Barefoot in White (Barefoot Bay Brides) (31 page)

“Tell me what?”

“Willie!” Next to her, Ona came closer, but Willow refused to even turn her head an inch.

“Tell me
what
, Nick?”

“Look at you!” Ona’s hand touched her shoulder, but Willow shook it off, rage coursing through her.

“Willow, you have to understand—”

“
I
have to understand?” She cut him off, too angry to let him finish. “I don’t understand anything except that I hate being manipulated. What is this pact you have with people you claim to have never met, Nick? What is this deal you made behind my back?” Her voice rose, but she didn’t care. She didn’t care that the mother she hadn’t seen in years was five feet away or that she walked outside in nothing but a bra and a thong. She didn’t care about anything but how her heart was shattering so hard in her chest she could actually feel sharp pieces stab her.

He was in some kind of partnership with her mother?

“I didn’t make a deal.”

Ona choked softly. “That’s not how I understand what Donny said.”

Donny! He’d met her father? After all that…talk? All they’d shared? He’d just held her and kissed her and took her almost there with that lie right between them?

“How is this possible?” she whispered, her voice ragged.

“Willie, you look amazing!”

She turned to slice her mother with a look. “Don’t call me that. My name is Willow.”

Ona flinched, sending a different kind of stab into Willow’s chest. No, she would not succumb to guilt. She was not the guilty party right here.

That person was standing in front of her in a towel, dripping wet and miserable.

To think that, moments ago, she was about to lose her virginity to him.

Oh, damn it
all
, she’d wanted that so much. And now…

“Willow.” He stepped forward, nothing but abject pain in his eyes as he got between her and the pool. “I was about to tell you that your mother is coming, that she’s behind Misty’s wedding that isn’t a wedding at all, but that—”

She shoved him with every ounce of strength she had. Stunned, he flailed his arms, his step faltered, and he tumbled right back into the pool with a splash.

“Oh!” Ona stifled a laugh, hand to mouth.

Willow looked at her. “What is it, if not a wedding?”

“Dad and I are renewing our vows, Willow. And you and I are going to be a mother and daughter again.”

She was aware that Nick sputtered to a stand in the pool, silent while she considered all the possible responses to that statement.

“No, we’re not ever going to be mother and daughter again, and”—she turned to Nick—“we are never going to be lovers.”

Without waiting for their responses, she went back inside and slammed the French door, snapping the lock. She pulled on her skirt, stepped into her shoes, and grabbed a Navy SEAL T-shirt from the back of his chair.

It was all of him she’d take. He could have Ona and Donny and whatever shred of memories they’d made together.

* * *

Nick heard the front door slam like a rifle shot. Funny how he could hear things he didn’t want to hear—like the sound of a door across the house—and didn’t hear what he really needed to hear. Like, he should have listened to his conscience when it screamed,
Tell her the truth
.

Instead, he’d listened to Donny Zatarain and now—

“She’ll be back.”

Nick swiped some water from his eyes and blinked up at the woman standing on the patio. Slender as a reed, her narrow shoulders confidently back, her ash-blond hair pulled straight off her face in a stark style that revealed virtually no wrinkles for a woman in her fifties.

“You don’t even know her,” he shot back, climbing out of the water and grabbing his own towel this time, whipping it around himself furiously.

“That’s at the core of this, don’t you see? I need to know her. I need her.”

“No, no, damn it.
I
need her. And now she’s gone. I’ve lost her.” It was his fault, all his fault, but that didn’t stop anger from bubbling up at this woman.

“You can manage a way to get her back.”

He shut his eyes. “Not everyone wants to
manage
people, Ona. Don’t you know that’s what she hates?”

She stared at the door where Willow had disappeared a few moments before. “What she hates is me.” The statement came out heartbreakingly pathetic, the tone enough to quell some of his fury at her.

“And me,” he added. “I should have told her the minute I found out the truth. She thinks we’re in cahoots now. And nothing could be further from the truth.”

“So you tell her.”

He slumped into the nearest chair. “If I ever see her again.”

Ona rounded the table and took a chair across from him. “You’ll see her again. This is meant to be.”

Oh, please. “I suppose this all became apparent to you while you stepped into the great beyond and had your life transformation?”

She smiled as if his sarcasm had no effect. “Actually, it all became apparent to me when I saw the agony in her eyes when she said good-bye to you. She’s in love. So that makes two of you, which is usually just the right number.”

Confused emotions mixed with an adrenaline dump, burning his chest. At least he thought that’s what was burning his chest. Maybe it was…no.
No
.

“I don’t
believe
in love.” Right?
Right
?

“Your loss,” she said quietly. “Because Willow does, and she loves you.”

“It’s lust,” he said simply. “We both feel it all the time.”

“But you haven’t acted on it yet.”

Her know-it-all tone was starting to irk, but he supposed she could infer that fact from what Willow had said.

We are never going to be lovers.

The searing in his chest grew worse at the echo of her words. He looked down at his lap, watching a droplet of water fall from his hair and get absorbed into the towel, trying to get his head around the fact that he was talking to Willow’s mother, not her friend. How much to share?

Nothing, if Willow had a say in this.

“It’s really not your business,” he finally replied.

She let it go, slipping a slim leather bag off her shoulder and opening it with an officious snap. “I can’t believe how much she’s changed,” she mused, fishing through the bag. “I’ve never seen a person transform herself so completely,” she continued, fishing in the bag for something.

“All it took was getting away from you,” he said quietly, still nursing his anger at the unexpected arrival that ruined everything.

What would have happened if Ona hadn’t shown up? Guess he’d never know.

