Moonshell Beach: A Shelter Bay Novel (15 page)

“Do you trust me?” he asked quietly. The smile had faded and his expression was as serious as she’d ever seen it. His eyes reassuring.

“Yes.” Of that she had not a single doubt. “Of course.”

He held out a hand. “Then come out to the farm with me. If it proves too much, too soon, we’ll work something else out. You’re not in this alone anymore. There’s not a person in Shelter Bay who won’t be watching out for the bastard. And your friends will all have your back.”

Her friends. She’d once had friends, a very long time ago, until Peter had gradually cut her off from everyone, causing the map of her world to narrow to just the house where she’d been a physical and emotional prisoner.

Now she realized that she truly did have friends. And although she’d never want to risk being responsible for their being harmed, she also knew that if Zelda, Maddy, or Sedona, from the bakery, were in the same situation she found herself in now, she’d want to help any of them.

She blew out a breath she’d been unaware of holding.

“All right,” she said. “And thank you.”

He shrugged. “No thanks needed. And, although you didn’t ask, there are four bedrooms in the house. One with your name on it.”

As she went upstairs to pack, Phoebe couldn’t decide whether his assuring her that they wouldn’t be sharing a room had her feeling relieved. Or a little disappointed.

Hormones. That was what was causing all these crazy, conflicted emotions she’d been having lately. That was all it was. It was all she could allow it to be.

“I can’t believe I said that,” Adèle said as she lay on her back, staring up at the bedroom ceiling, watching the lighthouse beacon flash on the plaster. “Bad enough I didn’t recognize that lovely actress Mary Joyce, but then to bring up the part about her being skantily dressed in her movies…”

“It’s the truth,” Bernard said, drawing her into his arms. “No point in beating yourself up over it.”

“It may be the truth, but it was also rude. And horribly inappropriate.” She sighed. “I’m beginning to wonder if I should even be allowed out in public anymore.”

“Don’t talk such foolishness.” He kissed the top of her head. “If you stopped going out, everyone in town would be showing up at our door because they’d miss you so.”

“You’re just saying that because you love me.” Knowing how he hated it when she wept, Adèle struggled against the tears that were filling her eyes and blurred the light.

“I always have.” He put a palm beneath her chin and lifted her gaze to his. “And I always will. But
I’ve never lied to you, Del, darlin’. And I never will. You’re part of the fabric of Shelter Bay.

“Think of all the people you’ve got knitting to make those blankets for those Project Linus kids. And all the other volunteer work you’ve done over the years. Why, after we lost our library to the Columbus Day storm back in the sixties, don’t forget, you were the one who spearheaded the campaign to fund a new one.

“And didn’t you and Sofia work together to get Second Harvest started here? And it was your idea to open a Kids’ Café here so kids who might otherwise go hungry have not only a nutritious snack at the end of their school day, but somewhere to hang out while their parents are working, so they’re not left on their own.”

It was true she’d always needed to keep busy, and the café was her newest project. She’d been going along full force when that stupid fall had slowed her down, but fortunately, Sofia, Dottie, and Doris had stepped in to keep up the momentum.

“And how about that Army vet Sax introduced us to last week?” Bernard continued to press his case. “You can’t say that you didn’t make a difference there.”

When she’d heard her three grandsons were playing basketball with an Army veteran turned teacher and coach at Shelter Bay High School, she’d asked to meet Dillon Slater, so she could hopefully coax him into teaching a basketball clinic. She’d been surprised and more than a little excited when it hadn’t taken any coaxing at all. In fact, not only had he immediately agreed; he’d also offered to help get momentum going for a tutoring program for the kids.

“There you go with your exaggerating again,” she complained without heat. “You’re making me sound like Mother Teresa.” Which she definitely was not.

“Not Mother Teresa, but Adèle Douchett, the woman everyone in town adores. So, how can you even think about turning into a recluse?” He linked his fingers with hers and lifted their joined hands to his lips. “Shelter Bay needs you, Del.” His mouth, which after more than fifty years of marriage still possessed the power to thrill, moved up her arm, across her shoulder, and began nuzzling at her neck. “
I
need you.”

