Sandpiper Island (The Bachelors Read online

  Swearing under his breath at his uncustomary restlessness, he straightened. Then, skirting the corner area that was both kitchen and dining room, he gave the rough bark of the heavy white pine tree that formed the far corner an absent rub with his palm before pushing open one of the triple-paned double doors. He stepped out onto the side deck. The dense, coniferous tree canopy provided year-round shade as well as much-needed protection against the elements. But the unseasonably brisk, late August sea breeze blowing inland through the treetops didn’t bring him the peace of mind it usually did.

  Back when he’d been working toward his degree, he’d spent almost every minute of his spare time researching alternate living spaces. Initially it had simply been a brain puzzle, a way to keep his thoughts occupied when he wasn’t studying so they wouldn’t veer into territory better left in the past. But that particular puzzle—off-grid living—was more than a distraction. In fact, it had captured his attention so completely that he’d eventually admitted it was the best possible solution for someone like him. Someone for whom the term “normal” didn’t apply.

  The first time he’d laid his eyes on a drawing of a sustainable, livable tree house, he’d known, instantly, that that was what he’d been searching for. After spending his school hours studying the habitats of the various endangered species he was learning about, he’d understood in that moment that he’d also been studying his own environmental habitat and that, being endangered himself, he’d needed to find the right home where he could, if not thrive, at least survive.

  He’d already begun his work out on Sandpiper then, as an intern to Dr. Claude Pelletier, a man he’d greatly admired, and whose wisdom and formidable intellect he missed very much. It had been his first summer on the island when Ford had discovered the exact right spot, deep in the thick thatch of white pine forest that filled the center of the heart-shaped surge of boulders, soil, and rock that comprised Sandpiper Island.

  The whole of Sandpiper was like a fortress, hugged entirely—barring the indent of the natural harbor—by a rocky, boulder-strewn shoreline, then surrounded by sea. There, deep in the tall, old forest—in the heart of the heart—he’d found his home.

  By the time he’d graduated and taken over operations on the island full time after Pelletier had taken ill, Ford had long since figured out every last detail of how his tree house would be constructed. Multileveled at the core, then spread out to satellite structures he’d added over time, connected by a series of rope bridges, decks, and ladders, through a sturdy group of perfectly matched pine, naturally spaced, so as not to overly burden any one of them. It had taken him eighteen months to complete the main structure, and that had been with a relatively mild winter by Maine standards tossed in the middle of it. He’d hewn every log, cut every board, driven every nail, so he knew and understood its every strength and weakness. It was both his aerie and his bunker. It had given him the one thing he’d known he needed to survive, the freedom to feel completely safe for the first time in his life.

  Only even his sanctuary couldn’t save him now from the entirely different set of images that flashed through his mind. Images he’d kept tightly sealed away from all conscious and subconscious thought for a very long time. These images weren’t filled with horror, weren’t the seeds of the endless nightmares he’d once suffered both while asleep and wide awake.

  No, he’d kept these particular memories under lock and key for entirely different reasons. Polar opposite reasons.

  He’d learned to live with his past, with the things he’d done, to the degree any sane, rational human being could. He’d made a certain kind of peace with himself by making a deal of sorts, that he was giving back, balancing a score that could never be measured, much less rectified, but that he was nonetheless working toward anyway. That deal had been carefully constructed with the knowledge that his work was where he funneled whatever passion he had left in him, where he gave whatever might resemble his heart, if not his soul. He wasn’t sure he’d escaped with even remnants of that left.

  His work was the only place he could allow himself even a thread of the luxury of caring, of wanting, of being needed or necessary to something other than himself, greater than himself. The flip side of that deal was that he’d never allow those same parts of himself to be compromised by another person. He would never let someone in, allow them to rely on him, to need him or, God forbid, want him. And he’d most definitely made certain he’d never want those things for himself. He didn’t deserve them, for one, and he sure as hell hadn’t earned the right to even think he could be trusted with the care and well-being of someone else’s heart.

