All I Want Is You Read online

  She and Jack snuggled, sharing one of the big white chairs, and later, Anna pulled her aside to quietly say, “Seems like things are going well with him now, yes?” And Christy assured her they were, and couldn’t help thinking it seemed like almost everything was going well for her these days. And she wasn’t sure exactly how that had happened, but she wasn’t complaining.

  Christy asked Mrs. Romo if she wouldn’t like a nice white cat, and Anna joined her in prodding after she heard about Dinah at the Hungry Fisherman, but Nancy declined. Christy also asked several of the nurses at Sunnymeade, along with the stained-­glass artist, Tamra, when they saw her the following night at the Sunset Celebration. And she asked Fletcher, too—­who said, “I like cats, but I can’t. My wife’s allergic.”

  When, in response, Christy exchanged looks with Jack, Fletcher just laughed and said, “I know, I know—­but she’ll be home soon.” And Christy saw what Jack meant—­something in the easy way he said it almost convinced her it was true.

  Reece Donovan invited Christy and Jack to go out on his catamaran snorkeling in the small bed of coral about a half mile offshore that gave Coral Cove its name. Christy had seen the vessel docked behind the motel, but hadn’t realized it belonged to Reece until he explained that he sometimes took tourists snorkeling, and that Happy Crab guests went for free. “Since you’re the only guests right now, you’ll have the coral and the fish all to yourselves.”

  Although Christy felt bad that business seemed lacking at both the Happy Crab and the Hungry Fisherman, she and Jack enjoyed a great day with Reece on the water, complete with lunch.

  Of course, the best parts of those days for Christy were actually the nights, usually after they returned to “the Crab,” as they’d started calling it. They now shared the same bed, and Christy loved that Jack couldn’t keep his hands off her. Sex, sleep, sex, sleep—­that was how most nights went, and Christy always found herself sleepy but happy the next day. Fortunately, it was easy to squeeze in a nap on the beach.

  Late Friday afternoon, Christy paid a visit to Grandpa Charlie on her own to drop off the paperback mysteries he’d requested she get for him. She’d pushed his wheelchair out onto the lawn and now sat on a wrought iron bench next to the chair. “I’m so happy, Grandpa,” she told him. Then she let out a replete sigh of joy, just basking in it.

  “I can’t tell you how glad I am about that, my grandgirl,” he said on a laugh. “You and Jack have gotten past your differences and moved things along to where they should be—­am I right?”

  She hadn’t told him that—­she hadn’t talked to him about her relationship with Jack since explaining she’d let Jack think she was only interested in money—­but she guessed her grandfather had seen the two of them together enough this week that it was obvious. “Yes, you are,” she informed him with a smile.

  Another chuckle echoed from Grandpa Charlie’s throat. “I knew that Jack was a good egg and would come to his senses.”

  But then she bit her lip, remembering the only downside to the whole situation—­well, the only downside to her whole life right now. “I’m just sorry I can’t figure out a way to help you stay here, though. Somehow I thought if I could make money selling jewelry that it would help you as much as me, but now that it’s happening, I’m realizing that even at the high prices its going for, the earnings just can’t add up quick enough.”

  He raked a hand down through the air, absolving her. “Was never your problem and I regret ever lettin’ you feel it was. It’ll work out however God intends,” he said. “But nothin’ could make me happier than to see you in love with a good fella. That’s more important than money any day of the week, darlin’.”

  And though Christy’s heart still ached for her grandpa, she understood now how true that was. Or . . . well, she’d always understood it. But she’d just gotten sidetracked for a little while. And it would be easy to blame Bethany for that, but Christy knew her friend had meant well, and she had let herself be talked into the ill-­fated plan.

  As for Grandpa Charlie, she decided she had no choice but to look at it the way he did, only with a more optimistic spin. “I’m just going to believe,” she told him, reaching out to squeeze his hand, “that some kind of miracle will happen and fix everything. Because miracles don’t seem so impossible to me lately.”

