Home to Stay (14 page)

Will flipped open some pages in the planner. “We’re looking at fewer than fifty guests, so there’s plenty of room down there for the chairs. And this way, Beth and Joe will practically be on the water. It’ll look gorgeous from every seat.”

“I think you’re on to something.” Randy slid her drawing his way and placed a large square for the tent along the side of the building. “If we put the food at this far end, then the caterer won’t have far to go at all. Less chance of trouble and more room for a dance floor.”

He sat back and rubbed a finger along his chin. “Is there anything you can’t do?” he asked, flashing Will an admiring grin that sent a blush up her cheeks, and heat to other places.

“Golf,” she said, trying to keep things light.

“Golf?”

“Yep. Tried it once. I was awful.”

Randy let out a full body laugh, and Will couldn’t help but laugh with him. He’d have laughed harder if he’d been there to see her swing that golf club.

Once the laughter faded, Will felt Randy’s eyes on her. Like the whiskey they resembled, spending too much time drinking in that look would make for a fun night but leave her with nothing but regrets come morning.

“Okay then,” she said, flipping to a blank page in the to-do section of the planner. She took notes as she spoke. “I need to find out how much table space the caterer requires, then see what Opal has in mind to put the cake on. At least the wedding is in the afternoon, so that gives the florist plenty of time to decorate once the tent is up.”

“The tent won’t take but thirty minutes. Have the guys arrive no later than eight that morning.” Randy leaned close enough for their thighs to touch, sending Will’s pen slashing across the page. “Sorry,” he said, putting a few inches between them.

“No problem,” she said. “Eight for the tent people. I’ll tell the florist nine and find out what time the caterer will need access to your kitchen.”

“Oh,” Randy said, putting his pencil to the graph paper again. “Here’s the dimensions of the decks, and I’ll put an X at the location of each outlet. If we put the DJ at the opposite end from the food, he’ll have an outlet here to hook into.” He placed an X near the front corner of the building.

Will folded the graph paper and stuck it inside the front cover of the planner. “That does it then.” Thank the heavens. She couldn’t handle being this close to the man much longer. Her brain cells were starting to fry, and the urge to turn and kiss him was getting harder to suppress.

But there was that damn envelope. Crap.

Randy put the pencils back in the drawer, leaving the few sheets of blank graph paper on the island. “I’ll put those away later,” he said, looking as if he didn’t want their visit to end.

Truth be told, she didn’t either. Which was all the more reason to cut and run.

“If you’ll open that packet from Sid, then I can head out.” She could have ditched him. Claim she’d forgotten, as he didn’t seem to be thinking about the envelope either. But she’d promised Sid.

“I’d forgotten about that.” Randy motioned for her to precede him to the couch. “Might as well get this over with. Sid doesn’t get wound up about much, so I’m curious to see what’s in here.”

So was Will.

Randy opened the flap, giving Will a quick look as if to say
are we ready?
With a nod, she said, “Let’s see it.”

He tipped the envelope down at an angle, sending a large photograph sliding onto the coffee table. It looked to be a family of four—a beautiful woman, a very large man, a serious-looking teen boy, and a small, dark-haired girl with a smudge of dirt on her cheek.

Will hovered on the edge of the couch. “Is that your family?” she asked in hushed tones.

Randy nodded but didn’t speak. He lifted the picture as if it might disintegrate in his hand. One fingertip touched the face of the beautiful woman, clearly his mother, to whom Sid bore a striking resemblance. His face took on a distant look.

Feeling the need to say something, Will asked, “How old were you there?”

“Eighteen,” he answered, never taking his eyes from the photo.

Silence hung like a fog in the air, but Will let it stay this time. Though he did his best to control his emotions, she could see pain and joy warring in his features. He’d clearly not seen this picture for many years, if ever. She had no doubt his mind was somewhere in the past, remembering the day it was taken, the moments before and after.

A full minute later, Randy turned the picture over. Written in Sid’s clear hand, it read, “Aunt Belinda found this in an old box.” That was it. Nothing sentimental. No dates, names, or locations. But then again, the brother and sister likely didn’t need a reminder of those incidental facts.

