Carolina Dreaming: A Dare Island Novel Read online

  “You don’t have anything to worry about.” Sam flashed her the Grady grin, white teeth and charm. “It’s a coffee shop, not a bakery. Beverages, smoothies, maybe ice cream. Nothing like what you can offer here.”

  “You don’t know that,” Jane said.

  “Actually, I’ve seen the business plan.”

  “When? How?”

  Another quick, apologetic glance. “My company’s doing the upfit on the building.”

  Jane sucked in her breath. O-kay. Sam had a business to run, a payroll to meet. She didn’t expect him to turn down work on her account. But . . . he was her landlord. Engaged to marry her friend. His taking a job with her competition felt oddly like betrayal.

  “Who signed the lease?”

  “Ashley Ingram,” Sam answered promptly. “Her parents cosigned.”

  “Ashley?” Another mental stumble. “Blond, sort of curly hair, twenty-ish?”

  “Yeah. Have you met?”

  Jane twisted her braid around her finger tightly enough to turn the tip of her finger blue. “I may have seen her around.”

  A blond, curly-haired twentysomething named Ashley had been sitting with her laptop in Jane’s place for the better part of a week. Jane had figured the girl was just another customer taking advantage of the bakery’s free Wi-Fi. But she could have been taking notes. On Jane’s menu, on her hours, on her prices . . .

  Swallowing, Jane looked again at the estimate. If her decrepit delivery van lasted another season . . . If the dishwasher didn’t break . . . As long as seven-year-old Aidan didn’t require anything outrageous like stitches or new shoes or regular appointments with a counselor . . .

  She could afford to do this. She couldn’t afford not to.

  “How soon can you start?”

  “I’ll have to work you in. We were already slammed before the last storm hit, and now between repairs and this upfit . . .” Sam looked at her face and stopped. “Fortunately, it’s not a big job. A small crew could knock it out in a week. Two, tops, depending on the weather. As long as you don’t mind being flexible about the schedule, I can be flexible about costs.”

  “Thanks, Sam. But you’re already giving me a break on the quote. I don’t need charity.”

  “It’s not charity. Let me work it out with the rental side. We can fix it so you’re paying on an installment plan. Add a little to the rent every month.”

  The rush of relief left her almost light-headed. “That would be great. Here.” She thrust a pink-and-white bakery box at him.

  His brows rose in surprise. “What’s this?”

  “Cupcakes. To say thank you.”

  “You didn’t need to do that.”

  She smiled, secure again. “Think of it as the first installment. Cappuccino cream for Meg and brown butter banana rum for you.”

  “Can’t say no to that. Thanks, Jane.”

  She followed him to the bakery door, watching as he strolled down the steps and away, hard-working, handsome, successful Sam Grady. A genuinely nice guy, six years ahead of her in school and forever out of reach.

  Not her type, she would have said back then, when she was young and stupid and her type meant pretty much any guy her father disapproved of who showed her a little attention.

  As Sam reached the end of the walk, a police car pulled up behind his truck. Sam stopped as the driver’s side door opened and Luke Fletcher got out. The two men greeted each other.

  They made quite a picture, Jane admitted—Sam, lean and elegant, with his unruly dark hair and killer smile, Luke, blond and broad-shouldered in his police uniform.

  Not that she was looking. Much. Luke was recently married to a lawyer from Beaufort. Jane had designed their wedding cake. Sam was engaged to Luke’s sister, Meg. Even if Jane had had time for romance, she didn’t poach.

  Still, she wasn’t immune to a little flutter of female appreciation.

  But it was the third man, getting out of the back of the police vehicle, who made her catch her breath.

  Travis.

  Her heart squeezed and then stopped.

  She forced herself to breathe. Not Travis. Her ex wouldn’t be out of prison for at least another month.

  But the resemblance was strong enough to make her palms grow damp. Long, rangy build, torn jeans, sun-streaked hair hanging around a stubbled face. Both the hair and his shirt needed washing.

