Must Have Been Love

Chapter 1

one

SKYLER

Have you ever known you’re making a bad decision at the EXACT time you’re making it, yet still you won’t back out? That’s me, right now. To be honest, that’s been me for the majority of my life. The last twenty-nine years of my existence have been one bad decision after another.

But this one could definitely be the worst.

I’m sitting in my car, the wipers working overtime to push the rivers of rain away from the windshield, staring out at an ocean that looks so foreboding I’m surprised anybody willingly drives down this road and onto the ferry that’s waiting at the end of the jetty.

“You promised me sunshine,” I say out loud, my voice echoing in the empty car.

A chuckle blasts out from the speakers. “I said I remember the sun shining there,” my sister says through the phone line. “It’s just one bad day. It’ll get better, Skyler.”

It’s ironic that Lee’s the one who’s being all optimistic and rah-rah-rah. She’s been against this from the start. So has our mom, which is a huge part of the reason I’m here right now, staring out at the rivers of rain pouring down the road to the dock. I’m the family mess up. The black sheep.

And for once, I want to prove them wrong.

A baby starts to cry from the other end of the phone followed by Lee’s cooing. She has her daughter Cora, her husband, James, who’s made it big in business, and her own career as an entertainment agent that is thriving. She’s been on maternity leave since my squishy little niece was born but she’ll be back at it soon enough.

“I should let you go,” I tell Lee.

“No, please don’t. You’re the only adult I’ve spoken to all day.” She sighs heavily. “Describe exactly what you can see.”

I lean my head forward, trying to squint out through the blur of the rain, but I only succeed in obscuring the glass even more with my misty breath. “I can see the ferry,” I say. It’s currently unloading the cars who have sensibly left the island.

It’s called Liberty, or at least that’s what everybody calls it. Its full name is Cape Liberty Island but according to Lee, nobody has ever called it that. It’s a pretty little island off the East Coast, lined with beaches and a main street that used to attract tourists by the boatload in the early part of the twentieth century, before the commercial airplane was invented and the rich moved on to foreign resorts.

But, from what I have gathered, there’s been some investment that has improved the town, as well as the hotel and bed and breakfasts that are there. I guess I’ll find out in a few minutes.

“What else can you see?” Lee says, sounding almost desperate. I know how much she loves her little girl, but I also know how much she hates being isolated at home.

“Um, I can see the island in the distance,” I lie, because I sense she needs this. “Just barely though.” There, not too much of a lie.

“It’s so pretty there,” she tells me. “You’ll call once you get to the bar, right?”

“Of course,” I say.

“And it’s usually sunny, I promise. I remember that visit with your dad…” she trails off. Mostly because she doesn’t like sad things, and this is definitely an upsetting subject. We have different fathers, but for a couple of years mine was a parent to both of us. She can remember him in a way that I can’t. Can remember who he used to be before the alcohol took over and changed him.

Whereas I can only remember bad times.

Because he’s been absent for most of my life, and now he’ll be absent forever.

The last car is off the ferry. A guy in one of those yellow rubber capes and hats gestures at the cars waiting to onboard. There are only two vehicles ahead of me. The one at the front belongs to an air-conditioning company. The second is another van, this one with the words The Grand Liberty Hotel written across it.

I lift my hand to the steering wheel, my bangles making a jangling sound. “Looks like it’s my turn to drive on,” I tell her. “I should probably go.”

“No!” she says quickly. “Don’t hang up. Let me hear what’s going on.”

“You know there’s a big thing on the wall of your living room that’s much more exciting than this,” I tell her.

“I hate watching television,” Lee says. “It reminds me too much of work.”

The guy in the yellow raincoat beckons to me and I drive onto the metal ramp that leads to the small ferry, the wheels groaning and clanging as I pull into the space ahead of me.

As I press on the brake, the bedraggled man knocks on my window and I lower it, the wind pushing a sheet of rain inside the car and wetting my face.

He glances at my clothes and I inwardly squirm. I’d taken Lee’s rose-colored memories at face value and dressed for a beautiful summer island day. I’m wearing a white gypsy style top and a floaty cotton skirt that I found at a thrift shop in Manhattan, along with sandals that show off my freshly pedicured – by myself – toes.