  Yet he was helpless to keep the images of that long-ago night from roaring in. As if it had happened only the night before, he could see the storm-lashed windows of the small rooms above the tiny restaurant on the other side of Half Moon Harbor, flickering like bold neon as lightning strikes illuminated the walls. The twisted linens on the foldout bed were wrapped around his bare legs, and Delia was astride him, gloriously naked, her red hair glowing in the storm’s strobe lights, like some kind of flaming, otherworldly halo. She was completely unapologetic about taking her pleasure from him, wrenching his release in return. Mother Nature relentlessly pounded the shores of the harbor, unleashing her fury, while the two of them pounded their way just as relentlessly through each other, unleashing themselves, as if the delirious pleasures of the flesh could somehow simultaneously free them from the soul-ripping grief threatening to drown them both.

  Delia sinking under because she’d lost her brother, her only sibling. And Ford feeling swallowed alive, because he’d known already, even then, that his grip on humanity, maybe on his very soul, had begun to slip away. Tommy was gone. Loyal, dedicated, good-will-always-beat-evil Tommy. Yet Ford had been left to live another day. So he could take more Tommys from the world. Cast more families into the devastating throes of grief he was witnessing, firsthand, on Delia’s beautiful, heartbroken face.

  She’d been gone when he’d woken up the next morning. When he’d made his way downstairs, she’d already been hustling in the restaurant kitchen. Her grandmother had been the one to push his breakfast plate across the bar in front of him, her expression neither open nor shut, but simply vacant. She’d lost a grandson . . . but there was work to be done. One foot in front of the other. Delia hadn’t so much as looked his way, so he’d stayed out of hers. He’d eaten his breakfast, paid the bill, said his good-byes . . . and gone back to hell.

  He heard the ping from the other side of the door he hadn’t closed behind him and headed back inside and up to his loft office, drawn inexorably to the screen, already feeling fate wrapping its long, clever fingers around his neck . . . only the tightness he felt was in his chest.

  He sat down, intending to find the words to explain to Grace that while he understood her concern, and appreciated her trying to help Delia, that he wasn’t going to be of any help. Not because he wasn’t willing, so much as he had no help to give. Only instead of typing, his fingers closed into fists as he read the words on the screen.

  She reached out to help me before she even knew me. Because she cared enough about you to want you to have what you really needed. Family. We both should have listened to her then. We both need to help her have what she really needs now.

  Another ping came, making him almost viscerally flinch. Memories, so long held at bay, roared in like thundering waves, breaching any and all walls, drowning his futile attempts to block them. Not just of that night, but of all the long mornings, afternoons, evenings he’d sat in her diner after returning to the Cove, drinking in the energy, the vitality, the life of her very presence. Her smile, her hearty, infectious laugh, listening as she alternately goaded a smile out of a gruff fisherman or a grudging apology from a short-tempered townie. He’d lost count of the number of times she’d lent an ear and a shoulder, offered a hug or a free meal, scolded, sympathized, lectured, loved, bussed cheeks, and even pinched the occasional ass. Hundreds of moments h
e hadn’t even been aware of were there for a detailed, exact recalling.

  Through the torrent, he read Grace’s final message. This one was simply a cut-and-pasted a news story from the local Cove newspaper.

  LOCAL DINER OWNER AND TOWN SCION IN BATTLE OVER LAND RIGHTS

  He skimmed the article, and the tight clutch in his chest matched the ones he’d made with his fists. “Hasn’t she lost enough in her life, you smug bastard?” It had been a while since he’d felt the need for physical violence. A very long while. But at that moment, he wanted to drive his fist through something. Or, more to the point, someone. “You have every other goddamn thing,” he said aloud to the absent “town scion.” “Why can’t you just leave her the fuck alone?”

  The scion was Brooks Winstock, descended from one of the oldest families in the Cove, who still owned a fair chunk of it, and was richer than Croesus. Now he wanted Delia’s Diner. Or, more specifically, the piece of prime harbor-front property it sat on. For, of all things, a yacht club. What in the fresh hell would Blueberry Cove do with a damn yacht club? It was a tiny town with a three-hundred-year legacy of lobster fisherman, shipbuilders, and sailors. Hardly the yacht club type.