Unable to help herself, Will scooted closer to him. “Want to talk about it?”

He jerked as if he’d forgotten she was there, which she couldn’t hold against him. Being faced with unexpected memories like this wasn’t easy. Sid should have given Will a clue so she could have prepared him.

I don’t want him to be alone when he sees it
.

Maybe Sid had given her a clue.

Randy ran a hand through his hair as the picture dropped onto the table. “I’m going to need something stronger than tea for this. You want some wine?”

Will’s plan to leave as soon as her envelope-opening duty was done went out the window.

“I’ll pour while you talk,” she said.

CHAPTER 14

R
andy showed Will where to find the glasses, the wine, and the corkscrew, but his mind was still hovering somewhere in the past. When that picture landed on the coffee table, his heart had stopped, while his brain switched into overdrive. The trip back in time was so fast, and so abrupt, he wondered if his body would ache later.

“Here you go,” Will said, handing him a glass where he stood near the sliding glass door at the back of the kitchen. “Do you want to sit?”

“Let’s go out here.” He slid the door open and waited for Will to step through. “We can sit on the glider at the end there.” Randy pointed to the far left end of the porch.

She took a seat, squeezing as close to the arm as she could get. He didn’t let it bother him. At least she was still here. Her presence seemed to make the memories easier to deal with.

Randy filled the space beside her, putting the glider into motion and staring out over the lapping waves. His house was only feet from the sand, and he’d left the outside much as it had been when he bought the place. Inside was modern and contemporary. Outside was rustic and weathered.

“Sid looks a lot like your mom,” Will said, opening the conversation. As much as she dodged personal questions, in most respects, Will wasn’t the type to dance around an issue. He liked that about her. “You have her eyes, too.”

“Angelita Pilar Navarro. A beautiful name for a beautiful woman.” Randy took a sip of wine before continuing, letting the weight of his mother’s name, something that hadn’t crossed his lips in many years, settle into his bones. “That picture was taken shortly before she died.”

“So you all knew she was sick? Is that why you look so serious in the picture?”

Randy shook his head, watching a butterfly hover on the edge of the porch railing. “We had no idea she was sick. The photo was taken right after she and I had a big fight.” He tilted his head back, closing his eyes and seeing the look on his mother’s face when he said he was leaving. “I wanted to see the world. She didn’t want me to go.”

“But you went anyway.”

He nodded in the affirmative, too choked up to say the word.

Will remained quiet beside him. Rolling his head her way, he tried to read her expression. Did she think he was a bad son? Was she pitying him, or would she tell him that was typical teenage behavior and to get over it?

No censure showed on her face when she turned his way. Only a small smile. “Survivor’s guilt doesn’t change the fact that you did nothing wrong,” she said, her voice a whisper. Then she looked down and laced her fingers with his. “You wanted to live, and you had no reason to think anything bad was going to happen to her.” Their eyes met again. “And none of those facts change a damn thing, do they?”

She got it. He squeezed her hand.

“Thanks for that. I’m guessing you have a similar experience?”

Will tilted her head to one side. “Kind of. I said hello to the wrong person. Let him in and then leaned on him during a rough time in my life.” She paused, biting her bottom lip. “I sometimes think, if I could go back to that moment and take back that hello, then none of the bad stuff that followed would have happened. My life would be so different.”

As Randy’s porch faced east, the sun was slowly dropping behind them, turning the horizon a deep purple before their eyes. He and Will watched the colors shift and darken as their hands remained entwined. A new thought struck him.

This would be a nice way to end every day
.

The sentiment would likely send Will running, so he kept it to himself.

“If you could change the past, then you wouldn’t be here on Anchor, would you?” he asked. The question would have been prying the day before, but it felt right in the moment. He felt a fissure of tension in the hand still resting in his own.

With a pinched expression, she answered, “No, I wouldn’t.”

