A Bad Boy for Christmas (15 page)

Mia the biddable headed towards it.

“Coffee stays on the table,” Zoey added.

“Now you’re being cruel,” Mia said.

Zoey waved away her protest. “Workshop rules.”

Mia didn’t quite know when avoiding Cutter’s mother’s gaze had become a priority. Somewhere between the doorway and the table, so she put her coffee down and accepted the armful of ivory satin that Zoey bestowed on her.

“It’s my most traditional gown yet,” said Zoey. “Try it on.”

“I thought you designed costumes.”

“I’m diversifying.”

“Are these pearls real?” Mia stepped behind the screen and stared at the beautiful creation in her arms. The pearls in the pattern of seashells outlined the barely there bodice and then rose over the shoulders and dropped again to meet below the waist.

“They’re real but not precious, although I beg to differ. Are you putting it on?”

“No.” Mia was still staring at it. “Is this a wedding gown?”

“Yes.”

“Shouldn’t there be a little more of it?”

“I think if you try it on you’ll find it quite elegant.”

Not a phrase that was often applied to
her
. “Why me?”

“I wanted to frame the picture,” said Zoey. “And I like to get a head start on things.”

There was no wearing a bra with this dress. Mia stripped down to panties and slipped it over her head, glorying in the fabric’s soft caress. The bodice fit as if it were made for her and the skirt fell in lush waves to the ground, trailing out behind her like a wave breaking gently on the sand. Wearing it made her feel as if she’d stepped out of her world and into a new one full of luxury and lusciousness.

“What size is this?”

“Your size. Do you have it on yet?”

“Yes.” Mia shuffled out, holding the bottom of the gown off the floor and then let the fabric fall once she stood in the middle of the room.

“You’ll need your hair up, of course.” Zoey produced knitting needles and proceeded to wind Mia’s hair into a bun that she secured with the knitting needles. “Pretend there are pearls involved, rather than knitting needles,” she said, “and now turn and let me see the back of the gown.”

Mia turned obediently and Cutter’s mother gasped.

Hello, tattoo.

Mia felt her spine stiffen instinctively. Always the urge to fight and argue and defend, but she damped it down again. So what if Cutter’s mother didn’t understand this form of art?
She
understood it, and would make no apology. Nor would she make it a cause for a fight. Hell, maybe the older woman was gasping at the marks Cutter had made. Now there was a thought guaranteed to make Mia blush.

“Now look over your shoulder,” Zoey ordered.

Mia did, and there was Bree with her camera, silently taking shots. “You realize you’re taking advantage of my worried and weakened state,” she murmured. “I’m not modeling for your catalogue.”

“I’m not taking them for the catalogue, I’m taking them for you and because I want to capture this moment,” said Bree. “You’d be surprised how much a photo can reveal. Now look towards Cutter’s mother.”

Mia didn’t
want
to look towards Cutter’s mother and be revealed. She didn’t want to see the recoil and the judgment in the other woman’s eyes, so she looked to Bree instead and silently begged for mercy.

I can’t
, Mia tried to convey, but Bree kept taking photos and finally Mia succumbed to morbid curiosity and glanced in the older woman’s direction.

And then Cutter’s mother did the damnedest thing.

She smiled and said, “Hi, I’m Claire, and I’d like to start our introduction all over again. It doesn’t reflect well on me that I’ve kept you and Jackson waiting so long, particularly when I’ve heard nothing but good about you both. But I’m here now, and I’d like to extend my welcome. Hello, Mia. I’m very pleased to meet you. Finally.”

Why tears gathered was anyone’s guess.

“Are you going to welcome Nash too?” Mia asked raggedly.

“Yes. With all my heart. It took a while, but I’m ready.”

“Oh, man.” He was going to
crumble
beneath the weight of this woman’s acceptance.

A mother’s love.

Maybe, just maybe, he’d come to know what that felt like.

“And here comes the storm,” murmured Zoey as a sudden torrent of rain slammed against the corrugated iron walls. “Hope you like your storms amplified,” she added as she descended on Mia with pins. “Arms out to the side, like a T. I want a better cutaway under the arm.”

