Barefoot at Midnight (Barefoot Bay Timeless Book 3)

  There, they rode along the water and dark, mysterious canals that had yet to be touched by eager developers. A midnight half-moon lit their way, and for a time, a short, free time, Libby didn’t think about anything but the strength of the man in her arms, the feel of his muscles and thickness of his torso, and the rough, hot, noisy engine between her legs.

  She pressed her lips to his shoulder and closed her eyes, inhaling the lingering smell of the food on him and the briny air from the brackish canal water.

  Coming around a corner on a darkened road, he slowed a little, then veered to the side, bringing the bike to a stop. He put his feet on the ground to balance them, then shut off the ignition.

  She squinted into the darkness, not sure exactly where they were, though she knew the area well enough. As her eyes adjusted to the darkness, she could see a blackened waterway and some islands beyond it, then past that, the Gulf of Mexico.

  He pushed the kickstand down and climbed off the bike, holding it steady for her to do the same. “Come with me.”

  She reached up and unsnapped her helmet, shaking out her hair. The closest thing to cool air that anyone would feel on an August night in Florida kissed the little bit of skin she’d left exposed, and almost immediately, a mosquito buzzed by her ear.

  She flicked at it, and Law tossed her an I told you so look, taking her hands and walking her to a long, weathered dock she hadn’t seen in the moonlight.

  “Oh, I know where we are,” she said, getting her bearings now. “We used to bring kayaks to this dock when we were teenagers.”

  “Mmm.” He nodded. “Lots of people do. There’s parking over there, and it’s the start of a good run through these islands.”

  “Does this dock have a name?” she asked.

  “Might. But I think of it as Beckett’s dock.”

  She glanced at him as they walked toward the wooden planks. “Who’s Beckett?”

  “My brother.”

  She looked up at him, surprised. “I didn’t know you have a brother.”

  “Had,” he corrected.

  “Oh, I’m sorry.” She studied him for a moment, then the darkness beyond. “Is that why you brought me here?”

  “I brought you here because you need to know who I am. What I am.”

  He took her hand and walked along the wooden platform to the dock that extended out about twenty-five feet into the canal. They walked in silence to the end.

  “Right here,” he said, pulling her a little to sit down. “Right here.”

  They sat on the end of the dock, and he crossed his legs. “Don’t hang your legs in,” he warned.

  “Best not to feed the gators?”

  “Yeah, but we’re safe up here.” He leaned back, bracing himself on two hands, looking up to the moon, quiet. She watched him for a moment, then scanned the still, black water and clusters of small islands.

  “I liked kayaking up here with Sam,” she said, a memory floating back to her. “And my grandfather liked to come up and fish.”

  “Good fishing here,” he agreed. “Except…”

  “Except what?” she asked, sensing they were getting to the root of why they were there.

  He didn’t answer, staring straight ahead.

  “Law?” she finally asked, putting a hand on his arm. “Tell me about your brother.”

  He focused his attention on her, coming back from wherever he’d gone. “He died here in a boating accident. And it was my fault.”

  She sucked in a little bit of air, the statement so direct and unexpected and…sad. “I’m sorry.”

  “Me, too,” he said with a wry laugh. “But you can never be sorry enough when you’re the reason the far better, smarter, and more amazing son is dead.”

  Oh. She squeezed his hand in sympathy, not arguing with what sounded like an old, old pain. Instead, she tried to wrap her head around losing Sam, and failed. “I can’t imagine that.”

  “No,” he agreed. “You can’t. It’s crippling. The only way I ever numbed it was with alcohol. It deadened the guilt and killed the memories. For a while at least. And then it started killing me, which is when Jake Peterson stepped in and saved my life.”

  “How did he do that, Law?”

  “He…” He looked directly in her eyes, a world of hurt in his. “He loved me. And at that point in my life, I didn’t know what that even was. Never knew it before or since.”

  “Your parents didn’t love you?”

