Meant to Be Mine

by Lisa Marie Perry

“Enough.” Not from personal experience, but what did that detail really matter now? “Porn night featured wax play.”

  Joss’s sharp ring of laughter was startling. “God. That’s like saying you can become a surgeon just because you watched someone play a game of Operation.”

  “There’s a successful business, lucrative stocks, and an apartment in Eaves. They belong to me.”

  “You were like a broken record for so long. ‘I’ll never go back.’ What changed?”

  “I went back. I came home,” she whispered, and she began to shake because it was so startlingly clear. Eaves was her home, though she had no family left. Her past was ingrained in the sand and sidewalk, her memory on the lips of people who still lived there. She wouldn’t be anonymous there, but perhaps now she was strong enough to appreciate that. “Maybe it won’t pan out. I might fail.”

  “You won’t fail. You’re too stubborn to fail.” Joss came over and folded her into a perfumed hug. “I’m going to miss you.”

  “So that’s an official no, you won’t come with me?”

  “It’s an official no. I don’t have a rich aunt or a hefty financial cushion. I have a stand mixer and some talent and a man who’s going to open doors for me if I’m patient enough.” Joss’s phone began to chirp before she stopped speaking. She went totally still. “That’d be Peter,” she said, the words bundled in uncertainty.

  “Guess what? I’m not leaving New York if you’re still bothering with that guy.”

  “Then I won’t bother with him.”

  Sofia leaned back. “Seriously? Just like that.”

  “Yeah.” She shrugged and ignored the call. “I’m not going to stand in the way of your doing what’s vital to you. Go to Eaves and make us proud.”

  “Us?”

  “Luz and me. I’m gonna go to bed.” Joss started toward the hall but turned. Her mouth tightened, then after a moment relaxed into a wistful smile. “Good-bye, Sofia.”

  “Good night, you mean?”

  “Uh-uh. Good-bye. I won’t want to say it when it’s actually time for you and that canine beast of yours to go.”

  Alone in the quiet, Sofia exhaled. She could change her mind. It wasn’t as if she’d packed or made arrangements or told a soul other than Joss what she was contemplating.

  She could stay put and continue the fight she’d begun when her father had left her here with a freshly transplanted heart.

  Or she could go home again.

  *

  “Suppertime, men!”

  Burke cursed, profane words marching out one after the next like railcars. He stilled the handsaw and slung off his goggles. “Abe, you and the wifey seem to want this extension built before next summer, so how about letting us work?”

  Abram Slattery tugged off a pair of work gloves and stuffed them into a back pocket as he trekked to where the guys had set up sawhorses and stacks of lumber. Orange extension cords snaked through the grass. Frames had yet to be raised and attached. Cigarette stubs and flattened beer cans filled the wastebasket swiped from Hannah Slattery’s pretty little powder room. The yard might resemble a war zone more than a worksite now, but the added square footage—a nursery for the twins baking in Hannah’s oven, and a craft room for the mama-to-be—would be finished with care.

  If all the interruptions ceased for just one damn day. Car after car contained at least one woman who’d poke her head out the window and stare at the spectacle. One claimed she was lost and needed directions. Another brought a six-pack and in return got Burke’s solemn promise that he’d give her a call. He wasn’t all that interested, but she had a sense of humor he liked and the other guys had all but threatened to clobber him if he didn’t secure the beer for them.

  Burke was on a vacation of sorts for the next several weeks, but time on his boat was precious and he wasn’t cutting into that time just to piss away the day at someone else’s house. Abram had recruited a half dozen men to help realize his wish to give his wife a haven—and in the process make up for whatever transgression had nearly busted up his marriage not too long ago. Burke had joined the fray because Hannah was kind of extraordinary, if unrelentingly nosy, and he figured anyone who was as tiny as she and actually happy about the idea of pushing out two babies deserved a reward. And though Abram hadn’t said it before and likely never would, Burke owed him.

  Abram, who’d helped his younger brother, McGuinty, detox in high school, had stepped in as Burke’s sponsor after his previous attempts at rehab and sobriety had failed violently. Once Burke had hooked up with a port, he’d left Eaves, but Abram’s line was always open.

