Trapped between loss and love...

Laura Kelly wanted to leave everything back in San Francisco. Her broken heart. The loss of her unborn child. Instead, her grief followed her here...to an island paradise in the Caribbean. Along with a neighbour who, despite his handsomeness, insists on being a complete pain in her city-girl backside.

That is, until Laura learns that Mark Tanner’s grumpy demeanor is hiding a terrible grief of his own. Instead of declaring war, Laura and Mark work together to restore an old boat, igniting an unlikely friendship—and an attraction neither of them expected. But sometimes all a broken heart needs is a little hope...and the possibility of new love.

CARA LOCKWOOD is the USA TODAY bestselling author of more than seventeen books, including I Do (But I Don’t), which was made into a Lifetime Original movie. She’s written the Bard Academy series for young adults and has had her work translated into several languages around the world. Born and raised in Dallas, Cara now lives near Chicago with her two wonderful daughters. Find out more about her at caralockwood.com, friend her on Facebook, Facebook.com/authorcaralockwood, or follow her on Twitter, @caralockwood.

Also By Cara Lockwood

Shelter in the Tropics

The Big Break

Her Hawaiian Homecoming

Boys and Toys

Texting Under the Influence

Discover more at millsandboon.co.uk

Island of Second Chances

Cara Lockwood

www.millsandboon.co.uk

ISBN: 978-1-474-08107-8

ISLAND OF SECOND CHANCES

© 2018 Cara Lockwood

Published in Great Britain 2018

by Mills & Boon, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers 1 London Bridge Street, London, SE1 9GF

All rights reserved including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. This edition is published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, locations and incidents are purely fictional and bear no relationship to any real life individuals, living or dead, or to any actual places, business establishments, locations, events or incidents. Any resemblance is entirely coincidental.

By payment of the required fees, you are granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right and licence to download and install this e-book on your personal computer, tablet computer, smart phone or other electronic reading device only (each a “Licensed Device”) and to access, display and read the text of this e-book on-screen on your Licensed Device. Except to the extent any of these acts shall be permitted pursuant to any mandatory provision of applicable law but no further, no part of this e-book or its text or images may be reproduced, transmitted, distributed, translated, converted or adapted for use on another file format, communicated to the public, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of publisher.

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Version: 2020-03-02

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“I’d rather have a seasoned woman any day of the week.”

Did Mark mean her? Was he...flirting?

Laura glanced at the bottle in his hand, hesitating. What would one more round really hurt, anyway? Mark seemed to sense her indecision.

He waggled the beer in front of her. “Come on. How miserable are you, really? Just two beers miserable? Because that’s hardly miserable at all.”

She had to laugh at that. She was far more than two beers miserable.

“Fine,” she said and grabbed the bottle from his hand. “You win.”

He chuckled and took another swig of his beer as she started on hers. She’d just stay for one more.

Besides...what was the worst that could happen?

Dear Reader,

I’m excited to share with you my new book, Island of Second Chances, a story about how sometimes we have to lose what we hold most dear before we find out what’s most important to us.

After an ill-conceived affair with her married coworker, Laura Kelly winds up pregnant. Her lover abandons her, however, and she’s left to face the pregnancy all alone, but then a tragic miscarriage sends her into a deep depression. Devastated by the loss, she drops out of her high-profile career and decides to take an extended vacation on St. Anthony’s island, where she battles her own guilt and sense of loss.

Mark Tanner used to work building Tanner ships, but after being betrayed by his brother, he moves to the fictional Caribbean island of St. Anthony’s determined to build a sailboat fast enough to win the local race. He hopes the prize money will help finance a trip around the world so he can heal from a bitter divorce and the tragic death of his son.

Tanner is skeptical of new neighbor Laura at first, but warms to her when he realizes she’s struggling with grief just as he is. He teaches her how to use her hands and quiet her mind, and maybe how to heal her heart. Just when they discover that they might be able to heal each other’s guilt, fate intervenes as a looming hurricane threatens the coast and everyone on the island.

I loved the idea of a couple at odds coming together and bonding from their loss. I hope you’ll enjoy this book about how love and losses can be intertwined, but ultimately there’s no more powerful way to heal than through love.

All my best,

Cara

Dedicated to my love, P.J. Benoit.

Contents

Cover

Back Cover Text

About the Author

Booklist

Title Page

Copyright

Introduction

Dear Reader

Dedication

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter Twenty-Six

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Epilogue

Extract

Chapter One

BUZZZZZZT. BUZZZZZZT.

It seemed Laura Kelly had only had her eyes closed for a minute, and suddenly, the air was full of the sound of some ruckus. A chain saw? A swarm of killer bees? What the hell was that?

She sat up in bed, her mouth tasting sour, as she glanced around the unfamiliar bedroom, bewildered. Then, she remembered. St. Anthony’s Island. Her escape route. She looked down and saw she wore the same jean shorts and white T-shirt she’d worn through three time zones yesterday to get here. She’d had three flight delays and a taxi cab driver who’d gotten lost twice before she finally reached the island at 3:00 a.m.

There it was again. The horrendous sound. She clearly hadn’t dreamed it. Yawning, she reached for her phone, but it was dead. She’d forgotten to plug it in. The little clock on the bedside table blinked 12:00. It had to be early in the morning, though the sun trickled in through the vertical blinds near her kitchenette.

She got up, groggy, and wandered to the patio doors. Her rented condo was on the second story, at the end of the row. She saw that she had two neighbors to her left and three below her, and that was it.

She’d known from the listing that the complex was remote, the way she wanted it, but now, standing on her balcony, looking out at the blue-green water, she realized her little building was the only one for seemingly miles. Pristine beach spread out in both directions, not a single towel or umbrella in sight, just brilliant white sand under a blazing sun.

The loud buzzing caught her attention once more, and she glanced down to find its source: a buzz saw in the hands of a man attacking a piece of wood with a steely determination.

He was shirtless, his back to her, dark hair cut short, and he was wearing cutoff camo shorts and no shoes. The cut muscles of his shoulder and back worked steadily, sweat glistening on them. He was cutting the plank literally steps from the complex.

Beyond that was a sailboat sitting on the beach. It looked to be old, or at least in desperate need of repair. It sat on a scaffold, lacking a working sail and looking worse for the wear on the bottom. Also, most of the deck was missing.

She rubbed her face and tried to yell down at the man, but the volume of the buzz saw made that impossible.

What was so important that the man needed to saw this early? Noah’s ark? She decided she’d have to go tell him kindly to knock it off. Until nine, at least.

She stabbed her feet into flip-flops, found her way to the condo’s front door and went down the open stairway to the parking lot. Unsure of the fastest route, she wandered to the side and around the back until she found an opening to the beach and the infernal noise. She found the man, bare back and all, hunched over a solid plank of wood, saw at the ready.

Sawdust flew all over his stone patio and what looked to be a makeshift workshop of sorts—an oversize storage shed with shelves for tools. Beyond, the sailboat in need of TLC sat on its stand.

She wondered how he’d managed to get the condo board to sign off on this. The boards she knew in San Francisco would never allow such a workspace in the condo common area, which she assumed the beach had to be.

Laura shook her head at the whole situation.

The man was taller than he looked from above, and she only barely registered the knot of muscles in his shoulders and biceps as he worked to steady the saw. All she could think about was the horrible noise bouncing through her ears and ricocheting through her skull. What kind of man went on vacation in the Caribbean just to literally saw wood? She glanced at him, and then beyond him, to the rusted-out bow of the boat on risers near the beach.

“Excuse me,” she shouted, now that she was just feet from the man. “Excuse me!”

The noise was far too loud for him to hear, even though she was less than two feet from him. Laura, losing her patience, reached up and tapped the man hard on his bare shoulder.

The man instantly shut off the saw and glared at her over his shoulder, his eyes barely visible through the work goggles he wore. Seeing her, he put down the saw and raised the goggles, revealing brown eyes that almost looked amber in the morning sunlight. He pushed the goggles up to his short brown hair and studied her.

He had a rugged face, etched a little by the weather, but with that almost ageless quality only middle-aged men have. He could be thirty-five or forty-five. He stayed in shape, clear from the cut of his bare chest. He wasn’t sporting six-pack abs, but his stomach was flat and lean.

Laura realized with a shock that the last time she’d seen a man wearing this little clothing, it had been Dean. In a hotel room.

She shook the thought from her mind and tried to focus on the man’s face, trying not to look at the miles of very tanned and very bare skin before her. He was annoyed, that much was clear by the thin slash of his mouth, and the way his brow furrowed.

“Excuse me,” Laura began, trying to be polite. “Hi. My name is Laura and I’m staying up there in 2-C, and it’s so early, so could you keep it down?”

A smile quirked the corner of his mouth. “Early?”

“Yes, and I’ve been traveling and could you keep it down...until nine?”

“Well.” He looked at his watch. “Considering it’s eleven thirty, that might be hard.” He flashed a winning smile.

Eleven thirty? It was that late? Laura felt a blush creep up her neck.

“Oh, well... I...” But she was so sure it was so early. Her body screamed that it was six in the morning but the sun in the sky told her it was later. She tried to calculate the time zone changes but her brain felt too muddled for the task.

“You’re the tourist.” The man cocked his head to one side, as if she might be a new exhibit at a museum.

“Well, yes, and—”

“Look, I’m sorry this is loud, but it’s the middle of the day. Next time, maybe you should check the time before you...” He glanced down at her ruffled hair and slept-in clothes. His face showed his disapproval. “Get out of bed.”

Now, Laura felt her temper flare and she’d all but forgotten her mistake about the time.

“Could you just please try to keep it down? There are such things as city noise ordinances.”

The man grinned then, a bit of sweat dropping down his squared-off, tanned face. “City ordinance? Just where are you from?”

“San Francisco.”

He studied her with amused, dark eyes. “Well, that explains it.”

“What do you mean by that?” Now, Laura felt the anger bubble up in her, hot and fluid. Was he calling her a liberal hippie? An alfalfa-sprout-granola-eating leftist? She’d heard all the insults, mostly from her right-leaning family who lived in downstate Illinois. She was proudly moderate independent, thank you very much.