  He opened his mouth to answer, then shut it again, turning away, silent.

  “They must have,” she said, as if the question begged some kind of answer.

  “They probably did, before September of 1980. After that? I was nothing but a source of pain. My mother was wrecked and eventually moved away to be with her family in Tennessee. She died a few years ago, and I can honestly assure you that she never once forgave me or said she loved me in the thirty-some years between Beckett’s death and hers.”

  Libby winced at the thought. And no one had loved him since then? She couldn’t imagine her mother not loving her, or, for that matter, not loving a child. She might sleep in an empty bed, but her heart and life were full with family love.

  “My dad raised me, more or less, and did his best to introduce me to the joys of drowning your sorrows in the bottom of a bottle. He also beat the crap out of me, reminded me every day that if I hadn’t given up, I might have saved my brother, and then he died, too, of cirrhosis. He didn’t really recognize me the last time he saw me. He called me…Beckett.”

  She sighed, still holding his hand, feeling like a little window to his heart was opening, and getting a chance to peek in was frightening and humbling. And just made her care for him more, and something told her that was not his intention at all.

  On the contrary, he was ripping back the curtain and expecting her to recoil.

  “We shouldn’t have been out that late,” he said, looking at the water again, drifting away in his thoughts. She knew better than to prod for details. She had to wait until he was ready.

  It took a full minute until he spoke again. “Beckett was fearless, you know? Four years older than I was, bigger than life. Loud, funny, smart, athletic, and nothing scared him. We should have gone home, but we didn’t. Fish were biting, and he…he’d stolen some beer from my dad. I didn’t drink it, since I was only ten, but Beckett had a few, and he got crazy.”

  He narrowed his gaze, locking on something…out there. She didn’t let go of his hand as she waited for more of the story.

  “He was acting like an idiot, throwing the net out too far, and we were only on a skiff with one shitty engine. It was dark, and I wanted to go home so bad, but Beckett was drunk. Maybe for the first time in his life. He threw the net off the bow, and it got caught on something, and he fell in. I wasn’t even looking. I just heard the splash and then…nothing. Silence. Just…nothing.”

  She tried to put herself in the body of a ten-year-old boy whose brother had just fallen into black, gator-filled water at night. The terror must have been paralyzing.

  “It was so damn quiet. That was the scary part. One second he was there, the next, gone.” He let out a slow sigh, steadying his voice and, she suspected, his heart. “I kept calling and looking. We had one flashlight that was almost out of batteries, and I was so nervous and scared I couldn’t steer the rudder. I just kept screaming his name over and over, but…nothing.”

  He dropped his head and let it shake from side to side, and Libby moved closer, putting an arm around him. She wanted to tell him it was okay, but that kind of pain couldn’t be brushed away with a platitude.

  He swallowed and composed himself. “I left,” he said softly. “I finally got the boat to steer right, and I came right back here and stood in the road wailing until some stranger drove by and found me, and I honestly don’t remember the rest of the night. They found his body the next day, and no, a gator did not kill him. He must have hit his head on something and died instantly or drowned quickly. Really, the details
never stuck in my head, because I knew the truth.” He closed his eyes, the pain etched on every feature of his face. “I quit. I gave up. I left too soon.”

  “No!” She sat up straight, shaking her head. “What could you have done? Jumped in the water and had the same thing happen to you?”

  He exhaled again. “I shouldn’t have left, and my dad told me that every day I saw him for the rest of his life. He ingrained it in me—Lawson Monroe is a quitter. I believed it, I lived it, and I drank to escape that truth.”

  “But you’re not drinking now, so you must have come to terms with this accident by now, at least to some degree.”

  “I have,” he said. “Going into the Army helped a lot, finding my skill in the kitchen, but Jake was the one who got me off booze and made me face the fact that my dad needed someone to blame for the loss of his favorite son. But it doesn’t change who I am, deep down. Not really good enough for…anything.”

  “Anything?”

