Carolina Girl (21 page)

“Yeah, fine, but I meant . . . I’m staying here. On Dare Island.” Without thinking, Meg turned her hand over, laced her fingers with Sam’s. “At least until Christmas.”

“Why Christmas?” Matt asked.

She’d been thinking about it, turning over the options, considering the angles. “The Simpsons’ motion is based on Taylor’s ‘changed circumstances,’ right? They’re saying we can’t take care of her. Well, for the next eight weeks, I can. After that, Mom will pretty much be back on her feet again. And Luke will be home.”

Tom frowned. “What about your new job?”

She appreciated his concern. “I’m a subcontractor, Dad. The agency hired me to do a job, but I’m not actually their employee. At this point, I can handle everything on-line or by phone while Taylor’s in school. Even if that changes in the next eight weeks—if they bring me into the firm or I get another offer—nobody in New York will expect me to start before New Year’s.”

“What about . . . your condo?” Tess asked.

What about Derek?
she did not say.

“I’m selling my share in the condo,” Meg said evenly. “It wasn’t as good an investment as I hoped it would be.”

“Good,” Tom said. “I never liked him.”

Tess rolled her eyes. “We’re aware of that, honey.”

“Then you’re coming with us on Tuesday?” Matt asked Meg.

She nodded, grateful for his quiet intervention. “That way Allison doesn’t have to take a day off.” She glanced at her soon-to-be sister-in-law. “If that’s okay with you.”

“Very okay with me.” Allison smiled. “Of course, my students might feel differently.”

“Somebody’s got to stay with your mother,” Tom said.

“I’ll be fine,” Tess said. “It’s only for a few hours.”

“We don’t know when Taylor’s case will be called. We could be gone all damn day.”

“So Josh or Allison can check in on me when they get home from school.”

“What if you fall?” Tom asked.

A short, charged silence.

“I’ll stay with you,” Sam said.

They all looked at him.

He shrugged. “Why not? I’m always willing to spend a day with a beautiful woman.” He grinned at Tom. “And you said it yourself. I’m practically family.”

Eighteen

T
HE AFTERNOON SUN
edged the clouds, playing off riffles in the bright blue waters of the bay. Driving home from the grocery store, Meg noted the white boats at anchor, the scattering of Jeeps and trucks behind Evans Tackle Shop. The working watermen had knocked off for the day.

Among the other vehicles, Sam’s pickup stood out like a shiny black swan in a flock of gulls.

Her heart thrummed like the wind over the dunes. Her foot eased off the gas. Like she was fifteen again, inventing excuses to walk by Sam’s locker at school, hoping for a glimpse of him. Should she stop? They’d barely had a chance to speak since he’d driven her home on Saturday. And tomorrow she’d be gone all day at the custody hearing.

It wouldn’t hurt to drop in for just a minute, she reasoned. To say thank you.

She pulled into the lot behind the long wooden structure and went in. The vacationers’ side of the store, with its bright T-shirts and cheap tourist tackle, was almost empty. But around the coffeepots on the other side, sitting in the mismatched chairs and jammed between the aisles of tools and oil, fishermen clustered in twos and threes and fives. A buzz rose on the air, more animated, more agitated than the standard gossip and jokes, the usual complaints about the weather, or the latest fishing quotas.

Heads turned when Meg walked in. Her step faltered. She certainly wasn’t the only woman in the place. She recognized Robin Johnson, a gillnetter like her father, and Hannah Doyle, who had a master mariner’s license and a degree in marine sciences from the University of Florida. But Meg was the only woman not wearing waders.

George Evans waved at her from behind the counter. “Hey, Meg. You just missed Matt. Took off right after the meeting.”

What meeting? she wondered. “That’s okay. I came, um . . .”

To see Sam.
She spotted him talking to Walt Rogers, hands in his pockets, leaning forward courteously in that listening way, and for a moment she lost her breath and track of her thoughts.

“Ah . . .” She met George’s interested, inquiring eyes. “To pick up a few things,” she finished vaguely.

“Sure,” George said. “What do you need?”

Her gaze skated over the ranks of unfamiliar fishing equipment, the cans of chewing tobacco and cigarettes behind the case. “Just . . .” She grabbed a pack of gum and then a drink can cozy and slapped them on the counter. “These.”

George rang her up with a twinkle. “Always happy to have your business. Sam should be ready for an interruption about now,” he added. “Walt’s been bending his ear for the last twenty minutes.”

Her face heated. “Thanks.”

