Chapter Four

Shea woke up drenched in sweat, his heart pounding and his cock throbbing. Aching for his wife.

An image of her lush breasts locked in his mind from four nights ago, when the ring he’d scraped every last penny together to be able to buy her, and the symbol of his undying love, played peek-a-boo with her tantalizing cleavage.

“It’s too late for us.”

With the memory of her words, a fresh agony sliced him. He was going to lose her.

Terror had him stumbling from the bed. His feet tangled in the sheets, but he kicked free of them and would’ve landed cleanly had the floor not dipped beneath him. On a groan, he rolled to his back, recalling too late that he’d slept on his boat, which was docked in the island’s small marina.

He dropped his head on the floor with a soft thud and stared up at the cabin’s low ceiling. Most days began this way, with him erupting from sleep in a panic, disoriented and disturbed to find that he wasn’t at home with his family, in his own bed. With his wife.

Without her, he was lost.

Before Isobel, life had been hard. Hard and ugly. Everything about her was soft and pretty. Soft eyes, soft heart, soft breasts and hips and thighs.

Twenty some years ago, he’d crossed an ocean to come to this strange, foreign land after a hellish year filled with unbearable loss and upheaval. He’d been sleepwalking through his days, as if his soul lived outside his body, observing each new disaster that came into their lives with an anguished sort of detachment.

Then there she was. Kind and pretty, with exotic coloring and the sweetest smile he’d ever seen. The first time he saw her, she was standing at the end of the pier watching as a storm gathered and built offshore. Back then, she didn’t fear the wild seas.

They were only kids then, but he knew he’d never be able to let her go. She was his, a gift from the universe that’d taken everything from him. She was his consolation. His reward for being dealt a shitty hand.

His.

He climbed to his feet and staggered to the boat’s cramped bathroom. Angling his shoulders, he ducked his head and squeezed through the narrow doorway. In the shower, the weak water pressure and tepid spray pulled a string of curses from him.

When he’d moved out of the house two years ago, his dad had recently passed, and because Shea had nowhere else to go, he’d crashed at the old place on Bridge Street. It was supposed to be a temporary landing spot, but he’d stayed a year while he cleaned up the legal and physical mess his dad left behind and made repairs to the ramshackle old structure.

When the house sold last summer, he was homeless again, so he started another renovation, this time of the loft above the pub. The abandoned storage space had needed a ton of work, and Shea alternated between sleeping in his office and on his boat while he completed the overhaul. Neither place made a great home for Connor and Maisie, but to them, it was an adventure they went on every two to three days for a few nights.

Mercifully, they didn’t ask why he wasn’t sleeping at home, and they seemed to accept that every dad lived at Grandpa’s house while he fixed it up and slept on his boat when the weather turned nice.

Last month he’d completed the loft renovation. The roomy space was cleaned out, and heat and electricity had been installed. All he had left to do was pack his truck with his belongings and haul it over there.

Yet he hadn’t. Even though winter approached and his days of being able to sleep on the boat were numbered, he procrastinated. Something he’d never done before in his life. It was an odd sensation, filled with doubt and indecision. Two more things he hadn’t bothered with up to that point.

Flipping open the cap on the new bottle of shampoo he’d picked up at the store, he inhaled deeply.

Damn. Still not the right one.

He wanted the shampoo that smelled like her, like them, because apparently everything in his life circled back to her. Even his fucking shampoo.

Which was the real reason he hadn’t moved. The fact was he couldn’t bring himself to give up his temporary sleeping quarters for something permanent. Something final. He couldn’t accept living someplace without her. She was his home, and he’d not have another.

After he’d showered and shaved, he pulled on a pair of well-worn blue jeans and a black henley with the green Lucky’s logo on the left breast. Then he made the ten-minute drive from the marina to the pub downtown.

The summer tourist season had begun to die down, and in the annual migration back to the mainland, Shea lost two bartenders inside a week when they returned to campus for fall semester. But despite the day on the calendar, the weather remained warm and patrons packed into the bar at lunchtime to refuel with food and drink before wandering back to the public beach or out on their boats.

When the crowd finally thinned out, Heather, his newly promoted manager, stuck her head into the kitchen where Shea had jumped in to help with the rush.

“You mind watching the bar while I do this interview?”

He wiped his hands on a towel. “For the bartender position?”

“Yep. He’s out front if you want to meet him. I set his résumé down somewhere…” Her voice trailed off as she disappeared behind the door.

Shea pulled the white apron over his head and dropped it on the hook by the door as he passed.

In the dining room, Heather greeted a trio of woman that had entered the pub and seated them at a table near the front window. Then she ducked behind the bar to fill their drink orders.

“You want me to get those?” Shea asked. “Or I can do the interview.”

“Will you do the interview, please?” She shot him a rueful smile. “I hate doing them.”

“No problem. Where is he?”

She waved in the direction of the booths along the far wall. “I’ll bring his résumé over when I find it.”

“Thanks.” Shea took aim at the booth. “You remember his name?”

“Adam… something or other.”

When Shea approached the booth, the dark-haired man looked up from his cell phone. Surprise crowded his expression.

“Adam? Thanks for coming in.” Shea stuck out his hand.

Adam stared at it for a moment, then reached out slowly and accepted the handshake. “Uh, thanks?”

“I’m Shea. The owner here.”

The color drained from Adam’s face. “You’re Shea? Shea Nolan?”

“That’s right. And you’re Adam…?”

