Reunion on Rocky Shores Read online

  This was the first time he had mentioned his wife to her on his own. It seemed an important step, somehow, as if he had allowed himself to lower yet another barrier between them.

  Julia held her breath, not wanting to say anything that might make him regret bringing up the subject.

  “You didn’t do it, though?”

  He shrugged. “I like working on my own. I can pick the music I want, can work at my own pace, can talk to myself when I need to. Yeah, I guess that probably makes me a little on the crazy side.”

  She laughed. “Not crazy. I talk to myself all the time. It helps to have Conan around, then I can at least pretend I’m talking to him.”

  He smiled. One moment he was wearing that remote, polite expression, then next, a genuine smile stole over his handsome features. She stared at it, her pulse shivering.

  She wanted to leap up and down and shriek with glee that she had been able to lighten his features, even if only for a moment, but then he would definitely think she was the crazy one.

  “Maybe I need a dog to take on jobs with me, just so I don’t get a reputation as the wild-eyed carpenter who carries on long conversations with himself.”

  “I’m sure Sage and Anna would consider renting Conan out by the hour,” she offered.

  He smiled again—twice in as many minutes!—and turned to the dog. “What do you say, bud? Want to be my permanent assistant?”

  Conan snuffled and gave a huge yawn that stretched his jaws, then he flopped over on his other side, turning his back toward both of them.

  Julia couldn’t help laughing. “Sorry, Will, but I think that’s a definite no. You wouldn’t want to interfere with his strenuous nap schedule. I guess you’ll have to make do with me for now. I just hope I haven’t messed up your rhythm too much.”

  “No. You’re actually helping.”

  “You don’t have to sound so surprised!” she exclaimed. “I do occasionally have my uses.”

  “Sorry. I didn’t mean it that way.”

  She managed a smile. “No problem. Believe it or not, I’ve got a pretty thick skin.”

  They worked in silence and Will seemed deep in thought. When he spoke some time later, she realized his mind was still on what he’d said about hiring an assistant.

  “Sometimes Robin would come with me on bigger jobs to lend a hand, until Cara came along, anyway,” he said. “She started to crawl early—six months or so—and was into everything. She barely gave Robin a second to breathe for chasing her.”

  Again, she sensed by the stiff set of his shoulders that he wasn’t completely comfortable talking about his family. She wasn’t sure why he had decided to share these few details but she was beyond touched that he was willing to show her this snapshot of their life together.

  “I can imagine it was hard to get any work done while you were chasing a busy toddler,” she said.

  He nodded. “She wasn’t afraid of anything, our Cara. If Robin or I didn’t watch her, she’d be out the back door and halfway to the ocean before we figured out where she had gone. We had to put double child-locks on every door.”

  He smiled a little at the memory but she could still sense the pain around the edges of his smile. She couldn’t help herself, she reached out and touched his forearm, driven only by the need to comfort him.

  His skin was warm, covered in a layer of crisp dark hair. He looked down at her fingers on his darker skin and she thought she saw his adam’s apple move as he swallowed.

  “Maddie was like that, too,” she said after a moment, lifting her hand away.

  “Maddie?”

  “I know. Hard to believe. She was a much busier toddler than Simon. She was always the ringleader of the two of them.”

  She smiled at the memory. “When they still could barely walk, they used to climb out of their cribs in the night to play with their toys. I couldn’t figure out how they were doing it so I set up the video camera with a motion sensor and caught Maddie moving like a little monkey to climb out of hers. She didn’t need any help but Simon apparently wasn’t as skilled so Maddie would climb out and then push a half-dozen stuffed animals over the top railing of his crib so he could use them to climb out. It was quite a system the little rascals came up with.”

  He paused in the middle of searching through his toolbox, his features far more interested than she might have expected. “So what did you do? Take out all the stuffed animals from the room?”

  She made a face. “No. Gave into the inevitable. We bought them both toddler beds so they wouldn’t break their necks climbing out”

  “Did they still get up in the night?”

  “Not as much. I think it was the lure of the forbidden that kept them trying to escape.”

  He laughed—a real, full-fledged laugh. She watched the shadows lift from his eyes for just a moment, saw in that light expression some glimmer of the Will she had known, and she could swear she felt the tumble and thud of her heart.

  She was an idiot for Will Garrett, only now she didn’t have the excuse of being fifteen, flush with the heady excitement of first love.

  After entirely too short a time, his laughter slid away and he turned his attention back to the project. “How do you feel about heights?”

  “Moderately okay, within reason.”

  “It would help if you could hold the trim up while I nail it, as long as you don’t mind climbing the ladder.”

  “Not at all.”

  For the next twenty minutes, they spoke little as they worked together to hang the trim. They finished two walls quickly but the other two weren’t as straightforward. One had a fireplace and chimney flue that Will needed to work the trim around and the other had a jog that she thought must contain ductwork.

  As she waited for Will to figure out the angles for the cuts, Julia sat on the couch, enjoying the animation on his features as he calculated. She wondered if he knew how his eyes lit up while he was working, how he seemed to vibrate with an energy she didn’t see there at other times.

