Meet Me at the Beach (Seashell Bay)

by V. K. Sykes

  The pier had returned to quiet, orderly calm. Lily’s volatile father had been rude, but Aiden had expected no less, given how much Tommy hated the Flynns in general and his dad in particular.

  Sometimes, Aiden thought it would be better for everyone if Doyle and his father locked themselves in a UFC cage and hammered it out once and for all with their aging, crippled fists. But he suspected that even a grudge match wouldn’t do much to end the feud that had been passed down through the generations, nurtured with a bizarre kind of toxic affection. Thankfully, though, he figured the crap might finally peter out with Sean and Tommy. None of their children seemed to have much interest in perpetuating the bullshit that had started over a century ago. Bram was the only one of their generation to carry any lingering taint of the grudge, but Aiden didn’t worry much about that. His brother’s drinking and gambling problems were far more troubling than any perceived wrongs committed by the Doyles.

  Unless, of course, the land development deal blew everything up again. From what he’d learned since he stepped off the ferry, it definitely had that potential.

  “Anything else I can help you with?” Aiden said.

  Lily pulled her sunglasses down from the top of her head, covering her beautiful green eyes as she took her seat in the stern. “You seem strangely anxious to help out the competition, Aiden Flynn.”

  He sank into a crouch so they could talk without him towering over her. “I’m not exactly tuning your diesel for the race,” he joked. “Just giving an old friend a hand.”

  Lily’s lush mouth seemed to flatten at his choice of words. “Old friend” hardly described how he felt about her. But as enticing as she was, he was probably opening himself up to a world of hurt if he tapped into the chemistry so obviously still there. Especially given all the issues festering between their families. But, man, he wanted to take Lily with an urgency that just about knocked him off his feet.

  “Well, I appreciate it.” Her slender but capable hand gripped the throttle on the Mercury 7.5-horsepower engine, so ancient that it might have been a hand-me-down from her grandfather.

  Lily was pretty and strong and full of energy, so at peace with her life that Aiden couldn’t repress a flash of envy. Even when he was doing the thing he loved best, playing baseball, he’d always been aware of a restless need to keep moving, to keep looking for that next best thing.

  Too bad he couldn’t figure out what that thing was.

  “I’m happy for you, Lily,” he said abruptly. “You always wanted this, and here you are. Exactly where you wanted to be and where you belong.”

  Her lips curved into a wry grin. “Oh, sure. I always wanted to be working my ass off in stink and slime to make less in a day than the cost of my fuel and bait.”

  Aiden knew she would never want to do anything else. “You know what I mean,” he said. “You’ve told me more than once that you wanted nothing more than to fish lobster from your own boat and spend the rest of your life right here on the island.”

  Her smile eased away into thoughtfulness. “You’re right, I did. And you told me you’d rather live anywhere else on Earth.” She gave a little shrug. “So I guess we both got what we wanted, didn’t we, Aiden?”

  He’d always thought so, but wondered why he couldn’t find the words to agree with her. Probably because everything had pretty much felt like crap since the Phillies cast him adrift. “Joking aside, you’re happy now though, right?”

  Lily’s brave smile lit up her face and tugged at his heart. “It’s been hard, but I’m content with my decisions. What else would I do if not this?” She tilted her head back to catch the sun on her face and spread her arms wide, as if to encompass everything around her, sea and land and air. He knew Lily had always loved the ocean, loved taking on its magical, dangerous ways.

  Most of their high school friends hadn’t had a clue what they wanted to do after graduation, but that had never been a problem for either Lily or Aiden. Maybe it had been their confidence in those dreams, the belief that nothing could knock them off their chosen courses, that had finally allowed them to come together on the night before he left the island for good.

  But Aiden hadn’t missed the fact that she’d used the word content, not happy, to describe her state of mind. He couldn’t help wondering if still being single at thirty might have something to do with her choice of words, because she loved kids and had always made it clear she wanted a small brood of her own someday. But according to Bram, Lily didn’t have a boyfriend now and had apparently never been truly serious about anybody.