“Ah, here it is.” Sliding a photo out of her bag, she placed it on the table. “How does a person go from this to”—she jutted her chin toward the French door—“that?”

He didn’t want to look, really. Willow had told him that she’d gotten rid of any pictures from the past, so she wouldn’t want him to look at this one.

“It’s almost impossible to believe,” Ona said, nudging the picture closer, forcing the issue.

He glanced, disinterested. “Not if you know her,” he said. “She does whatever she sets her mind to.” He waited a beat, then stared at Ona. “And she set her mind to never seeing you again.”

She closed her eyes, the target hit. “I don’t blame her.”

A tendril of sympathy wrapped his chest, enough to make his gaze shift to the picture in front of him. Holy shit.

“Is that how you remember her?” Ona asked.

Was it? Against his will, he reached for the photograph, lifting it to get a better look. He’d expected to see a fat girl, that was all. An overweight, unhappy, lost girl who’d somehow managed to find herself in the last three years. A girl he recalled being nice to in college, first because she was a breath of fresh air, and then because she had a famous father.

Or had he been attracted to Willow all along, from day one, but convinced himself otherwise? What if that history had been different? Where would they be today?

Sure, the girl in the picture was heavy, but her eyes still gleamed blue, and her smile belied any unhappiness. She looked to be in her early twenties, the backdrop of the Eiffel Tower telling him exactly where this was taken.

“She looks beautiful,” he said. “Her fire is on. Her smile is real. Her heart is right there in her eyes.” He brought it closer, absently grazing the edge of the photo with one finger. “She’s looking at the camera as if she loves the person who’s taking the picture.” She’d looked at him like that…back then and now. But not anymore, he thought glumly. He’d never see that expression again.

“Her father took her on a tour with him to Europe,” Ona said softly. “I wasn’t there, as you can tell by the joyous look on her face.”

He lifted his gaze to look at Ona, the last shreds of his anger fading at her sad, sad whisper. “There was a reason I didn’t tell her the truth, and it had nothing to do with a deal I struck with your husband.”

She waited, silent, gnawing on her lower lip.

“I thought that she needed to have some kind of reconciliation with you. I’ve gotten to know her, and she carries around a freight train of baggage where you’re concerned. She says she’s happy, but I don’t think she is. I thought that if she could start over with you, then…”

Ona leaned forward, her eyes glistening with tears. “Help me, Nick. Help me get my daughter back.”

“I did. And it cost me any chance I ever had with her.” But then he’d known that was going to happen when he decided to withhold the truth, hadn’t he?

They both sat silently for a second, lost in their thoughts, the two-dimensional image of a woman they both loved—

Nick shook his head. Did he love Willow? What would he do if he lost her now?

“Your phone is ringing,” Ona said, gesturing toward another table where he’d left it.

Of course, he didn’t even hear it. Why was his hearing clear one second and gone the next? Pushing up, he walked to the phone.

“It’s probably your husband returning the call.”

“No.” She shoved her chair back and stood, too. “I never gave him the message.”

He threw her a look as he reached his ringing phone. “Always pulling the strings, aren’t you, Ona?”

She closed her eyes with a guilty look and lifted her hand in good-bye, slipping through the living room door as quietly as she’d arrived. Nick looked at the caller ID, hoping for one name, but seeing something he’d never expected.

Lt. Commander Doug Seaton. He tapped the phone and put it to his ear. His good ear. “Lieutenant Hershey speaking.”

The clipped baritone of Nick’s commanding officer was both familiar and unsettling. This was it: his fate.

As he listened to the decision based on the hearing test he’d taken a month ago, Nick slowly sank back into the chair and tried to accept what he’d dreaded all along. Central training. Illinois. Desk job.

Of course the Navy didn’t want to keep paying him to live at a resort and write novels, did they?

As he listened to his crappy fate and future, he picked up the picture of Willow her mother had left behind. All he could see was the image of a woman he loved…and lost. Once more, he’d gambled on someone’s fate and made the wrong choice.

Chapter Twenty-six

For the second time in one day, Willow reached the harbor in record time, blinded by sweat and exhaustion, but freakishly charged to run another five miles before going home to bed. Run and sweat and refuse to think.

That was all she was capable of tonight.

She’d stumbled through the day, told her tale of woe to her closest friends, who’d been so supportive they hadn’t even placed bets on the situation, and then finally got into her sneakers to escape the pain that engulfed her heart. She’d long ago learned that physical pain could sometimes erase all the other kind.

From where she stood, she could see the lights of the Victorian-style beach house where she lived, but they didn’t call to her for comfort and rest as they usually did. The girls would want to talk. Or, even worse, Nick could be there, waiting for her with his excuses and apologies and rationalizations.

And hard, hot body that was
supposed
to invade hers.

With a grunt, she adjusted her earbuds, kicked up the volume on her music, and started to run again.

As much as she didn’t want to think about anything, one thought kept pounding at her brain with as much force as her feet on the pavement.

She
still
wanted to have sex with him. Even now, when she was spitting mad and truly hurt. Her body ached for that one chance, and now she’d never have it. On top of all the upheaval and heartbreak, she’d just wanted to get laid. By Nick. And only Nick. Whoever her first lover would be, he wouldn’t be Nick, damn it.

How could he do that to her? How could he lie so easily and pretend…

She slammed her feet as though the pavement was his heart and she could do to it what he’d done to hers.

Fury fueled every step, a bitter, familiar, resentment-infused anger that made Willow’s blood sing. She rounded a corner at the bottom of her street, slowing enough to make a decision whether to run home, shower, and cool off, or start the whole five-mile loop over again.