  CHARLIE watched Christy exit the room, aware how much brighter her presence made the place. He’d never seen his granddaughter so elated. And he hoped her happiness lasted. It could be fleeting, that kind of joy, based on being in love. ­People changed. ­People had secrets. And . . . some ­people could have the best of intentions but manage to ruin things by thinking they knew every damn thing.

  He wasn’t usually a cynical man. Or a self-­deprecating one, either. But that last thought took him back once more to that long, hot summer in Destiny that he’d so often revisited in his mind lately. How smart he’d thought he was at eighteen. How wise and practical. But maybe he was too hard on himself. The life he’d led up to then—­humble parents, farm life, small town far away from anything exciting—­had taught him to be practical. Too practical, it had turned out.

  Yet there had been those few sweet, sultry days that summer of 1954—­those few short, wholly glorious, wholly frightening days—­when he hadn’t been practical at all.

  His father’s back hadn’t healed quickly. And the heat wave of all heat waves continued to bake the Midwest. In Destiny, the heat had come with drought.

  Susan’s husband spent his days in distant fields attempting to irrigate as best he could. And Charlie had gone on laboring on the barn by himself, sawing and hammering from sunup ’til sundown, sawing and hammering until his hands were blistered from extra hours and trying to work hard enough to make up for his father’s absence. And also trying to keep his frustrations at bay.

  Everything inside him burned for Susan, hotter and hotter, seeming to rise right along with the temperatures. When he saw her, those were the worst moments. And—­at the same time—­the best ones, too.

  The tension between them when she brought his lunch each day was palpable. And now that he worked such long hours, she’d taken to bringing him dinner, and cold drinks throughout the day as well. She didn’t say much, but she didn’t have to. When their eyes met, everything they weren’t saying was plain to see—­and feel.

  By the start of August, the structure was coming together, beginning to look like a barn. A few more days and he’d be ready to start putting on the roof.

  He stood back surveying his own work late one afternoon when her voice came from behind him. “I told him it should be red.”

  He turned to look at her. She wore a yellow gingham dress and was as beautiful as ever, her hair drawn up into a ponytail, likely due to the heat—­but he liked the way it allowed him to see her slender neck. He wanted to kiss it. Though he had no idea what she was talking about. “What should be red?”

  “The barn,” she replied. “I said you should paint it.”

  He tilted his head, still not understanding. “Don’t believe paintin’ it was part of the estimate.”

  She hesitated, and he could feel her weighing her next words, deciding how much to say. “I know,” she told him. “But you’ll be done soon. If he pays you to paint it, you’ll have more to do.”

  He kept his gaze steady on her. “And . . . ?”

  “And . . . I could still bring you lunch each day. Watch you work. For a while longer.”

  Charlie had trouble catching his breath as he absorbed her words. He didn’t know how to reply. Because she’d been the one to run away when he’d tried to talk about whatever invisible thing lay between them. But now she wasn’t running.

  When he didn’t answer, she added, “I’ll be sad when you’re not here anymore. You make me less lonely, even if we don’t talk a lot, and . . .”

  “And . . . ?” he asked her once more.

&
nbsp; “And . . . I think about you. At night.” Now her voice came hushed, like she was having trouble breathing, too.

  And in the course of a few short seconds, a million things raced through Charlie’s mind. Life is short. He’s miles away. It’s hot as hell. She looks fresh as a breeze. I need to kiss her more than I need air in my lungs. Maybe it’s wrong. But it’s wrong that she’s with him, too. She was talking about red, but he saw shades of gray. And progressed to other questions. Will she slap me? Will she run again? Or will she take me to heaven?

  And then there seemed nothing else to do but follow his instincts, the urge that had been burning him up from the inside out, consuming him for weeks now. It only required two steps forward. After which he reached out, grabbed her hand. So soft. Or maybe his had just hardened from all the work this summer.

