Meet Me in Barefoot Bay

by Roxanne St Claire

  He held up his hand. “I get the picture.”

  “Do you?” She propped her elbows on the table and rested her chin on her knuckles. “Prove it.”

  “What’s to prove? When you finish in the minors, you get a coaching job in the minors.”

  “Are you passionate about coaching?”

  “I’m passionate about…” When he hesitated, her whole body tightened in anticipation. What was Will passionate about? She wanted it to be—

  “Baseball.”

  “Of course.”

  “Surely you didn’t forget that about me.”

  “I didn’t forget anything about you.” Lord, why had she told him that? Because he had that gift: He made her so comfortable she forgot to maintain control.

  The admission made him smile, not cockily like when he found out she’d Googled him, just—well, she couldn’t quite read those dozen different emotions flickering in his dark blue eyes. “Then we’re even. And you know that from the time I was five, I’ve lived, breathed, and slept the game. You know I love baseball. It’s all I know, all I’ve ever known.”

  “You know,” she said, “I have a choice right now.”

  Lifting his eyebrows in question, he waited for more explanation. “You do? I thought this was about my choices.”

  “It is. But I have to make a choice.” She sipped her drink and chose her words carefully. “When I am coaching a client and I believe they are self-delusional, I have two choices. I can either let them off easy because they don’t really want to face the truth and they’d rather write a check and believe they found their answers, or…”

  He didn’t respond, scratching his neck a little, as if he wasn’t quite sure where she was going with this. And might not like it when he was.

  “I can challenge them to face the truth head-on and deal with what that means.”

  “You think I’m self-delusional?”

  “I think you’re not that passionate about baseball.”

  “Are you nuts? If I’m not, what the hell have I been doing for the last, Jesus, thirty years since my dad bought the first tee and put a bat in my hand?”

  She just stared at him. “Precisely.”

  “Precisely what?”

  “Will, baseball has always been your father’s passion. Good God, I can remember him talking about you playing for his beloved L.A. Dodgers since the day you guys moved in.”

  “He always hated that I couldn’t get into that franchise,” Will admitted. “But we shared the passion, Joss. You can’t get as far as I did without it.”

  She wasn’t sure about that. “With your natural talent, you could get very, very far. And you did. But—”

  “But what?” He damn near growled the demand. “But if I had been more devoted, I could have gotten into the majors? I could have played for the fucking Dodgers?”

  She flinched and his hand shot across the table to take hers. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to get mad like that.”

  “No problem,” she lied. “That’s exactly why I let some clients take easy street. It’s easier for me, too.” She slipped her hand out from under his. “And I’m not saying if you were more devoted your career would have gone differently because, frankly, the past doesn’t matter anymore, unless it helps you see your own patterns.”

  He nodded, but she could tell agreeing with anything she was saying wasn’t easy.

  “I’m suggesting,” she said, “and quite seriously, that if you were truly, madly, and deeply passionate and in love with the idea of doing something with your baseball career, you would be doing it and not ‘waiting for someone to call.’” She air-quoted the phrase.

  Picking up a fry, he swiped it through his ketchup and shook off the extra. “My name’s out there,” he said, working to keep the defensiveness out of his tone, and failing. “My agent has me in with every minor league team in the sport, and the first bullpen or base-coaching job available, I’ll be considered.”

  “Is that the kind of coaching job you want?”

  “That’s where you start.”

  She pushed a little harder. “I don’t know, it seems to me that you could manage a whole team if you wanted to. You’ve always been the captain, always the leader.”

  He took in a slow breath, obviously uncomfortable with the subject.

  “Hey, you volunteered to be my client,” she said. “It’s not always easy. But when you dig deep and force yourself to think about what puts a bounce in your step and joy in your soul, then you might adjust your career goals.”