He just shook his head, and the sun glinted off tiny slivers of silver running through his hair, just the right amount of middle-aged gray. Laura wanted to tell him he was clearly old enough to know better. Or old enough to show a little more politeness to strangers.

He chuckled to himself then, as if he’d read her mind. Nothing about this was funny, so why was he laughing? She felt off balance with this man. Like somehow this entire conversation was one of his inside jokes.

“St. Anthony’s doesn’t have ordinances like that,” he informed her, crossing his thick arms across his chest. “So, you’re out of luck.”

“What about the other neighbors? This noise pollution is—”

“Noise pollution?” The man put his head back and laughed.

“What’s your name?” She’d have to report him. To someone. Somewhere.

“Mark.”

“Mark what?”

“Tanner.” He grinned. “And you are?”

“Laura Kelly.” She raised her chin in defiance. She didn’t care if he knew who she was. She’d be filing a complaint...with someone, somewhere.

“Well, Ms. Kelly, are you going to call the police? You should know the local chief is a buddy of mine.”

This wasn’t going well. Not well at all.

“What about the neighbors?”

Mark sighed and shook his head, studying her. “Three of the six condos are empty right now. Hurricane season coming and all. There’s you, me and Fred, who’s eighty-three and gets up at six to take his daily walk on the beach, so I cleared it with him to work here.”

“You didn’t clear it with me.”

He took her in, glancing at her flip-flops, to her jean shorts and her T-shirt all the way to the top of her head. “No, I didn’t, sweetheart. But, seeing as you’re just passing through, I don’t see a reason.”

Sweetheart? She wasn’t his sweetheart. Now, that really irked.

“I cleared it with the owners of your condo.” Mark shook a bit of sawdust from his hair, clearly unconcerned. “So if you’ve got a problem with the noise, I suggest you take it up with them. They should’ve warned you in the rental agreement there’d be...what did you call it? Noise trash?”

“Noise pollution.”

He chuckled once more, showing even white teeth. “Right. That.” He shook his head.

“I’ll be talking to the condo board then.”

Mark just grinned. “Considering I own the entire first floor, I’m actually the president of the board.”

That revelation hit her like a ton of bricks. “You own...” She glanced down the way at the entire first floor. Well, that’s how he managed to clear putting a big workshop on the beach in front of the first floor then. He owned it. She couldn’t imagine how much that cost, but knew it was a lot.

“I...” Laura had nothing more to say to that. He had the police in his pocket and he had a controlling share of the condo building, so complaining to the board would do no good. Hell, he was the board, sounded like.

Then he turned his back on her, fired up his saw again and began work once more.

Conversation done, apparently. At least, he thought so. She turned on her heel, fuming. He might think this was done, but, Laura vowed, this little disagreement was far, far from over. She’d been through hell and back, and she wasn’t about to let this man derail her. She was here on this island for a reason—to forget Dean, to find some way to heal—and she wasn’t going to let a rude neighbor get in the way of that. This wasn’t done. Not by a long shot.

Chapter Two

MARK TANNER TURNED and watched the feisty woman with the disheveled bob bounce out of his view. The woman needed some sunlight. Her bright white legs looked like neon billboards for the mainland as they furiously walked away from him.

But, he had to admit, her curves weren’t bad, and if you went for bossy types, she’d probably be a feisty go-getter in bed. She was just his type: small, tight and a handful. He shook his head, figuring that wherever she’d come from, she was used to getting her way.

But, Mark didn’t spook. She could rail against him all he wanted, but he had to finish this boat. It was the middle of the day, after all, and he had no patience for tourists who wanted to get their beauty rest at nearly noon.

He glanced back at the rusted-out old hunk of a boat that once belonged to his father. He was behind schedule in fixing her up. That wouldn’t do. This project was too important. He glanced at the small set of bronzed baby shoes that Timothy once wore that hung on a string above his worktable. Beneath them, he’d tacked up a photo of his boy as a baby, grinning a gummy grin from ear to ear.

He glanced out to the beach beyond. He could almost see his little boy running there, waddling into the water with his chubby, toddler hands outstretched for some shell. When he picked it up, he’d beam with triumph and call for his father’s approval.

With a sickening dread, Mark realized he couldn’t remember what his boy sounded like. His voice had been sweet and high, but now, in his memory, the voice had faded. The picture of his son stood mute in his brain, like some old-fashioned silent picture reel.

No. Couldn’t be. Mark squeezed his eyes shut. He would not let the memory of his boy fade. He worked harder to remember his sweet, high-pitched voice but couldn’t bring to mind the exact sound.

He stopped and pulled out his phone. He had a video of his boy there. He pulled it up and set the video to full-screen and saw his boy running through the sand in the wobbly video he’d taken on his phone.

“Daddy! Look!” Timothy cried as he pointed to a starfish that had washed up on the shore. It was a treasured find. “A star, Daddy! It’s a star!”

The sweet voice washed over Mark’s ears and he felt a brief peace before the sadness sank in. He’d never hear that voice in life again. He’d never get to hear what Timothy would’ve sounded like as he grew up, as his voice changed and matured. He put the cell phone back into his pocket, feeling the heavy weight of sadness cling to him once more. But he couldn’t let grief stop him. He needed to focus on that emotion and turn it into something that mattered.

He returned his attention to the wooden planks before him. That’s why he needed to restore this boat. That’s why he couldn’t stop working. Not until it was finished and not until it sailed in the warm, blue-green sea.

He cut the power on the saw to double-check the board he’d just cut. He focused again on the hull of the boat he would christen Timothy after the little boy who’d once been the light of his life. Before his life had been taken, a bright little candle blown out far too soon.

“Working hard, I see.”

Mark froze, recognizing the voice behind him that he’d know anywhere—his older brother, Edward. He felt anger, hot and thick, well up in his belly. Edward, the brother who betrayed him. Edward, his enemy.

Mark slowly put down the buzz saw. Then he flicked up his safety goggles and turned to face his brother. Just two years older, he carried the same dark eyes as Mark, the same lopsided smile, but that’s where the similarities ended. Mark was a man of his word. Edward, he knew, was a liar.

“What are you doing here, Edward?”

His brother shrugged one shoulder. “I wanted to see how you were doing.”

“Don’t bullshit me.” If you cared about how I was doing, you would’ve never slept with my wife. Ex-wife now, technically. Wife then, though.

“Language, kid. What would Mom say?” Edward wore expensive loafers and designer sunglasses that caught the Caribbean sun, blinding Mark for a second.

“If she were still alive, she’d be too busy kicking your ass to care.”

Edward just shook his head. “For what?”

For screwing my wife. For stealing her away from me. For...being the worst brother on earth at the very time I needed you most.

“For stealing the family company, for starters.” Edward and Mark had grown the family boat-building business into an empire, until Edward had the board vote Mark out in a hostile takeover last year, six months after Timothy died.

“I told you to take some time off after...” He swallowed. “Timothy. You needed it, and you didn’t listen to me, and so, yes, for the company’s sake and yours, I forced you out.”

Mark nearly choked on a dark laugh. He loved how his brother always managed to twist everything around, make his underhanded dealings sound like the right thing to do. “Don’t pretend this is about the company or me. It’s about your greed. You’ve always been greedy. Ever since we were kids and you ate my Halloween candy while I slept. Some things never change.”

“You’re still on me about Halloween? I was eight. You were six. We were kids.”

Mark shrugged. “The story just seems relevant, considering you always wanted what I had.”

Edward exhaled. “Look, I know you’re pissed at me, but—”

“Pissed at you?” He took off his work gloves in jagged, angry movements and tossed them on his workbench. “I’m not pissed at you. I can’t stand to look at you. You screwed me out of my business and you screwed my wife.”

“She’s your ex-wife now.” Edward sounded stoic, even steely. Not even an inkling of regret. None. “And you know why she made that choice. After what you did to her.”

Mark felt a pang of guilt. He knew what he did, and he knew why he did it. I never meant her any harm, but something had to be done.

“You know why I did that. And deflecting this back to me is still not an apology. For God’s sake. She’s pregnant with your baby.”

Edward visibly flinched.

“Didn’t think I knew?” Mark challenged him. “Did you forget how small this island is? How people talk?”

“I...” Now Edward was on his heels. “I was going to tell you.”

“Uh-huh. Sure you were.” Mark ground his teeth together. His heart pounded in his chest and he felt hot and cold all over. Mark hated the anger that bubbled up inside him, that threatened to take over, that bleached the already bright sand at his feet a starker white. He wanted to punch his older brother in the face, craved to see the shock and pain flood his features. He wanted to yell until his voice gave out, but he also knew there’d be no point. Edward never listened.

Edward let out a long, weary-sounding sigh. Since when did he get to sound exasperated? He wasn’t the one betrayed by the only family he had left.

“I came with a peace offering,” Edward said, holding up a manila folder. “It’s a contract. You should come back to work with Tanner Boating.” He nodded at Mark’s husk of a boat in the sand. “This isn’t good for you. For your head or your bank account. Restoring that old hunk of junk is a waste of time.”

Just when Mark thought Edward couldn’t tick him off any more, somehow his brother found a way to do it. He felt the fury grow hot inside him.

This was the boat that belonged to their father, and it wasn’t much, but it was his. That’s why it made it all the more important to restore it. For Timothy. And how dare Edward ask him back, as if he’d ever in a million years work under his brother?

“Not interested.” Mark turned his back on his brother, signaling the conversation was over. It had to be over, before Mark really lost it and did punch his brother in the face. He might be friends with the St. Anthony’s police chief, but he doubted that even he could worm his way out of an assault charge.

“Mark, look, bud, come on. Come back to work for me. You can help Tanner Boating build the fastest boat on the island. We’re going to win the St. Anthony’s Race again this year. We’re going to break the island record.”

Mark clenched his fist. “No, you’re not. I’m going to win that race. And the prize money.” A hundred thousand dollars.

“You don’t have enough time to finish this, and you’re just one person. Come on, come join our team.”

“I’m never going to work for you,” Mark ground out between clenched teeth. Why did Edward never realize when he stood on thin ice? “I’m going to build this ship. I’m going to win that prize money and I’m going to sail around the world. For Timothy. That’s what I’m going to do.”

