Carolina Dreaming: A Dare Island Novel Read online

“He’s a jailbird.”

  “He’s a friend of Luke’s.”

  “Then what’s he doing hanging around my daughter?”

  “I don’t know. But I do know if you go over there and protest, Jane will think you do not trust her judgment.”

  Hank scowled. “So now you’re an expert on what my daughter is thinking.”

  “Of course not. She is your daughter. But I am a woman. It is what any woman would think.”

  He knew Marta was a woman, damn it. He’d been made aware of it every day since Jack hired her, her perfume and her earrings and the way she crossed and uncrossed her legs when she got out of her damn chair.

  When Hank started with the sheriff’s department almost forty years ago, law enforcement was all male and almost all-white. Marta stirred things up, stirred him up, in ways he didn’t like to acknowledge. Even to himself.

  “Well, I know how guys think,” Hank said. “And I’m telling you, this Murphy bum is after more than Jane’s cupcakes.”

  “And what makes you think she will give it to him?”

  “She did before.”

  Marta’s dark brows drew together. “They knew each other before?”

  “No, damn it. She hooked up with some loser before.”

  And he hadn’t stopped her.

  The guilt of that would be with him always. His baby girl still hadn’t recovered.

  Hank had known that Travis was trouble. He’d warned her. But all his warning had done was gloss the bastard with the shine of forbidden fruit.

  Maybe Jane would have listened to a mother’s advice. But Hank couldn’t be her mother. And when it counted, he hadn’t been the father she deserved, either. A father’s job was to protect.

  Old, impotent fury stirred. He should have killed the son of a bitch when he had the chance.

  The chief’s door opened and Jack came out. “If you two are done bickering like an old married couple, I could use those reports. I’m going out to check on Dora Abrams.”

  Dora Abrams was eighty-four years old and called in for everything from suspicious noises to a stopped-up toilet.

  “I’ll take it,” Hank said. “Her house is on my way anyway. Aidan will be home from school in forty minutes.”

  Marta smiled at him. “You’re a good grandfather.”

  He didn’t deserve her praise. “Boys are easy.”

  Her smile broadened. “You say that because you have only raised a girl. Wait until he gets older.”

  * * *

  “THAT’S FORTY-NINE DOLLARS a night,” said the clerk at the Fishermen’s Motel, middle-aged and wiry, sporting a paunch and a walrus mustache. He looked past Gabe toward the parking lot. “That your dog?”

  Gabe glanced over his shoulder. The mutt sat panting gently in the sunshine on the other side of the glass door. “Is that a problem?”

  “I’ll need a ten-dollar damage deposit a day. Nonrefundable,” he added before Gabe could speak.

  “He’s not my dog,” Gabe said.

  “Whatever, buddy. Fifty-nine dollars. Unless you want me to call the cops to get him. I don’t allow strays on my property.”

  He paid. It was easier than explaining to Luke or that hard-ass Clark what he was doing with a dog.

  There was a rack of fly-specked postcards standing on the counter—grass waving on the dunes, the fishing pier—and he bought one of those, too. As long as he was here, he might as well follow routine. “You got a washing machine in the building?”

  “End of the hall. You’ll need quarters.”

  “You make change?”

  “Sure.”

  Gabe stopped by the laundry room on his way down the hall, tossing a load of clothes into a washer, using leftover laundry soap from the shelf above. He grabbed a half-empty bottle of detergent to take to his room. The Fishermen’s Motel didn’t seem like the kind of place that provided complimentary toiletries.

  The dog sniffed the edges of the motel room door before slinking inside.

  Gabe dumped his seabag on the quilted bedspread and looked around at the paneled walls and dirty blue carpet, the faded poster of the harbor over the TV.

  He grinned. Compared to some of the places he had slept on deployment, and some of the places he had slept since, the Fishermen’s Motel was the fucking Baghdad royal palace.

  He turned on the hot water in the tiny bathroom, regarding his reflection in the spotted mirror over the sink.

  He wasn’t meeting Luke’s wife and daughter looking like a homeless drifter. Too late for a haircut. But he could shave.

  When he got in the shower, the dog, who had been padding around investigating the carpet smells, stuck its nose past the curtain and whined.

