Chapter 18
She wanted him again. And again. And again.
More so, and much worse, she didn’t want him to leave his house. Ever. Didn’t want him out there in the world where other women could ogle him. And want him, too.
Which made her the absolute worst human being on earth. A failure on all spiritual levels.
Selfish to the core.
A fraud.
Eating her greens—still holding out hope that their intuitive properties would help her right herself—Dove paced the kitchen, waiting for Mitchell to finish his shower and get her out of there.
Away from infernal temptation.
Him in the shower…water sluicing all over every inch of the body that she hadn’t had nearly enough time with…a specimen of nature’s ability to create perfection in male form…
She shoved two forkfuls in her mouth at once. Forcing herself to chew with her mouth open. Breaking her mother’s heart, she was sure.
“Always chew with your mouth closed, Dove.”
“But, Momma, I can do a better job at chewing with my mouth open. Then my cheeks don’t get in the way so much.”
“But then you take away the appetite of others who are eating with you. Which is the better choice? Chewing for your own comfort? Or making a choice that benefits others?”
Technically, she wasn’t hurting anyone else with her current chewing choice.
So…perhaps she was still in her mother’s good graces.
With the exception of the whole wanting-to-keep-Mitchell-locked-up-for-the-rest-of-their-lives thing. No, not locked up. It would be a sacrilege to cage the magnificent animal that he was.
Just…just…what?
She wanted the world to know he was hers and respect that choice? To have him tell her that she was the only woman he wanted to be with, would be with, no matter what?
Then she could trust him to go into the world and not be affected by what other women wanted. Like her mother had trusted her father all the months he was out at sea for all those years.
And what about her dad? Had he trusted her mother, too? Had he given any thought to what he was leaving behind?
Or had he taken her mother for granted?
Thoughts she should have had before. Long before. She’d just never looked at her parents from the partner perspective before. How horribly…lacking…of her.
And now? When Whaler looked at all the months, all the years that he’d lost? Thinking that he’d have a lifetime of years with his love when he retired from the sea? Only to have her get sick less than a decade afterward?
An onslaught of regret hit her so hard she slid down to the floor and adopted the lotus position just to get through it. And was hit with another bit of understanding.
The bottle. She didn’t condone Whaler’s drinking. It was killing him. But it suddenly made more sense to her. It wasn’t just grief sending her father to seek constant oblivion.
It was the sense that his life choices hadn’t lived up to expectation. A lesson learned too late to avert the consequence.
How did a powerful man like her father live with the negative impact from a situation he’d created and couldn’t fix?
How did Dove help him find a way? When she didn’t know the way herself? Her mother had never taught her the lesson—not in words.
And not really in action, either. While she was absolutely certain her parents had adored each other, that her mother had loved her father and Dove, too, with her whole heart, she had no idea if they’d had an open marriage or not.
If her mother had taken lovers while her father was away, Dove had certainly never known about it.
Nor could she come up with a single male figure in her mother’s life who might have been more than just a casual acquaintance.
The sound of Mitchell’s shoes on the creaking stairs had Dove scrambling to her feet. Putting the lid on her greens and shoving the container back into the refrigerator.
Feeling as though she’d had a good morning session, even though she hadn’t technically been in a meditative state.
Her incredibly odd reaction to sex with Mitchell hadn’t been about her. It had been a way for her to gain understanding of her father’s struggles. To be able to find a way to help him, where in the past she’d failed.
A new perspective with which to greet him when he awoke.
She didn’t have all the answers yet. But with her new understanding, she was finally on her way to finding them.
And knowing the reason behind her uncharacteristically territorial reaction to the previous night’s activities meant that she’d just freed herself up to have sex with Mitchell again.
A thought that brought enough of a flood of good feeling to drown out the pricks of fear as she headed out with him and into her day.
Or would have if he hadn’t come into the kitchen with tight lips and lines marring his forehead.
“What?” she asked, when his gaze sought her out and held on.
“There’s no sign of Ladybird’s mooring ropes, but they found evidence on the cement pad to indicate that someone had been standing on it within the last day. Not a footprint, but a lack of sea debris and algae growth, side by side, in the size of feet.”