  Other than you, whispered his traitorous mind.

  He firmly squashed that thought. “You could do anything you wanted, but you were born to fish lobster. You always said it was in your genes, or like you had seawater running in your veins.”

  Lily gave a little snort. “Yeah, well, don’t forget it’s in yours too. Centuries worth of ridiculously optimistic genes that make us think we can actually make a living dragging bugs up from the ocean floor.”

  He had the DNA, for sure, but it was no match for the impact of a drunken pig of a father. Still, Aiden had to laugh at her apt description of the lobstering life.

  “Those genes must have somehow skipped my sister, though,” she added.

  Aiden didn’t recall much about Lily’s little sister. Brianna Doyle was two or three years younger than Lily and a bit of a princess. “What’s Brie doing these days, anyway? Still here on the island?”

  “Not likely,” Lily scoffed. “Not when the closest Neiman Marcus is over a hundred miles away. No, she’s a junior at an architectural firm in Boston and happy as a clam. By the time she made it to high school, Brie was almost as set on kissing the island good-bye as you were.”

  Yet another reference to Aiden’s decision to leave the island. After all these years, it clearly still grated on her. “Bram told me your pals Holly and Morgan left here early too,” he said. “So I guess I’m not exactly unusual on that score, am I?”

  Lily’s gaze slid down to her boots. “Well, at least they come back home for regular visits. Morgan and Holly are here now, and Brie will be back later today. She always comes home for Blueberry Festival weekend.”

  Aiden sighed. “I can’t say I do that, can I?” But you know my reasons.

  He’d refused to come back to the island even when his mother was still alive. Instead, he’d arranged for his mom and Bram to visit him, sending them plane tickets to Philly or whatever city he was playing in that was within a reasonable distance of Portland. But that meant he’d missed a lot of holidays and other milestone events with his family. It was the price he paid to avoid his father.

  She surprised him by standing up and extending a hand, silently asking to be helped out of the skiff. Aiden stood and grasped her by both the hand and the elbow, making sure she had her footing on the pier before reluctantly letting her go. Even in her masculine-looking lobster gear, she was still cute enough and sexy enough to get his temperature running hot.

  “I understood why you left, Aiden,” she said. “So I’m sorry if I sounded like I was judging you.”

  “Thanks.” He wasn’t sure where she intended to go with this. The fact that she’d hoisted herself out of the boat made it clear she had something she wanted to say.

  Lily put her hands on her nicely curved hips, her feet planted apart like she was about to give him a lecture. Aiden remembered that stance so well. Lily Doyle had been feisty as a teenager, and time hadn’t changed that.

  But she surprised him with her soft tone, sweetly colored by that gentle island lilt she would never shake. “You still hate it back here, don’t you? You’ve been away almost half your life, but it feels to me like not much has changed since we were kids.”

  As far as Aiden could tell, she wasn’t bitter or judgmental. If anything, she sounded sad for him. “Hate’s a strong word,” he said cautiously.

  Was she right that not much had changed? Sometimes it felt like everything had changed. He’d left Seas
hell Bay fourteen years ago with his dreams in full bloom, a pro contract in his pocket, and the promise of a major-league baseball career. Now, that career was in tatters and his future in the game murky at best. The golden boy had come home with a decidedly tarnished luster.

  “I wish you could see the island the way I see it, Aiden,” she said, her green eyes so earnestly intense. “See the people the way I see them. Seashell Bay is such a beautiful place, and the people are just so damn decent, despite their faults. I hate it that your father took that away from you.”

  Aiden pressed his lips together, his tangled emotions keeping him silent.

  “There’s so much good here,” Lily went on in a gentle but relentless voice. “So much that’s right for the soul. You just have to be able to see it.”

  He wanted to. He really did, but he could still see her father stomping down the pier, eyes full of suspicion and fury. And then there was his dad, whose contempt and anger toward him—an anger Aiden had never fully understood—had colored everything about the place. There was too much ugliness in his past, too much darkness to ever make the island right for him again.

  But he couldn’t say that. Not all of it, anyway.

