Barefoot in Lace (Barefoot Bay Brides Book 2)

  “Not now, obviously. I love this business we’ve started, but…” She rewarded him with a smile that was both inviting and a little uncertain. “Doesn’t every stylist dream of working for a big fashion magazine or a top-notch photographer?”

  “So do it.”

  She shook her head, her dreamy expression melting into determination. “Oh, no. I committed to my two closest friends to launch a business, and we’re getting more successful and better known with each wedding.”

  “Why did you do that, if you have other professional dreams?”

  “Because…” She took a slow breath, measuring her response. “Some things are more important than seeing your work on the pages of Vogue.”

  “Like?”

  “Like family,” she replied without a second’s hesitation.

  He frowned, realizing she’d mentioned she was from the Boston area and told Alex she had a brother, but hadn’t talked about any other family. “Where’s yours?” he asked.

  “Well, it depends on which family you mean. Ari and Willow are like my sisters now, and they are family, which doesn’t have to be blood.”

  The statement hit him harder than he’d expected, but he pushed the emotional response back to the dark corner where he kept thoughts like that. “Are they all from Boston, too? Were you childhood friends with these women?”

  “Oh, no. We met when we were all on the board of the American Association of Bridal Consultants, which had us traveling together every month to different destination-wedding locales. We cooked up the idea of combining our talents into one business and chose Barefoot Bay as our location. I threw in with them because I wanted the solid sense of a team and that security that comes with knowing someone has your back. Do you get that?”

  Did he get that? Better than anyone. He also knew how…fleeting…it could be. He lifted his arm and pointed to his panta monos tattoo. “I have my back,” he told her.

  “Oh, that’s right, you’re the Lonesome Dove.”

  “I prefer eagle.”

  “And eagles fly alone? Well, have fun with that. Like I said, family is everything, and they are mine.”

  Family is everything. He swallowed a response that would only sound bitter and angry. “What about the family that you were born into?” he asked.

  Her expression flickered slightly. “Cracked and broken up, I’m afraid.”

  He wasn’t exactly sure what that meant, but he recognized the hitch of pain in her voice. “As in…” he prodded.

  “As in my family is not a solid foundation to stand on, and since I really need and want that, I have chosen to build my life with these dear friends.”

  She regarded him for a moment, the moonlight making her eyes a soft, pale green, but then she closed them as something hit her. “How thoughtless I am,” she said suddenly. “I shouldn’t be talking about family to a man who recently lost his sister. I’m so sorry.”

  “No, that’s fine.” He paused as they reached the water’s edge, the sand as cold and hard as his heart right then. “I usually avoid the subject of family, even before this latest tragedy.”

  “What about the rest of your family?” she asked. “You said there are no other close relatives.”

  “My parents were killed in a car accident when I was seventeen. Ruthie was thirteen.”

  He heard her suck in a soft, shocked breath.

  “We lived with my grandmother, who Ruthie lovingly called Cruella DeMille.”

  Gussie gave a sad smile, listening.

  “And when she died, I raised Ruthie until she was eighteen.”

  “Oh, God.” She gave his arm a squeeze of sympathy. “No wonder you don’t talk about your family. You’ve lost three people.”

  He nodded, absolutely unwilling to tell her the number didn’t stop at three. It would have killed the whole night.

  “Is that why you take such emotional pictures?”

  The question surprised him. “I’ve never thought of it that way, but maybe.”

  “Your shots are always so poignant.”

  “Thanks, but that’s not because of my past. I told you I can find a subject’s vulnerability point. It’s my secret power.”

  She gave a quiet laugh. “Good to know. Is that better than X-ray vision?”

  “Very similar, actually. And that’s how I get a great shot. Models especially will tell me anything.”

  She gave him a playful nudge. “’Cause you’re cute.”

  He got a hold of her elbow and eased her a little closer so their feet were in the cool water. “So are you.”

  “Not exactly.”