  At last he figured out the math involved to make sure the moldings matched up correctly. He left for a moment and she heard his power saw out on the porch.

  “You love this, don’t you?” she asked when he returned carrying the cut pieces of trim.

  He shrugged. “It’s a living.”

  “It’s more than that to you. I can tell. I keep remembering how much you complained about your dad making you go out on jobs with him that summer.”

  His laugh was rueful, tinged with embarrassment. “I was a stupid sixteen-year-old punk without a brain in my head. All I wanted to do was hang out with my friends and try to impress pretty girls.”

  She shook her head. “You were not a punk. You were by far the most decent boy I knew.”

  The tips of his ears turned that dusky red again. “Funny, you always seemed like such a sensible kind of girl.”

  “I was sensible enough to know when a boy is different from the others I’d met. All they wanted to do was flirt and see how many bases they could steal. They weren’t interested in talking about serious things like the political science class they had taken the year before or the ecological condition of the shoreline.”

  “Did I do that?”

  “You don’t remember?”

  He slanted her a sidelong look. “All I remember is trying to figure out whether I dared try sliding into second base.”

  She blushed, though she couldn’t help smiling, too. “I guess you were just more subtle about that particular goal than the other boys, then.”

  “Either that or more chicken.”

  She laughed. She couldn’t help herself. To her delight, he laughed along with her and the unexpected sound of it even had Conan lifting his head to watch the two of them with what looked suspiciously like satisfaction.

  She remembered Sage’s assertion that the dog was working in cahoots with Abigail.

  Just now—with the rain pattering softly against the window and this peculiar intimacy swirling around t
hem—the idea didn’t seem completely ludicrous.

  “Okay, I think I’ve finally got this figured out,” he said after a moment. “I think I’m ready for my assistant.”

  She pushed her ladder closer to his since they were working with a much smaller length of trim.

  As he was only a few feet away from her, she was intensely aware of him—his scent, leathery and masculine, and the heat that seemed to pulse from him.

  He wasn’t smiling or laughing now, she noted. In fact, he seemed tense suddenly and in a hurry to finish this section of the job.

  “I can probably handle the rest on my own,” he said, his voice suddenly sounding strained. “None of the remaining lengths of trim are very long so I shouldn’t need your help holding them in place.”

  “I can stick around, just in case you need me.”

  His gaze met hers and she thought he would tell her not to bother but he simply nodded. “Sure. Okay.”

  She was so relieved he wasn’t going to send her away that she wasn’t paying as close attention to what she was doing as she should have been while she descended the ladder at the same time Will descended his own ladder next to her.

  In her distracted state, she misjudged the last rung and stumbled a little at the bottom.

  “Whoa! Careful there,” he exclaimed, reaching out instinctively to catch her.

  For one moment, they froze in that suspended state, with his strong arms around her and her arms trapped between their bodies. Her startled gaze flew to his and she thought she saw awareness and desire and the barest shadow of resignation there.

  * * *

  Will stared at her, his heart pumping in his chest like an out-of-control nail gun. A desperate kind of hunger prowled through him, wild and urgent. Though he knew she was far from it, she felt small and fragile in his arms.

  He could feel the heat of her burning his skin, could smell that soft, mouthwatering scent of cherry blossoms.

  He closed his eyes, fighting the inevitable with every ounce of strength he had left. But when he opened his eyes, he found her color high, her lips parted slightly, her eyes a deep and mossy green, shadowed with what he was almost positive was a heady awareness to match his own.

  He should stop this right now, should just release her, push her from Anna’s apartment and lock the door snugly behind her. The tiny corner of his brain that could still manage to string together a coherent thought told him that was exactly the course of action he ought to follow.

  But how could he? She was so soft, so sweetly, irresistibly warm, and he had been cold for so damn long.

  He heard a groan and realized it came from his own throat just an instant before he lowered his mouth and kissed her.

  She sighed his name, just a whispered breath between their mouths, but the sound seemed to sink through all the layers of careful protection around his heart.

  She wrapped her arms around his neck, responding eagerly to his kiss. Tenderness surged through him, raw and terrifying. He wanted to hang on tight and never let go, wanted to stand in Abigail’s old living room for the rest of his life with a soft rain clicking against the windows and Julia Hudson Blair in his arms.

  They kissed for a long time, until he was breathing hard and light-headed, until her mouth was swollen, until his body cried out for more and more.

  He didn’t know how long they would have continued—forever if he’d had his way—when suddenly he heard the one thing guaranteed to shatter the moment and the mood like a hard, cold downpour.

  “Mama? Are you there? I woke up.”

  The sweet, high voice cut through the room like a buzz saw. He stiffened, his insides cold suddenly, and frantically looked to the doorway, aghast at what he had done and that her daughter had caught them at it.

  He only knew a small measure of relief when he realized the voice was coming from the walkie-talkie she had brought downstairs.

  Julia was breathing just as hard as he was, her eyes wide and dazed and her cheeks flushed.

  Even through his dismay, he had to clench his fists at his side to keep from reaching for her again.

  She drew in a deep, shuddering breath, then walked to the walkie-talkie and picked it up.

  “I’m here, baby,” she said, her voice slightly ragged. “How are you feeling?”