  But either way, everything about her struck him as soft and perfect and feminine as he boldly curved his other hand around the nape of that lovely bare neck—­and kissed her.

  It wasn’t a sweet kiss—­it wasn’t the slow, romantic meetings of mouths you saw at the picture show. It was wild and hungry, rough and real—­and she was kissing him back. Sweet baby Jesus, she was kissing him back.

  That set off even more untamed need inside him, to know she was in this with him, feeling every bit of it, too, and giving in to it—­and it spurred him to pull her closer. He felt all the more connected to her, forgetting where he was, forgetting the hot sun that blasted down on them, forgetting she had a husband and that this was surely the most illicit thing either of them had ever done. There was only the hot kissing, the touching, the hands that began to roam, explore. There was only the yearning he couldn’t push down and had quit trying to anyway.

  There was nowhere in the world Charlie would rather have been than standing on the baked brown earth on a farm outside Destiny, Ohio kissing Susan for all he was worth. And despite that, despite the fevered heat of it all, he was trying his damnedest to be a gentleman, not move things too fast here, not push her. But fighting the urges grew useless—­he’d been fighting them for too long already. And when he could no longer resist the desire to slide his palm over the gingham print that covered her ripe breast, she gasped—­soft, pretty, excited—­and let him. Let him squeeze and mold her in his hand as they kissed some more.

  Though a sound—­the distant hum of a tractor from somewhere far enough away and yet still too close—­brought back their reality.

  “Aw, God, Susan,” he rasped between kisses. “You don’t belong with him. You belong with . . . somebody like me.”

  He held her in a gripping embrace; her hands pressed deliciously onto his chest. To be touched by her was to be branded—­he’d never stop feeling it. “Somebody like you?” she asked, sounding confused. “Or . . . you?”

  It gave him the courage to just say it, as he should have the first time. “Me,” he said. “You belong with me.”

  Her dark gaze went desperate with longing and he brought his mouth down on hers again, unable not to. He’d never experienced such animal responses—­but Susan brought something alive in him, awakened some new part of him he’d never known before.

  With one hand he molded and stroked her breast—­the other he clamped possessively onto her rear through the dress and hauled her even closer up against him, wanting her to feel his hardness. She let out another heated, startled gasp—­and then began to move against him, writhing like liquid heat in his arms.

  But then it came again, the sound of the tractor on a distant ridge. It might not even be King’s; it could be from the next farm up the way or the Dilly place, its dented silver mailbox situated right across the road from Susan’s white metal one. Susan’s and King’s. It was his name on the box, after all. His name on . . . her.

  And she must have felt all that, too, because the second he stopped kissing her, she pulled back, anguish now painting her expression. “What are we doing?” she exclaimed. “Where on earth can it lead? We have to stop, Charlie—­we have to stop!”

  And before he quite knew what was happening, she was breaking free from his grasp and darting away. He turned and watched her go, watched her racing toward the farmhouse up the short dirt lane like she was running from the devil himself. And Charlie had to ask himself—­which one of them was the devil here, him or Donald King?

  JACK and Christy walked hand in hand up the beach—­the isolated part again—­after having consumed corndogs and funnel cakes at the Sunset Celebration and then watching Fletcher’s show.

  When the phone in the back pocket of her shorts buzzed, Jack let go of her hand so she could check it. Peering down, she smiled and announced, “A text from Grandpa Charlie. I texted him earlier, told him what we were eating, and now he wants us to smuggle him in a funnel cake some night soon.”

  “Smuggling funnel cake won’t be easy, but we can give it a try,” Jack said on a laugh. Then he added, “It’s cool that your grandpa texts.”

  “The nurses taught him just a ­couple of months ago,” she replied with a smile. Then she raised her eyebrows at him. “Hey, let’s take a picture of ourselves to send him.”

  They were near the old rowboat they’d seen on the beach before, so now they sat down on one of the seats inside, and Jack held Christy’s phone out and snapped a shot.

