Life Happens (13 page)

Mya watched them make their way through the maze of tables and chairs and people. Reed carried Dougie, who seemed all arms and legs in sleep. Ruth held Sylvia’s arm, listening to something her son was saying. Earlier, Mya remembered thinking that not much had changed on the island. Like his brothers, Grady Laker had been a hellion in his day. Now a family man, he’d grown up, and Ruth had grown older.

Nineteen years older.

Mya felt it again, the welling up and the haunting question. What had she missed?

Since Elle had already made arrangements to catch a ride back to the summer cottage with her new friends, and Millicent had always preferred to fend for herself, Mya rose to her feet and prepared to say a few hasty goodbyes.

“I’m going, Elle,” she said as she skirted the dance floor.

“You don’t mind taking Kaylie with you?” Elle asked.

“You know Kaylie. Once she’s asleep, she stays asleep. I’ll put her to bed. Will you be late?”

Elle shrugged. “I doubt it. We’ll probably finish this dance, smoke a little pot, have a little sex and be home by three at the latest.”

Mya wasn’t the only one who gaped.

Elle assumed an age-old stance. “I’m kidding.” She tucked the blanket around the sleeping baby in Mya’s arms and whispered, “None of that should take more than a few hours.”

Mya gaped all over again.

“You heard the doctor tell me to raise a little hell.”

“I’m sure he didn’t mean—” Mya glanced at Troy, Elle’s dance partner. “Do you have pot?”

“Why, do you want some?”

Elle laughed. With a beguiling grin, she said, “I’ll be home in a little while. God, Mya, I’m not going to do any of those things.”

Troy looked a little disappointed.

As Mya went out the back door, she vowed to hug her mother more often.

Her grass skirt rustled slightly in the breeze. Despite the poor lighting, she recognized Dean easily from the back. She couldn’t see who he was talking to, but as she made her way closer, Mya overheard the conversation.

“We’re all sorry to hear about your daughter’s, well, you know. A shame, somebody as young as her. How horrible
this must be for you, Dean, especially now, of all times, when you’re finally getting the chance to know her.”

“I appreciate that, Heather. If you’ll excuse—”

“I just don’t know how Mya ever gave her up. Or you, either, for that matter. Sure you two were young. But so?”

Mya’s feet froze in the sand.

“I doubt there’s another girl on this island who would have done that to you. But then, Mya wasn’t born here, was she?”

It took Mya until the count of one to change her plans. Holding Kaylie close, she got the hell out of there.

She noticed the headlights in her rearview mirror a few minutes into her drive. They followed her past the ice-cream parlor, past the harbor, past the school, past Eagle’s Landing, all the way to the summer cottage.

She threw the lever in park, turned the key, then practically leaped from the car. “Go away, Dean.”

He beat her to the backseat, reaching for Kaylie ahead of her. When he straightened, he had the baby in his arms.

The man never had listened.

He ambled toward the cottage and shouldered his way through the door. Inside, he paused. “Let’s get her tucked in before you give me hell.”

After flicking on a lamp, Mya led the way to the sleeping porch where Elle had set up the baby’s portable crib.
Dean placed Kaylie on the daybed first. She seemed even more fragile asleep, and so incredibly innocent. It took both of them to change her diaper, remove her shoes and socks and clothes and get her into her sleeper. Somehow most of the vehemence drained out of Mya during the process.

She was fastening the last little snap when Kaylie opened her eyes. She looked at Dean first, and then at Mya. Her eyelashes fluttered in the middle of her disarming, precious smile.

A dozen emotions expanded in Mya’s chest, and every one was bittersweet. This was how it might have been if she’d kept Elle. They might have had a hundred nights just like this one, followed by a thousand more as she grew.

A wish was dredged from a place beyond logic. It came from a place she’d kept locked for a very long time. One look into Dean’s eyes, and she knew he’d been thinking about what might have been, too. A muscle worked in his jaw, a precursor to his temper.

But of course, he would be angry!

She spun around.

Like a shadow, he followed her into the living room.

“Don’t.” She trounced across the narrow room, her grass skirt swishing ridiculously. “Just don’t.”

Dean wasn’t sure what she thought he was going to do. But he hadn’t come here to argue. Why had he come, then? “Just don’t what?”

She turned on him. “I missed out, too. Don’t think you’re the only one. I know you wanted her. Not that I could possibly understand you on a soul-deep level. After all, I was never
really
of the island.”

He’d been afraid she’d overheard that.

She was the most exasperating, difficult woman he’d ever met. And yet, watching her eyes, he knew why he’d followed her tonight. She drew him. She always had. Without doing a damn thing, she drew him. Just being in the same room with her sent anticipation and a blinding urgency racing through him.

