Barefoot in White (Barefoot Bay Brides) (14 page)

“I guess that means you’ll have to be very involved,” Ari said. “And spending a lot of time with Nick.”

Willow slowly put the pepper slices on top of her salad, considering just what that would mean. “If I do, he’s going to want me to help him with this book, I just know it.”

“She’s his muse,” Gussie explained to Ari.

“Do you want that job?” Ari asked.

Willow gnawed at her lip, thinking about it. “I’d love to help him, and he obviously has some stuff from the war he needs to get over, but should I?” She looked at her friends, wishing they had the answer…except they both didn’t know the extent of the question.

“Because you’re scared you’ll get hurt again?” Gussie asked.

Yes and no. “I guess I’m afraid that if I help him face his past, he’s going to make me face my own.”

Ari gave a slow smile. “Oh, I love when the universe does its magical things.” She reached into the salad bowl and stole a fresh pepper, biting it with a gleam in her eyes. “You can’t do anything but sit back and enjoy the ride.”

* * *

After he ran, Nick did a hundred push-ups, three hundred crunches, and held a plank for as long as it took to listen to Z-Train’s live version of
My Sweet Ambrosia
. And he still had energy to burn. After writing until two A.M., he wasn’t sure what kind of juice he was running on, but it felt good.

Creative juice
. That’s what it was. Ever since Willow left yesterday, he’d been swimming in the stuff. He’d written until his fingers felt like they were going to fall off—well, he’d rewritten, more accurately.

It hadn’t been easy at first. He had to stew about her advice for a while, stare at the pages and rationalize why she was wrong, but then…he went back over some of the scenes where he’d introduced the character of Christina.

Two things happened. He wrote fast and furious, and when he went to sleep, instead of dreaming about a sultry brunette with a risky streak, his mind was on a willowy blonde with a wry smile and the inability to look away when he stripped.

So maybe she was right. And kind of an inspiration, because when he woke up, all he wanted to do was write more…and have Willow read it.

On his bed, his cell buzzed, making him hope it was her. But when he looked at the screen, a different kind of happiness hit. Damn, he needed this call, too.

“Trew Blue,” he said, forgoing a standard greeting for his closest friend, Lieutenant Jason Trew. “How’s it hanging, bro?”

“Low and long, my man.” Jason Trew’s voice echoed with his signature sense of joy, an unwavering belief that all the shit in the world didn’t matter as long as you had friends who had your back.

Trew had sure had Nick’s back when that IED blew. If it hadn’t been for Trew’s reflexes and willingness to take a chance, Nick would have lost a lot more than his hearing. Most likely a limb…or his life.

“Where are you?” Nick asked, closing his eyes to imagine where his platoon could be now. No way of knowing. He was out of the loop.

“Some fucking hellhole near water.”

Nick snorted, getting a lot from that non-answer. First, Trew wasn’t at liberty to say, even to another SEAL teammate. Second, it was out of nearly land-locked Iraq. Third, it was somewhere hot. Hot for action or hot in the air, but hot. He didn’t need to know much more.

“Staying out of trouble?” Nick asked, knowing that despite the casual nature of the question, Trew would know it was quite serious.

“We could use you, Nicky. Your sub is kind of a dick. How the hell’s your ear?”

Nick lifted his left hand to touch the ear, a sickening drop in his stomach. “No change as far as I can tell.”

“Damn it, really? When are you coming back?”

His whole body literally ached with the desire to answer that question with “soon.” But that would have been a lie, and he knew it.

“Not cleared yet.” Because he was still deaf in one ear. “Doc wants to give it more time.”

He heard Trew’s exhale of frustration. “Ah, that blows.”

“No shit. But I’m alive, man.”

Trew barely grunted. “Anybody talking about the next move for you?”

“Not yet.” But it was only a matter of time until the Navy made a decision about what to do with him. He hadn’t had enough combat experience to do much training, but he might work at the SEAL prep school or some other desk job. Until he could hear an insurgent sneaking up on him, he wasn’t going back into action, that was for sure. And he missed it. A lot.

“In the meantime, I’m here doing your dirty work, my man.” Nick went for light, but it might not have come out that way.

“It doesn’t suck, right?”

“Hell, no, it doesn’t suck.”

“You don’t hate it there, do you?” Jason sounded anxious to be reassured about the MOH stand-in duty and, hell, that was the least Nick could do.

“On the contrary,” Nick assured him. “And, look, don’t think I don’t know why you cooked up this whole ‘my sister needs a companion’ deal. I know why you did it.”

“You
know
?”

Nick laughed softly that Trew could be so naive. “Of course I know.” Medical leaves brought bad, bad mind-sets, that much was common knowledge. When a SEAL was less than two years out of BUD/S training and finally deployed and making a difference, a medical leave was a huge setback, and Trew knew it was no different in Nick’s case. A lot of guys never really got out of the hospital bed, at least not figuratively. Some of them stayed so wasted that they couldn’t get up.

There was a long silence, then Trew asked, “And you’re not pissed? ’Cause I really thought you’d beat the shit out of me when you found out why I asked you to go there.”

Beat the shit out of him? Why? “For sending me to a first-class resort on the beach?” He snorted softly. “First of all, I do appreciate the concern, though you had nothing to worry about with me. But I am trying to get…something accomplished. And this place…” He glanced around the room that had somehow become a cocoon of creativity for him, to the window that faced the heartbreaking view of the bay.

“What about it?”

“It’s good, man,” Nick said in a masterstroke of understatement. “It’s working. In fact, I decided to stay for a month.”

“Get out! That’s awesome, except I’d rather you were here.”

“Me, too, man, but this is”—different, if not better—“fine.” He couldn’t resist adding the truth. “Place is crawling with tail, Blue.”

