Meet Me at the Beach (Seashell Bay) (27 page)

L
ily hadn’t set foot inside the Flynns’ old wraparound Victorian for many years—not since Sean had stopped lobster fishing. Before that, Miss Annie would sometimes take her along when they surreptitiously visited Rebecca Flynn while Sean was out on his boat. It had been a gorgeous house back then, and its bones were still good, but on a November afternoon it looked pretty gloomy.

“The place needs a lot of work,” Aiden said.

They surveyed the spacious living room with its bow window and soot-crusted original hearth. Chunks of plaster had flaked off the walls and ceiling, the chandelier tilted from its loose base, and one of the windows had a crack running diagonally across it. But at least the place was spotless. Aiden had hired Peggy Fogg’s daughter to do a deep cleaning during the two months his father had spent in a rehab program in Portland, and now Mary stopped in every week to keep it tidy. That wasn’t a big deal, given that Sean had been staying with Miss Annie and Roy since his recent return to Seashell Bay.

“Brendan Porter will help out,” Lily said. “He’s a great
carpenter, and he can fill in when you don’t have time to work on the house yourself. And I’ve got some time on my hands now too.”

Lily had just pulled her lobstering gear for the season. She’d had a very good three months on the water and had made enough money to put herself on a much sounder footing. Aiden had continued to work sternman for her until he started at the university. After that, Lily had stopped fishing for a week. But then she had been able to hire Erica Easton after her captain, Forrest Coolidge, was hospitalized with a stroke. It looked as if Erica would be available next season too, since the stroke had left poor Forrest facing a very long rehabilitation.

Aiden took her gently by the lapels of her barn coat and tugged her up for a quick kiss. “Yes, but we agreed that you’d focus on the resort during the initial planning stages, since you’re the one with all the good ideas. You and Bram. I’m better off spending my spare time with a hammer and a paintbrush.”

She smiled at him, still not quite believing how everything had come together so quickly. Aiden had already lined up much of the project financing and ensured that the long process of legal and regulatory approvals was underway.

Bram’s role in the project so far had been a revelation. Like his dad, he’d also completed an alcohol rehab program. He and Sean were now seeing the same Portland psychologist—insisted on and paid for by Aiden—and he’d given up online gambling. In fact, he’d gone so far as to turn over his computer to Aiden to lock away. The difference Lily had seen in Bram since August was more than encouraging.

She batted her eyes in mock flirtation. “Oh, I can think of better ways to spend your spare time, big guy.”

Aiden laughed. “You’re insatiable, woman. It’s shocking.”

“Yes, but I know how much you love it.”

He grabbed her by the waist and pulled her against him. “We’ve still got a long way to go to make up for fourteen lost years.”

She pushed open his leather jacket and nuzzled into the solid warmth of his chest. “Then we’ll just have to work even harder.”

He hugged her for a few moments and then pulled her to sit beside him on the ratty, old couch in the bay window. “I haven’t told you yet what Dad said last night.”

Aiden had spent the evening with his father, Miss Annie, and Roy Mayo while Lily met Morgan in the city for dinner and a concert. But Aiden had been waiting for her at the ferry dock when she got off the boat, and they’d focused on other, more interesting things than talking as soon as he got her back to her cottage.

“He told me he wants to stay with Miss Annie and Roy a little longer,” Aiden said. “You know they’ve invited him to stay with them as long as he wants, and he says he’s happy there. Says those two old coots—his words, not mine—are good at keeping an eye on him so he doesn’t drink.”

Miss Annie had stepped up to the plate when Sean got out of rehab, insisting that Aiden remain with Lily at her cottage instead of babysitting his father, as she called it.

“God bless Granny and Roy,” Lily said, “but that setup obviously can’t last forever.”

“Dad realizes that. He just wants to stay there for a few more months—basically until he’s sure he can live alone
again without falling off the wagon.” Aiden gave her a wry smile. “I actually believe him, Lily. You’ve seen how much he’s changed.”