  The diner, he knew, just as Brooks Winstock damn well knew, was all Delia had. And not just in terms of earning a living. It was the foundation and focus of the life she’d carved out for herself in Blueberry, as her family had before her, with their own blood, sweat, and tears. She loved her life and her livelihood, and had earned the right to enjoy it. And the town loved her right back. Delia’s had become a Cove landmark . . . both the diner itself, and its colorful, saucy, outspoken owner.

  He couldn’t imagine her taking this lightly or well, much less going quietly. If he hadn’t been so pissed off, the image of her taking on Winstock might have gotten what passed for a smile out of him.

  Instead, he punched the screen dark, took the ladder down in a step and a jump, then stalked to the other side of the kitchen and grabbed his boat keys from the hook on the pot buoy attached to the wall by the single door there. He took the fast exit, shimmying down the knotted rope that extended through a hole in the deck to the forest floor below. He was halfway down the path that led to the only pier on the island before he realized what the hell he was doing. Just what in the hell are you doing?

  “Dammit, Grace,” he muttered again, under his breath this time, as he unknotted the ropes and jumped onboard the old lobster boat he’d bought off Blue years before and kept running with a combination of spit and sheer power of will.

  So, he’d been wrong. There were apparently two people in the world he couldn’t say no to. Not that Delia asked you to stick your nose in her business. In fact, he’d be lucky if she didn’t bite it off and hand it back to him, wrapped neatly in a takeout box. Hell, he wasn’t even sure what he thought he could do. But he’d stayed on the sidelines once before in his life, and he knew now, every time he looked into Grace’s pretty hazel eyes, what his choice had cost her. He might not be able to do a damn thing to help Delia, but sitting on the sidelines wasn’t going to be an option.

  God help us all.

  Chapter 2

  She’d dreamed about him. Again. “And that is so not a good thing.” Delia O’Reilly plunged her rubber-gloved hands back in the steamy, soapy water. “Understatement of the week.” Month. Year.

  Her livelihood—which was the same as saying her entire life—was being threatened with extinction, or at the very least a complete overhaul and relocation, which to her felt like the same thing, and what was she doing about it? Having hot sex dreams about a man she couldn’t have kept as a twenty-one-year-old with a failed marriage already behind her, much less nine years later when he’d shockingly returned and she’d been old enough to know better. So, what was her excuse now? She hadn’t made it to forty-three without learning a thing or ten about the opposite sex. She was old enough and wise enough to know that Ford Maddox wasn’t a man who could be caught, much less kept, by any woman.

  Not because he couldn’t settle on just one, but because he’d long since opted not to settle on any. Ever.

  Hadn’t she opted for that very same thing? Yes, yes, indeed she had. “So where the hell did all this lusting come from?” Lusting. A tame word for the up-against-the-wall, take-no-prisoners dreams she’d been having about Ford Maddox. Lusting she could handle. Hell, lusting was a normal, healthy state of being, if you asked her. The kind of dreams she’d been having, however, left her feeling empty and emotionally wrung out, without the actual real-life sexual satiation to at least provide a little balance. “Talk about your lose-lose,” she muttered.

  For the first few years after Ford’s return to the Cove, she’d entertained the idea—okay, fantasy—of proposing a no-strings relationship between them. By the age of thirty, she’d become an expert at no strings. Besides, no one in Blueberry knew him the way she did, and he was one of the rare few to have seen her at a most vulnerable moment. They shared a singular bond, the kind that made him someone she’d always care about, always watch out for, worry over. How could she not? He’d shown her courage, strength, and compassion at a time when he was suffering untold trauma of his own.

