She set out, passing the park. The music came from speakers set up by the massive gazebo. Men hustled around, putting up tentlike structures over the main area of booths, obviously taking precautions in case it rained.
As she continued on her way down the main street, she spotted a red neon sign that read Bartholomew’s. It hung over the entry to a place that had been styled to look like a pirate ship, complete with a gangplank entry. A wooden sign by the street promised An Adventure In Dining, followed by The Best Beef Around. That got her attention.
She walked up the gangplank, pushed back the door and stepped inside. The pirate ship theme was everywhere, the ever present Jolly Roger draped over a painting of Bartholomew. A man in full pirate garb, right down to the eye patch, was there to greet her.
“Ahoy, there,” he said loudly. “How many be there?”
“One be here,” Alegra said.
He grinned at her with a mock bow. “Ye got it,” he said, then reached for a huge leather-bound menu off a stand by the door.
He led the way through an arched entry into a room that looked like the bowels of a galleon. Dark wood walls, brass fixtures, heavy iron lamps and fake portals on the back wall added to the illusion. The booth he took her to was near the back, a bit too close to what looked like the kitchen entry, and so dark she doubted she’d be able to see her food. But she was too hungry to care at the moment.
She passed on an offered “grog of hot rum,” and instead ordered gin and tonic on the rocks. She’d barely settled in the seat and opened the menu before a waitress dressed like a pirate’s wench came to the table with her drink and said she’d be back in a bit to get her dinner order.
Alegra took a grateful sip of her drink, then rested her head against the high back of the booth and closed her eyes. She took several deep breaths and slowly let them out, willing her muscles to relax.
“Having a nap?”
Her eyes flew open at the sound of the familiar male voice. Joe was standing over her, but he’d changed out of his “island traditional” into a white, open-necked shirt worn under a black leather jacket, and with dark pants that clearly defined strong thighs. His hair was combed straight back from his face, and he had obviously just shaved. Damn it, he looked good, and for some reason, that annoyed her.
“Do you ever not sneak up on people?” she asked.
“Sorry,” he murmured.
Not entirely over his abrupt leave-taking today on the beach, she said rudely, “What do you want?”
He simply glanced at the empty side of the booth and asked, “Are you meeting someone?”
She shook her head, then took another sip of her drink.
“No business meeting?”
She looked at him, then quite deliberately took her phone out of her jacket pocket and laid it on the tablecloth. “Not right now, but who knows?” she said. “The night’s young.”
“Always ready,” he said pleasantly. And that annoyed her even more.
“In business you have to be,” she said, the words sounding stuffy even to her. “How about you?” She glanced past him, then met his blue eyes again. “Alone or with company?”
“I thought I had company,” he said. “But I was stood up.”
She gave in to sarcasm. “She sounds like a smart lady.”
Nothing seemed to get to him. “Oh, he’s no lady, he’s three years old and was here for hours with his grandparents watching them set up for the festival and playing with the other kids. By the time I found them, they were heading home to bed. Since I was still hungry, I came in alone to get something.”
She couldn’t resist saying, “You could have eaten earlier.”
“So could have you,” he countered. Again he glanced at her largely empty booth. “How about consolidating our booths? Maybe we can talk before your phone starts ringing.”
“Whatever,” she said deliberately.
He slipped into the booth, then the waitress was there, handing Joe a menu and asking if he’d like a drink. He ordered a whiskey on the rocks.
When the waitress moved away, Joe sat back, and his eyes narrowed on Alegra. “Are you angry?”
“Should I be?”
He shrugged. It hit her then that she didn’t have a clue if he was married or divorced. It appeared he had a child, however. A three-year-old boy. “I could see that you didn’t have time for food then,” he said.
“You have a short fuse.”
“I just don’t have time to squeeze substantive questions in between phone calls.”
She took a swallow of her gin and tonic before she leaned toward him and said, “You didn’t have to yell ‘Whatever’ as you disappeared.”
He chuckled. “See what I mean? Isn’t it the most annoying word in the English dictionary?”
“In the top ten,” she admitted as she realized she was starting to relax just a bit. She felt more mellow, and she wasn’t sure if it was the drink or his smile.
“How did you know about the parking area near the lighthouse?” he said without any preamble.
“I stumbled on it,” she lied, and quickly picked up her menu, opening it to partially block his view of her as she scanned the items. She read them aloud to fill in that space between her and Joe so he wouldn’t ask any more questions. When she finished with, “And ‘Bloody Jack’s Prime Rib,’” she peered over the top of the menu at Joe. “Now, that sounds appetizing, don’t you think?”
He was watching her intently. “Seems fitting for this setting.”
The waitress showed up with Joe’s drink, then took their orders. She couldn’t resist the pasta—Mad Patrick’s Penne. Joe ordered the prime rib, along with a carafe of red wine.
When the waitress left, Alegra sank back in her seat and looked directly at Joe. “So, let me get this straight. If I take a phone call, you leave, even if you are supposed to be interviewing me for your story, right?”
He seemed to consider that for a moment, then said, “I probably wouldn’t, mostly because I’m starving. And I want to do the interview, despite your damn phone.”
