Gansett Island Boxed Set Books 1-16 (Gansett Island Series) Page 30

  She cared for Joe far too much to risk hurting him any further by dragging him onto the roller coaster she faced in the immediate future.

  Her stomach ached at the thought of seeing David tomorrow, of confronting him with proof of his infidelity, of calling off their engagement, of canceling their long-planned wedding.

  As if she had conjured him straight out of a dream, she heard Joe’s deep, sexy voice telling her she could get through anything, that she was strong and capable and resilient. He believed in her, and knowing that made it possible to believe in herself. She would get through this, if for no other reason than he was waiting for her, and she couldn’t wait to find out what they might be together.

  Joe tapped on the bar at the Beachcomber, signaling the bartender to bring him another round. He’d lost count of how many boilermakers he’d already consumed. However many, it hadn’t been enough to dull the throbbing ache in his chest that had started the minute Janey walked away from him earlier.

  The sexy bartender who always flirted with him quirked a questioning eyebrow. “What’s up with you tonight? You’re hitting it hard.”

  “Just supporting the local economy.” He heard the slight slur in his speech and didn’t care.

  She poured him a new shot of whiskey and opened another bottle of beer.

  He tried to remember her name. Charley. No. Katie. Chelsea! That was it. They’d spent a memorable night together upstairs three or four summers ago, and ever since then, she’d angled for a repeat performance. Those days were over, he reminded himself. Janey had ruined him for other women.

  Thinking about her soft skin, her fragrant hair, the small but firm breasts that fit perfectly in the palms of his hands, the exquisite joy of being inside her when she came. . . Joe moaned.

  “You okay, Joe?” Chelsea asked, looking at him now with concern etched into her pretty face.

  Looking up at her, he was startled to realize he’d moaned out loud. It wouldn’t do for the owner of the Gansett Island Ferry Company to be seen falling down drunk at the island’s landmark hotel. He knew that, of course, but it didn’t stop him from downing the new shot in one giant gulp that burned all the way through him. What sweet relief it was to feel something other than desperate fear that he’d never spend another night with Janey.

  After years of wishing and hoping and praying, all his dreams had come true in an unexpected interlude that would haunt him for the rest of his days if it was all he ever had of her. His heart raced with anxiety at the thought of never being with her again, and his stomach lurched. If he didn’t get out of there immediately, he was going to be sick all over the bar. With a gesture for Chelsea to put the drinks on his tab, he tossed a twenty on the bar for her and ran out to the back alley where he was violently ill.

  Sweaty and chilled, he leaned against the clapboard building and decided he’d been stupid to think booze would cure what ailed him. Only one thing could cure him, but he couldn’t have her tonight. Wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, Joe staggered back inside and up the stairs to the room he kept on the third floor for nights he spent on the island. This wasn’t one of his regular nights, but he’d missed the last boat back to the mainland.

  In his room, Joe studied his haggard reflection in the mirror before splashing cold water on his face and brushing the sour taste from his mouth. Without bothering to undress, he landed face down in the lumpy bed and slipped into tortured dreams about the one he loved but couldn’t have. Every time he managed to get his arms around her, she somehow slipped away. The horrible dance went on all night until he woke with a start to blinding morning sun.

  Rolling onto his side, Joe groaned at the inhuman pain in his skull. Surely agony like this meant that someone had stabbed knives into his forehead and temples while he slept. He gripped his head to keep it on his neck as he sat up and tried to shake off the horrible dreams. A new surge of nausea had him rushing for the bathroom, where he discovered that whiskey burned even more coming back up than it had on the way down.

  He couldn’t remember the last time he’d drunk himself into such a stupor—or the last time he’d had better reason. A freezing shower snapped him back to life, which also brought him right back to why he’d turned to alcohol in the first place. Leaning his head against the cool tiles, he yearned for her and called himself six kinds of fool for being so stupid as to make love to her when she wasn’t really his. He should never have let that happen until she was free and clear to love him the way he loved her. The one thing the whiskey couldn’t change was the irrefutable fact that he had only himself to blame for his misery.