  “Anything that really matters. Ninety-nine percent of the time, I’ll quit. When the going gets tough, Law gets going. In the other direction.”

  She shook her head, not buying that at all. “Your dad said you were a quitter, you think that trait is why your brother died, but now you can’t or won’t have relationships because of it?”

  He stared at her, the slightest misting in his eyes. “Something like that.”

  “Is that why you’ve never married? Or settled into a home? Or one long-term job?”

  “That’s a lot of questions,” he said with a laugh, picking up a dried leaf from the dock and slowly breaking it into small pieces as he looked out to the night.

  “Then take them one at a time.”

  “Okay. Why I never married? I suppose if you dig deep enough, the accident shaped every relationship I ever had.”

  “Shaped them into what?” she asked.

  Another mirthless laugh as he cracked the leaf. “I guess I asked for this when I brought you here, huh?”

  “Really.” She leaned into him and gave a nudge. “We should be in bed right now, Lawless, not having deep, introspective talks on a bug-infested dock in the middle of the night.”

  “No kidding. What was I thinking?”

  “Too late now. Answer my questions.”

  He shot her a smile, about to say something, but then he shook his head.

  “What?” she asked.

  “You,” he replied.

  “What about me?”

  “I thought you were all…” He hesitated again. “I had you all wrong, that’s all.”

  Her heart did a little squeeze at the admission, and she wanted to ask how he had her wrong, what he thought, but she didn’t. “Why don’t you live somewhere permanent?” she asked instead. “Why are you moving about and bunking in spare rooms at your age?”

  The little light of warmth disappeared from his face, and he turned away again, silent for a long beat before he answered. “I guess the same reason,” he eventually said. “A home, like a long-term relationship, is just…well, it feels wrong to me.”

  “Wrong? How is that possible?”

  “Like it’s for other people, not me.”

  She drew back. “How can having a home be for other people and not for you?”

  He didn’t respond, silenced either by emotions or secrets too deep to share, even here.

  “Law.” She whispered his name, sympathy welling in her chest. “Everyone deserves a home.”

  He just flicked his brow and let the broken leaf fall back to the dock. “I don’t even get the concept, to be honest. Mine was crap as a kid, then in the Army I never had a home, then I sort of bounced around and lived with Jake. And what was your last question? Oh, the job. Well, chefs jump jobs unless…” He narrowed his eyes at her. “They own a place.”

  He was trying to tease, but guilt squeezed. “So that’s what the Pelican would be to you. Your first long-term job.”

  “My first long-term anything. And at forty-six, that’s saying a lot.”

  She gave a grunt of guilt. “God, I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be. It means something important to you, too.” He searched her face for a moment, as if he were trying to get inside and find out what that something was.

  “Balance,” she whispered.

  “Yes, that’s what you’re going to name the place. I remember.”

  “No, that’s what I’m looking for,” she said. “My whole life has been tilted by the need for…a man to validate me.” Even as the words came out, they surprised her. She hadn’t ever thought about it quite in those terms, and the concept was both unspeakably true and shameful.

  But, really, wasn’t that at the core of everything that troubled her? “Without that, I feel unstable. So I think the business would replace that and bring balance into my life.”

  “You don’t need a man to validate you,” he said. “To make sweet love and give you pleasure and enjoy all that beauty and brilliance, yeah. But you’re valid, Libby Chesterfield.”

  She smiled at him, but her mind was whirring through this new revelation. “I have an issue with casual sex.”

  “So I’ve heard.”

  “No, not just since I decided to be celibate, but always. I don’t like the way it makes me feel.”

  “That’s because—”

  “I know, I’ve been with the wrong guy and I’m putting too much meaning on the act. Let’s just say I’ve had enough meaningless hookups to know they don’t work for me, no matter the circumstances. That’s always been my downfall and why I married the wrong men. But men look at me, and that’s what they want. Sex and more sex and then…they move on.”

