Holiday at Magnolia Bay (Southern Born Christmas Book 1) (8 page)

“Is that my patriotic duty, too?” she whispered.

“No, sweetheart. The next time you touch me it will be because you can’t help yourself.”

‡

A
s promised, Drew
had arranged for shrimp and grits for dinner. Because they really were her favorite, Jenna was determined to enjoy them more than she had her lunch the previous day.

“You look lovely tonight, Sugar,” Miss Evie said.

The problem was that her hostess was making any enjoyment difficult. Miss Evie was as transparent as glass with her efforts to foist her godson on her. If it weren’t so humiliating, it would be cute.

“Doesn’t she look lovely tonight, Drew?”

“Lovely,” he said sporting a cat-ate-the-canary grin.

Jenna cursed herself for going home and changing into a halter dress after work. She’d told herself it was in deference to the hot August evening. Her outfit had nothing to do with the handsome man dressed in neatly pressed black slacks and a crisp tan shirt that brought out the green in his eyes. He’d even found a razor, presenting a clean-shaven face at dinner.

Both Perry and Imogene had been enthusiastic about Jenna dining with Miss Evie and her godson. “Find out all that you can about the soldier,” Perry had advised. “Make sure he doesn’t try to talk the old woman out of her donation,” Imogene added, intimating further that Jenna should somehow distract his attention. Of course, she hadn’t told either one yet that the project was still on. After the way they’d both tried to manipulate her, Jenna felt they deserved to stew a little while longer.

“So you said you’d have questions?” Jenna asked Drew as Miss Evie’s housekeeper cleared the dinner dishes.

Drew’s warm eyes studied her over the rim of his wine glass. “Oh, I have lots of questions.”

“About the turtle hatchery project, Lieutenant Commander. That was the purpose of this dinner after all.”

“Well, if you two are going to talk about turtles, I’m going to head off to my room for the night. I have some emails to send out regarding the party.” After Evie bussed Jenna on the head, Drew rose from his seat and escorted Evie to the door.

Jenna wasn’t surprised by her hostess’ hasty exit. In fact, she’d hoped to have some time alone with Drew to ask
him
some questions. And she’d start with his relationship with Miss Evie and—most importantly—how he planned to keep his godmother’s ‘financial house in order’.

“You never told me how you and Miss Evie are related,” she asked as Drew slid back into his chair.

“No, I didn’t.”

She settled back in her chair to wait him out. Drew took another sip of wine as one corner of his mouth turned up. “I thought we were talking about turtles?” he asked.

“Did you read the prospectus?”

He laughed then. “Believe it or not, I actually have my own advanced degree.” Her eyebrows went up before she could stop them. “I skimmed it so I could glean the important parts. Mainly the million dollars you need from my godmother to get the damn thing off the ground.”

“The dollar amount was her idea. She said she had no living relatives. Her fortune is supposed to be left to charity.” She narrowed her eyes at him. “Unless you thought she was leaving it all to you?”

Drew donned his practiced military façade. “I’ve never had any assumptions about inheriting one cent from Aunt Evie.”

His words surprised Jenna. “But you two seem so close.”

“I’m not close to her for her money.”

Drew’s statement felt like an accusation. “Neither am I! I’ve known the woman nearly all of my life. I don’t think I even noticed she was rich until I was an adult. We didn’t have that kind of relationship.”

He leaned across the table and refilled her wine glass. “Maybe you can explain your relationship to me. She obviously adores you which incidentally carries a lot of weight in my opinion.”

Jenna took a sip from her wine as she glanced through the room’s large picture window and watched the sun begin to dance along the top of the waves. “I met Miss Evie when I was eight. Our family used to always vacation for two weeks at the seashell cottage just around the bluff. One night, Robbie and I discovered her sitting on the beach watching over a turtle’s nest.”

“Robbie?”

“My older brother,” she explained. “She invited us to sit with her and watch as the turtles hatched. That night was the beginning of an annual tradition and life-long friendship for me. I believe I mentioned that my father is in the military.” Drew acknowledged her statement with a nod, thankfully allowing her to gloss over the rest of their conversation on the beach the night before. “So I was used to my closest friends being pen-pals. Miss Evie turned out to be one of my more devoted correspondents.” Jenna swallowed harshly. “When Robbie was killed by a drunk driver, my parents kind of went on separate paths. My dad with his military career and my mom trying to eradicate the world of anyone who drives while intoxicated. But Miss Evie kept writing and later emailing, encouraging me to keep to my studies so I could become a marine biologist. Living here in Magnolia Bay was always my primary goal. This is the one place that always seemed like home to Robbie and me.”

Drew was silent for a few moments; the only sound in the room came from the open windows as the waves crashed into the bluff at high tide. Gulls screamed before dive bombing the ocean for their dinner.

“So this really has been her idea all along,” he said as if he were speaking to himself. He dragged his fingers over his cropped hair, a resigned grin on his face.

Jenna took offense to his statement. She’d worked long and hard on the plan for the hatchery—part of the initial research stemming from her master’s thesis. “It wasn’t entirely her idea. Miss Evie is very intelligent, but there needed to be some scientific basis behind the development of the hatchery.”

“Certainly. For the hatchery.”

She wasn’t sure what to make of his cryptic remark so she took another swallow of wine. “Your turn,” she said. “I want the truth about how you and Miss Evie became so close.”

Drew settled back in his chair. “It’s a romantic tale,” he began, piquing Jenna’s interest with his word choice. “My grandfather, Shamus, was the family gardener at their estate in Wilmington, Delaware just after World War II. He’d come over ahead of his wife to make a place for the family. When he went to meet the ship carrying his wife and the four-month-old son he’d never met—my father—he was told my grandmother had died of influenza during the crossing.”

“Oh,” Jenna said. “How very sad.”