“That’s the trouble with eavesdropping,” he said. “You rarely get the whole story. You should have stuck around a few seconds longer and you would have heard the rest of it.”

“The rest of it?”

“I asked Heather if her halo ever gets tight. And then I asked her how Tim’s crew likes having such a good-looking female oceanography student on board for the summer. It took her mind off you, believe me.”

“Do you think Tim and this oceanography student are—”

“I doubt it.” Dean hadn’t planned to be the one to tell Heather about that intern, but dammit he’d had to do something. “Tim will probably have a lousy night and possibly a lousy summer now that Heather knows, but she’ll
think twice before talking about you again, at least when I’m around.”

Mya stood perfectly still. The lamp behind her threaded her short hair with gold and cast her brown eyes in shadow. He wondered what it was that made her so unique. Whatever it was, all these years apart hadn’t changed it. Her eyes could still spark with anger one moment, with laughter the next, and still glowed with something he’d never seen in anyone else. No matter what Heather had insinuated earlier, Mya hadn’t always been an outcast. It had taken people a while to accept her at first, but once they had, she’d been well-liked, and one of the most popular girls in school. And then he’d gotten her pregnant. If she’d stayed, they would have blamed Dean. Because she’d gone, she’d become the sinner, he the saint.

Nineteen years ago, he’d been determined to replace her. He’d dated other girls on the island and off. Mya had left him. To hell with her then. But it wasn’t that simple. When it came to Mya Donahue, nothing was ever simple.

“You were always putting someone in their place where I was concerned, weren’t you, Dean? It must have seemed like a full-time job.” The ocean broke far in the distance. Much, much closer, her grass skirt swished slightly as she removed it and tossed it tiredly to a chair. “I guess some things never change.”

“In that case I won’t apologize for what I’m about to do.”

“What are you going to do?”

He wasn’t sure who moved closer, but he was very sure of his intentions. “This.”

He covered her mouth with his.

H
e kissed her.

At least that was how it began. One kiss that exploded into desire. It was a possessive meeting of mouths and hunger, an urgent mating of instinct and heat and home-coming. It had been building up to this all evening. Mya had known it, felt it, understood it. But she’d fought it. She wasn’t fighting it anymore.

Need filled her, uncurling in places physically unconnected. It had been this way when they were teenagers, too. Theirs was a passion too huge to resist, too intrinsic to question. She’d managed to live without it for nineteen years. She’d even convinced herself she didn’t want it or need it. Why would anyone want this tumbling free fall into a crevasse so vast it was bottomless?

Because. There was no other explanation. Just because.

Her head tipped back, her hands gliding around his waist, catching in folds of clothing along the way, seeking, discovering, touching, remembering. And all the while, he kissed her.

Dean didn’t know what the hell he was doing.

Okay, he knew. He was losing himself in Mya. He’d known he was going to kiss her before he’d gotten Kaylie out of that damned car seat. He’d told himself he could handle this, could handle Mya and everything she brought out in him. He’d told himself he was older now, old enough to control his own lust. The problem was, this was more than lust. His throat tightened and his chest constricted. And it didn’t matter. Need was all that mattered, and it came from everywhere, from the throaty sounds Mya made when he slid his tongue into her mouth, from the soft skin beneath his hands and from the impression of her delicate bones and muscles. Need came from her lips, soft and wet and full, and from the entire length of her body straining against his.

It wasn’t enough.

It would never be enough.

He fumbled with the hem of her shirt and backed up, his elbow crashing into the wall. Some men claimed need made them weak. It made him strong, powerful enough to turn them both in an instant, so that her back was against the wall, his body pressing against hers, seeking, still seeking.

And all the while he kissed her.

And it wasn’t enough. It was never enough.

“Oh, Dean. Let me breathe.”

He gave her the moment she asked for. But she didn’t take it. Instead, her hands went to either side of his face, and she kissed him. Her lips wet and trembly, her body quavering with need, she kissed him.

He had to have her.

It didn’t matter where, on the floor, in her bed or against the damn wall. But he had to have her. And he had to have her now.

He saw her eyes flutter and felt her go slightly still. At first, he didn’t understand the reason. But then he noticed it, too. Headlights flickered on the far wall.

Through the roaring din inside his head, he heard an engine idling outside. A car door slammed. Voices called.

“Your mom’s back,” he said.

Mya heard what Dean said, but she was beyond speaking, beyond reasoning. A moment ago, she’d been all the way past the point of no return. Slowly, the daze was lifting, and somehow the voices outside filtered through. Dean was untangling his legs from hers, and drawing her shirt back up her shoulders. She took over from there, hurriedly buttoning, straightening, pulling herself together.