  Luke introduced the stranger to Sam. She studied him through the glass door as the three men stood talking, noting subtle differences. The stranger was taller than Travis, or maybe he simply stood straighter. His skin was sunburned, his eyes darker.

  But he was definitely the same type. Her type.

  Jane shivered deep inside.

  Her type left bruises.

  Two

  THE AIR WAS thick with warmth and the smells of baking, cinnamon and vanilla, wrapping Gabe in a blanket of comfort. He curled his hands around his coffee mug, forcing himself not to snatch the other half of his All Berry Muffin and wolf it down like a starving dog with a steak.

  You didn’t get muffins like that in jail.

  His gaze slipped to the blonde behind the counter, with the big gray eyes and gawk-worthy rack and skin like cream. There were a lot of things he didn’t get in jail.

  He took a sip of coffee, searing his tongue. The blonde is not on the menu, dickhead. He had enough on his plate without getting involved with some redneck lawman’s pretty daughter.

  “. . . surprised you got out,” Luke was saying on the other side of the table. “I always figured you’d do twenty years in the Corps.”

  So had Gabe. After the clusterfuck of his childhood, being a Marine was all he’d ever wanted. All he had.

  “The Corps had other ideas,” he said. Another bitter swallow.

  “You’re a good Marine,” Luke said.

  “A good combat Marine. I sucked at taking orders, and you know it. You cleaned up my shit often enough. No way they were keeping me around in this drawdown.”

  “What have you been doing?”

  “Nine months in county jail,” Gabe said, straight-faced.

  Luke’s eyes narrowed. “Before that.”

  “Driving rigs for a fracking operation in North Dakota.”

  “Decent job.”

  “Good money,” Gabe said. That’s what had drawn him in the first place. After six tours in the sandbox, he was used to cold winters and rough conditions, the constant company of men, the heavy drinking, the threat of violence that hung over the housing camps like the gray, overcast sky.

  “Work dry up?” Luke asked.

  Gabe shook his head. He could have gotten his old job back. Or one like it. A man who couldn’t find work anywhere else could always get a job in the fracking fields, in the boomtowns fueled by testosterone and the promise of easy money. Half the assholes he worked with had done time.

  But the other oil workers didn’t trust him anymore. The locals didn’t want him. He was tired of simply existing, sick of the life he had led since leaving the Corps. Scared of the man he might become if he stayed.

  He looked down at his scarred hands, his thick wrists sticking from the frayed cuffs of his fatigue jacket.

  His father’s hands.

  The thought made him cold inside.

  It didn’t matter where he’d been, Gabe reminded himself. He had to focus on where he was going. Even if he had to crawl to get there.

  “So, what brings you here?” Luke asked.

  When the job goes wrong, go back to the beginning.

  Gabe shrugged. “Needed a change, I guess.”

  “There aren’t a lot of jobs around,” Luke said frankly. “Dare Island’s no boomtown, especially in the off-season. But you can stay with us until you find your feet.”

  “Thanks, pal.” Gabe swallowed regret. “But I don’t think so.”

  “Why not?”

  Wasn’t it obvious?

  He glanced again at the blonde behind the counter. Luke had introduced them when they walked in. J
ane Clark, the deputy’s daughter, the one Gabe was supposed to stay away from. The pretty baker had stared at him as if she’d seen a ghost, her eyes wide in her smooth-as-milk face.

  Her daddy must have called ahead to warn her.

  Gabe had practice not caring about other people’s opinions. His parents, his teachers, even a couple of his commanding officers had written him off a long time ago. So he didn’t give a crap about some Southern lawman’s opinion. He didn’t even care so much about the blonde. But her reaction reminded him that there were plenty of people who would be equally suspicious of a down-on-his-luck drifter, who would be only too eager to send him on his way.

  Not Luke. But . . . Gabe surveyed his former brother-in-arms, the sharp new uniform, the shiny gold ring on his finger.

  “You have a wife now,” Gabe said. “And a twelve-year-old daughter.”

  “Taylor.” Luke grinned. “You worried she’s going to braid your hair while you’re sleeping?”

