Mya smelled gardenias. Since the leis were artificial, it must have been the candles burning on every table. There were at least a hundred people in the room.
In a low voice, Millie said, “And to think I almost fell for that ‘come as you are’ nonsense.”
Sylvia crossed the large room the moment she saw them. Catching Elle peering all around, she said, “Looking for something?”
“The fatted calf.”
Sylvia had a marvelous laugh that made her red curls bounce. “Not bad for two days’ notice, is it? We were going to have a real luau, but that ocean wind is just too cool tonight, so we had to move all but the clambake inside. I hope you’re hungry, Elle, because you’re in for a treat.” She hunkered down and smiled at Kaylie.
“Sylvia.”
Mya recognized Dean’s deep voice behind her. From the corner of her eye, she saw him motion with his right hand as he said, “Gretchen is either guiding an airplane in for an emergency landing or she needs you for something.”
Laughing again, Sylvia said, “There are grass skirts on the table in the corner. They’re giving hula lessons later. You’re in for some fun, Elle. Doctor’s orders.”
As Sylvia hurried away, Elle turned to Mya. “What did she mean, doctor’s orders? How did she know that?”
Mya turned to Millicent. “Yes, how did she know that, Mom?”
“Oh, look,” Millie said, reaching for Kaylie. “There’s Pattie and Sonia. If you don’t mind, I’d like to show off this beautiful baby girl.”
Kaylie went readily into her arms, and the two of them disappeared into the crowd.
Shaking her head, Mya said, “And she wonders why I keep secrets.”
She could feel Dean looking at her. Not that he was the only one. Mya recognized all but a few of the people present tonight. Most smiled if she caught them staring, and yet she felt as if she were wearing a scarlet letter on her chest.
“I have to say one thing for Sylvia and Gretchen,” Elle said over the Hawaiian music. “They know how to throw a little party.”
Dean smiled at Elle. “In case I forget later, I’m glad you could make it. That goes for both of you.”
Everything inside Mya started to swirl together. That was all it took for all her regrets to melt into her good intentions. Being back on the island was dangerous. It was as if all the years she’d denied herself access to the corner of her heart she’d closed hadn’t happened. It scared her. Even her fear was dredged from a place beyond logic or reason, a place where there were only shimmering emotions and yearnings better off buried.
Reed and his three boys motioned them to their table, where several places had been saved. The moment Mya and Elle and Dean took their seats, they were absorbed into the guffaws and easy camaraderie of this family.
Mya talked. She ate. She even laughed. But it was all surface. She’d been back on the island one day. Already, her defenses were a shambles.
By ten o’clock many of the guests had gone home.
The hula lesson had been a hilarious success, as had the contest that followed. A tie had been declared between Elle and Millie.
Mya had seen Dean go outdoors with Grady a while ago. They stood with other men just outside the glass doors. Although he’d kept his distance after dinner, she’d noticed him watching her.
He felt it, too.
Every so often Millie’s laughter carried to Mya’s ears. Elle seemed to be having a good time on the dance floor with some of the local teenagers. Mya sat with Sylvia and Ruth. Sylvia’s youngest was asleep on her lap; Kaylie was asleep on Mya’s. The candles burned low, and Mya took a deep breath.
“Something on your mind, Mya?” In the dim light, it was impossible to tell Ruth Laker was blind.
Actually, there was a lot on Mya’s mind. Most of it wasn’t the sort of thing she could tell Dean’s mother. “Whose idea was this party?”
Sylvia glanced at her mother-in-law and then said, “We’ve been sworn to secrecy.” But she looked through the window where Dean stood.
So. It had been Dean’s idea. The knowledge changed something inside Mya. A need was building. She’d gone to great lengths to be independent and strong, and had always denied that she was a needy person. But need was a funny thing. It could hide for years, until one day a woman noticed it squeezing into her thoughts, into her life.
Mya said, “It was a good idea to introduce them to Elle all at once. It probably saved her a lot of awkwardness in the coming weeks.”
