Barefoot by the Sea

Tessa closed her eyes, dark, old emotions swarming. She despised her mother for the way she’d lived, but now all she really felt was sorrow. Nothing but sadness for this bitter, lonely woman.

Good God, how she didn’t want to end up that way.

“She has kids and grandkids and ancient-looking sorority sisters and nephews and nieces and neighbors and a bunch of ladies in red hats all wailing over their precious Mimi.” She dragged out the two syllables like they tasted foul.

Mimi. For a moment, Tessa silently mourned the woman named Mimi who clearly didn’t die alone.

“And of course they had to do some ridiculous video montage of every picture ever taken of the woman. Including her…wedding pictures.”

She went silent, crying again.

“I know, I know what you’re thinking, Tess,” she finally said.

Tessa didn’t answer, because she’d made her feelings known in many arguments over the last fifteen years or so.

“But I loved him!” she insisted. “And he loved me.”

“If he really loved you, Mom, he wouldn’t have spent his life married to another woman.”

But was John much different? His wife might be dead, but his love for her sure wasn’t. Did Tessa even want to consider being with a man who clearly still loved another woman? Look what that had done to her mother.

“I better let you get back to sleep, Tessa.”

“’Kay. Feel better. I’m sure it won’t look so bad in the morning.”

Would it for her? For John?

“Oh, it won’t. I have a trial tomorrow and I intend to kick some insurance-company butt.”

Now that sounded like her mother again, a workaholic with a purpose. No husband, a distant daughter, and no friends. But a great job.

“What about you? How’s the farming going?”

“Fine. I intend to kick some sweet-potato butt tomorrow myself.”

Her mother laughed softly, her subtle disapproval of Tessa’s “career” always right under the surface. “Okay, then. G’night.”

When she hung up, Tessa walked to the windows and stared at John’s dark and empty bungalow. He was gone, of course. Running at the first sign of anything real.

She snapped the shutters closed, knowing exactly what she wanted to do first thing in the morning. Well, second. First, she’d harvest those damn sweets.

Ian rode. He fired up his bike, took off for the causeway, barreled onto an interstate, found a deserted highway, and kept going into—nothing. The world got so dark his entire focus was on the single lane lit by his headlight, the night closing in like his meager, unacceptable, regrettable decision to confess.

To confess nothing. Just enough to realize he should never have opened his mouth. The minute he started talking, he knew he’d said too much. Why didn’t he strip her down and silence every emotion with mindless sex, the way he’d done for three years?

Because he’d made the critical and idiotic error of letting this thing go past mindless. He’d made the stupid mistake of letting his feelings override his brain.

He swerved around a pothole, forced to slow down as the road narrowed and rutted. The thick smell of brackish water and wet leaves filled his head, doing nothing to clear the self-loathing in there.

And just like that, the road ended. He broke hard, fishtailing and finally coming to a stop by slamming a boot on the ground and letting it drag. Dead ahead was more nothing.

Where the fuck was he?

Blinking into the yellow beam, he peered at murk and mist and a rotted wooden bridge that went out to nowhere. Everything was black and thick and wet.

Good Christ, he’d driven right to the edge of the Everglades. Without thinking, he glanced down, half expecting a gator to chomp off his foot.

Let it. Some giant jaw could gnaw away the pain and misery, bringing it all to an end.

Hitting the kill switch, he silenced the engine and doused the light. Crickets and night creatures chirped, leaves rustled, and, somewhere out there, something splashed in the black water. He got off the bike and kicked the stand, shaking off the heat and the ride, walking slowly toward the weathered dock that spilled off the end of the road, leading right into a swamp.

He held his breath when one boot hit the wood, ready to fall right into the muck. But it held, and he walked the thirty or forty feet out to the end, the low platform barely above water level. It must be a launch dock for airboats, the only thing that could move through the thick grass of the Everglades.

A mosquito buzzed by and settled on his neck. Ian didn’t bother to swat it. Have a pint, mate. I’m bleeding all over the place tonight.

Grabbing the splintered rail, he leaned over to look into the water and long reeds that poked through it, sucking in another breath of humid, hot air, tasting a mouthful of regret.

What was he thinking? Why had he given in to that temptation to talk? Now she knew Kate had been murdered. She even had a time frame. How long would it take her to plow through the Internet until she found a clue, a grainy picture, a death notice…the truth?

And then what? A word to her friends, who whisper to a husband, who mention to a coworker, who—

Trapped.

Ian Browning was as trapped as his wife had been in the kitchen the day Luther Vane burst in with murderous intent. Had she screamed? Had she pleaded for her life? Had she lied about the babies to save their lives?

The sob pulled from his throat, doubling him over in an old and viciously familiar pain. He gave in to it, clutching his belly, growling with the agony. Then he stood straight, lifted his face to the star-spotted sky, and let out a wail that echoed across the Everglades and woke every stinking alligator for miles.

The howl tore at his throat and rattled his ribs and trembled his eyeballs and did absolutely nothing to heal the pain.

Not like Tessa would have.

The realization made him hurt all over again. He ached for the balm of her touch, the soft understanding of her voice. Her nurturing, gentle spirit was exactly what he needed…and the very reason he couldn’t drag her into his mess any more than he already had.

Spent, he let his knees buckle and drop to the dock, hitting it hard. He clutched the rough-hewn wood of the rail, bent over and broken. What was he doing out here? Hiding, of course. Running. Escaping.

Would he still be living like this once he got his kids? To a certain extent, but, somehow, he imagined a brighter life, one filled with laughter and love, tucked away on a village in New Zealand or a farm in Australia. Wherever they sent him, he could start over as a single father.

Without Tessa.

Maybe she’d want to go to a farm in New Zealand.

He sat straight up at the thought, so loud and clear he almost thought someone else had said it out loud. Maybe he had said it out loud.

Not that the idea was completely new, but the words hadn’t really formed in his head before this, taking shape and somehow becoming real. She’d told him about her life with her ex-husband, traveling from country to country, starting organic farms, and how she wanted to settle down and raise a family in one place.

Could he offer her something like that? Who knew when they’d have to uproot again because the wrong information got out or someone found a link to the past or his loose lips sank their ship?

Could he make her love him…for real? Could he get her to marry him for real?

Nothing prepared him for the sensation that rocked him at that thought. He actually fell flat on the wood, knocked over by the very idea of really marrying her and how much he wanted that.

Motionless on his back, he stared straight up and let the possibility fill him with something so unfamiliar he almost couldn’t put a name on it.