“God,” she muttered. “Some things really don’t change.”

How many times had Dean’s parents or her mother or someone else interrupted them in the nick of time when they were kids? They weren’t kids anymore but they were acting like kids.

The back door opened and closed. Only one lamp was
on in here, but it would be enough to illuminate their dishevelment, and enough to embarrass them both.

But Millie didn’t come looking for them.

The refrigerator opened and closed. The faucet was turned on and off. And then the kitchen light went out and Millicent’s footsteps tapped quietly in the opposite direction and on up the stairs. They both listened for the click of her bedroom door.

Finally, as if attached to the same string, they turned their heads and looked at each other. It would have taken only one small smile, one slight sway, one unspoken invitation from either of them and they would have taken up where they’d left off minutes ago.

Neither extended that invitation.

Not everything had stayed the same after all.

He walked to the door. Holding her ground, Mya took a deep breath.

Before letting himself out, he looked back at her. Whatever had been between them still was. But they weren’t kids anymore. Tonight wasn’t the night they would make love. Oh, they would. Perhaps tomorrow. Perhaps next week. It was just a matter of time.

If not for the peal of church bells carrying from the hill a mile away, Mya might have slept until noon. Once awakened she was glad, for she didn’t want to waste her time sleeping. She left her hair wet after her shower. Pulling on
baggy sweats, her favorite orange T-shirt and thick, yellow socks, she followed the aroma of fresh-brewed coffee.

Millicent was reading the Sunday paper at the table when Mya helped herself to a cup of coffee. Elle was spooning oatmeal into Kaylie’s mouth. The baby reminded Mya of a hatchling waiting at the edge of the nest, mouth open wide in anticipation of the next bite.

Millie’s newspaper rustled as she turned the page. “Nice party last night,” the eldest Donahue said.

Mya made an agreeable sound into her coffee.

Kaylie banged a spoon on her tray, and Millicent said, “Noticed Dean’s truck was in the driveway when I got in.”

Mya closed her eyes. “He followed me home.” Turning around, she found the other three staring at her as if she had egg on her face.

“And?” Millie asked.

“And we argued.”

Millicent wet one finger and turned another page. “Things sounded pretty quiet from the kitchen. It isn’t usually a good argument that makes a woman look radiant the next morning. Nope, it’s usually something else entirely.”

Mya was pretty sure Elle was smiling, too. “Are you two having fun?”

They were both still nodding when she heard a noise in the next room. “What was that?”

“By the way,” Millicent said, “Dean dropped by.”

“He did?”

There was another thunk.

Mya set her cup down hard as realization dawned. “You two are very funny.”

They both stopped trying to hide their grins.

Mya couldn’t resist touching Kaylie’s hair on her way by. “You could have warned me, kiddo.”

Kaylie’s grin was milky, her favorite word garbled but discernible. “Da.”

In the living room, Mya was greeted by the sight of Dean’s skinny rear end. The man had great symmetry, she’d give him that, white T-shirt, faded jeans, scuffed loafers and all. Bent at the waist, he was doing something to the back of a big new television in the corner. Boxes and packaging foam were everywhere.

“Having fun?” she asked.

He answered without turning. “Define fun. The DVD player is hooked up, but the surround sound system is giving me some trouble.”

“Aren’t you supposed to be in church?”

He eased into a more comfortable position down on his haunches. “Unless you count the string of cuss words I just called this cable connector, I haven’t done anything to confess.”

Everyone was a comedian these days.

“Yet.”

The simple clarification fanned the craving he’d started
in her last night and drew her farther into the room. Lowering her voice, she said, “When do you think you’ll have something to confess?”

His hand slipped off the screwdriver, making a loud and painful-sounding thud. He was cradling his knuckles when he finally faced her. The look that passed between their gazes went back a long time. She’d always held her own with him, always gave as good as she got. And then some. She’d forgotten how invigorating it was.

“What is all this?” She motioned to the electronic equipment.

Eyes as blue as Kaylie’s crinkled at the corners as he said, “Elle mentioned she likes to watch old movies.”

He was spoiling his little girl. It brought a poignant sweetness and a fear neither dared voice. No matter how many
what ifs
and
what might have beens
were between them, the greatest question was an unspoken one. What if none of them matched Elle’s bone marrow?

He cleared his throat. “When I finish hooking this up, I thought you and Elle might enjoy a tour of the island.”

A month ago, Mya would have said the idea was absurd. A few weeks ago she would have insisted she wouldn’t have enjoyed that at all. A few days ago she would have worried that a walk down memory lane was too dangerous. Leaving him to finish his task this morning, she went to get ready.

