The party broke up around ten with hugs and well-wishes for Janey and Joe. Kevin was one of the last to leave. He sat on the chaise and hugged his niece. “I’d say good luck, but you aren’t going to need it. We McCarthys are a hardy stock.”

“You make us sound like livestock,” she said with a grin.

Kevin barked out a laugh. “You’ve got this, sweetheart. My money is on you.”

“Thanks, Kev. Keep an eye on my dad, will you? He’s worked himself up into a full panic over the delivery. I’m worried he’ll have a heart attack or something before the baby arrives.”

“I’ll do what I can to keep him calm. Don’t worry about anyone else but you and that little one. We can’t wait to meet him or her.”

“Neither can I.”

“Love you.”

“Love you, too.”

“I’ll keep in touch with your dad. Don’t worry.”

“Thanks, Kev.”

Big Mac and Linda were accompanying Joe, Janey and P.J. to Providence tomorrow to help them get settled. They were due to return to the island in a couple of days. The island’s chief pilot, Slim Jackson, was on standby to fly Mac and Linda to the mainland if Janey went into labor early. Otherwise, they were due to return to Providence two days before her due date so they could take care of P.J. while his mom and dad were at the hospital.

Kevin hugged Joe, wished him the best and walked out with Mac and Linda, who’d stayed to help finish cleaning up.

“I can’t bear this,” Mac said when they were outside. “Maybe we should go with them for the whole time they’re gone.”

“We offered, and they said that wasn’t necessary,” Linda reminded her husband.

“Still, we could stay out of their way and help Joe with P.J. I’d feel so much better being there rather than sitting around here waiting to hear it’s go-time.”

“What about the marina?” Linda asked.

“Fuck the marina. Luke can handle it.”

Linda glanced at Kevin. “Can you help me out here?”

“You need to calm the hell down,” Kevin said. “Janey is worried about you.”

“She’s worried about me?”

“She just told me she’s afraid you’re going to have a heart attack or something equally dreadful.”

Mac’s shoulders drooped. “I don’t want her worrying about me.”

“Then you need to chill. I know this is so hard for you both. I can’t even imagine how terrifying it must be in light of what happened last time. But they’re doing everything right, getting themselves to the mainland well ahead of her due date. They’re going to be right where they need to be to ensure a smooth, safe delivery.”

“Keep telling me that, will you?” Mac asked.

“Any time you need to hear it.” To Linda, he added, “That goes for you, too.”

She went up on tiptoes to hug and kiss him. “Thanks, Kev.”

“Love you guys. Everything is going to be fine. I promise.”

Mac hugged him. “Love you, too. Thank you.”

“Any time.”

He waved them off and got into the sleek BMW he’d had sent from home when he decided to stay on the island. Funny how “home” used to be somewhere else entirely and now it was a tiny island in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by his big, boisterous family. He loved it here. He loved listening to their problems and trying to help them the way he had his patients for so many years. If only he had ready answers to his own problems.

He left Janey’s intending to head home, but found himself parked in the Beachcomber parking lot staring at the door and trying to decide whether he should go see her. That debate was new. Two days ago, it wouldn’t have been a question. He’d visited her almost every night she worked since they got together.

It pained him to realize that things between them had changed since she told him she wanted a baby. He didn’t want the changes to drive them apart, so he got out of the car and went into the bar, taking his usual seat and waiting for her to notice him.

She was talking to customers on the other side of the bar, and when she turned to find him there, her bright smile went a long way toward soothing the disquiet swirling inside him. When she looked at him like that, he had no problems or worries. And when she came over to lean across the bar to kiss him, he felt like the luckiest bastard who’d ever lived, especially when he saw other guys in the bar looking on in envy.

“How was the party at Janey’s?” She opened a beer for him and then reached for his hand.

He linked their fingers. “The usual McCarthy mayhem.”

“In other words, it was a blast.”

“As always.”

“How’s Janey?”

“Eager to get the baby out. Apparently, Joe is having a vasectomy while they’re on the mainland.”

Chelsea winced. “Ouch.” Then she gasped, and her eyes went wide.

“What?”

“We never actually talked about whether you’d had one.”

“A vasectomy? Nope. Deb had her tubes tied after Finn. I offered, but she said she wanted to be sure. Friends of ours had gotten pregnant after he had a vasectomy. Deb had rough pregnancies. ‘Two and done,’ she said.”

“Well, it’s good that you still can,” she said, giving him a shy smile. “If we decide to try.”