  “The only good thing I see in Seashell Bay is you, Lily, just like always,” he said, briefly cupping her soft cheek. “But you’re right, nothing’s changed for me. Nothing fundamental, anyway.”

  When Lily’s pretty mouth pursed in dismay, it was all Aiden could do not to grab her and kiss away the pain—his pain more than hers, he suspected. Instead, he turned away to gaze across the channel and think about the complicated mess his life had become.

  “Well, I really should get going,” she finally mumbled. “It’s getting late.”

  “Yeah, you should.” He turned to face her and smiled. Hell, there was no reason to take his crappy mood out on Lily, the one bright spot in his life right now. “But will I see you at the Pot tonight? Or are you going to be too busy plotting my downfall in the race?”

  Lily’s laughter was sweet music as it echoed over the still waters of the harbor. “No and no. I’m sure I’ll be too exhausted to hang out at the Pot.”

  It sucked that he wouldn’t see her, but he couldn’t deny the pleasure in hearing that she obviously wasn’t doing the bar scene. He guessed that made him a jealous asshole when he had no right to be, but he could live with it. “That’s a shame. But if you change your mind, I’ll buy you a drink. Or two.”

  “I won’t,” she said as she climbed back into her skiff. “But maybe I’ll see you at the Blueberry Festival tomorrow.” Then she suddenly cut him a teasing smile.

  “What?” he asked, as she yanked the outboard’s starter cord and the little engine came to life with a cough and a puff of acrid smoke.

  “I still remember how darn cute you looked when you were selling those pies at the festival for your mom,” she yelled over the motor noise. “You did that every year until high school, as I recall. What a good little boy you were back then.”

  Aiden gave her a mock scowl as he used his foot to ease the skiff away from the pier. He not only remembered the blueberry pies he’d sold to festivalgoers from a goofy booth, he could still practically smell them and taste their summer sweetness on his tongue. Nobody could bake a blueberry pie like his mother, God rest her sweet soul.

  He stood and watched Lily’s skiff putter out to the channel, feeling like he had a strange hole in the center of his chest. Then he turned and retreated back up the dock until he hit the road again at a flat-out run.

  Chapter 7

  As Aiden pulled into O’Hanlon’s boatyard, he glanced out at the spectacular view of the sun setting over the bay. Sinking fast, it streamed muted shades of purple and orange from the horizon, outlining in sharp detail the other nearby islands. He took a long look, enjoying the sound of the waves slapping against the shoreline and the total absence of traffic noise. He’d forgotten the deep quiet of the island, his memory wiped by years of city living. Then he got out of the truck and headed straight past the shop to the marina, where Roy Mayo would be waiting for him on Irish Lady.

  When Roy called Aiden’s cell and cryptically suggested that he and Bram might want to mosey on down to O’Hanlon’s for a “private” chat, Aiden had been torn between suspicion and relief. Suspicion because, well, a cryptic Roy was never a good thing, and relief because Aiden was sick of seeing his brother—three-quarters in the bag after polishing off a six-pack—sucked into yet another online poker game. Bram was so obsessed it made Aiden want to puke.

  Tired of fighting with Bram about it, Aiden had spent most of the afternoon before Roy’s call meandering across the family land, refamiliarizing himself with the near-wild beauty of Seashell Bay Island. His parcel, in the middle of the most rugged part of the property, featured the steepest bluffs and the best views of the ocean. At the bottom of those dark bluffs, narrow beaches strewn with seaweed and driftwood dotted the coastline, broken up by groupings of rocks of all sizes, some as big as a pickup truck. He’d loved climbing those rocks when he was a kid, one of the few good memories of his childhood.

  His feet had then seemed to gravitate toward one particular spot where someone in his mother’s family had long ago cut a zigzagging trail down a more gently sloping portion of the bluffs, a path now so overgrown by wild brush that he barely recognized it. When he finally reached the bottom and stood on the rocky beach, he’d had to give himself a thorough check for any deer ticks he might have picked up on his trek through the dense foliage. Getting Lyme disease was an ever-present worry on an island with a sizable deer population, and he sure as hell didn’t need to add that to his list of woes.

