Kisses After Dark Read online

  Kisses After Dark

  McCarthys of Gansett Island Series, Book 12

  By: Marie Force

  Published by HTJB, Inc.

  Copyright 2014. HTJB, Inc.

  Cover by Kristina Brinton

  E-book Layout by Holly Sullivan, E-book Formatting Fairies

  ISBN: 978-0991418268

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return it and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author. To obtain permission to excerpt portions of the text, please contact the author at [email protected].

  All characters in this book are fiction and figments of the author’s imagination.

  marieforce.com

  The McCarthys of Gansett Island Series

  McCarthys of Gansett Island Boxed Set

  Book 1: Maid for Love

  Book 2: Fool for Love

  Book 3: Ready for Love

  Book 4: Falling for Love

  Book 5: Hoping for Love

  Book 6: Season for Love

  Book 7: Longing for Love

  Book 8: Waiting for Love

  Book 9: Time for Love

  Book 10: Meant for Love

  Book 10.5: Chance for Love, A Gansett Island Novella

  Book 11: Gansett After Dark

  Book 12: Kisses After Dark

  Author’s Note

  Welcome to Kisses After Dark! I’ve been looking forward to writing Shane and Katie’s story, especially since their memorable encounter in Gansett After Dark. Bringing together Laura’s brother and Owen’s sister was something I’ve had planned for quite some time.

  I’ve had to laugh at some of the questions I’ve gotten about whether their relationship is “legal” since they are now “family.” It doesn’t seem odd at all to me because my mother’s brother and sister married a brother and sister, giving me nine “double” cousins. To make things even more complicated, both the “brides” had the same first name, so they basically traded last names. Are you scratching your head yet? It takes new members of our family quite some time, as well as diagrams, to fully understand how we’re all related! Twenty-two years in, my husband still jokes that he doesn’t get it. I also know two sisters who married a pair of brothers. I think it happens more often than we think. But yes, it’s perfectly legal as Shane and Katie are not actually “family” to each other.

  It’s always so much fun for me to go back to Gansett Island for another visit with the McCarthys and their crew. I want to thank the faithful readers of this series who turn up book after book to show their love and support for my characters and my fictional island. If you’re not yet a member of the McCarthy Reader Group on Facebook, come join the nearly 9,000 other fans of the series to chat about which couple is your favorite or whose story you most want to read in an upcoming book. Find the McCarthys of Gansett Island Readers Group. Need a refresher on Who's Who on Gansett Island? Click here to check out the latest list, updated through Gansett After Dark OR view our brand new McCarthy Family Tree! We’ve been working on the Family Tree for some time now, and we hope you love it as much as we do. This version is current through Gansett After Dark. We’re not currently planning to have it printed because it will be changing with every new book, so enjoy this online view of the McCarthy Family!

  When you’re done reading Kisses After Dark, join the reader group to dish about Shane and Katie’s story and to speculate about what’s ahead for our favorite fictional family and their friends. If you’re not yet on my mailing list, please consider joining at marieforce.com to be kept updated on new books and possible appearances in your area. If you’re on the mailing list and not receiving regular emails from me, check your spam filter to make sure you’ve allowed my messages to get through to you.

  Profound thanks to my amazing behind-the-scenes team: Julie Cupp, Lisa Cafferty, Holly Sullivan, Isabel Sullivan, Nikki Colquhoun and Cheryl Serra. Thank you to my editorial team, Linda Ingmanson and Joyce Lamb, as well as my beta readers Anne Woodall, Ronlyn Howe and Kara Conrad. Special thank you to labor and delivery nurse Brenna Hessler and Sarah Spate Morrison, family nurse practitioner, for keeping me straight on the medical details.

  On the home front, thank you to Dan, Emily and Jake, who are great supporters of my writing career and put up with all the time I spend with my fictional people.

  One of my most frequently asked questions is whether there will be more Gansett Island books. I always say that as long as my amazing and supportive readers seem to be enjoying the series, I’ll keep writing it. Thank you for your love of all things McCarthy. You keep me coming back for more of Gansett Island as often as I can!

  If you love the book (or even if you don’t), consider leaving a review on Amazon and/or Goodreads. I read every one of them, and they help to keep me engaged in the series and planning more books. In addition, your reviews help to draw new readers to the series, so thank you in advance for leaving a review. I hope to write Paul Martinez’s book next, so watch for more from Gansett Island in 2015.

  Thanks again for all your support of the McCarthys of Gansett Island Series. Happy reading!

  xoxo

  Marie

  Chapter 1

  His first thought at the start of every day was always the same.

  He’s home in the cozy apartment he shared with his wife. It’s winter, and they’re snuggled under the down comforter they’d gotten as a wedding gift from his sister. His wife is warm and naked, her body soft as she sleeps in his arms. The scent of her shampoo, the expensive stuff he bought for her at the salon she loves, surrounds him. He would recognize that scent anywhere, the scent of his woman.

  His body responds predictably to her nearness. Any time he’s awake and naked with her, he’s hard and ready to claim her. He moves his hand from her flat belly, up to cup a full breast, toying with the nipple that awakens instantly to his touch.