  That didn’t mean Burke would spend the summer hanging out at the side of the Slatterys’ house and playing eye candy for women with a sweet tooth to satisfy.

  “The sun’s gonna drop soon. Besides, we’re moving at a good pace,” Abram said. The other guys had taken “Suppertime, men,” as a cue to strip off safety gear and were heading inside to start tracking dirt on the floors and filling the air with the stench of sweat and cigarette smoke.

  “The walls aren’t finished.” Burke glanced at his forearm, where a yellow jacket had pierced him deep. “A big rain’s gonna hit in the next few days, so where do you want to be in this project when that happens? You call this a good pace, but if we keep getting visits from hot women carrying cold beer, you’re gonna need to have your twins pitch in to get this done.”

  “Fuck, you’re in a bad mood.” Abram whistled. “Well, then you’ll thank me for this warning. Hannah’s gone ahead and invited a friend over for dinner. A single friend, on the rebound.”

  “Please tell me the friend’s for McGuinty or somebody else.”

  “Nah, you’re in the hot seat. Hannah’s worried about you. She says it’s not natural for a grown-ass man to live out of a boat with nobody at home who cares about him.”

  “She said that? Nobody who cares about me?”

  “She said companionship, but that word makes me friggin’ itchy. I told her you get plenty of pussy all on your own, and she said if I ever said that to her again, I wouldn’t get any until our kids went off to college.”

  “So you pushed me under the bus for tail?”

  “Hell, yes.” Abram shrugged. “The friend’s easy on the eyes. She’s kind of new, used to work at that sex shop across from the laundromat. She’s pulling a check from the cottages for the season.”

  For the season meant through the summer, which meant she might be temporary. “And she has no plans to stick around?”

  “Doesn’t appear that way, but you know Hannah. She thinks she’s an ambassador for Eaves and it’s her mission to have folks put down their stakes here.” The man squinted. “Hey, you gonna put something on that sting? It’s not looking all that pretty.”

  “It’s fine.” It annoyed more than it actually hurt. “What’s the friend’s name?”

  “Peggy or Petra or something like that. You interested?”

  “In sitting at your table and having everybody watch us knowing good and damn well it’s one of your wife’s matchmaking experiments? Not really.” Burke laid down the saw. “So thank Hannah for giving it a shot, but I’m not sticking around for that.”

  Abram chuckled. “Ahead of you there. I tried to tell Hannah you’d pass this up, but she wasn’t hearing it. I’ll have her wrap a plate for you to take to the boat. Freezer shit’s convenient, but something home-cooked now and then is good for a man.”

  “If you’re about to try to sell the perks of marriage, take your pitch somewhere else. I’m not in the market for a wife.”

  “Not at all. Just letting you know mine whipped up a damn tasty roast with potatoes and she’s gonna wrap a plate. Grab it before you make your Houdini escape.”

  Left alone, Burke neatened his workspace and brushed dust and slivers of wood off his T-shirt. Eventually the addition would be complete and it’d look good. When Abram had approached him asking for a pair of hands, he’d had a glint of real excitement in his eyes—the look of a man pas
sionate about a dream. A nursery for his kids and a craft room for his wife weren’t extravagant things, but listening to the guy ramble on about the project, you’d think he was making plans to give her a piece of heaven itself.

  He couldn’t imagine wanting to bring somebody that kind of happiness, investing all of himself in a relationship, building any kind of life for a family of his own.

  The house was noisy and already glowing bright even though the sun hadn’t begun its quiet departure. This was permanence, and it wasn’t for him. The closest to permanent that he could allow was the two-grand-a-month slip he’d leased at the Eaves Marina.

  His boat, Colossians 1:14, which he’d named for his mother’s favorite Bible verse, wasn’t a home. It was the only possession that mattered. He lent it his labor and his heart, and he trusted it more than he’d let himself trust any friend, advisor, or lover. The vessel was the only family he had left, and the only connection to his mother, who’d folded from complications of chicken pox—a virus Burke had brought home from kindergarten the same way he’d brought a worm from the playground that he hoped to keep forever or a drawing he’d colored and was so proud of.