  She had known, even at barely twenty-one, that the one night they’d shared had simply been an extension of the pain and grief they were both suffering through, part of it shared, over Tommy’s death, and some of it intensely intimate, known only to each of them in their own hearts, minds, and souls. He couldn’t know what else she’d been dealing with, devastated by her husband choosing a life somewhere else, without her, plagued with self-doubt after choosing family obligation over the vows she’d made to him, feeling betrayed that he hadn’t stood up for her, either, and deeply confused by the mix of anguish, anger, and guilt.

  Just as she couldn’t know, couldn’t even begin to fathom, what Ford had been dealing with after everything he’d seen and done while in battle. Her brother had died in his arms, mortally wounded after a second land mine had exploded as he’d dragged Ford and half his unit to safety from the burning wreckage of the first one, all while taking direct fire. Delia couldn’t begin to fathom what any part of that did to a person’s psyche.

  Still recovering from his own injuries, Ford had accompanied Tommy’s body home, making sure his family knew he’d died a hero. He’d stayed for the funeral . . . remaining stoic, closed off, closed up throughout. Until he’d escorted Delia home afterward, and she’d invited him in. And he’d accepted the offer.

  It was for the best that he’d left after what she’d come to think of as That Night. Even then, she hadn’t romanticized it. She’d known it for what it was, even as she’d been doing it. It had been grief counseling masquerading as marathon sex. Afterward, when he’d gone, she’d made herself focus on the good that had come of that singular night. There had been a very powerful sense of sanctuary created in the intimate space they shared. She’d felt secure, safe, in a way she never had before.

  And, yes, though her battered ego hated to admit it mattered so much, she had reveled in the fact that he’d found her desirable. His strong, protective arms, his body over hers, had been like a buffer, walling off the outside world and, because of that, she’d finally been able to let go, to truly grieve. The loss of her brother, of her husband, and, maybe most important, the naïve ideal that life came with a happily ever after.

  She’d kept her focus on that singular truth, telling herself she was lucky she’d learned it early on. She’d wondered what, if anything, Ford had taken from that night. Then he’d come back. To stay. Which she’d taken as proof that he had indeed carried something from that night with him back into battle, back into hell. What else would bring him to Blueberry of all places nine years later? She was the only connection there could be.

  Her hands paused on the lobster pot she was scrubbing as her thoughts took her back to that moment, the day he’d come striding back into her life. She’d just turned thirty and, when it came to relationships, she’d considered herself
not merely battle-hardened, but bulletproof. Then he’d strolled into her diner. And her stupid, foolish heart, which she’d sworn she’d boxed up and stowed tightly away after Henry’s abdication, shoving it even more firmly back to the darkest corners of the shelf after losing Tommy, then her grandmother . . . had fluttered. Fluttered. Like she was some kind of ridiculous, innocent schoolgirl, all hearts and flowers, being teased and taunted by the stirrings of her first crush.

  Except one thing Delia O’Reilly had never been, at any age, was innocent.

  Foolish, however, she was beginning to think was a life sentence.

  That was the only explanation for allowing Ford Maddox to make her think about things she had no business thinking about. Knew better than to even consider thinking about. Over the ensuing years she’d eventually managed to tuck him neatly up on that same shelf with those other things better left in the past.

  So why now? Why had he invaded her sleep, her dreams, tantalizing her with memories of a night that her head still knew was about grief, even if her body was perfectly happy believing otherwise.

  It was an easy out to say that it was because his sister, Grace, had come to Blueberry back in May, hoping to reunite with her estranged brother. Grace had gotten to know Delia, initially because she was aware of Delia’s link to Ford and wanted to know more about her brother from the one person who knew him as he was now. Over the past three months, though, a true friendship had blossomed between them, to the point that Ford was only a small part of their ongoing conversations.

  Delia scrubbed her forehead with the back of her forearm, shoving the damp red curls aside, and wishing she’d tied one of her handkerchiefs around her forehead when she’d finally kicked the night crew out and sent them home. Most nights she was thankful to have the help, but there were times when she just needed everyone to clear out so she could have peace and quiet, some time with her own thoughts, which was a rare and therefore precious thing in her world.