Broken Angels (24 page)

“Legwork’s not always that bad,” Zach tossed in, his gaze drifting over Rebecca’s legs in a way that had her skin tingling.

Thankfully, Pat didn’t notice Zach’s teasing smile or the scalding stare Rebecca directed her ex-husband’s way. “It is when it leads nowhere,” he replied. “You don’t understand what I’m dealing with here. I’m talking about a global network of criminals who’ve been at this for decades. They’re virtually untraceable, untouchable.” Rebecca could’ve sworn she caught a note of admiration in his voice.

“Enough talking about work,” Tess admonished. “You’re here to relax.”

“Yeah, you’re right.” But Pat’s features failed to slacken. His shoulders remained stiff, his back ramrod straight. “I really needed to get away. I get claustrophobic in the city sometimes. Unlike my lovely wife here, I’m a small-town boy through and through. Grew up in Oak Bluffs.” A nostalgic mist rolled over his face. “Everything’s simple there, with your homemade ice-cream shops and your mom-and-pop restaurants and the sea every which way you look. That’s why I got this place. Reminds me of home.”

Amy suddenly hopped toward them. Strawberry blond ringlets bounced around her pretty face, forming a striking contrast with her honeyed skin and dark brown eyes. She took her father’s hand, begged him to go swimming with her. Pat muttered a protest, then stood with a grunt and obediently followed his daughter. Warmth ran lazy circles around Rebecca’s heart at the sight of man and girl melting into the harbor to a chorus of joyful giggles.

Then Zach decided to distract her while Tess was busy yelling something at her son. He ran his palm down the length of her leg, and the heat raged out of control, spread to flood her system. The second Tess’s head swiveled their way, he withdrew his hand, the picture of innocence.

“Are you overheating?” Tess asked her. “You look flushed.”

“I’m fine.” She directed a quelling look at Zach, who watched her with a knowing, totally infuriating grin. “But a swim might not be such a bad idea,” she added just to get even.

When she emerged from the water a few minutes later, she didn’t bother wrapping herself in a towel. The look on her ex-husband’s face as she paraded toward him, dripping wet, was priceless. She stretched out on a towel and allowed the sun’s rays to dry her, all the while sensing Zach’s blistering stare.

“You’re an evil woman,” he whispered when the neighbors were out of earshot.

Laughter exploded from her. “It’s no less than you deserve. You’ve been undressing me with your eyes all day.”

“No I haven’t. That string bikini leaves very little to the imagination. Patrick’s been checking you out, too,” he grumbled.

She sprang to a sitting position. “He has not.” Unease skittered through her. “The guy’s married.”

“He’d have to be dead not to notice you in that number.”

Suddenly self-conscious, she grabbed a towel and draped it over her damp body. A victorious smile bounced across his full mouth, and she couldn’t help but wonder if his assertion was just a clever ruse to get her to cover herself up.

“Aren’t you going to go for a swim?” she taunted.

“Maybe tonight.” The unmasked implication in his voice turned her bones to rubber. Heat inundated her cheeks.

Zach ran his palm over her face. “I’ve always loved the way you could do that.”

“Do what?”

“Blush. It’s more potent than that bikini.”

The man was killing her. His feathering caress, the way his eyes drank in the sight of her left her weak and molten inside.

Relief gushed through her when Tess came to sit beside them again. Now he’d have no choice but to behave.

“What a perfect day,” the neighbor chirped.

Rebecca hummed her approval, closing her eyes for a second to chase the image of Zach’s sexy grin, washboard stomach and perfectly chiseled chest from her mind.

“I forget how blue the sky is sometimes.” Tess wrapped her arms around her legs and stared into the sea. There was a calmness about her that Rebecca envied.

Noah and Jason both raced out of the water, clambered onto the sand. Tess shot to her feet and swathed her son in a towel, planting a heartfelt kiss on the top of his head.

That familiar tightness blossomed within Rebecca, a gentle throb pulsing around a wound that refused to heal. Longing lumped in her throat, and she looked at Noah, who watched the scene with feigned indifference. Still, she caught a flicker of something beneath the apathy, an unspoken ache that mirrored her own. Following Tess’s lead, she grabbed a towel and approached her nephew.