Although she knew his words were meant to reassure, they inadvertently brought up another concern. Bernard Douchett was one of the strongest, most independent, hardworking men she’d ever known. And the most optimistic.

Hadn’t he assured her, as Hurricane Audrey had wreaked devastation on their small bayou community, wiping Petit Chenier off the map, that they’d survive?

Although she might not remember what she had for supper last night, and had failed to recognize a famous movie star earlier this evening, Adèle’s mind clung to the memories of that seemingly endless dark night as tenaciously as hanging Spanish moss had clung to the ancient oak trees surrounding their home. As stubbornly as she’d clung to the roof after the small wooden house had been washed off its piers and sent floating through the bayou.

When she’d checked in on Lucien before going to bed that night, the weather bureau had been predicting that the storm would hit Texas. Unfortunately, as they’d discovered at one in the morning, the weather
bureau had been wrong. Since there was no way to leave the island of Petit Chenier, they’d gone to the attic, hoping the additional height would provide protection.

But then the house had washed away, and one wall had been knocked apart when it had rammed into a half-sunken fishing boat. Which was when Bernard had strapped their toddler son to his broad chest, looped a rope between his waist and Adèle, and led them onto the roof. Where they’d huddled together as the storm raged around them.

When morning broke, Adèle had been crushed as she viewed the destruction that went as far as the eye could see. As bad as that had been, it had gotten worse over the next days as recovery efforts were undertaken to locate the nearly five hundred dead. Including Bernard’s parents, who’d lived in Grand Chenier and were among those never found.

Tragically, the storm had not only taken the shrimp boat Bernard had saved for years to buy, but also left both of them without any family except for each other.

Rather than sit around bemoaning their fate, her husband had gotten busy looking for work to get them out of that shelter. When he’d heard they were hiring men to catch crab up in Oregon, he’d cashed out their very small bank account, bought a used pickup to replace the one that had washed away with the house, and moved the three of them to Shelter Bay.

Life still hadn’t been easy. They’d both worked hard, but they’d always been a team. Adèle knew she’d be lost without this man who’d won her heart so many years ago. And, she feared, as tough as he
was, he’d be equally devastated if
he
was the one to be left alone.

“What if the doctors are wrong?” She finally gave voice to the fear that had been bedeviling her for weeks. “What if I don’t get better?”

“Then we’ll stay just the way we are.” He bent his head and brushed a light kiss against her quivering lips. How was it, she wondered, that he could still create a spark with a single look? Or a tender touch. Or a soft-as-sea-foam kiss. “Which, from where I’m lying right now, isn’t such a bad thing,
chère
.”

His deep voice was like velvet—rough and smooth at the same time. It was also the one he’d bring out whenever he was in the mood for seduction.

“But what if I have the Alzheimer’s?”

“We’ll cope. As we have with everything else.”

His lips skimmed up her face to linger at her temple, where, if you looked carefully, you could see the scar from the blasted fall that had stolen so much of her memory.

“What if I forget who
you
are?”

Adèle had a dear friend, Betty Jenkins, whose husband had stopped recognizing her six months ago. Even having been warned that such a day was coming, Betty had been heartbroken when Ralph Jenkins had told her that she couldn’t possibly be his wife. That his wife was young and beautiful. And Betty was old and fat. Those were, tragically, the last words he ever said to the woman he’d come home to marry after defeating the Germans in World War II.

“Then I’ll simply have to court you every day to remind you that I’m the man who loves you to distraction,” he said easily. “Which, believe me, would be no hardship, Del.…

“And speaking of courting.”

He leaned her back against the snowy sheets and, with an expertise that came from more than fifty years of practice, began making slow, beautiful love to her.

As warmth began to flow through her veins, and her limbs turned to water, putting aside her worries for now, Adèle wrapped her arms around his broad back and allowed herself to be drawn into the mists.

After another night of erotic dreams starring the wickedly hot warrior who now, inexplicably, had a name, Mary dragged herself out of bed, ordered room service, then took a shower. As she stood beneath the streaming warm water, she tried to keep her mind from imagining it was J. T. Douchett’s hands smoothing the fragrant bar of oval soap over her wet and distractingly needy body.

