Seaside Hearts (Love in Bloom: Seaside Summers, Book 2) Contemporary Romance (15 page)

“When Pop’s sober and I try to talk with him about his drinking, he’s adamant that he doesn’t have a problem and that he just misses my mother, which I know he does. Then I feel guilty for trying to push him into AA meetings or rehab. And honestly, I think he’s past the AA stage. He’s worried about people in town finding out and losing business because of it. To be honest, I think he needs real, full-time help to beat this.”

“I can’t imagine how hard this has been for you. What happens when he’s drinking?”

Pete scrubbed his hand down his face. “He’s consumed with my mom. He doesn’t remember that she died, so he asks where she is. It’s pretty heartbreaking.”

“He’s right about people finding out, but the alternative is not good for either of you.” Jenna slid her hand around the back of his neck and kneaded the tension from his muscles. “I’m sorry you’ve been going through this alone.”

Pete pulled back. “I can handle it, but—” He looked away again.

Jenna realized how deeply this was impacting him, and she wasn’t sure how to help, but she desperately wanted to. “Well, the next time that happens when we’re together, please don’t feel pressure to leave me behind. I’ll go with you. Maybe I can help.”

He shook his head. “No. You don’t need to see what he’s like.”

“Is he violent?” She began to imagine all sorts of awful situations.

“No. He’s just the opposite. He’s kind of pathetic.”

Jenna saw sadness in Pete’s eyes, but it was the tension and maybe even embarrassment rolling off him that made her chest constrict. Had his father’s alcoholism even allowed for Pete to grieve for his mother, or had it begun immediately after his mother’s death? Was he embarrassed for his father, or for himself? And his choice of words rubbed her the wrong way.
Pathetic?
That could only come from years of pain.

“Pete, your parents were married a long time. He probably does feel lost without her, but that doesn’t make him pathetic.”

Pete pushed to his feet and paced. His hands fisted, and the muscles in his jaw bunched. “What does it make him, Jenna? She died. She’s not coming back. So you deal with that, right? You say to yourself,
Okay, the woman I loved died, but I can’t die right along with her.
It sucks, and yes, his life is enormously different. Empty, without her in it. But he’s killing himself, and that would have killed my mother if she were alive to see it.”

Jenna was struck by his words—and his anger. They were so similar to her own, toward her mother.
She just needs to get over it and move on.
 She realized how unfair those words were. She pushed the thought away so she could focus on Pete.

“Pete, I think it makes him a man who loved a woman so deeply that when she died, she took too much of him with her.” She rose to her feet and reached for his hand. His fingers were tense, but she held tight. “She was the glue that held him together. People don’t just become alcoholics. He was probably drinking all along, but her presence kept him in check.”

“Yeah. No shit.” He pulled his hand away, and Jenna flinched at his spite. He turned back quickly, his eyes heavy with sorrow. “I’m sorry. That was a shitty thing to say. I know you’re right, Jenna. I get it. He was always a drinker, but this…The way he’s throwing in the towel is just not like him. He’s always been the guy who made things happen. The one who made me and my brothers stand up and be men. You know, face your faults and your fears and overcome them. His famous goddamn words to us were,
Men don’t run from hard times. They conquer them.
” Pete set his hands on his hips and looked over at the bay.

“Wait a minute. Pete, do you think he’s doing this on purpose? Do you blame him for this?”

He narrowed his eyes. Then his gaze softened and he reached for her hand. “I’m sorry, Jenna. I didn’t mean to take you down with me. I know he’s not doing this on purpose. But that doesn’t make it any easier to accept, and it doesn’t make his calls any easier to deal with.”

Jenna closed the distance between them and reached up to touch his cheeks. She felt the tightness in his jaw and wanted to ease that tension and take away the sadness in his eyes. She wondered if her friends saw the same sadness and tension when she spoke of her mom.

“Pete, I know you feel like you can, or you should, handle this alone, but I’m going through something with my mom right now, and I’ve been trying to deal with it on my own. It’s hard. It’s damn hard. Listening to you talk about your dad made me realize that I was wrong. I don’t need to try to deal with my mom by myself or deal with her by keeping my distance. I need to be closer to her and let her grieve for her marriage in whatever way she needs to,
with
my support.” She moved closer to him.

