Castaway Cove (32 page)

Mac
and Annie dropped Charlie off at Still Waters, then went on to Castaway Cove.

“How did he know that?” she asked as they sat on the porch swing, watching the moon begin to rise over the top of the Douglas fir trees, casting a silvery sheen on the water. The rain had lessened to a soft mist. “About my bend thing?”

“Beats me,” he said, rocking gently, his arm around her shoulders, her head on his. “Sax said he had ghosts return from the war with him. Real ones, who drove around in his Camaro and ragged him and stuff, just like they did when they were alive. Maybe he’s not imagining his Annie visiting him.”

“Maybe not,” she agreed. “Did you notice something else?”

“What?”

“He was dry. It was pouring rain out there, but he was as dry as if he’d spent the entire night indoors by the fire.”

“Damn. That is something to ponder. But I think it can wait until later.”

Leaving her for a moment, he went back to the truck and returned with a package.

“You got me something from my own shop?” Annie asked as she recognized the wrapping paper.

“Kim helped me pick it out.” Mac was suddenly nervous. “I hope you like it.”

Unlike Emma, who tore into packages, Annie carefully slid off the ribbon, then cut the tape on the ends and bottom with her fingernail, folding back the paper to reveal the gift he’d come up with weeks ago.

“A scrapbook?”

“Open it.”

She did, then looked up at him. “It’s blank.”

“I figured we could fill the pages with all the days of our life together.”

She didn’t immediately answer. As her eyes filled, he could only pray that her tears were happy ones.

“This is”—she ran her fingertips over the ivory and black woven cover—“the most wonderful present anyone has ever given me.”

“It’s just a scrapbook,” he said, even as he was relieved that she liked it. The past few days he’d begun second-guessing himself, wondering if she’d rather have a ring. But then he’d figured she’d rather that they pick one out together. Wouldn’t she? He’d never been so conflicted in his life.

“No,” she said as she looked up at him. “Scrapbooks are about preserving the past. This is looking forward to our future.”

“Speaking of that.”

And then, because his grandfather had never steered him wrong, Mac left the swing, got down on one knee, and said, “I love you, Annie. For better or worse. Whatever lies around that bend. I love you now, and I’ll love you forever. Until, like it goes, death we do part.”

He waited a beat, thinking of Charlie and his war bride. “And beyond. You’ve always wanted a family, and I want to give you one.”

“You have,” she said softly, her eyes getting all moist again.

“But here’s the thing. My family won’t be complete without you. So, would you make my grandfather, my father, my daughter, and me very happy, and just say yes?”

Her answer was in those remarkable eyes. And on those lips he could taste even when she wasn’t anywhere in the room.

“Yes,” she said. Her laugh was light and breezy. “Absolutely, positively yes.”

“Thank you,” he said. “You’ve just made my family very, very happy.

“As for me . . .”

And because making love to Annie on this swing had been his fantasy since he’d first seen it, hanging there beneath the porch roof, Mac sat down on the swing again, put the scrapbook on the table, took her into his arms, and kissed her as he pressed her down upon the pretty flowered cushions.

It was all either of them would say for a very long time.

* * *

Eight months later

“Happy?” Mac asked Annie.

“How could I not be?” She glanced around at the party in full swing at Bon Temps. “Everyone we know is here.”

“It’s a special celebration,” he pointed out. “We’re now officially, according to the State of Oregon, a family of five.”

“And Charlie, your father, and Marian make eight.” Annie thought it was cute how Boyd was obviously so in love with his bride of six weeks.

“We Culhane men lucked out,” he said when she mentioned that. “Gramps with his Annie, my dad with my mom, and now Marian. And topping the hit list, me, with you.”

“We’re both lucky,” she said as she looked over at Emma demonstrating a slightly wobbly arabesque to her eleven-year-old twin brothers, Jordan and Justin.

Annie had met and fallen in love with the two boys while volunteering at Camp Rainbow, a summer camp for separated foster siblings. When Mac, who’d come to the camp for an afternoon of letting the kids play deejay, had met them, he’d fallen just as fast and, although they’d been in and out of state care since they were toddlers, he’d told her they’d better scoop them up before someone else realized how great they were.