Living in New York, coming home only for the holidays, had distanced Meg from the island rumor mill. But she could imagine the speculation now that Tom Fletcher’s daughter was dating Carl Grady’s son. Bad blood between the two men since Carl had tried to buy Fletchers’ Quay from Tom’s father forty years ago. The Fletchers had held out when Carl gobbled up the rest of the waterfront, but no one denied his money or his power. Most islanders probably thought Meg had landed a good catch. In their eyes, nothing she ever accomplished—not Harvard, not an MBA, not even a half-million-dollar salary—would be equal to that.

She tried not to let it bother her.

But the whispers left her with a dilemma. Should she frustrate the gossips or feed them? Walk on by with a friendly greeting? Or wrap her arms around Sam’s neck and plant a long, deep, hot one on him?

Which of course would be promptly reported to her parents. She winced. Better to go with the casual greeting.

When she passed Sam, though, he took her arm. Her hand.

“Well, hi.” The patented Grady smile appeared, only slightly frayed at the edges.

She studied his face. He looked tired, she thought. Or tense. There were lines dug into his forehead, a subtle stiffness in his shoulders. But he didn’t look annoyed to see her.

She smiled back, squeezing his fingers. “Hi, Sam. Mr. Rogers.”

“You called me ‘Mr. Rogers’ when you were twelve, honey. I think you’re grown up enough to call me Walt. We missed your daddy today.”

The meeting, whatever it was.
“He’s home with Mom.”

“I hear she’s doing better.”

“Yes, sir.” And that, she reflected, was the other side of the small town grapevine. Your neighbors might all know your business, but they cared about your welfare.

“You be sure to give her my best,” Walt said before turning back to Sam. “I hear what you’re saying. But none of those agencies are lining up to hand us the money.”

Sam glanced at Meg. “I was telling Walt about some of the government initiatives for watermen.”

“And I’m not arguing with you,” Walt said. “I’m just saying if you’re on the water at five in the morning, you don’t want to come home and bust your brain writing up grant applications and proposals for a bunch of bureaucrats, trying to convince them you deserve funding more than the next guy. It takes forever, it’s a pain in the ass, and I’m telling you—no one around here has the time, the energy, or the know-how. And without those government grants, you’re dead in the water.”

Write grant proposals? Convince people to come around to your way of thinking?

“I could do it,” Meg said.

They both looked at her.

She shrugged. “It’s what I do for a living. I’d have to look at the agency guidelines, meet with the fishermen to identify their needs, but the actual grant applications wouldn’t take me too much time at all.”

“How much is too much?” Walt asked.

Meg smiled. “That depends on how difficult you are.”

“Huh.” Walt’s lips twitched. “You’re pretty smart. Guess Tom was right to send you to Harvard after all.”

“Thank you,” Sam said to Meg as they left the tackle store.

“You’re welcome. I take it that was the first meeting of the watermen’s cooperative?”

“Yeah.” Sam stopped in the sunlit parking lot, taking a deep breath of crisp November air.

“How’d it go?”

“Not bad. Not good”—his grin flashed briefly—“but not bad.”

Not just tired, she thought. Discouraged as well. “Meaning?”

He rolled his shoulders. “They’re islanders. They’re ornery and independent. They don’t want to be beholden, and they don’t trust the government in Raleigh. They’ve been screwed before and they’ve got long memories.”

She nodded. She knew her island history. Dare’s stubborn independence went beyond its frustration with state regulations to the start of the Civil War. When the rest of North Carolina had seceded from the Union, the inhabitants of Dare and Hatteras had declared their loyalty to the North.

“They’ll come around,” she said. “They’ll see it’s a matter of survival, like incorporating the town.”

Sam ran his hand through his hair. One lock flopped forward on his forehead. “I hope you’re right. They’re worried. For the co-op to succeed, we need more than a building or even the dock space. The fishermen need to be able to sell their catch at a fair price. That means increasing the demand for locally caught seafood.”

“Sounds like you need a PR person.”

The gleam reappeared in his eyes. “You applying for the job, sugar?”

She smiled, hoping to tease him out of his frustration. “You can’t afford me. Do you know what my hourly rate is?”

He slid his arms around her. “Maybe I can’t afford not to hire you.”

“Mm.” She pursed her lips, pretending to consider, aware of the press of their lower bodies. He felt so good, warm and hard against her. “I suppose I might be persuaded to give you the friends and family discount.”

“Not necessary. I wouldn’t want to take advantage.” He nuzzled a sensitive spot below her ear, and she bit back a gasp. “But if you want to work out a trade of professional services . . .”

She struggled to keep her eyes open, her head from dropping back. At any minute, somebody could walk out and see them. “I don’t need another ramp.”

“Those weren’t the services I had in mind.”

