Chapter 20
“Mommy, Mommy, help me!” Zoey flung herself against Maggie’s legs. “The tickle monster’s gonna get me!”
Maggie set the plates in the sink and swept her daughter into her arms just as Josh appeared in the doorway, crouched, fingers
wiggling menacingly. “I have come to tickle the girl child!”
Zoey let out an ear-piercing scream and buried her head in Maggie’s shoulder. “Run, Mommy!”
Maggie sent Josh a mock scowl. “This is how you get her ready for bed?”
“The girl child is in her sleep clothes,” he growled.
When Zoey peeked at Josh, he wiggled his fingers and snarled, inducing another squeal.
“She’ll never get to sleep after you’ve wound her up, you know.”
“I’m not winding her up. I’m wearing her out.”
“We’ll see about that. How about you put the tickle fingers away and find a nice quiet book to read her.”
Zoey scrambled down. “I want the giraffe book!” she called as she ran toward her room.
“How many pages does it have?” he called after her.
“Two million fourteen hundred zillion!”
He met Maggie’s gaze. “Seems excessive.”
“Yeah. Good luck with that.” She snapped a dish towel at him.
A threatening expression came over his face as he wielded his tickle fingers and let out a snarl.
Maggie pointed a finger at him. “Don’t you dare.”
He lifted a brow, inching closer.
“Josh.”
“That schoolteacher tone doesn’t work on me.”
“We have work to do and it’s getting late. Plus, I’ll tell your mom you sneaked out of the house for that Nickelback concert
senior year.”
He leaned back. “You wouldn’t.”
“Try me.”
“You’d ruin a mother’s perception of her perfect angel-child?”
“In a heartbeat.”
“Uncle Josh, I found the giraffe book! Come read to me and turn on my princess light.”
“Magic word,” Maggie called.
“Please!”
Josh studied Maggie, narrowing his eyes. “You’re just lucky I have a date with a cute little four-year-old right now.” He
turned to go.
She snapped him in the seat with the towel.
He whipped around, fingers wiggling.
She screamed, leaped behind a chair.
But he was already heading toward Zoey’s room, laughter ringing out.
***
Josh leaned over Maggie’s shoulder as he homed in on the laptop. Will’s job application sat on her lap. A list of articles and social media accounts dominated the screen. “It’s hard to tell which ones are him and which ones might be some other Will Jennings.”
“Also, there are multiple entries for William Jennings.”
“He put Will on his application, but I guess that doesn’t mean that’s his full name. Try enclosing his name and location in
quotation marks.” They’d already found his Facebook account, but he’d only posted two pictures and hadn’t filled in any information
on his About page. He didn’t seem to be on any other social media sites.
Maggie ran another search. “There, that’s better. This one has a picture.” She clicked on it and a photo of Will wearing a
basketball uniform appeared.
“Wow, he was all-state.”
“And he attended John T. Hoggard High School.”
“That might be helpful.”
She opened more web pages, but either they were dead ends or they couldn’t be certain if it was the right Will. “I’d love
to find his mother’s name. You might recognize it.”
“Maybe we can get access to his senior yearbook. His parents’ names might be in there.”
“Do they put yearbooks online these days?”
“Only one way to find out.”
As she typed into the search window, Josh became aware of the way his arm pressed against hers. She smelled like sunshine
and coconut—she always had. The image of her in that modest red suit flared in his mind. He’d seen her in a swimsuit a million
times before—at swim meets, at the beach, at Erin’s—and managed to keep his eyes and thoughts where they belonged. Mostly.
But she wasn’t married to his brother anymore and he was this close to telling her how he felt. The sweet recollection of that kiss they’d shared washed over him, bringing every cell to life. He’d relived every second of that kiss a thousand times. Dissected each glance, each touch, each sweep of her lips. The memory was as worn as a well-read love letter and just as treasured. There had to be something here, didn’t there, for her to have kissed him that way?
Except she’d probably been pretending he was Ethan.
The thought sluiced him like a bucket of cold water.
