Chapter Fifteen

 

 

Shea woke to a room painted by dawn. A miniature foot jammed under his left cheekbone and at the sound of his wife’s steady, rhythmic breathing relief swamped him.

It had all been a bad dream. The angry words, the anguished glances, the tears and crushing grief were nothing but a terrible nightmare. He’d never left and had remained exactly where he was supposed to be.

With her.

He’d never wanted anything more than to be with her. Not a cheering crowd or a high-powered career. Those things were a means to an end. After growing up with a violent, volatile drunk for a dad, he wanted peace. Calm. After a lifetime of upheaval, he wanted steady.

He wanted Isobel.

Forever.

Reality crept in, wringing a pang of despair from his chest. He hadn’t yet awakened from the nightmare.

But he was rousing.

When he turned his head to look at his slumbering wife, the smile in his heart made its way to his face.

In the dusky light, her unkempt beauty stunned. He’d gazed at her face thousands of times, but she appeared different to him now. He stared at the same silky brown hair and smooth caramel skin.

Then he realized the change wasn’t in her. It was in him.

It was in the way he saw her. He’d known the wound of her dad’s abandonment had sliced deep, but he hadn’t understood the full extent of her trauma.

Extracting Connor’s tiny foot from his cheek, Shea eased from their bed and slipped quietly from the room. Since the separation, he couldn’t recall the last time he’d slept through the night. Without her by his side, sleep eluded had him. Now, he felt more rested than he had in years.

He started a pot of coffee brewing and settled at the kitchen island with his cell phone. Late last night, he’d sent a flurry of text messages to his brothers and sisters-in-law and he flipped quickly through the heap of their replies.

Once done, he shuffled over to the coffeepot. As he poured his first cup, Isobel padded into the kitchen, a mildly queasy look on her face.

Dread dragged at him and he jammed the pot into the coffeemaker cradle. Was she second-guessing them already? Doubting him? What would he have to do to prove to her—

Her hand cut through the air, her cell phone clasped in her palm. “Vanessa called.”

Air returned to his lungs. “What did she say?”

“There’s been a slight change of plans. They want to do the interview next Tuesday, and the photoshoot the following day.” Panic darkened her light eyes. “I don’t know if I can make three-and-a-half dresses in ten days.”

“You don’t have to do it alone.” He tapped his finger on the tip of her straight nose. “I’ve called in reinforcements.”

“What reinforcements?”

“The sisters. I sent a few texts last night asking if anyone had a hidden talent we don’t know about.” Steam rose from the black liquid as he filled a coffee mug. “Turns out Emily and Mina both know how to sew. That gives you three extra sets of hands.”

“Three?”

“Mina, Emily, and me.”

Her jaw went slack. “You sew?”

His shoulders moved with his shrug. “I grew up with four brothers. We had no mother and no money. Yeah, I sew.”

Her eyes narrowed with her doubt.

“My skills are best suited for repairing holes and replacing buttons, but that has to count for something, right?”

“These are thousand-dollar dresses.”

“Guess you better show me the stitch you want me to use, then.” He sipped the hot brew.

She tortured her bottom lip, but the panic had left her eyes and an irresistible light peeked through the gray clouds.

Abandoning his coffee, he reached for her.

“I expect to be closely supervised.” He pressed the length of his body against hers and, dipping his head, inhaled her intoxicating scent. “Very closely.”

A shiver raced through her.

He couldn’t stop the smile that curved his lips as she lifted her face to his.

When his mouth hovered a whisper from hers, she drew back. Pale gray eyes swirled with vulnerability. “I’m sorry about last night. I might’ve overreacted a little.”

His heart hammered against his rib cage. “I forgive you. I don’t think the kids heard your screaming orgasms.”

With a startled laugh, she smacked his arm. “I’m trying to apologize.” Her eyes latched on to his shirtfront. “I guess I still have some hang-ups about my dad.”

He toyed with a wisp of hair at her temple. “You don’t have to apologize for that.”

She snuck a glance at him from beneath the sweep of her eyelashes. “When he came to the pub, what did you two talk about?”

“You.” A tired habit caused him to hesitate for one heartbeat, two. “And he asked about Connor and Maisie.”

“What about Finn?”

A kick of anger punched him in the chest. “Finn didn’t come up.”

Her lashes swept down to hide her eyes.

Was she angry? Annoyed? With him, or with her dad? Shea hoped the latter, but he didn’t want to guess. For one, he sucked at it, but also, he wanted to know what was going on with her. What was really going on with her.

“That bothers you, doesn’t it?”

“He’s about to turn eighteen and my dad has never even met him.” Her throat spasmed.

“The next time he comes into the pub, you want me to say anything to him?” Shea asked, a hopeful ring in his tone. “Deliver a message, maybe?”

