, feeling like a stalker, watching her lie in the sun, face upturned to greet the Florida rays, giant dark sunglasses masking her brown eyes. A People magazine lay on the concrete beside her, anchored in place by a half-full water bottle and an open package of cookies.

  He unlatched the gate, and when the hinges creaked in complaint, Daisy sat up, and pivoted toward him. No expression betrayed her thoughts, but her shoulders stiffened and her hand curled tight around the aluminum frame of the chair.

  All he noticed was the way the swimsuit hugged her body, the dark fabric ten times more dramatic against her pale skin. The way the neckline—a sweetheart neckline, some remote reach of his brain supplied—outlined the generous swells of her breasts, then dipped in a tantalizing V in the center. Her hair was undone, loose around her shoulders, and the breeze toyed with the dark tresses, as if taunting him with what he couldn’t have.

  He’d had an entire speech planned on the way over here. A list of a half dozen reasons why she should sign the divorce papers and go back to New Orleans. But every one of those thoughts flitted away, and all he managed instead was, “Enjoying the sun? It’s a nice warm day for it.”

  Lame small talk. What was he, sixteen again? What was it about Daisy Barton that muddled Colt’s mind? She made him feel like a geeky, stumbling fool.

  She leaned back against the chair and studied him, her own eyes unreadable behind the oversized dark sunglasses. “Did you really come here to discuss the weather, Colt?”

  “No, I didn’t.” He cleared his throat, then took a seat on the edge of the lounge chair beside her. He propped his elbows on his knees, and forced his gaze away from her cleavage and back to her face. “I came here
to talk about us. Well, you. And me. And . . .” He cursed. “What the hell are you doing here, Daisy?”

  Three times he’d asked her that same question. Maybe because he still couldn’t put the words Daisy, here, and back in his life together.

  “I’m enjoying the sun.” She lay back against the chair and turned her face to the sky again.

  “Goddammit, Daisy, don’t play games with me. We had an understanding years ago—”

  “An understanding? I thought it was a marriage.”

  “A marriage we ended, by mutual agreement,” he said.

  “Until you came to New Orleans and thought you’d screw my brains out, for what, old times’ sake?”

  The harsh words iced the air between them. “That wasn’t what that was.”

  “No?” She turned to him again, lowered the sunglasses, and met his gaze head-on. “Then what do you call it when you flirt with me, tell me you still care, take me back to your hotel room, have mind-blowing sex with me, and then FedEx divorce papers to me three months later?”

  “I’m sorry I misled you.”

  She got to her feet, ripped off the sunglasses, and glared down at him. “Misled me? Is that how you’re justifying it?” She shook her head, snatched up her towel, the cookies, and water, then jammed her feet into a pair of flip-flops. “You know what, Colt? You were right. It was a nice day to enjoy the sun. Until you came by.”

  Then she brushed past him and out through the gate. The metal swung back, clanged against a pole, and stayed there. Daisy marched across the lot, into Room 112, and slammed the door.

  Well, hell.

  Colt stood there, while the pool gurgled and traffic went by on the street a few feet away. He knew he should let her go. He should get in his damned car and go home or go back to work or go get a beer and put her out of his mind. Daisy Barton had never been one to be tamed or corralled. The sooner he quit trying to tell her what to do, the sooner she would get bored with whatever game she was playing here, and be on her way.

  Or maybe . . . if he was smart, he could find a way to sever the ties with Daisy once and for all, and also restore order to his own life. He grabbed the magazine and crossed the lot to knock on the flimsy motel room door. An instant later, Daisy flung it open, still wearing the bathing suit, the towel discarded on the floor by the door.

  “You forgot your magazine,” he said, and held it out.

  Once again, another brilliant sentence. What the hell was wrong with him?

  She held his gaze for a minute, then looked away and bit her lip. She jerked the magazine out of his hand and started to close the door.

  He reached for the edge, and stopped her. “And . . . I wanted to apologize. Can I come in?”

  She considered that for a long moment, then stepped back and waved him into the room. They stood there, staring at each other, two people who once used to talk so much it seemed they’d run out of breath before they ran out of words, now mute and at an impasse.

  “It wasn’t mine,” she said.

  “What wasn’t?”

  “The magazine. I found it there. It was someone else’s. I should take it back to the pool in case whoever left it comes back.” She started to go past him, but he caught her arm. When she looked up at Colt, he realized that for all her bravado and anger, Daisy was scared.

  Why? Did he make her as nervous and discombobulated as she did him? Maybe she was having trouble, too, trying to figure out what this was—or wasn’t—between them.

  “The magazine can wait,” Colt said. “There’s no one else at the pool.”

  “Still, I should . . .” She glanced down at his hand on her arm. He released her and stepped back, but the warmth of her flesh had left an invisible imprint on his palm.

  “I’m sorry,” Colt said. “For New Orleans. I never should have made you think there was something between us still. I was drunk and lonely and there was a part of me that . . .”

  “That what, Colt?”

  He didn’t have an answer. He never did when it came to Daisy. That was the problem with her. She was the kind of woman who made a man forget his priorities and his plan. Every time he got within ten feet of her, his brain cells misfired.

