Moonshell Beach: A Shelter Bay Novel

by JoAnn Ross

  In the past, drawing the line between his personal life and professional life hadn’t been all that difficult. When he was deployed, he was at war. Which meant he had no personal life. When he was stateside, while he still might be training for battle, once he left base, he could flip the switch and enjoy being a single guy who might not be the chick magnet his brother Sax had been, but had never had any trouble attracting women who’d enjoyed partying as much as he had.

  But the manual he’d been given specified that the NOK should be notified within eight hours of the Marines learning of the death or serious injury. Which, during the surge, definitely cut out any weekend getaways, and after the third time being dragged away from some warm bed just as things were really heating up, J.T. had begun to realize that—except for the hours between 2400 and 0500, when notifications were no longer supposed to take place—juggling his Marine duty with a real life was going to prove difficult.

  When, after notifying a pregnant mother of three whose parents were both deceased, he’d broken down and humiliated himself by crying like a baby while taking a shower with a wet and willing anthropology instructor from MiraCosta College, he’d thrown in the towel.

  After a couple of months of self-imposed celibacy, J.T. had begun to worry whether he’d even remember what to do if an opportunity for a hookup did occur.

  By the time he’d separated from the corps, sex had gone completely off the radar.

  Until Mary Joyce got off that plane. And flipped a damn switch.

  “Are you armed?” she asked, dragging his mind from wondering what she was wearing beneath that silky top back to their conversation.

  “No.” He’d had enough of weapons to last him the rest of his life. “But I’m more than capable of taking out any bad guys who might decide to get too close and personal.”

  “While I don’t expect that to happen, it’s encouraging. Do you always glower so? Or would you happen to have PTSD issues I should know about?”

  “I don’t glower. And here I’d always thought the Irish treated conversation as an art form. Are you always this direct?” he asked, dodging her question with one of his own.

  “I wouldn’t be, as a rule. And you’d be correct about our conversation, but I’ve always believed that if we Irish were supposed to think in straight lines, the Celts wouldn’t have put all those pretty curves around the rigid lines of the cross when they converted from paganism.

  “However, it appears that we’re going to be forced to live in each other’s pockets for the next few days. While you’ve obviously taken the time to research my life, you haven’t been at all forthcoming about yourself, and since I’m not one to hand over control that easily, particularly to complete strangers, I’d like to know what, exactly, my studio and your sheriff have gotten me into.”

  “I don’t have PTSD, so you don’t have to worry about me going Rambo and shooting up the festival. If for no other reason than I wouldn’t want to piss off the sheriff, who just happens to be engaged to my brother.”

  “The hero brother.”

  “Yeah, but—”

  “I shouldn’t be bringing that up.”

  “It’d probably be best you don’t. Not that he has PTSD, either.”

  At least, from what Sax had said, his ghosts were gone since he and Kara had gotten together. As happy as J.T. was for his brother, getting engaged seemed like a radical way to get rid of his own.

  “It’s just that he’s a former SEAL. And those guys prefer to keep their work in the shadows.”

  “Understood.”

  She studied him for a while longer. Then her lips curved, ever so slightly.

  “Small towns,” she murmured. “Everyone lives in everyone else’s pockets.”

  “Pretty much so.”

  “And wouldn’t I be knowing that well enough?” She sat down on the couch, kicked off her shoes, and began rubbing a narrow, high-arched foot. “I have no idea why on earth I allowed my stylist to talk me into wearing these heels,” she muttered.

  “You don’t get to choose your own clothes?” Who’d have suspected the Marines and a Hollywood star would have anything in common?

  “I spent the past two days and another three hours this morning doing a press tour. Well, actually, that’s misnamed, since it isn’t truly a tour. I was essentially held prisoner in a hotel suite at the Beverly Wilshire, while the studio PR people paraded reporters and the higher-profile celebrity bloggers in and out like a herd of cattle. Everyone gets ten minutes, including those television stations that can’t afford to send someone to Los Angeles, so they do satellite remote interviews instead.