  He turned off the shower, grabbed a towel and scrounged for some clean clothes. Dressed in khaki shorts, a green Gansett Island Ferry Co. polo shirt and topsiders, Joe made his way—painfully—down to the gift shop, where he bought three packets of Advil and downed every one of the six pills. Normally, he’d be face-first in coffee at that hour, but he didn’t think his fragile stomach could handle it.

  He gave himself a few minutes to make sure the Advil would stay down before he took the hotel’s front steps to the sidewalk and crossed the street to the ferry landing. The first boat of the day had just arrived from the mainland, and his staff was hard at work unloading cargo and preparing the next boat. Off to the side, two of his younger employees engaged in good-natured horseplay while they waited to supervise the loading of the passenger vehicles that were lined up to drive onto the next ferry.

  “Hey!” Joe called to the two young men, who immediately froze at the sound of his voice. “I’m not paying you to fool around. Knock it off!”

  His unusual outburst caught the attention of all the employees working in the area, but Joe pretended not to notice as he headed for the office. Screw it, he thought. Even the best of bosses was allowed a foul mood every now and then.

  “Hey, Joe!”

  At the sound of a familiar voice, Joe turned, giving his aching head time to catch up to the sudden movement. His bleary eyes cleared to find David Lawrence coming off the ferry. Joe’s hands rolled into fists.

  “I thought that was you.” David extended a hand. “How’s it going?”

  Joe in his right mind would’ve reluctantly shaken David’s hand and gone on with his life. Joe in love with the woman who had cried her heart out over this guy didn’t shake the proffered hand or go on with his life. Rather, he raised one of those fists and plowed it into the good doctor’s handsome, smiling face.

  Now that, Joe thought as David collapsed to the pavement, had been worth getting up for.

  Chapter 8

  They’d let him make one phone call, so naturally Joe called Mac, knowing his friend would approve of the so-called “crime” that had landed him in the island’s only jail cell. A woman at the marina reported that Mac was out on the Salt Pond. She promised to give him the message as soon as he returned. In the meantime, Joe was left to cool his heels on a stiff cot with an icepack wrapped around his swelling knuckles.

  Images of David’s bloody face and girlish shrieks ran through his mind. Joe grunted out a laugh. It’d been worth it. So totally worth it. Getting arrested for assault was a small price to pay for seeing that pompous ass taken down a few notches. Joe’s satisfaction in exacting a tiny bit of revenge on Janey’s behalf was tempered by the pounding in his head and the lingering nausea.

  Right at that moment, it occurred to him—for the first time—that Janey might not appreciate what he’d done. An odd twinge of anxiety danced up his spine as the rustling of footsteps outside the cell had him sitting up straighter on the cot.

  Along with Joe’s high school classmate, Gansett Island Police Chief Blaine Taylor, Big Mac McCarthy came around the corner and stood outside the cell, hands on hips, his usually amiable face set into an expression of supreme displeasure.

  Oh, shit.

  Joe stared at the man he’d loved like a father since he’d been a newly fatherless seven-year-old transported from the frenetic energy of New York City to his grandparents’
home on a tiny island with fewer than a thousand year-round residents. One of the more important residents, at least to Joe, was currently giving him the once-over and apparently not liking what he saw. Disappointing Big Mac had never been high on Joe’s to-do list.

  “What’s the meaning of this, my friend?”

  “Call it an act of impulse.”

  “You broke his nose.”

  “He broke her heart!”

  Big Mac’s lips tightened. “So I hear.”

  Joe crossed his arms and winced when his abused knuckles made contact with his shirt. “He had it coming.”

  “Perhaps, but to my thinking, it was her punch to throw, not yours.” Big Mac ran a huge hand through wiry gray hair. “Do you know I haven’t been in here since you and Mac decided to flatten half the mailboxes on the island with my truck?”

