Gansett Island Boxed Set Books 1-16 (Gansett Island Series)

by Marie Force

  “Not at all.”

  “What’ve you been up to all week?”

  “I’ve been taking it easy. This past school year was particularly exhausting.” She wanted to tell Maddie about what had transpired with Luke, but she just couldn’t bring herself to share.

  “I can’t imagine being responsible for twenty seven-year-olds. One two-year-old is killing me.”

  Sydney laughed. “It does wear you out after ten months. I’m sure I’ll miss it, though.”

  “Miss it? What do you mean?”

  She told Maddie about her decision to leave her job—and why.

  For a long moment, Maddie was quiet and pensive. “So what’ll you do now?”

  “Not sure yet. I’m hoping to figure that out this month while I’m here.”

  “You should stay out here with us permanently. This is your favorite place, after all.”

  Sydney chuckled at Maddie’s shameless campaigning. “It’s nice to feel wanted.”

  “We’d keep you plenty busy. You’d be surprised how much goes on around here in the winter these days.”

  “You’ll be plenty busy this winter with a new baby.”

  “That’s true,” Maddie said. “I can barely manage the one I have. I can’t imagine how I’ll handle two.” She gasped. “God, I’m sorry. I just keep putting my foot in my mouth.”

  “Can we make a deal? Right now?”

  Still looking stricken, Maddie nodded.

  “Can we please keep it real? What you said is something anyone would say with a two-year-old and a new one on the way.”

  “I don’t mean to be insensitive.”

  “You’re not being insensitive. It’s your life right now, and I don’t want you to walk on eggshells with me. If you think it, say it. Please don’t filter yourself because something bad happened to me.”

  “I hope you know I don’t mean to complain. I’m so blessed, and I know that.”

  “Don’t ever take those blessings for granted.”

  “Did you?” Maddie asked hesitantly. “Take your blessings for granted?”

  “Don’t we all sometimes? I was always grateful for what we had, but I don’t know if I appreciated it quite the way I should have. When I think of the kids, sometimes all I can remember is hollering at them for getting mud on my floor or getting after them about leaving their toys all over the place.”

  “That’s stuff every mother says to her kids.”

  “I know, but it’s more than that. You’ll see when your kids get a little older. You get sucked into life and work and school and friends and birthday parties and sports, and the days go by in such a whirl of activity. Weeks would pass, and I’d feel like the only conversation I had with Seth was about Max’s T-ball team or whose turn it was to help with homework.”

  “I can see how that happens. There’re days when it’s all Mac and I can do to get Thomas fed, bathed and in bed before we’re ready to drop ourselves. I can’t remember how I ever did it by myself.”

  “I’m so glad you found a great guy, Maddie. No one deserves to be happy more than you do.”

  “Aww, thanks. That’s so sweet of you to say. Do you think, you know, you might ever...”

  “Venture into dating again?”

  Maddie nodded. “I don’t mean to pry. I just can’t imagine you alone the rest of your life. You’ve always been such a people person. I was so painfully shy when we were kids, but you were Ms. Sociable.”

  “I’ve become a little more introverted—that happened even before the accident. But I’m not big on the idea of being alone forever, so I suppose I’ll wade back into those shark-infested waters eventually.” She thought of Luke and what he’d said to her a week ago. “Maybe sooner rather than later.”

  “Are you keeping secrets? Has your nocturnal visitor continued to come by?”

  “Not in the last week or so.” She stared out the window, wanting to tell Maddie about Luke’s last visit but afraid to put words to the torment it had caused her.

  Maddie pulled into a parking space behind the Beachcomber, cut the engine and turned to Sydney. “What aren’t you telling me?”

  Sydney hesitated but only for a second. Who was she kidding? She was dying to tell someone about what’d happened. After she relayed the story, Maddie stared at her. “Say something, will you?”

  “What’ll you do?”

  “I don’t know. Part of me wants to run to him and live again, you know? But the other part doesn’t want to take advantage of a good guy who’s already been hurt enough by me in one lifetime. What right do I have to do that to him?”