  “Oh, hell, no,” Gabe said.

  The mutt dropped its head, staring up at him with those hopeful cartoon eyes, its tail waving slowly back and forth.

  Gabe sighed. He hadn’t caught fleas last night. That didn’t mean he’d get lucky two nights in a row. Anyway, the beast was filthy. He couldn’t keep it in his motel room in its current condition, nonrefundable damage deposit or not.

  “Fine.” He pushed back the shower curtain. “But remember, you asked for this.”

  Catching the dog under the elbows, he dragged it under the water with him.

  * * *

  “YOU’RE ASKING FOR trouble,” Hank said to Jane when she got home that night. “Letting that no-account jailbird hang around your shop.”

  Jane looked around automatically for Aidan, who was doing his homework at the kitchen table. “Dad, can we not use that word, please?” she asked in a lowered voice.

  Hank’s bushy eyebrows shot down. “Are you defending him now, too?”

  Too? Who was defending Gabe to her father? Not that it mattered to Jane.

  “No, I’m trying to protect . . .” Her gaze went to her son. Aidan.

  She had talked to him, tried to talk to him, about his father in prison.

  It’s a place where grownups go when they break the rules, she had explained to his down-bent head.

  Lauren and all the books had advised her to be honest, to talk to him about his feelings.

  You know you’re safe now, don’t you, Boo? His baby name, shortened from Pooh Bear. I talked to a lawyer to make sure he can never try to see you, never try to take you away, again.

  Aidan had looked up at that, his eyes gleaming through his lashes. He never tried to see me before.

  It was true. Travis had left them before Aidan’s first birthday. Until eight months ago, Aidan had had no contact with his father.

  Now Aidan slid out of his seat, his straight brown bangs hiding his expression. “I’m done with my homework. Can I go to Christopher’s house to play Legos?”

  She rubbed his arm gently, as if she could smooth away some invisible hurt. “Why don’t you invite Christopher to come here?”

  “But, Mom, he has the new Avengers set.”

  Jane regarded her son’s split lip. His mouth was still swollen from yesterday’s fight, but his aggrieved tone sounded reassuringly normal. She didn’t want to let Aidan out of her sight. But he needed friends, and the Pooles lived right down the street. Gail Poole was a math teacher at the high school. Nothing bad would happen under her supervision.

  “Okay,” Jane said as cheerfully as she could. “We’re having dinner in an hour. Be home by six thirty.”

  Aidan ran for the door.

  “And watch out for cars!” she called after him.

  The screen door banged shut.

  “You want to protect him, you’ll keep away from that Murphy fellow.” Hank’s craggy face was fierce, his tone gruff.

  In his own way, he worried about her as much as she worried about Aidan.

  She smiled at him affectionately. “I wasn’t planning on bringing him home for supper, Daddy.”

  Although I did make him breakfast. Okay, not a thought she could share with her father.

  Hank grunted. “Gary Wilson saw him raking your yard.”

  Jane
resisted rolling her eyes. She should have known the island gossips would pass along that little detail. “I gave him a sandwich. He wanted to pay me back. I thought it was actually pretty nice of him. Helpful.” Responsible.

  “That’s what he wants you to think. Back when I was with the sheriff’s department, there was a guy in this neighborhood went around knocking on doors asking for yard work. Some fool woman says yes and convinces all her neighbors he’s really a good guy down on his luck, just needs a chance.” Hank stuck his thumbs into his belt loops. “Course it was all a scam so he could case out the neighborhood. Six weeks later, all their houses are broken into and Mr. Helpful is gone. Along with their TVs, laptops, power tools, and anything else he could get his hands on.”

  Jane knew her dad was only trying to look out for her. But his almost forty years in law enforcement had given him a pretty cynical view of human nature.

  Jane had fed Gabe as a kindness. Paying it forward, because she had needed kindness in the past, too, and because he had been kind to that dog.

  Not because she was softhearted or softheaded or because she was letting herself be taken advantage of by some hot drifter with hard muscles. Nope. Not this time. Never again.

  “I don’t think Gabe Murphy was casing out the bakery, Dad.”