  Gabe didn’t smile back. “It’s not your kid I’m worried about. How’s your wife going to feel about you giving couch space to a transient with a record?”

  Gabe almost missed it, that barely perceptible hesitation Luke covered with another smile. They’d played poker together for too damn many years. He knew all Luke’s tells. You couldn’t throw that kind of history away. They shared a past.

  But not a future. Luke had a good thing going here. Gabe wasn’t screwing that up for him.

  “Kate’s fair,” Luke said. “She won’t judge without all the facts.”

  “You said in the car she’s a lawyer.”

  Luke nodded with obvious pride. “Family lawyer. That’s how we met. She contacted me in Afghanistan when Dawn died and left me guardianship of Taylor.”

  “So she does wills and stuff.”

  “Wills, custody agreements, restraining orders. Kate does a lot of work with abuse victims.”

  A lawyer and a cop. With a kid.

  Gabe grunted, turning his mug around in his hands, trying for once to think before he spoke. “No matter how fair-minded she is, I don’t see a woman whose job is protecting women and children welcoming a killer under her roof.”

  “She’s married to a Marine,” Luke said quietly.

  Gabe looked up. Their gazes locked.

  There were things they had seen and done in Afghanistan that they didn’t talk about. That didn’t mean they didn’t think about them. Dream about them.

  Luke had joined the Marines to follow in his father’s footsteps, to be the man his father was. Gabe had joined up to get as far away from his father and his father’s example as the Corps would take him. But in Afghanistan, the reasons didn’t matter. They fought for the same cause. Not to save the world, but to save their lives and the lives of the guys serving next to them. Kill or die.

  “That’s different,” Gabe said. “That was war.”

  Luke lifted an eyebrow. “Justified killing.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Isn’t that what the jury decided in your case? You were acquitted. I saw the verdict. Not guilty on all counts.”

  “That doesn’t change what happened. A man died. I killed him.”

  “Is that what you told the arresting officers?”

  Gabe’s jaw set. “I screw up, I take responsibility.”

  “Jesus, Gabe,” Luke said with exasperated affection. “I swear, if somebody wanted to beat you, you’d hand them the stick.”

  Gabe shrugged. He never had been any damn good at groveling to authority.

  “So, what happened?” Luke asked.

  “He swung first.”

  Luke nodded, satisfied. “Self-defense.”

  Gabe took a swig of coffee. “Something like that.” Self-defense, defense of others—his lawyer had explained that they were the same.

  If Gabe had been a local boy, particularly with his service record, the case against him might never have been filed. But the tiny North Dakota town where he had been charged was reeling under an influx of oil workers and crime. The district attorney was up for reelection and determined to make a name for himself. Hell-bent on making an example out of somebody. He had even turned Gabe’s military service against him, invoking the civilians’ fear of PTSD.

  Gabe was a flight risk, the DA had argued. A transient. A troublemaker. And because of that, Gabe had been locked up awaiting trial through continuance after continuance.

  “Then we’re good,” Luke said.

  Gabe shook his head. “Best if I’m on my own right now,” he said stubbornly.

  “Best for who, pal?”

  For you, idiot, Gabe thought. He clamped his mouth shut.

  “Fine.” Luke exhaled. “There’s a fishermen’s motel down by the pier. Nothing fancy, but they ought to have a vacancy this time of year.”

  Gabe didn’t care about fancy. Even before he’d been extended the hospitality of the Williams County Jail, he and Luke had slept on rocks and under tanks and side by side in a crowded hooch where you had to layer on every stitch you owned to keep from freezing in your cot at night. When he was working the oil fields, he had stayed in a “man camp,” where they bunked dormitory style, six to a trailer. Gabe would have been grateful for anyplace that had hot water and a mattress. But paying for a lawyer from one county over had taken almost every cent he had. He didn’t have money to waste on a motel room until he got a job.

  “I’ll think about it,” he said.

  “If you need me to spot you a couple nights, just until you find something . . .”

  Gabe’s jaw set. “I’m good.”

