Barefoot in White (Barefoot Bay Brides) (6 page)

She waited, part of her knowing what was next.

“I’m sorry I talked to you only because of your dad. Because I thought you could, you know, arrange a meeting.”

Her heart sank a little, an old ache pressing down. “Why didn’t you just ask me for backstage passes, then? I would have gotten them for you in a heartbeat.”

He lifted one of his mighty, strong shoulders. “First of all, I didn’t just want backstage passes. I wanted an open door into the music industry. I had delusions of drummer grandeur. But I chickened out every time it came up, so I never asked you.”

“Well, that was crazy, especially in a business where who you know is everything. Heck, I could have had my dad bring you into one of the practice sessions at the studio.” Anything. She’d have done anything to be closer to him back then.

He closed his eyes and grunted like she’d slammed his solar plexus with a power-punch. “Shit, I’m an idiot.”

“Yep.”

“But at least I have integrity.”

“No, you were right the first time. Idiocy, not integrity.”

His smile faded completely. “I meant I had integrity about…that time. That night…when you…” His voiced drifted off to an embarrassing silence.

She sighed, closing her eyes as she lost any hope of controlling this conversation and steering it in another direction. “And this would be why I wanted to talk about the menu and not the past.”

“Why should we dance around the elephant in the room?”

She snorted softly. “Or the elephant that was in that room. Meaning me.”

“Willow!” He reached forward and closed his hand around hers, holding too tightly for her to jerk back. “Listen—”

She managed to free her hand. “Nick, you don’t owe me an apology. I understand what happened.”
Please don’t make me relive it.

“I wasn’t honest that night, and it’s important that you know why I did what I did.”

She knew why. Because he was grossed out by the idea of sex with a girl who weighed more than he did. “I’d rather not rehash it, Nick. It’s ancient—”

“I have to,” he said, leaning closer. “Otherwise, it’s just going to sit between us and fester.”

A festering fat elephant. Did he have any more lovely metaphors as memories? “Look, you had every right to turn me down. I was a little drunk, and you were—”

“Not at all drunk.”

She swallowed, certain he didn’t realize that just made it worse. Tipping her head to one side, she narrowed her eyes at him. “I weighed”—she took in a ragged breath—“a lot. A whole hell of a lot.”

“Do you really think that’s all I saw?”

“At eighteen? At UCLA, home of the pencil-thin co-ed? Yeah.”

“You’re wrong. But that night, when you kissed me, I knew I’d be using you to get to your dad. I felt like shit about it. So I took off and acted like I wasn’t interested.”

She managed a laugh, despite the sting to her heart. “I guess as excuses go, that’s a pretty good one.” She kept a smile as she looked at him. He didn’t need to know that just sitting here talking about it was like reliving that night in the dorm hallway all over. The distant strains of a Linkin Park song coming out of someone’s room, the smell of burned popcorn and beer, the scuffed linoleum floor she stared at after he’d walked—no, damn near run—away. Did it matter why he’d turned her down? Either way, it still hurt like a bitch.

“Then you forgive me?” The hope in his voice told her just how important her absolution was.

Fine. He could have it. Why should he know how lasting an effect that night had? Talk about embarrassing. “I do,” she assured him. “It’s forgiven and forgotten.”

He let out an audible sigh and then quickly added, “Good. Then our date’s still on for tonight?”

She drew back in surprise. “You still want to go out with me?”

“And not because I want to meet your dad, I swear.” He snagged her hand again and gave a confident squeeze. “I’d really like to get to know you now.”

Now that she wasn’t two hundred and sixty pounds. She gave a shaky smile and purposely didn’t answer. Of course she wanted to go out with this hot and sexy Navy SEAL. But he was also a constant reminder that, under all her muscle tone and dieted-down body, she was still Willie Zatarain. And that scared her in a way she couldn’t describe.

“As a rule,” she said, “I don’t spend time with people who knew me…before.”

One brow lifted in surprise. “No one?”

She shook her head.

“Then I have an idea.” He took out his phone and tapped it. “Give me your address?”

Something told her he wasn’t a man who took no for an answer. But did she want to say no? She told him the address, watching his hands work, imaging those hands…working.

He put the phone down and then threaded her fingers with his, slowly lifting her knuckles to his mouth. She eyed him carefully, aware that he was drawing her whole body closer to his but absolutely unable to back up or stop him until his cheek was touching hers. “Guess what we’re going to do together, Willow?”

Goosebumps blossomed up her arms as possibilities danced in her head. But she couldn’t. She absolutely couldn’t give in to this temptation. Didn’t she have any control? Of course, she lived by control. She owned control. Control was her bitch.

“What are we going to do?” she asked softly.

He lightly kissed her cheek. “Rewrite history.”

And just like that, control evaporated.

Chapter Five

The vague ringing in Nick’s left ear had become so much a part of his life that he didn’t even hear it anymore. Especially not when his clumsy index fingers somehow found the right keys and his brain dug up some powerful sentences and his laptop screen slowly went from white to words…words that told a story.

He saw everything in his head, as vivid as a movie, but that didn’t make him some kind of great writer. That meant he had a good memory for details. The foul stench of a dusty, vacant stairwell in the north observation post. The jab of rubble and stones in his knees as he positioned himself for a long watch. The flat central Iraq horizon with only the few buildings of Habbaniyah breaking his visual out to the gunmetal gray water of the Euphrates. The grit of sand in his teeth. The tin taste of anticipation.

He remembered it all. But in the story, something dramatic should happen here. Sighting an insurgent? A grenade in the distance? Something to throw this lieutenant over the edge.

