Meet Me at the Beach (Seashell Bay) (7 page)

After that episode made the rounds of the island, few people had wanted much to do with Sean Flynn, other than his drinking buddies and a few Doyle haters. Some had even wanted to report Sean to the Office of Child and Family Services in Portland, but the Flynns had closed ranks over that one—even Aiden. He was too proud to ask for help, and Lily knew he’d die before he ever inflicted that sort of shame on his mother.

But that was the day Lily had started to hate Aiden’s father with every fiber of her being, and the hate still burned hot and steady.

So why was she challenging Aiden to the boat race, knowing what it would probably mean to him? Knowing what she would then demand of him once she won?

First and foremost because she so badly needed his help, of that there was no doubt. But she also couldn’t help believing that it would be good for Aiden to get back out on the water. With
her
this time, not his asshole father. Maybe it was a naïve hope, but Lily truly felt that Aiden should try to come to terms with his island past, for everyone’s sake as well as his own. His father’s abuse
had denied him the primal, loving connection most of the islanders felt toward Seashell Bay. Aiden had never been allowed to develop a true sense of affection and respect for the island way of life, because the man who should have taught him that was an abusive bastard.

If Aiden couldn’t see that simple truth, if he couldn’t understand that the island was worth saving—even if his father wasn’t—then Lily was terrified he’d turn his back on Seashell Bay, on all of them, for good.

“I know you won’t have any trouble lifting the traps, but I also know you’ve had a lot of trouble with your knees,” she said, trying to sound normal and not like a guilt-ridden, manipulative jerk. “You had surgery over the winter, didn’t you? I guess you’re not playing because you’re still recuperating.”

Aiden gave her a grim-faced nod as he easily hoisted one of the traps and leaned over to set it down in the boat. “I had surgery, but I’m fine now. I just can’t make sharp turns and pivots like I used to.” He looked back toward Forrest Coolidge and Erica Easton, who were pushing off in their skiff, almost as if he was embarrassed. “But I’m not on the disabled list.”

Lily didn’t get it.

Aiden looked back at her and blew out a heavy breath. “The Phillies released me, Lily.”

Clutching her buoy, she struggled to make sense of what he’d said. What did it mean for his future? A dozen questions swarmed from her brain to her lips. But she couldn’t find the words to voice them so instead she grimaced in sympathy. “Aiden, I’m so sorry.”

Darned if she didn’t have to blink back tears as she finally put the buoy down in the skiff.

He shrugged, as if it didn’t really matter. She knew it did.

“My agent’s working on getting me hooked up with another team,” he said.

Lily sincerely hoped that some other team would pick him up. Aiden had always said that baseball meant everything to him, and from an early age, he’d focused like a laser on making a career in pro ball. She’d known with absolute certainty—because he’d told her with absolute certainty—that he would never fish lobster, and he would never live anywhere near his father.

“I’m sure that’ll happen soon,” she said.

Of course, she had no idea if that were true, because she knew virtually nothing about the sport. Even when it came to Aiden’s exploits, all she knew was only what the locals talked about. What was the point of following his career? From the moment he’d taken that final boat into Portland after graduating high school, she’d understood that dwelling on him would only bring her more heartache.

Aiden shrugged his broad shoulders. “I hope so. My options are starting to get pretty limited, though.”

He bent his long, powerful legs and deposited another trap squarely on top of the one already in the skiff. Lily didn’t even pretend to keep her eyes off his incredibly fit and gorgeous body as he worked with easy assurance. As an athlete, he might be losing a step, but as a man, he couldn’t be more in his mouth-watering prime.

“Could that mean your stay might be…” Lily almost said
indefinite
, then winced at how needy that would sound. She regrouped. “Um, longer than I’d first thought?”

After lifting another trap, he straightened and gave
her a long, assessing look that raised the fine hairs on the back of her neck. “What exactly was your first thought, Lily?”

“Oh, you know, a few days,” she babbled. “Don’t forget I know better than anybody how you feel about Seashell Bay.”

He gave her a slow grin that sent a few tendrils of heat licking down between her thighs.

“Lily, I’d say you know a lot of things about me better than anybody,” he said in a voice that made her shiver. Then he took a step closer, crowding her a bit.

She eyed his broad, muscular chest, fighting the deranged urge to slip her arms around his neck and press against him. After all these years, that instinct was still so powerful it took her breath away. Everything about Aiden was familiar, from the burn scar on the inside of his forearm from a childhood accident to the lock of dark hair that dipped down onto his forehead. But he was different, too, excitingly so. He was a man, seasoned and experienced, with sexy laugh lines around his firm mouth and a knowing, sensual look in his dark gaze.