  Maddie took a moment to think that over. “It seems to me that by making the offer he did, he’s willing to take the risk.”

  “He’d be crazy to take a chance on me. My life is a mess at the moment.”

  “It’s not a mess. It’s in transition, and you’re smart to not want to start something you might not be ready for.”

  “But?”

  “You already know he’s a good guy. You know what you’d be getting.”

  “True.”

  “Do you still love him, Syd?”

  She’d asked herself that same question a thousand times over the last week. “Oh God, I don’t know. Part of me suspects I never stopped loving him. I thought about him far too often over the years. Even when I was married, I thought of him. I hate to say that because it sounds so disloyal to Seth, and I don’t want to be disloyal. But I can’t deny I thought of Luke.”

  “Well, he left it up to you and didn’t put a time limit on his offer. So you could let it ride for the time being.”

  “Which is more or less what I’ve decided to do.”

  Maddie raised an eyebrow. “More or less?”

  “I can’t deny I’m tempted. Just being near him makes me all fluttery and weak-kneed the way I was with him at seventeen.”

  Laughing, Maddie said, “Girl, you’re in serious crush.”

  “Is that why I’ve been so miserable all week?”

  “Absolutely.” They got out of the car and walked arm in arm toward the iconic hotel. “When Mac moved into my place to take care of me and Thomas after he knocked me off my bike, I had the most god-awful crush on him. I wasted far too much time listing all the ways it would never work rather than contemplating how it might work perfectly.”

  “What changed your mind?”

  “Mac did. He can be very convincing when sets his mind on something.”

  “I can’t see Luke doing that. He’s much more reserved, and he made it clear he won’t be pursuing me. He put the ball firmly in my court.”

  “That doesn’t mean he won’t try to convince you to give him a chance.”

  As Sydney stewed over that possibility, they arrived at the Beachcomber lounge, where a trio played live music. The small dance floor was crowded with couples and just about every seat at the bar was taken.

  Mac’s sister Janey, Maddie’s sister Tiffany, Abby who owned Abby’s Attic, and several other women Maddie knew from her job at McCarthy’s Gansett Inn waited for them. Maddie made the introductions, and the others put Sydney immediately at ease. She had no doubt Maddie had fully briefed her friends on Sydney’s tragedy, but unlike the social gatherings at home where Sydney usually felt like a pariah since the accident, here she was far more comfortable.

  “Janey,” Maddie said as she sipped a club soda, “you have to tell Syd how you and Joe got together.”

  After much hooting, hollering, and catcalling, Janey waved her hands to quiet the others. She was tiny and blond but seemed to make up for her lack of height with a larger-than-life personality. “I was engaged to someone else,” Janey began. “I’d been with David, a medical student in Boston, for thirteen years.”

  “Can you even believe that?” Maddie asked.

  Amazed, Sydney shook her head. “That’s a long courtship.”

  “Too long, as it turned out. I caught him in bed with another woman.”

  Sydney gasped. “No way! What did yo
u do?”

  “After I ran away from David’s Boston apartment, my car broke down. I called Mac’s best friend, Joe, who has always been like a fifth brother to me, and he came to my rescue.”

  “In more ways than one,” Tiffany said with a snort, and the other women howled with laughter.

  Janey’s face turned bright red. “Turns out,” she said, “Joe had been secretly in love with me for years. We’ve been together ever since.”

  “That’s such a great story,” Sydney said.

  “You left out a few very important parts,” Maddie said with a pointed look for her sister-in-law. “They’d only been together a short time when Janey realized a lifelong dream of getting accepted to veterinary school at Ohio State. Joe owns and operates the Gansett Island Ferry Company, so Janey naturally assumed he wouldn’t be able to go with her to Ohio.”

  “I just couldn’t do another long-distance relationship,” Janey said ruefully, “so I made the supreme mistake of breaking up with him.”