  Blaine snickered, and Joe sent him a dirty look.

  Joe swallowed hard as memories of a long-ago night came flooding back. That had been the first time he’d disappointed Big Mac, and Joe had gone to great lengths to make it the only time—until today.

  “Remember what I did then?” Big Mac asked.

  He and Mac had never forgotten the endless night in jail when they were just sixteen. And that, of course, had been Big Mac’s goal. While they’d still gotten into their share of mischief, they’d never gone near another mailbox. Joe stared at the older man, incredulous. “You’re not planning to leave me in here overnight.”

  “That’s up to you,” Big Mac said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “You need to apologize and kiss some serious ass so he’ll drop the charges.”

  Joe released a humorless laugh. As if! “Not in this or any other lifetime.”

  “Then you’d better get comfortable. I hear the judge isn’t due back until next Friday. Isn’t that right, Blaine?”

  “Sure is. He’ll arraign you then on felony assault charges.”

  “That ought to be real good for business,” Big Mac added.

  Joe swore under his breath. Stuck in here for six days? That hadn’t been part of the plan—not that he’d had much of a plan before the sight of David’s smarmy face sent him over a cliff he hadn’t realized he’d been teetering on. No, he didn’t regret flattening the bastard, and he’d be damned if he would apologize.

  “Does Janey know about this?” Joe forced himself to ask. His gut clenched with guilt and his mouth went dry as sand when it dawned on him that since he last saw Big Mac McCarthy, he’d made mad, crazy love to the man’s beloved only daughter. The same daughter he’d called Princess until she turned nineteen and begged him not to.

  “I reckon most of the island knows by now. The good doctor put on quite a show.”

  “Fucking baby,” Joe muttered. “It’s the least of what he deserves.”

  “Lucky for you, I happen to agree, even if I don’t approve of you taking it upon yourself to even the score.”

  Oh, if only he knew. . .

  “You’re a respected businessman, a pillar of this community,” Big Mac continued. “You’ve got no place resorting to violence in front of your employees and customers.”

  No one had ever been better at building Joe up or cutting him down to size when necessary. Apparently, not much had changed in the nearly twenty years since he and Mac had become adults.

  “I’m sorry to disappoint you.”

  “I have a feeling I’m going to be the least of your worries.” Big Mac nodded to Blaine who opened the cell.

  Before Big Mac could change his mind, Joe made for the open door. “I thought you said I’d have to apologize first.”

  Big Mac’s eyes twinkled with mirth. “I just wanted to see what you’d have to say to that.”

  Blaine laughed at the expression on Joe’s face. “Well played, Mr. McCarthy.”

  “Glad I’m available to amuse you both,” Joe said.

  Laughing, Big Mac put an arm around Joe’s shoulders. “While you know damned well I don’t condone violence, after hearing about what he did, I probably would’ve been tempted to punch him myself. You saved me the trouble.”

  Even though he was usually taller than most men, Joe had to look up at Big Mac. “Did I really break his nose?”

  Big Mac squeezed his shoulder. “Sure did.”

  “Good.”

  Joe had punched David. Joe had punched David in the face, breaking his nose. Thirty minutes after hearing about the incident at the ferry landing, Janey was still trying to get her head around it—and trying to decide where she wanted to go first, to the jail to bail out Joe or to the clinic to confront her wayward fiancé.

  “I’ll take you anywhere you want to go,” Maddie said after Janey vocalized her dilemma. “Mac left us the truck.”

  “Don’t you have to work?”

  “I took a few weeks off to get ready for the wedding.” Her cheeks flushed with color. “Your brother insisted I enjoy every minute of it.”

  “That’s awesome. He’s right. It’s a once-in-a-lifetime event, and you should enjoy it.” Janey ached, thinking about the plans for her once-in-a-lifetime day that wasn’t going to happen now.

  “What do you want to do, Janey?”

  “What do you think I should do?”

  Before Maddie could state her opinion, Janey’s cell phone rang, and she took the call from her father.