Although the boys had been living with Mac, Annie, and Emma on Castaway Cove since September, today’s party was to celebrate the finalization of their adoption.

Emma, who’d proclaimed to have
always
wanted a big brother, was thrilled to now have two.

She was flourishing in first grade, and growing up so fast that both Annie and Mac often wished children came with a
Pause
button. Over the past months of ballet lessons, her princess stage had been swept away by her new goal of becoming a ballerina. One thing hadn’t changed, though, and that was why she was wearing a petal pink shirt with
TU-TU CUTE
spelled out in darker pink rhinestones.

“You need to hold Zelda,” she informed Jordan, as she picked up the pug, the one she’d chosen from Charity Tiernan’s shelter the day after she’d gotten lost. Which, she’d told Annie, had been a lot better than being grounded for life. “So I can get another picture.”

“How many does that make?” her older brother asked as she plopped the dog onto his lap.

“Only about a gazillion,” his twin suggested. The indulgent smile he gave Emma revealed his inordinate patience with the little sister, who followed them both around like a puppy. But still managed to boss them around in a style befitting an empress. Or a prima ballerina.

“We need to record everything for the family scrapbook,” she said, pointing out what everyone in the family had been hearing since Annie had given her the pink princess camera that she was never without.

After another series of clicks, she looked across the room toward Sedona, who was pushing a wheeled table toward them, accompanied by cheers from the guests.

“Oh, wow!” Emma began snapping away at the stunning blue and white sheet cake with
JUSTIN AND JORDAN, HOME FOR GOOD
written on the top in white frosting. “That’s so pretty!”

Mac had surprised Annie yet again by coming up with the idea for the single large candle in the center, representing their joined family, surrounded by the five smaller ones for Annie, Emma, their boys, and himself.

“You need to blow out the candles,” Emma instructed her brothers.

“Let’s all do it together,” Mac suggested.

Holding hands, that’s exactly what they did.

“This,” Emma said on a deep, blissful sigh as the six candles sputtered out and Annie began cutting the celebration cake, “is the bestest day ever!”

And coming soon . . . the story readers have been asking for! Don’t miss Cole and Kelli’s prewedding holiday romance!

Return to Shelter Bay for the holidays in “Christmas in Shelter Bay,”
New York Times
bestselling author JoAnn Ross’s novella in the
Christmas on Main Street
contemporary romance anthology.

Available in November 2013 wherever books and e-books are sold.

It was beginning to look a lot like Christmas in Shelter Bay. Tinseled garlands and wreaths with huge red bows were strung across the streets, colorful holiday scenes had been painted by students on the windows of all the local businesses, and fairy lights sparkled in the branches of trees all over town.

Down at the pier, Cole Douchett was freezing his tail off stringing lights onto the cabin of his family’s fishing boat.

“Why, exactly, are we doing this?” he asked.

“Because the mayor got the idea for the town to have a Christmas boat parade, like they do up in Portland,” his grandfather Bernard said.

“She’s hoping it’ll bring in more tourists,” Lucien, his father, said.

“Yeah, why go all the way to Hawaii for beaches when you can winter on the Oregon coast? In case you didn’t notice, that’s frigging sleet hitting your face,” Cole complained.

“Boy’s been in the desert too long,” Bernard drawled to his son. “All those years in Afghanistan and Iraq thinned his blood.”

“I don’t mind the cold,” Cole countered. “I’m an effing Marine. We live for miserable conditions. . . . What I don’t get is why we need to be out here turning into Popsicles in order to draw in more tourists. This is a
fishing
boat. It’s not like we’re going to be taking tourists for whale-watching rides around the bay.”

And the boat wasn’t even used all that often anymore, except for family sportfishing.

While his grandfather had worked as a commercial fisherman until recently, his dad had left the sea years ago to open a restaurant with Cole’s mother.

