Barefoot in the Rain

  She plowed through some shrubbery in the neighbor’s yard, not bothering with the access path to the canals. How far could he have gotten? Was he out there rowing? Lost? Or—

  She let out a soft cry as she reached the water’s edge, the muck squishing through her bare toes. The canal wasn’t deep, maybe four feet, and she could wade or even swim it, but not for long. And not safely.

  She turned left and right, thinking hard and fast, spying a bright-yellow plastic kayak leaning against a dock two houses away. She took off for it, a million rationalizations spinning through her mind. But no one called out to stop her when she dragged the lightweight craft down a stone path, used the oar to push off, and hopped into the single seat.

  Rain bounced off the water and made a popping sound on the plastic kayak, falling just hard enough to make the effort completely uncomfortable and the world wet and blurry.

  Or maybe her vision was blurred by tears, because without her realizing it, they were pouring out of her eyes.

  Just thinking about Guy lost out here, alone and terrified, ripped her heart to shreds. Please, God, please let him be okay.

  Dragging the paddle through the water, she squinted at the little mounds of mangroves that made up the islands, a question nagging at her, as incessant as the rain.

  When had he started to matter so much to her?

  Why did she love a man who had made her life a living hell?

  “Because that man is gone,” she mumbled into the rain and breeze. And in his place was a new man who deserved a second chance.

  Just like Will.

  Maybe Will hadn’t sacrificed his career for her, or come after her when they were separated, and maybe he’d opened his heart and life to a man Jocelyn thought she hated. Maybe Will needed her forgiveness, too.

  Maybe Jocelyn needed to let go and love instead of holding on to hate.

  There was no maybe about it. But first, she had to find her father.

  A loud splash made her jump and almost drop the oar, but she clung to the slippery stick, her eyes darting as she expected to come face-to-face with an alligator. But it was a mighty blue heron who’d made the noise, a helpless fish hanging from its mouth.

  “Henry,” she whispered, a sob choking her. “Have you seen my daddy?”

  He tipped his head back, devoured breakfast, and stretched his wings to take flight, heading south to disappear in the rain. Without a clue which way to go, she followed, staying close to the shore, her arms already burning from the effort of slicing the kayak through the water.

  This was lunacy. He wasn’t out here.

  But who had taken the rowboat? a voice insisted.

  How had he dragged it across the street and into the water all by—

  The kayak hit something hard in the water, pulling another gasp from her throat. What the—

  A narrow tip of aluminum stuck straight out of the water. The tip of a sunken rowboat. No, no. Not a rowboat. Their rowboat!

  Shoving wet strands from her eyes and tamping down panic, she looked around, zeroing in on a mangrove hammock about twenty feet away. It was the closest island, the only place a person could swim to from here.

  “Guy!” she called out, the words lost in the rain. “Guy!”

  With every ounce of strength she had, she plowed the oar through the water, reaching the island in about fifteen burning strokes. He had to be here. He had to.

  She climbed out of the kayak, stuffing the edge of the oar in the muck for balance, her foot landing on a sharp rock that made her grunt in pain. Dragging the kayak to dry land, she remembered the picture she’d taken from the house and found it pressed to the wet bottom of the kayak seat.

  Wanting it with her, she unpeeled it from the plastic and turned to squint into the rain and through the mangroves that lined the island’s edge.

  “Guy! Are you here?”

  Shoving branches out of her way, she headed toward the middle of a hammock that was not more than thirty feet in diameter. In the center there should be some clear space and—

  She spotted him rolled up in a ball under a Brazilian pepper tree.

  “Guy!” Ignoring the roots and rocks stabbing her bare feet, she ran to him, falling on his body as relief rocked her. “Oh my God, are you okay?”

  He moaned, murmured, and turned slightly, his glasses completely bent from the weight of his head, his poor face marked with bug bites, his teeth as yellow as ever as he bared them in a smile.

  “That you, Missy?”

