Barefoot in the Rain (9 page)

He just lifted one brow, and, for a single, crazy second, she thought he knew exactly who he was talking to. Was that possible? She swallowed hard. Could he really know her, and he’d lied all this time? “Guy?”

He nodded, excited, sniffing a little. “You have one? A memory?”

“How could I?” she asked. “If I just met you?”

“You’re so smart and kind,” he said. “And you’ve been through half my stuff. You did the whole kitchen. The drawers are very neat now, even that junky one with the batteries. Surely you know enough to gift me with one memory.”

“Okay,” she agreed, looking around, taking in the remnants of their lives: a teapot her mother’s friend brought from England, a salt and pepper shaker set painted as Santa and Mrs. Claus, a set of yellowed lace doilies her mother had loved.

The doily.

Somewhere, in her head, a little gold lock turned on a beautiful high-gloss box, an imaginary safety box where she’d tucked away the bad stuff, never to be pulled out and examined again.

Until she had to.

The box opened and there she saw the crystal vase perched on that very doily, stuffed with a vibrant bunch of gladiolas that Mary Jo Bloom had bought at Publix for just $3.99.

“Four bucks,” she’d said with a giggle in her voice to her little girl. “He can’t get too mad about four dollars, can he?”

Her mother had placed the vase on the kitchen table, foot-long stems popping with life and happiness.

“Everyone should have fresh flowers in their life, don’t you think, Joss?”

Jocelyn opened her eyes, barely aware she’d closed them, and stared at the man across the table from her, ignoring the expectant excitement in his eyes and seeing only the anger, the disgust, the self-loathing that he transferred to his family.

“Do you remember the day you came home from work and your wife had fresh flowers on the table, Guy?”

He shook his head slowly. “I’m sorry. What did they look like?”

“They were gladiolas.”

He lifted one of his hunched shoulders. “Don’t know what that is, Missy.”

“They’re long-stemmed, bright flowers,” she explained. “They come in long bunches and they spread out like flowery arms reaching up to the sky, a bunch of
ruffles for petals, in the prettiest reds and oranges you’ve ever seen.”

He gasped, eyes wide, jaw dropped. A memory tweaked?

“You came into the house and saw the flowers…”

“All red and orange? Like long sticks of flowers?” He nodded, excitement growing with each word.

“You wanted to know how much they cost.”

“In a glass vase?” He hadn’t heard her, she could tell, as he pushed back the chair. “I know these flowers. I remember them!”

“Do you remember what happened, Guy?”

He almost toppled the chair getting up, making Jocelyn grip the table in fear. What was he going to do? Reenact the whole scene?

“Wait here,” he said, lumbering out of the room.

Did he want the memory or not? Didn’t he want to know about how he’d picked up that vase, screamed about wasting money, and thrown that bad boy across the linoleum floor, scattering water and flowers and one terrified child who tore under her bed and covered her ears?

You have no right to be happy!

Those were the precise words he’d said to her mother. She could still hear his voice echoing in her head.

“I found it! I found it!”

Just like that little girl, Jocelyn slapped her hands over her ears, squeezing her eyes shut, drowning out the sound of that man hollering.
God damn you, Mary Jo,God damn you.

Why did he hate her so much?

“Look, Missy!”

He slapped a half-finished needlepoint pattern clamped into a round embroidery ring on the table.

“Those are gladiolas,” he said proudly.

The work was awful, no two stitches the same size, loose and knotted threads, but the shape of a tangerine-and peach-colored gladiola was clear, the wide-hole netting made for beginners bearing the design of a bouquet in a glass vase.

“I never could finish it,” he said glumly. “It made me sad.”

“That’s the memory making you sad.”

“It is? What happened?”

She looked at the craft, each little row of stitches so clearly the work of someone who’d labored to pull that silky yarn and follow the simple pattern.

“Does it really matter, Guy?” she asked.

His shoulders slumped, tears forming again. “I just want to know why this makes me so damn sad. Every time I look at these flowers, I want to cry.” A fat drop rolled down his cheek. “Do you know why, Missy?”

Of course she did. “No,” she lied. “I don’t know why they make you sad.”

“ ’Sokay,” he said, patting her hand with thick, liver-spotted fingers, a fresh smile on his face. “Maybe that Nicey lady will help me figure it out when they do the show.”

“Yeah. Maybe she will.”

N
ice work, Palmer.”

Will didn’t look up at the sound of a female voice, barely audible over the scream of his mitre saw. He recognized the voice, though. “Just a sec, Tessa.” Cutting wood this costly required a steady hand and a completely focused brain, and, shit, he’d been fighting for both of those since he’d left Guy’s house a few hours ago.

When he finished cutting the plank, he shut off the saw and shoved his safety goggles onto his head, meeting his visitor’s gaze as she stood in the doorway of Casa Blanca’s largest villa, Bay Laurel.

“You like?” he asked, gesturing to the one-quarter of the living-area floor he’d managed to nail down.

“I do.” She raised her bright red sports water bottle in a mock toast. “This must be the astronomically expensive
African wood that Clay’s been talking about for two months, right?”

He grinned. “I picked it up on Friday.” Grabbing his own water and a bandanna to wipe the sweat from his forehead, he paused to admire the wood he’d laid so far. Scary thing was, he didn’t remember leveling or nailing half those planks. His head was not in the game. But the wood was gorgeous, perfectly grained and beautifully stained. “Bay Laurel’s going to be spectacular when it’s done.”

“As nice as Rockrose?” Tessa asked. “I saw it last night all finished for the first time.”

“Yeah, I understand we have our first guest.” He picked up the freshly cut plank, dusted off the sawed edge, and rounded his cutting table to return to the floor.

She nodded. “Small world, isn’t it?”