“I still can.” Even if the thought of another baby made him more anxious than anything had in a very long time. “I talked to Laura about babysitting for them, and she said any time we want, so I made a date for Sunday.”

She gave his hand a squeeze. “Thank you for arranging that.”

“No problem. How hard can it be to get three kids under the age of two ready for bed and settled for the night?”

“Umm, is that a rhetorical question?”

Kevin laughed and then released her hand so she could tend to other customers.

“You’re a lucky guy,” a man on the next barstool said.

“Excuse me?” Kevin said.

“She’s a beautiful woman,” the man said, nodding at Chelsea, a note of wistfulness in his tone that put Kevin on edge.

“Yes, she is.” Kevin took a subtle glance at the man, noting he was probably in his early- to mid-thirties. And, he admitted grudgingly, the guy was good-looking. He was the sort of guy Chelsea ought to be with, a thought that made his chest ache.

Was he holding her back by holding on to her? Ugh, now there was a cheery thought. Christ, when had the simplest thing in his life become so bloody complicated?

I want to have a baby. That was when. He took a deep drink of the beer he hadn’t planned to have. What the hell was he going to do? One minute, he had himself convinced there was nothing he wouldn’t do for her, including father and raise their child. The next minute, he was balking at the thought of becoming a father again at his age. The internal debate was driving him mad.

Kevin nursed the beer over the next two hours while Chelsea tended to customers, cleaned the bar and cashed out. The young man who’d admired her had left a while ago, wishing Kevin a good night, but he’d left him with a whole new set of questions.

When Chelsea was finished, they walked out together.

“Are you coming over?”

“Yeah, if that’s okay.”

“It’s okay,” she said, smiling.

He waited until she’d pulled out of the parking lot and then followed her to her place, parking behind her in the driveway. Inside, Chelsea went directly to her bedroom, pulling her Beachcomber T-shirt over her head and dropping her khaki shorts on the floor. “I need a shower.” In the doorway to the bathroom, she turned to him. “Join me?”

Kevin was momentarily struck dumb by her sweet, sexy smile and the plea he saw in her lovely eyes. She knew things were “off” between them, and she certainly knew why. But she was trying, and that meant the world to him.

He pulled the shirt over his head and kicked off his jeans.

Chelsea’s smile got even bigger before she disappeared into the bathroom to start the shower.

He stepped into the shower, wrapped his arms around her from behind and kissed her shoulder. He’d never thought shoulders could be sexy until he met her.

“Hi there,” she said, resting her hands on his arms.

“Hi yourself.”

“You okay?”

“I’m great. You?”

“I’m… anxious.”

He hated to hear that. “What about?”

“You know. I feel like I’ve made a big mess of things.”

“You haven’t. Not at all, sweetheart.”

“Do me a favor, Kev. Don’t lie to me to make me feel better.”

He turned her to face him, drawing her in tight against his erection. “I love you, Chels. That’s the one thing you can be sure of.”

“I know you do, and I love you, too. But we’ve both lived long enough to know that sometimes love isn’t enough.”

Settling her head on his chest, he swallowed the panic that seized him at the thought of losing her. This was one of those moments when he’d give her anything she wanted if it meant he’d get to keep her in his life. “There was a guy in the bar tonight. The one sitting next to me. He said I was a lucky guy to be with you.”

“That was nice of him.”

“I completely agree. I am lucky to be with you this way.”

“Why do I hear a ‘but’ coming?”

“I could tell he thought you were hot, which of course you are, and I thought for a second that he was the sort of guy you should be with—young and handsome with his best years ahead of him, not behind him.”

“Does it matter at all that I’m in the shower with the guy I want to be with?”

“Of course it does. That means everything to me. You know that.”

“Then stop trying to replace yourself and acting like you don’t bring anything to our relationship besides this.” She wrapped her hand around his cock and gave a gentle stroke that his head falling back as he groaned. “You are so much more to me than this, Kevin.”

He rested a hand on the wall of the shower because it was either that or fall over. “You could have anyone…”

“I don’t want anyone but you. I haven’t wanted anyone else since the first night we spent together.”

God, she was so sweet and sexy and perfect in every way. He dropped his hands to her ass and lifted her, pinning her against the wall.

She gasped when her back met the cool tile and released her grip on his cock. “Kevin…”

“What, honey?”

“Make love to me.”

“There’s nothing else I’d rather do.” He kissed her and groaned when her tongue twisted with his. As he had many times since the first time with Chelsea, he thought about what he would’ve missed if he’d never met her. He’d never had the kind of all-consuming sex he had with her, and he’d become addicted to it—and to her—over the last year.

