by V. K. Sykes
She remembered his rich laugh when he’d opened the big hatbox, but now he seemed a little… sad, maybe, at the memory. “And I said I thought they’d be useful since you’d been drafted by the Texas Rangers.”
“They would have been really useful if I’d actually spent any time in Dallas instead of bouncing around in their minor-league system until they traded me.”
They were both silent again for a minute, clearly remembering. Lily’s heart had been a lead ball in her chest when she shopped for his birthday. What do you buy a boy who’s about to leave you, probably forever? Every one of her early ideas had felt maudlin, coldly calculated to make him remember her, and she’d rejected them as making her seem needy and petty. Instead, she’d chosen light-hearted gifts that she hoped would make him laugh. After all, it wasn’t like he actually owed her anything or had made any commitment beyond friendship.
A friendship that had meant the world to her at the time.
“What happened to the Stetson, Aiden?”
Again a faint smile curled up the corners of his mouth, one that made her want to wrap herself around his awesome body and kiss him. “I’ve still got it at my house in Philly. On top of a bookcase.”
Stupidly, a glow lit her up at the idea that he’d kept her silly present. That had to mean something, right?
Before she did something truly idiotic—like carry through on that urge to lock lips with him—she straightened and grabbed her gaff. “Well, I guess we’d better stop jawing and haul some traps, huh?” She leaned out to reach for the buoy.
“I still remember your birthday too, you know,” Aiden said.
Lily almost dropped the gaff into the water. She turned to stare at him. He leaned against the rail, arms crossed over his chest, gazing at her with that sexy smile and a light in his eyes that made her stomach feel squirmy and girly.
“You do?” she whispered.
His lips parted in a slow grin. “Yep. In fact, I’m pretty sure it’s this Saturday.”
Actually, Aiden was positive that Saturday would be Lily’s thirty-first birthday. It wasn’t that hard to remember, since it fell two days after his mother’s. Maybe Lily didn’t remember that connection. That made it a special week in two ways, especially since he was destined to spend it in Seashell Bay.
“Any particular plans for the big day?” He would have loved to do something special for her, but that probably wasn’t a good idea. He tried like hell to remember why.
Lily shrugged. “Just the usual dinner with my folks. At their insistence, I might add, not mine.” She made a little scoffing noise. “Hey, once you get past thirty, you’d just as soon forget birthdays, right?”
“Tell me about it.” Aiden had never worried about his age until lately. “Thirty is the top of the hill for most ballplayers, and after that it’s a steep slope down until you’re done. At thirty-two, most players are already thinking about the end of the line.”
“True, but at least pro athletes make good money. Lobster fishermen, not so much, and we don’t exactly have a secure life either. So many burn out, get an injury, or develop a chronic condition that trashes their ability to work.” She grimaced. “Our dads are perfect examples.”
“Bram too,” Aiden said. His brother’s life had been flipped upside down in a few horrible seconds.
“It’s not an easy life, that’s for sure.”
Lily was right. Compared to the hardship and insecurity fishermen faced—and, in their dads’ cases, while raising young families—Aiden’s troubles didn’t match up. He’d been blessed by good fortune, all things considered.
“We’re really cheering each other up, aren’t we? I should just shut up and count my blessings,” he said.
Lily’s gorgeous green eyes widened. “Aiden, I didn’t mean it as a criticism. You’re right to be thinking about your future. Everybody should. I’m just saying that we all need to remember that things could always be worse.”
He nodded. “Agreed.”
Her little lecture gave him a perfect opening to make the point that she should cut him some slack on the land deal. “So, given what you just said, can you get where I’m coming from on the sale of my land, under the circumstances?”
She’d picked up the gaff again but didn’t dip it in the water to hook the buoy. Instead, she leaned against it with one hip thrust out in an unintentionally sexy way that certainly drew Aiden’s attention.
Down, boy.
“Maybe you should spell it out for me,” she said. “It sounds like you want to.”