“Not finding it,” she said. “I don’t think they have them online. We could always try the school later.”
He forced his thoughts back to the task at hand. “What about those sites that find people?”
“We can try, but I think you have to pay for a membership.”
Maggie put Will’s information into one of those sites and waited as the search engine took its time downloading its findings.
“So what’s he like? Did you talk to him much?”
“He’s nice. Ambitious. He’ll be a good addition to my crew—and it’ll give me a chance to know him better.”
“If we come up empty here, you can always fish for information.”
“I’d rather learn as much as we can online, even if it does make me feel like a stalker. I don’t want to be weird with him
and make him suspicious.”
“Sure.” The downloading finally stopped and a box came up. “They want money. Let’s try a different one.”
“I can always pay for a membership and cancel it later.”
“Let’s see if we can get around it first.”
A few minutes later she found a site that gave away a bit of information for free. “Look, this is definitely the right Will.
It lists his phone number and there’s a woman’s name associated with him.”
“Robyn Jennings. She’s about the right age to be his mother.”
Maggie clicked on her name. “It’s her. Same address. Does the name sound familiar?”
Robyn Jennings. His dad had done his fair share of work talk around the house when he was growing up. But the name didn’t ring a bell. He
shook his head. “Not at all. Let’s run a search on her.”
“Maybe there’ll be more information on her. She’ll have lived a little more life than a nineteen-year-old kid.”
“Plus her name’s not as common.”
“Let’s see what we can find out.” Maggie keyed in her name and city, then hit Return, and a page of sources turned up. “There’s
a Robyn Jennings who works at Novant.” She clicked on the link and they scanned the hospital’s article.
The one sentence including her name made Josh’s heart sink. “She’s an RN. That would put her in the same field as my dad.
They might’ve worked together.”
“We don’t even know for sure this is her. Look, there’s another Robyn Jennings who works for a gallery downtown.” Maggie clicked
on the link and a photo appeared with a caption listing the women pictured.
Josh pointed at the woman in the middle. “Can’t be the right Robyn. She looks younger than us.”
“You’re right.” Maggie went back to the source page and began scrolling as they scanned the links. “Most of these refer to
the nurse.”
“Well, let’s click on them one by one and see what we can glean.”
It was a long, tedious process. Most of the articles were from the hospital’s website or medical newsletters and brochures.
She’d attended NC State and worked for at least two hospitals and an OB practice. Finally, the Novant Health directory turned
up a photo.
“There she is,” Maggie said.
Josh leaned closer. Robyn Jennings’s straight blonde hair framed a smiling face. She possessed deep-set blue eyes and an inviting
expression.
“Recognize her?”
“No.” He frowned. “If this is a current photo, she’s a lot younger than Dad. Maybe midforties?”
“It lists her as on staff so the photo is probably current. Would she have even been in medicine that long ago?”
“Let’s say she’s forty-three. Will is nineteen so she would’ve had him at twenty-four. Old enough to have completed her schooling
and have her license.”
“Will’s got her blue eyes.”
He cut her a look. “Or my dad’s. When I was interviewing Will, we got off topic for a bit and he laughed. Maggie, it sounded
so much like my dad’s laugh, it was eerie.”
Maggie pressed a hand to his. “This must be so hard.”
“I don’t want to believe it. But the evidence is stacking up.” Josh returned to the photo. When he’d learned Will’s age, he’d
done some math. At the time of Will’s birth, Josh would’ve been fourteen and finished with his treatment for lymphoma. But
nine months earlier, at the time of Will’s conception, Josh would’ve been in the throes of treatment. Could his dad, in the
midst of that ordeal, have turned to a colleague for comfort?
Maggie shook her head. “Your dad just turned sixty-five. That would’ve made him forty-six when Will was born. I can’t imagine
him hooking up with anyone, much less a woman twenty years his junior.”
Neither could Josh. But every time he saw Will, he was taken aback by his resemblance to Ethan. “And yet that scenario happens
so often it’s a cliché.” And the more he thought about it, the more it bugged him that his dad was so absent during his sickness.