  To Arizona, she thought glumly.

  She took a deep breath to finish the speech. “I would like to change that.”

  He stared at her, waiting for her to elaborate.

  “I would like to…be with you and have no expectations,” she said. “You know why?”

  “I’m going to guess it’s not the five orgasms I’ve promised.”

  “I trust you.”

  He just looked at her some more.

  “I trust you to make love to me and make me laugh and feel great and have fun, and I know, I know without a shadow of a doubt, that we’re both going into it with our eyes wide open.”

  “You might close your eyes.”

  “The fifth time. Exhaustion, you know.”

  He gave her a sly smile. “I can do that, and I think I’ve made it clear how much I want to. But are you sure? You’re not going to wake up, freak out, and run screaming into the night?”

  “Nor will I demand you love me forever and take the trash out on Tuesdays.”

  He laughed softly. “But isn’t that kind of a contradiction? You have these issues with men who only want you for sex, and now you want sex with one who’s made it perfectly clear what he wants, why he wants it, and how it won’t lead to anything except the next round.”

  “Yes.” She took a slow, deep, cleansing breath. “It’s like yoga. Sex with you will be like yoga.”

  “Ooh.” He hooted softly. “I promise you, Libby, it will be nothing like yoga.”

  “One of my best instructors once told me that it’s not yoga until you fall out of the pose. That’s when you realize what you’re doing wrong, and that’s when you reap incredible benefits. Obstacles fall away. Conflict disappears. Things that tripped you up your whole life suddenly make sense.”

  He studied her for a moment. “Yoga really does that?”

  “Absolutely,” she said. “It could help you.”

  “I don’t need help,” he replied quickly, starting to get up as if she might change her mind.

  “But you do.” She didn’t rise with him, but kept his hand in hers. “You need to let go of the thing that has you coming back to this dock.”

  “My brother? Never.”

  “Your guilt. Your shame. Your regret. Your firm belief that you aren’t worthy of a home or a relationship or a long-term job.”

&
nbsp; He shook his head and tugged her hand to bring her up with him. “I can’t yoga that stuff out of my life. But…” He pulled her all the way up and into him for a kiss. “I’m happy to help you have sense-making sex if you’re sure that’s what you want.”

  She nodded, firm in her conviction. “That’s exactly what I want. I want to enjoy sex and not have it all wrapped up with things that…don’t matter.”

  He took her hand and brought it to his mouth. “They matter to you, Lib.”

  “But I don’t want them to,” she insisted, meaning every word. “And you are the perfect lover to do the job. Tonight. Now. My house is ten minutes away.”

  He just looked at her for a few moments, a bit of wonder and amusement in his eyes. “Okay, yoga bear,” he whispered. “Let’s fall together.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  Law was drunk. He remembered the feeling and recognized it immediately. The erratic and chest-cracking hammer of his heart when the first sip hit his blood. The numbness in his fingers as they reached for another drink. The slack jaw, heavy limbs, the single-minded focus on pleasure, even the ringing in his ears that screamed more, more, more.

  Holy hell, Law was plastered on Libby Chesterfield.

  He’d felt a little tipsy during a long, wet, grabby kiss in her driveway. He’d gotten slammed as they started stripping each other before the door was locked behind them. And he was downright wasted on the feel of her breasts and the taste of her mouth as he and Libby staggered helplessly up the stairs to her bedroom.

  And now, standing at the foot of her bed, naked and hard and desperate as she lay down and beckoned him with the crook of her finger, Law knew that as soon as he had her, as soon as he plunged into paradise and surrendered to the sheer intoxication of Libby, it wouldn’t be enough.

  Just like that first sip of Jack and Coke, when it had slid down his throat and warmed his veins, he’d want her again and again and again.

  Then he’d be addicted to Libby, and hadn’t he just made some kind of promise that this would be nothing but a hedonistic, indulgent pursuit of pleasure that would happen once or twice or maybe three times and then it would be over?