“Fine.” Let’s get it out on the table. “To me, the deal is all about Bram, period. I want you to understand that, Lily. It’s not that I don’t care about my old man in some totally screwed-up way, but after all those years of hard drinking and smoking, well…”
“It’ll be a miracle if he sees seventy,” Lily said.
“Probably. But Bram—hell, he really needs help. He’s got almost no money left as far as I can tell. I don’t even know how he keeps gambling. He told me he makes enough on the games to break even, but I have a hard time believing that.”
“I worry about him too. Maybe your father lends him money?”
“I doubt it, because Dad says he’s in bad shape too. Always seems to have money for booze and smokes, though.”
“People always manage to find money for those things,” Lily said.
Aiden couldn’t miss the bitterness in her voice. He knew she was thinking about her dad. Tommy Doyle wasn’t nearly as big an asshole as Aiden’s father, but he had his own struggles with the bottle. “Dad gets Social Security, that’s all, and Bram has absolutely no income. He’s been living off some money Mom left him when she died, money she’d inherited and kept separate from Dad. But that must be nearly gone by now after all his gambling.”
“I’m so sorry, Aiden,” Lily said, her gaze soft with sympathy and concern.
That was one of the things he’d always loved about her—she wore her heart on her sleeve. And God, it felt good to talk to her about the worries that were keeping him awake night after night. He’d confided in her when they were teenagers, and now he realized how much he’d missed that. Lily Doyle was one of the few people he could trust with the secrets of his soul.
He decided to lay it all out for her. “I can’t help worrying that Bram might be in debt to…”
“A loan shark?” Lily guessed when he paused.
“Something like that. Maybe I’m just being paranoid.”
She grimaced. “No, you’re right to worry. Look, I know Bram can’t fish anymore, but has he even tried to find a job? The word on the island is that he doesn’t want to work, especially now that he thinks he’s going to make a pile of money selling his land.”
There was some truth to that, but there was another side to the story too. “Maybe, but you can probably put yourself in Bram’s shoes, because all you ever wanted to do is fish, right? Well, it was exactly the same for my brother. All he ever wanted was to be a lobster fisherman, just like his dad. He always loved boats, loved the sea. When he was old enough, he worked his ass off as a sternman and then waited for years until a commercial license finally came available. He saved every dime so he’d be in a position to buy Irish Lady when Dad was ready to retire.” He stared at her, willing her to understand what he was trying to say. “I was proud of him.”
Lily braced her legs against the swell of a passing ferry, totally focused on him.
Aiden’s throat went tight, like it did every time he thought about Bram’s accident. “But then it all came crashing down. One little distraction was all it took. It could have happened to anybody.” He shook his head. “It could have happened to you.”
She nodded. “It still could. I think about that all the time, because there’s always danger waiting on the water.” Then she gave a funny little shrug. “Then again, you city folks can step off the curb and get run over by a bus, right?”
“Sure, but my point is that the accident changed Bram forever. It su
cked the life out of him. You can understand why.”
She nodded, her lips pressed tight with reluctant agreement.
Aiden turned half away from her, leaning on the railing and gazing at the beach past Wreckhouse Point. Two little boys, maybe seven or eight, were racing along the thin strip of sand, followed by a lumbering old black Lab. There was no adult in sight, and that was just fine. Short of drowning—and every kid on the island learned to respect the water at an early age—there wasn’t much to worry about. Life didn’t come much safer than it did on Seashell Bay Island.
At least until you took to sea on a small fishing boat.
“Bram and I spent a fair bit of time together after that,” he continued. “In Philly, or somewhere on the road where I was playing. I wanted to get him away from the island and the bad memories for a while.” Aiden shrugged. “He was okay as long as we didn’t talk about his future. Every time I said a word about that he threatened to split if I didn’t get off his case.”
“Hardheaded,” she said quietly. “Like a true islander.”