  He was alive. Relief rocked her. “Yes, Guy. It’s me.” She folded him in her arms and squeezed her eyes against the sting of fresh tears.

  “Are you mad at me?” he asked, as contrite as a kid.

  She sat up, tenderly holding his head while she slipped the ruined glasses off his face. “No.” Her voice cracked. “Just tell me you’re okay.”

  “I’m fine.”

  But she could tell by his gruff, hoarse voice that he wasn’t. He was scared and suffering, and surely wouldn’t have made it out here much longer.

  “Did I miss the yard sale?”

  She almost laughed, but shook her head, rocking back on the wet dirt and grass with him in her arms.

  “We waited for you.” She inched him away to search his face, so battered and bitten, so old and tired. He didn’t even resemble the man of her childhood anymore. Not inside or out. “What happened, Guy? Why did you leave me?”

  His eyes clouded as he shook his head. “I don’t remember.”

  Really? Was he telling the truth? “You really don’t remember anything, Guy? Not why you left or what your life used to be like or—”

  “I wanted this! How did it get here?” He snapped up the wet picture that had fallen to the ground.

  “I…” She slid the picture from his fingers, the image so water-damaged that it was almost impossible to make out any details. “It’s mine,” she said.

  “You know that little girl?” His voice rose with a mix of fear and hope.

  Jocelyn nodded, biting her lip, fighting more tears. Finally, she looked up to meet his gray gaze. “I am that little girl.”

  Something flickered in his eyes, a flash of recognition, a split second of awareness, then the fog came back.

  “Do you know that, Guy?”

  He closed his eyes and shook his head, abject misery in the tiny move. “I forget.”

  She cupped his face with her hand. “Then so will I.” She leaned closer so her forehead touched his. “I forget and I forgive.”

  He heaved a great big sigh.

  She lifted her head, pressed her lips to his wet forehead, and gave him a kiss. “Let’s get you home, Daddy.”

  The tailwind that got the flight across country by dawn East Coast time turned out to be a cold front that left all of southwest Florida in a mist of cool rain, snarling up traffic even at this crazy early hour.

  Was it Will’s imagination or was the causeway just more crowded than usual?

  Next to him Coco stirred, finally taking off the baseball cap and sunglasses she’d kept on since before he’d returned his rental car at LAX. Must be the standard L.A. disguise, he mused, thinking of Jocelyn and her designer cap.

  Coco had slept almost the whole flight, stayed pretty quiet when she woke, and had been remarkably ignored by almost everyone.

  Of course the way Will looked at anyone who came within five feet of her kept any curious celebrity hunters at bay.

  “You sure she’ll be here?” Coco asked as his truck rumbled over the causeway toward Mimosa Key. “Because I will not do this without Jocelyn.”

  He didn’t respond, weaving through way more traffic than he’d have expected at this time of the morning.

  “You are sure, aren’t you?” she pressed.

  “I’m not sure of anything,” he said honestly.

  “Except that you love her.”

  He shot a surprised look at her. “That obvious?”

  For the first time, she laughed softly. “Maybe you should ste
p back and review your behavior for the past day. Have you even slept? No, you’ve just flown cross-country—twice—and threw yourself at the mercy of a woman you’ve never met, sucker-punched a movie star, and kidnapped me to—”

  “I didn’t kidnap you,” he shot back. “You were ready to leave him.”

  “I thought I had. Then I took him back. I’m done now.”

  “What finally changed your mind?”

  She let out a dramatic sigh. “You.”

  “Because I beat up your husband?”

  “Because you love Jocelyn enough to do what you did. I want that,” she said simply. “I saw it in action and it wasn’t in a movie script. It was real. I want that for me.”

  “Then you should go find it.”

  “This is the first step, big crazy lover boy.”

  He grinned at her. “You think I’m crazy?”

  “I do, which makes you absolutely perfect for Jocelyn, in my opinion.”

  “Why, because her role in life is to fix crazy people and make them better?”

  “No, because she’s a nutcase herself.”