And a little distant even when he was present. Why hadn’t Josh noticed that before?
Maggie’s cell phone buzzed. She dug for it and checked the screen. “Sorry, I have to take this.”
“Sure.”
She handed him the laptop and headed toward the French doors. “Hello?”
“Yes, hi...” Her melodic laughter sounded as she opened the door and slipped out into the night. “Sounds about right.”
She was talking to a man—he could tell by the soft quality in her voice. She hadn’t closed the door but the roar of the surf
made her words unintelligible.
As far as Josh knew, she hadn’t been seeing anyone back home. Had she met someone here in Seabrook? She hadn’t even been here
a month, but Maggie was an attractive woman. She’d never had trouble drawing male attention.
Or maybe she’d reconnected with an old friend from high school. She didn’t have an old boyfriend—Ethan had been her one and
only—but that didn’t mean some of her male friends hadn’t been interested. It wasn’t hard to believe she’d made contact with
one of them. Would she have mentioned it to Josh?
As she continued her conversation, she leaned on the deck railing, her hair fluttering in the breeze.
He was letting his imagination run away from him. For all he knew the caller was a colleague or something.
On summer break?
Maggie was a friendly person. She had male friends.
Her laughter carried over the sound of the surf and jealousy pricked.
She straightened and wandered back inside. “All right, sounds good.” Another laugh. “No, I won’t... All right. Talk to
you later then.” She pocketed her phone, closed the door, and returned to the couch.
Was it his imagination, or were her cheeks flushed?
He tried for a neutral expression. “Who was that?”
“Oh, just someone my mom knows. You know how she is.”
He arched a brow and went for playful. “She’s setting you up with a man?”
Maggie rubbed her neck. “Well... she’s trying to. I’m just humoring her.”
“Sounds like he is too.” The strain had crept into his voice.
Maggie’s gaze sharpened on him.
Even though jealousy now spread through his veins, he flashed a sardonic grin. “Mother knows best?”
“Hardly. But Derrick seems nice enough. We agreed to chat again, that’s all. Believe me, having my mother’s recommendation
is an automatic red flag. He has an uphill battle and doesn’t even know it.” Maggie reclaimed the laptop and typed something
into the search engine. “Find anything else?”
“Um, no.” Hopefully she wouldn’t notice the screen still displayed the same page as when she’d stepped away.
She hit Enter and a new search popped up.
Why was he so caught off guard by the call? She’d told him she was ready to date again. That’s why he’d decided it was time
to tell her how he felt. Ask for a chance. If he didn’t do it soon, some other guy would swoop in and win her heart—and no
way was he going through that again. He’d wanted to put all this stuff with Will to rest first, but he wouldn’t risk losing
Maggie for good.
Either he’d get a chance with her or he’d sell his business and take that job at the Charleston Yacht Club. The manager had
given him till August 1 to decide. Big D would be happy to take over Island Tours and he could keep his crew intact. The new
job was good money and would put plenty of distance between him and Maggie. It would also put more miles between him and his
family. It wasn’t the option he was rooting for.
He watched her in his peripheral vision, his heart thumping in his chest as he tried to form the words. He’d planned a million times what he’d say, but he couldn’t seem to pull up a thing at the moment. He just had to say it. Get it out there.
He placed a hand over hers on the keyboard.
She looked at him, a question in her eyes.
“Maggie, there’s something I—”
“Mommy!” Zoey called from her bedroom. “I don’t feel good!”
Maggie smiled at him. “Hold that thought.”
His breath escaped in a huff as Maggie went to check on her daughter.
He used the distraction to construct a few meaningful sentences. He wouldn’t tell her he’d been in love with her for years.
It made him seem pathetic and the shame of it still ate at him. Besides, there was no sense in scaring her off. She’d likely
be distressed enough at the thought of dating her former brother-in-law. Of what his parents might think. One thing at a time.
He’d just ask if she was open to the idea of giving them a chance.
But a few minutes later the unmistakable sound of retching came up the hall, putting all thoughts of the conversation on hold.