Barefoot Beach

by Debbie Mason

  “No. We do this now. It’s more important than eating.”

  Marco stared at his grandmother. Other than her family, there was nothing more important to Rosa DiRossi than food. It was a good thing she couldn’t read his mind. If she had even an inkling that he thought he needed some help in the romantic love department, not only would today be his worst Fourth of July on record, but any chance of salvaging the rest of his summer would be blown.

  While he’d been silently staring at his grandmother, Mia had handed out the colorful squares of tissue paper and markers. He looked at the paper in front of him, then nudged it away with the tip of his finger.

  Rosa pushed it back with hers. “You need all the help you can get.”

  He sighed heavily, shielded the paper with his hand, and wrote Have an awesome summer just like in the good old days. He glanced at his niece and sister, who had finished theirs and were rolling them into tight cylinders.

  “Are you two writing books?” he asked Liam and Rosa when he’d finished rolling his paper into a tiny tube.

  His grandmother didn’t respond, but Liam did. “Ronan’s fine motor skills aren’t fully developed, so he needs help. In case you’re wondering, he wants a cousin. Preferably before he’s a teenager.”

  “Thanks a lot—”

  Mia interrupted Marco. “That was my wish too, Daddy.” She then turned her earnest gaze on him. “You don’t have a lot of time, Zio. Some people don’t get pregnant right away. I’ll be a teenager in two years.”

  “Try three. Besides, you already have cousins on the Gallagher side.” Before his sister or grandmother could get in on the conversation, he said, “Now what are we supposed to do? Rip them up?”

  “No!” Sophie and Mia cried, while at the same time Rosa set her rolled paper upright on the table. Before he realized what she was up to, she lit a match and touched it to the tip. The paper floated in the air and then whooshed into flames.

  He stared at Rosa, who cupped her hands to catch the burning embers. “Are you crazy? Don’t catch…What do you two think you’re…?” he began when Sophie and Mia did the same. Like Rosa’s, their papers rose into the air and burst into flames. “Careful where the embers…”

  “We all caught them!” Mia squealed. “Now the wishes will come true for sure.”

  “Don’t you dare light yours.” Marco had just finished telling Liam when Rosa leaned over and set theirs on fire before he could stop her.

  Above Mia’s and Ronan’s laughter and squealing, Marco could have sworn he heard screaming. He held up a hand. “Quiet for a sec.”

  There it was again. Someone was in trouble. Liam handed him Ronan. Marco passed him to his sister and then jumped to his feet. Their pagers went off. They were on call. A recording from dispatch relayed the location of the emergency—Greystone Manor.

  Liam pulled out his cell phone as they took off at a run for the manor. “It’s my uncle Daniel. He went out on a paddleboard and appears to be in distress on the water,” he said once he’d disconnected.

  “Heart?” Marco asked as his own began to race. The last place he wanted to be tonight was anywhere near Greystone Manor.

  “Could be anything. They never did figure out what happened last fall,” Liam said as they sprinted along the path through the woods. He glanced at Marco when they cleared the trees and raced for the bridge. People in their wedding finery stood outside the white tent opposite the pond. “You gonna be okay?”

  “I’m fine.” He whipped his T-shirt over his head, letting it drop onto the grass. “Just glad I didn’t go commando today,” he said as he went to unbutton his jeans.

  “You and me both. Though I have a feeling the women might be disappointed.” Liam lifted his chin at a group of twentysomething women congregated on the beach.

  One of them turned, her pretty face stricken. “Can you swim?” she called out. “Our husbands tried to help and got caught in the undertow.”

  “Everyone wants to be a damn hero,” Marco muttered as he looked around for the groom while toeing off his running shoes. “Where the hell is Johnny?” Callie’s new husband and a member of their crew.

  He spotted the bride at the water’s edge. Her back was to him, her wedding gown billowing in the light breeze off the ocean, her long, golden-blond hair streaming down her back. And just beyond her, Johnny struggled to keep himself and a sandy-haired man afloat.

  Faint cries drew Marco’s attention from the two men. He squinted against the setting sun and made out Daniel Gallagher lying prone on a yellow paddleboard in the distance.

