“When you clean up this mess, call my Rhonda. She won’t trap you or dump you. Good woman for a guy like you.” Skip grabbed an oar and stuck it into the sand to steady the boat.
Trevor didn’t know what to say to that so he only nodded and turned his attention to Marsha. “I’ve been trying to contact you for the last day or so,” Trevor sniped, despite his will to remain cordial.
“Yes, well, once I bought my ticket here, I felt it best to wait until we could speak in person.” Marsha stepped onto the sand in her impractical, fancy-heeled sandals, making him hold her upright with each step.
“I think you two can find your own way back.”
Trevor wanted to shout at the woman and tell her the girls were right about her manipulative ways. He had no doubt she brought Marsha out here to stir up trouble. He needed to get her off Friendhsip Island and quick. “Let’s go.” He headed for the dinghy but she crossed the sand and headed for the lagoon.
“Wait, we should talk for a bit.”
“Talk? I tried to call you. Why didn’t you call me back?”
She didn’t even bother facing him until she reached the waters edge of the lagoon. “Speaking about a baby isn’t easy over the phone.”
“Finding out that you could be a father in the society pages isn’t easy, either,” Trevor growled.
Marsha bent over, holding her belly with a groan.
Panic jolted through him. He raced to her side, held her up, and placed his hand over hers on her belly. “Are you okay? Is the baby alright?”
“Yes, the doctor calls them stretching pains. Guess my modeling career’s over. Which means there’s no reason for us not to get back together. We can have a real life now. The one you always spoke about.” Marsha took his other hand and put it on her belly. “We can be a family.”
A splash drew Trevor’s attention to the water. Three girls were in a canoe, staring at him. Trace, Bri, and Julie.
He stood there frozen in Julie’s broken gaze.
Trace hopped out, untied the dinghy from the mangrove, and tied it to the canoe. “Want to be on our beach so much, fine, you can stay.” She pushed from shore and headed to the ocean.
“Wait. You can’t do that,” Marsha screamed.
Bri shook her head. “And you brought another woman here. Shame on you.”
Julie didn’t say anything. Marsha flicked off her shoes and ran after them, but she halted at the water’s edge with a crinkled nose.
Trevor shook off his surprise and ran to the beach. “Wait! It’s not what you think!”
Julie’s gaze transfixed on him with an I’ll-never-forgive-you expression.
And he knew she wouldn’t.
Ever.
Chapter Twenty-Two
The women didn’t say a word until they’d reached the house. Everything in Julie’s world had been turned upside down in an instant. “I was such a fool. To think I’d believed he deserved a chance to explain. I’d planned on sneaking off to his place after we were done at the beach, but now…”
“Now he’s on our hit list.” Trace tossed the dinghy keys onto the kitchen counter.
Kat eyed them. “You realize you stole that, right? Theft is a crime.”
“You would say that,” Trace sniped.
If Julie didn’t know better, she’d think Trace was madder than she was.
“No. I’d say if you’re going to commit a crime, be smart enough to get away with it and don’t park it at the end of our street and put the keys in Jewels’s house. I’d sink it out in the middle of the river.”
“Why, Kat, I didn’t know you had it in you.” Wind remained at Julie’s side, rubbing small circles on her back.
At least she’d finally found her breath. It had only taken the ride back and the walk up the hill before she could manage to even think about breathing again. Okay, she’d obviously managed the act. She just hadn’t realized it due to being completely numb. Now, though. “How ’bout sinking him in the river?”
“Mom, I didn’t know you had it in you.”
Wind abandoned Julie’s side but didn’t go far. She sat next to Bri. “You don’t know your mother. She once put those roadblock signs up in Edward Wilson’s yard with a message that said Beware, Dead End Man Ahead.”
Bri gasped but with a big grin on her face. “You didn’t.”
“Oh, I did, but he deserved it. The boy tried to seduce Kat, and despite the fact she was too smart for him, he told the school he’d scored behind the football field.”
“Mr. Wilson did that? Is that why he’s always avoided you when we run into him?”
“Yep, but that’s not where the story ends.”
“It isn’t?” Bri sat forward as if watching a thriller at the climactic scene.
“Kat waltzed into the lunchroom and punched him in the eye. His mother was so furious, she came to the school to complain because her son was too gentlemanly to ever hit a girl. That she’d raised him with respect.”
“What happened to Kat?”
“I marched into the principal’s office and confessed to being the one who put the signs in their yard and told her why. His mother was so furious that she took Ed by the ear, marched him to the locker room after school, and, in front of all of his half-dressed football buds, made him tell them that he was a pathetic little man who had to lie because he couldn’t get a girl to sleep with him.”
“She didn’t,” Bri gasped.
“She did. That boy never spoke out of turn again. They called him Dead End Ed for the rest of high school.”
“I don’t think I would want to be Trevor right now.” Bri chuckled.
Julie thought back over their childhood antics and realized nothing would help this situation. “No. I won’t allow it.”
“Oh, why not? It’ll be fun to torture him. What will it be? Signs are kind of our thing, and we can go bigger now that we have money. I’m thinking of renting a billboard