  He turned her so they were facing each other, considering if he should tell her he was about to use that secret talent or let her figure it out. For a few heartbeats, they looked at each other, a nice, positive attraction as heavy as the humidity in the air.

  Brushing back a few strands of her hair, he inched infinitesimally closer. “Why do you wear this?”

  She answered with a casual shrug of one shoulder. “It’s my signature look.”

  “Hmm.”

  “It is,” she insisted.

  “Is that why you don’t think you’re pretty?”

  Her eyes grew wide, like he was a doctor tapping around and had found the very spot that caused pain. “I never said that. Charity did.”

  “And she’s wrong,” he assured her.

  She gave a little eye roll, telling him she didn’t think Charity was wrong at all.

  “But you do always wear a wig?”

  “Not always. Sometimes I wear hats.”

  Her expression shifted subtly, susceptibility working its way to the forefront as he found her tender place, the thing that made her teeter on the edge between fierce and fearful. He wanted to see that on her face, wanted to memorize it. God, he wanted to take a picture of it.

  “Take the wig off.”

  She stared at him, motionless.

  “You can do it,” he said. “I don’t care if you’re hiding a bad hair day or you’re bald as the proverbial cue ball. I want to see you, Augusta McBain.”

  “You’re looking at me, Thomas Jefferson DeMille.”

  “But I’m not seeing all of you.” He got a little bit closer, threading his fingers into the hair until he felt the netting underneath.

  “Don’t,” she said.

  He relaxed his hands instantly, obeying her order. “Then tell me the real reason you wear it, and I’ll never mention it again.”

  For a long, long time, she didn’t move, didn’t even breathe. He was certain she was making some kind of decision. To trust or not trust. To share or not share. To give or not give. It was like watching a woman decide whether she’d let herself be seduced. Only it was a hundred times sexier.

  After a slow, deep inhale, she put her hands on the sides of her head and carefully lifted the wig out of his fingertips. As the bangs brushed upward, he saw more of her. A high, beautifully round forehead that finished the heart-shaped face. God had been in a very good mood the day He’d designed her.

  Waves of honey-colored hair fell to her shoulders in soft, silky strands. It wasn’t styled, but it had been twisted, so the strands curled a little, framing her face. Thick, sexy, naturally beautiful hair that would look stunning in any style.

  “Why do you hide this?” he asked, incredulous because it wasn’t what he had been expecting under that wig.

  She swallowed, then turned. He managed not to hiss a breath at the sight of the back of her head, where there was no hair at all. Just a misshapen patch of cratered skin, disfigured and slashed with the marbled, mottled scars of a horrifying burn.

  He saw her shoulders rise a bit, as if she shuddered under his scrutiny. He turned her around and wasn’t the least bit surprised to see mist in her eyes.

  “You know what I think is beautiful?” he asked.

  “If you say my head, I’ll know you’re lying.”

  He let his thumbs run under her jawline. “Beautiful is a woman who survives and thrives n
o matter what life throws at her.”

  “Life didn’t throw that bottle rocket. My brother, Luke, did.”

  “Oh.” The sound was half grunt, half sigh, all pain for her. “That’s awful.”

  “No, it’s just something that happened.” She reached up and pulled her hair off her face, making a ponytail. “My scar is ugly, so I cover it, that’s all.”

  But somehow he didn’t think that was all. Not for a minute. And that only made Tom want to peel off more layers of Gussie McBain.

  Chapter Four

  “It’s no big deal,” Gussie said, using that cavalier tone she always copped when someone saw the scar. She’d learned early that the attitude helped ease the other person’s discomfort much more than her own.

  “Your eyes would say differently,” Tom replied.

  And then there was the rare person who saw right though her devil-may-care act. Immediately, she fought the urge to stuff her head back into the safety net of her favorite wig. Instead, she concentrated on the look in Tom’s dreamy blue eyes, a look that wasn’t pity or shock or disgust or curiosity.

  He looked…intrigued.