The silence stretched out while a thoughtful scowl marred her features.

Then, with a hard shake of her head, the frown vanished. “No.”

 

 

By midmorning, Shea and Finn had hauled her sewing machine and supplies up the narrow flight of stairs and wedged an oversized work table through the loft doorway. While she set up the ballgown on a dress form in the middle of the room, they positioned the table beneath the work lights Shea had hung the previous night.

She’d borrowed three additional dress forms from the store and when Finn lugged the last two into the loft, Isobel handed him a bottle of water.

At his side, she watched Connor chase Maisie around the wide-open space until he’d taken a long, heathy swallow.

Then she pounced. “Your dad told me you gave Sidney Shaw a ride home the other night.”

“Uh-huh.”

“I don’t know her family. Don’t they live in Fishtown?” she asked, referring to the old neighborhood by the wharf.

“Yeah. So?”

Isobel noted the defensive edge in his voice. “Just curious.”

Finn rolled his head in her direction and leveled her with a look. “What do you want to know?”

“Do you like her?”

The water bottle captured his attention. “She’s nice.”

“I mean—”

“I know what you mean, Mom.” He swallowed a long swig of the clear liquid.

Isobel waited.

When he finally pulled the bottle away from his lips, he glowered. “It doesn’t matter if I like her. She doesn’t like me.”

“That’s ridiculous. I saw her talking to you a few weeks ago after your game. She seemed friendly.”

His glower darkened. “She’s nice to everybody. Especially the other boys. All the other boys.” He tossed his bottlecap into the trash can near the door. “I’m the only one she doesn’t give the time of day.”

“Oh.”

Light gray eyes snapped to her face. “What does that mean?”

“Nothing. You’re right. If you’re the only boy she treats differently from all the other boys, then she must not see anything special about you.” Isobel sighed dramatically. “I guess that’s that then.”

She left him frowning down at his water bottle and intervened before Connor climbed onto the front windowsill. Soon Finn rounded up Connor and Maisie and headed out, leaving her and Shea alone to work.

From the heap of supplies discarded in a corner of the room, she retrieved the storage box filled with her collection of glass and crystal beads and plucked her sketch pad off the floor near her purse. Dragging the rolling cart behind her, she approached the as-yet unadorned princess ballgown.

As she flipped open her sketchbook and leafed through the pages, he came to stand beside her. She pinpointed the intricate pattern she’d designed for the bodice and as she started to explain the markings to him, he leaned close. His warm, subtle scent filled her senses.

“So we’re using two different beads?” His gruff voice moved through her like a deep-bone massage.

“Yes, these two.”

With large, work-roughened hands, he fingered the delicate beads.

While she threaded a needle, he studied the guide she’d made. She picked out one sparkling crystal from the hundreds of shiny beads in her storage box and turned to the dress.

“Like this.” She stabbed the fine fabric and pushed the needle through.

Then she slid the bead down the thread, and holding it gently in place, made another stab at the pristine fabric. After several more jabs, she knotted the string and then looked up into his face.

“Only one thousand more to go?” He cracked his knuckles. “Step aside and let the man work.”

Over his shoulder, she observed his first few stitches. He took extreme care with the fragile fabric and, to her baffled amazement, he had a sure hand and some actual skill. She made only a few suggestions before his delicious smell and sexy needlework drove her the far side of the loft where she could finally drag a full breath into her tight lungs.

With effort, she forced her mind away from the man across the room and onto the design for the next dress. She unrolled a large swath of tracing paper and began laying out a new pattern for an elegant trumpet-style gown. A few times, she glanced up to find Shea’s gaze fastened on her, and the nearly tactile touch of his watchfulness raised gooseflesh on her arms.

Sometime later, when she’d finished drawing the pattern and stood deliberating where she might find her shears, Emily and Mina arrived.

Emily took over the beading from Shea, who stood and stretched his back while Isobel hunted up the scissors and put Mina to work cutting out the pattern design. When Shea slipped out quietly, Isobel settled in a stream of sunlight pouring in through the front windows and, sketchpad in hand, contemplated how she wanted to approach the next gown’s design.

After a bit, Shea returned with a card table, which he set up in the back corner, and a sound dock that he used to pump music through the loft. Another brief departure followed, and then he reappeared with a large sampling of food from the kitchen downstairs and an array of caffeinated beverages.

For the rest of the day and into the evening, they chatted and sang along to music while they worked, taking intermittent breaks to sneak bites of pub food and sips of caffeine. By the time they finally quit for the night, they’d cut out the sections for the trumpet-style gown, which Isobel had pieced together and placed on a dress form and had made progress on the ballgown’s beadwork. Isobel heaped thank yous onto her sisters-in-law as they scooted out the door, then turned to the task of packing up her things to head home.