Oh yes, it was going to be a very long four days. And she wasn’t certain she’d helped her case last night when she’d realized she’d pushed too fast. After he’d left the suite, she belatedly remembered that a storyteller’s innate need to dig beneath the surface, to know everything about both real people and fictional, could often be viewed by others as being intrusive.

“You should have taken a page from Nora’s book,” she muttered as she dragged a comb through her wet hair. Hadn’t her sister taken four long weeks to draw Quinn out of his life-hardened shell? What made Mary think that she could prove equally effective in a mere day?

Then, it had also been obvious to everyone in the family that Quinn had been attracted to Nora from the start. If J. T. Douchett was interested in her, except for his reaction to the dress she’d worn to the reception, he’d certainly done a very good job of hiding his feelings since she’d gotten off the plane. And couldn’t that flash of lust be explained away by a knee-jerk response to any woman in a short, tight, skimpy dress? Especially a woman he’d already seen nearly naked on his TV screen. Like so many men she’d met, he’d undoubtedly been attracted to her sexually free character. Not her.

Not that she cared what the man thought of her personally.

Liar.
Whether she was being influenced by those dreams, or merely because he was the most interesting man she’d met in a very long time, Mary did care. Too much for comfort.

She’d just snuggled into a thick, terry cloth robe with the inn’s whale logo embroidered in blue on the front when the phone on the bathroom wall rang. Since the operator had been instructed not to send calls through unless they were from someone on the committee, she assumed it was a schedule update or perhaps room service calling to confirm something with her order, and picked up the phone.

“Finally!” the frustrated voice of the studio executive assistant said on an exasperated huff. “If I were a paranoid person, I might think you were ignoring my calls.”

“I haven’t had a minute to even breathe, so I turned my phone off.” That part was true. Well, mostly.

“Have you given any more thought to the idea?”

“As I said last time we spoke, I’ve been busy, but I have been thinking about it, and honestly can’t see where I could fit a vampire into my story.”

“I was thinking about that last night,” Tammi, who could make a bulldog look indecisive, said. “You already have a romantic triangle going on with your selkie queen, the scientist, and the queen’s fiancé. So—now, just go along with me, here—you could have a female vampire claim your scientist.”

“Why would she do that?”

“Well, because, for one, he’s really, really hot. And second, it sets up another conflict when the heroine has to battle the vampire for his eternal soul.”

“A real battle? He’s thinking of turning my film into a summer special effects movie for adolescent males?” Although her stories might be set in fantastic realms, Mary had always held firm about not letting the tech-crazed FX guys get their hands on her scripts.

“Don’t worry.” Mary had heard that soothing tone before. Usually when Tammi’s boss was pushing for changes in the script. Changes that he believed would make it even more commercial. “Given the state of the economy, Aaron wants to keep the budget down, so going with big FX isn’t even being discussed.”

“I’m glad to hear that.”

Mary’s relief was short-lived. “Instead, he’s considered something more basic we both feel would be even more effective than computer-generated content.”

“And that would be?”

“A fight scene. Between you and the vamp character over the scientist.”

“Aaron wants to bring in the mud-wrestling audience now, too?”

“Of course not!”

Thank God.

“He was thinking of using the ocean for a venue. Well, not actually the ocean, because an underwater fight scene would be more expensive to shoot. He’s thinking in the surf.”

Sand and surf wrestling?
“He wants my heroine to roll around in the surf with a female vampire?” Forget the FX; this would get those adolescent males to buy tickets.

“Exactly!” Excitement shimmered in the other woman’s voice. “Can’t you see it, Mary? You naked, because you’ve been celebrating the summer solstice on the beach, so you’ve shed your sealskin, revealing your human form. There’s a full moon shining down—”

“Wrong genre. Unless you and Aaron also are thinking of adding a werewolf.”

“Aaron doesn’t find werewolves sexy. All that fur and strange shape-shifting stuff. And this would work because vampires also go out hunting for blood during full moons.” There was a pause. “Don’t they?”