  He didn’t answer right away, then said, “I know this is going to sound crazy, but my parents lived their entire lives and gave everything they have for my success. I still feel like I can’t let them down, you know?” He hesitated a minute, the wheels turning as he worked it out. “Maybe I don’t want to be a minor league coach, but that would somehow be a slap in the face to my dad, who did everything so that my career—my whole career—would go the right way. And, shit, my liking to be a carpenter? That’s like my ignoring everything he ever told me. A carpenter was a failure to him, somehow. Blue-collar and… ordinary.”

  She nodded, truly understanding and recognizing his predicament. “But you can’t make lifelong decisions because of sacrifices your parents made when you were a kid, Will.”

  “I know that.” He smiled. “That’s why I’m waiting. And you want to know something else? I think your standard life-coach question is meaningless, completely rhetorical, and tells you nothing about the person.”

  “About what you’re prepared to die for?”

  “A stupid question, if you ask me.”

  She leaned forward, more interested than insulted. “But the answer tells me everything about a person. It tells me what matters to them.”

  “Nope, it tells you what they think should matter to them, not what really does. I’m more interested in what someone has sacrificed for in the past.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Like for me, I sacrificed my life for baseball. College was a joke. I never went to a party, didn’t join a fraternity or a club or anything. I just practiced, played, traveled, and studied. I sacrificed everything for baseball, so I think you’re whole theory is bogus.”

  She shrugged but couldn’t help smiling. “I still think you had a breakthrough.”

  “You just want me to pay for lunch.” He grinned and put a hand on the check the waitress had left on her last trip by, one of at least five in the last ten minutes. “So what about you, Joss? What have you sacrificed?”

  She looked him right in the eye, so drawn to him, so certain of him, it slammed her right back into the past.

  “Ah, speaking of a breakthrough,” he said. “I can see it on your face.” He leaned so close she could see every lash now, every fleck of navy in his eyes, every hint of whisker stubble, even the tiniest bit of ketchup in the corner of his mouth.

  Her whole being ached to kiss it off. And she hated ketchup.

  “No breakthrough,” she said. “This was your life-coaching session.”

  “Answer my question. What have you sacrificed to achieve your passion?”

  She swallowed, but even that couldn’t keep down the truth. “I sacrificed everything for love.”

  His jaw loosened as the waitress zoomed over and scooped up the check and money. “Keep the change,” he said without taking his eyes from Jocelyn. “You did?”

  “Everything,” she assured him. Everything that mattered, given up one summer evening in a stairwell outside his bedroom.

  “I gotta tell you, Joss, whoever he is—or was—I hate his fucking guts.”

  He wouldn’t if he knew the truth. “Why?”

  “Because I’m jealous of someone you loved,” he said simply. “It should have been me.”

  The food thunked to the bottom of her stomach and she actually felt a little sick.

  It was you.

  “If you felt that way, why didn’t you call me when we went to college?” she asked.

&nbs
p; He closed his eyes. “I was waiting for you.”

  She tried to smile, but her mouth trembled a little. “I think I see a pattern here, Will Palmer.”

  He laughed, tipping her chin with his knuckle. “Damn, life coach, you’re good.”

  “Only if you break your pattern, Will.”

  “Yeah. Well, I intend to.” The low, sweet promise in his voice reached right into her chest and squeezed her heart.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Guy slapped the jack of spades on the table and gave Zoe the dearest look she’d seen in—well, since she’d left her great-aunt in Flagstaff, Arizona.

  “You old coot,” she said, dropping her remaining card on the pile and shaking her head. “You beat the pants off me in Egyptian Rat Screws. That is not easy to do.”

  “I’m really good at cards,” he said, fighting a smug smile.

  She leaned on one elbow and pointed at him. “You like older women?”

  “I might be dumb but I’m not blind, Blondie. You’re not older than me.”

  “Not me.” She laughed, waving her hand. “My great-aunt. She’s pretty hot for eighty… ish. How old are you?”

  He angled his head, thinking. “I don’t have a clue.”