Sliding into her tight, wet heat was like finding paradise. He loved the way she tightened around his cock, how she pulled his hair and left scratches on his back.

“Why would I want anyone else when I have you?” she asked, looking at him with her heart in her eyes. “No one has ever taken care of me the way you do.”

As he throbbed deep inside her, Kevin closed his eyes against the rush of emotion.

Her arms wound around his neck, her fingers delved into his hair, and her lips skimmed his face. She made him feel cherished and wanted in a way his wife never had. Their connection had been electric from the beginning, and after all this time, that initial attraction had never faded.

The guy at the bar was right. He was a lucky son of a bitch to have earned the love of such an extraordinary woman, and he’d be wise to hold on to her, no matter what.

Chelsea lay in bed next to Kevin, her mind racing with thoughts and worries that couldn’t be quieted no matter how hard she tried. She could tell he was wrestling with the challenge she had brought into their harmonious relationship. Part of her wanted to say never mind, let’s forget about it. But the other part of her knew that wouldn’t be wise.

For years, her mother had yielded to her father’s wishes to the detriment of her own dreams and had been rewarded for her loyalty by a husband who’d left her for another woman. Her mom had never recovered from that blow. To Chelsea’s knowledge, her mother hadn’t been on a single date or so much as entertained the idea of being with anyone else in the twenty years since her marriage ended in dramatic fashion.

As much as she loved Kevin, Chelsea didn’t want to end up like her mother by sacrificing her own goals for someone else. Not that Kevin would ever ask that of her. He wasn’t that kind of guy. In fact, one of the things she loved best about him was the way he supported and indulged her many hobbies, including gardening, cooking and photography.

For her birthday, he’d bought her gifts tailored to each of those things and had obviously put considerable thought and preplanning into each of them. Living on the island required careful planning for occasions when shipping was involved. His thoughtful gifts had touched her because he’d put so much care into choosing things he knew she’d love, such as the shiny new garden tools and the cookbooks. Not to mention the diamond bracelet she had loved.

No one had ever treated her the way he did, as if she were the most precious thing in his life even if his sons were at the top of his list, as they should be. But he made her feel damned important to him.

She turned over, put an arm across his abdomen, and without waking, he pulled her in closer to him.

Chelsea sighed with contentment. She felt happy and safe when he was with her, no matter what they were doing. Even when he sat at her bar and shot the shit with other patrons during her shifts. Being in the same room with him comforted her.

“You’re restless, sweetheart,” he said in a sleepy-sounding voice. “What’s wrong?”

“I can’t turn off my brain.”

“Come here.” He settled her head on his chest and ran his fingers through her hair. “Better?”

“Mmm.”

“What’re you thinking about?”

“My mother, of all things.” Kevin had yet to meet any of her family, which would change when her brother’s family came for a visit Labor Day weekend.

“What about her?”

“She never got over my dad leaving her for someone else. In twenty years, she’s never so much as thought about being with another man.”

“That’s too bad. What’s got you thinking about that?”

“I never want to be like her, you know? I’ve gone out of my way to avoid situations that could turn me into a younger version of her.”

“I don’t know your mom, but I do know you. And you went through a difficult thing when your dad left, but it hasn’t made you bitter or angry.”

“In some ways it did. I’ve been all about the drive-by relationships, because if you don’t get too involved, you can’t get hurt. I moved out here to get away from the family drama fifteen summers ago and never left. I feel like I’ve backed into my life rather than making deliberate choices about what I want.”

“Do you realize you just told me more about you in one minute than you have in the last year?”

“Did I?”

“Uh-huh. Why do you suppose that is?”

“Are you shrinking me right now, Doc?”

“Nah. I just want to understand why it’s hard for you to talk about yourself.”

Chelsea thought about that. “You want to know something I’ve never told anyone else?”

“Very much so.”

He made it so damned easy for her to be vulnerable with him. That was one of the things she loved best about him. “She blames me for my dad leaving.”

Kevin shifted them so he could see her face. “What? Why?”

“He left her for my best friend’s mom. I brought the best friend—and her mom—into our lives. She was different toward me after everything that happened.”

“Chelsea, honey… It was not your fault. You have to know that, right?”

She shrugged. “I guess…”

“I guarantee you he was unhappy in his marriage long before he met your friend’s mom and decided to leave.”

“How do you know that?”

“Because if he was happy, truly happy with your mom, he never would’ve noticed anyone else. I’ve seen a lot of this very thing in my practice. An affair is almost always the result of years of unhappiness. That doesn’t make it right, but most decent people don’t just wake up one day and decide they want someone else. It’s a long, slow process of disillusion and often loneliness that leads someone to look outside their marriage for fulfillment.”

