Seaside Embrace (Love in Bloom

by Melissa Foster

  “Don’t touch my girl, asshole.”

  The guy held his arms up. “I didn’t know, man.”

  “She said she wasn’t interested loud and clear,” Hunter growled.

  “Hunter!” Jana yelled. “Put him down.”

  Hunter’s angry eyes moved between the guy and Jana, his brow wrinkled in confusion.

  “Hunter. Seriously.”

  “Learn some fucking manners,” he said before dropping the guy to the floor.

  Jana stormed through the crowd and out the front door.

  Chapter Thirty

  HUNTER FLEW OUT the door and caught up to Jana. “Where the hell are you going?”

  “Nowhere.” She paced, hands clenched tight.

  “Jana, what’s going on? Why are you pissed?”

  “Because,” she spat. “Why do you have to act like a Neanderthal? I can handle myself.”

  “Seriously?” He closed the distance between them. “Did you want that asshole to touch you? Because if you did, then fuck me, Jana. I thought you were mine.” And then it hit him like a brick in the face, and he stopped cold. His entire body turned to ice as his words hung in the air between them.

  First the key, now this? What the hell is going on?

  “Hunter…” She reached for him, but he took a step away.

  “Jana…?”

  “I don’t need you to go all caveman crazy. I’m allowed to dance. I’m allowed to move my body to the music, and yes, guys are going to look. They might even approach me, but Jesus Christ, Hunter, don’t you trust me to handle myself?”

  “Do you want me, Jana?” As soon as he said it, her lips curved up in that fucking sweet smile that turned him inside out, and he realized he’d asked for the three words she was never going to give him.

  She crossed her arms and rolled her eyes.

  He laughed, despite the anger that was coursing through him. “You’re a pain in the ass.”

  “So are you,” she pointed out. “I’m not a delicate flower, Hunter. I can tell a guy to fuck off if I need to.”

  She was so fucking sexy when she was ornery, and he loved her so much, he couldn’t hold on to his anger any longer. “No shit. You’ve done it to me.” He stepped in closer, wrapping his arms around her waist.

  “I never told you to fuck off. I told you to learn how to be romantic.” She flashed a sassy smirk.

  “Fuck…” He slanted his mouth over hers, taking her in a deliciously warm kiss. “You’re mine, Jana, and I’ll be damned if any woman of mine is going to dance like that and turn on other guys.”

  She pushed away from him. “God. You’re infuriating sometimes. It’s not the 1950s.”

  “You’re right, it’s not. But hell if you don’t make me want to beat the shit out of any guy who looks at you.”

  She stood with her hands on her hips, looking impossibly stern and sexy at once. “You always tell me to trust you. Well, what about you, Hunter? Don’t you have to trust me, too?” Before he could respond, she said, “I’m going back in to party with everyone. It’s a celebration, remember? Sky and Sawyer deserve a happy night. They don’t need us fighting about keys and assholes.”

  As she disappeared through the pub door, Hunter groaned, hoping to hell that was the second step back and that the next one would be a step forward. He knew Jana too well to hope for the leap.

  Two hours later, after a tense celebration, they pulled up in front of Jana’s house. Hunter cut the engine and they sat in silence.

  “I’m sorry we argued,” he said into the dark.

  “Me too.”

  His phone rang, and he pulled it out and groaned. “It’s Clark. I’ve got to take it.” He stepped from the truck as he answered.

  “Hunter, Nina and I had a big fight. Can I crash at your place?” Clark sounded horrible, defeated. His voice was scratchy and rough, as if he’d been yelling.

  He ran his hand through his hair. Going home was the last thing he wanted to do. He and Jana didn’t argue, not like this. Their arguments weren’t arguments at all. They were mating dances. But tonight felt different—and it had all started with the stupid key. But he couldn’t blow off his buddy because of their shitty night. “Of course. I’m at Jana’s. Give me twenty minutes to get there.”

  After ending the call he helped Jana out of the truck and told her he had to go let Clark in.