“I don’t know if you want me to be there or not, but I want to be here for you. What your father is going through isn’t a reflection on you. It’s a reflection of how much he loved your mom. So what if her death weakened him? He’s already raised you and your siblings. He’s done his job. He’s allowed to fall apart.”

“He’s killing himself,” Pete hissed out.

“Right, which is why you can’t feel guilty about getting him the help he needs. He’s allowed to fall apart, as I was saying, but he can’t be allowed to kill himself in the process. I think you should talk to him more. Make him understand where you’re coming from.”

Pete turned away. His shoulders rounded forward and he put his hands on his hips again. “I’ve talked so much that now when I open my mouth he has a rebuttal out before I even finish. Besides, he’s right about the store. If word gets out, it’ll affect his business, and none of us wants to run it.”

Jenna wrapped her arms around him from behind and pressed her cheek to his back. He covered her hand with his own and exhaled; then he turned in her arms. She loved being close to him, and the more they shared, the closer they became. It pained her to know he’d been carrying this burden alone for so long.

He brushed her hair from her shoulders and ran his thumb over her cheek. “I’m a selfish bastard, aren’t I?”

Jenna was gaining a better understanding of what was really going on, and it was hitting home. If they posed an intervention, it would clearly come down to Pete running the store, since his siblings lived out of town. He had his own businesses to think about. She felt bad for his family, and at the same time, Jenna realized how selfish she had been not to give up her vacation time for her mother, when her mother obviously needed her. How could she fault Pete, if she couldn’t fault herself?

“We’re all selfish, Pete. But after going through these last few weeks with my mom, and listening to what you’re going through, I think it’s safe to say that we expect our parents to set aside their own needs and be there for us, maybe even rescue us, for the first eighteen years of our lives. They put that energy into raising us well and teaching us responsibility and empathy for a reason, right? All those years of caring for us, putting up with our teenage shit, our ignorance, and putting the rest of their lives on hold, it’s got to count for something. I think for some of us—me with my mom and maybe you with your dad—we have to learn to be just as selfless as our parents were. Maybe now it’s our turn to rescue them.”

JENNA STAYED WITH Pete for the rest of the day. She went with him to take care of a small boat repair at the marina, and then they had lunch at the Wellfleet Pier. It had been the most enjoyable day that he could remember in a very long time. Gone was the nervous energy that used to trail Jenna like a shadow around him and the uncertainty of his thoughts of their compatibility. He realized that even if she had remained nervous around him, it wouldn’t have hampered his feelings for her one iota. He loved being with Jenna, and even her need to line up the silverware at the café and organize his workbench in the barn didn’t bother him. It endeared her to him even more.

Late afternoon found Pete caulking the seams along the bottom planks of the schooner, and he realized that he’d finish refitting the boat very soon. That should have thrilled him, but instead it gave him a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach. This was supposed to be the project he and his father completed together. A joint effort. More importantly, it was supposed to be the project that pulled his father from his internal hell and brought him back to Pete as the man—and the father—he used to be.

He wiped the edge of the caulking with a rag, then set to work on the next plank. Jenna had been sitting in the grass talking on the phone with her mother for the last half hour. She was inviting her to visit for a few days, and damn if the first thing that entered Pete’s mind was of how it would affect their time together. He knew it was a selfish thought, and between his father and that thought, he was mired in guilt. A moment later, his thoughts shifted to what Jenna had said about
rescuing
their parents. He’d never thought of what he was doing with his father in those terms, but the more he thought about it, the more he realized that he
wasn’t
rescuing him. He was enabling him, putting a Band-Aid on a much larger problem. And what made it worse was that he hadn’t realized that part of the reason was probably that he wasn’t sure he was selfless enough to take over the hardware store and set his life aside for however many weeks it might take for his father to get the help he so desperately needed. Then again, the reality of his father drinking himself to death was a fear that gripped Pete every time he walked into his father’s dark house. The silent battle between them must have been warring in his subconscious.

Even though he wasn’t running the store, hadn’t he already put his father’s life ahead of his own and set aside his freedom? Wasn’t he still?

Yes, he realized, he was.

He heard Jenna laugh softly, and it was so different from her normal loud, halting laugh that it pulled him from his thoughts. She was sitting just outside the barn with her legs stretched out in front of her. She wiggled her toes, and when Joey licked them, she laughed. Pete loved listening to the cadence of her voice and seeing her smile as she listened to her mother on the phone, then responded, and then listened again. It made him long for the relationship he once had with his father. He hadn’t realized how alone he’d felt dealing with his father’s drinking until he and Jenna had spent the day talking about their families.