Lily hadn’t had a civil conversation with Sean Flynn for ten years before the night he ended up at Maine Medical Center. Now he’d started to treat her like a human being and not a scum-of-the-earth Doyle. They still had a ways to go, but the progress was undeniable. Sean had even managed to talk to her father for a few minutes last week without getting into a fight.

Maybe, just maybe, the decades-old family feud was finally coming to an overdue end.

“That’s good.” She nodded. “So we’ve got a few months to fix up the place and get it ready for him.”

“Not exactly,” Aiden said. “Dad and I talked about doing another swap.”

“Swap?”

“I’ve agreed to build him a house a quarter mile down the road—he wants something small and easy to deal with—and in exchange, he’s going to give me the family home.”

Lily stared at him. They hadn’t talked much about the future, but she’d assumed—hoped, anyway—that he’d keep living with her until they could someday build their own house on the land he’d already swapped with his father. “Uh, it’s a wonderful old house, but I thought it might have too many… bad memories for you.”

Aiden gave his head a little shake. “I can get past that. This was my mom’s house too, and I like remembering her here. Besides, we’ll create our own memories. Great ones.”

Lily’s throat got tight so she just gave him a big smile.

He rose and pulled her up from the couch. “Come on, I want to show you something.”

She followed him up the staircase to a small, second-floor room in back that offered a panoramic view of the ocean. “I remember this. It’s the room your mom used for reading and sewing.”

The pale yellow room looked almost exactly the same now as in her memory. A cushioned rocking chair in one corner, a love seat opposite, bookshelves on two walls, and a braided area rug that covered much of the floor. A pair of lopsided clay vases that Aiden and Bram had made one summer at the Rec Center stood on a small table, the colorful dried flowers inside them perpetually cheery. Lily had taken the same workshop, and her mother still had her tragic effort at a vase on display too.

“Mom called this room her hideaway. We’d spend hours in here—she’d be sewing or knitting while I had my nose in a book.” Aiden gave a little chuckle. “She would make me read a chapter and then tell her what happened in it before I was allowed to go outside and hit baseballs or play catch with Bram or my friends.”

Lily smiled. “Smart lady. I’m going to keep that strategy in mind for the future.”

Our future and our children.

“I know Mom would be happy to see us take over her family home and restore it,” Aiden said. “And I think she’d love to have her favorite room get a different kind of use.”

“Like?” Her breath had caught, but she tried to sound casual.

Aiden’s lips curved into a broad smile. “I was thinking along the lines of a nursery.”

Lily flashed him an answering smile, feeling a little too choked up to answer.

Aiden reached into his jacket and pulled out a small blue box—the kind you got at a good jewelry store—and her heart rate went into triple digits. He eased it open to reveal a stunning emerald ring.

“I love you, Lily Doyle,” he said in a serious voice. “Marry me and we’ll renovate a house, build a resort, raise some kids, take care of our parents, and catch a million lobsters, right here in Seashell Bay. Oh, and maybe we’ll win a few conference baseball championships too.”

She held out a trembling hand to let Aiden slip the ring onto her finger. Then she threw her arms around his neck and pulled herself up on tiptoe to kiss him. “That sounds like a plan, Aiden Flynn. The best plan ever.”

With his arms wrapped tightly around her, Lily knew the man she’d always loved had finally come home for good.

R
yan Butler dumped his army-issue duffel bag onto the deck and grabbed a bench seat beside the ferry’s port rail. As usual, he’d kept his gear to a minimum for a visit home. And it struck him as weird that he still thought of Seashell Bay Island as home, despite his determined escape years ago. Most summers, he’d spend only three or four days with his folks, but this vacation could last a lot longer. He had plans, of course, but his years in the army had taught him the necessity of keeping them flexible. If the island started to close in on him, he’d jump on a ferry and head somewhere else. He had some money, some time, and no responsibilities, so he could pretty much do whatever he wanted, whenever he wanted. Ryan called that freedom, and he needed a good dose of it right now.