  She didn’t know whether to laugh or cry, he was so damn sweet. “Well, you’re not her age, I can assure you of that. I’ll go with sixty-five. Still, you’d like Pasha.”

  “Who’s Pasha?”

  “My hot great-aunt who is, I might add, almost as good as you at the game I just taught you an hour ago.” She marveled at that; for a man suffering from Alzheimer’s, there were still a few sharp cells at work up there.

  The doorbell rang and his eyes widened. “Who’s that?”

  She pushed up. “No way to know until I answer it. But I hope to hell it’s a reporter.”

  “Why?”

  She grinned. “So I can channel my inner Meryl Streep.” She peeked through the window in the door and smiled. “They’re back,” she called out. “Stay in the kitchen, Pops. I’ll handle this. Oh!” She turned to him. “What’s your real name? Is Guy short for something?”

  “Alexander.” Then he gasped. “Where the heck did that come from?”

  She laughed. “Your memory, smarty-pants. Now stay there.” She shook her hair and arms, took a deep breath, and opened the door. “Yes?”

  The little bald eagle stepped forward. “We’re looking for Mr. Bloom. For his daughter, actually.”

  “Daughter-in-law,” she said. “You found her.”

  He frowned. “His daughter, Jocelyn Bloom.”

  She let out a full-body put-upon sigh, leaning on the doorjamb and shaking her head. “When are you nitwits going to get it through your head? This is not the man you want, no Jocelyn Bloom lives here, and anything you’re reading in the paper is not true.”

  None of that was, technically, a lie.

  Baldie wasn’t buying. “We have proof that this is the childhood home of Jocelyn Bloom who lived here with her parents, Guy and Mary Jo.” He lifted up an official-looking paper, and Zoe curled her lip.

  “They did live here, like, eons ago. This is the home of Mr. Alexander.”

  Again, not a lie. But distrusting eyes narrowed at her; he was no doubt familiar with the runaround. “Where’s Jocelyn?”

  “Beats me, but you guys are barking up the wrong address.”

  “She used to live here.”

  Zoe leaned forward and flicked a finger at the paper he held. “Your info is wrong. Buzz off and don’t come back or you’ll be facing the sheriff himself. We’re sick of you all.”

  “There’ve been other reporters?” A note of worry cracked his voice.

  “A few. They’re gone, and so are you.”

  She closed the door and instantly another white card slipped through the mailbox hole. Zoe ripped it into tiny pieces and shoved it right back out.

  “That ought to keep the creeps at bay for a while,” she said, brushing her hands like she was good and finished and heading back to the living room, where Guy was shuffling the deck for the next game.

  “What’s she look like?” he asked.

  “Oh, it was a he. Bald and ugly.”

  He grinned. “I meant your aunt.”

  “Great-aunt. And, trust me, she is—great, I mean.” Zoe dropped onto the sofa across from Guy, giving him raised eyebrows. “So you do like older women?”

  “I figure if she’s anything like you, yeah.”

  “Aw, you sweet thing.” She started collecting her cards as he dealt slowly and with great precision. “She’s funkalicious for an octogenarian.”

  He laughed. “I don’t know what that means, but I think I like it.”

  “It means she spikes her gray hair, has too many earrings, and has a weakness for beer.”

  “At eighty?”

  She shrugged. “Youth is wasted on the young, you know.”

  “I’d like to meet her.” He scooped up his cards and tapped the half-deck carefully. “What happens when you put down an ace, again?”

  “The other person has four tries to beat it.”

  His shoulders sagged a little, a gesture she recognized as one Pasha made when she was just a little overwhelmed at the moment. “Let’s take a break,” she suggested, setting down her cards. “I think I’d rather just talk for a little while. You want more of that delicious tea?”

  “Nope, makes me have to pee.”

  She laughed again. “I love that you say what you’re thinking. It’s always been a problem for me.”

  “It bothers my son.”