  He took his eyes from the road to glance at her. “Are we talking about the same woman? I’ve never met a person more sane than Jocelyn.”

  “With the compulsive list making?”

  He laughed softly. “Yeah, she’s a list maker, but that doesn’t make her crazy. It makes her organized and gives her a sense of control.” And he loved that about her.

  “And the neatness?”

  “Like I said, control and organization. She’s not OCD.”

  “Borderline. And, sorry, but there is nothing sane about hanging on to your virginity into your thirties.”

  He slammed on the brakes, getting a deafening horn from the poor guy behind him. “What?”

  “You didn’t know?”

  A few white lights popped in the back of his head, blinding him momentarily.

  Jocelyn had never slept with anyone?

  That wasn’t possible. That wasn’t normal. And that wasn’t true anymore, even if this woman had her facts straight, which he sincerely doubted she did. “I don’t think she’s the kind of woman to talk about that to her friends.”

  “Oh, we talked about it. She talked about everything with me.”

  Probably not everything, but he wouldn’t be the one to share her secrets.

  “I know about her dad.”

  Okay, maybe everything. He flipped the wipers up a notch as they passed through a band of heavy rain. “He only… only beat her once,” he said, hearing the shame in his voice. Did she know Will’s role in that spectacular night?

  “Once was all it took to freeze her up in the sex department.”

  He slipped around a slow-moving van, spraying water as the end of the causeway beckoned. And, he hoped, the end of this conversation. “I don’t think you know what you’re talking about.”

  He prayed she didn’t, anyway. Not that he didn’t like the idea of being the only man who’d ever made love to her, but had he played a role in stealing that from her, too? Guilt pummeled his chest.

  “I know what she said. Her old man damn near killed the guy she was fooling around with. Her dad—he’s one for the books, isn’t he? Anyway, she told me he caught her with the guy and beat the holy hell out of her. Called her a whore over and over again. With each punch, he said it again—”

  “Stop it.” He pounded the steering wheel, his eyes stinging. “Just… stop it.”

  “Oh my God, it was you.” She reached over and grabbed his arm. “You were the guy she was with that night. She never told me it was Baseball Boy, just… a guy.”

  Of course not, because she was still protecting him. He shook off her hand, gritting his teeth in silence while new waves of hate rolled over him. Remorse and regret roiled through his stomach, making him sick.

  “She never told me his name,” Coco continued, on a roll now. “She was just, you know, trying like hell to convince me to leave Miles when the whole story came pouring out of her. And I… I couldn’t just walk. I was chicken and so she came up with this fake affair for me. She let me save face and him, too. We hoped that would be enough to…”

  “To what?”

  “Keep him away from me.”

  He grunted. “That’s what restraining orders are for.”

  She just shook her head and shifted in her seat. “Jocelyn’s one in a million, you know?”

  God, he knew. Fifteen years. That was a damn long time to be alone. Too long.

  As if he could cut some of that time short, he smashed on the accelerator and fishtailed a little as he swerved through more traffic.

  “Holy shit!” She dove down like someone had shot through the windshield, fighting to get her seat belt undone.

  “What’s the matter?” He looked at the car next to them, right into a telephoto lens. “What the hell?”

  “Just drive. Fast!” She pushed onto the floor, scrambling for her hat and sunglasses. “How much farther?”

  “We’re almost there.” But the dark van slid right behind them, on their tail, and stayed there until he turned onto Sea Breeze and hit the brakes one more time to stare at the spectacle that made absolutely no sense. Except that it did.

  “Um, Coco.”

  She didn’t move from her hiding place below the dashboard. “What?”

  “About that press conference.”

  “What about it?”

  “I think it started without you.”

  Chapter 31

  They were drenched by the time Jocelyn managed to get Guy back to the dock where she’d found the kayak. The whole deal took well over an hour since the kayak was built for one. She managed to squeeze them both in, keeping him calm, getting him in and out of the water, tenderly helping his bug-bitten body make the short journey.