He left out the part that he might not come back. Why go there? Edward wouldn’t care anyway.

Edward just shook his head. “You can’t do it by yourself.”

“I’m not. I have friends.” Mark thought about Dave and Garrett. They’d help him. They promised.

“Are you sure you can count on them?” Edward asked him, making Mark doubt himself for a second. Was that a threat? Had Edward somehow gotten to his friends? No. Dave would stay true. They’d known each other twenty years. When Mark and Elle had been married, Dave and his wife would do everything together with them. That kind of friendship didn’t just disappear overnight, did it?

Edward dropped the manila folder down on the worktable. “I’m going to leave this in case you change your mind.”

“I won’t.”

Edward clucked his tongue in disapproval and left. Mark’s hands shook with anger as he clenched them into fists. He listened as his brother’s steps faded away, and then he knocked the manila folder off the table, papers flying everywhere. The ocean breeze kicked up then, scattered them everywhere.

Mark knew his brother spoke some truth; he was just one person and he could only work so fast. The competition was in two months and he wasn’t sure he had enough daylight between now and then to get it done. If he didn’t, the Timothy would never even leave the beach.

Dave and Garrett would help him finish it. He texted the two of them, asking to meet this week. Plan, strategize and figure out how to make this boat faster than Edward’s.

Taking the Timothy out to sea on an extended voyage was the only way Mark could think of to keep his boy’s memory alive, to make sure he was not truly forgotten, even as his own memories grew dim. That’s why it was more important than ever that he focus, that he work harder and longer and that he get this done.

* * *

LAURA GLARED OUT her balcony sliding glass door, doubting for a minute whether or not she should’ve even come to St. Anthony’s. Did I make a mistake?

She thought about how she’d cashed in her 401(k). It’s done now, she thought. She’d already be paying the penalty on the money, even if she put it all back tomorrow. Besides, any time she thought about packing up her things and heading back to San Francisco, she just got nauseous.

The entire town reminded her of Dean. She couldn’t leave her apartment without being flooded with a hundred unwanted memories. The dark restaurant with the cozy table in the back where they’d met sometimes. The convenience store they’d ducked into when they’d been carrying on a torrid affair and worried about running into people they knew. Laura knew it was wrong. She did. But she’d also never intended for it to happen.

She and Dean had worked on a software launch together, heads bent together for hours over their desks, which sat across from one another in the open floor plan of the company. She’d liked Dean’s outrageous, irreverent humor, which always made her laugh. She’d told herself that theirs was strictly a professional relationship, even though a part of her had known the flirting wasn’t just in her head. Now she knew none of that was as harmless as she’d thought.

She and Dean would go out to lunch, first with a group of colleagues and then increasingly one on one. Dean would share details about his unhappy marriage and his aloof, uncaring wife, and she would admit the loneliness of being single and her fear that she’d remain that way forever. She realized now how clichéd all of it was, how wrong she’d been to let things go so far with Dean. But she’d never meant for it to get physical. She really hadn’t.

Dean had joked that she was his work wife, and she’d loved the title, because she loved how in sync they were. It had felt like they shared the same brain at times. He completed her sentences in board meetings and she anticipated his every work need. Then came the office holiday party at an upscale San Francisco sushi restaurant, where he cornered her near the bathrooms.

“I’ve fallen in love with you,” Dean had told her and kissed her. She’d been shocked, and yet, she tentatively had kissed him back, and in that instant, everything changed.

After that, she became the star in her own star-crossed lovers tale, fighting valiantly for true love despite all the many obstacles. She knew it was wrong to think so. She knew that, but sometimes love came in surprising ways, a powerful force she couldn’t control.

Even now, even after everything Dean had done to betray her...to betray their love...she still felt the itch to contact him. She glanced at her phone, noticing, of course, the lack of new messages. Should she contact him? See how he was doing?

No! What was she thinking? Text Dean? Why should she care how he was? He didn’t care about her. Dean had made that abundantly clear the last time she’d seen him.

The worst part was that she felt like the heartache, everything she’d lost, was a punishment from God. She’d done the wrong thing, and this pain was what she’d earned.

She lay down on the bed, feeling as if she’d never be whole again, wondering if she could ever heal.

* * *

AFTER STARING AT the ceiling for an hour, unable to fall back asleep, Laura decided she wasn’t going to waste a beautiful day in the Caribbean and quickly donned her sturdy black one-piece suit and her newly purchased floppy straw hat.

After walking at least a mile to reach a spot of desolate beach, she couldn’t hear Mark’s buzz saw anymore, thank goodness. Beside her sat a brand-new cooler she’d found in the condo that she’d filled with drinks and snacks. She’d wanted to get away, and get away she had. Not a single sail dotted the blue-green horizon as the sun blazed down, coating everything in a thick warmth. Down the beach, she saw a figure walking—a woman in a shawl?

Laura tilted her head back on her bamboo mat and let the sunlight warm her cheeks. She inhaled deeply the smell of the ocean breeze and listened to the gentle rustling of palm tree leaves near her. She could almost feel the beach healing her from the outside in. This was why she came. To get away from it all.

She imagined her problems existing far, far away, and now the only thing she’d have to worry about was when high tide might come and wash away her cooler. This is what she needed...the absence of stress, nothing here to remind her of Dean. Just the gentle roll of waves against the beach.

Then came a distant cry.

A seagull? she wondered. She propped herself up on her elbows and glanced down the beach. The sound came from the woman walking along the water. Laura realized now that the woman wasn’t wearing a shawl at all. It was a baby sling. She held a baby, probably no older than three months, who was now wailing as the mom adjusted the baby in the fabric against her chest.

Laura felt her stomach tighten.

In her mind, she saw herself that morning she’d taken the pregnancy test. The positive filling her with both dread and excitement all at once. She was going to have Dean’s baby.

Then, she remembered Dean’s reaction. How he yelled, blamed her for the accident. Then she remembered the sudden cramping, the bright red blood. The trip to the emergency room in the ambulance as she miscarried.

Her sister had been there in the hospital when she woke up. Maddie told her she dodged a bullet, but it didn’t feel like it. It felt like the bullet hit her right in the chest.

She felt like she couldn’t breathe as she watched the mother and baby coming closer.

Anytime she saw a baby, she thought of her own, who would now never be born, the baby she’d carried inside her for a slight twelve weeks. How could something so small have changed her life forever? She knew it sounded irrational, but to her, the minute she’d found out she was pregnant, everything changed. She became a different woman, her life suddenly veering down a different path. With every baby she saw, she saw her own laughing back up at her.

I lost a baby. I lost my future. I’m thirty-five. I won’t have another one. Hell, maybe my body doesn’t even know how to make one the right way. The man I thought loved me didn’t at all. Of course I’m not fine.

She wished her mother was still alive. She wanted to hug her, wanted to ask her what she should do now.

She couldn’t look at a baby without feeling that profound sense of loss, because something deep inside her told her that she’d never be a mother now. She was thirty-five, and she’d had one chance at being a mom, and her body failed her.

She glanced at the happy mother, cooing to her baby. She wouldn’t be able to stay here, watch this, see the life she would never have.

Laura knew she couldn’t ask the woman to leave. It wouldn’t be fair. It wasn’t the baby’s fault. Or the mother’s.

In a rush, Laura packed up her things. She threw on her ankle-length cotton cover-up sundress and began walking. The buzz saw would be better than the baby crying. If she listened to the baby much longer, she knew she’d burst into tears.

After she’d walked a bit, she could hear the buzz saw again. She gritted her teeth. If it wasn’t one thing, it was another.

She thought about marching in there and giving Mark Tanner a piece of her mind, when she suddenly saw a gray tendril of smoke rising up from his workshop. An acrid, unmistakable smell filled the air.

Was that...a fire?

Chapter Three

SOMETHING WAS BURNING. At first, Mark thought it might be just his imagination, just sawdust flying from his saw as he hacked into the planks before him. Then he thought it might be someone grilling, except the fire smelled decidedly closer. He cut the buzz saw and turned around to find that the manila folder his brother brought had landed near his gas generator, and somehow had managed to catch alight. Smoke poured from the folder and heavy bits of sawdust that coated his small workspace.

Mark spun around, looking for something to douse the fire. He tried to kick sand on the flames, but that only seemed to add more sawdust to the fire, fueling it, making the flames grow.

He rushed into his kitchen, looking for a towel or a blanket, anything he could use to suffocate the flames. But before he could, a blur in a dark cover-up rushed past him and dumped a cooler full of ice on the fire, as well as two cans of some soda, and the small flames went out in a sizzling hiss.

She also happened to douse his saw, too, which now had pieces of ice covering the blade. And the flying soda cans knocked over one of the boards on his sawhorse, which clunked against his nearby worktable and sent Timothy’s bronze booties flying in the air. They landed with an awkward thump in the sand. The picture of his boy as a baby also came loose, fluttering down to the ground.

“Hey!” he cried, lunging at the photo and the bronze booties. If they were dented, so help him... “What are you doing?” He scooped up the small bronze shoes from the sand, clutching them protectively in his hands.

“Helping you,” she said, putting a hand on her hip.

She wore a muumuu, that was the only way he could describe it. The ankle-length sundress exposed only her elbows and left absolutely everything to the imagination.

She was too young to be so...dowdy, he thought. He knew she had a good body; he’d seen her legs earlier and knew the woman kept in shape. So why was she wearing a blanket out on the beach? Must be shy. Or timid. Or worse, conservative. Very, very conservative. Straitlaced, clearly. Even her outfit annoyed him.

She thrust her oversize sunglasses upon her head, pushing back her short dark bob and glared at him, her eyes looking greener than the Caribbean in the sunlight.

“Help?” he cried, sweeping his arms wide to encompass the disaster before him, even as he noticed that one of the soda cans opened on impact, sending a spray of sticky liquid onto his bare feet and all over the expensive blade of his saw. Great, just great. “Why don’t you just punch me in the face next time? You’ll create less damage.”

An annoyed wrinkle appeared between her eyebrows. “Don’t tempt me,” she shot back, clutching the new empty cooler beneath one elbow, her green eyes shining like emeralds with just barely contained anger. “Maybe I should have. You were running around in a panic instead of dealing with the fire.”