It was Ruth who said, “Who says he did it for Elle?”
Mya was more apt to say something she would regret than crumble into tears, and yet she had to blink moisture from her eyes. Perhaps that was why she didn’t see Reed until he’d lifted his youngest from his wife’s arms.
“Are you sure you want to keep this tyrant overnight, Mom?” he asked.
“I’m sure. And he’s not a tyrant. But if he were, he’d have come by it naturally.” Ruth stood. Patting Mya’s shoulder on the way by, she said, “It’s good to have you back on the island, Mya.”
Mya watched them make their way through the maze of tables and chairs and people. Reed carried Dougie, who seemed all arms and legs in sleep. Ruth held Sylvia’s arm, listening to something her son was saying. Earlier, Mya remembered thinking that not much had changed on the island. Like his brothers, Grady Laker had been a hellion in his day. Now a family man, he’d grown up, and Ruth had grown older.
Nineteen years older.
Mya felt it again, the welling up and the haunting question. What had she missed?
Since Elle had already made arrangements to catch a ride back to the summer cottage with her new friends, and Millicent had always preferred to fend for herself, Mya rose to her feet and prepared to say a few hasty goodbyes.
“I’m going, Elle,” she said as she skirted the dance floor.
“You don’t mind taking Kaylie with you?” Elle asked.
“You know Kaylie. Once she’s asleep, she stays asleep. I’ll put her to bed. Will you be late?”
Elle shrugged. “I doubt it. We’ll probably finish this dance, smoke a little pot, have a little sex and be home by three at the latest.”
Mya wasn’t the only one who gaped.
Elle assumed an age-old stance. “I’m kidding.” She tucked the blanket around the sleeping baby in Mya’s arms and whispered, “None of that should take more than a few hours.”
Mya gaped all over again.
“You heard the doctor tell me to raise a little hell.”
“I’m sure he didn’t mean—” Mya glanced at Troy, Elle’s dance partner. “Do you have pot?”
“Why, do you want some?”
Elle laughed. With a beguiling grin, she said, “I’ll be home in a little while. God, Mya, I’m not going to do any of those things.”
Troy looked a little disappointed.
As Mya went out the back door, she vowed to hug her mother more often.
Her grass skirt rustled slightly in the breeze. Despite the poor lighting, she recognized Dean easily from the back. She couldn’t see who he was talking to, but as she made her way closer, Mya overheard the conversation.
“We’re all sorry to hear about your daughter’s, well, you know. A shame, somebody as young as her. How horrible this must be for you, Dean, especially now, of all times, when you’re finally getting the chance to know her.”
“I appreciate that, Heather. If you’ll excuse—”
“I just don’t know how Mya ever gave her up. Or you, either, for that matter. Sure you two were young. But so?”
Mya’s feet froze in the sand.
“I doubt there’s another girl on this island who would have done that to you. But then, Mya wasn’t born here, was she?”
It took Mya until the count of one to change her plans. Holding Kaylie close, she got the hell out of there.
She noticed the headlights in her rearview mirror a few minutes into her drive. They followed her past the ice-cream parlor, past the harbor, past t
he school, past Eagle’s Landing, all the way to the summer cottage.
She threw the lever in park, turned the key, then practically leaped from the car. “Go away, Dean.”
He beat her to the backseat, reaching for Kaylie ahead of her. When he straightened, he had the baby in his arms.
The man never had listened.
He ambled toward the cottage and shouldered his way through the door. Inside, he paused. “Let’s get her tucked in before you give me hell.”
After flicking on a lamp, Mya led the way to the sleeping porch where Elle had set up the baby’s portable crib. Dean placed Kaylie on the daybed first. She seemed even more fragile asleep, and so incredibly innocent. It took both of them to change her diaper, remove her shoes and socks and clothes and get her into her sleeper. Somehow most of the vehemence drained out of Mya during the process.
She was fastening the last little snap when Kaylie opened her eyes. She looked at Dean first, and then at Mya. Her eyelashes fluttered in the middle of her disarming, precious smile.
