Chapter Thirteen
C ould this really be his life or merely some delicious dream he didn’t want to end?
Throughout the afternoon and evening Wes spent with Jenna and their respective daughters at the beautiful state park south of Cannon Beach, he had to stop more than once to soak in the moment.
It was a perfect summer evening, in company with his daughter, whom he loved more than anything else in the world, as well as the lovely Jenna Haynes and her daughter.
Only months earlier, he would have been standing in the chow line waiting for his bologna sandwich and pudding cup. If he was lucky.
Now he was sitting on a blanket a few dozen yards from the Pacific Ocean, watching the sky light up with color as the sun began its slow descent into the horizon.
The air was filled with the sound of the girls’ laughter as a cute puppy with gangly legs loped around with enthusiasm, trying to catch the tennis ball they chucked between them.
Across from Wes on the blanket, watching the girls with a soft smile, was the warm, beautiful woman who was becoming increasingly important to him.
He wanted to bottle up this moment, to take it out when life felt hard or when he gave in to his occasional bouts of self-pity at all that had been taken from him by someone he had trusted.
“What a beautiful evening.” Jenna gave a contented sort of sigh. “Thank you so much for suggesting this. It was exactly what I needed.”
“Tough day? I mean, besides the stitches in your hand?”
She looked back at the girls. “Not really. It was busy, but no worse than usual for a Friday. I did have to deal with some...unpleasant customers, but I handled it the best way I could.”
“That’s always tough, isn’t it? That was the hardest part for me of running a business. I tend to be impatient with people who are rude and demanding. It’s hard not to want to respond in kind.”
“What do you do?”
“Usually just try to remind myself that everybody has a bad day once in a while and I have no idea what they might be going through outside of this momentary interaction. Don’t get me wrong. As you know probably too well, there are some garbage people in the world.”
“Like your partner who set you up.”
“He heads the list.”
He didn’t like thinking about Anthony Morris for even a moment longer than necessary.
“I doubt I’ll ever be able to forgive him for trying to pin his crimes on me.”
“And getting away with it for years,” she pointed out.
“Right. But even with Tony, I try to remember that he is now behind bars, where he belongs, paying for what he did. I, on the other hand, am currently sitting on a spectacular beach watching the sunset with a beautiful woman.”
He hadn’t meant to add that part but had to admit he enjoyed seeing the wash of pink across her cheekbones.
She gazed at him for a long moment, then quickly looked away.
“Not so close to the water,” she called to the girls, who changed direction and returned to the blanket, with Theo leading the way.
The dog plopped onto the blanket, tongue panting.
“Oh. You’re a thirsty guy, aren’t you? That’s what happens when you play so hard,” Jenna said to the puppy.
Working around her injured hand, she opened her own water bottle and poured some into the dog’s bowl they had brought. Theo lapped at it gratefully, which made the girls giggle.
“I’m thirsty, too,” Brie declared. “Can I have another root beer?”
“I’m thirsty, too,” Addie said.
“We have plenty of water but only one root beer left,” he answered.
He had picked up a four-pack of craft root beer bottled by one of the local breweries. He and the girls each had enjoyed one but Jenna declared she was happy with water.
The girls studied the sole remaining bottle, clearly understanding the dilemma. Only one of them could have it. But which one?
“It’s okay,” Brielle said after a moment. “You have it.”
Addie shook her head. “No. You have it.”
“How about this,” Jenna suggested. “You can share it. I can pour half the bottle into one of your empty water bottles.”
“Good idea,” Brie said, clearly thrilled with the solution.
“My water bottle is empty,” Addie said, tipping it for the last drop to be sure.
“Why don’t you let me do that?” Wes held out a hand to take the root beer bottle. “We don’t want you to splash soda all over your bandages.”
Jenna made a face but handed over the root beer bottle and Addie’s water bottle.
Wes moved a few steps away from the blanket in case of fizzing and opened the bottle of root beer, carefully pouring out half into the water bottle.
As he returned to the blanket and handed the soda bottle to Brie and the pink water bottle to Addie, Wes couldn’t help thinking about the time one of the guys in his block, a particularly nasty guy named Victor, had shivved a guy at lunch over a peanut butter cookie.
He remembered the scream and the blood and the shouting guards as if it happened that morning.
Would memories of that dark time always taint his future happiness? He didn’t want it to. He wanted to be able to completely put it behind him, but he wasn’t sure that would ever be possible.
He could not pretend it had never happened. Those three years were part of him, just like the time he had spent in the Army and the years of his childhood when he had lived on that breathtaking Colorado farm.
He had to hope that eventually moments like these, pure and perfect, would overwhelm the darkness.
“Thank you for everything,” Jenna said as the girls sipped at their respective root beers. “This was so fun going tide pooling with you girls and having you show us all the creatures you learned about at camp.”
That had been one of Wes’s favorite parts of the evening. Jenna had orders from the doctor to keep her hand dry, so Wes had set up a beach chair for her on the sand just above the surf. She watched, the dog at her side, while he and the girls scrambled carefully over the rocks looking at starfish, sea urchins and anemones of every color.
Addie and Brie used Wes’s cell phone to snap pictures of what they found for Jenna, so she could enjoy the experience, too.
While he had set up their picnic dinner of fried chicken, pasta salad and kettle chips, Jenna had scrolled through the photos, asking the girls questions about their discoveries.
After dinner, the girls had begged to take a walk on one of the lush trails around the state park. With the girls racing ahead, he and Jenna had walked together, chatting about places they had visited and bucket list destinations they would like to see.
Finally, they had returned here to watch the sunset.
“We should probably head back soon,” Jenna told the girls as they finished their soda.