  “You’re a stronger swimmer than me. You get my uncle. I’ll take these two,” Liam said as he kicked off his shoes, leaving on his board shorts. They galloped into the cold water. Liam going right, Marco left.

  Callie called his name, but he didn’t have time to turn around and respond. It was more than that though; he didn’t want to see her face. He pushed her out of his mind, focusing instead on Liam’s uncle.

  Marco dove under the water, coming up several yards away from where he went under. He began to swim out into the harbor, his strokes even and powerful, his kick strong. Liam was right. Marco was the stronger swimmer of the two. It hadn’t always been that way. But now his best friend had a family to occupy his free time.

  In the distance he heard the sirens as the emergency vehicles raced for Greystone Manor.

  Five minutes later, when the searchlights cut across the water, Marco stopped swimming to raise his arm, glad of the light, as night had fallen, the moon and stars buried beneath the clouds.

  Daniel lifted his head from the paddleboard, seemingly disoriented. “Where am I?”

  “Mr. Gallagher—Daniel—don’t try to get up, okay? Just stay down on the board.” He didn’t want him falling off and into the water. “Can you tell me what happened, sir? Do you have any pain?” he asked as he treaded water to the front of the board. Like most of his crew, Marco was a certified paramedic.

  “My heart, I think. I had an attack last fall, you know.” His Irish accent was thick. The older man had returned to Harmony Harbor last summer, after spending the majority of his adult life in Ireland. No one knew why he’d come home.

  Marco refocused on his patient. Daniel’s color appeared to be good. His breathing wasn’t labored, nor were his words slurred. And other than that brief moment of disorientation, he seemed aware of the situation. All good signs. “I heard about your attack, sir. Are you in pain now? Any light-headedness?”

  “No. Although it might be the chill keeping the pain at bay.”

  Possibly. An archaeologist, Daniel regaled him with stories about his digs while Marco swam the older man and his board to shore. For someone who’d been in distress not more than twenty minutes before, he appeared to be doing remarkably well. No sooner had Marco had the thought than things took a turn for the worse.

  As soon as he stood up to push the paddleboard the rest of the way to shore, Daniel began to moan. Callie, who’d been standing with the crowd gathered on the beach, lifted her wedding gown and waded out to meet them. She was a nurse.

  Of all the things he could have said to her, “You look beautiful” shouldn’t have been one of them, but that’s exactly what he said.

  She stared at him, her eyes glassy. “I wish…” she began, only to be cut off by a man wading out to them wearing a soaked tuxedo.

  “Baby, what are you doing? You’re going to ruin your dress.” Johnny held Marco’s gaze as he lifted his wife into his arms and carried her back to shore.

  There was a whining sound just before fireworks exploded in the night sky above them. Red, white, and blue starbursts twinkled down to earth.

  Daniel moaned louder when Liam and his father, the fire chief, reached for the board, pulling him the rest of the way to shore. “I’m dying. Call my daughters. Tell them their da needs to see them to say goodbye.”

  “Daniel, you’ll be fine.” The chief tried to reassure his brother as the paramedics moved him onto a stretcher wit
h Liam’s and Marco’s help.

  “I’m dying, I tell you. You need to call my daughters, and you need to call them now.”

  “All right. We will. Just calm down. Here comes Mom, so stop saying you’re dying.”

  An elegant older woman with white-blond hair clutched Rosa’s arm as they hurried down the grassy incline. Kitty Gallagher wore low heels and a light-blue pantsuit. The two women had been best friends since grade school.

  After leaving Kitty with the chief, Rosa came to Marco’s side. She smiled up at him. “You see, mio bel ragazzo. Wishes do come true.”

  He bent down to look her in the eyes. “What are you talking about? You didn’t wish Daniel dead, did you?”

  She cuffed him on the arm. “Stupido. Kitty’s granddaughters, they’re coming home to Harmony Harbor.”