  By now she’d have expected the kayak owners to be awake, but all of the houses seemed unnaturally empty. And quiet. Still, someone was making noise. She could hear voices—quite a few, in fact.

  Jocelyn put her arm around Guy and guided him across the grass.

  “You’re going to be okay,” she promised, leading him along a thick six-foot hedge of hibiscus trees that blocked the view of the street and his house. “We’ll get some ointment on those—”

  The voices suddenly grew even louder, almost like a crowd screaming in the stands at a game, making them both slow their step.

  “What was that?” Guy asked, clinging tighter to her.

  “I don’t…” But deep inside, she did know. Deep inside, she knew exactly what they were going to find when they reached the street. Reporters. Cameras. Paparazzi.

  “Guy, I have to tell you something.”

  He didn’t answer as he navigated the wet grass and drizzle that smeared his glasses.

  “I need you to brace yourself for when we get to the street.”

  “Why?”

  “Because…” She took him a few steps farther, the crowd noise rising up as if they already saw her, the constant clicking of cameras like a serenade of crickets, a few voices shouting, the words impossible to make out. Neighbors she recognized gathered in small groups outside their houses, some still in bathrobes, some with cameras of their own.

  “There she is!” someone yelled.

  “With that man!”

  Jocelyn turned left and right, confused. No one was pointing at her. No reporters came running at them. She took a few more steps and rounded the shrubbery to get a view of Guy’s house.

  “Oh, my word, Missy, look!” Guy practically stumbled as he pulled her forward and they saw the crowd covering her front lawn and driveway and spilling into the street.

  “I know, Guy, I know.”

  He turned to her and threw his arms around her. “You did it, girl!” He knocked his glasses to the ground but didn’t even notice, practically jumping up and down. “You got the crowds here for the yard sale! Look at all the cameras!”

  She couldn’t help laughing at his exuberance and the pure innoc
ence of his assumption. “Guess we did, Guy.” She dipped down to get his glasses, wiping them with the hem of her shirt, which didn’t help at all but gave her a second to collect her thoughts as she peered past him at the pack of reporters.

  Why were the cameras all pointed toward the street, where a truck slowly—

  Not a truck. Will’s truck. Chills exploded over her skin as she covered her mouth in shock. “Oh my God, he’s back.”

  “William?” Guy greedily grabbed his glasses. “I knew it! I knew he’d come back to me. He always does. Like… like… like one of the Austrian toys.”

  “Australian.”

  “What are they called?”

  She just smiled, an inexplicable happiness washing over her like the rain. “Boomerang.” Or Bloom-erang.

  You always come back to me.

  “But his interview…” Was today. Her words were lost in the breeze and crowd noise as the truck slowed in front of the house, unable to get in the driveway.

  “Come on.” Guy tugged at her, running on pure adrenaline now. “We gotta get over there.”

  “Wait.” The media rushed the truck, surrounding it, shouting questions, pounding on the hood. Did they think she was in there?

  Will parked on the street just as the front door of the house opened and about a half dozen sheriff’s deputies came marching out of Guy’s house. They dispersed the crowd and stationed themselves in a protective pathway to the car.

  All for Will?

  Didn’t the media realize the person they wanted was right behind them, standing out in the open? Obviously not, which gave her a chance to change her plan. She had Guy now; there was no reason to make her public plea.

  Just then, the crowd roar erupted as Will got out of the truck, rounding to the other side, shouting at the cameramen. A few more deputies surrounded the truck, one opening the passenger door to help someone out.

  Oh, not someone. Coco.

  For a moment Jocelyn couldn’t speak. Shock and disbelief stole her breath and crushed her lungs. Coco Kirkman was here? With Will?

  Why?

  The press shouted questions, but Will and one of the deputies flanked Coco, who held up her hand in a plea for space. Will shouted at the reporters, but Jocelyn couldn’t catch the words over the noise. She’d make a statement? Was that what he said?