Before the ballgown, she paused. Peering closely, she examined the stitching and decided Shea’s skill exceeded the others. She shook her head. How could she know someone for so long, be married to him, and not know everything there was to know about him?

“Uh-oh. Is that a look of disapproval?”

She turned as he entered the loft, after having snuck downstairs to check on things at his work.

“Not at all,” she said. “You’re good, actually.”

A smug smile touched his puffy lips. Then he pulled a lollipop from his back pocket, peeled away the colorful wrapper and took a long lick of the bright red sucker. After a moment, he caught her staring at him, her mouth slightly ajar.

“What?”

“You’re eating a sucker.”

“Connor asked me how many licks it takes to eat the whole lollipop.”

He rarely ate junk food, and she couldn’t recall him ever doing something so silly as counting licks of a lollipop.

“Is something wrong?” he asked.

“Who are you?” Aggrieved bewilderment strained her voice. “Every time I turn around, you’re doing something… strange.”

“Eating a sucker is strange?”

“For you? Yes. And sewing? Seriously?”

The sucker left a bright red kiss on his lips. “I’m a man of many talents.”

“We’ve been married eighteen years and it’s like I don’t know you at all.”

His arms swept wide to encompass their surroundings. “I know the feeling.”

 

 

The next day, she had to work at the store. On her lunch break, she visited the loft to find Mina and Emily working together on the beaded bodice while Shea organized her thread box, which had gotten jumbled in the move.

After work, she went home to change and eat dinner with the kids and when Connor and Maisie had gone down for the night, she left Finn playing video games while the little ones slept and headed back to the loft.

Sounds from the pub downstairs carried through the floor while she sat before trumpet gown making neat stitches to connect the fitted lace bodice to the gossamer skirt. Through the row of large windows, blackness blanketed the island while inside the loft, Shea’s work lights lit up the space.

When the raucous noise below had quieted, Shea appeared. Sitting back, she craned her neck to either side to stretch her aching muscles.

“It’s almost two o’clock.” He set a tote on the card table and pulled out a bottle of wine. “Need a break?”

She joined him at the table as he poured wine into two Styrofoam cups. A smile curved her lips when she realized he’d chosen a wine they’d drunk once in a while in the early days of their marriage, when they were too poor to afford a decent blend.

He handed her one of the cups, then raised the other a small hitch. “To the good old days.”

With a smile, she touched her cup to his.

“Did you know back then that you wanted to make wedding dresses?”

The sweet wine made her lips pucker slightly when she shook her head. “Not at all.”

“What did you want to do?” The folding chair groaned when he settled into it.

“I never picked an occupation.” She dropped into the chair across from him. “I don’t’ remember thinking I wanted to be a nurse or a teacher or anything like that.” She studied the pink liquid in her cup for a moment. “There was a lot I wanted to do though.”

“Such as?”

“Travel.”

A flicker of surprise warmed his expression. “I didn’t know that.”

“When I was young, before we met, I used to dream of leaving the island.”

“Where would you go?”

“Everywhere. New York, Paris, Cincinnati.”

When he laughed, the years seemed to fade away.

“Then my mom drowned, and now I’m afraid to take the ferry across a mile-wide stretch of water.” Shaking her head, she chuckled.

That time he didn’t laugh with her.

He leaned his head back to rest against the exposed brick wall. “Lately I’ve been thinking about traveling more. With the kids.”

Her tense muscles began to relax with the effects of the alcohol. “Where do you want to go?”

“Ireland, Mexico, Puerto Rico.” His quick answer surprised her. “I want to take them to see where their grandparents come from.” His voice softened when he said, “I want to visit my mom’s grave.”

Grief squeezed her heart. “You miss her?”

“Every day.”

“Your memories of her, are they strong?”

His gaze fixed on some point on the ceiling. “Not anymore. They’ve faded some, but I still remember the feeling of her, you know?”

She nodded, and shifted in her chair, as if to alleviate the old pain. “What about you? Did you always know you wanted to be a lawyer?”

A thoughtful frown touched the edges of his features. “Once I realized what law could do, yes.”

She propped her elbow on the table and rested her chin in the cradle of her palm. “What do you mean?”

“Growing up, I saw a lot of injustice, but I was just a kid. I wanted to fight but all I had were my fists, so I mostly just used those.” His bright eyes danced with humor. “Then I discovered law, and I finally had the tools to fight with my mind. With the truth. I had a voice, and I wielded it to lay waste to bad guys. It was a heady rush.”

The passion in his voice wedged a lump in her throat. “Then why did you quit?”

When he dropped his gaze, the feathery sweep of his dark eyelashes cast deep shadows over his taut cheekbones. For many long moments he didn’t speak.

The silence in the room filled with tension until, abruptly, he stood. “It’s getting late. We should get home.”