“You’re very smart about so many things. When you explain it, something that has never made sense to me makes all kinds of sense.”

Kevin snorted with laughter. “If I’m so smart, maybe you can tell me why my own wife was so unhappy she went elsewhere without me even noticing until it’d been going on for months.”

“Sometimes we can’t see what’s right in front of us.”

“That’s very true.” He ran his hand up and down her arm in a soothing caress. “I want you to do something for me.”

“What?”

“I want you to repeat after me. It wasn’t my fault that my father left my mother for my best friend’s mom. Come on. Say it.”

Chelsea smiled. “It wasn’t my fault that my father left my mother for my best friend’s mom.”

“Do you need to say it again to truly believe it?”

“Nah, I’m good.”

“I’m sorry you went through such a difficult ordeal at such a young age. It had to be devastating.”

“It was,” she said softly. “Everyone knew. People looked at me everywhere I went. In school, at the grocery store, the local pizza place. It was mortifying.”

“I can only imagine. What about your friend? She must’ve been in the same boat.”

“She was, and it was worse for her. Her parents had already been divorced for years, so her mom was considered the homewrecker by people in town. She… That’s when she started cutting herself. It went on for years until she finally found a good therapist who got her back on a positive track, but her life has been kind of a mess.”

“And she’s your stepsister now, right?”

“Yeah, but we aren’t really close anymore. The drama kinda killed our friendship.”

“I’m sorry you had to go through all that.”

“So am I, but it taught me a lot about what I didn’t want in my own life.”

“Like what?”

“Drama. Relationships that are too much work. People who are disloyal, especially to the ones they love.”

“That’s a good list.”

“It’s worked for me and so has island life. The drama can’t find me here.”

“It does have that advantage.”

“I want you to know…” Her courage failed her before she could get the words out.

“What do you want me to know?”

“I never had the slightest urge to have children until I had someone in my life who made me feel safe to want more.”

“Chelsea…”

“It’s okay if you don’t want the same things I do, Kev. I just wanted you to know that your love gave me the courage to want things I thought were out of the cards for me.”

“I’m so honored that you feel that way about me. I keep thinking I should step aside and let you go find someone closer to your own age who hasn’t already been a dad for almost thirty years.”

“I’m not looking to go off and have kids with just anyone, and I swear to you, if you decide it’s not in the cards for us, I’ll understand.”

He reached out to caress her face. “I heard everything you said, sweetheart, and I love you for being honest about how you’re feeling. It means a lot to me that our relationship has made you feel comfortable and confident enough to ask for what you want.”

“It has.”

“You want to talk about what it’s done for me?”

“I’d love to,” she said with a grin that made him smile, too.

“It’s made me believe in love again. It’s made me believe in myself again.”

“I can’t believe you ever didn’t believe in yourself. You’re too confident for that.”

“That might be how it seems, but when your wife of more than thirty years walks out the door for a younger man, it does lead to a crisis of confidence.”

“I hate that she made you feel that way. You’re the best man I’ve ever known. Well, except for your brother, of course.”

Kevin poked her, and she cracked up. Her “crush” on Big Mac was something they joked about often. “You know he’s going to want to hire you away from the Beachcomber to be the general manager of the new McCarthy’s Wayfarer, don’t you?”

“Seriously?”

“Of course. He loves you as much as you love him.”

“You say that so matter-of-factly, as if it wouldn’t be a BFD for me. Did he actually say he wants me for that job?”

“Not yet, but I have no doubt you’re on his radar. He’ll pour on that famous Big Mac charm to woo you away from the Beachcomber.”

“He could do it. That charm is formidable.”

Kevin moved quickly to pin her to the bed. Hovering above her, he scowled playfully. “All this talk about your affection for my brother is making me jealous.”

“Is this the same head doc who likes to say that jealousy is a wasted emotion?”

“The very same one. See what you’ve done to him?”

“What’ve I done to him?” she asked, her expression wistful and serious.

He leaned in to kiss her. “You’ve made him crazy and jealous and happy. So damned happy.”

She raised her arms to curl them around his neck. “You make me happy, too.”

“We’re going to figure this out, Chels. I promise you that.”

“You know you have no need to be jealous of anyone, right?”

“Yeah, baby. I know.” When he kissed her again, she opened her mouth to his tongue and lost herself to the desire that overwhelmed her any time he held her this way.

If this was all they ever had, it would be enough, or so she told herself.