  I was arrested for murder, he’d said. Not robbery.

  Hank scowled at her as if she had no more sense now than she had at nineteen. “You have no idea what he’s capable of. He could get violent again. You really want to take that chance?”

  Jane pressed her lips together.

  She wasn’t an innocent anymore. She had learned to run her business through trial and error, to move past her mistakes and trust her own judgment.

  But . . . Misgiving seeped into her stomach. Wasn’t it safer, where Gabe was concerned, to listen to her father the cop?

  She could take a risk for herself. But not for her bakery. And certainly not for Aidan.

  “I have a security system,” she reminded her father. “Anyway, it doesn’t matter. He’s just passing through. He’ll be leaving soon.”

  “Not soon enough,” Hank said.

  She thought of Gabe’s eyes, his arms, his grin, and her heart gave a little kick against her ribs. “No,” she agreed. “Not nearly soon enough.”

  Six

  THE PEAKED ROOF of the Pirates’ Rest, rising through the trees, felt weirdly familiar.

  Gabe had visited the Fletcher family’s bed-and-breakfast only once, eleven years ago. But that roofline was etched in his memory, embedded in his brain.

  Back in Afghanistan, everybody who had anybody got emails. Digital pictures from home. Mrs. Fletcher sent Luke actual photographs, tucked into care packages of socks and eye drops, baby wipes and hard candy, slid into envelopes along with the latest family news. Maybe because Luke’s dad had served in Nam and Beirut, and Mrs. Fletcher had never adjusted to communication in today’s Marine Corps. Or maybe because she knew, with a military wife’s understanding or a mother’s instinct, that sometimes a guy needed a tangible reminder of home. Something to hold on to.

  Somewhere Gabe had hit on the idea of sending his own postcards, palm trees and temples, Greetings from Iraq. He never knew what to say. His own mother never wrote back. But the very act of sending them reminded him there was a world beyond the sandbox. Something worth fighting for.

  There was this one picture Luke had taped to his locker—parents, Tess and Tom; older brother, Matt, with Matt’s teenage son, Josh; and their sister, Meg—all framed by the sheltering eaves and solid columns of the porch. The freaking perfect American family. Not Gabe’s family. But he used to sneak looks at them, the way they leaned into one another, casually touching, smiling and squinting in the sun, and think that would really be something to come home to.

  Maybe that’s why he found himself standing at the back gate, the entrance he’d used with Luke all those years ago as if he were family.

  The prodigal son returns. He wondered if they’d killed the fatted calf for him or if he’d be eating with the pigs tonight.

  He never even thought to ask Luke if he still lived here. Too late now.

  A dog barked from one of the guest cottages. Gabe put his hand on the gate and swung it wide as the cottage door opened and Luke came out.

  He grabbed Gabe in a one-armed hug as if they hadn’t seen each other just yesterday. He pounded Gabe’s shoulder and released him, fixing him with that uncomfortably penetrating gaze. “You look . . .”

  Gabe smiled wryly. “Presentable?” he suggested.

  The shower and change of clothes had restored him, on the outside at least, to a semblance of the Marine Luke used to know. As if Gabe had scraped off three bad years along with the bristles and grime, leaving him without his layer of protective camouflage. Clean, but also raw and vulnerable.

  Luke grinned. “I was going to say ‘less like roadkill.’ Come inside.”

  Gabe glanced at the small yellow cottage. “You live here now?”

  Luke gestured for him to go ahead. “Good for Taylor to have her grandparents around.”

  “And the rent money probably comes in handy for your parents in the off-season,” Gabe said.

  Luke smiled and shrugged, confirming his guess. “Come meet the family.”

  A fluffy white cat regarded Gabe balefully from the arm of the sofa before jumping down and running off. A long-legged, long-haired child sprawled on the braided rug in front of the television.

  “Jesus,” Gabe said. “She looks just like you.”

  Clear blue eyes—Luke’s eyes—met his gaze. “Except I’m twelve,” she pointed out. “And a girl.”

  And a handful. Gabe swallowed a grin.

  “My daughter, Taylor. Gabe Murphy. And this,” Luke said, sliding his arm around the waist of the woman next to him, “is Kate.”