“It’s, uh, Aiden.”

“Oh, sorry about that.” Shea slid into the booth across from Aiden. “We’ve misplaced your résumé.”

“My résumé?”

“You’re here for the bartender position?” Straightening, Shea glanced at the nearby booths. “Or maybe I got the wrong table?”

“No.” The word shot from Aiden. “I mean, yes. I’m here for the job. Of course I am. Why else would I be here?”

At the odd response, Shea’s eyes narrowed.

“I’m new here. To the island. Just moved,” Aiden said. “I’d heard your name mentioned around, but I pictured someone a little more…”

One of Shea’s eyebrows crept skyward.

A rusty laugh knocked loose in Aiden’s chest. “I don’t know what I pictured. Someone different, I guess. Your accent, is it English?”

“English?” Shea’s tone dripped with disgust. “Now you don’t come into my bar insulting me like that. I’m Irish, and don’t ye go forgettin’ it.”

A wide smile split Aiden’s face. He had a nice face, Shea supposed. Girls probably appreciated it, anyway. If Shea had to guess, he’d say Aiden was probably close in age to Jack and Leo.

“So, what brings ya to our little island?”

Aiden rubbed a hand across the back of his neck. “Oh, well, that’s a long story.”

“The long stories are the best,” Shea said easily. “Why don’t you catch me up on your work history? How long you been bartending?”

“All my life. I grew up in a pub.”

Aiden took Shea through his work history, stopping off at bars in Montreal, Detroit, Chicago, and Vancouver. In college, he’d studied some mixology and had dabbled a little in brewing since then.

As he talked, Shea considered his unusual accent. It wasn’t like any he’d ever heard before. Not quite the clipped Midwestern cadence of the locals, nor the elongated vowel patterns of a Southerner, and each word came off slightly awkwardly. Almost stilted. He must hail from some peculiar land. Minnesota, maybe?

Aiden seemed to be a perfect fit for the job. Almost too good to be true. Pushing to his feet, Shea told him as much.

“How soon can you start?”

Aiden slipped from the booth and straightened to his full height. “As soon as you need me.”

“In that case, welcome aboard. C’mon over and let me introduce you to everyone.”

Shea introduced Aiden to the staff and showed him the layout behind the bar. When Heather pulled Aiden aside to hammer out a work schedule for him, Shea found his attention drawn through the pub’s large tinted front window and across the street to the bridal store.

He wondered what she was doing right now. Did their kiss dominate her thoughts the way it did his? Had she dropped the ridiculous opinion that they needed a divorce? If not, that kiss and her undeniable reaction to him should’ve dispelled the notion. Despite the anger and the arguments, she still wanted to him. He’d suspected it all along, but now he knew it to be true.

A primal, carnal satisfaction hummed in his veins.

That doesn’t mean she loves you.

Whatever. He needed to touch her more. Touching her would lead to kissing. Kissing to wanting. Wanting to softening. Such a lusty concoction just might be the opportunity he’d been waiting for. The opening he needed to break through the barriers she’d erected between them.

Yes, she’d erected the walls, but his sudden optimism gave him the courage to admit she hadn’t done it alone. He’d handed her the bricks.

She’d constructed her walls over years, all eighteen of them, but mostly the ones he’d spent working at the law firm. The job had been hard–and ugly. It had changed him in ways he never could’ve expected, and though he hadn’t been able to stop the changes from taking place, he could feel them happening to him. He could feel himself withdrawing, drowning. Unable to fight his way back to the surface, he’d sunk deeper every day while his body was riddled with invisible wounds. Unseen traumas that were nonetheless life-altering, as real as a jagged scar or a chronic limp. Submersed by the pain, he’d drifted away from her. Until one day, he’d quit. He just quit, because apparently, he was too broken to care that only losers quit.

There could be no doubt that he’d had a role to play in creating the barriers between them. Which only meant he had all the tools necessary to tear them down again.

By now, Heather and Aiden were deep into a demonstration of the software system used on the cash registers. With things under control, Shea considered the store across the street. In under a minute, he could be near his wife, pulling her into his arms and reminding her how good they could be together.

He started toward the front entrance, but just then, the heavy wooden door swung open and a blinding stream of bright sunlight struck Shea. He blinked against the cruel surge of light as the shadow of a man moved toward him. When the door fell shut, the postman stood before him.

The color rode high on Postman Pete’s cheeks. “Seamus Michael Nolan?”

“What are you doing, Pete? You know it’s me.”

Pete held out a thick envelope with a bright green certified receipt attached to the top fold. “Sign here, please.”

Everything inside Shea went still.

Pete’s wandering gaze didn’t quite manage to meet his eyes.

With painful slowness, Shea’s hand came up to accept the envelope. “What is this?”

“Certified letter.”

“Yeah, I can see that.” When Shea grasped the pen, he struggled to steady the trembling in his hand as he scrawled his name along the black line. Deep down, some part of him understood his life was about to be irrevocably changed.

“Have a good day.” Pete spoke to the floorboards as he scurried to the exit and vanished into another blast of sunshine.

Shea turned over the envelope in his hands and read the sender’s address. His stomach lurched.

Law Offices of Miles Sinclair, P.C.

Pain ripped through him and his knees buckled.

Fuck, it hurt.

She did it.

Denial screamed through him. He couldn’t believe she did it. How could she?

After nearly two decades together, in which they brought three lives into the world and stood side by side as they buried two of their parents, she’d gone and done it.

She’d filed for divorce.