  “Because they all seem to ask the same questions, I’ve no doubt all the interviews will end up reading and sounding exactly the same. Which doesn’t answer your question, so getting back to my choice of clothing, since my personal style is much more casual, for performances such as this festival, it’s easier just to show up and let someone else dress me.”

  “Movie-star Barbie.”

  The words, once again, were out of his mouth before he could stop them. To his surprise, she didn’t appear offended, but merely laughed.

  “Isn’t that the exact same thing my grandmother Fionna said when she visited Hollywood for the Oscars?”

  He’d read that Mary Joyce had been nominated for best original screenplay, but hadn’t won. Some of the Web sites whose links he’d followed while researching her claimed it was because she refused to play by Hollywood’s old boys’ club rules.

  “At any rate, Leon, my stylist, assured me that since I’d be sitting the entire time, these would be fine. He also told me that if they only came in size twelve, he’d kill to have a pair himself.”

  She switched to rubbing the other foot. She’d painted—or had some minion do it for her—her toenails the color of ripe peaches. Although he’d never had a foot fetish, J.T. had a sudden urge to nibble on them. “Which is when, although they’re not his size, I just should have handed these over and let him try to wear them.

  “And, proving that I can, eventually, wind my way back to an original topic, to answer your earlier question about that young man’s screenplay, the reason I started my own production company is because women, unfortunately, have a very short shelf life in the American cinema. I’m well aware that much of my appeal is that while women buy tickets to be told a romantic story, men go with them, or watch the DVDs, because I happen to look good naked.”

  Although J.T. had never blushed in his life, he knew his expression must have given him away when she laughed.

  “I take it you watched my films.” She paused a beat. “Solely as intel research for your mission, of course.”

  “I checked them out. You’re a compelling writer. And you’re very good in them.”

  The sparkle returned to sea blue eyes. “And if I were to give you a pop test on intricate plot details and selkie history, I’m sure you’d pass with flying colors.”

  He folded his arms. “Try me.”

  “Although I’m tempted, I’d best be hanging up my clothes to get the wrinkles out before this evening’s performance.”

  She stood, picked up the high heels from the floor, then walked into the adjoining bedroom, assuming, he decided, that he was like that stylist who chose her clothes for her, yet another minion who’d handle her luggage.

  Shrugging, and finding it interesting that she’d think of the festival as a performance—which made him wonder how he was supposed to tell whether the person he’d just finished speaking to was real or merely acting—J.T. picked up the bags and followed her.

  9

  Deciding that there was no way her fans could reach Mary Joyce as long as she stayed put up in the honeymoon suite at the inn, J.T. returned to Bon Temps, where his family was busy preparing the place for the reception.

  “So?” Sax asked as he dusted all the bottles on the shelves behind the bar. Not that the place wasn’t clean enough to do surgery on the floor, but it wasn’t every day a famous Hollywood
movie star paid a visit to the restaurant and dance hall. “How did it go?”

  “Okay.”

  “Okay?” His sister-in-law, Kelli, turned and put her hands on her hips. “You’ve just spent all that time with Mary Joyce, who just might be the hottest name in Hollywood right now, and all you can say is that it was okay? We want details, J.T.”

  “Her plane was on time. She didn’t have as much luggage as I would’ve figured, and when I left her, she was hanging up her clothes so they won’t wrinkle.”

  “I’ll bet she has people to do that in L.A.,” Sax said.

  “I didn’t ask. But some guy did pick out her clothes. And her shoes.”

  Unsurprisingly, being of the female persuasion, Kelli was quick to jump on that one.

  “What kind of shoes were they?”

  “I don’t know.” J.T. shrugged. “Shoes. They were high. With skinny metal heels and covered with some sort of leopard stuff.”

  “Did they have red soles?” his mother asked.

  “I didn’t notice.”

  “I’ll bet they did,” Kelli decided. “Dammit, think harder, J.T.”