  Wanting to see her and watch her reactions, he opens his eyes and is punched in the face by reality.

  Every damned morning.

  He’s not in bed with his wife. He’s alone in the room he calls home now at the Sand & Surf Hotel on Gansett Island. The wife he’d loved beyond reason, to the point of blindness to the faults that ended them, is long gone. She divorced him after ruining him in just about every way a man can be ruined, leaving behind memories that torture him.

  Shane McCarthy stared up at the ceiling he’d painted white the winter before when the Surf had undergone extensive renovations overseen by his sister, Laura, and her now-husband, Owen Lawry. The call from Laura, pleading with him to come help them get the hotel ready for the summer season, had finally drawn him out of the dark hole he’d been in for nearly two years, mourning the loss of his marriage—and a big chunk of his sanity.

  He needed to get up, grab a shower before his nephew Holden woke up and get them both to the brunch Owen’s grandparents were hosting to celebrate the newlyweds. Shane was thrilled to celebrate his sister’s happiness with a man he liked and respected, but the minute he got up, he would lose Courtney for another day.

  The beginning of every new day was the only time he gave her anymore. If he had his druthers, she wouldn’t even get that. But he was unable to control the places his mind went in that ambiguous space between dreams and wakefulness. So he gave her those minutes and nothing else. He took the time, upon waking each morning, to mourn what’d been lost, to grieve for what would never be again and to wallow, however briefly, in the past.

  He’d experience
d the highest of highs and the lowest of lows with Courtney, extremes so jarring it was a wonder he could function in the aftermath of the wreckage she’d left behind. But he was functioning. He was working on an affordable-housing project with his cousin Mac and making a worthwhile contribution to the Gansett Island community.

  He was involved on a daily basis with his sister, his father, his nephew, his new brother-in-law and the large extended family that lived close by on the island they all called home. The hotel that had initially served as a refuge had begun to feel like home. The dark apartment in Providence that had been ground zero for the end of his marriage was a distant memory now that Laura and her hotel had forced him back into the land of the living.

  If only he could do something about these early morning visitations with the past. He needed an exorcism or something equally dramatic to remove Courtney from his DNA. She’d worked her way all the way in during the years they’d spent together, and removing her was turning out to be one hell of a difficult challenge.

  Too bad you couldn’t flip a switch in your brain and stop thinking about something or someone who made you sad and angry and regretful and horribly, miserably lonely. Shouldn’t there be a way to make that stop? At this point, Shane would pay good money to find that switch in his own brain, because it was high time for this shit to stop. It needed to stop.

  Courtney was nothing to him anymore, except for his ex-wife. He’d practically bankrupted himself to put her through rehab after discovering her addiction to prescription pain meds that predated their marriage. Her way of thanking him for everything he’d done for her was to serve him with divorce papers the minute she was sober again.

  Talk about a wake-up call. He sure as hell hadn’t seen that coming as he’d counted down the ninety days she’d spent in rehab, living for the day when they could get their lives back on track. While he’d been blindsided by the drug problem, the divorce had left him demolished. The worst part was he still didn’t know why she’d done that. Had she met someone else in rehab? Had she suddenly decided he didn’t look as good to her when she was no longer hopped up on pills?

  The why of it tortured him almost as much as the reality of living without the woman he’d expected to spend forever with. Even after all this time, he still didn’t understand why. He’d been served with papers on the day he’d expected to pick her up from the clinic and start over again. He hadn’t even gotten the courtesy of a conversation. She’d disappeared from his life as quickly and as dramatically as she’d entered it his senior year of college.

  Running his hands over his face, filled with frustration and anger at himself for dwelling on things that shouldn’t matter so much after all this time, he thought about yesterday, about his sister’s wedding and the palpable joy between her and Owen. It had been a truly perfect day, a rare gem in the mess his life had been for quite some time now.

  And then he remembered the incident that had nearly marred that rare gem of a day. Hell, it had nearly ruined a lot more than his sister’s wedding. He’d been swimming at the beach in front of the hotel when a distressed cry from another swimmer had put him in rescue mode. Upon reaching the woman, she’d latched on to him in a panic and dragged them both under. For a brief moment, he’d thought she was going to kill them both. Then he’d begun to fight, freeing himself from her tight grip after an epic struggle.

  He’d managed to eventually get them both to the beach, but not before she lost her bikini top. When he’d brushed back the blond hair from her face, he’d realized she was Katie Lawry, Owen’s sister. Though their families were now connected by marriage and despite the fact that Katie was Owen’s sister, Shane couldn’t stop thinking about the most perfect set of breasts he’d seen since his divorce.

  Hell, they were the only breasts he’d seen since his divorce, which was probably why he couldn’t seem to scrub the memory of them from his brain. Again, that off-switch would come in handy as he was about to see her at the after-wedding brunch, and he needed to be able to look at her without thinking breasts at the first sight of her.

  Christ, he needed to get laid if he got so worked up over a pair of bare breasts. It was sad to realize he couldn’t remember the last time he’d had sex or even wanted to. Well before Courtney went to rehab, which was… Shit, almost two years ago.

