Chapter 4 #2
“What changed your mind?”
“Mac did. He can be very convincing when sets his mind on something.”
“I can’t see Luke doing that. He’s much more reserved, and he made it clear he won’t be pursuing me. He put the ball firmly in my court.”
“That doesn’t mean he won’t try to convince you to give him a chance.”
As Sydney stewed over that possibility, they arrived at the Beachcomber lounge, where a trio played live music. The small dance floor was crowded with couples and just about every seat at the bar was taken.
Mac’s sister Janey, Maddie’s sister Tiffany, Abby who owned Abby’s Attic, and several other women Maddie knew from her job at McCarthy’s Gansett Inn waited for them.
Maddie made the introductions, and the others put Sydney immediately at ease.
She had no doubt Maddie had fully briefed her friends on Sydney’s tragedy, but unlike the social gatherings at home where Sydney usually felt like a pariah since the accident, here she was far more comfortable.
“Janey,” Maddie said as she sipped a club soda, “you have to tell Syd how you and Joe got together.”
After much hooting, hollering, and catcalling, Janey waved her hands to quiet the others.
She was tiny and blond but seemed to make up for her lack of height with a larger-than-life personality.
“I was engaged to someone else,” Janey began.
“I’d been with David, a medical student in Boston, for thirteen years. ”
“Can you even believe that?” Maddie asked.
Amazed, Sydney shook her head. “That’s a long courtship.”
“Too long, as it turned out. I caught him in bed with another woman.”
Sydney gasped. “No way! What did you do?”
“After I ran away from David’s Boston apartment, my car broke down. I called Mac’s best friend, Joe, who has always been like a fifth brother to me, and he came to my rescue.”
“In more ways than one,” Tiffany said with a snort, and the other women howled with laughter.
Janey’s face turned bright red. “Turns out,” she said, “Joe had been secretly in love with me for years. We’ve been together ever since.”
“That’s such a great story,” Sydney said.
“You left out a few very important parts,” Maddie said with a pointed look for her sister-in-law.
“They’d only been together a short time when Janey realized a lifelong dream of getting accepted to veterinary school at Ohio State.
Joe owns and operates the Gansett Island Ferry Company, so Janey naturally assumed he wouldn’t be able to go with her to Ohio. ”
“I just couldn’t do another long-distance relationship,” Janey said ruefully, “so I made the supreme mistake of breaking up with him.”
Maddie started laughing, an infectious sound that quickly spread around the table. “He carted her right out of our wedding reception and let her know there was nothing he wouldn’t do, nothing he wouldn’t give up, nowhere he wouldn’t go to be with her. So romantic! And, he proposed—in bed!”
Janey stuck her tongue out at Maddie. “You had to get that in there, didn’t you?”
“That’s the best part! They’re back from their first year in Ohio, and how was that, exactly?”
“Sublime,” Janey said with a dreamy smile that was met with more whoops from her friends.
Satisfied with the retelling of the story, Maddie sat back and crossed her arms, sending Sydney a rather calculating look. “It’s interesting, isn’t it, Syd, that Janey thought she was doing what was best for him, and it turned out she was the best thing for him.”
Maddie McCarthy, it seemed, was a whole lot less subtle than Maddie Chester had once been. Sydney raised her wineglass in toast to Maddie. “Touché.”
Maddie waggled her brows at Sydney, and then her expression suddenly changed. “Now what, do you suppose, they are doing here?”
Sydney looked over to see Mac, Luke and another guy who she assumed was Joe, pulling up stools at the bar.
“Checking on us, no doubt,” Janey said, even though she lit up with pleasure at the sight of Joe.
Sydney’s heart skipped into overdrive as she feasted her eyes on Luke, startled to realize she’d missed him terribly during the long week since she’d last seen him. How was that possible? She’d had exactly two conversations with him in seventeen years!
“Mmm,” Tiffany said. “That Luke Harris is some kind of sexy.” She added a predatory growl to her statement that set Sydney’s nerves on edge.
Oh my God, she thought. I’m jealous!
“Need I remind you, dear sister, you’re married,” Maddie said. “Besides, I heard Luke is seeing someone.”
While Sydney bit back a groan, Janey pounced. “Who is he seeing? I’ve never known him to date anyone!”
“That’s not true.” Maddie cast another sly glance at Sydney. “He and Syd went out for years back in high school.”
“Is that so?” Janey said. “Well, you must’ve ruined him for all other women.”
Sydney winced at the teasing comment that struck far too close to home.
She was saved from having to reply when the three sinfully good-looking men ambled over to their table carrying bottles of beer and wearing predatory grins.
Well, two of them were grinning. The third one looked as undone as she felt.
She made an effort to breathe normally as she took in every detail of the white button-down shirt he wore with the sleeves rolled up over strong forearms. Not that she was looking too closely, but he had what looked like a shark’s tooth on a leather string around his neck.
Something about that slash of white against his tanned skin was ridiculously sexy.
Sydney felt a stirring deep inside that she recognized as desire. It’d been so long since she’d felt anything other than devastation that the emotions Luke awakened just by walking toward her were overwhelming, to say the least.
While Mac and Joe said hello to the women and shook hands with Sydney when Maddie introduced them, Luke, being Luke, hung back. Within a minute, Maddie was seated on Mac’s lap, and Joe had dragged Janey off to dance.
“So much for girls’ night out,” Maddie muttered as she leaned into her husband’s loving embrace. “What’ve you done with our son?”
“He’s with my parents,” Mac said with a suggestive wink as he rested a hand on her pregnant belly. “Having a sleepover.”
Maddie flashed him a seductive smile. “Is that so?”
“Uh-huh,” he said, laying a lingering kiss on her.
Sydney was about to escape to the ladies’ room when Luke leaned down to whisper in her ear.
“Dance with me.”