After his latest grueling contract with Double Shield Corporation, Ryan had made clear to his controller that he needed a serious break. For ten months, he’d been babysitting diplomats in Baghdad. For six more after that, his job had been protecting a Fortune 500 CEO and his team as they bounced their way across a string of countries that
varied from half-assed safe to outright deadly. Those jobs paid great but left him with an even bigger dose of uncertainty about his future than when he’d left the military. A little of the hired gunslinger’s life went a long way, and he sure as hell couldn’t see doing it in the long term.

As for the alternatives? At this point he hadn’t a clue.

A year and a half ago, simmering frustration with his army career and the lure of good money had prompted him to leave Special Operations and hook up with Double Shield, a private military contractor. But it hadn’t taken long to realize that money wasn’t enough. In fact, his restlessness had only increased after he’d taken the corporate gig. At least in the army, Ryan had felt as if he had roots that kept him grounded. Now he was drifting. His bank account was getting fatter, but that was about the only good thing he had to show for his life over the last eighteen months.

He twisted in his seat to take another look over Casco Bay, breathing in the tangy scents of the sea air and the fishing boats. He must have taken one of these ferries between Portland and the island hundreds if not thousands of times, including every day of his four years at Peninsula High. The ride could be a boring pain in the ass, but it was relaxing. Forty minutes to an hour of pure peace. Put the earbuds in and zone out.

Except for the occasional mad morning rush to finish up homework before the boat docked in Portland. Okay, maybe more than occasional.

A cheerful serenity cloaked the harbor scene even though tourists and locals alike rushed to make boats to the various islands, towing children and dogs, as well as groceries in carts and battered canvas bags. Coming home
had never particularly thrilled him, and yet Ryan had spent enough time eating dust and dodging bullets and IEDs to regard the good old USA, and coastal Maine in particular, as probably the closest thing to peace he’d ever find. Yeah, it was caught in a retro time warp that certainly wasn’t for an adrenaline junkie like him, but he did appreciate the laid-back beauty of the place that remained unchanged from one year to the next.

The ferry horn sounded one blast to signal the boat’s imminent departure. A couple of tanned and fit young deckhands—probably college students—finished securing the cargo while two others pulled the metal gangway onto the boat. Like them, Ryan had spent the summer after his high school graduation crewing on the island ferries. It had been hard, hot work, but something about that final summer, working and partying with his high school friends, had been almost idyllic.

And then he’d left for the military and soon enough to Afghanistan, Iraq, and then Afghanistan again. In the process, he’d lost too many army buddies and seen enough ugliness to last several lifetimes.

“Hold up!” a voice cried from down the pier. “Please, guys, I really need to make this boat.”

Ryan recognized that feminine voice even before he saw Morgan Merrifield running full tilt boogie down the concrete platform of the ferry terminal. Her pretty face flushed and her blond hair flopping forward into her eyes, she lugged an overstuffed L.L.Bean bag in her right hand and pulled a wheeled cart with her left. Instinct made him jump up and rush down to the boat’s lower deck to help her.

Though one of the deckhands was rolling his eyes at
her, the other one grinned and started to push the gangway back across the gap between the platform and the boat. With the sweetest smile God ever put on a woman’s face, Morgan thanked them as she set her bag down and fumbled for her ticket. Ryan waited a moment for the guys to secure the gangway, and then strode across to help the girl he’d known since she’d barely started to walk.

“Yo, Morgan, it looks like you could use a hand with that. If taking my help wouldn’t offend your girl-power pride, that is,” he teased.

Morgan and her best friend, Lily Doyle, had always been hardheaded when it came to proving they were as capable as anybody on Seashell Bay. In Lily’s case, that determination had translated into fighting the sea as captain of her lobster boat. In Morgan’s, it was all about organization. Morgan Merrifield could organize the living hell out of anything, whether it was a referendum campaign or the kids’ events at the Blueberry Festival. She’d been born to be a teacher, and Ryan figured she probably ran her elementary school classroom as efficiently as an Army Ranger instructor ran his drills.