So Mia stood like a T in Zoey’s workshop while the storm broke overhead, thrumming down on the galvanized tin roof with savage intensity, and Bree asked Claire about England.

This
wasn’t
a world Mia knew how to behave in.

Three Jackson men were out to sea in that storm. The Francos’ teenaged grandsons were out in it too.

Lightning cracked and Mia jumped. Zoey’s pin landed between a couple of ribs but that was the least of Mia’s worries.

“Did you not feel that?” Zoey asked, instantly grabbing for a tissue to press against Mia’s skin.

“We need to acquaint you with a tattoo gun,” she muttered back, as lightning cracked again, closer this time, and Mia jumped twice as high. “They’ll radio in when they find them, right? And then everyone can just power on back here to safety and sit out the storm.” That was wishful thinking speaking. She had a feeling reality might prove quite different.

“Even if they find the boys, they might not get back in for a while. Depends what condition the boys and the other vessel are in,” Cutter’s mother offered finally. “Even if they want to get in they might not get through the bar.”

“The bar?”

“The place where the river water meets the ocean. It can get rough in weather like this. If the other vessel needs a tow they may decide not to come in until it’s calm. They
will
radio in.”

“Do you go out?” Mia asked. “Have you been out in weather like this?”

“Yes. They won’t be relishing it—well, Cutter might—but he’ll be taking every precaution. He’s a good skipper.”

“I am so not cut out for waiting. And I am definitely not cut out for waiting around in a wedding dress. Zoey are we done yet?” Mia asked as Eli appeared in the doorway. “Have you heard anything?”

“I have. They’re searching nor’-east of Green Island. No sign of the boys yet.”

“That can’t be good. Doesn’t GPS find everything these days?”

“We need to acquaint you with nautical safety protocols so you don’t worry so much.”

“You should.” Mia nodded vigorously. “Right now, please. Is there a manual? Bring me a manual to read.”

He brought her four, along with a book about rescue on the high seas. Nothing like a little light bedtime reading.

She was still reading two hours later, long after the dress fitting had ended and Eli and his father had gone out again to tend to the boats. Long after Zoey had made a cushion island for her and Bree on the sofa and Claire Jackson had gone downstairs to the office to man the VHS radio for incoming calls.

Not
a weak woman, that one.

And then Eli thundered up the stairs and poked his wet head around the wall. “They’ve found them. The engine failed and the boys’ boat ran aground on rocks near Green Island. They’re going to leave it there and see what’s left in the morning. Old man Franco made the decision. They’re getting the boys off now and coming back in.”

“And the bar?” asked Mia, who was having visions of thirty-foot waves.

“We’re about to go and take a look at it for them. Want to come?”

“Yes!” Mia was up instantly, still clutching the book on transponders that he’d given her earlier.

Which was how she, Bree, Geoff Jackson and Eli came to be standing on the Brunswick Bay break wall when old man Franco’s fishing trawler and then the coastguard vessel returned from their rescue mission.

Mia watched, heart in mouth, as the waves played a game of
now you see them, now you don’t
with the boats. She almost buckled at the knees the first time that happened.

Then she saw Cutter smile, a flash of white teeth, which Nash returned as he stepped up to the wheel and put one hand on it, and all the anxiety she’d been saving up came tumbling out.

“What are they
doing
? Nash can’t take the wheel now; he’s been out to sea
once
. When it was a
pond
.” She met Geoff Jackson’s startled glance with a fierce one of her own. “Well? You’re their father. Make them behave!”

“Cutter’s giving the other one a feel of the wheel, that’s all. He won’t actually let him take control, or I’ll kill him.”

“
The other one
,” she spat. “And who might that be? The son you’ve kept waiting for two weeks? The son you’ll soon have the privilege of getting to know? He’s not the other one! He has a name. Your name!” she roared. “Don’t you dare diminish him by calling him
the other one
. Not in front of me.”