  And that gave her enough courage to let the wig hang in her hand and feel the rare sensation of a tropical breeze on her hair and scalp.

  “Well, the problem’s in the back,” she said, using another well-worn phrase. “It was a blessing I spun around the instant I did or that would have been my face.”

  He flinched with a millisecond of horror. “What happened?”

  She rooted through all the different versions of the tale she’d accumulated over the years. The quick-and-dirty “childhood accident” or “wrong place, wrong time” was fine with the occasional stranger. The more detailed “my brother was drunk with his friends and accidentally shot a bottle rocket at my head” usually sufficed for the very curious. But then there were close friends who deserved a little bit more.

  Where on the spectrum of trust did Tom land? She wasn’t sure yet, so she went with the simple truth.

  “Fourth of July accident when I was fifteen years old,” she said. “I was at the Cape with my older brother, and he and his friends got…well, like crazy teenage boys get on summer nights at the beach. Next thing you know, I’m an Independence Day statistic.”

  “Holy shit,” he murmured. “How awful. For both of you.”

  Somehow, the fact that he recognized how bad it was for Luke, and not just her, touched her heart. Truth was, it was worse for her brother than it had been for her, and he’d paid a higher price.

  “Yeah, it”—broke up the most perfect family—“was hard.”

  “Hard has to be an understatement.”

  She turned to the water, oddly unembarrassed that he could see her scar. She knew how to partially cover it with a ponytail and some creative hairstyling, but it wasn’t covered now. “Damn, you have a gift,” she murmured.

  “Don’t change the subject.”

  “I’m not. I mean it. You weren’t kidding when you said you have X-ray vision.”

  “I don’t generally unleash that on innocent bystanders, but…” He got a little closer. “You fascinate me.”

  She did? He was the fascinating one with all his secret powers of perception. Silent for a moment, she listened to the water lap and the sound of distant laughter from the resort.

  “So, did you forgive your brother?”

  The question stung, nearly taking her breath away. “If only I could.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “After I got out of the hospital, he…” She swallowed hard, wishing so much this story had a different ending. “He left.”

  “Where did he go?”

  She shrugged. “We don’t know.”

  Tom looked as surprised as anyone when she told them the truth.

  “Except for a few random calls after he disappeared, he dropped off the face of the earth.”

  “Damn.”

  “Yeah, damn.” Old emotions, anger and hurt and frustration, bubbled up and threatened to spew. But she shouldn’t tell him everything, not now, not here. This man barely knew her and had no connection to her. He wouldn’t care about how her happy, stable, perfect family shattered from the impact of one wayward bottle rocket and one stupid girl on a hot July night fifteen years ago.

  In her peripheral vision, she was aware that he lifted his hand and was going to—

  “No.” She jerked away from his touch before his hand made contact with the scar. “Please.”

  “Does it hurt?”

  “Only my pride.” She raised the wig. “My hair won’t grow where the burn scar is, no matter how many transplant surgeries I had.” She grabbed the hair that grew on either side of the scar. She kept it long, and with some creativity, she’d learned to get it under a hat or even make a ponytail to come out of the back of a baseball cap, but she never forgot that the scar was there.

  “I battled it for years, then wigs came into style, and I made wearing one my own personal look, in a rainbow of crazy colors. That’s it. Curiosity satisfied? Can I put it back on?”

  “You don’t have to wear it for my sake, only if it makes you more comfortable.” He gestured toward the raised edge of sand formed by the last high tide. “Want to sit?”

  “What I want to do is dive into that water.” The admission tumbled out, and at his surprised look, she added, “I’m usually at the beach on crowded Sunday afternoons, so I never go underwater. I wear hats a lot.”

  “So let’s go in.”

  She laughed at the suggestion. “I’ve shown you enough skin for one night.”

  “Then keep your clothes on.” At her look, he laughed. “Underwear? I assume you’ve got some on. Colorful, if I had to venture a guess.”