Take me
, she thought. “Big talk,” she scoffed.

“I’m prepared to back it up with action. Want to drive out to the job site and neck?”

Yes.

She swallowed temptation. “I can’t,” she said. “I’ve got milk in the car.”

He raised his head, his gaze warm and considering. “You doing the grocery shopping now, too?”

“Somebody has to. I’m the one who’s home all day.”

“Running the inn, taking care of your mother, being there for Taylor when she gets home from school. When do you get your own work done?”

“I have Dad to help take care of Mom, and Matt does a lot with Taylor. I get it done.”

“It’s still a lot. I’ll understand if you don’t have time for this grant application stuff.”

She felt a twist almost like panic. “I want to do it. I like the challenge. I can’t clean toilets and bake cookies all day.”
All my life
.

“Okay.” Sam paused. “I know this is hard for you, putting your life on hold for the next eight weeks because your family needs you. But I admire the hell out of you for it.”

She lifted one shoulder, uncomfortable with his praise. “I’m just doing what has to be done. We all are.”

“Taylor’s lucky to have you.”

“She’s lucky to have Matt. And Allison. I’m just there to cook. I don’t know anything about little girls.”

“You were a little girl once.”

“A long time ago. I don’t know how to talk to her,” Meg confessed. “I don’t know how she feels. What she needs.”

“She just lost her mother,” Sam said. “That leaves a hole you never completely recover from. It’ll take time for her to adjust.”

Her breathing tangled. He would know. He’d lost his mother, too, when his parents divorced.

“You’re right,” Meg said. “I know you’re right. See, even you understand her better than I do. I just . . . Shit.” Her throat closed. She blotted at the corners of her eyes with her fingertips. “I don’t know why I’m upset.”

Sam’s eyes were warm and compassionate. “Maybe because you understand her better than you think.”

She shook her head, wordless.

“Meg . . .” Sam stroked his hand down her arm. “When Tess was in that accident, it changed things. All of a sudden, you had to accept that she was vulnerable. That you could lose her. And then you lost your job, and then you lost . . . you dumped that jerk you were living with. Maybe you should give yourself time to adjust, too.”

She sniffed. “I don’t think any period of adjustment is going to turn me into my mother.”

He smiled. “I think you’re more like Tess than you know.”

“Not really. Luke has her generosity. Matt has her heart. I just have . . .” Meg floundered, overwhelmed by a sense of inadequacy. “Her recipes.”

“Don’t sell yourself short,” Sam said. “You’re loyal, like your mother. And hardworking. And fierce in defense of the people you love. You’re a great example for Taylor.”

“She doesn’t need an example,” Meg said. “She needs a mom. And I’m no good at it.”

The thought burned. Meg had always adored her own mother, loved her, laughed with her, and was sometimes irritated by her. She admired Tess’s strength in a crisis, appreciated her calm and cheerful management of her family and the inn. But Meg had always secretly believed her mother could have done better, ought to have done more, with her life.

Until now. Until Taylor, who came with feelings and needs and no instruction manual. The realization of how much Tess had always done without complaint or apparent effort made Meg feel grateful. And the tiniest bit ashamed.

“You’re doing fine,” Sam said. “You took Taylor trick-or-treating. The other girls, too.”

“That was a holiday. Holidays are different. They come with a script, like a checklist. Pumpkins, popcorn balls, trick-or-treating. I can do that. It’s the day-to-day stuff I suck at. That whole come-home-from-school, how-was-your-day routine. I can bake her cookies, but she doesn’t talk to me.”

“Sometimes the cookies are enough. The asking is enough. I never told your mother about my day, but it meant something to me that she cared enough to ask.”

Because nobody else ever had, Meg realized.

She cupped his face with her hand. “You know she always liked you,” she offered.

He turned his head and kissed her palm. “I’m glad. She’s an amazing woman.”

“I appreciate what you’re doing for her, staying with her tomorrow.”

“It’s nothing. There’s not much I wouldn’t do for your family, Meg.” His eyes met hers. “Or for you.”

Her heart wobbled. She could fall in love with him so easily, she thought. And that would be a mistake for both of them.

Under the easy charm and teasing humor, he was deeply perceptive and almost shockingly sincere. Driven, like her, to succeed. She appreciated his kindness. She was determined to enjoy whatever time they had together. But she didn’t kid herself it would be enough. For either of them.

She curled her fingers, holding his kiss inside.

She didn’t doubt that Sam wanted her. But he wanted everything, the whole package, Island Meg, with the complete complement of family and community that came with being a Fletcher. And she’d spent her entire adult life leaving all that behind.