  “I’ve bailed out Joe,” he said without preamble. “He’s coming to the marina to have lunch with me.”

  Her insides churned with indecision. She needed to see Joe, to find out what had driven him to punch David, and mostly to see if he was all right. The Joe she knew and loved wouldn’t do such a thing. So what had happened? Did David say something he shouldn’t have? Janey wouldn’t put it past him.

  “Did he say anything about what happened?” she asked her father.

  “Not much.”

  “I’ll come by the marina after a while.”

  “Is there anything I can do, Princess?” he asked in a soft voice that brought tears to her eyes.

  “I could use a big hug from my daddy.”

  “You got it,” he said gruffly. “I’ll see you soon.”

  Ending the call, she turned back to Maddie. “I need to see David. Can you take me to the clinic?”

  “Of course.”

  Twenty minutes later, they arrived at the entrance to the Emergency Room. Janey reached for the handle to open the car door but was hit with a sudden bout of paralysis. Waiting inside was the man she’d loved all her life, the same man who had betrayed her and didn’t have a clue that she knew what he’d been up to while continuing to profess his undying love for her.

  “Janey? Are you all right?”

  “I don’t know if I can do this. How do I go in there and play the role of the concerned fiancée when I know what he’s done?”

  “Just take it a step at a time. Deal with the injury and what happened with Joe this morning. Later, when you’re alone, you can talk to him about the rest.”

  Janey rested a hand on her aching belly. “I don’t want to be alone with him. The thought of it makes me sick.”

  “Then you don’t have to be. Mac and I meant it when we told you we’ll do anything we can to get you through this in one piece.”

  Janey continued to stare at the entrance to the ER. “It’s funny, you know? A week ago, if I’d heard he was hurt, I would’ve dropped everything and gone running.”

  Maddie rested a hand on Janey’s, infusing it with much-needed warmth. “That was before you discovered he’d been unfaithful to you. You don’t owe him anything. If you’d rather not go in there, you certainly don’t have to.”

  “If I don’t, then the whole island will be talking about why I didn’t show. Joe has already given them enough cause for speculation.”

  “Are you angry with him? With Joe?”

  “I’m shocked, to be honest. It’s so unlike him. I just keep wondering what David could’ve said to set him off.”

  “You’ll find out s
oon enough.”

  “Yeah, well. . . First things first.”

  “Want me to come in with you?”

  “Oh! Would you? That’d be great.”

  “Let’s go.”

  Inside, they asked for David and were shown to a curtained cubicle at the end of a long hallway. Glancing at Maddie for courage, Janey stuck her head inside and gasped at the sight of David bruised and bloody and swollen. Damn! Joe had done quite a number on him!

  “Well, look who it is,” David said with a bitter edge to his voice. “My missing fiancée.” His face was so distorted he didn’t even sound like himself. “Where the heck have you been, Janey? I’ve been trying to call you for days!”

  As if she was meeting him for the first time, she studied the thick dark hair she’d so loved running her fingers through, the piercing blue eyes, the strong jaw and sensuous lips. David Lawrence had always made her heart race, but looking at him now, she felt dead inside. “I had. . . um. . . some stuff to take care of.”

  “What kind of stuff? And what the hell’s wrong with Joe?”

  “Did you say something to him?”

  “I said hello. That was it. Next thing I know, I’m on my ass with a broken nose that hurts like a mother.” Under each eye was the start of what would no doubt be colorful shiners—the least of what he deserved. “What’d I ever do to him?”

  Since Janey couldn’t very well answer that question, she said nothing. He didn’t seem to notice as he continued to rant.

  “You didn’t tell me what ‘things’ you had to take care of that kept you from calling me back for three days.”

  He sounded sulky and petulant. Did she dare remind him of the many times over their years together that she’d waited sometimes a week for a return call from him while he was doing who knows what with other women? As she studied him, she decided it wasn’t worth the bother of the argument. What did it matter now?