“Anyway, even if he wanted to get a job now, who would hire him? His head’s messed up, he barely graduated high school, and he drinks way too much.” Aiden clenched his fists against the anger he had bottled up over Bram’s rotten luck. “One way or the other, Lily, I have to make sure he’s going to be okay. I love my brother, and I’m not going to let him sink into some kind of pathetic drunken poverty if I can help it. I will not let him turn into my dad.”
Lily leaned over and gave Aiden’s shoulder a sympathetic squeeze. He liked the feel of her slender but strong hand on him too much. “Of course you won’t. But Bram has to be able to help himself too, right?”
“Yeah,” Aiden said. Actually, he would have liked nothing better than to scoop Bram up and whisk him to Philadelphia or wherever else he ended up, but he’d already floated that idea to Bram and had been met with wounded disbelief.
Aiden, I’m your brother, not your charity case.
Bram, like most Flynns, intended to live out his days in Seashell Bay and be buried in the family plot at Saint Anne’s-by-the-Sea. The island held his brother in its relentless grip, and nothing Aiden did or said would change that.
“I think he needs help,” Lily said in a careful voice. “Professional help and a support group for his gambling.” She gazed up at him, searching for his understanding and, possibly, approval.
“You’re talking about a shrink?” Aiden tried not to sound too defensive. Lily wasn’t trying to manipulate him to her advantage. He knew she cared for Bram.
“Some kind of therapy.” She shifted from one sneakered foot to the other, clearly uncomfortable but not backing down.
“Well, you might be right, but you’ve known Bram all your life, Lily. Seriously, can you see my brother on a shrink’s couch? Hell, maybe we could talk Dad into going too. Get a two-for-one discount.”
Lily turned away and shoved the gaff into the water, hooking it under the buoy. “It’s easy to be cynical, Aiden, but I don’t hear you coming up with better answers.”
When she fed the pot warp into the hauler and started it up, it effectively ended the conversation, since Aiden wasn’t about to shout over the loud whine of the machine. Sighing, he widened his stance and got ready to receive the lead trap.
There wasn’t much more he could say, anyway. Lily was right that he didn’t have any better answers. And Bram’s bad habits were obviously becoming more deeply ingrained.
Every day Aiden spent in Seashell Bay pounded home the fact that his family was deep in an epic shithole. And he sure as hell didn’t have the faintest idea how to make it right.
Chapter 14
Lily parted the curtains and scowled out her front window at the fog that refused to quit. It was already late morning, and yet the murk had only slightly dissipated since dawn. Now, though, she could at least glimpse the outline of her parents’ house on the other side of the trap lot. Still, she didn’t dare take her boat out. When it was this bad a couple of hundred feet inshore, on the water it would be heavy enough to make fishing dangerous even with radar and GPS. Miss Annie would remain at her mooring.
One thing she could easily see out her window was her mother bustling down the pea gravel track that connected Lily’s place to her parents’ house. Her mom carried a square Tupperware container cradled against her stomach as she strode purposefully past Lily’s Jeep.
Muffins? Coffee cake? Banana bread?
Lily was glad she’d made a fresh pot of coffee. When her mom showed up midmorning with baked goods, it meant she intended to stay for a chat. She’d no doubt correctly guessed that Lily would be in a blue funk over the weather that had prevented a day’s fishing.
Lily had called Aiden at five forty-five to catch him before he headed down to the dock. She’d expected him to be relieved, but to her surprise, he’d sounded a little disappointed when she told him he was off the hook for fishing today. He’d even told her—with apparent sincerity—to call him right away if the fog broke enough later to let them head out.
His unexpected response had left her standing in the kitchen, staring at the disconnected phone as she tried to figure him out.
Lily smiled as her mother pushed open the door. “Hi, Mom.”
“Good morning, honey. Goodness, that fog was as thick as terry cloth out there first thing this morning, wasn’t it?” Edith Doyle shook herself as if the fog had been clinging to her slight form. She wore a gray cardigan over a white blouse and black mom jeans, and her graying hair was pulled back into a ponytail and secured by a neon-pink scrunchy.