“I wish we could stay here all night,” Addie said, lying back on the blanket and gazing up at the few pale stars beginning to appear.
“I’m afraid there’s no camping allowed at this park,” Jenna said. “But maybe one weekend this summer we could borrow a tent from Rosa and Wyatt and camp at one of the other places along the coast.”
“Can we come?” Brie asked.
Wes gave an inward wince at his daughter’s forwardness.
“That would be so fun!” Addie exclaimed. “Can we go camping together, Mom?”
That lovely pink rose on her cheeks as she sent Wes a quick look. “I’m not sure Rosa and Wyatt have a tent that would fit the four of us.”
“We could bring our own tent!” Brie said. “You have one, don’t you, Dad? If not, Mom and Ron do.”
“I do have a tent. But maybe Jenna and Addie wanted to have their own trip together.”
“It would be so fun to have you come, wouldn’t it, Mom?”
Jenna lifted her gaze to his again. Heat surged between them. “Sure,” she finally said. “We can probably make that work. We’ll have to see.”
He would love nothing more than spending a weekend camping with Jenna and their daughters. He had visions of talking by the fire until the early hours of the morning, gazing up at the stars, kissing her again until they were both shaking with need...
Wes sighed. He would be smarter to come up with excuses to stay away from Jenna, instead of letting his mind run wild, imagining mythical future outings together.
Though he didn’t want this particular evening to end, he turned his energy toward loading up his pickup truck with all the things they had brought and making sure they carried away everything from their picnic site.
“Dad, can we stop and have gelato before we go home?” Brielle asked him when they were all finally loaded into the truck and he was about to drive out of the parking area.
His gaze met Jenna’s and she shrugged. “Fine with me. I love gelato.”
Wes pulled out onto the road back to Cannon Beach, feeling as if he had been handed a reprieve.
Maybe Jenna didn’t want the evening to end, either.
After driving back to Cannon Beach, he parked down the street from the small storefront selling gelato in at least two dozen varieties, handmade on the premises.
He and Brielle had discovered the place shortly after he arrived in Cannon Beach, and stopping here occasionally had become something of a ritual for them.
The night was lovely and pleasant, not too warm and not cold enough for a jacket. The streets of downtown were bustling with visitors but the line at the gelato shop moved quickly.
After they ordered and received their gelato—chocolate chip for him and the girls and butter pecan for Jenna—they found an empty picnic table outside the shop and sat down, licking at their cones and people watching.
This was another moment he would store in his memory bank. The girls giggling about something, Theo lapping the ground of any drips from the cones, and Jenna pretty and soft in the lamplight as she tapped her sandal along with the live music coming out of the restaurant next door.
“This has been a perfect evening,” she said as she worked to finish off the final few licks of her cone. “Thank you so much for suggesting it.”
“Yeah,” Addie said. “Thanks. It was really fun.”
“Can we do it again the next time I come to stay with you?” Brielle asked him. “Maybe we could go to another beach and try tide pooling there.”
“Sure.”
He wasn’t sure whether Jenna wanted to spend any more time with him, but Wes figured he could always take his daughter on his own.
Same for the camping trip. As much as he would enjoy going with Jenna and Addie, he and Brie could still have a great time, the two of them.
“Looks like somebody is pooped.” Jenna gestured to Theo, who had plopped down at her feet and didn’t look like he wanted to move.
“He’s not the only one. I think I know two girls who are going to drop the moment they get home.”
“I’m not tired,” Addison insisted.
“Me neither,” Brielle said.
“Well, Theo certainly is,” Jenna answered.
“Because he’s still a baby and babies sleep all the time,” Brielle informed her. “That’s what my mom says, anyway.”
“They do sleep a lot,” Jenna said. “All except Addie.”
She smiled at her daughter. “You were up and down all night long and didn’t sleep through the night until you were eight or nine months old. Your dad used to say you were afraid you were going to miss something. You were an early adopter of FOMO.”
“What about me, Dad?”
Through his own choices, Wes had missed so much after Brie had been born, too busy trying to build the company. At least his time in prison had helped him realize that any success he earned professionally could be gone in an instant. This. This was the important thing. Family. Friends.
Love.
He didn’t want to go there. Yes, he was developing feelings for Jenna but he certainly wasn’t falling in love with her. That would be completely self-destructive of him.
“You are still afraid you’re going to miss something,” he said, focusing back on his daughter. “It’s one of the things I love most about you.”
She rolled her eyes at him. “I can’t help it if all the good stuff happens after I go to bed!”
After they finished their gelato, he helped all three of them back into his pickup and drove the short distance back to Brambleberry House.
“Thank you again,” Jenna said when he pulled into the driveway. “That was the most enjoyable evening I have had in a long time.”
“Same for me,” he admitted, his voice somewhat gruff.
“We can help you carry things back inside.”
“I’ve got it. Don’t worry.”
“Okay. Well, um, have a good night.”
He pushed down a hundred things he wanted to say. Especially Can I carry you to my bed after the girls are asleep and keep you there all night long?
“Thanks,” he finally managed. “If you need help with Theo after Addie goes to sleep, let me know.”
All evening, the girls had been taking turns holding the dog’s leash so Jenna didn’t have to risk reinjuring her wounded hand.
She nodded. “If I need help, I’ll call. But I’m sure we’ll be fine.”
Before she headed toward the house, she shocked him one last time that day by reaching up and brushing her lips against his cheek.
It was all he could do not to turn his mouth to meet hers and devour her. Desire for her seemed to have become a steady beat through his veins.
“Good night,” she murmured, then hurried into the house, leaving him to watch after her and ache.