God, she’d loved him so much back in the day that it still made her chest ache to think about it.

Love.
Lily gave her head a mental shake. As if a sixteen-year-old could truly understand what that meant.

When Aiden slid a big, warm hand onto her hip, she barely managed to stifle a gasp. “Aiden…” She raised her left hand and pressed against his shoulder, a halfhearted effort he saw through instantly.

“Have you forgotten how much you loved it when I touched you?” His voice was a low, thrilling combination of purr and growl that made her weak behind the knees.

Oh, hell no.
Not again. Lily tried to force herself to step away from him, but her stupid body wouldn’t obey the message her brain shrieked at her.

Until, that is, she glanced over his broad shoulder and saw what—who—was charging down the dock. Then she practically jumped, as if a five-pound lobster had just dug its claws into her butt.

L
ily, what the hell’s going on down there?” Her father’s deep, raspy voice boomed down the pier from a throat ravaged by decades of cigarettes and whisky. Tommy Doyle had always been a bit of a drama queen, and he rushed down onto the floating pier as if she were being attacked by a band of pirates.

Lily took another step back as Aiden glanced over his shoulder. “Ah, your dad hasn’t changed a bit,” he said. “Apparently, he still wants to shoot every Flynn on sight. I can only hope he’s not packing heat.”

She gave him an exaggerated eye roll. But at least he was calm, and she prayed he’d keep his powder dry in the face of what was sure to be a rough encounter with her hot-tempered dad.

Her father charged down the pier as fast as his arthritic knees would carry him. Instinctively, Lily slid around Aiden to get between him and the man who hated every Flynn that had ever set foot on Seashell Bay Island.

“What’s wrong, Dad?” she said, as he approached. “Why are you down front at this hour?”

His face almost as red as the hull of the town’s fire rescue boat, her dad held a big clamp in his meaty fist. “Last night when you left, you didn’t take the new hose clamp I got for you.”

Sighing, Lily reached for it. She’d forgotten not only the clamp, but even that she’d asked her father to run into Portland to pick up the part in the first place. He didn’t mind doing a few errands for her now and again, especially since there wasn’t much else his rheumatoid arthritis would allow him to do anymore.

“Thanks, Dad. You’re the best,” she said gratefully, but she didn’t like the expression on her father’s face one bit.

“You’re welcome, but what the hell’s he doing here?” Her dad glared at Aiden as if the poor guy had just cut her lobster gear out of the water. “Why are you talking to this… this… damn Benedict Arnold?”

Yep, her father could drama-queen with the best of them. “Dad, come on. That is absolutely—”

“Morning, sir. Long time, no see,” Aiden interrupted in a voice so calm and easygoing that it stunned her. His coffee-brown eyes betrayed only mild amusement.

The last time her dad had spoken to Aiden was to tell him how overjoyed he was to see him leaving the island and that the only thing that would make him happier was if Aiden never came back. It had taken her father five years to get around to admitting that awful fact to Lily. It still made her both ashamed of him and sick to death of the feud that a few silly old men wouldn’t let die.

“Not near long enough, Flynn,” her father growled. “I know why you’re back. You don’t give a shit about this island, but as soon as you get a sniff that you and your
clan can make a pile of dough, you’re all over it. Sell the island to the developers and to hell with the rest of us, right?” He stepped forward, invading Aiden’s personal space as he stared up at the much younger and stronger man.

Stupid, stupid, stupid.

Though Aiden’s shoulders hiked and his fingers started to curl into fists, Lily knew his reaction was pure male instinct. No way would he back away from anyone, but he’d never hurt her dad either.

Lily was almost as tall as her father, but she weighed barely more than half as much. Still, she clamped her hands onto his shoulders and stared directly into his face, now puffy with all the medicine he had to take for his arthritis.

“Listen, Dad, we are
not
having a shouting match on the pier while I’m trying to load gear. If you have something you need to get off your chest, please do it somewhere else and at some other time.” She gave him a placating smile and lowered her voice. “Thanks for bringing the clamp, but why don’t you head back home and have another cup of coffee, okay? I’m fine here. Aiden was out for a run and just stopped a moment to help me load up. That was pretty nice of him, don’t you think?”