  “That’s okay. We’re both tired. A little space will do us good.” Her eyes were filled with sadness, and it made him want to stay right there and figure their shit out, but it was after midnight and he knew from experience a little space would probably do them more good than staying up all night, especially with the competition tomorrow.

  “I’m sorry, Jana. He sounded awful, and God knows what’s going on, but I’d imagine we’ll be up for a while talking about whatever he’s going through.”

  She shrugged. “It’s fine. He needs you.”

  Part of him wished she’d ask what about me? and say she needed him, too. Or beg him to come over after he was done talking with Clark. But that wasn’t Jana.

  Jana was the woman who freaked out about a key.

  “My competition is tomorrow afternoon. You’re still planning to come?”

  She hooked her finger in his belt loop, and that simple, familiar touch eased his worries.

  “Of course.” She went up on her toes and pressed her lips to his.

  His phone vibrated again, cutting their kiss short. After one more chaste kiss, they gazed into each other’s eyes. A world of questions passed between them, falling into the crevice that had formed between them.

  ***

  JANA STOOD IN the foyer of her house listening to the sound of Hunter’s truck fade into the night. The silence of the room closed in on her. How long had it been since she’d been home alone at night?

  She walked down the hall to her bedroom, feeling exhausted. Depleted. Ready to drop. She’d gone through so many emotions lately that maybe a night alone would be a good thing. She’d never needed company before. Why should she now? And besides, she could use the rest. They both could.

  She took off her jewelry and stripped off her clothes. She needed a shower, but she was too tired to make it happen. Instead, she brushed her teeth and washed her face. Hunter’s scent lingered on the towel. She glanced around the bathroom at his toiletries mingling with hers. We’re practically living together.

  Jana turned off the light and padded into the bedroom, taking a T-shirt from Hunter’s drawer and pulling it over her head. Then she slipped beneath the covers and closed her eyes.

  She’d never been one for opening acts, but she’d take the opening act instead of standing on an empty stage.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  HUNTER SPENT HALF the night listening to Clark and Nina’s newest battle, which he still wasn’t sure he understood. It sounded to him like they were going around and around about the same issues without any resolution. Nina felt like she was a single parent, and Clark felt like he was undervalued. Hunter had witnessed many happy marriages: his parents, Pete and Jenna, and all their friends at Seaside. They made Clark and Nina’s troubles seem out of the ordinary. But he wasn’t dumb enough to believe that every couple wasn’t fighting their own private battles.

  He left his house early to head down to his father’s hardware store. Some guys turned to alcohol when things got tough, as his father had after they’d lost his mother. Hunter usually turned to his work, but after spending so many hours working on the sculpture for which Jana was his muse, he knew the shop would only further confuse him. The next best thing to working with his hands was being around power tools—and his father. A double dose of calming influences.

  Hunter had grown up in the small town of Brewster, where thankfully, not much ever changed. He parked beside the hardware store and headed around front. His phone rang as he reached for the door, and he smiled when he saw Jana’s beautiful face on the screen. But his mind zipped back to last night, to their argument over the key and her se
xy dancing, tempering his emotions.

  Running a hand over his closely shorn hair, he paced the sidewalk as he answered. “Hey.”

  “Hi.”

  Silence stretched uncomfortably between them.

  “I just got a call from Brock. The girl who was fighting in the exhibition match today got food poisoning, and he needs me to fill in for my weight class, so…”

  Hunter’s gut clenched.

  “I know your competition is today, and I hate to miss it, but he’s really in a bind, and I kinda thought—”

  He hadn’t made a big deal about the competition because they’d been dealing with Jana’s studio, but it was important to him. He debated asking her not to go to the fight, but that didn’t feel right, either. Especially after he’d given her a hard time about the way she’d danced last night. Everything he was saying lately came out wrong. Everything he did pushed her further away. Hunter never claimed to know how to handle women or relationships, but with Jana, together they’d somehow figured it out. He had faith that this, too, would somehow work out.