  “My throat still hurts a little but I’m okay,” Maddie answered. “Where are you, Mama?”

  Julia flashed a quick glance at him, then looked away. “Downstairs with W—Mr. Garrett. Didn’t you see my note?”

  “Yes, when I woke up. But I was just wondering if you were still down there.”

  “I am.”

  “Is Conan there with you?”

  Will saw her sweep the room with her gaze until she found the dog still curled up by the couch. “He’s right here. I’ll bring him up with me if you want some company.”

  “Thanks, Mama.”

  She clipped the walkie-talkie to her belt, angled slightly away from him so he couldn’t see her expression, then she seemed to draw another deep breath before she turned to face him.

  “I…have to go up. Maddie needs me.”

  “Right.” He ached to touch her again, just one more time, but he fiercely clamped down on the desire, wanting her gone almost as much as he wanted to sweep her into his arms again.

  Without warning, he was suddenly furious. Damn her, damn her, for making him want again—for this churn of his blood pouring into the frozen edges inside him. Pain prickled through him, like he had just shoved frostbitten fingers into boiling water.

  He didn’t want this, didn’t want to feel again. Hadn’t he made that clear? So why the hell did she have to come in here, with her sweet smile and her warm eyes and her soft curves.

  “Will—”

  “Don’t say anything,” he bit out. “This was a mistake. It’s been a mistake for me to spend even a minute with you since you came back to town.”

  At his sudden attack, shock and hurt flared in her green eyes and he hated himself all over again but that didn’t change what he knew he had to do.

  “You didn’t think it was a mistake a moment ago,” she murmured.

  He couldn’t deny the truth of that. “I’m attracted to you. That’s obvious, isn’t it? I have been since I was sixteen years old. But I don’t want to be. You’re in my way every single time I turn around.”

  He lashed out, needing only to make her understand even as he was appalled at his words, at the way her spine seemed to stiffen with each syllable.

  Still, he couldn’t seem to hold them back once he started. They gushed between them, ugly and harsh.

  “You’re always coming around to help me work, showing up at my house dragging your kids along, crowding me every second. Don’t you get it? I don’t want you around! Why can’t you just leave me alone?”

  Conan rose and growled and for the first time in Will’s memory the dog looked menacing. At the same time, a branch outside Anna’s apartment clawed and scratched against the window, whipped by a sudden microburst of wind.

  Julia seemed to ignore all the external distractions. She drew in a deep breath, her face paler than he had ever seen it.

  “That’s not fair,” she said, her voice low and tight.

  He raked a hand through his hair, hating himself, hating her, hating Robin and Cara for leaving him this empty, harsh, cruel husk of a man. “I know. I know it’s not fair. You don’t deserve to bear the weight of all that, Julia. I know that, but I can’t help it. I’m sorry, but it’s the truth. I need you to leave me alone. Please. I can’t do this anymore. I can’t. Not with you. Not with anyone.”

  The branch scraped the glass harder and he made a mental note to prune it for Sage and Anna, even as he fought down the urge to pound something, to smash his fists hard into the new drywall he had put in a few months earlier.

  She studied him for a long moment, her features taut.

  “Okay,” she finally murmured and headed for the door to Anna’s apartment.

&nb
sp; Before she left, she turned around to face him one last time. “I appreciate your frankness. Since I know you’re a fair man, I’m sure you’ll allow me the same privilege.”

  What the hell was he supposed to say to that? He waited, though he wanted nothing more than to shove the door closed behind her and lock it tight.

  “I have something I want to say, though I know it’s not my place and none of my business. Still, I think you need to hear it from someone.”

  She paused, and seemed to be gathering her thoughts. When she spoke, her words sliced at him like a band saw.

  “Will, do you really think Robin and Cara would want this for you?”

  “Don’t.”

  He couldn’t bear a lecture or a commentary or whatever she planned. Not now, not about this.

  She shook her head. “No. I’m going to say this. And then you can push me away all you want, as you’ve been doing since I came back to Cannon Beach. I want you to ask yourself if your wife and little girl would want you to spend the rest of your life wallowing in your pain, smothering yourself in it. From all I’ve heard about Robin, it sounds as if she was generous and loving to everyone. Sage has told me what a good friend she was to everyone, how people were always drawn to her because of her kindness and her cheerful nature. I’m sorry I never had the chance to meet her. But from what I’ve heard of her, I can’t imagine Robin would find it any tribute to her kind and giving nature that you want you to close yourself away from life as some kind of…of penance because she’s gone.”

  She looked as if she had more she wanted to say, but to his relief she only gave him one more long look then turned to gesture to Conan. The dog added his glare to hers, giving Will what could only be described as the snake-eye, then followed her out the door.

  Will stood for a long moment, an ache in his chest and her scent still swirling around him. He closed his eyes, remembering again the sweetness of her touch, how fiercely he had wanted to hold on tight, to surrender completely and let her work her healing magic.

  He had to leave.

  That was all there was to it. He couldn’t stay in Cannon Beach with Julia and her kids just a few houses away. There was no way in the small community of year-round residents that he could avoid her, and seeing her, spending any time with her, was obviously a mistake.