“Put your car in park and shut off the engine,” he shouts over the thunder of the rain. He brings his gaze up to my face. “You come to work at the hotel?”

I shake my head. “No.”

“I hope you’re not a visitor. You picked a bad day for it.”

He’s telling me. But I kind of like the way he’s chatty despite the weather. “My dad used to own the bar on the island,” I tell him. “The Salty Dog.” And now I own it, thanks to his will.

“You’re Wayne’s kid?”

Of course he’d know my dad. The island isn’t exactly huge. There are only a few hundred full time residents, though it’s a tourist haven during the warmer months, when the population surges by the thousands on a daily basis. Most come for the day, though there are guest houses in the town center along with the stupidly expensive hotel that opened late last year. I checked out the prices before realizing I could barely afford one night there.

“That’s right,” I shout back at him and he blinks, opening his mouth then closing it, like he’s thought better of what he was about to say. Instead he shouts out to a second man dressed in a yellow rain slicker. “Hey Jesse!”

The man who turns around is younger than me. “Yep?”

“This is Wayne’s daughter, the one who inherited The Dog.” The older man grins. “That’s Jesse,” he says to me as though I should know who he’s talking about.

Jesse walks over, leaning down until his face is next to the other guy’s. “Hey.” He gives me the biggest smile.

“Hi.” I smile back, trying to be friendly, but he seems disappointed by my response for some reason.

“I’m going to lock up the gate,” he tells the older man. “We’re ready to go.”

“Okay.” The man frowns again, then looks at me. “Once we get to Liberty, the bar is on the right as you drive up. It’s been empty a while.”

I take a deep breath, trying to ignore the guilt that washes over me. I’d had no idea my dad was sick. I hadn’t heard from him for years. Didn’t even know he’d gone back to the little island off the Atlantic Coast to run a bar.

He and my mom separated when I was a baby and Lee was five. I barely remember him, save for the occasional visit when he was sober enough to remember he had kids and for Mom to let him into our nice house in Hollywood Hills. Lee remembers a bit more – the visit to Liberty before I was born, the way he and mom would throw things at each other during every fight.

Theirs was a passion that burned hot and fast. Looking back, their relationship was so alien to the way I see my mom now. She’s the ultimate responsible parent, and he was a free spirit, never willing to settle down.

She says I take after him in that way, and I know it exasperates her. I just don’t know any other way to be. I’ve lived in dozens of different places and had a lot of different jobs. It’s not the life she hoped I’d have.

“Thank you,” I tell the older man. I’m feeling nervous about seeing the bar for the first time. There’s something portentous about it, especially with this rain streaming down.

He nods, still giving me that strange look, then tells me to roll the window back up. Not that it matters, my face and neck are already soaked.

“Who was that?”

Lee’s voice comes as a shock. I’d forgotten we hadn’t hung up our call.

“The ferry captain and Jesse, his assistant, I think.”

She laughs. “You’ll know everybody’s name within a week. There are no secrets in small towns.”

And yet it feels like the opposite. We didn’t even know my dad was here for the last few years. He’d inherited the bar from his own mother, and had been running it for the last five years before he became ill. But he hadn’t bothered to let us know.

That had hurt more than anything. The fact he’d finally settled down for a few years. Enough to have a little business he could leave to his daughter.

“As part of the bequest he would like for you to stay on the island for a period of six months,” the lawyer told me as he read me the contents of the will. Apparently – according to my mom, who’s a paralegal – that clause is easily contestable.

But I’m not sure I want to contest it. I’m not sure of anything really. I have nowhere better to be and I need to see the island my dad grew up on, the island that everybody in my family can remember except me.

And then I’ll make some decisions.

It takes twenty minutes for the ferry to cross the little channel of the Atlantic Ocean between the mainland and Liberty Island, and for the entire journey I can see nothing but rain. The only indicator we’ve actually reached land is the way the boat slows down and the crew starts to rush around, preparing for us to dock.

The ramp groans as they let it hit the concrete of Liberty’s jetty, then the van at the front starts to pull away.

The younger man – Jesse – waves at me as I start up my engine. I wave back and turn my wipers to high, thankful that the bar is in the main town, just up from the dock, so I don’t have to try to find my way around this place in the pouring rain.