Rant over she turned back towards the bar, only to find that the boat had disappeared. “Oh, God, where are they?” Her roar had become a whimper. “Whose bright idea was it to bring me here?”

“Mine,” said Eli. “Rethinking it.”

She was falling apart, a woman in crisis. The two men she loved most in the world—one like a brother and the other with all of her heart—were somewhere in that roiling mass of white-capped waves.

She didn’t want to watch and she couldn’t look away. “Where are they?”

“There,” said Geoff, and moments later the yellow boat emerged from behind a wall of water to shoot skywards before crashing back down again. She counted five people still in the boat. Two of them, no guesses which two, were waving at them. “You think
you’re
going to kill them,” she told Geoff Jackson. “I’m going to kill them first.
How about you hold on to something, you morons!
”

“How about you hold on to me?” said a gruffly amused voice and then Geoff Jackson’s arm came around her shoulder.

“Rips your heart out when you think they’re in trouble, it does,” Geoff Jackson told her gruffly. “The first time Cutter and Caleb went out alone, Claire was holding my hand so hard as they waved goodbye, I nearly lost the use of it. She’s fickle, the ocean, and she’ll cruel you if she can, but if you respect her she’ll steal your heart instead. They’ll be through this in a minute. One more big wave, watch, and then they’ll just surf on in.” Arm outstretched, Geoff Jackson pointed a way through the waves and the coastguard boat followed as if guided by magic.

“There,” he said quietly. “Nothing to it.”

As Mia learned firsthand what it meant to love a fisherman’s son.

“Now,” continued the older man as he turned them towards the vehicle they’d left at the end of the break wall. “I’ve never had daughters, but I do have a wife, and when those boys get off the boat you save any criticism you have—and I’m not saying it’ll never be warranted, but you save it for tomorrow—and be proud of them tonight.”

*     *     *

Mia couldn’t have
said who was more surprised—her or Bree—when not five minutes after setting foot on land and getting the boys dry, Geoff Jackson disregarded his own sage advice and wound up toe to toe in bellowing argument with Cutter over the stupidity of making Nash the third man on the coastguard boat. Apparently there were rules and Cutter had broken them. Clearly, Cutter felt justified in having done so.

“What was I going to do, wait another half an hour or an hour until someone else could get here? Franco had Paulie with him, he’s coastguard. We had three trained men in place, one other set of steady hands and two seaworthy boats. We were
always
safe.”

“And what about showboating your way back in? Whose idea was that? You couldn’t have waited?”

“It was worse further out.
Not
a picnic out there tonight, Dad. I did the job to the best of my ability.”

“It was a bad call.”

“It was my call to make and I made it. I’d make it again!” Cutter gave as good as he got. “We’re all still here, aren’t we? What more do you
want
?”

“Enough!” Mia had a voice and she had never been afraid to use it, or to use her body as a shield to protect the ones she loved. “Enough.” She surged forward, only to be checked by Eli.

“Watch,” he murmured. “It’s only steam. Watch.”

As Cutter and his father embraced, top to toe, in a bear hug of epic proportions.

“You scared me half to death, son. You led your brothers into that.”

“I brought ’em back.”

His brothers.

And then Geoff was embracing Nash next, just as fiercely as he’d embraced Cutter. “I’m Geoff,” he said gruffly and tightened his hold. “And you’re Jackson. Good to see you, son.
Good
to meet you.”

Hell of a homecoming.

“Better?” Eli asked quietly.

“Yeah. I—sorry.” She felt thoroughly battered by the evening’s events. “I get it now,” she told him raggedly. “Steam. I know all about blowing off steam.”

“I know you have a lot of questions for me, son,” Geoff said as he pulled out of the hug but kept his hands on Nash’s shoulders. “I need you to know that my answers aren’t going to be pretty. They’re not going to bathe me or your mother in a good light. But know this: I wish I could have helped her more. I wish I’d known how to. She broke my heart with her self-destructive ways, and then she broke it all over again by not telling me about you. I wish I’d known. Those aren’t just empty words, son.
I wish I’d known
. I would have come for you. I wouldn’t have let you down.”