Oh, good grief. He wasn’t panicked. He was calm and collected. He never panicked. What was she talking about?

“I wasn’t panicking,” he said. “I was going to get something to put the fire out.”

“By running around like a chicken with his head cut off.” A knowing smirk tugged at her mouth.

“I wasn’t.”

“You were.”

Now she was making him argue like a five-year-old. Unbelievable.

“Glad I was walking by because you clearly needed help. I saved your boat.” She nodded toward the husk of his boat. He glanced down and noticed that she’d also splashed one end, which carried the hint of char on one board, where the fire had lapped dangerously close to his baby.

He dropped to his knees to inspect the board and make sure it hadn’t been damaged. If he had to start the frame all over again... But, no, the damage was surface only, just a small smudge mark he could all but wipe off with his finger.

“I know you meant well, but I didn’t ask for your help.” He knew he was being ungrateful, and he didn’t like it, but she was like a cow skipping through a china shop, destroying everything in her wake and then demanding he thank her for the damage. He knew the woman was trying to help, but now he had to worry about his saw and whether the soda had damaged it.

But first, he inspected Timothy’s shoes, connected by a single string, and thankfully saw no damage. He gently placed them back on the nail, hanging by the particle-board backstop of his worktable. Then he picked up the saw. He unplugged it from the extension cord and wiped it down with a work rag nearby.

If it was damaged, he didn’t know how he’d replace it. And without a saw, what would he do? He’d never finish the boat on time.

Then he heard a sound. A high-pitched crying. A baby. His phone! Somehow, in the chaos, it had been flung into the sand. He grabbed it, noticing that the impact had started an old video of Timothy from when he was just a baby. He was crying, fussy for his nap.

Mark clicked off the video and wiped off the screen, which was covered in dots of sticky soda.

That’s when he realized she was still standing there. What was she doing? Hadn’t he made it clear she wasn’t welcome?

He glanced up and saw that she seemed frozen in place. She glanced at Timothy’s bronze baby shoes and at the phone he still held in his hand, her face a mixture of grief and pain. He felt all those emotions he saw fighting for control behind her sea green eyes. He knew them all—pain, grief and an aggressive, bottomless loss of hope. But why did hearing a simple video of Timothy make her feel this way? What had happened to her? Or was she just unhinged for some other reason?

“Laura,” he said, and then stopped. What was he going to ask her? Are you okay?

She turned then, eyes brimming with tears, and he knew with a certainty that whatever had triggered this grief was still fresh. Before he could say any more, she dropped the cooler and sprinted away from him.

He felt a sudden urge to go after her, but then what? Maybe she wasn’t grieving. Maybe she was just a crazy person. Maybe he was projecting his own feelings on her. What did he know?

Still, he felt guilty. Guilty because somehow he’d made her cry. And guilty because he knew she suffered in some deep, damaged way that only someone who’d lost something truly dear to them would know. It didn’t sit right with him. He felt the need to make it up to her.

“Well, damn,” he muttered beneath his breath as he swiped up the cooler she’d dropped. “Now I’m going to have to do something nice.”

It went against his gruff, no-nonsense, let’s-not-spend-time-talking-about-our-feelings self. He’d never been a touchy-feely guy, but he couldn’t just let her suffer alone. He knew what that felt like.

* * *

LAURA FLED TO her condo and flung herself on the bed, angrily swiping the tears from her face. She hated that she’d become so weak, so completely unstable that a simple video of a baby and some bronzed baby shoes could so undo her in the moment.

It wasn’t right. She should be getting better, and yet, she just seemed to be getting worse. She was a walking sponge, just oozing tears all the time. She just wanted it to stop, all of it. St. Anthony’s was supposed to be the place where she got away from all the things that hurt her, where she could finally heal. After all, the island was named for the patron saint of lost things. And she’d never felt more lost in her whole life.

Why did this happen to her? Why had God seen fit to take her baby away before he could even be born? Why was she the only one mourning him?

But then again, she knew why. She’d been wrong, so very wrong, to be in love with Dean. This was God punishing her, she felt, for the mistake she made: falling in love with a married man.

She squeezed her eyes shut. Dean was a mistake. She knew that. But, the baby wasn’t. No matter what anybody said.

Her sister had told her that she’d have other babies. But Laura didn’t want another baby. She wanted the baby she lost. She glanced down at her flat belly, hidden beneath her flowing cover-up. Now it might never be full.

She wished she could talk to her mother. Get some measure of comfort, but her mother had died years ago.

Feeling lost and alone, her willpower crumbling, she grabbed her phone and dialed Dean’s work cell.

He answered on the second ring. “Hello?” he sounded harried, his voice low.

“Dean?” She hated how angry he sounded that she’d called, how disappointed. He used to always sound happy when he heard her voice. Now he always sounded like she was calling to deliver bad news.

“What are you doing calling me?” he whispered, his voice a furious, low buzz. Then, she realized that he must be at his house. The house he still shared with his wife.

“Dean. I’m sorry... I’m just...” Lost. Alone. Hurting. Wishing that you still loved me...or that you’d ever loved me at all. She hated all the desperate feelings that bubbled up, determined to break the surface. Dean sure had been happy to hear about the miscarriage. Ecstatic, even. Why did she think he’d comfort her now?

Dean sighed, a sound full of patronizing pity, and she felt even worse. “Look,” he said, voice softer. “I’ll try to call you when I get into work, okay?”

She heard shuffling in the background, and then a voice. His wife’s? She felt her stomach tighten with jealousy.

“I’ve got to go. I have to take my wife to the doctor,” he said, louder this time, in a voice that sounded too businesslike, and she knew that Angela was in the room. He was pretending to talk to someone at work.

“Is she all right?” Laura asked, cautious. After all, she wasn’t heartless.

“Well, we were going to tell everyone at the office this week, but she’s sixteen weeks pregnant.”

The words hit Laura like a ton of bricks. She felt all the wind knocked out of her lungs. Pregnant? His wife was...pregnant? Laura was speechless. Words failed her.

“Oh, yes, thanks,” Dean prattled on in a pretend conversation with a coworker who didn’t exist. Completely oblivious or not caring that he’d shattered what was left of her world. “I’ll check in with you when I’m back in the office. Thanks. Bye.”

And then he hung up, the line dead as she clutched her phone in her numb hand. Dean’s wife was pregnant. She was going to have a baby.

Sixteen weeks along?

She’d been twelve weeks along just a month ago when she’d lost her baby. That meant...

That meant that he had to have known that his wife was pregnant at the same time Laura was. That also meant that he had been having sex with Laura at the same time he had sex with his wife. The wife he claimed he hadn’t touched in two years, the wife who apparently hated sex. But she didn’t hate it enough to get pregnant apparently, Laura thought bitterly.

She knew Dean had lied, but this...this was a whole other level.

No wonder he’d been so relieved when she’d lost the baby. There was no way he’d leave his pregnant wife. Besides, there was no reason he’d leave his wife, period, not if Angela was actually a loving partner rather than the cold, distant monster he’d described.

Suddenly, she felt a searing rush of rage. She ought to pick up that phone and call his home landline to try to talk to his wife. Or message her on Facebook. Shouldn’t she know she was married to the worst kind of liar?

But then the rage drained out of her and all she felt was pain. She’d been so incredibly stupid. Why had she ever believed a word he said?

And when, oh, when would God stop punishing her? She knew she’d made a mistake, but when would she be forgiven? She’d asked so many times, in church, on the plane here and once again now. Please. I’m sorry. I was wrong.

She didn’t know how long she lay there, but eventually the daylight faded outside and dark shadows covered the length of the condo. She ought to try to get up, find something to eat for dinner, but she couldn’t muster the strength or the will to do it. Why bother?

She heard a soft knock on her door distantly and wondered if she’d imagined it. She lay quietly, listening.

Another knock sounded, followed by silence.

Nope, definitely someone at the door. But she couldn’t muster the energy to get to her feet. She didn’t think she’d ever be able to leave the bed again. She lay motionless, anticipating another knock, but it never came.

Good, she thought. Whoever it was went away.

She felt a sudden urge to move, to get out of the condo. She hated wallowing in self-pity. It just wasn’t her. Maybe going to the beach would clear her head? After all, she’d traveled all this way, paid to be here. What was the use of being on an amazing tropical island if she was just going to stay cooped up inside?

She sniffed, pulled on a pair of jean cutoffs over her bathing suit and stuffed a wad of tissues in her pocket. Then she flung open the front door and found her cooler waiting for her there. The cooler she’d dropped downstairs at Mark’s workshop.

She reached down to pick it up and found it heavier than an empty cooler should be. Laura set it down once more and lifted the hinged lid. Inside, she found her Cokes and four bottles of beer. Along with that was a hastily scribbled note that read:

Sorry about earlier.

Mark

P.S. If you want company while you drink these, you know where to find me.

Chapter Four

AT FIRST, LAURA laughed out loud. Mark expected her to come over for a drink? After how rude he’d been? After he’d practically shouted at her when she’d put out a fire?

Then, after the laughter faded, she reconsidered. It was a nice gesture. Surprisingly nice from a man she could best describe as gruff, and at worst, surly.

The exact opposite of Dean in his heyday. Dean, who used sweet words and bright promises to charm everybody he met. It was why he’d been the director of sales at her former company. He could sell anything to anybody. Mark wasn’t like that. He could barely sell an apology, she reasoned. Sorry about earlier? About when? When she’d saved his workshop from fire and he’d told her he didn’t need her help? Or when he’d implied her thoughts about noise pollution were completely moot?

But, given how Dean turned out, maybe she should give gruff a try. Besides, what was one beer? Part of her didn’t want to be alone right now. She didn’t want to stew in her own misery, to turn over all the ways Dean had betrayed her in his mind, to face the yawning black chasm of her own sadness. Dean would have a baby, all right. Just not hers.

Then again, smooth-talking Dean had turned out to be a liar. Maybe the opposite of Dean was just what she needed right now.

Honestly, she wanted a distraction. Any distraction.

She grabbed the cooler and headed downstairs.

As she stood in front of his metal door, she knocked, the tin plunking sound reverberating in her stomach. The door swung open and Mark greeted her with a neutral expression.