  “Polka dot, actually.”

  He made a little grunt in his chest, kind of slow and dirty. “Did you know that they’ve done research and found that men are aroused by polka dots?”

  “Men are aroused. Period.”

  “I can handle a swim. Can you?” He started unbuttoning his shirt, pulling the tails from his khaki pants. When he finished with the buttons, he shrugged out of the shirt, the moonlight catching cuts and cords of his muscles, and a soft tuft of chest hair nestled between impressive pecs. And more ink. His whole left pec was covered in swirls of purple and blue that looked like some kind of dragon. The tattoo ran over his shoulder and pec and down the side of his waist. She wasn’t normally a lover of all that body art, but his was stunning, and she couldn’t stop staring.

  The pants hung low enough to show narrow hips and the tip of another tattoo…down there.

  “We’ve all got some things hidden, don’t we?” he teased, watching where her gaze had settled.

  “Your hidden things are nicer-looking than mine.” She scooped up his shirt and handed it to him. “But since I met—and hired—you today, I’m going to pass on the swim.”

  He took the shirt, letting their fingers brush, sending a hundred goose bumps down her spine. “I’m not ready to end the night.” And there went a hundred more.

  “Who said anything about ending it?”

  His brows rose in interest.

  “We’ve got a twelve-year-old opponent waiting to play Mario Kart.”

  His lips slid into a slow smile. “You do. I’ll watch.”

  “Then let’s go.” She turned to walk away and head up the beach, but he snagged her elbow, stopping her.

  “One more thing,” he whispered in her ear, staying behind her. She waited, her breath catching. “I happen to think scars, any kind of scars, are beautiful.”

  And then he brushed the thin hair aside and pressed his lips to her exposed scalp, burning her skin, searing her heart, and making her want to spin around and take some of that kiss directly on her mouth. All of it.

  But she fought the impulse, and broke the contact, walking a few steps away from him, knowing she was being very smart to turn down a night swim with a hot guy…but it still felt like the dumbest thing she’d ever do
ne.

  * * *

  Momma’s home! Alex slammed her finger on the controller to pause the game, but then reality bit. Momma couldn’t be home. She was dead.

  The pain in her gut, so familiar she barely thought about it most of the time, rose up to her chest and squeezed some more. Would she ever get used to it? Probably not. Definitely not.

  Another soft female laugh, light and airy—like Momma’s when she was excited about something—floated through the house from the living room.

  Who was that? Alex stood slowly, dropping her controller to tiptoe down the hall, but before she reached the next room, she heard that laugh again and recognized it instantly. The pink-haired lady. That’s who he’d gone to see?

  A weird sensation seized her, something like anticipation and longing and familiarity all at once. That lady reminded her of Momma.

  “Alex? Gussie’s here to play that game with you.”

  Alex took a step farther, coming through the archway, sucking in a breath when she saw the lady wore a bright yellow sundress.

  Momma would have died for that dress. She made a face, realizing how wrong that thought was. Momma did die.

  “Not if you don’t want to,” Gussie said quickly, making Alex wonder what her face gave away.

  “No, no, I do want to play.”

  “Great.” Her tone was so friendly and natural, Alex relaxed a little, something she rarely did when Uncle Tommy was in the room. He was so dark and serious, and obviously hated her so much that Alex just wanted to hide from him.

  “What should I call you?” The question sounded awkward, and Alex could practically hear her mother correct her or cover for her daughter’s lack of social skills. But Momma wasn’t here, so Alex would have to stumble through conversations, and life, without her. “Miss…Something?”

  “Gussie works for me,” she said, coming closer. “Or Princess Peach.”

  Momma was Peach. Always, always. Ever since Alex taught her to play Mario Kart, Momma had been Princess Peach on the Sugar Scooter. She won only when Alex secretly let her, and then she would jump up and down and holler, “Peach rules!” and they’d both laugh, and Momma would point at the screen when Peach was on the podium like she was a boss.