“Ryan,” she gasped, her gaze widening in surprise. She stared for a few seconds then flashed him a glorious smile that sunk deep into his bones. “Oh, heck, offend away. Be warned though. That bag is heavy.”

Though he easily hoisted the canvas tote, she wasn’t kidding about the weight. Lugging the heavy load would have done in a lesser woman. But Morgan kept herself in shape, and today she looked as lithe and toned as ever.

Incredibly feminine, too, he didn’t mind noting—slender but with truly nice curves in all the right places.

“What’s in this sucker, anyway?” he asked.

“Beer, among other necessities.” She cast him a mocking glance as she maneuvered the cart across the narrow gangway onto the boat. “By the way, it’s real nice to see you again too, old pal.”

Ryan followed her on board, laughing at her good-natured dig. “Likewise, Morgan. But why do you need to lug beer all the way from the mainland? The stores on the island stock all kinds of it.”

“I’ve got a regular guest who insists on having his beloved Moosehead, and damned if I didn’t forget to ask the Jenkins sisters to order it in. I was shopping in town today anyway, so I thought I’d pick some up.” She brushed a hand back through the silky, shoulder-length hair that kept blowing across her face, and her rosebud mouth curved into a sly smile. “We make a little money running an honor bar. It helps the bottom line a bit.”

Ryan switched the bag to his other hand and helped her steer the cart around a pile of suitcases left on the deck. “Well, aren’t you just the considerate host? Or is it hostess? I don’t want to be politically incorrect.”

“You, politically incorrect? Perish the thought. But yeah, I’ll do special stuff for guests to keep them coming back. God knows we can’t afford to lose any more business.” For a moment, her cheery expression dimmed.

The deckhands yanked the gangway on board again and closed the gate. Morgan wheeled her cart across the cabin to the port side and found an empty bench.

Ryan plopped the bag down beside her. “Okay if I sit with you? Or would you rather be alone?”

She looked at him like he’d just lost his mind. “What, you think I’d rather be alone than sit with the hottest dude to ever walk the halls of Peninsula High School? Every
female on this boat is thinking I’ve hit the jackpot, you idiot.”

Though she was clearly kidding, Ryan had a sudden flash of Morgan clinging to him like a second skin at the festival dance last summer. Neither of them had been joking then.

“Oh, come on,” he said, his brain momentarily seizing up as his gaze drifted to the truly nice cleavage exposed by her blue tank top.

Lame, man. Really lame.

Ryan dropped onto the bench next to her. The urge to pull her into his arms to comfort her surprised him with its intensity. He gave her hand a quick squeeze instead. “Sweetheart, I’m really sorry about your dad. He was a great guy.”

Morgan’s features turned somber, her gaze drifting to the dock where the water taxis were moored as the ferry moved toward the open water of the harbor. She shifted toward him on the bench, her floral print skirt fluttering around her tanned legs. “Thanks, Ryan. And thank you for the sympathy card. I know I should have acknowledged it, but… well…” She paused to breathe a low, heartbroken sigh that practically killed him. “I just couldn’t stand to go through them all again, and then it seemed too late.”

Cal Merrifield had keeled over dead of a heart attack in late April. Ryan had been stunned when Aiden Flynn e-mailed him the shocking news. Morgan had lost her mother to cancer about three years ago, and now her father was gone at just sixty years of age. Cal had owned the Lobster Pot bar and restaurant for years before selling it to buy the island’s only B&B. He was truly one of the
good guys, and Ryan knew that his sudden loss had devastated Morgan and her younger sister, Sabrina. According to Aiden, it had pretty much rocked the entire island of Seashell Bay.

“I heard you left your teaching job,” he said, not wanting to force her to dwell on the details of her dad’s death.

Her face scrunched up in a grimace that would have been comical if the subject weren’t so awful. “Yes, for now. I took a leave of absence.”