He’d put on a shirt and taken a shower, she saw, as his hair was still wet. The faded T-shirt stuck to his very muscular chest, leaving little to her imagination. This was better than a frown, and yet still she felt like she might be intruding.

“Uh. Just wanted to thank you for this.” She lifted the cooler. He glanced at it, mute. Did he not write the note that invited her to come over for a drink? Was he not going to invite her inside?

She hesitated on his welcome mat, wondering if she’d read the entire note wrong. It certainly seemed like an invitation. “Well, then.” She hated awkward silences. Why was he just staring and not saying anything? “I guess I’ll go.”

She was halfway turned around when his voice stopped her. “Did you want to come in?”

“Uh...sure?” she said, glancing at him over her shoulder. “I mean. If you’re not busy.”

He slowly shook his head, dark eyes watching her. “Not busy.” Then he retreated from the door, leaving it open, and she stepped into his condo.

The place smelled like the open air of the beach and ocean because his patio doors were flung wide open. His workshop and the partially restored boat obscured some of the dark, rolling sea, but she could hear the waves gently lapping against the beach. Outside, the moon rose above the ocean, casting a silver light on the water.

The layout of his place was largely the same as hers, although his kitchen was slightly bigger and newer. Instead of touristy bamboo furniture, his was entirely dark, simple wood and modern lines. Also, his place was twice the size of hers; he’d knocked down a wall and made two condos into one. Somehow his place seemed more masculine, too, yet tastefully decorated. A large photograph of a sailboat hung on one large wall near the kitchen, drawing her eye. The matting said Tanner.

“Your boat?” she asked. She set the cooler on his kitchen counter and walked up to the oversize photo of the impressive sailboat to study it.

“My brother’s now. But used to be, yeah.” He fell silent once more as he whipped the bottles of beer out of the cooler and popped open the caps with an opener. Laura suspected there might be a story there but didn’t push it. Mark was a hard man to read, and she was still feeling him out.

“Is the one you’re building going to be like that?” she asked.

“Kind of,” he said, handing her a bottle.

She took it gratefully, wondering if a little beer would make conversation less like pulling teeth. They clinked bottles and Laura took a deep swig of the cold, fizzy beverage, letting the lager slip down her throat. She’d only just starting drinking her first beer and already she wanted her second.

“Want to sit outside?” he asked.

“Yes,” she answered a little too quickly. She took another deep swig of the beer.

“You need another one of those?” he asked her, and Laura realized she’d drank nearly half the beer already.

“Probably.” She sighed, thinking about how lately every day just screamed for strong drinks and lots of them. “It’s been that kind of day.”

“For you, too, huh?”

She glanced at his dark eyes and thought she saw a flicker of pity there. Or maybe understanding. She nodded. “I plan to drown my sorrows in alcohol.”

“Well, then, we’re going to get along just fine, after all.” Mark reached back in his fridge and grabbed a few more bottles, loading up her small cooler so full that the lid wouldn’t close. “I was going to finish up this beer alone, which probably means I’m an alcoholic. If we do it together, then we’re both just being social.”

He laughed and she joined him.

He lifted the cooler and headed outside. Laura followed, the warm ocean breeze ruffling her short hair as she followed him past his workshop. The full moon hung in the sky and shed a gray light on the beach. He’d set up two beach chairs not far from his shop, facing out to the ocean.

“Beautiful,” she said, staring at the moon, amazed at how many stars she could see here, far away from the lights of the city.

“Yeah,” he agreed. They both sat in the chairs and he laid the cooler between them. “You never really get used to it.”

Laura finished her first beer and Mark handed her a second. He whistled, sounding impressed. “Boy, you weren’t kidding about the alcohol.”

“I don’t know if you have enough beer to make me forget about my day.” Dean was going to be a father. She might never be a mother. “It’s the worst ever.”

“Can’t be, because mine definitely was,” Mark said as he took a sip of beer. “Started with this pretty lady yelling at me for working in the morning, except that it was practically lunchtime and...”

Pretty lady? The compliment didn’t slip past Laura. He thought she was good-looking?

“Okay, okay, okay.” Laura raised her beer bottle like a shield. “Sorry about that. I was jet-lagged. I thought it was early.”

“Uh-huh.” Mark grinned, flashing a teasing smile that somehow looked even brighter in the moonlight. Laura couldn’t help but think how handsome he was when he wasn’t solemn or grumpy. “Well, apology accepted.”

“And what about you, Mr. Grumpy Guy With a Saw, who might also be a pyromaniac?”

“I’m not a...” Mark frowned, but then he pointed his beer bottle at Laura. “You’re teasing me.”

“Maybe. For all I know, you set that fire on purpose so I’d come running and save you.”

“Why would I do that?”

She took a sip of beer, savoring the cold, crispness as it slid down her throat. Already, she began to feel the tightness in her stomach relax as the second beer hit her stomach, and she glanced out across the dark ocean waves. Above the water, thousands of stars glistened. “Maybe you like pretty ladies who also put out fires.”

He laughed. “Maybe,” he agreed.

Were they flirting? Laura wondered. It had been so long since she’d even been interested in flirting, she couldn’t say. Surely not.

She studied him. He was attractive—if you went for lean, muscled guys. With just a hint of gray at the temples and dark eyes that never missed a move. She would’ve put herself in that category, before Dean. Before losing her baby.

He took a swig of beer and glanced up at the star-filled sky. Then, he glanced back at her. “So? Go on. Tell me about your day. It had to be bad for you to suck down that beer so fast. What’s driven you to drink?”

“Oh. You don’t want to hear about my problems.” She couldn’t imagine he’d be the least bit interested.

“Actually, I would,” he said, leaning back in his deck chair and getting comfortable as he stretched his long, tanned legs out in front of him. “I’m bored to death of my own problems. I need a change of pace.”

“Well...” Laura hesitated. Was she really going to pour her heart out to a stranger she barely knew? Tell him secrets she’d not even told her closest friends in San Francisco who had no idea about the baby or Dean? “I don’t know. Most of my friends don’t even know what’s been going on. It’s not the kind of thing I can really share.”

“Okay,” he said, setting his beer down by the leg of his chair. “Let’s break this down. So you’re here for how long?”

“A month. I don’t know. I haven’t exactly made a plan.” She shrugged. She’d never imagine she’d be on such an open-ended trip before. But then again, she’d never imagined she’d have an affair, either. Life was full of surprises.

He raised his eyebrows. “Miss Noise Pollution doesn’t have a plan? I have to say, I’m surprised.”

“Why?”

“I thought you’d have your whole life planned out in one of those—what do they call them? Day riders? Runners? Calendar whatevers?”

“I like calendar whatevers, and no, I don’t.” Actually, she used to. Not that she had a physical calendar she carried around, but her online calendar was extensive. She even used to put major milestones in it, like ask for a raise, or look for a new job with more responsibilities. She’d been that odd job candidate who relished answering the question, what’s your five-year plan? She always had an answer.

Now? Not so much.

“I used to be a planner,” she admitted. “But that was before I learned that the old joke, ‘how do you make God laugh? Make a plan,’ was actually no joke.”

Mark nodded, agreeing. “Amen, sister,” he said and they clinked beer bottles.

Laura realized she was having a good time. Amazing, but true.

“So back to how horrible your day was,” Mark said.

“I thought we’d let that go.”

“Oh, no. I don’t let anything go.” Mark flashed another grin. “So you don’t know how long you’re staying, but I’m guessing you aren’t moving here for good.”

“Probably not.”

“Okay, then. A month. Maybe two at most you’ll be here, living above me. Then, you’re probably never going to see me again. So what’s the harm in telling me something? I don’t know any of your friends. I won’t tell any of them.”

He had a point there. She sighed. “Where do you want me to start?”

“Wherever you’d like. The workday is done. I’ve got a beer in my hand and I don’t have anywhere to be, except out here, enjoying this.” He lifted his beer bottle to the scenic view before them of the dark waves glistening in the moonlight. He had a point.

The beer helped her shed her inhibitions, and she forgot why she shouldn’t tell this man everything. He seemed like he really wanted to know. And he was right—he was a captive audience. Might as well see if he was a genuinely sympathetic ear.

“Well,” she said. “It all started with me making the mistake of falling in love with the wrong person.”

Mark laughed. “What did you go and do that for?”

“He was charming. And persistent. And he said he loved me.”

“Oldest tricks in the book,” Mark said and Laura had to laugh a little. She watched his profile in the moonlight. He turned to study her and she felt the weight of his attention.

“So what made him the wrong man?”

“For starters?” Laura took a big swig of beer for courage. Here goes nothing, she thought. “He was married.”

Mark coughed, and for a second, Laura feared he was judging her, like she knew her sister did, like she knew everyone would who ever found out. Only two people actually even knew about the affair: her sister and Dean. She realized she had no idea how a stranger would react. Derision? Probably.

She deserved it, too, she thought. She could feel the heavy weight of guilt pressing against her shoulder blades. Why had she shared this information? With a man she barely knew?

She could see his shoulders shaking a little in the moonlight. Was he angry?

Then he broke the silence with a laugh, and she realized with a start he’d been laughing at her.

“You?” he managed to sputter. “You had a torrid affair? Miss Noise Pollution?” He laughed a little harder and slapped his own knee.

Well, this wasn’t the reaction she’d been expecting. A lecture, disapproval, maybe. But laughter? “What’s so funny?”

“It’s just... I can’t imagine you... You’re so buttoned up. So prim and proper. You, breaking one of the Ten Commandments? I just can’t imagine it.” Mark swiped at his eyes. The man laughed so hard, he actually started to tear up.

Laura felt a prickle of indignation run down her spine. She wasn’t that straitlaced. Was she?

“It’s not funny.”

“It is, though. Have you met you?” He shook his head. “Today, you were wearing a muumuu to the beach, like head-to-toe covered. Not exactly the type to have an affair.”

“Well, I did. I mean, I didn’t plan on it exactly, but it happened, and I take responsibility for it, but...I mean, it’s not something anybody I know would ever think I’d do, probably.” Laura thought about her small circle of girlfriends, most of whom were married and none of whom she could ever confide in about this. None of them would understand, she knew that for certain.