  He’d turned his back to the ocean to gaze back up to the top of the bluffs, remembering one summer afternoon—he was thirteen, he thought—when he and his mother had gone for one of their long walks, eventually wending their way down that same path to the sea. While he’d skimmed flat stones over the water, his mother had talked dreamily about how this piece of land would be a perfect place for him to someday build his home. It wasn’t just because it had a world-class view, she’d said. It was because she wanted her grandchildren to be able to slip easily down the bluffs to the ocean and play on the rocks and in the sea, learning to appreciate the awe-inspiring gift they’d been given by their ancestors over the generations.

  That was the land that Bram and his dad wanted to sell to developers. His mother would have hated the prospect, fighting tooth and nail and with every ounce of strength in her petite body to prevent it from happening.

  Aiden still got a lump in his throat whenever he thought about his mom and how unfair it had been that she’d been stricken down by heart disease while relatively young. But being back here in Seashell Bay, especially on the land she’d gifted him, made him miss her in an even more profound way. Mom had cherished every rock, every tree, and every ounce of soil on this little outpost. In his mind, she was forever connected to it, even a part of it.

  And in some weird way, the island itself seemed to mock him, making her absence that much more painful.

  Aiden crossed the boat yard to where Irish Lady was moored and climbed over her gunwale. Roy was sitting in a canvas chair in front of the wheel, his feet up on a plastic crate and a beer in his right hand. A beat-up Boston Red Sox ball cap was pulled low on his head, almost covering his eyes. Damn near everybody in this part of the country was a Sox diehard. Not once could he recall seeing anyone with a Phillies cap or T-shirt, despite the fact that a local boy played for Philadelphia.

  Had played for Philadelphia.

  “Working hard, I see,” Aiden said.

  “Don’t sass me, boy.” Roy pointed to a minicooler in the stern. “Help yourself to a cold one.”

  “Don’t mind if I do.” Aiden picked his way around some greasy metal parts and popped open the lid of the cooler, then reached in to pull a Shipyard from the melted ice. He wiped the wet bottle on his jeans and opened it. “So, what’s up with the old girl that called for t
his urgent pow-wow?”

  Don’t tell me the tub isn’t even going to make it to the starting line. That thought froze him with horror.

  Roy exhaled a rattling breath. “Well, Mike and Jessie did a good job getting her cleaned up and back in the water, and I’ve been doing some tinkering today on the diesel.”

  Aiden lifted a brow. “Tinkering, huh?” With engine parts strewn all over the deck, it looked more like a rebuild to him. Or a massacre.

  “Nothing too dramatic, but when I took her out to the channel this afternoon and gave her full throttle…” He shot Aiden a little sheepish grin. “Well, let’s just say there was a bit of smoke. Do you want the technical details?”

  Aiden grimaced. “I know dick-all about diesel engines and don’t want to. Just tell me you’re going to be able to fix it. In time for the race, obviously.”

  Roy put his beer down on the deck and sat up straight, leaning over to rest his stringy forearms on his khaki-clad thighs. “There’s a bit of a problem.”

  Crap. Realistically, Aiden knew he had a damn good chance of losing to Lily, but it would really stick in his craw if he had to pull out because this geezer had annihilated his father’s boat. “Spit it out, Roy,” he said as calmly as he could manage.

  “The damn power chip in the engine control unit is blown.”

  “ ‘Is blown’? You mean you blew it on the test run, after your modifications, right?” Aiden said through gritted teeth.

  Roy picked up his beer and leaned back again, the definition of old-school casual. “Shit happens, son. You wanted me to make this boat faster, so don’t start whining on me now.”

  Aiden wasn’t whining, but he was definitely second-guessing his father and brother for their confidence in Rocket Roy. “Can you get a replacement and somehow put all this back together in time? And preferably for at least one test run before the race?”

  “Sure, but there are chips and then there are chips. I can get a run-of-the-mill unit in Portland tomorrow, but if you really want to win this thing, you need to upgrade. And it’s going to cost.”