He could bring that anger up with so little effort! She lifted her phone. “Look, it’s a convenience. It’s important in business to stay connected at all times.” She lowered it to the table with a sigh. “Forget it. You wouldn’t understand.”
“Rather condescending of you,” he muttered.
“I didn’t mean—”
He cut her off. “That’s okay. Believe it or not, there was a time when you’d have thought I’d had a cell phone surgically implanted in my hand.”
“New York can do that to a person,” she murmured.
She didn’t miss a certain tightness that crept into his expression. “That was another life,” he said.
“But it was yours.”
“So is this. This is where I grew up. I left after high school graduation and went out to conquer the world.” He paused when the waitress came back with the carafe and he took his time pouring a goblet for Alegra before topping off his own drink. Joe reached for his goblet. He held it up in a salute. “Here’s to our lives now, and here’s to this place.”
She didn’t move to touch her own glass. “Was your life in New York that bad?” she asked, discovering she really wanted to know.
He sat back and pressed one hand to the tabletop with splayed fingers. Then he spoke in a low voice. “This is supposed to be about you, not me. I’m the journalist, the one who’s supposed to be asking the questions.”
“You don’t have your notebook with you, and I don’t have my press packet with me, so humor me,” she said. “Give me a thumbnail sketch of your past life.”
“That’s the point, it’s my past life. It’s done.”
“And forgotten?”
“Do you forget your past?”
“No one does,” she said softly. “Our past makes us what we are today.” She quickly amended that statement. “Or it drives us to be what we are today.” She took a breath, avoiding thoughts of what had made her what she was. “What m
ade you put that life behind you?”
He smiled wryly. “All right, if you insist, I’ll give you that thumbnail sketch. I left here, graduated college in journalism and business, moved to New York and started out as an intern at the newspaper. I graduated to writing obituaries, then moved up to community news, the city buzz, and finally made it to the serious news. No overnight sensation, but eventually, I got to near the top, then to the top.”
He’d been the editor of one of the largest, most respected newspapers in the country and now he was here, doing a weekly paper that had little to no impact on any world but the island?
Alegra couldn’t get her mind around it. “So how could you just walk away? Why would anyone choose this place, this life, over everything you had?”
Alegra lifted her gin and tonic, but it was empty. So she took a swallow of wine. As the warmth spread in her, she waited for Joe to answer. He finally did.
“See, you can’t believe it,” he said frowning. “But I can’t believe that it took me so long to do it.”
Their food arrived, but Alegra barely glanced at the steaming plate of pasta with its rich, creamy sauce. Instead, she told him, “All I know is, I would have never walked away from the life I’ve made for myself and come back to this.”
“Well,” he replied, “sometimes what we think we want turns out to be everything we don’t need.”
She shook her head. “That’s crazy. What’s wrong with success, with working for what you want and getting it?”
“Nothing. Nothing at all, unless…” He took a sip of wine. “Everyone has to decide what’s most important to them. It’s that simple.”
Simple. She’d decided a long time ago to get out of here, and she had. She’d decided to be everything she never could have been here, and she was. Was that simple? She shook her head. “It’s your choice, and if you’re happy…” She let her words trail off as she picked up her fork.
“AND THIS INTERVIEW is supposed to be about you,” Joe said. Truth was, he’d been on the verge of forgetting who was interviewing whom and telling her about Jean and the breakup and the day he knew that he only wanted to be here with Alex. But her “It’s your choice, and if you’re happy” was so pat and so annoyingly condescending—did she make a habit of being condescending?—that he bit back his story. All he said was, “Damn straight,” deciding to put off the interview for a bit until he was in a better mood, then tackled his food.
Alegra methodically ate her pasta, sipping wine and occasionally sighing softly, but she didn’t make any effort to make more conversation. When Joe decided enough was enough, he put down his utensils and waited for Alegra to look up from her meal.
He wondered if a woman like her could ever understand how priorities could shift and change? He finally said, “The three-year-old is my son, Alex.”
Her fork stopped on the way to her mouth, then lowered to the plate with a slight clatter. “I figured that must have been your son.” She pulled the napkin off her lap and dropped it over her almost empty plate. “And your wife…?”
“She’s gone.”
He knew his blunt choice of words was wrong when color touched her cheeks and she murmured, “Oh, I’m so sorry. No wonder you came back and—”
“Oh, no, she’s not dead. She’s in Zambia, I think.”
Her eyes widened. “Zambia?”
“Last I heard.”
“What’s she doing there?”
“She’s working. She’s a photographer. Jean Miles.”
“The photographer who does all those wild-animal photos?”
She knew of her? “Yup.”
“Well, it is a small world,” she murmured.
“How so?” he asked.
“I used her work for an ad campaign about six or seven months ago.” She sat forward with her elbows on the table and her fingers laced so she could rest her chin on them. “We were starting an animal-print line, and her photos were terrific, African and lush and so sensual.” He thought she might have colored just a bit at her choice of words. “They were great.”
He had visions of how Alegra would use the theme of wild animals in her business. “I bet they were.”