  He thought. “Okay. Yeah. They did.”

  Kelli stopped polishing a table, turned to her mother-in-law, and both women said together, “Christian Louboutin.”

  “Not that I could ever afford more than a thousand dollars for a pair of high heels, but that leopard model is impossible to find,” Maureen said.

  “I know.” Kelli nodded. “While I was getting my hair trimmed last week down at Cut Loose, I read in People that even Oprah is on a wait list.”

  “A thousand dollars?” Lucien Douchett asked. “For a pair of shoes?”

  “Closer to fifteen hundred,” Maureen informed her husband. “I saw them on his Web site.”

  J.T. was wondering why, if she couldn’t afford the stupid shoes, his mother was even surfing Internet shopping Web sites for them, when his two brothers both laughed.

  “When you get married, one of the first things you’ll learn,” Cole told J.T., “is that women are hot on shoe porn.”

  “Even I would’ve known to come back with a more complete report than that,” Sax said.

  “Well, obviously, since I don’t have a wife or a fiancée, I haven’t slipped into embracing my feminine side,” J.T. shot back.

  “What about her clothes?” Kelli asked before one or both of his brothers could put him in a headlock for that comment.

  “Pants, a top, and some sort of short sweater thing.” Knowing that they’d demand more description than that, he tacked on, “The pants and top were black. The sweater fuzzy and sort of creamy beige.”

  “Honestly, J.T.” Kelli blew out a frustrated breath. “You are absolutely no help at all.”

  “Sorry. I thought I’d been tasked with keeping crazy fans away. Not giving the two of you a Red Carpet report.” Since they were his mother and sister-in-law, he struggled for some insider fashion bone to throw them. “But she was really glad to take her shoes off.”

  “If I owned a pair of Christian Louboutin shoes, I would never take them off,” Kelli said.

  “Well, you’d look damn silly wearing stilettos to help Cole scrape barnacles off his fishing boat,” J.T. countered.

  “I was speaking hypothetically.” Her tone was that an empress might use to an annoying footman.

  “Sorry.” He held his hands up and found himself thinking that it might be easier being back in the Kush with bullets flying.

  “Why don’t you help me carry in the beer for tonight?” Sax suggested.

  Ooh-rah. J.T. did not have to be asked twice.

  “So,” his brother said, opening the door to the walk-in cooler in the back of the kitchen, “how did it go? Really?”

  He’d suspected Sax didn’t need help getting the beer. What his brother wanted was a mission status report. “Like I said, it went okay. She seems nice enough. Not as much of a diva as I was expecting. Are we carrying in beer or giving me the third degree?”

  “Just curious. I saw her once. In Iraq.”

  “Iraq? How come you didn’t say that the other day when Kara stuck me with this detail?”

  “It didn’t seem all that relevant right then, since we were talking about you and I didn’t want to sidetrack the conversation.…I was down doing covert stuff during the surge. She was on a USO tour. Apparently not her first.”

  “That’s admirable. And dicey for a civilian, even in the Green Zone.” Apparently Mary Joyce was tougher and definitely gutsier than she looked.

  “This one wasn’t in Baghdad. It was at FOB Warhorse.”

  Okay. He had to give the actress major props for that. Enclosed by fences and concertina wire, Forward Operating Base Warhorse had been one of the deadliest regions for coalition troops during the surge.

  “What did she do?”

  “It started out as the usual dog and pony show. She showed a DVD of outtakes from her movies, which were kinda funny. Of course, when you’re stuck out in the damn desert, anything’s going to be more entertaining than it might be back home. Then she sang with a country singer whose name I forget, because he’s not all that famous.”

  “Famous ones tend to get the big stages and extra security.”

  “Yeah. Which was why I was surprised to see her at Warhorse, ’cause she’s at a star level that usually travels with a lot of brass. She also did Normandy on that same trip.”

  Another FOB by the Iranian border, which hardly ever got any visiting entertainers.

  “So, she can sing, too?”

