Chapter Thirty

Jocelyn sat straight up just as the clock radio next to Guy’s bed clicked to 6:00 a.m., the light blanket one of the girls had covered her with shoved to the foot of the bed. Outside, the soft drizzle and pre-dawn darkness cloaked the room in a dreary shroud.

Sliding off the bed, she opened the door, but the house was completely quiet and dark. Where was everyone?

Asleep, she discovered after a quick walk through the house. Tessa and Zoe spooned on a twin bed in Jocelyn’s old room. The sheriff’s men had left. Clay and Lacey had taken Ashley home earlier and must have stayed there.

She went back to Guy’s room, circling the bed and standing in front of the dresser that used to be her mother’s. It was empty now, no perfume bottles or that pretty pink jewelry box with a big embroidered rose Jocelyn had loved as a little girl.

Was that jewelry box gone, too? She hadn’t seen it in any of her cleaning and organizing, but they hadn’t finished the closets. She turned to Guy’s closet, opening the door. The moment she snapped on the light and looked down, she was rewarded with the very thing she’d been looking for. Not only had the jewelry box not been thrown away, it sat on the floor, wide open.

Kneeling down to examine the contents, she lifted an old not-really-gold chain that had turned black with time, and two tiny rings with blue stones, vaguely recalling that they were her mother’s birthstone.

A top shelf lifted out to reveal more space at the bottom, empty but for a picture.

Oh. A piece of her heart cracked and left a jagged edge in her chest as she stared at the snapshot. The edges were worn from handling, the photo almost warm to the touch.

And the memory of the moment so clear in her mind, Jocelyn let out a little cry when she looked at it.

It was her seventh birthday, so January 4, 1986.

January of 1986? That was the same month—

She put her hand to her mouth as pieces fell together. This was the last time they’d gone out in the rowboat. After that, Guy had changed. Life had changed. Everything had changed.

Had Guy been looking at this photo when she’d come to drag him away to Barefoot Bay? Had he realized his “Missy” and this little girl were one and the same? Did he remember that day when they went out on the row—

With a soft gasp she shot to her feet. Had anyone looked for the boat? Had anyone thought to check the islands? She needed to call Slade. They had to search out there right now.

Clutching the photo, she ran down the hall, not bothering to wake the girls. She needed her phone. Turning in circles, she couldn’t remember where she’d last seen it, a low-grade panic and certainty making her whole being tremble with the need to know if her hunch was correct.

She pushed open the garage door and looked around for the rowboat, but she and Zoe had left it outside to dry in the sunshine. Barefoot, she darted across the garage to open the door and run to the side of the house to find the—

“Holy shit,” she mumbled, staring at the empty spot where they’d left the boat. “Is it possible?”

She squinted into the breaking dawn, wiping raindrops from her face.

Was Guy out there in the canals or on the islands alone?

Fueled by that fear, she started to run, slipping in the wet grass and ignoring the chilly breeze that came with the rainy cold front. She didn’t bother to look when she ran across the street, but in her peripheral vision, she saw a car pull out of a parking space up the street.

A fine chill raised goose bumps on her arms. The Silver Alert had gone out hours ago, her name most certainly attached as the next of kin. The wolves waited for her with cameras and microphones.

Fine. If her suspicion was wrong—and, God, she prayed it was—then she’d do whatever was necessary to find her father. Even tell the truth if she had to.

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 step 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.”