  Luke frowned. “I’m on duty tonight. If you just need a place to crash, the holding cells are usually empty.”

  God, he was tempted. But he’d be damned before he’d sleep behind bars again.

  Especially with his old buddy on the other side. They were brothers, but no longer equals. The realization chafed.

  “More coffee?” The owner, Jane, stood by their table, bringing with her a pot of coffee and the scent of cinnamon.

  Gabe nodded. “Thanks.”

  She avoided his eye as she refilled his cup. He wondered how much she’d overheard.

  Luke’s radio crackled. “Dare Island to Fletcher,” said a woman’s voice. “Please respond.”

  Luke touched the mic clipped to his shirt. “Fletcher.”

  “Luke, we have a 10-50 with injuries, possible fatality, at the corner of Beacon and Long. Chief’s on his way. Fire department on scene.”

  Luke was already standing, reaching for his pocket. “On route. Code 3. I’ve gotta go,” he said to Gabe. “Accident by the bridge.”

  “I can help.” He had trained as a combat lifesaver. In a firefight, he could handle anything from a blocked airway to an open chest wound.

  Luke shook his head. “EMTs already on the scene.” He hesitated a moment. “You okay here?”

  “My seabag’s in your car.”

  “Right.” Luke dropped some bills on the table. “Let’s go.”

  They moved with purpose toward the door. The buzz of adrenaline, the relief of action . . . It was like old times again, grabbing their gear, saddling up for a mission, riding to the rescue. Game on.

  Except there was nothing, this time, that Gabe could do to help.

  Luke tossed Gabe his bag. “Dinner tomorrow. My place.”

  “Yeah, yeah, go.”

  The door of the patrol car slammed. The siren wailed to life. Luke pulled out, tires crunching, blue lights flashing.

  Gabe stood alone in the parking lot, his heart rate slowly dropping, watching those lights disappear in the distance, leaving him behind.

  Not like old times.

  Suck it up, buttercup.

  He shouldered his bag and trudged inside.

  Jane Clark was leaning over, wiping down their vacated table, her thick blond braid falling over her shoulder like some princess in a fairy tale. Or the Swiss Miss on a cocoa package, something tasty and wholesome. His stomach rumbled. He saw, with regre
t, that his half muffin was already cleared away.

  She looked up at his entrance, her shoulders instinctively rounding, protecting her chest, like a woman who had learned to fend off the wrong kind of attention from the wrong sort of guy.

  Not another soul in the place. No wonder she was wary.

  He stopped by the door, giving her a moment to recover.

  She straightened, wiping her hands on her big white kitchen apron. “Did you need something?”

  He needed a lot of things—a meal, a shower, a bed. But his dwindling roll of bills had to last until he found a job. His gaze dropped to the Wonder Rack before he fixed his eyes firmly on her face.

  There was a time he could have talked any woman into taking him home for an hour or the night. But her body language made it clear she wasn’t that kind of woman. Or maybe he was trying hard not to be that guy anymore.

  He cleared his throat. “How late are you open?”

  “Until four. It’s the off-season,” she added, as if the early hours required an explanation.

  It was almost four now. The public restrooms would be locked until May, the local businesses shuttered by five. “Mind if I use your restroom before you close?”

  “Go right ahead.”

  He washed in the sink and then did his best to mop the floor with paper towels.

  When he came out of the restroom, Jane was behind the counter. She saw him and closed the cash drawer of the antique register. Ping.

  “I was arrested for murder,” he drawled. “Not robbery.”

  Her face flushed.

  He was such a dickhead. Nice to know he was still proving the old man right: Open mouth, make trouble. And his teachers: You’ll never learn.

  He waited for her to call her dad on him, but she just gave him a long, dry look. “Is that supposed to be funny? Or reassuring?”

  He found himself grinning. “Maybe both?”

  “Maybe your delivery needs work,” she suggested.

  His grin broadened. “Yes, ma’am.”

  She looked away, but not before he saw a smile tug the corners of her mouth.

  She followed him to the door. The trees outside obscured the view from the street. The gravel parking lot was empty.