  Sax laughed at that. “Not worth a damn. Which was what made it really great. Because she seemed…real, you know? And not like some big Hollywood star who needed to look perfect. Then it was what she did afterward that was really cool.”

  “Which was what?”

  “She just hung around the rest of the day, visiting everyone, signing autographs, posing for photos, oohing and aahing over baby pictures, wedding pictures, whatever anyone wanted to stick in her face.

  “And although Cole’s right about her being really, really hot, especially in those movies where she’s naked a lot, she didn’t give off all that many sexy vibes.”

  “I have a hard time believing that.” She’d certainly stirred up juices he’d put in cold storage.

  “I’m not saying there probably weren’t a lot of guys dreaming about her that night, but by the time she made her way through the camp, and even stayed for dinner, it was more as if she was all the guys’ sister. And the women’s BFF.”

  Having seen a little bit of that behavior at the airport, although it was a stretch to imagine the woman who’d gotten off the plane dressed in Kevlar and a helmet, strolling around the Iraq desert chatting up troops, J.T. could almost envision it.

  “So,” Sax said, “my reason for telling you this now is that she seemed like a nice woman who genuinely cared about people. And God knows, appearing at a small-town film festival no one’s ever heard of damn well isn’t going to do a thing for her career. You might want to keep that in mind over the next few days and attempt to be more hospitable.”

  J.T. wasn’t surprised that Sax had already heard about his less-than-welcoming behavior. Gossip was the coin of the realm in small towns, whether they were in a Middle East desert or on the Oregon coast.

  “I wasn’t that bad,” he argued, following his brother out of the cooler. “And who the hell snitched?” He’d put money on that pissy theater guy.

  “Her Honor, the mayor, called Kara. Kara, in turn, called me. She’s not happy.”

  “Sorry.” It was true. He’d always liked Kara, a lot. In fact, there’d been a time, back in seventh grade, when he’d had a crush on her, which, showing that he hadn’t lost all his brain cells, he was smart enough not to share. “I didn’t mean to cause you any problems. It’s just that…Shit.”

  He dragged a hand through his hair. “Does it ever get easy?”

  Sax didn’t have to ask what. “No. But I can tell you that it gets be
arable. And there are actually days that it almost seems like all that shit happened to someone else.”

  He put the beer down on a counter and narrowed his eyes, giving J.T. a hard big-brother look. Having always been the town bad boy, he hadn’t developed it as well as Cole, who’d been the “perfect” eldest Douchett brother, but it was not a bad imitation. J.T. figured Sax had probably gotten better at it while doing all that covert SEAL stuff.

  “You sure you’re okay?” Sax asked with serious concern. “Because if you need help—”

  “You don’t have to worry. Despite what some of the people in town seem to be saying, I’m not a danger to myself or others,” J.T. answered as he had on the questionnaire he’d had to fill out during his separation from the corps. At the time he figured most of the Marines did the same thing he did—tick off the boxes that would get them out with the least amount of hassle.

  “But?”

  “It’s just hard, okay?”

  “I believe we’ve determined that.” Sax shook his head. Thrust a hand through his hair and looked conflicted as hell. “Look, if hanging out with Mary Joyce is that tough a duty, there’s a bunch of jarheads down at the VFW hall who’d probably jump at the chance to take your place.”

  “No.” J.T. drew in a deep breath. Squared his shoulders. “I just had a bad morning.” After a mostly sleepless night. “But you can promise Kara that I’ll be on my best behavior until the woman leaves town. Hell, I’ll be so nice and polite, people will think I’m effing Mr. Rogers.”

  “You don’t have to go that far. Just try to be civil. Because if you screw this up and make my bride-to-be unhappy before the wedding, then I may have to throw you back in the bay.”

  “There were two of you against the one of me,” J.T. said. “And yeah, though I didn’t want to admit it at the time, I was sorta halfway drunk, which gave you the advantage.” Something Sax had said sank in. “Wedding?”