A dozen emotions expanded in Mya’s chest, and every one was bittersweet. This was how it might have been if she’d kept Elle. They might have had a hundred nights just like this one, followed by a thousand more as she grew.
A wish was dredged from a place beyond logic. It came from a place she’d kept locked for a very long time. One look into Dean’s eyes, and she knew he’d been thinking about what might have been, too. A muscle worked in his jaw, a precursor to his temper.
But of course, he would be angry!
She spun around.
Like a shadow, he followed her into the living room.
“Don’t.” She trounced across the narrow room, her grass skirt swishing ridiculously. “Just don’t.”
Dean wasn’t sure what she thought he was going to do. But he hadn’t come here to argue. Why had he come, then? “Just don’t what?”
She turned on him. “I missed out, too. Don’t think you’re the only one. I know you wanted her. Not that I could possibly understand you on a soul-deep level. After all, I was never really of the island.”
He’d been afraid she’d overheard that.
She was the most exasperating, difficult woman he’d ever met. And yet, watching her eyes, he knew why he’d followed her tonight. She drew him. She always had. Without doing a damn thing, she drew him. Just being in the same room with her sent anticipation and a blinding urgency racing through him.
“That’s the trouble with eavesdropping,” he said. “You rarely get the whole story. You should have stuck around a few seconds longer and you would have heard the rest of it.”
“The rest of it?”
“I asked Heather if her halo ever gets tight. And then I asked her how Tim’s crew likes having such a good-looking female oceanography student on board for the summer. It took her mind off you, believe me.”
“Do you think Tim and this oceanography student are—”
“I doubt it.” Dean hadn’t planned to be the one to tell Heather about that intern, but dammit he’d had to do something. “Tim will probably have a lousy night and possibly a lousy summer now that Heather knows, but she’ll think twice before talking about you again, at least when I’m around.”
Mya stood perfectly still. The lamp behind her threaded her short hair with gold and cast her brown eyes in shadow. He wondered what it was that made her so unique. Whatever it was, all these years apart hadn’t changed it. Her eyes could still spark with anger one moment, with laughter the next, and still glowed with something he’d never seen in anyone else. No matter what Heather had insinuated earlier, Mya hadn’t always been an outcast. It had taken people a while to accept her at first, but once they had, she’d been well-liked, and one of the most popular girls in school. And then he’d gotten her pregnant. If she’d stayed, they would have blamed Dean. Because she’d gone, she’d become the sinner, he the saint.
Nineteen years ago, he’d been determined to replace her. He’d dated other girls on the island and off. Mya had left him. To hell with her then. But it wasn’t that simple. When it came to Mya Donahue, nothing was ever simple.
“You were always putting someone in their place where I was concerned, weren’t you, Dean? It must have seemed like a full-time job.” The ocean broke far in the distance. Much, much closer, her grass skirt swished slightly as she removed it and tossed it tiredly to a chair. “I guess some things never change.”
“In that case I won’t apologize for what I’m about to do.”
“What are you going to do?”
He wasn’t sure who moved closer, but he was very sure of his intentions. “This.”
He covered her mouth with his.
CHAPTER 12
H e kissed her.
At least that was how it began. One kiss that exploded into desire. It was a possessive meeting of mouths and hunger, an urgent mating of instinct and heat and home-coming. It had been building up to this all evening. Mya had known it, felt it, understood it. But she’d fought it. She wasn’t fighting it anymore.
Need filled her, uncurling in places physically unconnected. It had been this way when they were teenagers, too. Theirs was a passion too huge to resist, too intrinsic to question. She’d managed to live without it for nineteen years. She’d even convinced herself she didn’t want it or need it. Why would anyone want this tumbling free fall into a crevasse so vast it was bottomless?
Because. There was no other explanation. Just because.
Her head tipped back, her hands gliding around his waist, catching in folds of clothing along the way, seeking, discovering, touching, remembering. And all the while, he kissed her.