  How pathetic was it that the sight of Katie Lawry’s breasts triggered the first pang of desire he’d felt since then? Was he the same guy who’d had sex with his wife nearly every day—sometimes two or three times a day—before it went to shit? He couldn’t remember what it had been like to be that guy. That guy was so far removed from his current reality, it was like he was someone else altogether.

  Pathetic was definitely the word of this day, and it wasn’t even seven o’clock yet. Weekends provided hours upon hours of time that needed to be filled. This weekend had been better than most with all the wedding festivities to help keep his attention on the present where it belonged. He was better off on days when he could lose himself in work and stay so busy he had no time for dwelling.

  A tiny squeak from the room next door wiped away all unpleasant thoughts and gave Shane a genuine reason to smile. His nephew, Holden, the brightest light in Shane’s life, was awake and in need of the uncle who’d stayed with him so his parents could enjoy their wedding night.

  Shane got up, hit the bathroom and went into Holden’s room, where the baby was sucking on his own toes, a relatively new addition to his arsenal of adorable tricks. Then again, Shane thought everything Holden did was adorable. “Hey, bud. Did you sleep well? I don’t know what your mama is talking about with all these middle-of-the-night stories.”

  Holden rewarded him with a big spitty smile that showed off his two new bottom teeth and reached up with his arms and legs.

  Shane laughed and scooped him up, hugging him close for a full minute before transferring him to the changing table to dispose of the heavy overnight diaper.

  “Dude, that’s a lot of pee. How many beers did you have at the wedding anyway?”

  Holden squeaked and squealed and giggled, his infectious joy a balm on the wounds Shane carried with him. Holden gave him hope, an emotion he’d been sorely lacking until his nephew came along to remind him that life goes on even when you think it can’t possibly.

  “Mammammamma.”

  “Mama is across the street with Daddy, and trust me, bud, you don’t want to know what they’re up to.”

  His comment was received with more squeals and lots of wrestling to get the new diaper on. Owen had warned him to feed Holden his cereal before he tried to get him dressed, so they moved to the apartment’s tiny galley kitchen, where he plopped Holden into his high chair and mixed up the cereal while the baby enjoyed some Cheerios scattered on the tray.

  Shane had expected to have a couple of kids of his own by now. That’d been the plan anyway, before he discovered his wife had been hiding a raging addiction to pain meds. What if she’d gotten pregnant while she was still addicted? He shuddered thinking now about the bullet he’d dodged.

  Pushing those thoughts aside, he gave his full attention to his nephew. As long as he stayed focused on the present, the past couldn’t catch up to him. At least that was what he told himself as he moved through every day, still trying to outrun the relentless pain.

  She’d dreamed about drowning. The reality Katie Lawry was still processing, hours after she’d nearly drowned on her brother’s wedding day, was how quiet it had been under the water. It had drawn her in a like a lover, stealing over her with its awesome might, pulling her down, down, down into endless darkness.

  A small part of her had welcomed the quiet darkness, not that she’d ever admit that to anyone. She’d seen the harshness, lived with it for much of her life, thus the slight temptation to let go and surrender. She’d struggled, she realized now, because of Owen. Because she couldn’t do that to him, especially not on a day on which he would finally get the happiness he deserved more than just about anyone she knew.
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  He’d always been there for her, and she’d fought like a tomcat to be there for him, nearly killing Laura’s brother in the throes of battle. In the shower afterward, she’d trembled so violently she’d been afraid it wouldn’t stop in time for her to attend the wedding.

  She trembled just as violently as she relived the entire episode and allowed herself to imagine what could’ve happened if Shane hadn’t been there to save her. She trembled to think about what it would’ve meant to her mother, brother, siblings and grandparents to lose her so suddenly, especially after all they’d been through lately with her father’s trial.

  The Lawry family finally had a reason to celebrate. Mark Lawry was going to prison—for years—after having abused his wife and children for decades. Katie would never forget the feeling she’d experienced upon hearing the news that her father had pleaded guilty to the charges rather than allow an old family friend to testify about the years of abuse he’d inflicted upon his family. General Lawry would rather plead guilty than allow his family’s dirty laundry to be aired out by the wife of one of his former subordinates.

  Thank God for his arrogance. Thank God for his hubris. Thank God it was over for all of them, although she’d often had reason to wonder if it would ever really be over. Owen was the first of the seven Lawry siblings to find love and get married. The rest of them had chosen to remain stubbornly single rather than chance the kind of relationship their mother had found herself in after marrying their father.

  Katie admired Owen more than just about anyone she knew. He’d taken many a fist on behalf of her, her twin sister, Julia, their sister Cindy and their brothers John, Josh and Jeff. Owen had looked out for all of them, had sacrificed his own dreams to stay close to them after their father kicked him out of their home.

  And now he’d taken the huge step of committing himself to Laura and their children for the rest of his life. That took guts when you came from what they did. Katie wished she had the guts to take that kind of risk, to let someone in, to allow herself to have feelings for a man.