Chapter 5
“Here.” Will offered his hand to help Julie out of the rowboat.
“Thanks.” She took his hand, but this time, she didn’t get that wild sense of excitement growing inside her from touching him. Julie gratefully splashed down into the shallow water on the shore.
Will kept hold of her hand for a moment. “I’m going to stay out here and talk to Dylan for a bit,” he said quietly.
“Sounds good.” When he let go of her hand, she trudged through the sand toward the back door of Dylan and Stacey’s house.
“Julie!” Carol exclaimed. She was seated at the table with a big tray of cut cookies in front of her. “You’re back already.”
“And just in time to help us decorate these cookies.” Stacey pulled out an extra chair. “I’ll get some more icing bags.”
“Aren’t Vivian and Elijah helping?” Julie asked. Decorating cookies had always been something that Molly had done with her, at least until she was in high school.
“They did for a little while, but they got bored pretty quickly and went upstairs to add more items to their wish lists. Do you want to do trees or Santas?”
“Trees,” Julie answered quickly. Santas only made her think of Will, and she doubted the cookies were cut to look like muscular guys in tight pants.
“So,” Carol pressed, giving Julie a cheeky sideways glance. “How did it go?”
“Fine,” Julie choked out. She hadn’t been certain what to think of Will all along, and now she was even less sure.
“Fine?” Carol echoed. She put down her icing bag and looked at her daughter. “Stacey, you’ve known Julie longer than I have. Does her ‘fine’ sound like ‘not fine’ to you? Because it does to me.”
“I’m afraid so,” Stacey agreed as she slid a pan of cookies in front of her friend. “What happened?”
Julie sighed as she tried to figure out how to start. “It was pretty great at first. He showed me around his boat, which was a lot nicer than I expected. He redid the whole interior himself and even has a bed that folds down from the wall.”
“A man who knows how to make his own bed is never a bad thing,” Carol said with a wink. “I always preferred the messing it up part, myself.”
“Oh, Mother.” She flung a tiny cloud of confectioner’s sugar at Carol. “Go on, Julie.” Stacey started work on the Santas herself, filling in their beards with white icing.
“We were having a really good time. Provincetown was so cute and quaint, and we did a little shopping. Will was really being sweet, and I thought maybe I was wrong about pinning him as the bad boy type.” A guy who bought a candle just because it smelled like her surely couldn’t be that bad at heart, right?
“Then these three guys showed up at the pizza place we were at. They basically said we’d better get out of there and never show up again, or they were going to kick Will’s ass. ”
“Hm.” Stacey finished with the white icing and set the piping bag down. She looked interested but not nearly as concerned as Julie thought she’d be. “Who were these guys?”
“I asked him that once we were back on his boat. He just said they were the Malones and that he hadn’t seen them in a long time, but he didn’t seem like he really wanted to talk about it.
” It’d already bothered her to know that someone was after him, and the biggest guy’s threat that he’d better not see Will again seemed like a genuine one.
But Will’s resistance to explain it all to her didn’t make her feel any better.
“The Malones,” Carol echoed. “I don’t think I’ve ever heard of them.” She picked up a cookie shaped like a snowman and bit its head off.
“Mom, we’re supposed to be decorating these for the party, not eating them,” Stacey reminded her.
“Someone needs to do a little taste testing,” Carol defended.
“Anyway,” Stacey said pointedly, “I don’t think I’ve heard mention of the Malones, either. But Will and all his brothers have lived their whole lives here. They could be just about anyone. Did anything else happen?”
“No. That pretty much ended it all there. Will looked like a volcano about to erupt, like he really wanted to do something about it, but he didn’t.
I don’t know if that was because of me or something else.
” Julie realized she hadn’t iced a single cookie and picked up a bag of green icing.
Her hands were unsteady as she tried to trace the outline of the cookie.
“Mm, a fight to defend your honor,” Carol swooned. “That sounds exciting!”
“Exciting is what I thought I might get out of Will,” Julie replied.
She hadn’t intended to be so blunt about it, but it was the truth.
“Excitement, fun, adventure, all of that sounds great, especially compared to the snoozy guys I usually end up dating. I could tell Will was outgoing right from the start.”
“Most people would have to be drunk as hell to wear an outfit like he did the other day,” Stacey agreed.
“But this was over the line for me,” Julie continued.
“I don’t need someone who’s actually dangerous or might put me in danger because of his connections.
I kept looking behind us on the way back to the boat, convinced one of those big guys was going to jump out.
It really freaked me out, and it makes me wonder what else Will has going on that I’d need to be concerned about if there was going to be any kind of relationship. ”
“Okay. So we’ve established you’re not just interested in a roll in the hay,” Carol pointed out.
Apparently, this was just a conversation for being blunt, but Julie was glad.
Beating around the bush wasn’t going to get her anywhere.
“I’m not saying we have to get married. Goodness knows I’ve already messed that up before.
But a relationship? Yeah. That’s more my style.
I’m just not sure if Will fits into it.”
Stacey had started on the red icing for the Santa suits. “You know, Will has changed quite a bit since I first met him.”
“Yeah?”
“Oh, yeah. If you think he’s rough around the edges right now, you should’ve seen him before. Damn.” She spilled a little icing off the cookie and onto the tray. “He’s actually softened up quite a bit.”
“Hm.” Julie stared down at her tray of cookies.
Usually, she’d be glad to help with such a task, but right now, her motivation was shot.
She was tired in body and in soul. That encounter with the Malones had scared the shit out of her.
Julie was used to a safe world where the biggest worry was a computer virus.
Annoying, yes, but not something that would put her in actual, physical danger.
“I don’t know. It might be too much. I have to keep Molly in mind, anyway. ”
“Do you?” Carol challenged. “She’s away at college. I know her legal address is still the same as yours, but how much longer will that be the case?”
Julie frowned, blinking rapidly to keep tears from forming.
It was so hard to let go, even when it was time.
“I don’t know. She’s already talked about getting a place with her friends when she comes back to finish school here.
Even if she moves out, though, I still have to be careful about who I bring around.
I mean, she’s my daughter. It’s my job to keep her safe. ”
Carol, laying all her jokes aside for the moment, reached across the table and put her hand on Julie’s.
“Of course it is. I just want you to consider that you’re coming into a time in your life when you can finally think of yourself first. You’ve gotten past all the diaper changes, field trips, dances, and back to school shopping.
It’s not an easy transition, and it’s harder than people ever think it will be to start living for yourself instead of someone else. ”
Now a tear did escape Julie’s eye. It ran down her cheek and splashed onto the cookie she’d been working on. “I guess that one’s mine now,” she laughed thickly. “Thank you, Carol. It’s good to hear that from someone who’s been through it.”
“I’m here for you, dear. We both are. Only you can decide if Will is worth pursuing, but I just wouldn’t want you to give up for the wrong reasons.” Carol patted her hand and smiled.
Stacey put her arm around her friend. “The one thing I can tell you is that I wouldn’t support you hanging out with Will if I didn’t think he was a safe person. The two of you are very different, but overall, he’s a decent guy. He’s changed a lot since I’ve known him.”
“So you think I should give him a chance?” Julie asked.
“It’s up to you,” Stacey said with a shrug, “but yeah. I think it could be worth it.”
“I might’ve gotten in my head a bit about the whole thing today,” Julie admitted.
She’d been feeling a resistance to Will all along, but her attraction to him was much stronger.
It’d be silly to let one little incident drive her off so quickly, and she had to admit that he’d behaved himself even if the Malones hadn’t known how. “We’ll just have to see what happens.”