Picking up the bag she’d packed for the hospital when she’d first come down that morning, she slung it over her shoulder and headed for the door. “So we know that someone tampered with the boat, but we have no way of finding out who.”
He was right behind her. Which just plain felt good. “Yep.” He didn’t sound at all happy about that fact.
“But we know who it is,” she reminded him. “It just means we still don’t have the proof we need to have him stopped.”
“It means he’s getting bolder,” Mitchell told her as he slid into the car seat beside her. They pulled their doors closed at the same time.
In unison.
As though their sex dance had somehow put them in sync.
The thought filled her with pleasure. She clung to it as she asked something that had been toying at the edge of her brain.
Something she hadn’t wanted to think about.
“How would Brad Fletcher know about that cement platform? He’s not from Shelby, nor has he ever, that we know of, spent any time at St. James Boats.
I didn’t even know about it until my dad bought the place and I started fooling around in the water.
That was a few years before he’d retired, so before his fleet of boats were in.
My folks would let me jump off the dock and swim, as long as one of them—Mom—was around to keep an eye on me. ”
She was jabbering. Had her parents—their relationship—on her mind. They’d had a good plan for their future together. Her mother had seemed really happy about it. Eager to spend time at the marina. She’d been a huge help in getting the business up and running…
“Same way he got your studio vandalized,” Mitchell’s words cut into her remunerations. “Hired someone local.”
Maybe. Most likely. But… “Why go to all the trouble to swim in to get the job done when he could have just done the job from the docks?” With new horror shuddering through her, she turned to look at him. “Unless he knew about the newly installed cameras.”
The way Mitchell’s jaw tensed was his giveaway. “You already figured all this out,” she said to him. “And you have a suspect. Kirk? You think Fletcher hired him?”
Mitchell’s glance over at her as he paused at the end of his driveway held…speculation. Not confirmation. “It’s possible Kirk told Fletcher about the platform,” sounding…different. Tense, but not as…uptight.
“You suspected someone else.”
Pulling out onto the street that would take them into town, he gave her another, easier glance. “Not suspected,” he told her. “Just wondered about. Not because he’s given me any reason to doubt him, personally, at all.”
There was only one person left that she knew of that fit the bill.
“Wes?” she asked him, incredulous. “Wes would no more sabotage my father’s business than cut his own feet off.
It’s not about the money for him,” she said.
“It’s about family. Loyalty. Keeping businesses local. The man is Shelby golden to the core.”
Odd how Mitchell remained silent after her tirade, where normally he’d quietly lay out logical points as he saw them.
And, not liking that he hadn’t done so—worried that his not doing so had something to do with the sex they’d had, as it was the only thing that had changed between them—she said, “The facts point to him.”
When he continued to face straight ahead, not acknowledging that he’d heard her, she pushed harder. “And you didn’t want to tell me until you had proof because you knew it would upset me.”
Nice. But…she couldn’t go there. Most particularly not with him.
But really, not with anyone. She might need his help and physical protection against an attacker at the moment, but that didn’t make her any less capable of handling the crappy challenges that life dumped on her.
It was all part of the journey. Even if it meant she made mistakes. She had to be allowed to fail.
She’d asked for the help she needed.
He continued to drive. She continued to stare at him. Hard. “You didn’t tell me because you’re getting all manly on me, thinking I need protecting from emotional pain, rather than seeing me as an equal work mate,” she accused.
And Mitchell nodded.
There was no point in avoiding the truth. A fact Mitchell had learned probably from birth. And while he did not like, or want, his newfound awareness where Dove was concerned, he knew better than to avoid it.
Most of the problems his clients—and his family members—brought to him were the result of avoidance. Not wanting to deal with something. Hoping it would go away.
Many things did work out as one hoped. There were times when possible problems didn’t materialize. But that didn’t mean you didn’t prepare for them just in case.
And in his case, avoidance wasn’t really even a choice. He was in the middle of a huge pile of muck. He wanted a woman he had nothing in common with.