Chapter 7
Reeling from everything Janey had told her, Maddie checked on Thomas one last time in his big new room before heading to the master suite she shared with Mac.
She still wanted to pinch herself to make sure she wasn’t dreaming about living with her own handsome prince in what could only be called a palace compared to the tiny apartment she used to call home.
Mac was already in bed, but he sat up when she came in. The covers fell to his waist, and Maddie took a moment to appreciate his splendid chest. She never got tired of looking at him.
“How is she?”
“Okay.” Maddie released her hair from the bun and shook it loose.
“Don’t forget she’s already had a few days to absorb the blow.
” In the gorgeous new dresser that matched the king-size bed he’d insisted on, Maddie found one of the half-dozen silk nightgowns he’d bought for her the same day they’d gone to the mainland to order furniture.
After a quick trip to their spacious bathroom to change and brush her teeth, she shut off the light and slid into bed next to him.
Like he had every night since the huge bed was delivered, he met her in the middle and wrapped his naked body around her.
Maddie had never known bliss like that which came from sleeping in Mac’s arms every night.
“Can you tell me again why we needed this massive bed when we only use about three feet of it?”
He kissed her bare shoulder, sending goose bumps all the way to her ankles. “When we wake up some morning in the near future surrounded by kids, you’ll know why.” His big hand found her flat stomach and branded her with its heat.
She knew exactly what he was thinking. They’d come close a few times recently to disregarding caution, but so far, caution had prevailed. Maddie turned so she could see him, wishing she could share with him what Janey had told her.
“You’re not going to tell me what my sister said, are you?”
Startled, Maddie met his gaze, astounded as always by how easily he read her. “I. . . ah. . .”
Mac laughed and kissed her. “It’s okay. You girls are allowed to have your secrets.”
“We are?”
“Sure. I know you wouldn’t keep anything monumental from me. We have rules.”
Guilt pinged through her. Yes, they had rules—rules she’d insisted on. But telling Mac what had happened between Janey and Joe would set off an explosion that could ruin a lifelong friendship, not to mention what it might mean for their wedding.
Mac would never understand that Janey had been the aggressor.
He would only see that his best friend had betrayed his trust and taken advantage of his baby sister when she was vulnerable.
She knew him well enough to be certain of how he’d react.
So she said nothing. Instead, she reached for him and kissed him, hoping to get her mind—and his—off what she wasn’t telling him.
“Mmm,” he said against her lips. “I wait all day for this.”
“Me, too. I don’t know how I ever lived without it.”
That seemed to fire his passion as he devoured her with heated kisses, shifted her under him and settled into the valley of her legs. “All this stuff with Janey,” he said, kissing a path from her mouth to her neck to her breasts, “makes me realize how incredibly lucky we are.”
Her fingers burrowed into his soft dark hair, and her legs curled around his hips in encouragement. “We’re so lucky. So very, very lucky.” And she hoped against hope that she wasn’t risking everything by keeping a huge secret from him.
Using both hands, he brushed the hair back from her face and gazed down at her in the milky darkness. “I love you, Madeline.”
Her heart still tripped over itself whenever he looked at her that particular way. “I love you, too.”
He started to reach for a condom, but she stopped him. She told herself it wasn’t guilt that had her wiggling out of the nightgown while keeping him trapped between her legs.
“What’re we doing?” he asked with a bemused expression.
“Throwing caution to the wind.”
“Really?”
She crooked an eyebrow at him. “Are you saying no?”
He started all over again with deep, heated kisses. “I am most definitely not saying no.”
Maddie smiled at him, loving him so desperately.
He threw his head back and moaned. “Oh, man.”
“Good?”
“I won’t last long like this,” he said through gritted teeth.
She slid her hands over his back to clutch his backside. “Then you’d better make it count.”
Mac proceeded to do just that.
Janey lay in bed in Mac’s guestroom trying to decide whether or not she should check the messages David had left in the last few days.
A soft giggle came from the room at the other end of the hallway, and Janey realized her brother was probably making love to his fiancée.
For the first time, Janey had reason to envy her brother’s romantic harmony.
He was happily settled, and she was in the midst of an uproar. Avoiding it wouldn’t make it go away.
With great reluctance, she powered up her phone and dialed into voicemail.
“Hey, babe, it’s me. I’m between patients, but I wanted to totally shock you by saying happy anniversary.
” Janey laughed to herself that he had called her the day after their anniversary.
“You’re shocked, right? I knew it. Thirteen years, can you believe it?
Time flies when you’re having fun. This time next year, we can celebrate together.
Anyway, I just wanted to say I love you, so call me so I can say I love you. ”
The sound of his familiar voice had tears spilling from her eyes. By “between patients,” had he really meant he was between bouts of passionate sex?
She listened to the rest of his messages—increasing concern about where she was, why he couldn’t reach her, and finally, irritation. “I’m going to call your mother if I don’t hear from you within the hour. Where are you?”
Janey had never realized before just how available she’d been to him.
Whenever he had time to call, she’d always been there.
Well, not anymore. Curling into a ball in the comfortable bed, she clutched the pillow tight against the pain of David’s betrayal.
Even days later, the images ran through her mind like a horror movie she could never escape.
If only she hadn’t seen it. But if she hadn’t, he might’ve gotten away with it, and she might’ve married a cheating scumbag.
“Not my David,” she sobbed into the pillow. “How could you do this to me? How could you do this to us?”
In the midst of unbearable pain, Janey longed for Joe’s strong arms, his soft words of comfort, his steady presence.
With the phone still clutched in her fist, she considered calling him, if only to hear his voice.
She thought about it for several minutes before she dismissed the idea as patently unfair.
Before she could consider spending another minute with Joe, she had to put David in the past—literally and emotionally.