  In whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.

  She must’ve known how her son would turn out…who he’d become. He was sin and destruction, and redemption was a dream. Kind of like these new walls, yet they were part of a dream that stood to be accomplished eventually.

  He entered the house through the mudroom, ready to stomp the dirt from his work boots on the mat, but came to a sharp stop when he saw Abram and Hannah pressed together with a tipped-over laundry basket at their feet and nothing between them but her round belly.

  “Oh—sorry, bro,” Abram said, setting his wife aside as pink filled her pale cheeks. “She was giving me a clean shirt. I sweated through the other.”

  “No explanation necessary,” Burke told them. “It’s your house. I’m just going to grab my plate and cut out of here.”

  “Stay, Burke. Grab a chair and eat with all of us, please?” Hannah said in a sweet-as-syrup tone that’d probably persuaded legions of men to change their minds.

  “No,” he said. Tiny word, no. But dressed in the right tone—firm, nonnegotiable—it was profoundly effective.

  Hannah squeaked and looked to her husband, who only shook his head and somehow caught the shirt she suddenly yanked from the knocked-over basket and tried to fling at him.

  “What are the odds that she’ll spit on my roast or salt the ever-loving fuck out of my helping of the potatoes?” Burke asked as she marched out of the mudroom.

  Abram slugged him on the shoulder, laughing. “She’d never sabotage you like that. The bad press might take a star from the restaurant, and that’d really get her hackles up.”

  Hannah was an internationally trained chef, and ran an upscale place where Burke’s worn plaid shirts and skull caps weren’t welcome.

  “I had to ask. Weren’t you the one who told me she threatened to withhold sex from you for the next eighteen years? How am I supposed to know what she’s capable of?”

  “Oh, yeah?” Hannah had appeared at his side carrying a platter piled generously with roast, potatoes, a thick dinner roll, and macaroni and cheese—damn, how could Abram call himself a friend and not mention there’d be mac and cheese? “I’m capable of sending your plate home with my friend. She’s polite and sincere, and at least she’ll appreciate my intentions.”

  Shit. Now he’d lost his right to homemade mac and cheese—with the crumbly crust on top, too. “I didn’t mean to piss you off.”

  “But you did. Both of you.”

  “Fine. I’m going to take off and think of appropriate penance. There’s a silver lining here, though. Your friend won’t waste her time on a man who’s impolite and insincere.”

  “Know what your problem is, Burke?”

  “That plate in your hand’s gonna get nice and cold if you mean to stand here and run down all my problems.”

  “I was only going to say you try too hard to be an abrasive bastard.” With nothing more to add, she bristled when her husband tried to soothe her and then marched away again.

  Burke turned around on the mat. “Sorry, Abe.”

  “She’ll forget about it. That’s her way.”

  “Glad to hear it. But she’s mistaken about one thing. I don’t try too hard. Being an abrasive bastard comes real damn easy for me.”

  On his boat he showered and then rummaged for food. He had a Hungry-Man rotating in the microwave, half-done, when he stopped the timer and trashed the tray. He considered calling the ginger who’d brought the six-pack to the Slatterys’ but wasn’t in the mood to figure out somebody new. Identifying a woman’s motives—from the questions she asked to the way she touched him as they fucked—was ordinarily as thrilling of a high as anything else. Tonight, though, he wasn’t in the frame of mind to play.

  The fish-and-chips joint downtown was the exact definition of a dive, and Burke fit seamlessly into the milieu when he straddled a chair at a table near the pickup counter and nursed a ginger ale while he waited for the waitress to put through his shrimp and slaw basket order.

  “It’ll be a minute,” she warned him, tossing her gaze from one end of the packed place to the other. “Summer crowd.”

  “Tourists gotta eat, too,” he said neutrally. This place offered damn decent seafood at prices that were easy on the wallet, but it was standing room only most nights, since the owners had extracted seating and replaced it with a jukebox and plenty of floor space to dance.