Like the tine of a fork against crystal, the ringing sang in his damaged ear, but he leaned forward, taking an imaginary step in the story. Something dramatic
did
happen in that stairwell, he mused. But this wasn’t an autobiography. And that conversation probably wouldn’t win any literary awards. It had been…nice. And nice wasn’t the stuff of novels.

Still, he closed his eyes and let himself slip back to that first encounter with Charlotte Blaine, which had happened in a moment much like the one he’d described. On watch, in Habbaniyah, on a quiet night in a bunker.

The whole team had been pissed as hell to get a female embed, even for the brief time they were on this particular mission. A journalist among them was a pain in the ass, but a woman? That went against everything, injecting high-quality estrogen into a group that thrived on nothing but nerves, sweat, and testosterone.

But maybe that
was
the action he needed at this point in the story. Maybe he should bring the character of Christina into this scene—yeah. He nodded, picking up his pen to jot a note and think about what he’d written weeks ago, before the block. She and Gannon had already had their run-in at the old airport when she announced how long she’d be there.

So now they could kiss.

He felt his lip curl, and not in empathy with his character. How could he describe a kiss? He knew what it felt like to pull a trigger, to fall out of an airplane and make a low-opening jump, and even how a man’s arms could ache from pulling an injured comrade out of the line of fire. He’d internalized those sensations and could make them real on the page.

But a kiss? He didn’t think when he had his lips on a woman’s mouth. And the times he’d kissed Charlotte? They’d been rare, few, stolen—and he had no memory of anything but his thoughts flatlining from lack of blood to his brain.

He stared at the screen and wrote a few sentences to bring the character onto the page. He tapped out a line of dialogue. A thought. A smile. A touch.

Then, for what felt like an hour, he stared at the screen, his two fingers hovering above the keyboard like a pair of Blackhawks over a bridge about to be bombed.

That damn ringing—crap, it was his cell phone. “Shit!”

He pushed back from the laptop, frustrated as his brain slid down the fast rope of an imaginary moment into the freeze of a real one. Who was—

“Son of a bitch,” he murmured, grabbing the phone to see the time. Nine thirty! What the
hell
? He’d lost track of time. He unlocked the screen, a thud of disappointment in his chest when he saw Misty was the caller. What about Willow? Did she think he’d blown her off?
Damn
it.

“Yeah, hey,” he said as he answered, digging for composure, swiping back his hair as he stood. “S’up, Misty?”

“Nicky, I’m in Naples.”

Italy? He blinked to clear his head and remembered the Florida city across the causeway from this island.

“Having a blast with some friends here.” She was louder than usual, although there were club-like sounds behind her. Maybe a little toasted. “Are you okay?” she asked in a singsong voice. “I feel like I ditched you.”

“I’m fine, good.” Late as hell, but… He squinted at the number in the lower left corner of his laptop screen, doing a quick calculation. Seventeen pages! A record. “I’m great. But don’t worry about me. Gonna go have a late dinner with Willow.” If she didn’t kick him to the curb.

“Really?” Her voice rose so high it made his teeth hurt.

“Yeah, but I’m late, so you take your time and have fun.”

“Oh, I am.” She dragged out the last word with the hint of a giggle.

“And don’t drive,” he added.

“No worries. I have a limo, or I’ll stay at the Ritz. Ona’s taking care of me.”

Must be nice. He had a rental, and he hoped to hell the GPS could find the address he had.

The minute he hung up, he tapped in Willow’s name, and the number she’d given him—already programmed into his phone—popped up. But before it connected, he ended the call.

He needed to do this in person. He needed to apologize and he needed to…kiss her. For research.

* * *

Berries…100

Almonds (17)…150

Oatmeal w/ milk…200

Whole grain roof tile…150

Definitely an A for today, Willow thought with a familiar jolt of satisfaction. Willow stared at her food journal, half of her brain trying to remember how long it had been since she’d had anything but an A, the other half mentally calculating how long it had been since she’d last checked her phone to see what time it was
. Or if anyone had called.

It had been awhile. A long while.

She set the spiral notebook on the table, leaning back on the porch swing to listen to the water lapping on the shore of Pleasure Pointe Beach across the street. This porch and swing had sealed the deal when they’d found this incredible house with three apartments right on the beach. Ari had the top-floor one-bedroom, Gussie had moved into the middle floor, and Willow lived on the main floor in the largest of the three apartments. So Willow’s place had become a central gathering area for them, especially on this porch with the water view.

But her friends were out tonight, and she was…stood up.

How could she call it anything else? She didn’t have to look at her phone to know the two most obvious facts: It was
still
about nine thirty, and he
still
hadn’t called.

She’d actually given up on her “date” half an hour ago and had gone in to change into running shorts and a tank top, fully intending to hit the sand to jog off the frustration.

But something stopped her.

Hope.

She let out a grunt and pushed up, squinting into the shadows on the porch. How long had she sat out here in the dark…waiting? Waiting for a call or a car or a cancellation, but got…none.

It was too late to join Ari and Gussie, who’d gone out to dinner with a few friends from Casa Blanca. But it wasn’t too late to run the beach. She went inside, grabbed a banana, which tasted like mush in her mouth, and drank a little water to hydrate before taking off into the night.

She stretched on the porch, holding on to the railing as she warmed up, kind of hating herself for peering down South Street with that damn hope in her heart.

Face it, he forgot. Or maybe he’d had second thoughts. She’d like to think Misty coerced him into a night on the town, but their BTB specifically told Ari she was hanging out with friends in Naples that evening. Ari said she’d climbed into a limo and disappeared. Who hired a limo for a day of wedding planning, anyway? That was so something her mother would do.