He threw her a look as he passed, trying—and failing—to read the expression on a face he’d gotten to know pretty well in the months they’d both worked at Casa Blanca.

“Sure seems that way,” he said, laying the board so he could get the blind nailer on top of it and start hammering.

Tessa stepped over the new wood, getting her footing on the underlayment that hadn’t been covered yet, and settled into a corner of the room like she was ready to chat.

Not that unusual; they’d had plenty of conversations about the resort, her gardens, the other construction workers when someone irritated them. But he knew that she knew—no, he didn’t know what she knew.

And that made everything awkward.

He kneed the nailer against the board and waited to let her set the direction and tone of the conversation.

“So you and Jocelyn were next-door neighbors.”

So
that
would be the direction and tone.

“Moved in next door when we were both ten,” he confirmed, scooping up the soft-headed dead-blow hammer to start nailing the flooring. This was a critical plank, part of a decorative band of darker wood that offset the shape of the room, an idea he’d had and really wanted to make perfect to impress Clay.

He’d have a better shot at perfection if he wasn’t nailing at the same time he was having this conversation.

But Tessa sipped her water and watched, not going anywhere.

He raised his hammer just as she asked, “Were you two close?”

He swung and missed the fucker completely.

“Sorry,” she said sheepishly. “I didn’t know it was like batting.”

“It’s nothing like batting,” he said, shifting his knee on the pad and looking over at her. “And, yeah, we were good friends.” The next question burned, and he couldn’t help himself. “She never mentioned me?”

Tessa looked at him for a beat too long, a lock of wavy brown hair falling from her bright-yellow work bandanna, her soft brown eyes narrowed on him. She never wore makeup, he’d noticed, not even for employee parties or barbecues at Lacey and Clay’s place. But her eyes were always bright and clear, probably from all those vitamins and organic crap she ate.

“No,” she said simply. “Not once.”

He nodded and raised the hammer again. This time he hit it direct and hard, a satisfying vibration shooting up his arm.
Not once
.

Why would she mention him? He’d never even called to find out where she was, if she made it to college, how she made it to college.
Not once.
And she’d never called him, either. He’d stopped waiting sometime around the middle of his first baseball season, a mix of relief and loss dogging him like a yearlong dry spell at the plate.

“I remember when Lacey was fighting for the permits to build Casa Blanca last year, I saw Jocelyn,” he said, remembering how he’d practically jumped her before she’d shot out of the town hall. “And another girl was there with you, a blonde.”

“That was Zoe Tamarin. The three of us were in a triple dorm room. Lacey was the resident adviser. Zoe’s here, too, by the way. She flew in last night and is staying at my house.”

“Really? College reunion or something?”

She screwed up her face like he was clueless. “Jocelyn’s in trouble,” she said, the words sending a weird punch in his chest. “The four of us are really tight. When someone has a problem, like Lacey did last year or Jocelyn does now, we rally.”

“That’s… nice.” So she’d found another safety net when he was out of the picture. He wasn’t sure how that made him feel, but the next hammer swing was even harder.

“How close were you two?” she asked.

“Maybe you should ask her.”

She snorted softly. “You don’t know her very well, do you?”

“Funny, I was just thinking that. I don’t really know her much at all anymore.”

“Well, she’s not the most, uh, forthcoming person. She’s very private.”

She’d always played things close to the vest, but not with him. She had been open with him. But that was so long ago. He slid the nailer along the wood plank and nestled it into place, then raised the dead-blow hammer again.

“You don’t think she had an affair with that Thayer guy, do you?” she asked just as he swung.

God damn it, he missed again.

“Sorry, Will.”

He closed his eyes, silently accepting the apology and delaying his response.

“Do you?” she asked again.

“I haven’t thought much about it.” Which was pretty much an out-and-out lie. He’d thought plenty about it when he heard it on TV and still had the damn tabloid in his truck.

“Well, she didn’t,” she said. “It’s all lies.”

“Then why doesn’t she say something to shut up all these yapping reporters?”

She took a sip of water. “In true Jocelyn fashion, she won’t say. But I know her and I can assure you, she’s caught in the middle of something that is unfair and untrue.”

“That’s a shame.” And he meant it. She’d had enough crap in her life. “Good that she can ride it out here in Barefoot Bay.”

“Well, she does have her dad here, but…” Her voice trailed off. “Do you know him?”

That one came in like a curveball, low and slow and totally unexpected. Good thing he caught curveballs for a living once.

He hammered a few times, thinking. How much had
Jocelyn told her friends? Any other woman, he’d guess everything. Jocelyn wasn’t any other woman, though. And how much did she want known? Probably nothing.

“I live in my parents’ old house, right next door to him, so, yeah, I know Guy Bloom.”

Tessa inched forward, interest sparking in her eyes. “What’s he like?” When he didn’t answer, she added, “I’m not prying or anything, it’s just that she doesn’t talk about him much. At all, really.”

He slammed the last nail and leaned back on his haunches to survey the board before pulling out his level.

“He’s old,” he said, doubting that was giving away any state secrets. “Not real healthy. I, you know, keep an eye on him now and then.” Like every morning, afternoon, and night.

“Nice of you.”

He shot her a look. “Decent and humane. I’d do it for anyone, any old man living next door.”

“Whoa.” She held up a hand and smiled. “I just said it’s nice, Will.”

Puffing out a breath, he let his backside fall onto the underlayment, shaking his head, words bubbling that he just had to fight.

“What is it?” she asked.

“Look, she’s private, you just said so. I don’t want to speak out of school.”

“Will, we all want to help her,” she said, leaning forward. “We love her. But last time she was here and probably this time, too, she won’t go anywhere near that part of Mimosa Key. She refuses to go south of Center.”

“Well, she’s south of Center right this minute.”

“What’s she doing there? I thought she was shopping.”