Her never-ending supply of brightly colored scrunchies never failed to crack Lily up.
Her mother kicked off her shoes at the door. “I thought you could use some blueberry muffins to cheer you up on such a foggy morning.”
“You’re the best, Mom. Thanks,” Lily said as she headed into the kitchen.
Her mother padded behind in her stocking feet. When she pried off the Tupperware lid, the amazing smell of freshly baked muffins filled the room. Lily’s mouth started to water. Her mom’s baking was better than chocolate and almost as good as sex, and she could feel her mood starting to lift.
Soon after they sat down and took their first sips of coffee, her mother cocked an eyebrow. “You look quite out of sorts this morning, sweetie. Is it more than just the fog?”
When she paused significantly, Lily knew she was in for it.
“Are things not going so well with Aiden after all?” Mom asked.
Lily had told her parents—after some prodding—that Aiden was adapting to work on the boat much better than she’d anticipated, but she’d refused to go into detail. Trust her mother, though, to not let sleeping dogs lie.
“Aiden’s doing well enough,” Lily answered, “given all the stuff he has to deal with. I don’t think he realized just how awful the situation was with Bram until he came home.”
Her mother nodded. “I’m sure he didn’t fully understand—not when he’d all but disappeared from his family’s life.” She held up a hand when Lily started to protest. “I know he’d fly Rebecca and Bram out for visits, but that barely scratched the surface. Rebecca always worried about Aiden. She thought he was running away from his family and his past.”
“Well, heck, what else could he do? With a father like Sean, who could blame him?”
Her mother sighed. “He can’t do anything about his father, but it’s not too late for Bram. At least I hope not.”
Lily pushed her half-eaten muffin aside. “That’s the only reason Aiden would ever agree to sell his land. He only cares about the money because of what it could mean for Bram.”
“That’s all well and good, but I’m sure Sean could have come up with a smaller project that would have made the family plenty of money without ruining the island. No, this particular deal is all about Sean’s greed and ego. The man thinks people have been persecuting him for years, so he’s darn well going to show everybody who’s really
in charge in Seashell Bay.”
Lily resisted the urge to rub her temples. “We’ve gone over this so many times, Mom. That’s all water under the bridge. There’s only one deal on the table, and it’s going to be up to Aiden to decide whether it goes ahead or not. I’m going to do all I can to push him in the right direction, but I get where he’s coming from. Aiden’s not like his father. He just wants to do the right thing.”
“Well, I have to say the man handled himself well at the social the other night, unlike his father. And yours, I might add. I gave your father quite a talking to when we got home. Sean was an idiot—no surprise there, of course—but Tommy would have played right into his hands if Aiden hadn’t stepped in. I told your father that this feud nonsense has to end. It’s the twenty-first century, for goodness’ sake.”
It had been quite an evening, followed by that steamy encounter on the beach with Aiden. Not that her mom would ever hear about that little incident. “Aiden was great. And I was glad Micah stuck Sean behind bars for the night, the old goat.”
Her mother grimaced. “The town should name a jail cell in his honor. He’s been in it enough.”
Lily waggled her hand. “A little exaggeration there, Mom.”
“Okay, maybe a little.”
“Actually, I wouldn’t mind if the next time Micah throws him in jail, he sends the key to the bottom of the channel. Sean Flynn is a horrible man. The way he treated his wife and then what he did to Aiden…” Lily had to stop when her throat grew too tight.
“So true,” her mother said in a quiet voice.
The old mahogany grandfather clock chimed the hour, as it had been doing in Lily’s living room for a year now. It had been in the Doyle family for well over a century, but Gramps had gifted it to her on her last birthday, saying it was about time a girl took charge of the “damn noisy thing.”
“Why did Mrs. Flynn put up with it?” Lily asked. “I know it was a different time, but she deserved so much better. I realize he never hit her—he saved that crap for his sons—but he made her life a misery. She was such a nice woman too.”