Noah shoved her arm away before she could cover him. “I’m okay,” he spat, startling her with the sheer force of his words. Without sparing her another glance, he shook off the water and took off in search of his sister.

She turned to Zach and found him studying Noah, who was now wrestling with Kristen over a pail. It hadn’t taken the boy long to pick a fight. Zach met her gaze, and she realized he’d reached the same conclusion. His expression dripped with the same helplessness unfolding inside her.

“Go play with Noah and the girls,” Tess, who hadn’t noticed a thing, crooned. Jason instantly complied. Pat dutifully joined them and began building sandcastles with his children. It was a scene right out of a commercial promoting one family getaway or another.

Except for Noah, who lingered a short distance away, watching them with barely contained resentment. Then, his features alight with the same mock innocence that had graced Zach’s face minutes ago, he ambled toward them and stepped smack in the middle of their creation.

Jason jumped up. “You did that on purpose,” he cried, blinking to chase away tears.

“Did not.” Noah crossed his arms over his narrow chest.

“You did. I saw you,” his friend insisted.

“Liar.”

“You’re the liar. You’re just jealous ’cause my castle is better than yours.”

Noah shoved him. Hard. The boy lurched backward and fell in the sand. Noah flung himself on top of Jason, hands fisted, body wired. Punches began to fly.

All four adults rose simultaneously and ran to stop the fight. They pried the children apart, everyone speaking at the same time.

“How could you?”

“What were you thinking?”

“You could hurt each other.”

“You’re supposed to be friends.”

Tension spread like a black cloud to darken the peaceful afternoon. The lighthearted camaraderie was shattered. Tess was livid. Pat couldn’t believe Noah had acted so poorly. Bolt barked up a storm. Kristen began to cry, and Amy sought refuge in the comforting folds of her mother’s sarong. Only Will continued to smile and gurgle, oblivious to the commotion around him.

When the dust settled, Rebecca and Zach apologized to the neighbors, then gathered up the children and retreated into the house, where they could scold Noah in private.

It was like trying to squeeze compassion out of a rock. The boy was firm, resolute. He’d broken the sandcastle by accident. Jason had provoked him. It was all Jason’s fault, and so forth.

Zach’s exasperation was palpable. “Go to your room,” he ordered, “and don’t come out until I say you can.”

The boy stomped away in a huff.

“And no video games,” he called out after him. “I want that Game Boy.”

Noah turned a pair of flaming eyes Zach’s way. Realizing he wasn’t going to win this one, he retrieved the device and slapped it in his uncle’s waiting palm. Then, with a last mutinous look directed at Zach, he raced up the stairs and slammed the bedroom door shut with the force of a hurricane.

“I don’t know what’s up with that kid.” Zach looked tired, beaten. “He’s gotta get a handle on his anger.”

She recalled the look on Noah’s face when Tess had kissed Jason, the resentment in his eyes as he’d watched Pat build that sandcastle with his kids. “He didn’t do it out of anger,” she said. “He did it out of grief.”

Zach’s brows narrowed. “How do you figure that?”

“Seeing Jason with his parents made him hurt, so he returned the favor.” Hadn’t she been guilty of the same thing, back when her own dreams had died a slow, devastating death? The only way she’d known to deal with her pain was to push everyone she loved away—her best friend, her husband. Anger was just a shield, a barrier erected to conceal a deep well of sorrow.

Zach’s frustration ruptured, and his face fell. “What am I supposed to do about that? How do I make him stop hurting?”

“You can’t. He needs to deal with it in his own way, at his own pace. Some people have the ability to accept life’s blows and move on. Those who don’t, retreat into themselves.” In Zach’s troubled eyes she saw everything sorrow had cost her, everything she’d sacrificed for the simple luxury of wallowing in her misery. “And in the process they destroy everything that matters to them,” she whispered.

He studied her for what felt like an eternity, and even though she was now fully clothed, she felt more exposed than she had in her swimsuit earlier today.

“You really do understand him,” he finally uttered, and there was a hint of reverence to his words.

“Yeah, I do.” She squeezed his shoulder reassuringly. “Let me talk to him. Maybe I can help.”

“Be my guest.” He ran his fingers through his hair until it spiked at the ends. Weariness rearranged his features in a mask she barely recognized. “I’m all talked out.”