“Excellent. Anything in particular?”

“One.” He closed his eyes and pictured Willow. “Blond, blue-eyed, hot.”

“Different for you.”

They both knew he meant Charlotte. Jason Trew was the only SEAL on the team who knew about Nick’s budding relationship with the embedded journalist. And even he didn’t know the real truth about Charlotte’s death, but he knew what it had done to Nick.

“She is different,” Nick mused, his brain firmly on the present and not the past. “And I knew her in college.”

“Seriously? In California? How the hell did that happen?”

“Someone up there loves me, I guess.” He grinned and paced the room. “And I’m not complaining.”

“Is she a guest?”

“No, no, she’s the wedding planner working for your sister.”

“
What
?” The word came sharp through the phone, a jab of shock.

Nick laughed. “Is that against the wedding rules or something?”

“Nick, you can’t tell her. Holy shit, you can
not
tell her. Misty will fucking kill me.”

What the hell was he talking about? “Tell her what? That I’m your stand-in? Too late, man. I told her everything. She knows you were supposed to be here, but I’m here instead. Misty explained that you and she had this planned since you were kids.”

All he heard was a light choke of disbelief.

“Why the hell can’t she know that?”

“Not
that
,” Trew said. “The whole reason why you’re there.”

Nick stopped pacing, dropping onto the bed to process what his friend was saying. And it still didn’t make sense. “Which would be…what?”

Trew swore softly.

“What?” Nick demanded again.

“Man, I gotta talk to Misty. Is she there?”

“No, she left. I think she went back to New York. Why do you have to talk to her?”

Jason Trew, normally a talkative bastard, was dead silent. In the background, all Nick could hear was the ambient sounds of the mess hall.

“What the hell is going on, Blue?”

“I’ll, um, I’ll tell you after I talk to Misty. Did you tell her you know this wedding planner chick? Does she realize that?”

“Yeah. What difference does it make?”

“Oh, none, I guess. I gotta book. They’re haulin’ us out of here, and I didn’t get any chow. We’ll talk soon.”

He thought about pushing for an explanation, but whatever was gnawing at Trew’s ass didn’t matter. God only knew when they’d talk again, but when they did, his friend would probably tell him it was some stupid thing about catching the bouquet that he thought would piss Nick off. “You stay in one piece out there, Blue.”

When he hung up, he forgot about the weird conversation as soon as he turned on his laptop. Instead, he let the familiar clatter of the mess hall work as background music in his head while he wrote for three solid hours. He was on fire.

Chapter Twelve

Willow was about to hit send on the email to Jill Peyton, sending pictures of Chef Ian and Tessa’s “matched set” of twins they’d successfully recruited for the wedding party, when her email dinged with a new message. Tempted to ignore it, she glanced at the window that didn’t quite offer a beachfront view, but the soft golden light told her that it was sunset on Barefoot Bay, and she wanted to get out to enjoy it if at all possible.

Maybe a certain resort guest would be out there watching that same sunset on the beach. She hadn’t seen Nick since she’d left his villa yesterday, and her whole body hummed with a need to change that, pronto. She might not have seen him, but she sure as heck thought about him a lot.

She sent the email and clicked over to her in-box, a tightening in her belly at the name. Misty Trew. And the subject line. NEED HELP ASAP!

Willow took a sniff of the air. Trouble, trouble, trouble. She opened the note, her eyes shuttering at the sheer length of it, not to mention the ridiculous overuse of exclamation points! After every sentence! Which were not so much sentences as commands!

The very last bullet point was a note that the preliminary guest list was attached and that they should immediately start assigning rooms and villas for the guests with stars next to their names.

Willow’s heart did a roller-coaster dip. From the moment Misty had revealed that she knew Willow’s mother, this seemed inevitable. Would her mother be here for the wedding? A hot burst of fear mixed with dread and topped with a great big dollop of anything-but-Ona splashed in Willow’s stomach at the thought.

She looked at the attachment, but didn’t actually open it. How long did she think she could actually avoid her mother?

Long. She’d managed to do so for three years, a feat that had been remarkably easy. Ona was always busy, always traveling, always late, always surrounded by important, beautiful, powerful,
skinny
people who did exactly as she wanted.

Like Misty.

Oh, boy. Willow dropped back against her chair, that hot feeling of dread melting into something even uglier. Wasn’t she above being jealous at this point in her life? Not that she envied Misty her reed-thin body, cover girl looks, or her job in front of the camera. But…weren’t those the very things that caused Willow’s constant sense that she was a disappointment to her mother? Willow with the body that embarrassed Ona. And Willow with the looks that favored her father and not her magazine-cover mother. And Willow who was openly disdainful of modeling as a career choice.

Obviously, Misty and Ona would have all those common bonds where Willow and Ona had nothing but…arguments and anger and the inability to ever see things through the other person’s eyes.

Misty probably agreed with everything that control freak demanded. Hell, they had the same personality. Was
that
what was eating at her with this client? Because it really felt a lot like the green monster was chewing at her insides.

Her finger lingered over the mouse button, ready to click. What if Ona and Donny Zatarain’s names
were
on the guest list? What would that mean, other than Willow would have to see her parents in a month?

She opened the list, not really surprised at how tight her throat was, but kind of shocked by how short the list was. Fewer than fifteen names. Misty had said a small wedding, but even by “intimate” Barefoot Bay wedding standards, this was tiny. Still, her gaze went straight to the bottom. Yardley was the last name. No Z’s. No Zatarains.

A slow exhale of pure relief escaped as she stared at the space under the last name.

“You’re so intense when you work.”

Her head shot up at the words, making her turn to the door with a soft inhale of surprise. And delight. Forget the sunset. The sight of Nick Hershey filling her office doorway was as glorious as anything nature could provide.