Tommy shifted his gaze to Aiden again, his glare still fierce. “We don’t need any help from you, Flynn. Never did, never will. And the sooner you finish the dirty business you came for and get your ass off our island, the better we’ll all be for it.”

Lily wanted to shake her dad, hating the shuttered look that came over Aiden’s face. God, as if he needed another old man from Seashell Bay giving him a hard time.

“I didn’t come here to do any dirty business, Mr. Doyle,” he said quietly. “And if you want to talk about the issues sometime, feel free to give me a call. I’m staying at Bram’s.” He gave a casual shrug. “You might be surprised to know what I think or don’t think about what’s going on.”

Lily peered at him. What did he mean by that? Unfortunately, Aiden was wearing one of the best poker faces she’d ever seen.

“Yeah, well, don’t hold your breath on that,” her dad huffed, still not breaking away.

Once again, Lily had a close-up reminder of where she’d gotten her stubborn streak. “Please go home, Dad,” she said, sighing.

He finally blew out an angry breath, gave Aiden one more dirty look, then turned and walked away. But a few feet down the pier he half-turned and gave her a funny little grimace. “We’ll talk more tonight at dinner, Lily. You’re coming over, right? Mother’s making her blueberry cobbler.”

Lily smiled at her father’s roundabout way of telling her not to worry too much about what had just happened. He could be a blustering old warhorse at times, but he wasn’t a cruel man and he’d never lifted a hand against anyone. “Sure, Dad. See you tonight.”

In silence, she and Aiden watched her father’s gimpy progress until he was up on Water Street. Then she turned to him with a rueful smile. “Dad doesn’t mean half of what he said. He’s just worried about the development, and you happened to be on hand to take the brunt.”

Actually, her father almost certainly meant every word he’d said, but right now she needed to pour some oil on troubled waters.

Aiden shrugged as he reached for a spool of pot warp. “Blueberry cobbler, huh? Lucky you.”

He sounded okay, but the heat between them had blown away on the crisp bay breeze.

Lily seemed to be in no hurry to push off in her skiff, prompting Aiden to cast a puzzled glance skyward. The sun climbed higher in a cloudless blue vault, which meant another sizzling hot day on the water. He’d worked many long days on a lobster boat in the full, blazing sun—anything else he’d done was a cakewalk by comparison, including covering center field during a heat wave.

The pier had returned to quiet, orderly calm. Lily’s volatile father had been rude, but Aiden had expected no less, given how much Tommy hated the Flynns in general and his dad in particular.

Sometimes, Aiden thought it would be better for everyone if Doyle and his father locked themselves in a UFC cage and hammered it out once and for all with their aging, crippled fists. But he suspected that even a grudge match wouldn’t do much to end the feud that had been passed down through the generations, nurtured with a bizarre kind of toxic affection. Thankfully, though, he figured the crap might finally peter out with Sean and Tommy. None of their children seemed to have much interest in perpetuating the bullshit that had started over a century ago. Bram was the only one of their generation to carry any lingering taint of the grudge, but Aiden didn’t worry much about that. His brother’s drinking and gambling problems were far more troubling than any perceived wrongs committed by the Doyles.

Unless, of course, the land development deal blew
everything up again. From what he’d learned since he stepped off the ferry, it definitely had that potential.

“Anything else I can help you with?” Aiden said.

Lily pulled her sunglasses down from the top of her head, covering her beautiful green eyes as she took her seat in the stern. “You seem strangely anxious to help out the competition, Aiden Flynn.”

He sank into a crouch so they could talk without him towering over her. “I’m not exactly tuning your diesel for the race,” he joked. “Just giving an old friend a hand.”

Lily’s lush mouth seemed to flatten at his choice of words. “Old friend” hardly described how he felt about her. But as enticing as she was, he was probably opening himself up to a world of hurt if he tapped into the chemistry so obviously still there. Especially given all the issues festering between their families. But, man, he wanted to take Lily with an urgency that just about knocked him off his feet.

“Well, I appreciate it.” Her slender but capable hand gripped the throttle on the Mercury 7.5-horsepower engine, so ancient that it might have been a hand-me-down from her grandfather.

Lily was pretty and strong and full of energy, so at peace with her life that Aiden couldn’t repress a flash of envy. Even when he was doing the thing he loved best, playing baseball, he’d always been aware of a restless need to keep moving, to keep looking for that next best thing.

Too bad he couldn’t figure out what that thing was.

“I’m happy for you, Lily,” he said abruptly. “You always wanted this, and here you are. Exactly where you wanted to be and where you belong.”