Randy followed his gut on his next move. Lifting their clenched hands, he dropped a kiss on Will’s knuckles. She turned his way, but didn’t withdraw her hand.

“Maybe everything does happen for a reason,” he said, settling their hands back atop his thigh.

Will relaxed into him, laying her head on his shoulder. “Maybe so.”

Will leaned on Randy for several minutes, watching the water pull at the sand, listening to him breathe beside her, his solid shoulder beneath her ear. So much for maintaining any kind of fearful facade. Or keeping her distance.

He’d always seemed so happy, like he didn’t have a care in the world. Turned out, he had scars like she did. Maybe not as deep, but they were there.

“Explain something to me,” Will said, sitting up and turning her body his way. “Why would a person who’s seen so many people you care for die way too young spend his adult life looking death in the eye and daring it to take you?”

He tapped the arm of the glider, completely relaxed. “I don’t look death in the eye.”

She raised one brow, sending him a
no, really
look.

“Okay, it’s not knitting, but I never take unnecessary risks. I never climb without safety ropes and at least one other person along. I don’t scuba dive alone, or in caves.” Randy shimmied his shoulders. “Too easy to get stuck. I don’t ride any machine I’m not positive I can handle, and I never jump out of a plane without packing my own chute and having a backup ready to launch.”

Will nearly laughed. Did he hear himself?

“What’s the highest mountain you’ve climbed?”

“About twenty-two thousand feet, but I still want to do Shishapangma, which is twenty-six thousand.”

The reason he never made it to Shishapangma was something Will didn’t feel like discussing at the moment.

“That doesn’t sound high to you? Or dangerous?”

“I see where you’re going with this.” Randy took a sip of his wine, clearly buying time to think of a good defense. “It’s really not that dangerous if you know what you’re doing. Hell, snowboarding down the side of a mountain is more dangerous than climbing one.”

Will crossed her arms. “So you’ve snowboarded down the side of a mountain? And this isn’t a death wish?”

“You’re not going to let this go, are you?” Randy swiped a hand through his hair and gave a long, heavy sigh. “Fine. Yes, some of the stuff I do is dangerous, but the rush is worth it. And like I said, I don’t do anything half-assed. No ‘Hey, watch this’ and take a flying leap. There’s a difference.”

“Well,” she said, sliding some humor into her tone, since she didn’t want this encounter to end with an argument. They’d come too far for that. “When you put it that way.”

He granted her a smile in return, bobbing the side of his knee against hers. “My dad always talked about the places he’d go. The things he was going to do…someday. When he had enough money. When his kids were grown.” Shifting focus back to the horizon, he added, “He never even got back to Puerto Rico to visit his family. I don’t want to live my life
someday
. Then you never end up living at all.”

Now he had a point. Will had always been too focused on preparing for tomorrow to make sure she was living in the present. That didn’t sound like a very satisfying way to be.

“Do you ever do anything just to do it?” he asked, pulling Will from her life analysis.

“You mean for no reason?”

“No, I mean because you want to. Not because of what it’ll get you, or because someone else expects you to do it.” He turned, leaning an elbow on the back of the glider. “Do you ever do anything for
you
?”

Everything she’d done in the last three years had been for her own survival, but did that count? Look at how she’d handled a day off. She couldn’t even sit still and enjoy some time alone.

Alone. Even when she was working, surrounded by people, Will still felt alone in the world. Though she didn’t feel all that alone right now.

“I’ll take the hesitation and that confused look on your face as a no,” Randy said. “There’s a concept in the Eastern religions that suggests one live in the now. Not the past or the future, but strictly in the moment.”

Will pulled her legs up until her chin rested on her knees. “How could you not think about the future?” Or in her case, keep one eye over your shoulder watching for the past to creep out of the shadows.

“What good does worrying about a year from now do you today?” Randy absently toyed with her sleeve, making it hard to concentrate on the conversation. Not that she understood what they were talking about.

“The decisions you make today affect where you’ll be in a year,” she said. “You can’t ignore that.”

Randy shook his head. “There are a million factors that affect where you’ll be in a year, and ninety-nine percent of them are out of your control.”