Dean didn’t know what the hell he was doing.
Okay, he knew. He was losing himself in Mya. He’d known he was going to kiss her before he’d gotten Kaylie out of that damned car seat. He’d told himself he could handle this, could handle Mya and everything she brought out in him. He’d told himself he was older now, old enough to control his own lust. The problem was, this was more than lust. His throat tightened and his chest constricted. And it didn’t matter. Need was all that mattered, and it came from everywhere, from the throaty sounds Mya made when he slid his tongue into her mouth, from the soft skin beneath his hands and from the impression of her delicate bones and muscles. Need came from her lips, soft and wet and full, and from the entire length of her body straining against his.
It wasn’t enough.
It would never be enough.
He fumbled with the hem of her shirt and backed up, his elbow crashing into the wall. Some men claimed need made them weak. It made him strong, powerful enough to turn them both in an instant, so that her back was against the wall, his body pressing against hers, seeking, still seeking.
And all the while he kissed her.
And it wasn’t enough. It was never enough.
“Oh, Dean. Let me breathe.”
He gave her the moment she asked for. But she didn’t take it. Instead, her hands went to either side of his face, and she kissed him. Her lips wet and trembly, her body quavering with need, she kissed him.
He had to have her.
It didn’t matter where, on the floor, in her bed or against the damn wall. But he had to have her. And he had to have her now.
He saw her eyes flutter and felt her go slightly still. At first, he didn’t understand the reason. But then he noticed it, too. Headlights flickered on the far wall.
Through the roaring din inside his head, he heard an engine idling outside. A car door slammed. Voices called.
“Your mom’s back,” he said.
Mya heard what Dean said, but she was beyond speaking, beyond reasoning. A moment ago, she’d been all the way past the point of no return. Slowly, the daze was lifting, and somehow the voices outside filtered through. Dean was untangling his legs from hers, and drawing her shirt back up her shoulders. She took over from there, hurriedly buttoning, straightening, pulling herself together.
“God,” she muttered.
“Some things really don’t change.”
How many times had Dean’s parents or her mother or someone else interrupted them in the nick of time when they were kids? They weren’t kids anymore but they were acting like kids.
The back door opened and closed. Only one lamp was on in here, but it would be enough to illuminate their dishevelment, and enough to embarrass them both.
But Millie didn’t come looking for them.
The refrigerator opened and closed. The faucet was turned on and off. And then the kitchen light went out and Millicent’s footsteps tapped quietly in the opposite direction and on up the stairs. They both listened for the click of her bedroom door.
Finally, as if attached to the same string, they turned their heads and looked at each other. It would have taken only one small smile, one slight sway, one unspoken invitation from either of them and they would have taken up where they’d left off minutes ago.
Neither extended that invitation.
Not everything had stayed the same after all.
He walked to the door. Holding her ground, Mya took a deep breath.
Before letting himself out, he looked back at her. Whatever had been between them still was. But they weren’t kids anymore. Tonight wasn’t the night they would make love. Oh, they would. Perhaps tomorrow. Perhaps next week. It was just a matter of time.
If not for the peal of church bells carrying from the hill a mile away, Mya might have slept until noon. Once awakened she was glad, for she didn’t want to waste her time sleeping. She left her hair wet after her shower. Pulling on baggy sweats, her favorite orange T-shirt and thick, yellow socks, she followed the aroma of fresh-brewed coffee.
Millicent was reading the Sunday paper at the table when Mya helped herself to a cup of coffee. Elle was spooning oatmeal into Kaylie’s mouth. The baby reminded Mya of a hatchling waiting at the edge of the nest, mouth open wide in anticipation of the next bite.
Millie’s newspaper rustled as she turned the page. “Nice party last night,” the eldest Donahue said.
Mya made an agreeable sound into her coffee.
Kaylie banged a spoon on her tray, and Millicent said, “Noticed Dean’s truck was in the driveway when I got in.”
Life Happens Page 14