  “What does that have to do with…?” It hit him then what she meant. “No, Ma. I’m serious. Don’t even think about setting me up with the Gallagher girls.” Looking into her shining eyes, he knew to protest was useless. He grabbed his shoes and jeans and chased down his boss. “Hey, Chief. Any chance I can take my vacation time next week?”

  Chapter Two

  The new plane Theia Lawson piloted flew like a dream. A good thing since her passengers were a nightmare.

  She winced at the muffled sound of stampeding little feet and shrieking laughter coming through the cockpit door and her noise-reducing aviation headset. She wondered why she hadn’t anticipated the drama that would result from transporting Penelope Gallagher, her two mischievous twin boys, and Penelope’s half sister, Daphne, who’d exhibited all the signs of a fearful flyer, to Harmony Harbor.

  No, Theia thought at the crash and bang that practically rattled the seven-passenger Cessna Citation, she shouldn’t be surprised there would be drama with members of the Gallagher family onboard. She’d come to know the sisters’ father, Daniel Gallagher, pretty well last fall. The man was adept at causing drama wherever he went. Obviously, he’d passed the talent on to his progeny.

  The noise level in the cabin decreased exponentially when a measured baritone leveled instructions to settle down and return to their seats in a firm, commanding tone. Theia’s boss and best solidus friend, Caine Elliot, had assumed the role of flight-attendant/co-pilot today. He rarely flew as anything other than her passenger, but he’d decided he needed to go undercover to better gauge the situation with the Gallagher girls.

  Theia loved Caine like a brother. She credited him with saving her life and then giving her one far better than she deserved or expected after she’d quit the navy. He was kind and generous, brilliant when it came to business.

  But he wasn’t the same fair-minded, moral man she knew and loved when it came to the Gallaghers of Harmony Harbor. She might not know a lot about business, but his dealings with the family seemed underhanded and vengeful, traits she’d never seen in Caine, though she’d unfortunately witnessed them in her dealings with his grandmother, Emily Green Elliot. Theia had as little as possible to do with the eighty-year-old tyrant who kept Wicklow Developments and her grandson firmly under her dictatorial thumb.

  A conversation between another pilot and air traffic control drew Theia from her thoughts about the Elliots’ plot to wrest control of Greystone Manor from the Gallagher family. The pilot flying up ahead reported turbulence. There had been a chance of thunderstorms this morning, but she’d factored them in to her fight plan.

  She glanced at the weather radar. There was no change in precipitation levels, but that didn’t rule out clear-weather turbulence.

  After activating the FASTEN YOUR SEAT BELT signs in the cabin, she pressed the comm button on the audio panel and spoke into the mic on her headset. “For your safety, please ensure your seat belts are fastened, as we may be entering an area of turbulence.”

  She was about to ask Caine to do the same but doubted he’d hear her above the noise. It sounded like the three-year-olds were throwing a tantrum due to being restrained.

  “Get hold of your demon spawn before they kick out a window and send us to a watery grave!” Daphne yelled.

  Without warning, the remarks triggered a barrage of memories for Theia. A vise tightened around her chest, making it difficult to breathe. Sometimes that was all it took, just a throwaway remark or a simple sound. She held her breath for seven seconds and then pushed it out for eight. In and out until the tightness in her chest finally released.

  Pushing the vestiges of murky memories from her mind, she muted the comm on the audio panel. She wasn’t backsliding. This was just a blip. Her PTSD was under control. She hadn’t had an episode in almost a year. Switching on her headset to talk to air traffic control, she requested permission to increase elevation.

  Her gaze flicked to Caine as he entered the cockpit. She welcomed the grin that curved her lips at the sight of his disheveled dark hair and his untucked white shirt, the look of frustration etched on his handsome face. The Gallaghers had clearly tested the limits of her typically unflappable boss.

  He took his place beside her. “Don’t even,” he muttered as he put on his headset.

  She waited until the plane leveled off at the new altitude and she’d checked the radar to respond. “Bet you wish you’d listened to me and drove the Gallaghers to Harmony Harbor instead of flying them to their father’s deathbed. You’re a much better driver than you are a co-pilot. Plus, you look good in Harry’s uniform,” she said, referring to Caine’s personal driver.