Zach watched Becca walk away, feeling oddly deflated. Kristen and Will played quietly in the living room, so he decided to join them. He dropped onto the couch, his mind riddled with troublesome thoughts he couldn’t subdue. The last time he’d felt this useless, his marriage had fallen apart.

The stakes were even higher now. Noah’s future was on the line. Right now he used his fists to deal with his grief. Later on, new, far more dangerous options would present themselves: booze, drugs, maybe even an act of crime or two. Zach needed to get the situation under control, and fast.

The question was how? How could he get through to his nephew?

Maybe Becca would have better luck. She understood the kid far better than he ever could. Then again, Zach saw more of himself in Noah than he cared to admit. There was something familiar about the boy’s unfaltering stoicism, even as he shattered inside. Another iceberg with a volcano bubbling at the core. One of these days the ice would crack, and the pain would have no choice but to bleed out. Then what?

With a dejected grunt, he propped his elbows on his knees and linked his fingers. His head felt heavy, weighed down by the amalgamation of all his worries, so he placed his forehead on his fists for support. He stayed like this for quite some time, until a small body crept beside him. Hair brushed his biceps as a silky cheek dug into his arm. He raised his chin to find Kristen snuggled at his side, watching him shyly. A tentative smile ghosted over her lips.

Something warm and sweet coated the walls of his throat. He lifted his arm and clumsily draped it over her narrow shoulders. The girl relaxed, went limp against him, burrowed deeper.

And that made everything better somehow.

Noah slumped in his bed, his fists clenched, his heart pounding so hard he thought it would burst right out of his chest. His uncle didn’t understand anything. All he did was yell at him, and he was sick of it. Why were adults so annoying? Why did there have to be so many lousy rules? What right did Jason have to tell him he was jealous of his crappy sandcastle? Who cared about a useless pile of dirt, anyway?

If his dad were still alive, they would have built a castle ten times bigger than Jason’s. They would have made Jason’s castle look like a dumb shack. Pain tightened inside him. His breathing grew rough, choppy, and hissed between gritted teeth. Was this what it felt like to have an asthma attack?

He wanted to hit something. Badly. Instead, he grabbed a pillow and flung it across the room. It nearly hit the door as it swung open, and Aunt Becca entered. Her gaze followed the arc the pillow made before it plunked at her feet.

“Are we having a pillow fight?” She was trying to be funny, but Noah’s lips didn’t as much as twitch. He was too busy dreading the lecture he was sure to get any minute now.

“What do you want?”

She looked nervous, uncomfortable, kinda like he always felt on the first day of school. “I thought maybe we could chat a little. Just you and me.” She came to sit beside him on the bed, and he cringed.

“Why?”

“Why not?”

He could think of a few reasons, the fact that she couldn’t stand him for one.

It hadn’t always been that way. He remembered a time long ago when she’d played with him. He’d really liked her then. But the memories were old, fuzzy around the edges. He couldn’t get any images, just a warm, funny feeling in his tummy. He wanted to ask her why she’d stopped liking him, but the words remained trapped in his throat.

“What happened out there today, kiddo?”

Here comes the lecture.

He shrugged, fingering his father’s ring, which he’d worn on a chain around his neck ever since Will had found it in the canoe. “Jason got on my nerves.”

“It wasn’t very nice of him to say you were jealous of his castle, was it?”

Surprise lanced through him. Maybe she did understand after all. “He was being a jerk.”

“Friends do that sometimes. Your mom and I used to fight all the time when we were little.”

He raised stunned eyes to her face, and she quickly added, “Not with our fists. We fought the way girls fight. One time I was mad at your mom because she called me carrot head, so I wrote a love note to the most popular guy in school and signed her name to it. Then I put it in his desk. She was mortified. Never called me carrot head again.”

He wanted to smile, but he couldn’t. His chest hurt too much whenever he thought of his mom. Tears stung his eyes, but he held them back. There was no way he’d let his aunt see him cry.

“What I’m trying to say is that it’s all right to get mad at your friends. Just be careful because you never know when you’ll lose them. And then you’ll be left with nothing but regrets.”

“Is that what happened to you?” He bit his lower lip. He shouldn’t have asked that. Now she’d get angry.

“Yeah. That’s exactly what happened to me,” she whispered.