  “I . . . don’t know,” he said.

  “Then why are you here? I thought we settled all this back in your office. You don’t want me in Rescue Bay and you don’t want to help me with the loan. So why did you come to the motel, and even more, why follow me to my room?”

  “Oreo cookies.” He shook his head and let out a little laugh. Who was he kidding? This wasn’t just about restoring order to his life. It was about trying to make sense of why he was still drawn to the one woman who didn’t make sense for him. “It was the damned Oreo cookies.”

  Confusion filled her eyes. “Oreo cookies?”

  He picked up the opened package she had tossed on the nightstand. Dark chocolate crumbs littered the veneer surface like ants at a picnic. Inside the package, chocolate wafers rustled together. “The first time I met you, you were eating Oreos. I’d never seen anyone eat an Oreo like you do.”

  He could remember the day like yesterday. She’d been seventeen, sitting on the wide porch steps outside of the Hideaway Inn. He’d been in a hurry, rushing to his summer job at the paddleboard shop down the beach, but he’d stopped when he’d seen the pretty brunette sitting in the sunshine, with a half-eaten package of Oreos. She’d smiled up at him, a smile as bright and warm as the sun, and said, “Want one?”

  That was it. Two words. It had stopped Colt in his rush to get to work. For that moment, he couldn’t think of a single thing in the world that sounded better than sitting in the warm summer air with a pretty girl, eating cookies for breakfast. He’d dropped onto the step beside her, and wham, that was it. He’d been hooked, on the cookies, on her.

  An embarrassed smile danced on her lips now, flushed her cheeks a pretty pink. “I only like the middle.”

  “And I only like the cookie part.”

  “I remember.” Her voice was soft in the dim room, her eyes wide mysterious pools.

  A long time ago, he’d found those differences between them sexy and endearing. He’d thought their wild, headstrong relationship, with all its clashes and drama, was a sign of meant-to-be. Now he knew better, or at least he told himself he did. Because right now, in the quiet solitude of a crappy motel room on the eastern side of Rescue Bay, Colt was having trouble thinking about anything more than how beautiful Daisy looked right now.

  He put down the package and moved until he was inches away from her, until the dark floral scent of her perfume teased at his senses, awakening memories that haunted his nights, made him remember the backseat of his father’s Grand Marquis and a squeaky bed in a fifth-floor walk-up.

  It made him wonder about possibilities, like what might have happened if he had opened up to her years ago, instead of enduring those dark, horrible days alone. If he had called her and said I need you, Daisy, would she have come? And most important of all, would she have stayed?

  That’s what he wanted to know, the question that had drawn him to her in that diner three months ago. Once again, instead of asking it and opening doors he’d kept shut for fourteen years, he said, “Why are you really here, Daisy?”

  “I told you. Because I need”—she took a breath and in that moment, he thought she’d say I need you, but then the breath passed and instead she said—“a new beginning.”

  The vulnerability in her words chipped away at his resolve. “Why here? Why now?”

  She paused a long time. Then she turned away, crossed to the window, and looked out at the pool, sparkling in the sun. When she spoke again, her voice was low, quiet. “This place was the only place that ever felt like home. I know I was only here for a summer, but it was a perfect summer. I mean, look at this town. Gulf breezes, palm trees swaying in the wind, egrets that perch sedately o
n the edge of the water. It’s like living in the middle of a Jimmy Buffet song.”

  “I don’t know if it’s quite as perfect as all that.”

  She shrugged. A melancholy smile curved up her face. “At the time my aunt asked me and Emma to take over the inn, I was so tired of working in dives, so tired of having men old enough to be my grandfather grab my ass when I brought them a menu,” she went on. “And so, so tired of feeling like I was a hamster on a wheel, getting nowhere fast. Then when the chance came to resurrect the inn . . . well, it was time for a change, and maybe a chance to find that Jimmy Buffet world. So I came here.”

  He took a half step closer, and turned her to face him. Her chest rose and fell with her breath. The heat from her barely clad body drifted down his skin.

  “That’s all you want from me, Daisy? A cosigner on a loan?”

  “You owe me that much, Colt, after . . .” Her eyes welled. She bit her lip, drew in a breath, and the tears receded. “Don’t you think?”

  She wasn’t talking about that night three months ago in New Orleans. She was talking about how he had left her the first time, just up and walked away, a scared kid who hadn’t cared how the chips fell behind him. He’d been focused on getting home, on making amends for leaving, and he’d never thought about how cruel it was to leave nothing more than a note behind.

  He’d never told her why he’d left, why he hadn’t returned. Why he’d excised his wife from his life after that day, like a tumor.

  “I owe you more than that,” he said, his voice suddenly rough against his throat. Every ounce of him was hyperaware of the tiny scraps of fabric covering her curves, the scent of cocoa butter tempting him like a siren at the edge of a rocky cliff. The bed a few feet away. The wild, headstrong rush that always enveloped them every time they were in close proximity, like magnets that couldn’t resist the pull.

  A cookie crumb dotted the edge of her lips. It made him think of the beignets. Of the first time he’d met her. Of all the times he’d wanted her and kissed her, and how much he still wanted to do just that.