***
Belle
His hand was firm and strong covering mine. Drake was a massive, hulking guy. I never thought about it much. Even after a few days, it was easy to get used to someone else. Even with his tall 6’4 or so frame and his broad shoulders, I easily forgot how big he was. After all, I tended to give back as good as I got when we argued. He wasn’t going to get one over on me based on looming, but this was different. As I walked down the shore with my bare toes digging into the sludgy sand, I marveled at how large his hand was compared to mine. It covered it so completely. He was strong and yet wounded, someone who clearly sought to protect others. No matter how he tried to bluster through things, he needed someone to be there for him as well.
Drake wasn’t saying anything, and I hadn’t expected him to talk at first. He’d clearly been uncomfortable admitting so much to me, and I could understand how he’d accidentally shown me too much of himself. I understood, at least a little. He couldn’t help when the flashbacks came, but he had no reason to be ashamed. He was a hero, serving his country and paying such a high price. If this was part of the whole Drake McManus package, then it wasn’t going to make me run for the hills. I wasn’t sure where any of this was going, but I wasn’t going to bail on anyone because of something they couldn’t help about themselves.
“It’s really gorgeous,” I said, perking up my ears as the water crashed onto the shore. “You weren’t wrong about that.” I smirked and squeezed his hand playfully. “I suppose the great Drake McManus is rarely wrong.”
He frowned for a second and then chuckled. I hoped he accepted the olive branch I was offering. We’d had too much darkness for the night. It was time to heal, to laugh. “My bank balance and client record tends to say no to that,” he agreed. “There’s so much beauty on this island. I know some prefer other, more remote, places in the Pacific Ocean but I always wanted to be here.”
“Can I ask why?”
“When I was a kid, we didn’t have much money, and that was an understatement. Mom was the type who clipped hundreds of coupons to make ends meet and she entered every contest or sweepstakes you could think of. When I was thirteen, she won a cruise—the only really good thing she ever had happen to her or to our family—and we got to go to the Bahamas. It was too expensive to do much once we got here, even eat more than bottled water and sandwiches. The food import costs are pretty insane. But we had this amazing time, splashing all week in the ocean and lying on the beach. Hell, I think it was the only time I ever saw my family relax. I guess… I just wanted to come back here once I’d made my bones and have that again.”
“Are you and your parents close?” I asked, surprised he’d mentioned them at all. He hadn’t before.
Drake squeezed my hand back. “I take care of them now that I can, and I think they appreciate it. Mom said thanks when I bought the farm out of debt. So that’s something.”
I frowned and wanted to ask about his dad, but he hadn’t brought the man up first so I decided it was probably a no-go zone. I was learning there was a veritable walk-in closet of skeletons for Drake and that pressing on them too fast caused him to withdraw. I didn’t want that so I bit my tongue on it for now.
“What about your parents?” he asked. “I know Maurice Fontaine had some high roller days. You had to have been to more than your fair share of beaches.”
“All the way into high school, the finances were good. I didn’t have it hit me till I took out loans for college and we had to sell off our mansion. I know that sounds so ‘poor little rich girl,’ but it’s true. So… Monaco, Fiji, the Mediterranean, yeah, I’ve seen all of it, but the best time I ever had was a couple years ago. We went up the coast a bit to some small town in Cali, not even a tourist trap place. We just spent the day there with Mom, enjoying everything. We weren’t worried about making appearances. Mom enforced this ‘no cells’ rule and we just, I dunno, were with each other.”
“You really care about your mom, don’t you?”
I frowned. “Did Leonard say something?”
“No, but you talk about her a lot, even more than your sister or Maurice. It sounds like you two have a special connection.”
“She’s, uh, struggled,” I offered. “Ever since we hit the hard times, she’s just suffered the most from it.”
That was all I could offer. Maybe I was a hypocrite for insisting on truths from him while I couldn’t or wouldn’t dare talk about my own family’s pain. I just didn’t want him to know about Mom’s cancer. I don’t know what it said about our budding relationship, but I didn’t trust revealing that information because it just gave him too much leverage over me.
I wasn’t ready for that.
“Then we’ll work on actual business talk tomorrow, I promise. Let me see what you and Carol have come up with, and, I promise you, we will figure out how to help your father’s company and to make sure that mine gets what it needs as well. Okay?”
I nodded and stood on my tiptoes to kiss him, my tongue tangling with his in a frantic dance for dominance. Tonight, we needed to come together and heal, but I wasn’t ready for sex again. I needed to just make sure we could just be together, could take comfort in each other. He seemed to understand that need, and while his arms twined around my back and he pulled me closely to him, he didn’t do more. There was no insistent thrust of hips against mine, no roaming hands. Instead, there was just us, our kisses, and the roar of the ocean behind us.