  “Sure, good luck.”

  “I guess we’ll catch up later?” she asked tentatively. “I’ll try to make it after the fight. I just never know how late they’ll run.”

  “Yeah, whatever.” His biting tone surprised him, but he couldn’t have covered the sting of her missing his competition if his life depended on it.

  He ended the call before his voice could shoot any more darts, then headed inside. How many times had he and his siblings walked into their father’s shop on their mother’s heels? Running up and down the aisles as his parents talked or kissed or whatever adults did when their kids were busy terrorizing a store.

  He thought about his childhood. He’d had a good one, and as he’d grown into a man, no one had ever questioned his playing around with women. Hell, no one had ever held him accountable, either. Men were lucky like that. He thought of Jana and all that she’d been through, and an empathetic ache weighed heavily inside him.

  She’d poured her heart out to him, and he’d made it even worse by judging one of the very things that drew him to her. Her dancing. His heart ached at how stupid he’d been. She’d become vital to him. Essential.

  As he opened the door to his father’s shop, he realized that he’d always thought there were four essential elements to life: earth, wind, fire, and water. But he’d been so very wrong. There were five, at least for him, and he had a feeling Jana was the only element he needed.

  His father looked up from behind the counter. A wide smile graced his handsome face as he came around the counter with open arms.

  “Hunt. How’re you doing, son?”

  Hunter welcomed his father’s warm embrace. Neil Lacroux had hair the color of sand after a harsh rain. When he’d been drinking, his belly had gone soft and his face had aged, but now that he’d been sober for a few years, he’d lost the weight. Losing his wife had stolen a piece of his spirit and left behind a shadow of emptiness that Hunter assumed would always be there. But he was glad his father had climbed out of the bottle and gotten back to the business of living his life.

  “I’m okay, Pop. I thought I’d come down and walk the aisles for a bit.” He smiled, knowing his father would laugh at the reminder of what he’d said to his son so often in his youth when Hunter had had a bad day. Come on down to the shop with me. Walk the aisles. We’ll talk tools and you’ll feel better.

  “Gotchya.” His father’s large hand landed on Hunter’s shoulder and squeezed gently. “What’s on your mind?” He picked up a can of paint from the counter and placed it on the shelves beside the others. “Is it the competition? I’ve got Mira, the young gal I hired last month, coming in later so I can be there.”

  “Thanks, Pop.” Thinking of Jana and the sculpture he’d created in her image, he said, “It’s not that. I’m pretty sure we’ve got that nailed.”

  “That’s what Grayson said, too. He said you’d finally found your muse.”

  “Yeah, you could say that.” Was there such thing as a life muse? Because that’s what he felt like Jana had become. She inspired so much more than his creativity.

  They walked up and down the aisles. His father pointed out a few new tools and a new brand of electric screwdriver he carried. Normally the distraction would be enough to ease Hunter’s mind no matter what he was dealing with, but today he couldn’t shake the churning in his gut.

  His father looked at him with an assessing gaze and tilted his head toward his office. “Come see what I found last week.”

  Hunter followed him into the small office just beyond the counter. Neil waved to a chair, and Hunter sat down, watching his father push aside stacks of papers. The wall in front of his desk was littered with pictures of Hunter and their family.

  “I was digging around in your mother’s sewing room, looking for something I’d misplaced.” He opened his file drawer and withdrew a green hanging file folder. “And I found these.” He set the folder on his desk and opened it, revealing Hunter’s original drawings of his very first sculpture.

  “She kept them?” The image of his parents standing across from Wellfleet Harbor came rushing back, the smell of the bay, the glimmer of love in his mother’s eyes. God, he missed her. He reached for the drawings, poring over the notes he’d written in the margins. Remember her fingers. His arm.

  “She kept everything,” his father said. “Those drawings were the catalyst for what you’ve become, Hunter. I saw it as kind of a sign, seeing as how your work is going to be judged in the very spot where you saw us standing.”