It takes less than a minute to drive up the road and make the right to where a low roofed building overlooks the water. I park in a graveled spot next to the overhanging canopy that shades stacks of outdoors chairs and tables, and stare out, feeling stupidly emotional.

This was where my dad grew up. And where he spent the last years of his life. Did he think about me? Did he think about calling me?

I would have visited. I should have.

“I’m here now,” I tell myself.

“Excellent.”

Dear God, how is Lee still on the line?

“I’m gonna hang up,” I tell her. “I need to put my phone away if I’m going to dash through the rain to the bar.”

“Take photos. Send them to me. Call me once you’re situated.”

I will, but I feel like I need to be alone right now. I hang up and grab my purse, deciding to leave my luggage in the car until the rain lightens up. I want to explore before I decide what to do next.

According to the lawyers, there’s an apartment at the back of the bar. The same apartment my dad lived in until he relocated to the mainland when he got sick. I’ll be staying there for a while.

“Here goes nothing,” I murmur to myself as I open the car door and the sound of rain hitting the tin roof of the bar fills my ears. It’s a short run from the car to the canopy, but I still manage to get soaked, the thin cotton of my skirt and top clinging to my flesh like it’s afraid.

I have to dig through my overstuffed purse – way too full of fliers and tissues and a half-eaten bag of M&Ms – to find the code and keys the lawyers gave us. I key in the numbers then unlock the three rusty locks, hearing the groan of metal scraping against metal. When the last one is unlocked the door swings open and I quickly close it behind me, taking a look at the place that I now own.

The bar consists of one room with tables and chairs piled neatly across the wooden floor, like whoever was here last thought they’d be back in the morning. There’s a large wooden counter at the end of the room, along with liquor bottles attached to optics that haven’t been used in a while.

It feels almost ghostly in here. For a second I consider leaving. Just turning my back and agreeing with my mom that the best thing to do is contest the clause.

But then she’ll be right and I’ll be wrong, the way I always am.

I walk over to the bar, running my finger over the sticky wooden countertop. Dust clings to the pad, turning it a dark gray. Drops of rain fall from my hair onto the dust, moistening it, as a shiver wracks through my body.

I’m not sure if it’s because I’m soaked to the bone and it’s cold or because it feels like there are way too many memories in this place.

I’m just about to pull my phone out and call Lee back – for moral support more than anything – when the door I closed securely behind me is shoved open. The sudden noise makes me jump and I shiver again, goosebumps breaking out on my body as I turn around to look at the doorway.

And the man framed inside it.

Holy hotness, he’s good looking. I blink, taking in the expensive suit, the white shirt buttoned to the top, and the perfectly knotted tie, all packaging the tall, broad body that wouldn’t look out of place on a viking. One with brown hair though, because he has the thickest, glossiest, brushed back hair I think I’ve ever seen.

But it’s his face that draws my gaze. He has one of those straight, strong noses that leads down to the perfect lips – not too full, not too narrow, just perfectly balanced and currently pressed together.

I’ve always been a sucker for a man with a chiseled jaw. But those jaws are usually stubbled, belonging to a guy with long hair, a suntan, and no 401K or designer suits to his name.

This guy though. He has an aura about him. If I had to categorize it, right now it’s screaming ‘don’t mess with me.’

My breath stutters at the way he looks ridiculously angry and handsome at the same time. His jaw is twitching, his lips pressed into a mean scowl, and his ocean-blue eyes are glaring at me.

My heart starts to pound. I can’t remember the last time I had such a visceral reaction to somebody I’ve never met before. Especially not an angry guy in a suit. I’m all about happiness and free love.

Shame my body doesn’t seem to remember that right now.

Luckily, he goes and spoils it all by opening his mouth.

“How many fucking times do I have to tell you people? This is private property,” he rasps. “Get out of here. You’re not welcome.”

I’ve had a lot of server jobs in my life. Dealt with thousands of annoyed people whose meal was cold or wrong or they’re just having a bad day and decided to take it out on me.

I know how to deal with angry people, but right now I’m cold and I’m wet and damn it, I could do without this right now.

“No,” I say, shooting him as dirty of a look as I can muster. “You get out. This is my bar and you’re not welcome.”