  His son. “Will?”

  He nodded.

  “Did it always bother him? You know, like when he was little?”

  He considered that, chewing on his bottom lip. “I’d like to work on my needlepoint now.”

  Either he couldn’t remember or didn’t want to say. Or didn’t want to lie. Because a thought kept niggling at her: Was it possible Guy really did remember the past?

  “Sure,” she said, getting up to gather the cross-stitching he’d shown her earlier.

  Maybe he did remember who Jocelyn was and maybe he did know Will wasn’t his son. Because what better way to wipe your personal slate clean—especially if it was messy—than to conveniently forget everything you ever did? It was that or just run away when people got suspicious; God knows she knew that trick well enough.

  He didn’t strike her as that cunning, but who knew?

  She handed him the frame with the thick “training mesh” that a kid would use to learn needlepoint, along with some pearl cotton thread and a needle. “How’d you learn this?” she asked, wondering just how hard it would be to trap him.

  “Will taught me.”

  “Really? How’d he learn?”

  “Computer videos. That tube thing.”

  “YouTube.” She watched his hand shake ever so slightly as he pulled the thread through to execute the most basic half cross-stitch. “Will’s good to you,” she said, carefully watching his reaction.

  He looked up, his gray eyes suddenly clear. “I love that boy more’n life itself.”

  More than his own daughter? “What was he like as a kid? A baseball player, I understand.”

  Guy’s eyes clouded up again and he cast his gaze downward. “I don’t recall.”

  “You don’t recall or you didn’t really know him that well?”

  He refused to look up. “You know, my mind.”

  “No, actually, I don’t know your mind. Surely you have a picture of him? His trophies? Where are they?”

  “In his house, next door.” He stabbed the needle. “I don’t go over there.”

  “Why not?”

  He shrugged. “I just don’t.”

  “Why not?”

  The needle stuck in a hole and he tried to force it, pulling some of the thread and making an unsightly lump. “Let’s go back to talking about your beer-drinking old aunt.”

  She leaned forward. “Why don’t you ever go to your son’s hous
e?”

  He looked up. “I did once.”

  “And?”

  “It made me cry.” His voice cracked and his eyes filled and Zoe felt like a heel.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, taking the frame from his hands so she could try to undo the tangled stitch. “I shouldn’t have made you talk about it.”

  He just shook his head, swallowing hard. “I can’t remember,” he said, wiping at his eyes under his glasses. “But…”

  She got the thread through, saving him from that one little mistake on the needlepoint anyway. “But what?” she prompted, handing it back to him.

  “But you wouldn’t be the first person to try to prove I’m lying.”

  “I’m…” Her voice trailed off as he lifted his eyebrow. Then she just started to laugh. “Shit.”

  He grinned. “Shit what?”

  “Shit, you and my aunt would really hit it off.”

  Smiling, he leaned back and worked on his flowers in silence.

  “There’s a marina around the corner, remember?” Will asked as they stepped outside the deli. “Want to go down there? It’s too pretty to—” Go look at more old-age homes. “Do anything indoors.”

  “Sure.” She slipped the sunglasses on again and tugged at the brim of her red cap. “And we can finish your life-coaching session. You want to?”

  “I want…” He reached under the cap and pulled the shades down her nose. “You to take off these stupid things. I can’t see your eyes, Jossie.”

  A smile threatened but she shook it off. “I have to.”

  “No.” He slid the glasses off and slipped them into his pocket, reaching to put his arm over her shoulders. “I’ll protect you from the roving paparazzi.”

  She laughed. “You like playing bodyguard.”

  “Who’s playing?” He squinted into the parking lot, then pressed an imaginary earpiece. “The coast is clear. Let’s get Bloomerang to her yacht.”

  She smiled up at him, the prettiest, widest, sweetest smile he’d seen from her yet. “You used to call me that.”

  “Because you always came back to me,” he reminded her with a squeeze.