  “Yes, but I’d have to pay attention to the road. And as you so sweetly pointed out, you have no need of my services. This way, I can spend more time observing Penelope and Daphne.”

  “How’s that working out for you?”

  “Smartass,” he said without heat.

  “So I take it Penelope and Daphne, like the rest of the Gallagher family, have bought into Daniel’s deathbed act?” She couldn’t believe they’d fallen for it the first time, let alone a second.

  “They have, but I’m not convinced the soon-to-be-ex Mrs. Gallagher has. Tara won’t allow Daniel’s youngest, Clio, to fly over.” Tara and Clio lived in Ireland.

  “Three daughters by three different wives. He’s quite the lad, our Daniel is,” Theia quipped, though she honestly wasn’t surprised. Daniel Gallagher was a handsome charmer who had a way with women.

  Personally, she liked the man. He was interesting and engaging, and beneath his gregarious bravado, she’d caught a glimpse of a man who wasn’t as happy or as confident as he appeared, which she found kind of endearing. It didn’t mean she approved of what he was doing behind his family’s back. In her book, you were loyal to your family no matter what.

  Even if that family included an uncle who could barely look at you now and cousins who’d tormented you growing up and hadn’t outgrown the habit. Her aunt loved her at least.

  Thoughts of her family carried with it the memory of their last visit two and a half years before, days after the accident. Theia cleared her throat in an effort to get rid of the emotion the memories evoked.

  “It’s probably a good thing there’s only two to deal with. From the little time I’ve spent with them, there doesn’t appear to be any love lost between Penelope and Daphne. I imagine throwing a third sister into the mix would make it that much worse,” she said, her voice huskier than usual.

  “You’re probably right, but it would carry more weight if all three of them were here to demand their shares of the estate be sold immediately.”

  She pressed her lips together to keep from voicing her disapproval of the plan. It was none of her business, and she had no intention of sticking her nose where it didn’t belong. She’d grown fond of the Gallaghers in the short time she’d stayed at the manor last fall, but she loved her job and couldn’t afford to lose it. Her salary was more than generous. Without it, she wouldn’t be able to make amends to the family who’d lost their husband and father because of her, or to sleep at night, or live with the guilt of what she’d done. What she’d failed to do.
<
br />   Besides, she considered Caine family. She owed her loyalty to him, not to the Gallaghers.

  “I know how you feel about this, T, but you don’t know the entire story. Emily—” He broke off to stare straight ahead. “Trust me, I have good reasons for what I’m doing.”

  She’d known all along that his grandmother was behind this, but she couldn’t call him out on it, could she? Emily was his family. And, like Theia, he believed you stuck by family no matter what. As far as she knew, his grandmother was the only family he had left. He was an adult orphan like her.

  Actually, she wasn’t positive she was an orphan. She’d never known or met her father. Despite her mother dragging her to Ireland every summer to search for the man she’d proclaimed to be her grand passion, the love of her life.

  Theia rolled her eyes. As far as she was concerned, romantic love caused more trouble than it was worth. Especially the head-over-heels kind. Or, as she thought of it, the kind of love that made you lose your mind. It wasn’t that she was against the whole marriage thing. She wanted a family. Eventually. She just didn’t have time for one now. Even if, at thirty-four, her biological clock was ticking so loudly it was getting hard to ignore.

  But ignore it she did. She had a debt to pay. And until she’d paid it, she didn’t deserve to be happy. She scrubbed her hand over her face, refocusing on the job.

  “I’m sure you do have a good reason, Caine. But all I care about right now is that we’re flying back to New York at five like you promised.” She glanced at him. “We will be, won’t we?”

  The sooner she was gone from Harmony Harbor the better. Pretending to be someone he wasn’t might not bother Caine, but it bothered her. A lot.

  “You have a hot date you didn’t tell me about?”

  “Caine.”

  “Okay. Relax. As far as I know, we’ll be leaving at five. I was a little busy trying to corral the terrors, so it was tough to get a read on how Daphne and Penelope feel about the Gallaghers and the manor. I got the impression they’re not overly fond of their father.”