Love After Dark (40 page)

“I’ll take that as a ringing endorsement, coming from you.”

Ned pulled up to the lighthouse and put the car in park. “You take care of yerself these next few weeks. ’Tis okay to be a bit melancholy, but don’t let it go too far. Ya hear?”

“I do,” she said, smiling at him. “And I appreciate your kind words.” With a twenty-dollar bill in hand, she reached over the seat.

“Yer money t’ain’t no good here, honey.”

“Thank you, Ned, for the ride and the words of wisdom.” She leaned over the seat to kiss his cheek, leaving him flustered as she got out of the car, dragging her crutches behind her. She was about as over them as she was the tears.

Ned turned the cab around and left with a toot of the horn.

Waving to him, Erin dropped the crutches on the grass and hobbled over to the fire pit, where Slim had made himself right at home. “Fancy meeting you here,” she said.

He got up to give her the chair and took a seat on the cooler, reaching for her injured foot to prop it up next to him. “Heard the festivities didn’t turn out quite as planned tonight. Sorry to miss it. I had a late flight and just got back to the island half an hour ago.”

“And you came right here?”

“Directly.”

“How come?”

“Other than the fact that a very,
very
cute lighthouse keeper lives here?”

It had been a long time since any man had called her cute. The compliment made Erin’s face heat up, which, thankfully, he couldn’t see. The glow of the fire made them both look hot—particularly him. “Other than that.”

“I figured tonight might be another of those tough nights for you. Thought I’d come by to check on you.”

“That’s exceptionally nice of you.”

“I’m an exceptionally nice guy.”

She laughed at that even as she suspected it was true. “Who doesn’t lack for self-confidence.”

“Only where you’re concerned. Never quite certain where I stand with you.”

“Your approval ratings are higher than ever right now.”

“Yeah?” he asked, his face lighting up with glee.
 

She rolled her eyes. “Don’t let one victory get you all full of yourself.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it.” He tossed another log onto the fire and stoked it. “So was it a tough night?”

“It wasn’t too bad, all things considered.” She told him about the prank the girls had perpetrated, and enjoyed his ringing laughter at her description of the guys reacting to having been had. “Jenny is glowing with happiness, and the prank sort of took over the night when the guys crashed looking for strippers. Lots of laughs, good music, good food, good friends. It was fun.”

“I’m glad you had a nice time.”

“I just had a lovely chat with Ned on the way home. He said something that really resonated with me.”

Slim got up from the cooler and opened it to retrieve the marshmallows Erin had in there. He affixed two of them to sticks and handed one to her along with a second marshmallow for later. “He’s the best when you need advice. What’d he say?”

“That it’s okay to be a little melancholy over the wedding, but I shouldn’t let it get out of control. That wouldn’t be good.”

“No, it wouldn’t. You’ve worked long and hard to get to where you are now.”

“And where am I exactly?”

“You’re in a place where you have good friends, lots of laughs, good food, good music,” he said, quoting her words back to her. “You have a cool job, and you live in a lighthouse. What’s better than that?”

“Not much.” He didn’t even know about the other job she had as an advice columnist to the lovelorn, ironic as that was since she hadn’t had much of a love life to speak of in years. “So I was thinking…”

“About me?” he asked hopefully.

She threw her extra marshmallow at him.

“I’ll take that as a no.”

“I was thinking about Jenny’s wedding. Her second wedding, I should say.”

“What about it?”

“I’m allowed to bring a date.”

“Is that right?”

“Uh-huh. You know of any single guys who might like to go to a fun wedding with me?”

His mouth fell open and snapped shut.

She had to hold back laughter that was straining to get out.

“I know this one guy,” he said after a long pause. “He’s kind of dashing in a roguish sort of way. Movie-star handsome, absurdly talented and very interested in spending more time with a certain cute lighthouse keeper.”

“Movie-star handsome, roguish, absurdly talented… He sounds like a player.”

“Nah, he’s not. He’s too much of a homebody to be a player, although he does enjoy a little
playing
on occasion. He’s a one-woman kind of guy.”

“Do you have his number?”

His marshmallow caught fire, and he blew on it until it was extinguished. “Umm, you do know I’m talking about me, right?”

“Oh,” Erin said, feigning surprise while continuing to suppress the laughter. She’d laughed more with him than she had in years. “I thought it had to be someone else, because who describes himself as roguish, movie-star handsome and absurdly talented?”

“Ha!” he said with a grin that could only be described as roguish. “So I went a little far trying to sell myself as the perfect date for this important wedding of yours?”

“Little bit.” She held her marshmallow over the fire until it was toasted to a golden brown. “But if you’d like to come with me…”

“I would. I’d like to. Very much so.”

“Good,” she said, smiling at him. “I should mention that my parents will be there. Just in case that makes you want to back out.”

“It doesn’t. I’m in. But it doesn’t count as the dinner you promised me.”

A shiver of excitement danced through her at the thought of spending more time with the dashingly roguish pilot.
 