  Maddie started laughing, an infectious sound that quickly spread around the table. “He carted her right out of our wedding reception and let her know there was nothing he wouldn’t do, nothing he wouldn’t give up, nowhere he wouldn’t go to be with her. So romantic! And, he proposed—in bed!”

  Janey stuck her tongue out at Maddie. “You had to get that in there, didn’t you?”

  “That’s the best part! They’re back from their first year in Ohio, and how was that, exactly?”

  “Sublime,” Janey said with a dreamy smile that was met with more whoops from her friends.

  Satisfied with the retelling of the story, Maddie sat back and crossed her arms, sending Sydney a rather calculating look. “It’s interesting, isn’t it, Syd, that Janey thought she was doing what was best for him, and it turned out she was the best thing for him.”

  Maddie McCarthy, it seemed, was a whole lot less subtle than Maddie Chester had once been. Sydney raised her wineglass in toast to Maddie. “Touché.”

  Maddie waggled her brows at Sydney, and then her expression suddenly changed. “Now what, do you suppose, they are doing here?”

  Sydney looked over to see Mac, Luke and another guy who she assumed was Joe, pulling up stools at the bar.

  “Checking on us, no doubt,” Janey said, even though she lit up with pleasure at the sight of Joe.

  Sydney’s heart skipped into overdrive as she feasted her eyes on Luke, startled to realize she’d missed him terribly during the long week since she’d last seen him. How was that possible? She’d had exactly two conversations with him in seventeen years!

  “Mmm,” Tiffany said. “That Luke Harris is some kind of sexy.” She added a predatory growl to her statement that set Sydney’s nerves on edge.

  Oh my God, she thought. I’m jealous!

  “Need I remind you, dear sister, you’re married,” Maddie said. “Besides, I heard Luke is seeing someone.”

  While Sydney bit back a groan, Janey pounced. “Who is he seeing? I’ve never known him to date anyone!”

  “That’s not true.” Maddie cast another sly glance at Sydney. “He and Syd went out for years back in high school.”

  “Is that so?” Janey said. “Well, you must’ve ruined him for all other women.”

  Sydney winced at the teasing comment that struck far too close to home. She was saved from having to reply when the three sinfully good-looking men ambled over to their table carrying bottles of beer and wearing predatory grins. Well, two of them were grinning. The third one looked as undone as she felt.

  She made an effort to breathe normally as she took in every detail of the white button-down shirt he wore with the sleeves rolled up over strong forearms. Not that she was looking too closely, but he had what looked like a shark’s tooth on a leather string around his neck. Something about that slash of white against his tanned skin was ridiculously sexy.

  Sydney felt a stirring deep inside that she recognized as desire. It’d been so long since she’d felt anything other than devastation that the emotions Luke awakened just by walking toward her were overwhelming, to say the least.

  While Mac and Joe said hello to the women and shook hands with Sydney when Maddie introduced them, Luke, being Luke, hung back. Within a minute, Maddie was seated on Mac’s lap, and Joe had dragged Janey off to dance.

  “So much for girls’ night out,” Maddie muttered as she leaned into her husband’s loving embrace. “What’ve you done with our son?”

  “He’s with my parents,” Mac said with a suggestive wink as he rested a hand on her pregnant belly. “Having a sleepover.”

  Maddie flashed him a seductive smile. “Is that so?”

  “Uh-huh,” he said, laying a lingering kiss on her.

  Sydney was about to escape to the ladies’ room when Luke leaned down to whisper in her ear.

  “Dance with me.”

  Chapter 5

  Tongue-tied, Sydney stared up at him. “Um, sure. Okay.” She started to get up and tripped on the chair leg.

  Luke reached out to steady her, and their eyes met. A hum of awareness rippled between them.

  Sydney had no doubt everyone at her table as well as the entire bar full of people were staring at them as Luke wrapped his hand around hers to lead her to the dance floor.

  Naturally, the musical trio picked that moment to switch the tempo to something slow and sultry. Sydney wondered if Luke had paid them to do that. She expected they’d be awkward and fumbling with each other, but Luke brought her smoothly into his arms and moved them around like they’d been dancing together forever. His fingers on her neck sent shivers rippling through her.