Unfortunately, Bon Temps had taken a hit by a vicious winter ice storm, only to be given a knockout blow two months after that when hurricane-force winds triggered by a Pacific typhoon came barreling through Shelter Bay. Which was when Maureen and Lucien Douchett had thrown in the towel and retired.

Sort of.

They were currently running a bait shop on the harbor, but his father had kept the commercial fishing license, and whenever a recreational day on the water ended up with more crabs, rockfish, or salmon than the family could eat, the two men sold them to local venders and restaurants.

“Didn’t we mention both your grandmère and mother like the idea of a boat parade?” his father asked.

Slam.

Case closed.

There was nothing these two men wouldn’t do for their wives. If Adèle and Maureen Douchett wanted the family to take part in this latest cockamamie Shelter Bay marketing gimmick the mayor had come up with, that’s exactly what their men would do.

“They also
like
Christmas,” Bernard said pointedly, “unlike some people in the family.”

Which would be him.

It hadn’t always been that way. Although his grandfather might have moved the family to the Pacific Northwest from Louisiana after Hurricane Audrey had wiped their bayou town of Petit Chenier off the map, the Douchetts had remained Cajun to the bone.

Which meant family celebrations were perched at the top of their priorities pyramid. Growing up, Cole hadn’t fully appreciated the strength of his parents’ and grandparents’ long-term marriages. Until he’d learned the hard way that such commitment was a rare commodity.

“I didn’t say I didn’t like Christmas,” he grumbled.

There’d been a time when he’d enjoyed the holidays. But that was then. And this was now, and what he mostly wanted was to just be left alone.

“You’ve been giving Scrooge a run for his money,” Lucien said from atop the ladder as he arranged a long string of lights into the shape of a Dungeness crab.

“I was thinkin’ more along the lines of the Grinch,” his grandfather said.

“We understand you’ve got a lot on your mind, what with the decision you have to make.” His dad’s tone turned serious. “But your mother worries.”

“Your grandmère, too,” Bernard said. “You havin’ nightmares?”

“Once in a while.” On the rare occasion he could actually sleep though the night. “But that goes with the territory, right?”

The two older men nodded knowingly. They’d also both been Marines, and while they might never talk about their own action, Cole suspected he wasn’t the only guy in the family with ghosts.

“I’m not pressuring you,” his father said. “Whether or not you reenlist is a decision you can only make on your own. But the same way I’ve been keeping your brother’s Camaro ready for when he returns home for good, we’re holding on to this boat for you. Just in case you’d be wanting it.”

“Not that you’re obligated to take up fishing,” his grandfather assured him. “But you’re the only one of the three boys who talked about someday taking the business over.”

While his two brothers enjoyed sailing, neither of them had ever been all that enthusiastic about working on the family’s fishing boat. Unlike Cole, who’d always thought a bad day out on the water was better than a good day on land. Which was why Sax ragged him about becoming a Marine desert rat instead of having joined the Navy so he could go to sea. Of course the irony was that Sax was a Navy SEAL, but he’d ended up spending nearly as many years in the desert as Cole had.

Of the three of them, Sax had always been the one to buck tradition. Not to mention the rules. While Cole, as the eldest, had been the Eagle Scout in the family. The rock-solid, dependable, “perfect” one.

The role model.

What neither of his younger brothers realized was that it was damn exhausting always trying to live up to expectations. Just once, he thought, as he plugged in the lights and watched the oversized Dungeness crab begin to flash bright red, he’d like to be the Douchett bad boy.

Okay. Not really bad.

But reckless, like Sax.

Or impulsive, like his baby brother, J.T.

“I’m still not sure what I’m going to be doing,” he said.

It wasn’t that he didn’t want to come home and spend the rest of his life fishing. The problem was that whenever he thought about returning to his coastal hometown, enjoying life on the water after all those years in the Iraqi sandbox and Afghan dustbowl, he’d feel guilty about the idea of leaving his men—guys who’d become as close as his own brothers—in harm’s way.

“You liked working the tourist fishing boats back when you were in high school,” his father reminded him.

“Boy had a real knack for talking those rich city folks up,” his grandfather agreed. “Ernie Martin always said his business brought in triple the amount of tips when you were showing folks how to bait their hooks and pull in their catch.”