“Yeah, well what’s a poor Irishman going to do with a baby? He sure as hell couldn’t work and take care of my father. The Good Ladies of Wilmington—not to mention social services—wanted to take my father away and adopt him out. Grandpa Shamus needed a wife in a hurry.”

Jenna mouth went dry. Miss Evie would have been in her late teens at the time, mourning the loss of her fiancé in the war, if Jenna remembered the story correctly. Surely… Her expression must have indicated what she was thinking because Drew laughed.

“No, not Aunt Evie. She was apparently deeply depressed at the time. But someone had to care for my father while my grandfather went out and found himself a wife. It took Shamus three months, but by then Aunt Evie had bonded with my dad. Her parents didn’t want to see their only daughter depressed again, so he grew up with a step-mother and a surrogate mother, both of whom loved him like his own. I always said my dad was a lucky guy. My brother and I are both Evie’s godsons since legally she can’t be my grandmother.”

“That’s so fascinating! She still goes up to Wilmington to visit. Is that where your parents live?”

Drew looked a bit uncomfortable briefly. “My dad still has a garden center there, but he lives in Maine year round now.”

“And your brother?”

“Jack lives wherever the best deal is.” There was bitterness in his voice, leaving Jenna to wonder about his relationship with his brother. She missed Robbie every day and she couldn’t imagine not having a close relationship with him had he lived.

Drew stood and walked around the table to stand beside her chair. He offered her his hand and she didn’t hesitate. She was excited that he didn’t have a legal stake in Miss Evie’s financial affairs, thus he couldn’t hold up the development of the hatchery. But that was nothing compared to the excitement humming through her body at his touch. Her head was telling her to take things slow, but the rest of her wasn’t listening.

He led her out onto the wide balcony overlooking the Atlantic. The lights of Magnolia Bay were just beginning to twinkle a mile and a half to the south. A light breeze caressed her back and when she shivered briefly, Drew pulled her in closer.

“So we were supposed to discuss turtles. Specifically their mating habits,” he said, as his mouth moved closer to her ear. “But before we do, where do your friend, Perry, and his plastic fiancée fit in to all this?”

Jenna turned around so they were facing one another. His eyes saw too much, so she looked out over the ocean. “Perry was hand-picked by the board of directors—and me—to lead the project. I didn’t know about his fiancée until yesterday.”

“That much was obvious.” He rubbed her bare shoulders. “Do I need to stand in for your brother and have a talk—or something else—with him?”

She smiled at the idea of him filling in for Robbie. When she was in Magnolia Bay, she felt as if her brother was there with her, but until Drew said this, she didn’t know how alone she really was. Sure, she had her circle of friends—Macy, Kristin, Miss Evie—but no one to “stand up for her”. Of course, Drew could likely kill a man with his bare hands, so “something else” really wasn’t an option either.

“I’ve already done that. Besides, it wasn’t like things were ever that serious. I just didn’t like being played for a fool.”

“No one would ever mistake you for a fool. Just big-hearted.” He brushed his lips over her forehead. “So can we skip the turtles and move on to the part where you repay me for my show last night?”

Jenna buried her head against his chest as her cheeks flamed at the memory of his shoreline strip. The kiss hadn’t been too bad either. She couldn’t lie, she was attracted to him, but that didn’t mean she had to act on it. In spite of Miss Evie’s efforts to throw them together tonight, she wasn’t sure she could look her oldest friend in the eye after doing the wild thing with her “favorite” godson.

“You know you want to,” he murmured against her skin. “I’m not promising you anything except a night of pure pleasure.”

“Guys like you aren’t capable of making any promises.”

He was on leave, after all. Neither Drew nor Miss Evie had mentioned how long he was staying.

“See, that’s what I like best about you. You know the score up front.”

She wanted to throw caution to the wind, but given her recent track record, she decided she needed to be more trusting of her common sense. “Drew, I—”

Jenna never finished her sentence. Before she knew what was happening they were both on the plank floor of the balcony, Drew screaming in her ear to get down.

A trio of helicopters from the nearby Coast Guard center skirted the shore-line on their weekly maneuvers. Drew’s entire body was shaking as he pressed her into the floor. Sweat pooled on his temple while the rest of his face had gone ashen.

“Drew,” she whispered. “It’s okay. They’re the good guys.” Her hands were tucked between their bodies. She managed to pull one free to slide up and down his back. “Shh,” she said as she did so.

The noise from the helicopters died down and Drew’s heartbeat began to slow beneath her fingers. As reality reached him, Drew placed his palms onto the floor, extended his arms and shifted his weight on to them. Jenna shivered at the desperate look in his eyes before he quickly shuttered it.

“Christ almighty,” he murmured.

“Drew, are you all right?”

He didn’t answer. Instead he pushed himself to his feet before reaching down and gently lifting her off the floor.

“Did I hurt you?” His voice was gravely, his tone chagrined.

“No. Of course not,” she tried to reassure him. “It’s you I’m worried about.”

“Don’t be,” he snapped.

Jenna tried not to recoil from his words. She’d seen firsthand the stress vets endured when they returned home from active duty and Drew’s reaction wasn’t out of the ordinary. She tentatively rested her hand on his biceps.

“Let me help you,” she whispered. “Please.”

She watched as he swallowed roughly, his eyes darkening with an emotion she couldn’t quite interpret. His hand rose up toward her face, before he jerked it back and shoved it in his pocket. “The help that you’re offering and what I want from you are two different things.”

Jenna had no trouble interpreting that. A jolt of arousal coursed through her. Two minutes earlier, she’d intended to walk away from him. Now, she wasn’t so sure she could.

In the end, he made the decision for her. “I need to get out of here. Excuse me for not showing you out.” He turned and strode across the balcony toward the guest house.

‡