Oh, now he wanted to break out the math. “That’s a gross exaggeration.”

“That is reality, my friend.” A long, narrow finger pointed at her nose. “You need to learn to live in the moment.”

What would it be like to pretend the past couldn’t affect her? To stop worrying about the wrong tourist stepping up to her bar? Or that an annoying reporter will figure out why Will’s face looked familiar?

Which reminded her. “That reporter left today, didn’t she?”

“You see,” he said, throwing up his hands. “You can’t even stay in the now for this conversation.”

“That’s not true,” Will defended herself. “I asked about something that happened today. So that’s the now.”

Randy finished his wine and rose from the glider, sending Will sliding back and forth. “You asked because you were worried she was going to figure out where she saw you before.” Growing serious, he asked, “
Has
she seen you somewhere before?”

Will swished the remnants of her glass, keeping her eyes on the dark liquid. “I don’t know.”

That was true. She had no way of knowing if Rebecca had seen her face before or not. Will
did
know she’d never seen Rebecca before, but that didn’t mean much when Will’s face had been plastered across the New England media once upon a time.

“Well you can stop worrying. She’s gone. So what do you say?” he asked, extending a hand. “Want to do some living in the moment?”

With the departure of the reporter, Will’s current source of anxiety was gone. There was no reason to believe Rebecca would give her a second thought once she reached the ferry. Maybe it was time to put the past where it belonged—behind her.

But she had to be sure of Randy’s intentions. Regardless of attempting to live in the moment, planning any sort of future that included a relationship was still impossible. If that’s what Randy expected, she’d have to walk away.

“The moment?” she asked, ignoring his hand until she knew what he was offering.

“No yesterday. No tomorrow.” He stepped closer. “Only today.”

That sounded good, but her brain wasn’t going to cave that easily. “If I take that hand, where am I going?”

His eyes turned dark, but the grin retained its mischievous charm. “If I’m finally convincing you to spend real time with me, inviting you to my bedroom first thing wouldn’t be a very smart idea, now would it?”

A tremor of disappointment trailed down Will’s spine. Not that she’d have had sex with him tonight. As tempting as the thought may be.

Sliding her hand into the large warm one he offered, Will rose to her feet. Randy held his ground, which put their bodies less than an inch apart. Sex may not be on the table this evening, but it would be soon. If they were going to do this, they would take it all the way.

Eventually.

“One condition,” she said, enjoying the feel of his arm as it wrapped around her waist. “It’s our little secret.”

Deep brown eyes narrowed. “Not sure I like that part.”

Will went for logic. “Sid suggested you woo me not long ago, didn’t she?”

Randy took a half step back. “Maybe.”

“Relax,” she said, tapping his chest. His wide, solid chest. “Sid told me. She also told me she wants to see you find a happy ever after like she has. If they think we’re an official couple, that’s what they’ll expect for us. And not only Sid, but Lucas and Beth and Joe. It’s as if they’ve all caught the love disease.”

“You make them sound terminal.”

“Think of it as contagious.”

The rumble of laughter that rolled through Randy’s body sent heat to all the right places on Will’s. “I see. I don’t like the idea of sneaking around, but I suppose what we do is no one else’s business.”

“Good man.” Will drained the rest of her wine. “Now I’d better be getting home.” It was dark now. Too dark to see Randy’s eyes clearly. But she could almost feel his thoughts dance along her skin.

“I think we should do something to seal the deal,” he said, voice dropping an octave and the Latin accent stronger than usual. “Something symbolic. You know what they say. Begin as you mean to go on.”

Oh, he was good. Too good. Extending her arms around his neck, Will gripped her wrist with her free hand and pressed her body against the wall of a man holding her tight. “That sounds fair,” she whispered, rising up on tiptoe to reach his lips.

Instead of leaning forward, Randy stayed still, letting Will make all the moves. Good thing she was tall herself. When she brushed his full lips with her own, the taste of wine and heat threatened to scorch her brain.
Why weren’t they going to have sex tonight?