“I assume that was for your sister’s sake?” No way Sabrina Merrifield could manage the B&B. Though she’d been Cal’s steadfast helper, poor Sabrina had always had enough trouble just managing her own life.

“Yes. That and my guilt.”

He frowned. “Guilt?”

Morgan’s gaze skittered off to the side as the ferry captain tooted his horn, drowning out the squawking seagulls. “That was a stupid slip of the tongue. Just forget I said it,” she finally replied.

Because Morgan was as upfront and honest as anyone he’d ever known, her response surprised him. But then she smiled, and even though it looked to him like it might have been forced, it brought her quiet beauty blazing back to life.

Simply put, Morgan was a babe, with eyes as blue as a June sky, a clear, honey-smooth complexion, and a cute nose with a slight tilt that gave her face character. She also had the most thoroughly kissable lips he’d ever seen. But though the island guys now all agreed she was a first-class hottie, it hadn’t always been that way. Growing up, she’d been a bit nerdy, slightly overweight, and naturally shy.
But by the middle of high school, she’d started to blossom into a very sexy girl. Morgan and Lily and their friend Holly Tyler had made one hell of a triple threat back then, and almost every teenage guy in Seashell Bay had spent considerable time and energy circling them like a pack of overeager puppies.

“Let’s go up to the top deck,” he said. “It’s too nice a day to be stuck down here in the cabin.” Morgan had probably sat on the lower deck because she didn’t want to haul all her crap up the stairs, but he figured they both could use some fresh air.

“Good idea,” she said, getting up.

“Want me to bring your stuff?”

She scoffed. “Boy, pal, you’ve been away too long. You know it’s safe to leave things on the boats. Besides, there’s nothing valuable in there.”

“Except for the beer,” he joked. Still, he decided to keep an eye on people getting off the boat at the two stops they’d make before Seashell Bay. He’d learned not to be fully trusting—not even here.

As he climbed the staircase behind Morgan, Ryan gave her rear view a thorough, if discreet, inspection. Damned if she didn’t get prettier every time he saw her, with a body that just didn’t quit. When she sat down on a bench at the stern, she reached into her purse and pulled out a pair of sunglasses, covering up the baby blues that he could stare into all day. It mystified him that Morgan wasn’t in a permanent relationship with some mainland guy, since she’d been teaching school up the coast for years. He doubted that anything would ever happen between her and any of the island guys, though. Everybody knew everybody else too damn well. As kids, they’d played with each other and
gone to school together from the time they were knee-high to a fire hydrant.

There were exceptions, but most young people in Seashell Bay regarded their island contemporaries more as annoying brothers and sisters than potential mates. Friends, yes. Soul mates and lovers, not so much.

“If you’re a little cool up here,” he said, “I’ve got a fleece in my duffel.”

A refreshing breeze usually appeared around the time the ferry cleared the harbor and turned into open waters. On a hot summer day, you could fry an egg on the sidewalk in downtown Portland and be reaching for a sweater before the boat passed the ruins of Fort Gorges in the middle of the bay.

She tipped her face up to the sun for a moment. “Thanks, but I’m fine.” Then she looked at him, inscrutable behind her big, movie-star shades. “Ryan, I’m really surprised to see you here in June. You’re usually only back for the Blueberry Festival.”

He leaned back in his seat and stretched out his legs, going for casual. “Let’s just say this isn’t going to be my standard, quick in-and-out. I might even stay for the whole summer or most of it.”

He heard the sharp inhalation of her breath. “Well, that’ll be a first,” she said after a pause. “Your mom and dad must be so happy. And heck, that means people might actually get a chance to know the real you, not just the mysterious tough-guy front you put on.” She smiled and gave him a friendly poke on the arm. It wasn’t the first time Morgan had teased him about what she called his “strong but silent” act.

“What are you talking about? I’m an open book.”

“An open book with blank pages, maybe.”

“Wow, that didn’t tickle,” he said, adopting a wounded look.

Morgan laughed, a light, melodious sound that Ryan had always found insanely sexy.