The Saturday-night crowd at the Beachcomber had thinned out by the time Kevin McCarthy pulled up a barstool.

Chelsea came over to him, smiling warily. “Dr. McCarthy.”

“Ms. Rose.”

She raised a brow as she put a napkin down on the bar and placed an ice-cold light beer on it. “Glass?”

“Comes in one.” The cold beer tasted good going down. “You gonna call my big brother on me tonight?”

“You gonna give me reason to?”

Kevin laughed at her saucy comeback. When she smiled at him, he realized how pretty she was. Her thick blonde hair was braided down her back. She wore little or no makeup, but she didn’t need it, and though she was tall, she carried her height with an elegance to her movements that indicated dance training. The fact that she was far too young for him didn’t keep him from noticing that she was a beautiful woman.
 

“Where’re you coming from?” she asked.

“I was at my brother Frank’s for dinner with my sons.”

“How many boys do you have?”

“Two, Riley and Finn. I guess they count as men these days. They’re twenty-five and twenty-seven.”

“You don’t look old enough to have kids that age.”

“Had them young.”

“Where’s their mom?” she asked, taking a casual glance at the wedding ring he still wore.

He hadn’t been able to bring himself to remove it. “That’s kind of a long story.”

As they talked, she’d been drying glasses out of the dishwasher and returning them to the shelves. “I’m here until one.”

The open invitation to share wasn’t lost on him. As someone who made a living listening to other people’s problems, he rarely shared his own with anyone. But there was something about her that had him spilling the whole ugly story.

By the time he finished telling her about his wife leaving him for a younger guy, she’d discarded the dishtowel and he had her full attention.

“I’m so sorry, Kevin. That’s awful.” Without asking if he wanted it, she opened another beer for him and put it down on the bar. “That one’s on me.”

“Thank you.”

“Had you guys been having problems?” she asked tentatively, as if she wasn’t entirely sure she should ask.

“Not that I knew of. I was blindsided.” He took a drink of the beer. “But with hindsight, I can see there were signs that I missed. Or chose to ignore. I don’t know. She wasn’t happy. I thought it was a phase that would pass. It had before.” Sliding a finger through the condensation on the bottle, he said, “After the boys left home, we found ourselves without much to talk about. It happens. I see it a lot in my practice.”

“It’s a big change after years of focusing on your kids.”

“It is, and we were guilty of making it all about the kids, to the exclusion of our relationship. We tried to get back on track. Went on a few vacations, spent time with friends. But it took effort that hadn’t been necessary way back when.”

“I think it says something for you that you can look back and see where the trouble was.”

“Too bad I didn’t realize how bad the trouble was before it was too late.”

“You knew.”

“I did?”

She nodded. “You said it took effort, that it wasn’t easy the way it once had been. You had to be aware of that at the time.”

“I was, but I never expected her to actually leave me for another guy. And what she said on the way out the door…”

“What did she say?”

“That life was too short to spend it with me.”

“Ah,” she said, shaking her head. “That was unnecessary. It’s her loss. You know that, don’t you?”

“You think she’s saying that when she’s getting busy with her young stud?”

“Is that the part that pisses you off the most? That he’s younger?”

“Nah.”

“You sure?”

“Kinda.”

Her husky laugh warmed him on the inside the way a shot of whisky would. A low hum of desire took him by surprise. It’d been a long time since he’d felt anything resembling desire. “You’re easy to talk to, Ms. Rose.”

“Thank you, Dr. McCarthy.”

“How do you know I’m a doctor anyway?”

“I asked your brother.”

“Which one?”

“Mac. I saw him in the grocery store earlier today.”

“And you asked him about me.”

“I might’ve.”

He was so out of practice with such things that Kevin wasn’t sure he was reading this correctly. Was she flirting with him? “How come?”

“I thought you seemed troubled the other night. I asked if you were okay. We got to talking.” She shrugged.

“And that’s all it was? Some bartenderly concern?”

“Is that a word?”

“Answer the question.”

“It might’ve been more than that.”

Definitely flirting. He cocked his head to take a closer look at her pretty face. She never blinked.
 

“I’m sorry for what you’ve been through, but I’m not sorry you’re single.”

“Separated.”

“Permanently and legally?”

“Heading that way.”

“Are you planning to go back to her?”

“No.”

“What if she shows up here and says it was all a big mistake?”

Kevin thought about that for a minute. “Even then.” Permanent damage had been done, and there was no undoing that.

“Then that counts as single in my book.”

“Does it now?”

“Yep.” She gave him that look again, the one that couldn’t be mistaken for anything other than interest. “I slept with your niece’s husband once.”

“Joe or Owen?

“Joe.”

“Before he was her husband?”

“Yes! Years before.”

“Okay.”

“So that doesn’t appall you?”

“Why should it? I assume you were both single and consenting.”

“We were.”

Kevin shrugged. “Sex happens.”

“Does it?”

“That’s been my experience.”

“What do you think about it maybe happening tonight?”

For a moment, Kevin was rendered speechless. But then he recovered. “I’m fifty-two.”