“That may have been more about the fact that Ernie didn’t like people,” Cole said. “I never could figure out why he switched from commercial fishing to charters. I doubt if he said more than a dozen words to anyone all the hours we were out on the water.”

“Fishing has always been an iffy way to earn a living,” his father said, relating nothing Cole already didn’t know. “At least if Ernie didn’t fill the boat’s hold with fish by the end of the day, he’d still make a tidy profit from the charter fees. But he’s finally closing down shop for good.”

“Put his boat up for a fire-sale price the other day,” Bernard said. “Seems he wants to escape the rain and retire in the Arizona desert.”

Personally, Cole couldn’t figure out why anyone would want to live in the desert by choice, but he figured if everyone felt the way about the Pacific Coast that he did, people would be flooding into Shelter Bay and ruining the town.

“It’s a newer one than the boat you worked on that summer,” his grandfather added. A bit slyly, Cole thought. “He had it rigged up especially for charters.”

Cole felt a tug of interest. One of the things he’d been forced to think about was the high rate of veteran unemployment. The idea that he’d actually not only have a job, but one he loved, was tempting.

“If I were to stay, I’d already have a boat.” This one, which was starting to remind him of Snoopy’s doghouse in that old Charlie Brown Christmas TV special. Could they put any more damn lights on it?

“An old boat that’s got decades of fish smell embedded into every board,” his grandfather said. “Not that there aren’t those who’d want it.”

“We’ve had offers from fishermen wanting to expand,” Lucien said. “If you wanted, you could sell it and put the money toward Ernie’s newer, shiny one.”

Okay. That was an even more interesting idea. But . . .

“I wouldn’t take your money.”

“We’re doing just fine,” his father said. “Especially since you and J.T. got together with Sax and pitched in to buy us our new place.”

“We’re family,” his grandfather said. “What’s ours is yours. You know,” he said thoughtfully, “all this Christmas fuss and bother is probably making it tougher for you to focus and sort your choices through properly. Maybe you should spend some time alone at the cabin.”

His father and grandfather had built the cabin themselves at Rainbow Lake during summer weekends back when Cole had been in elementary school. The adults in the family worked long hours, so getting the time to escape for more than a day or two had been rare, but after Labor Day, once the tourists had mostly left town and the crabs were molting, putting a pause to the season, his parents would close Bon Temps, his grandfather would dock the boat, and they’d all spend the best two weeks of the year swimming, pole fishing, eagle watching, barbecuing, and just lying in hammocks, listening to the waterfall tumble over rocks into the lake while the breeze whispered in the tops of the towering Douglas fir trees.

There were times, more and more frequent lately, when memories of those carefree summer vacations had helped Cole survive deployments.

“I promised Mom I’d be home for Christmas,” he said, even as the idea of being alone out in the woods sang its Siren song.

“She’ll understand,” his dad assured him. “Though I’m not going to deny that she’s been looking forward to getting her boys home again so she can spoil you all.”

Which she’d definitely been doing. Cole had been home only three days and he’d already eaten more than he normally would in a week.

“Why don’t you compromise?” his grandfather suggested. “Stay until after the boat parade and the school program, which has turned out to be a pretty big deal, since your grandmother’s been working overtime helping Kelli with her kindergarten class’s part in it. Then take off.”

Damn. Kelli Carpenter was a blast from Cole’s past. One that, unfortunately, in a town this size, he probably wasn’t going to be able to avoid for long.

“If you’re sure Mom wouldn’t be upset . . .”

“She’s your mother,” both men said together.

“She’s always wanted the best for you and your brothers,” his dad tacked on. “If you need time alone to get your head around what you’re going to do next with your life, she’ll be fine with the idea.”

Guilt was a powerful motivator and—as a memory of a past Christmas tree lighting and Kelli Carpenter’s blue eyes flashing anger like lightning over a stormy sea came crashing back to him—although he’d never considered himself a coward, Cole decided to take his father and grandfather up on their offer to get the hell out of Dodge.