  “It’s a good picture,” she said, checking it out, and then proceeding to send it to Charlie.

  “Another new memory,” Jack told her.

  It was a few minutes later, as they headed farther back up the beach, that Christy ventured, “So, are you ever gonna tell me about . . . you know?”

  Jack glanced over at her. Damn, she looked so pretty, her hair blown back by the wind, a fresh touch of sun on her face. She wore white shorts and a colorful tank, the outfit showing off her tan—­somewhere along the way she’d transformed from Alice in Wonderland into the perfect blond beach babe.

  And, of course, he knew what she was talking about. She hadn’t asked him about it again, not once, between the first night they’d made love and now—­but he knew. And still he heard himself asking, “What?”

  “About . . . the girl who hurt you,” she said.

  “You promised to tell me your history,

  you know,” said Alice.

  Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland

  Chapter 17

  “I DON’T like bringing up something unpleasant,” she went on, “but I feel like there’s so much I don’t know about you. And I guess I’m curious. I mean, you always seem so sturdy, so strong . . . it’s hard for me to imagine you being hurt.”

  Jack sighed, took in all she was saying.

  In a way, what Candy had put him through had begun to seem a lot further in the past since Christy came along. So maybe this should be easier to talk about now. But hell, where did he begin? How would she take knowing he’d held back something so big from her as an entire marriage?

  “It . . . happened around three years ago,” he said.

  They still walked, the calm surf tonight just barely lapping at their feet when it came flowing up onto the sand, and beside him, he sensed her waiting patiently for him to go on. And when he didn’t—­when he struggled to find the next words, the next safe part of the story to tell her, she asked, “What was her name?”

  “Candy,” he said. That was safe.

  But she waited for more.

  And he finally heard himself telling her again the one part she already knew. “Like I said before, she cheated on me.”

  He felt Christy’s compassion pouring out in her heavy sigh. “I’m so, so sorry that happened to you. I can’t imagine how that kind of betrayal feels.”

  And shit—­he didn’t like this already. Of course she was going to be sweet, sympathetic; it was her nature. But he didn’t like admitting that he wasn’t always that guy she saw, the strong, sturdy one. He didn’t like revealing his weaknesses. H
ell, who did?

  And hadn’t their time here in Coral Cove been tainted with enough unpleasantness already? The last week or so since everything had changed, since they’d had sex and started saying I love you, had been phenomenally good. Fun. Happy. The way it was supposed to be with a girl you were crazy about. He hadn’t had that in a long time. He’d thought he might never have it again. And couldn’t Christy use some happy, easy days, too, without worry or angst? Was it wrong to want to keep being strong and sturdy in her eyes? Was it wrong to just want a little happiness for them both?

  He’d tell her about his divorce soon—­he just didn’t want to get any deeper into this now.

  “But enough about that,” he said easily, trying to blow it off.

  He felt her draw back slightly to look at him, pausing their steps. “Enough? You haven’t told me anything about it yet.”

  Her surprise was perfectly understandable, so he was honest. About this anyway. “It’s a nice night, Alice. I’m having fun with you. I don’t feel like ruining that by traveling back down that particularly ugly path in my life tonight. I’d rather focus on the present. Which is pretty good, right?” He glanced over, gave her a grin.

  And she smiled back. “Pretty great,” she corrected him.

  And he liked that correction. She was amazing, and he wanted things to keep being amazing between them. So he asked, “Can you understand why I’m not up for telling you the whole unpleasant story tonight?”

  She gave a soft nod.

  And his heart warmed as relief flowed through his veins.

  He squeezed her hand, a silent thank you for letting him off the hook again.

  JACK left Christy by the side door they now usually came in at Sunnymeade. Ron the Nurse had quietly called it the “after hours door” with a wink to Christy soon after their first ­couple of visits. Jack had a funnel cake to deliver and he didn’t want it getting any colder before Charlie could dig in to it.