Jenna ended her call and jumped to her feet, reading a text on her phone. She tugged at her bikini top as she hurried across the grass toward him. Bo Derek had nothing on Jenna Ward. Jenna was the sexiest woman he’d ever met. Her shirts were always too tight on her breasts and too wide on her waist. Her dresses clung to every delicious curve. She couldn’t hide her body if she tried, but Jenna’s mannerisms that Pete thought might make them incompatible were the very things that softened her and made her even more alluring.

“Bella texted. They’re having a barbecue tonight in the quad.” She reached for his hand and began swaying to the music. “Do you want to be my date?”

He shoved the rag in his pocket and wrapped his arms around her. “That depends. Can I bring Joey?”

“Always. I love Joey.” She went up on her tiptoes and puckered her lips.

Pete pressed his lips to hers. “You love Joey, huh?”

“Yeah. She’s the perfect dog. Sweet, cute, and not too demanding.”

“So you don’t like demanding?” He lifted her into his arms, and Jenna wrapped her legs around his waist. She was light as a bird, and he loved the way she buried her hands in his hair and held on. Her skin was hot from the sun, and when he nuzzled against her neck, she smelled so good he had to kiss his way across her collarbone. “I can be pretty demanding.” She tightened her grip on his hair and he pressed openmouthed kisses down her breastbone and along the edge of her bikini top.

“I like…” Jenna’s words came out as one long breath. “Oh God, Pete.”

“Too demanding?” He leaned back and looked at her. Her eyelids were heavy. She had a foggy, sexy look of wanting to be kissed.

“I like your demands.” She returned his kiss with hunger, loving his mouth with hers and pressing her breasts against his chest. She felt so damn good that he wanted more of her. He had no control when it came to Jenna; he always wanted more. He wanted to be closer, wanted more of her heart, more of her love. He slid his hands beneath her bikini bottom and grabbed her bare ass. Jenna tore her lips away and eyed the boat.

“Have you christened it?” She raised her brows with a mischievous glint in her eyes.

Holy hell
. “No, I haven’t christened it, you dirty girl.” 

Jenna shot her arms straight up in the air. “Lift me up, baby. We’ve got lovin’ to do.”

Pete took her in another greedy kiss. “Where the hell have you been all my life?”

“Trying to get your attention, silly.” Jenna kissed his chin and reached her arms up again. “Come on.”

She was so damn cute, but there was no way he could hoist her into the boat. It was too tall. He set up the ladder with her clinging to his neck like a monkey. She kissed his chin, his jaw, his neck, driving him out of his freaking mind. Finally, when he had the ladder set up, he lifted her by her waist and turned her around, then grabbed her ass as he followed her up the ladder.

She stood in the middle of the boat, and he watched her eyes dance over his workmanship. He’d refinished all of the wood, stained and painted it, and worked his fingers to the bone, which he now realized he had done to work out his frustrations over his father’s drinking.

“Pete, this is stunning. It’s beautiful.”

“
You’re
stunning, Jenna. I don’t mean that as cheesy as it sounds.” He folded her into his arms and kissed the edge of her mouth. “You have the biggest heart of anyone I’ve ever known, and it comes through with everything you do and say.”

He kissed her softly, loving the feel of her hands as they traveled up his chest, and he deepened the kiss. He pushed away the thoughts of his father and what the boat was supposed to signify and allowed himself to get lost in Jenna, in the taste of her lips as he dragged his tongue over the bow of her upper lip and followed it around to the swell of her lower lip. The feel of her breasts against his chest as he stripped away her bikini, and later, her softness beneath him as he lowered himself down on top of her.

“Pete.”

She reached for him, her eyes full of pleasure and desire, her body ready to receive all that he had to give. Pete reveled in the sound of his name coming off her lips, and when their bodies joined together for the second time, his heart swelled and his whole body became hot with emotions. He’d shared his most intimate secret with Jenna, and as he lowered his cheek to hers, he barely contained the three words that he wanted to say. Their relationship was years in the making, and there was no stopping his heart from pouring out, one word at a time. He had to tell her, had to let her know, even if he withheld the words he really wanted her to hear.

“I can’t even begin to conceive of a single night without you in my arms.”