  Absorbed in the clean scent of soap and citrusy aftershave, Sydney had to remind herself to keep breathing. She’d forgotten how much bigger than her he was, but she hadn’t forgotten the tenderness he’d always shown her or the gentle way he’d held her. The way he did now, as if she was the most precious thing in his world.

  She fixated on the shark’s tooth hanging from the leather cord around his neck, all the while resisting the urge to reach up and touch it. “Did you find the shark’s tooth or buy it?”

  “Found it.” He drew her in even closer to him, and Sydney had no choice but to rest her head on his chest. His heart hammered under her ear, and she was relieved to know she wasn’t the only one affected by this dance.

  “So how’ve you been?” he asked.

  “I’ve been good. How about you?”

  “Great.”

  “Oh. Really?”

  “No,” he said, laughing softly. “I’ve been crappy.”

  Sydney raised her head to look up at him. “You have?”

  With his dark eyes fixed on her, he nodded.

  “Me too,” Sydney confessed.

  “In case you were wondering, I didn’t know you’d be here tonight.”

  “I could tell you were surprised to see me.”

  “Pleasantly surprised.” His fingers slipped from her neck to her shoulder, laying a path of sensation as they went.

  All too soon, the song ended, and Luke drew back from her. “I could use some air,” he said. “Care to join me?”

  Even though she knew it would be all over the island by morning that they’d gone off together, Sydney took his outstretched hand and went with him to the hotel’s dark porch. They stood looking down at the busy street as well as the breakwater that formed the harbor and the ferry landing, where a lone boat waited to make the first trip to the mainland in the morning.

  The air coming in off the water was warm, but Sydney’s skin prickled with goose bumps that had nothing to do with the temperature and everything to do with the man standing beside her.

  “I missed you this week, Syd.”

  She turned to him, about to take a step she wasn’t entirely sure she was ready for. “I missed you, too.” Running her tongue over her lips, she ventured a glance up at him. “I thought a lot about what you said.”

  Tucking a strand of hair behind her ear, he said, “A
nd?”

  “I have no idea what I’m doing right now. I’m a bad bet.”

  He put his arms around her. “So you’ve said.”

  How did he manage to do that so smoothly? How did he manage to make her feel surrounded by him yet totally safe?

  Almost as if he couldn’t resist, he dipped his head and kissed her.

  “Luke—”

  “Hmm?” He kissed her again. “Did I mention how gorgeous you look tonight?”

  Sure enough, her knees went weak, and she reached for him. At first he just pressed his lips softly to hers, letting her know the next move was up to her. When she realized what he was doing, that he was giving her the power to decide for both of them, she couldn’t resist running her tongue gently over his bottom lip.

  That drew a tortured groan from deep inside him.

  Encouraged, she did it again, this time letting her tongue venture a little farther into his mouth. Everything about his embrace was familiar, yet new, too. His taste, the texture of his lips, the way he held her so close. She tempted and teased, but still he held back.

  “Luke,” she gasped.

  “What, honey?”

  “Kiss me back. Will you please kiss me back?”

  “Gladly.”

  While Syd waited breathlessly to see what he would do, he sprinkled soft kisses on her face before returning his attention to her mouth. Once again he began softly, gently, as if he was making sure she was with him before he went any further.

  By the time she felt the first tentative brush of his tongue over her sensitized lips, she was on the verge of begging him for more. The tangle of tongues and teeth and breathless passion went on until Sydney wasn’t sure how she remained standing.

  “God,” he whispered. “Syd...” He cupped her cheek and went back for more.

  As they strained against each other, trying to get closer, her nipples pebbled and brushed against his chest. His free hand slid down her back to align her with his erection.

  Approaching voices on the porch startled them apart.

  Breathing hard, they stared at each other in the darkness, stunned to discover everything they’d once felt for each other was still there, lying dormant, waiting for the opportunity to remind them of what they’d shared so long ago.