She cared for Joe far too much to risk hurting him any further by dragging him onto the roller coaster she faced in the immediate future.
Her stomach ached at the thought of seeing David tomorrow, of confronting him with proof of his infidelity, of calling off their engagement, of canceling their long-planned wedding.
As if she had conjured him straight out of a dream, she heard Joe’s deep, sexy voice telling her she could get through anything, that she was strong and capable and resilient.
He believed in her, and knowing that made it possible to believe in herself.
She would get through this, if for no other reason than he was waiting for her, and she couldn’t wait to find out what they might be together.
Joe tapped on the bar at the Beachcomber, signaling the bartender to bring him another round. He’d lost count of how many boilermakers he’d already consumed. However many, it hadn’t been enough to dull the throbbing ache in his chest that had started the minute Janey walked away from him earlier.
The sexy bartender who always flirted with him quirked a questioning eyebrow. “What’s up with you tonight? You’re hitting it hard.”
“Just supporting the local economy.” He heard the slight slur in his speech and didn’t care.
She poured him a new shot of whiskey and opened another bottle of beer.
He tried to remember her name. Charley. No. Katie. Chelsea! That was it. They’d spent a memorable night together upstairs three or four summers ago, and ever since then, she’d angled for a repeat performance. Those days were over, he reminded himself. Janey had ruined him for other women.
Thinking about her soft skin, her fragrant hair, the small but firm breasts that fit perfectly in the palms of his hands, the exquisite joy of being inside her when she came. . . Joe moaned.
“You okay, Joe?” Chelsea asked, looking at him now with concern etched into her pretty face.
Looking up at her, he was startled to realize he’d moaned out loud.
It wouldn’t do for the owner of the Gansett Island Ferry Company to be seen falling down drunk at the island’s landmark hotel.
He knew that, of course, but it didn’t stop him from downing the new shot in one giant gulp that burned all the way through him.
What sweet relief it was to feel something other than desperate fear that he’d never spend another night with Janey.
After years of wishing and hoping and praying, all his dreams had come true in an unexpected interlude that would haunt him for the rest of his days if it was all he ever had of her.
His heart raced with anxiety at the thought of never being with her again, and his stomach lurched.
If he didn’t get out of there immediately, he was going to be sick all over the bar.
With a gesture for Chelsea to put the drinks on his tab, he tossed a twenty on the bar for her and ran out to the back alley where he was violently ill.
Sweaty and chilled, he leaned against the clapboard building and decided he’d been stupid to think booze would cure what ailed him.
Only one thing could cure him, but he couldn’t have her tonight.
Wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, Joe staggered back inside and up the stairs to the room he kept on the third floor for nights he spent on the island.
This wasn’t one of his regular nights, but he’d missed the last boat back to the mainland.
In his room, Joe studied his haggard reflection in the mirror before splashing cold water on his face and brushing the sour taste from his mouth.
Without bothering to undress, he landed face down in the lumpy bed and slipped into tortured dreams about the one he loved but couldn’t have.
Every time he managed to get his arms around her, she somehow slipped away.
The horrible dance went on all night until he woke with a start to blinding morning sun.
Rolling onto his side, Joe groaned at the inhuman pain in his skull.
Surely agony like this meant that someone had stabbed knives into his forehead and temples while he slept.
He gripped his head to keep it on his neck as he sat up and tried to shake off the horrible dreams. A new surge of nausea had him rushing for the bathroom, where he discovered that whiskey burned even more coming back up than it had on the way down.
He couldn’t remember the last time he’d drunk himself into such a stupor—or the last time he’d had better reason.
A freezing shower snapped him back to life, which also brought him right back to why he’d turned to alcohol in the first place.
Leaning his head against the cool tiles, he yearned for her and called himself six kinds of fool for being so stupid as to make love to her when she wasn’t really his.
He should never have let that happen until she was free and clear to love him the way he loved her.
The one thing the whiskey couldn’t change was the irrefutable fact that he had only himself to blame for his misery.
He turned off the shower, grabbed a towel and scrounged for some clean clothes.
Dressed in khaki shorts, a green Gansett Island Ferry Co.
polo shirt and topsiders, Joe made his way—painfully—down to the gift shop, where he bought three packets of Advil and downed every one of the six pills.
Normally, he’d be face-first in coffee at that hour, but he didn’t think his fragile stomach could handle it.
He gave himself a few minutes to make sure the Advil would stay down before he took the hotel’s front steps to the sidewalk and crossed the street to the ferry landing.
The first boat of the day had just arrived from the mainland, and his staff was hard at work unloading cargo and preparing the next boat.
Off to the side, two of his younger employees engaged in good-natured horseplay while they waited to supervise the loading of the passenger vehicles that were lined up to drive onto the next ferry.
“Hey!” Joe called to the two young men, who immediately froze at the sound of his voice. “I’m not paying you to fool around. Knock it off!”
His unusual outburst caught the attention of all the employees working in the area, but Joe pretended not to notice as he headed for the office. Screw it, he thought. Even the best of bosses was allowed a foul mood every now and then.
“Hey, Joe!”
At the sound of a familiar voice, Joe turned, giving his aching head time to catch up to the sudden movement. His bleary eyes cleared to find David Lawrence coming off the ferry. Joe’s hands rolled into fists.
“I thought that was you.” David extended a hand. “How’s it going?”
Joe in his right mind would’ve reluctantly shaken David’s hand and gone on with his life.
Joe in love with the woman who had cried her heart out over this guy didn’t shake the proffered hand or go on with his life.
Rather, he raised one of those fists and plowed it into the good doctor’s handsome, smiling face.
Now that, Joe thought as David collapsed to the pavement, had been worth getting up for.