“Well, then, you are full of surprises. Here’s to bold women who aren’t afraid to break the rules.” He offered up his beer bottle for a toast. Reluctantly, she clinked the neck of her bottle against his.

“It’s not something I’m proud of. I don’t even think I should be toasting.” Now, Laura felt weird about it. Was he mocking her? “I mean, have you cheated?”

“Nope,” he said, taking a big drink. “Was cheated on, actually. My wife slept with my brother. They’re together now. They’re even...” He bit off the last of his sentence, as if regretting even bringing it up.

Laura felt the blood drain from her face. Now he’d hate her. He’d have to.

“Oh... I am so sorry. You must...must hate me. I’ve got to be the kind of person you hate the most. A cheater.”

“Why? You’re not my brother. Or my wife.” He shrugged one shoulder and took another long drag of beer. “They’re the ones who betrayed me.”

“But—”

“Look, your sins aren’t against everybody. I’m sure, Miss Noise Pollution, you had a very good reason for cheating.”

That was kind of him, she thought, not to plunk her in the category of horrible person automatically. She knew many people who would.

Laura thought about Dean’s silky words, about his gentle hands. “Not really. I mean, I thought...I guess I thought it was true love. I thought we were going to be together. But in the end, I’m not going to make excuses. I just wanted to, I guess.”

“I’m liking you more already,” Mark said, turning his head and grinning. “That’s more than my wife ever admitted.”

Still, Laura felt rotten. She felt as if she’d wronged him, too, somehow, just being in the camp of women who wore scarlet As on their chests.

“Come on. I don’t hate you. So what? You had an affair. I mean, I don’t think cheating is right, but at the same time, you’ve got a little bit of an edge to you. One I didn’t expect. I kind of like it.” Mark studied her in the dark and she felt a little unnerved by his gaze. Was he flirting with her? Surely not. Mr. Surly Boat Building Guy? “So did he leave his wife? What happened with Mr. Wrong?”

“No, he didn’t leave his wife. The opposite, actually.” She squeezed her eyes shut, remembering the sound of Dean’s harried voice on the phone, the almost casual way he’d delivered the earthshattering news. “He got her pregnant.”

Mark whistled low. “Well, that sucks.”

“Yeah. I just found out today.” She took a long swig of the bottle and found that she’d downed half of this one, too. At this rate, she was going to be drunk very soon. Somehow that thought didn’t seem to bother her in the least. On a day like today, she almost welcomed oblivion. Anything to make her mind stop looking backward.

“So he’s going to stay with his wife?” Mark leaned over his chair, moving closer to her. “Make a happy little family? Or at least happy until his wife figures out he’s been dipping his wick in other places.”

She nodded.

“Well.” Mark slapped his knee. “Can’t say that sounds too good for you.”

She remembered how Dean had been so disappointed to find out she was pregnant. She wasn’t sorry to lose Dean. He’d proven himself a liar and unworthy of her affection. She knew that on a base level. It wasn’t losing Dean that hurt so much.

“Well, I don’t want Dean. Dean was a prick.”

“Dean? His name is Dean? Well, with a name like that, of course he was a prick.” Mark chuckled low and Laura joined him.

It felt good to hear someone else bash Dean. Hell, it felt good to talk to someone other than her sister. How long had it been since she’d had a real conversation with someone? Ages. The secret of her affair with Dean had driven a wedge between her and all her friends, and she hadn’t been able to talk about it openly, not even the miscarriage. Her friends didn’t even know she’d been pregnant. But she wasn’t ready to tell Mark that. Not that. Not yet. Talking about losing her baby somehow made it even more real.

He leaned forward. “There’s something more, though, isn’t there?”

“What do you mean?” Laura suddenly felt defensive. Could he see right through her? How did he know there was more?

“I mean, there’s more to this story. You’ve lost more than Dean.” He seemed so certain, and yet, how did he know? Did he have ESP?

“I...” she began, alcohol swirling in her brain. “I don’t know if I want to talk about it. Besides, what about you? I can’t be the only one to spill my guts. If I’m talking about my no-good, horrible day, then you have to tell me why yours was so bad, too.”

Mark cocked his head to one side. “Fair enough.”

“What made your day so bad?”

“My older brother, the one who slept with my wife and stole our company from me, came back and asked me if I’d work for him.”

Laura coughed, nearly choking on her beer. That sounded like one winner of a sibling. “What did you say?”

Mark paused and studied the label on his beer. He began picking off the edges. “I said hell no.”

Laura laughed and offered her bottle up for another toast. “Here’s to the power of no.” They clinked their mostly empty bottles once more and she giggled. “I’m actually having more fun than I’d thought.”

He glanced at her and grinned. “Me, too.”

“You’re not as grumpy as I first thought, either.” She gave his bicep a playful shove. She felt the compact muscle there, the solidness of it.

“What? Me? Grumpy?” Mark laughed as he absorbed her jab. “I’m Mr. Sunshine over here.”

Now it was Laura’s turn to cackle. “You? Have you met you?” She relished quoting him now that the tables were turned. She reached out and put her hand on his shoulder, a gesture she’d meant to be purely platonic, but as her laughter died down, she realized she’d kept her hand there a beat too long.

Suddenly aware of the heat of his skin, the strength of the muscle beneath, she wondered what his arms might feel like around her, and she remembered the glisten of his muscles in the sunlight just that morning. She wondered what it would feel like to run her hands down his bare arm.

As soon as the thought popped into her head, she squashed it. What was she doing? She hadn’t thought of a man like that...well, since Dean. And look where that got her. Was she really so eager to jump back into the fray? Was she even ready to have a man touch her again? She had lousy instincts about men. Dean had just proved that.

She pulled her hand away a bit too quickly, heat creeping up her neck. She glanced quickly at him, but he seemed not to notice, or at least not to register her touch.

Not that she should be surprised. As if he’d ever in a million years be interested in her. Miss Noise Pollution, he’d called her. Here she was, worried about sleeping with a man who probably had no intention of ever sleeping with her. Her head swam with alcohol and she knew she ought to stop before she truly made a fool of herself.

“Well.” She put down her now-empty beer bottle. “It’s late. I probably should be going.”

“Are you serious?” Mark asked, spinning in his chair and gawking at her. “This is what you call drowning your sorrows in alcohol? Honey, you’re a lightweight.”

“I am not.” Laura lifted her chin in defiance. She wasn’t exactly a heavyweight drinker, but she could hold her own.

“Then prove it.” He handed her another beer bottle.

What was this? College? Would he ask her to do a beer bong next? Please. “Come on. Don’t be silly. We’re not twenty.”

“Nope. We’re not. Thank God.” He grinned. “And I’m glad, because twenty-year-olds know nothing about the world. I’d rather have a seasoned woman any day of the week.”

Did he mean her? Was he...flirting? She glanced at the bottle in his hand, hesitating. What would one more round really hurt anyway? Mark seemed to sense her indecision. He waggled the beer in front of her.

“Come on. How miserable are you, really? Just two beers miserable? Because that’s hardly miserable at all.”

She had to laugh at that. She was far more than two beers miserable.

“Fine,” she said and grabbed the bottle from his hand. “You win.”

He chuckled and took another swig of his beer as she started on hers. She’d just stay for one more. Besides, what’s the worst that could happen?

Chapter Five

LAURA WOKE UP feeling like an elephant had stomped on her head and someone had filled her mouth with sand. Searing white light bashed her closed eyelids, and a pulsing, distant thud of pain thumped in her temples. She feared opening her eyes. The light would no doubt make her hangover ten times worse. All she wanted to do was lie here, very still, and hope to fall back asleep.

Flashes of the night before came to her. Beer, Mark, laughing...then more beer. She’d drunk her misery away, yes, she had, but she’d also brought more misery to her brain, which right now wanted to crawl out of her skull to get away from this crushing migraine. Her stomach roiled, too, and she felt a wave of nausea overcome her. Not good.

She’d have to open her eyes sometime. She cracked one eye open, expecting to see the palm-tree-decorated comforter on her rental condo bed, but instead found herself lying beneath a gray-striped blanket on a large king-size bed in a room she didn’t recognize.

Laura sat up in alarm, the sheets falling from her body, and then realized she was wearing nothing but her bra and underwear. Laura covered her chest with her arms and realized with alarm she was sitting in Mark’s bed. In her underwear.

But where was Mark?

She listened frantically but heard nothing. Was she alone? What the hell had happened last night?

Frantically, she searched her memory of the night before. Beers on his deck. Lots of beers. Then... Oh, no. Tequila shots. Did that happen? Yes, she had a fuzzy memory of Mark slicing limes. Tequila was never good. She might as well just hit herself in the head with a rock. Why did she think tequila was a good idea? But then, nothing after that. Oh, Lord. What had she done? She couldn’t recall anything more.

God, she’d only ever blacked out once in her life in college. That was fourteen years ago. What the hell was wrong with her?

She heard the front door of the condo rattle open and swing shut. Mark? Was that Mark? Frantically she glanced around the room for her clothes. Where were they? And, more important, did Mark...take them off?

She heard a soft knock on the bedroom door. “Hello?” Mark called.

“Uh...yes?” Laura scrambled to pull the covers up to her chin. Granted, she was wearing a sturdy pair of cotton boy shorts and matching bra with more coverage than most bikinis, but still, she felt vulnerable and exposed.

“Morning, Drinking Beauty,” Mark teased. “I’ve got your clothes here. All laundered.” He backed into the room, not looking at the bed. Did he keep his head turned because he was being a gentleman?

He dropped them on the edge of the bed.

“Why did you wash my clothes?” she asked, stunned.

“You don’t remember?” he asked, back still turned.

“Remember what?”

Mark chuckled low. “Get dressed and come get coffee. Have I got a story to tell you.” He shut the bedroom door behind him, and Laura scrambled to get her clothes. What had she done? Had he...? Had they...? Did they have sex? Why couldn’t she remember?

She felt red flames of embarrassment lick her face. She wasn’t that kind of girl. But she had admitted to an affair. Had he thought she was easy? That she just jumped into bed with anybody? She didn’t, for the record.