  Hunter nodded, smiling to himself with the memory of that afternoon. “You know, Pop, there was a time when my work was everything. I lived for it. I craved the feel of the cold metal in my hands. Knowing that whatever I had inside me would come out in what I created.” He gazed into his father’s deep-set eyes. Eyes he’d looked into his whole life and seen endless support.

  “And now?” his father asked.

  “Now I still feel the same love of my work. I could never stand in front of a class and teach, like Matt, or tattoo people’s skin, like Sky. And the way you and Pete refinish boats is incredible, but it’s also too regimented for me. I need the freedom my work offers. I need to be able to visualize what I want and turn those visions into reality.” He inhaled and blew it out slowly. “But for the first time in my life, I found something else that fulfills me in ways I never imagined possible, someone else. She challenges me, Pop, and makes me want to be a better person. More caring. Stronger, but in a different sort of way.”

  “Sounds like me when I met your mother.”

  He smiled, thinking of his mother. “The funny thing is, with her it’s not about fulfilling my hopes and dreams. It’s about fulfilling hers.”

  Hunter pushed to his feet, filled with purpose and determination. “Pop, I have an idea.”

  “You usually do,” his father mumbled as he got to his feet. “You know, you don’t always have to act on your impulses, Hunter. You could contemplate, let things settle for a little while, and then make a decision with a level head.”

  He smiled and draped an arm over his father’s shoulder. “Wasn’t it you who told me that levelheaded decisions have no place where women are concerned?”

  His father laughed. “Probably so.”

  “Well, then, you should say ‘I told you so.’ Because it’s definitely true where my woman is concerned.”

  ***

  WHY DID EXHIBITION matches always run late? The match was supposed to begin at two o’clock, and by four o’clock they were just finishing the third weight class. Jana was up next, and she was a nervous wreck. She was running on no sleep, too much coffee, too little training, and a heart that felt like it had been filled up like a helium balloon that soared to cloud nine, only to find it had a pinhole leak and was making a slow descent back down to earth.

  “Ready, sis?” Brock helped her put on her gloves while he spoke. “Whatever’s got you more jittery than a coke ad
dict, kick it to the curb, because, baby, you’ve got this. You’re fierce, determined, and you’ve got a harder punch than any woman in your weight class. Focus, Jana.”

  How could she focus when she felt like her world was careening out of control again? She should be at the competition with Hunter, not fighting in a match she didn’t really care about.

  She held up her boxing gloves. “Can you just check my texts for me quickly? Hunter had his competition today for a sculpture he was making, and I was supposed to go. I just want to know if he won.”

  “That’s what you’re stewing over? Jana, we could have forfeited this match.” Brock grabbed her cell phone and checked her text messages. “You’ve got, like, a zillion messages from Sky and one from Hunter. Which do you want first?”

  “Sky.” Because Hunter’s might not be as nice.

  Brock began reading Sky’s message. “‘OMG. Hunter is a finalist. SQUEE! He is one of three finalists, fingers crossed.’” He arched a brow. “Squee?”

  Jana smiled, too happy to respond to his question. “He’s a finalist. That’s amazing.”

  “There’s more. Do I really have to read them all? You go up in seven minutes—”

  “Read them!” Her happiness was layered in guilt. Hunter had placed as a finalist, but she’d missed it. He never asked her for a thing, and here she was, fighting instead of going to the event he’d been working toward for weeks. She really did suck as a girlfriend. She made a decision right then and there that from now on she would focus on Hunter. No matter what else was going on in her life, she was going to make sure she was there for him. And if he needed her to modify her sexy dancing in order to feel more comfortable, then she’d do that, too. It was a small concession, wasn’t it? He’d done so much for her.

  Brock sighed and continued reading Sky’s texts. “‘He looks so nervous. And OMG if you could see the guy he’s up against. He’s such a nerd LOL.’” He lifted his eyes. “Jana. I’m not doing this.”