“So, you’re here and she’s there, and…?”
“We’re divorced,” he said bluntly.
“Oh.” She took the time to sit back, lift her wine and take a sip before asking, “And you have custody of your son?”
“Yes. I brought him back here, and we’re staying with my mother and father. Their house is just down the beach from the lighthouse. That’s why I was on the beach earlier. It’s where I grew up, my home. You know, the one place you can go back to no matter what happens in your life.”
He watched Alegra lower her eyes, those ridiculously long lashes shading her expression, and he thought she whispered, “Sure.” Then she looked up, but not at him. She waved to the waitress, who came over to the table. “The bill?” she asked.
The waitress collected their plates, then hurried off. Joe watched Alegra fiddle with a fork that had been left behind, straightening it, then turning it sideways before she righted it again. He could see her discomfort. Not anger, not embarrassment, but something he’d said had bothered her, had put that expression in her eyes, and now she wanted out of here. “It’s my treat,” he said for lack of anything else to say that would get her to look at him again.
When she glanced up, her eyes held a tinge of bleakness in the amber hue, then she shook her head and reached for her jacket, from which she produced a slim wallet. “No, I’ll take care of it,” she said quickly, and as the waitress came to the table, she put out a hand to take the bill.
Joe didn’t bother arguing. It didn’t matter to him. He said, “Thanks,” and let her take out a credit card, give it to the waitress, then sit back and wait for the girl to return. “We only talked about me,” he said. “I didn’t get anything about you.”
She looked at him blankly for a moment, then said, “Oh, maybe later we can talk.”
The waitress was back, handing her a pen and the receipt. She signed it quickly, and Joe didn’t miss the slight unsteadiness in her hand as she added what he could tell was a more than generous tip. Then the waitress was gone, and Alegra was standing, slipping on her leather jacket and pushing her wallet and phone in the pockets. “Thanks for the company,” she said and left.
Joe got to his feet and caught up to her as she exited the front entry of the restaurant. The night was cold, and the mist was haloing the lights of the town. He wasn’t sure she knew he was there as he came up to her side on the fake gangplank, but when he spoke to her, she didn’t seem surprised. “Going back to the Snug Harbor?” he asked.
She stopped, not looking at him, but glancing right and left up the street. “What do they do if it rains on the festival?” she asked without answering his question.
“It’s not if,” he said, watching her as she looked up at the blackness of the sky. “It’s when. And they have tons of canopies and awnings and tents to protect everything.” He motioned down the street on the far side where he could make out a sea of those very things for protection by the park. “Rain is part of life here.”
She shrugged, her arms hugging herself tightly, but she didn’t make a move to go any farther. “How do you live with it?” she asked in a low voice.
He did his own version of answering a question with a question. “Is something wrong? Did I say something that upset you?”
“You? No, it’s not you. I’ve…” She bit her bottom lip, then exhaled a sigh that misted in the cold air. She never looked at him. “I’ve got work to do.”
She would have left, but he touched her on the upper arm. He felt her stiffen, then stand absolutely still in front of him. “No vacation at all while you’re here?”
As if to answer his question, there was a muffled ring. Her cell phone again. She pulled it out, looked down at the glowing readout on the front, then hit the ignore button before she spoke to him again. “This isn’t a vacation.
”
A direct answer, yet he thought he caught a certain sadness in it. He had the most overwhelming urge to take the phone and toss it away, then pull the woman to him. But he just said, “Too bad,” and meant it.
Chapter Six
When Alegra turned from Joe and started up the street toward the bed-and-breakfast, his words rang in her mind. You know, the one place you can go back to no matter what happens in your life?
She walked more quickly through the mist that was changing to a light rain. She would have run if Joe hadn’t been somewhere behind her, watching her. Then she sensed movement by her. Joe, falling in step with her. He was quiet as they neared the park entry, obviously with no idea that what he’d said was like a blow to her midsection. You know, the one place you can go back to no matter what happens in your life? No, she didn’t know. She had never known. She never would.
She barely controlled a trembling that she felt deep inside her, and she hoped Joe would just go away when she got to the bed-and-breakfast. Then she’d be alone.
At last the old Victorian was there. She turned into the driveway and headed for her cottage, and when she reached it and stopped, Joe caught her gently by her upper arm, turned her toward him. She didn’t try to break away, but just waited.
He studied her for a long, agonizing moment, then moved closer, dipping his head and she felt instant horror at the idea he was about to kiss her.
But there was no kiss. His lips weren’t on hers, but by her ear, and he whispered softly, “Sleep well, and turn off your damn phone.”
Then he moved back, withdrawing his touch, and she stared at him, not at all sure why she felt oddly let down. He cocked his head to one side, said, “Call me when you’re free to talk,” and headed off into the misty night.
She went into her cottage, stripped off her damp clothes and turned on the shower. As soon as the water heated up, she stepped under the warmth.
His words came back to her. You know, the one place you can go back to no matter what happens in your life? In that moment, she thought she could hate Joe Lawrence. He had that one place. She never had. She slapped the tiled wall with the flat of her hand and wept.
Alegra's Homecoming Page 6