Laura pulled on her shorts and her T-shirt, her head still throbbing and her tongue feeling like she’d spent the night sucking on sandpaper. She managed a quick glance in the mirror above his dresser and saw her hair in complete disarray. Her short dark bob stuck out in all directions and yet was completely flat on one side. Plus, a smudge of old mascara ringed her left eye. She looked awful.

Laura tried her best to tidy herself up, but she needed more than just water from the sink to really make a dent. She gave up easily, too hungover to do much about her frightening hair. The effort of putting on clothes exhausted her. Her stomach protested at every move, threatening to empty itself at every turn.

She opened the door, cautiously at first, and saw Mark, his back to her, making coffee in the kitchen. She shuffled out, unable to move faster, her head still in a vice.

“Hello?” Her voice came out as a croak, and Mark turned, a knowing grin on his face.

“Well, hello.” He wiggled his eyebrows, and she worried then and there that they’d done it. And she had no memory. Not one single memory of them having sex. She tried to focus on what she did remember, but it all just felt like one white-hot headache.

“Uh, what, uh...happened last night?”

The coffee machine hummed, and the strong smell of some dark brew wafted through the air. Morning sunlight filtered in through the vertical blinds of his patio, striking her head like laser beams.

“You had a lot to drink.” Mark wore cargo shorts, flip-flops and a tight T-shirt over his muscled chest. He looked amazingly put together, not a hair out of place and freshly shaved. He leaned back against the counter, crossing his muscled forearms across his chest, dark hair slightly ruffled and that cocksure smile on his face. How could he roll out of bed looking so...sexy?

“I know that.” Laura’s head pounded. She pressed her hands against her temples, almost hoping to squeeze the headache out of her head. Also, oddly, her nose felt sore, she realized. “But...what else?”

“Well. You at one point yelped, ran down the beach and shouted at the ocean, ‘I don’t need you, Dean!’”

“Oh, I didn’t.” She suddenly wished the ground would open up and swallow her.

“You did. Then you started throwing handfuls of sand into the ocean.” Mark’s grin got bigger. He uncrossed his arms. “And cursing. A lot.”

A dark memory tried to wiggle its way to the forefront of her brain. Yes, that sounded actually right. The feel of the wet sand in her hands. The rush of anger. The release of her fury. Yep. That seemed about right.

“Then you face-planted.” Mark hit the counter for emphasis, showing her how she’d landed as his palm smacked on the granite.

Oh, no. Well, that explains the sore nose.

“Right in the sand.” Mark was having trouble not laughing at this point. The corners of his mouth twitched, and his dark eyes never left her. “I mean monumental face-plant. And you just lay there for a minute. Groaning.”

“I didn’t.” Could this get any worse?

“You did. I tried to help you up, but you told me you were just going to lie there. Let the sea take you somewhere. That maybe it was all better this way.”

Laura flinched. “That sounds dramatic.”

“You were very determined to lie there in the sand.”

“I’m...I’m so embarrassed.” She smacked her own forehead, but that just made her headache worse. She peeked at Mark between two fingers. “Then what?” She almost didn’t want to know.

“Then you tried swimming out to the ocean, even though you were on sand, so it was really less like a butterfly stroke and more like a belly crawl.” Mark did his best imitation with just his arms as he struggled against air. If she’d done that, she must’ve looked ridiculous. “You did make it to the water, though, and got yourself good and drenched.”

“My clothes... That’s why you washed them.”

Mark crossed his beefy arms once more. He was still grinning. The coffee machine beeped, signaling its ready brew, and Mark poured two cups. He handed her one, which she reluctantly took. She didn’t know how much her uneasy stomach could stand, but the coffee smelled good so she decided to give it a try.

“I didn’t think you had it in you, Miss Noise Pollution, but let me tell you, you created a whole lot of noise last night,” he said. “You better be glad I’m president of the condo board.”

“Ugh. No.”

“Yes. Lots of shouting and squealing. And cursing. Lots of cursing about Dean.” Mark seemed to be enjoying this a little too much.

Laura slumped into a nearby armchair and he followed her, taking a seat kitty-corner from her on the couch. He set his coffee mug on the glass table by his knees.

“And I haven’t even told you the best part,” he said.

“Do I want to hear it?” she groaned. She held the coffee cup in both hands and took a sip. It tasted remarkably good. She took another.

“When I finally dragged you out of the surf, I told you we needed to go back to my house and get you into something dry and put you to bed, but you just stripped right on out of your clothes, threw them at me and then went running down the beach shouting, ‘I don’t wanna go to bed!’”

“Ugh,” Laura groaned. “Really?”

Mark chuckled and reached into his own back pocket, pulling out his smartphone. “’Fraid so. I got proof.” He drew up a video he’d taken on the moonlit beach the night before. Sure enough, there she was, running away from him and shouting, arms flailing in the air and dark hair bouncing. Laura almost couldn’t watch it, yet she couldn’t look away, either.

“I want to die right now.”

“That’s also what you said about a half beat later, when you ran out of steam and threw up all over the sand.”

“No!” Laura smacked her face again, forgetting about her bruised nose. “Ow.”

Mark chuckled as he leaned forward, tapping her knee. “You, Miss Straitlaced, are one helluva interesting time when you drink.”

“I’m not usually. But tequila does weird things to me,” she admitted. She brought the coffee cup to her mouth and sipped at the strong brew. “In fact, now that I think about it, tequila was what I was drinking the last time I got in trouble...in college.”

“Well, whatever it was, you put on quite a show.” Mark grabbed his own mug from the coffee table and took a sip.

“So you didn’t take my clothes off?”

Mark chuckled, nearly spitting out his coffee. “No, no. You were more than happy to take them off yourself. I had to encourage you not to take off your bra. You really, really wanted to.”

She shook her head.

“I finally persuaded you to come home with me, but only after you ran around for a good twenty minutes more, shouting at the top of your lungs. I’m surprised the other neighbors didn’t call the police. But then I got you into bed.”

“So...uh...we didn’t...I mean...I don’t remember if we...” This might be the most embarrassing thing she’d ever asked a man in her life. “Did we have sex?”

Mark burst out laughing. “No, we didn’t, Miss Noise Pollution. Which I’m going to continue to call you but for entirely different reasons now.” He glanced at her. “I don’t take advantage of women who can’t consent.”

“Oh.” That was good then.

“And you were in no condition to consent.”

Laura felt searing humiliation. Why had she let herself go like that? She knew why. Because of Dean. Because of everything that happened. She’d wished for oblivion, and she’d gotten it all right.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I don’t usually act like that. I swear. It’s not...me.”

Mark shrugged. “Well, all I can say is running after your half-naked ass on the beach beats the hell out of sitting by myself on the couch.”

Laura got a flash of a memory, but couldn’t quite bring it into focus. She strained to recollect it as she stared at him sitting across from her. The dark shadow of a memory formed. What was it? She couldn’t quite remember.

“You’re sure we didn’t... I mean, nothing happened?”

“We didn’t have sex, if that’s what you’re asking,” Mark said. “But I didn’t say nothing happened.”

Oh, God. Something did happen! Ack.

“What did I do?” It had something to do with that couch. She had an inkling of a memory she couldn’t quite pull into the light.

“Well, wouldn’t you like to know?”

* * *

MARK LOVED TEASING LAURA. It just might be his new favorite pastime. He watched as all the color drained from her face as she imagined the worst-case scenarios from the night before.

The girl knew how to let loose, something he never would’ve expected from her. She also had an amazing body, one that he’d appreciated in the silver light of the moon as she’d jogged down the beach in her underwear. All firm thighs, small waist and jiggling in all the right places.

“Tell me,” she pleaded with him now, her face streaked with old mascara. She looked like a complete mess, but she also looked adorable.

“No,” he teased.

“Mark!” She playfully slapped his arm and he liked the contact.

“What? A gentleman never tells.” He couldn’t help but laugh as she growled, baring her teeth.

“That is not what that saying is supposed to mean.” She slapped at his arm again.

“Fair enough.” He grinned. Now she was getting mad, and her green eyes flashed with growing frustration even as her cheeks grew pinker. God, he loved seeing the passion in her. It reminded him of the woman from last night, the one who’d laid herself bare...emotionally and pretty much literally.

In truth, nothing happened, and yet, everything had at the same time. He’d finally caught her at the edge of the beach, corralling her back to his condo and wrapping her up in a towel as best he could. By then, she was hardly keeping her eyes open, and the fire had drained out of her. He’d been worried about her getting sick again, and that had been his main focus as he steered her to his bed. But before he could even get her to the bedroom, she’d resisted him.

“I wanna go back outshide,” she’d slurred and tried to change course. He’d resisted, and yet she’d forced him to stagger backward a little. Somehow he’d caught his foot on the rug and tripped back into the couch. She fell on top of him, the towel falling away. He still remembered the soft feel of her full, heavy breasts against his chest, the thin cotton fabric of her bra hardly putting up much of a barrier between them. The way he’d wanted her in that moment in a way he hadn’t wanted a woman in a long, long time.

Then she’d leaned in and he’d thought for sure she was going to kiss him.

But instead, she’d collapsed on his chest and begun snoring. Loudly.

“Nothing happened,” he said now. “I promise. Just lots of you yelling. And then you passed out.”

“Really?” she asked, looking uncertain.

“Really,” he confirmed. “By the way, you snore.”

Laura chuckled a little.

“Oh...my head.” Laura cradled her head in her hands.

“Want a little hair of the dog?” He offered her an unopened beer.

“No. Please no.” Laura held up her hands together as if trying to ward off any more alcohol. “That sounds like a terrible breakfast.”

“How about I cook you a real one then? I don’t know about you, but bacon always cures what ails me.”

She looked up at him and managed a weak grin.

“Bacon it is,” he said and got to work on whipping up something for them both.

It had been a long time since Mark had felt this relaxed in his own kitchen. Hell, in his own skin, for that matter. His world had been turned upside down since his boy had died.

God, that awful day. He wanted to shake it from his memory. He glanced outside, past his patio and to the shell of his father’s boat. He hadn’t even thought about the boat in more than twelve hours! The boat was usually the last thing he thought about when he went to sleep and the first thing he thought about when he woke up. Of course, he’d been busy chasing Laura down the beach half the night. Still. He needed to stay focused. He’d need to get to work soon if he wanted to have any hope of finishing it before the race.