Her lips curved into a wry grin. “Oh, sure. I always
wanted to be working my ass off in stink and slime to make less in a day than the cost of my fuel and bait.”

Aiden knew she would never want to do anything else. “You know what I mean,” he said. “You’ve told me more than once that you wanted nothing more than to fish lobster from your own boat and spend the rest of your life right here on the island.”

Her smile eased away into thoughtfulness. “You’re right, I did. And you told me you’d rather live anywhere else on Earth.” She gave a little shrug. “So I guess we both got what we wanted, didn’t we, Aiden?”

He’d always thought so, but wondered why he couldn’t find the words to agree with her. Probably because everything had pretty much felt like crap since the Phillies cast him adrift. “Joking aside, you’re happy now though, right?”

Lily’s brave smile lit up her face and tugged at his heart. “It’s been hard, but I’m content with my decisions. What else would I do if not this?” She tilted her head back to catch the sun on her face and spread her arms wide, as if to encompass everything around her, sea and land and air. He knew Lily had always loved the ocean, loved taking on its magical, dangerous ways.

Most of their high school friends hadn’t had a clue what they wanted to do after graduation, but that had never been a problem for either Lily or Aiden. Maybe it had been their confidence in those dreams, the belief that nothing could knock them off their chosen courses, that had finally allowed them to come together on the night before he left the island for good.

But Aiden hadn’t missed the fact that she’d used the word
content
, not
happy
, to describe her state of mind.
He couldn’t help wondering if still being single at thirty might have something to do with her choice of words, because she loved kids and had always made it clear she wanted a small brood of her own someday. But according to Bram, Lily didn’t have a boyfriend now and had apparently never been truly serious about anybody.

Other than you
, whispered his traitorous mind.

He firmly squashed that thought. “You could do anything you wanted, but you were born to fish lobster. You always said it was in your genes, or like you had seawater running in your veins.”

Lily gave a little snort. “Yeah, well, don’t forget it’s in yours too. Centuries worth of ridiculously optimistic genes that make us think we can actually make a living dragging bugs up from the ocean floor.”

He had the DNA, for sure, but it was no match for the impact of a drunken pig of a father. Still, Aiden had to laugh at her apt description of the lobstering life.

“Those genes must have somehow skipped my sister, though,” she added.

Aiden didn’t recall much about Lily’s little sister. Brianna Doyle was two or three years younger than Lily and a bit of a princess. “What’s Brie doing these days, anyway? Still here on the island?”

“Not likely,” Lily scoffed. “Not when the closest Neiman Marcus is over a hundred miles away. No, she’s a junior at an architectural firm in Boston and happy as a clam. By the time she made it to high school, Brie was almost as set on kissing the island good-bye as you were.”

Yet another reference to Aiden’s decision to leave the island. After all these years, it clearly still grated on her. “Bram told me your pals Holly and Morgan left here early
too,” he said. “So I guess I’m not exactly unusual on that score, am I?”

Lily’s gaze slid down to her boots. “Well, at least they come back home for regular visits. Morgan and Holly are here now, and Brie will be back later today. She always comes home for Blueberry Festival weekend.”

Aiden sighed. “I can’t say I do that, can I?”
But you know my reasons.

He’d refused to come back to the island even when his mother was still alive. Instead, he’d arranged for his mom and Bram to visit him, sending them plane tickets to Philly or whatever city he was playing in that was within a reasonable distance of Portland. But that meant he’d missed a lot of holidays and other milestone events with his family. It was the price he paid to avoid his father.

She surprised him by standing up and extending a hand, silently asking to be helped out of the skiff. Aiden stood and grasped her by both the hand and the elbow, making sure she had her footing on the pier before reluctantly letting her go. Even in her masculine-looking lobster gear, she was still cute enough and sexy enough to get his temperature running hot.

“I understood why you left, Aiden,” she said. “So I’m sorry if I sounded like I was judging you.”

“Thanks.” He wasn’t sure where she intended to go with this. The fact that she’d hoisted herself out of the boat made it clear she had something she wanted to say.

Lily put her hands on her nicely curved hips, her feet planted apart like she was about to give him a lecture. Aiden remembered that stance so well. Lily Doyle had been feisty as a teenager, and time hadn’t changed that.

But she surprised him with her soft tone, sweetly
colored by that gentle island lilt she would never shake. “You still hate it back here, don’t you? You’ve been away almost half your life, but it feels to me like not much has changed since we were kids.”