  Luke’s wife was beautiful, with warm coppery hair and the same cool, assessing eyes as the cat. “Gabe.” Her smile was polite, her handshake smooth and firm. “Thank you for coming.”

  Gabe didn’t blame her for the guarded look. He was used to people looking at him like he was a bomb waiting to go off. Plenty of vets struggled to adjust to civilian life. And plenty of civilians didn’t wait for a formal diagnosis of PTSD to make a judgment.

  Kate was a lawyer. She probably saw all kinds of cases of alcoholism, anger management, abuse. Given what Luke had probably told her about him, it was no wonder all she saw when she looked at him was a rap sheet and a problem.

  “Thanks for having me,” he said. “Can I do anything? Give you a hand, maybe, in the kitchen?”

  “Actually, there’s been a change in plan,” Luke said.

  Right. Gabe looked at the wife. This is where Luke told him they were going out for dinner, just the two of them, away from his wife and daughter.

  “Sure,” he said easily. He nodded to Kate and Taylor. “Nice meeting you.”

  Luke frowned. “They’re coming with us. Just across the yard. We’re eating at Mom and Dad’s tonight.”

  Gabe stared at him, uncomprehending.

  “Family dinner,” Luke explained. “My sister wanted to get together with everybody tonight, and Mom jumped at the opportunity to welcome you home.”

  * * *

  THE KITCHEN WAS full of people. And food. And noise.

  “Let me get you a beer,” Luke said, plunging into the crowd around the refrigerator.

  Gabe had really nice memories of the Fletcher family. But there were a lot more of them than he remembered. Plus, he figured their welcome might be different now that he wasn’t some eighteen-year-old boot facing deployment but an ex-Marine with six tours and an arrest record under his belt.

  But that didn’t stop Mrs. Fletcher from grabbing him and hugging him tight. “Gabe!”

  He put his arms around her carefully. Her head came to the middle of his chest. The hair he remembered as mostly black was now a vibrant red.

  “It’s so good to see you,” she said, drawing back to arm
’s length. Her eyes were damp.

  Shit, in another minute, she’d have him crying. “You, too, Mrs. Fletcher.” He glanced at Luke’s dad, a retired career Sergeant Major. “Mr. Fletcher.”

  Tom Fletcher jerked his chin upward and gave him a dead-eyed drill-instructor’s stare. Okay. Not so different from his last visit.

  Mrs. Fletcher patted his arm. “Call me Tess.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” No way.

  “Josh, get those dogs away from the dip,” she ordered.

  The tall teenager chatting with Taylor grabbed one of the two dogs running around underfoot and hauled it toward the back door. Luke’s nephew, Josh. The last time Gabe had seen the boy, he’d been around . . . seven? Eight?

  “Come on, Shorty,” Josh said.

  It wasn’t clear to Gabe if he was talking to Taylor or the dog. Kate had disappeared across the room, leaving Gabe with Matt and his wife, a young leggy blonde whose name he didn’t quite catch.

  Everybody was talking at once. Gabe was relieved when Luke came back with the beer.

  “What can I get you, Allison?” Luke asked.

  “I’ll stick with iced tea, thanks,” she said. “School day tomorrow.”

  Gabe could tell she was about ten years younger than her husband. But . . . “You’re a student?” he asked.

  She smiled. “Even worse. I’m a high school English teacher.”

  “Meg, what about you?” Luke asked. “Glass of wine?”

  His older sister shook her head. “I’ll pass, thanks.”

  Allison’s eyes widened. “Oh, my God, that’s it. That’s the announcement!”

  Matt glanced down at his wife. “What announcement?”

  “The reason Meg and Sam wanted us all to come to dinner tonight,” Kate said from across the room.

  Tess turned from the stove, spatula in hand. “Sweetheart, are you—?”

  “Pregnant?” Meg finished. She nodded. “Yep.”

  The tall dude next to her, with wavy dark hair and lots of teeth, took her hand. Gabe recognized him from the day before, when Luke had introduced them outside the bakery. Sam Grady, the contractor. Meg’s fiancé.

  There were shrieks. And hugs.