“So, the boat? Want to tell me about it?” Laura asked, catching him staring.

“Oh. Well, I want to restore it and race. Every year, there’s a big sailboat race on the island. And the prize is a hundred thousand dollars.”

“Whoa.” She looked suitably impressed. “That’s a lot of money.”

He nodded. “Yep, and when I win it, I’m going to go sail around the world. I’ve got a team who will help me finish the boat and help me race it. And after that, I’m just going out to sea. It’s the only place I feel...okay.”

Laura frowned. “Why is that? I mean, why on the boat?”

Mark swallowed, wondering how he was going to explain this. “I’ve always loved to sail. But now...it’s really because it was my son’s favorite place to be. Before he died.”

Laura’s face went pale. “Oh, I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to—”

“I know,” Mark said, waving his hand as if it was a dismissable foul. He was so tired of people apologizing all the time if he ever brought up Timothy. It wasn’t her fault he’d died. And frankly, talking about him meant no one would forget him. “I’m naming the boat Timothy...after him. He wasn’t quite three when he died.”

“Mark.” Laura clutched her chest as if her own heart were breaking. “That’s just so awful. What happened?”

“Accident,” he said, curt, cutting off the word before it even left his mouth. Accident. That’s what they called that horrible day Timothy walked into the ocean and never came back. “My ex-wife was watching him on the beach one morning when I was away at work. She fell asleep. Timothy wandered into the water and never came out.”

It was the other reason Mark wanted to be out on the sea. That’s where his boy was.

“She fell asleep?” Laura sounded shocked. “But that’s horrible. The boy in her care and...”

Mark nodded. It was horrible. All of it.

“I don’t know what to say.” Laura’s eyes brimmed with tears. Was she going to cry? He was momentarily baffled by the response. Why did she feel the loss so acutely? He was used to looks of pity. But hers was something else. Like she’d experienced loss herself.

He was about to ask her about it when a hard knock came on Mark’s door. Laura looked a little startled but recovered as Mark checked his phone. Only then did he realize he’d forgotten to plug it in. He guessed it must’ve died shortly after he’d shown Laura the video of her dancing on the beach. Mark walked to the door, praying it wasn’t his brother, or this morning was about to get a lot more hostile.

He swung open the front door to find Dave standing there, tall and blond, looking his usual tanned, thirtysomething self. Dave was one of the best sailors on the island. He’d won the race three years in a row, and he’d be helping Mark do it for a fourth time.

“Do you answer your phone?” Dave accused as he swept into Mark’s condo.

“Phone died,” Mark said and then added sarcastically, “Well, come on in. Make yourself at home.”

Dave saw Laura and stopped in his tracks. “Oh. Uh... I didn’t realize you had company. I can come back.”

“No, come on in. She’s my upstairs neighbor. Laura, meet Dave, the best skipper on the island.”

Dave extended his hand and Laura took it, though Dave barely acknowledged her. He seemed distracted, worried even. “I’ll come back, man.”

“No. Stay. I’ve got a few ideas I want to go over with you about the boat, and we’re way behind, really, so I need extra hands today if you can spare them...”

Dave was really starting to look uncomfortable as he shifted uncertainly from one foot to the other. He glanced anxiously at Laura, who managed a weak grin, her hangover still haunting her.

“No, why don’t I let you... I mean... I’ll come back.”

“Dave. Come on. You’re here. Let’s go over a few things.”

“I can go,” Laura said, standing up for a wobbly second, holding her head. Poor thing looked like she might topple over. That hangover was a doozy.

“No, stay,” Mark said, and Laura gratefully slumped into the couch once more. Mark returned to the kitchen where he finished cracking eggs in a bowl, added a bit of milk and then put them in the melting butter in the pan on the stove.

“You haven’t had breakfast yet. Dave? You want something?”

Dave reluctantly followed Mark to his kitchen. “Uh, no, man. I’ve eaten, and anyway I can’t stay long. The wife wants me to help shop for strollers today.”

Dave and his wife were expecting their first child in a few months.

Mark was happy for his friend. He and Katie had been trying for years and the pregnancy came after they’d both thought neither one would ever be a parent. Dave was a stand-up guy, a good guy, and Mark knew he’d make a wonderful father. Katie would also make an excellent mother. But the news still caused a pang in his heart.

“Any names yet?”

“A few.” Dave relaxed a little bit but still didn’t sit down. “Katie wants to name her Madison, after her mother’s maiden name. I prefer Penelope, after my mom.”

“How about Penelope Madison?” Mark offered.

“Could work,” Dave said, but then sank into a moody silence. He glanced at Laura once and then back at Mark.

“What is it? You look like you just found out your dog died.” Mark dropped his spatula on the kitchen counter. “Come on. Spit it out.”

Dave laughed, a nervous little bark. “Why do you say that?”

“Because you always were a lousy actor,” Mark said. He turned the stove off, the smell of freshly cooked scrambled eggs filling the air.

Dave looked like he was about to face a firing squad. He glanced once more at Laura.

“Look, she can hear whatever it is you have to say,” Mark said, suddenly not caring. “We decided we don’t have secrets.” He winked at her and she smiled shyly.

“I don’t know how to say this.” Dave glanced down, looking ashamed.

Fear and apprehension rose in Mark’s chest. He remembered what his brother had told him about trusting his friends. Had Edward gotten to him? Had Dave been bought?

But they’d been good friends for years, worked side by side on winning boats for the last three years. Sure, Edward had been part of that, but Mark always thought of Dave as his friend first. After all, Mark had been the one to find him in Florida and recruit him to come sail the Tanner boat in the race.

Dave had helped the Tanner brothers win prize money that they ultimately put into Tanner Boating. Dave, of course, had his own money, after inheriting a multimillion-dollar corporation from his dad. He largely lived off a trust fund, using his free time to sail, which had become his life’s passion. Edward couldn’t bribe Dave. It’s one reason Mark had been so certain Dave would be on his side.

“I can’t race with you.”

“What do you mean, ‘can’t’?” Mark felt the panic rise in his throat. Why couldn’t Dave race?

“You know Katie and Elle are friends.”

Elle, Mark’s ex-wife. Yes, he knew Elle and Katie were friends—good friends. Best of friends, actually. The four of them had been nearly inseparable when they’d been a couple. But since the separation and then divorce, Dave and Katie had worked hard to befriend them both. “Yes,” Mark said carefully. “But so are we.” He paused, suddenly wondering if that were still true. “Aren’t we, Dave?”

“Of course, we are. You know that. It’s just...”

Mark wasn’t sure he wanted to hear what came next.

“Listen, you know that I’m on your side,” Dave said. “But Katie is pregnant, and so is—”

“I know,” Mark interrupted, holding up his hand. He didn’t want to talk about how Elle was expecting his brother’s baby. Dave suddenly couldn’t look Mark in the eye. “She feels that she’s got to take Elle’s side, and she’s asked me—” Dave swallowed hard “—not to race with you.”

“What?” Mark felt the betrayal like a sharp jab to the gut. He felt irrational anger flare up in his chest. Why would she ask him to do that? And where were Dave’s balls? Was he just going to roll over because his wife said so? Mark had done a lot of good things for Elle and Dave, and he’d been good friends with both of them.

In the living room, Laura sat stock-still, just listening, eyes wide. But he had more important things to worry about than what she thought of this mess. The eggs he’d just cooked were getting cold, but he didn’t care. Breakfast hardly seemed important. “But what about the boat for Timothy? What about sailing around the world?”

He felt his plan slipping away. He needed that plan. He’d been counting on it.

“I’m sorry, Mark. But I won’t be able to help you finish it or race with you. If it were just up to me, then I’d be with you, man. But I’m in a tough spot here.” Dave’s eyes begged for mercy. “If I don’t do this,” Dave added. “I think Katie might seriously leave me.”

“After all Elle did to me? She ran off with Edward!” She’s having his baby.

“You know she wasn’t the only one who made mistakes.” Dave let the accusation hang there. Sure, throw that in his face, now that he was down.

“That’s not fair.” Mark felt the need to defend himself. He knew they all took her side, even though she’d done the unthinkable with Edward. But his son had died. How else was a father supposed to act?

“What about your brother? Is Garrett with you?”

Dave shrugged. “I don’t know, man. You’ll have to ask him.” He paused. “I’m sorry. I am, but this is my wife. Maybe after the baby comes, she’ll calm down a little about all this.” Dave sounded more hopeful than Mark felt. He also looked miserable, caught between his wife and best friend.

Mark knew then that it went deeper than just keeping peace at home. This was about prioritizing your wife above your friends, and on some level, Mark had to respect that. He didn’t have to like it, but he’d have to live with it.

“Look, I don’t want to come between you. I know how much you love each other.” Mark did. But he couldn’t look his friend in the face now, either. He knew their friendship was irrevocably damaged. He also knew he couldn’t ask his friend to give up his wife for him.

“Thanks, man.” Dave clapped his friend on the shoulder, but Mark only felt the sting of the slap. He knew he was doing the right thing, but it still felt rotten. He was losing one of his closest friends. And he just assumed Garrett would be a lost cause. The two were brothers, and blood was thicker than water.

“I won’t ask Garrett to choose, either,” Mark said. They’d lost one crew member, so what was one more? The two of them couldn’t race alone anyway. “So that leaves me on my own.” Mark couldn’t help but state the obvious. The words left a bitter taste in his mouth, but then why should he be surprised?

He was always on his own. Nobody but him. Since Timothy had died. Since even before then. If there was one thing this world had taught him, it was don’t rely on anybody else. “It’ll be a shame, two of the best sailors on the island sitting this race out.” Mark meant it as a statement of fact, but it came out sounding bitter.

“Listen, Mark. I...” Dave stopped. There was nothing more he could say. Not really. “I guess I’ll go.”

“I think that’s best,” Mark agreed, feeling bitter disappointment settle in his stomach.

Dave didn’t offer his hand and Mark didn’t either as Dave slowly walked to the door. Mark felt like the last hope for his boat, for his promise to Timothy, walked straight out the door.

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