  There were places to dance in Eaves, but church basements, family-friendly halls, and the glass-walled ballroom studio weren’t where people ended up when they wanted to grind. Grinding dirty in a dive with fish in the air wasn’t ideal, either, but Burke knew better than most that everything in life demanded sacrifice.

  So he wasn’t particularly empathetic that couples dry-humping their way to a hookup might be inconvenienced by the scent of fried fish on their hair or would have to squeeze into the underground bar on Society Street for a no-hassle good time in a place that had cleaner air but no room to gyrate.

  He flipped over the paper place mat in front of him and grabbed a pencil from the Solo cup that held “Rate Our Service” tickets. He began a maintenance list for the boat—living aboard, even practically, meant constant repair—but for no clear reason he stopped tuning out the racket around him and put down the pencil.

  “Just because you offered me a fish fillet doesn’t mean I’m obligated to eat it,” someone complained.

  Swinging up his drink, he looked through the dancing, laughing, good-timing patrons toward the pickup counter.

  The bottle almost slipped out of his grasp. What the hell was she doing here?

  Word was Sofia Mercer had turned right back around to New York the day after her aunt’s funeral. That’d been a few weeks ago—Memorial Day weekend—and since then he’d worked damned hard to forget the impact of their crazy, destructive encounter in Luz’s apartment.

  He hadn’t tripped out since McGuinty had scored some fucked-up hallucinogens in high school and one of their buddies had almost flung himself off a plank bridge. So the woman stirring up a scene wasn’t a creation of a drug.

  Wrapped in tight jeans, drenched in some silky little high-necked, short-sleeved shirt, she was real.

  And oblivious to everything but the crisis on her hands.

  “I ordered a chicken fillet sandwich. Grilled. I don’t want fried cod.”

  “Are you allergic to seafood?” a cook on the other side of the counter asked.

  “I prefer not to eat it. Why didn’t anyone let me know you were out of chicken? My number’s on the order.”

  “Sorry about that. As you can see, we’ve got a full house tonight,” the cook hollered out over the crash of music and the sizzle of frying food. “Fifty-minute wait on the chicken, or you can get a full refund. But seafood’s kind of a thing on the Cape. You did call a fish-and-chips restaurant.
”

  “Grilled chicken sandwiches are on the menu. People say they’re the best around.”

  “Experiment a little. Would that kill you?”

  “I’m not allergic, but if I ignore my diet in the name of experimentation and start eating copious amounts of greasy fried foods, then yeah, it will kill me.”

  The cook planted his hands on the counter. “Hey, look, princess—” Another man tapped him on the shoulder, said something while gesturing up and down his sternum, and then the cook took on a pained expression and went to the register. “Ah, jeez, I’m sorry. I didn’t know. Here’s your refund. The grilled chicken order’s on the house and we’ll even have it run out to you, but it’s still on a fifty-minute wait.”

  Burke didn’t have to work too hard to guess what the other guy had told the cook, and judging by the self-consciousness that took over her body language, neither did Sofia.

  “Fine, okay. I’m at Blush on Society. The sign says closed, so just knock.” She squeezed her way out of the restaurant.

  Fifty minutes was ample time to collect groceries and fix a multicourse dinner with trimmings from scratch. Maybe not that, but if he were in her position he wouldn’t put off a hungry stomach for the promise of a sandwich nearly an hour past its original wait time simply because it was free.

  Burke relinquished his table and went to the counter to cancel her chicken sandwich and his shrimp basket—making this his third failed attempt at dinner tonight. When he pointed his truck toward the market and thought up the ingredients he’d bring to Sofia’s door, he told himself he was being practical.

  Not at all dangerous.

  CHAPTER 8

  For the first time since Luz’s death, the sex shop’s lights burned.

  - BLUSH -

  LINGERIE & EROTIC VICES

  But something else was different, too. Was it the naughty gold letters across the windows? The displays against smoky black backdrops had changed. Gold mannequins, all but one naked as the day they were assembled, lounged over a velvet chair, posed so that their hands covered each other’s genitals. The clothed mannequin was propped on the chair dressed in a fuzzy white robe that gaped open, revealing a line of fiberglass flesh. The scene looked like…