Whether by design or happenstance, they had the island to themselves. Dean drove around the perimeter first, pointing out landmarks and telling stories of his misspent youth. Elle wanted to know about every story, every place, every old building, everything. When she asked about the floating markers bobbing on the water’s surface, Dean explained. “They’re lobster traps. Every fishing family has its own markings denoting who’s whose. Lobstermen have been known to draw guns when their traps are tampered with.”

“No shit.”

Dean laughed. “Lobsters were once so plentiful they washed ashore and people simply picked them up by the bushelful. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries they were even fed to the servants.”

“Do any of the Lakers lobster?” Elle asked.

He shook his head. “My father was the last, and that was the way he wanted it. It’s a hard living, physically and financially. Greg says he’s going to resurrect the family business, but I don’t know. It can be difficult for rookies to break into. He’s determined. Who knows?”

“Do Lakers always get what they want?” she asked.

His gaze met Mya’s in the rearview mirror. And she braced herself for his answer.

“We try,” he said, then changed the subject.

Elle asked to get out at the school. Since it was Sunday, the building was locked. Artwork hung in many of the windows on the lower level, which housed first grade through eighth. The second story was reserved for those in high school.

Mya remembered the first time she’d set foot inside when she was nine. To this day, she associated the smell of chalk and glue with nerves.

“Are there still eight or ten kids per grade?” she asked.

“Are you kidding?” Elle asked.

But Dean said, “That number has been holding for years.”

“There are only eight or ten kids per graduating class?”

Dean said, “There were twelve of us.”

Again, his and Mya’s gazes met. This time it was Mya who said, “There would have been thirteen, but I left near the end of eleventh grade and finished high school on the mainland.”

She could see Elle absorbing everything, and wondered about it. If Dean found it strange, he didn’t comment.

“What about college?” Elle asked, sounding like a reporter.

“Nobody falls through the cracks in a school this small,” he said. “Although a few of us have tried. Your cousin Cole will be seventeen in August. His SATs were through the roof. Takes after Sylvia in the sciences. If he keeps his act together, the school board will pay to fly him to the main
land to attend advanced classes part of every day next year. He has his eye on Harvard.”

“Are the rest of the Lakers smart?” Elle gave the empty swing a push on her way by.

“We do all right.”

“What about the Donahues?” Elle asked.

Dean answered. “If Mya would have stayed, she would have been valedictorian of our class.”

“I guess Kaylie has a fighting chance in the brain department.”

Catching Elle’s eye, Mya said, “What about you?”

Her shrug was endearingly shy. “My SATs were through the roof, too.”

Mya was filled with a pride she probably didn’t deserve. And she sighed.

A large shadow glided across the playground. Elle looked up at the bald eagle riding an invisible current in the sky. Mya looked at Elle. “Are you going back to school when your treatments are finished?”

The question came awfully close to that stipulation Elle had named. But Mya couldn’t help it.

“We’ll see,” was all Elle would say.

Mya’s and Dean’s gazes met, held, for Elle was even more evasive than usual. A worry she couldn’t voice worked over Mya.

Eventually, they got back in Dean’s four-by-four. He drove east along gravel roads, across wooden bridges span
ning narrow streams and through lush woods. They saw deer, chipmunks and squirrels. Mya would have liked to know what Elle was thinking as Dean pointed out the remodeling and renovation projects he’d worked on. He didn’t stop driving or talking until he reached the top of a long and winding path that led to what the islanders called The Cliffs. There, he got out, and Mya and Elle followed more slowly.

Mya hadn’t been up here since she’d left the island. The summer people paid a fortune for the large, Victorian houses near the harbor, but as far as she was concerned, those had never been able to hold a candle to this one.

“We won’t get shot for trespassing, will we?” she asked.

“No.”

“You’re sure?”

“Positive.”

Noticing signs of life, Mya asked, “Who lives here?”

“I do.”

She was glad he didn’t look at her, because she was visibly shaken. Her mother hadn’t told her he’d purchased this place. The house was one of the oldest on the island and overlooked the Atlantic. Elle had been conceived on a quilt in a sheltered cove just around the bend below.

Shading her eyes with one hand, Elle said, “Can you see Portland from here on a clear day?”

“Almost.” Dean’s voice was deep and quiet and had the allure of still waters.

“How can you almost see something?” Elle asked.

He demonstrated. Looking toward the mainland, he said, “If you stand still enough, stare long enough, hard enough, you can almost see.”

Her throat thickening, Mya understood. “Do you do that often?”

“Not if I can help it.”

She understood that, too. Staring toward the island, she’d often had the feeling someone was staring back at her. It had been as if their gazes had met in the middle, in a way they’d never been able to do.