Barefoot Season Part 18

"With Mich.e.l.le?"

"What? Why would you ask that?"

"She was gone and now she's back. There's tension between you." He flushed. "Damaris likes to talk."

"Great." She wondered what other secrets the cook was sharing with their guests. "It was a long time ago. Allen cheated with a lot of women."

"You married him, anyway?"

"I was stupid." In truth, she'd been pregnant, but Leonard had already heard enough about her sordid past.

"He's the stupid one for leaving."

She smiled. "Thank you. I appreciate the support. As much as I'd like to put all the blame on Allen, I have some responsibility in what went wrong."

"If you change your mind," he said, "about, you know..."

"You're very sweet."

"That means no." He shrugged. "I guess it could be worse. You could have said I was nice."

"The kiss of death?"

"You have no idea."

The heat was bad enough but the bugs were worse. The gra.s.shoppers had arrived and they were everywhere. Crunching underfoot. Flying into her, getting tangled in her hair. Mich.e.l.le hated the gra.s.shoppers, hated the heat. The unbearable scorching air surrounded her like a thick, smoking blanket, sucking the air from her lungs. She turned, wanting to run but unable to. Her feet were tangled. She was hot, too hot. She couldn't breathe. Couldn't move. She screamed then. Screamed and screamed until the nightmare faded and she was in darkness.

Her breath came in gasps. She could feel her heart pounding in her chest, like thundering hooves. Sweat covered every part of her, and despite her burning skin, she shivered as the night air cooled her.

Confusion made it hard to think, to answer the basic questions like where was she and was she all right. Some of it was that she'd been deeply asleep-so deep she'd allowed the nightmares to surface. Some of it was she was still a little drunk. Which meant she couldn't have been asleep too long.

She automatically reached to her right and turned on a lamp. The clock on the nightstand said 12:34. She'd been in bed less than an hour.

As that thought registered, so did the room. She recognized the furniture, the shape, the murky shadow that was the sunroom. Something moved.

She spun toward the doorway and saw Jared standing there.

He had on jeans and nothing else. Golden hair covered his chest and angled down to the open waistband of his jeans. His feet were bare, his hair mussed. In other circ.u.mstances, she would have thought he looked s.e.xy as h.e.l.l. But his eyes were wary and he wasn't watching her the way a man watched a woman he wanted.

"What the h.e.l.l are you doing here?" she demanded, pulling up the covers and glaring at him. "This is my room. If you can't respect my privacy, then I'm leaving."

"Don't get your panties in a bunch. I was checking on you."

"Why? Does it give you a thrill to watch women sleep?"

"Not especially. I wanted to make sure you were all right."

"Why wouldn't I be...?"

The nightmare, she thought grimly, remembering how it had ended. With her screaming. It hadn't all been in her sleep.

"Did I wake you?" she asked, less defensive now, but no more pleased with his presence.

He shrugged. "It happens."

The nurses at the hospital had told her she often screamed out in her sleep. The information had been delivered matter-of-factly. It wasn't as if she were the only one on the ward dealing with the aftermath of what she'd seen and done.

"How often?" she asked.

"A few times a week."

She winced. "Sorry."

"Don't be. You went through a lot over there."

"It would have been easier to come home with a rash. At least that's quiet."

"It'll get better."

"You know this how? Did one of the fish tell you?"

He shifted so he was leaning against the door frame. Involuntarily her gaze strayed to the open waistband of his jeans, then lower, to where he'd obviously hastily pulled up his zipper.

Something stirred low in her belly. What was he wearing underneath? Briefs? Boxers? Nothing?

"I served."

His words were at odds with her thoughts. It took her a second to remember what she'd asked, and when she did, she covered her face with her hands.

"Sorry. That's right. I knew you had. I'm a mess." She dropped her hands and looked up at him. "What did you do?"

"I was a sniper."

Sniper as in- She swore silently. Talk about an unrelatable experience.

There was more. Bits and pieces drifted to her. Local gossip loved a juicy story and he'd had his local fifteen minutes of fame.

He'd returned to the island with a wife. She'd been young and pretty, from somewhere back east or the middle of the country. Maybe one of the vowel states. But she hadn't liked island life enough to stay. Or maybe it was being married to a guy who ran boats. Either way, she'd left. All that had happened just before Mich.e.l.le had taken off.

"You have nightmares?" she asked. "From when you were in?"

"Not anymore. I got help. You need a group."

"I don't want a group."

"I didn't say you had to like it. You need to figure out how to make sense of it all. How to deal. You need someone, Mich.e.l.le. Find a group."

His voice was low, the words insistent. s.e.xy.

Her gaze drifted across his bare chest. He was strong and powerful. A take-charge kind of guy, which could be both good and bad in bed, depending on his att.i.tude. She had a feeling Jared was the good kind.

The sort of hot tickling deep in her belly stirred again.

What would he say if she invited him to join her? Yes would be her first choice, but she wasn't sure. For all she knew, he was involved with someone.

There were also other issues. For one, she had to pee. For another, she would want to brush her teeth first and she couldn't figure out a way to do that casually.

"Think about it," he told her.

She had a bad feeling he wasn't talking about s.e.x.

Even so, she nodded.

"I can get you a number," he added.

"You just happen to have information on veteran support groups lying around?"

"You're not my first rodeo, kid. You found the information on this room at the VA, right?"

"Uh-huh."

"I post it there on purpose. I keep this room for returning vets. To give them a safe place to get back into this world. After what I went through, I wanted to help."

She opened her mouth, then closed it. Great. She'd been thinking about s.e.x and he considered her a mercy case. Wasn't that always the way it went?

"Get out," she growled.

He surprised her by grinning.

She reached behind her and grabbed a pillow. By the time she'd tossed it in his direction, he was already gone.

"d.i.c.kwad," she muttered as she sank back on the mattress and turned off the light.

But she was smiling, too, and for once the darkness seemed more friend than foe.

Carly straightened the bedspread, then stood back and studied the room.

The drapes were open, allowing the hint of sunlight to spill onto the hardwood floor. Lamps sat in the exact center of the two nightstands. The linens were fresh, the room dusted and vacuumed.

Against the wall, a narrow table held bottles of water, a coffeepot and bags of coffee, packages of cookies, a few postcards and a map of the town. In the bathroom, fluffy towels hung neatly; there were bathrobes on hooks on the back of the door and a tray laden with soap and bath salts and bubble bath stretched across the tub.

She'd forgotten the satisfaction of cleaning a room in preparation for the next guest. She liked making sure all the fixtures sparkled and that the bed was perfectly made. She enjoyed putting out candles and setting the radio on a cla.s.sical station. She had a sense of pride in her work.

These days all she got were lists of which snacks were more popular and what coffee type got the most use. Cleaning the rooms, she could see the package of cookies with only one missing, as if they'd been too awful to finish. Either way, the inventory had to be replaced, but better to know what people liked rather than what they simply opened.

She made a few notes on her pad, then shoved it back in her pocket. She'd taken on cleaning a couple of rooms three afternoons a week as a way to help but was now grateful for the chance to connect with their guests on a more intimate basis.

She checked one last time to make sure she hadn't left any cleaning supplies, then stripped off her gloves and started out of the room. As she did, she heard uneven steps in the hallway. Mich.e.l.le came around the corner.

"I didn't know you could manage the stairs," she said by way of greeting.

"It's a b.i.t.c.h, but I figured I'd better get up here."

Carly clenched her jaw and crushed the gloves in her hand. She shouldn't even be surprised, she told herself, stepping back to allow Mich.e.l.le into the room she'd just finished. Like mother, like daughter.

She knew what would happen next. The not-so-subtle insults, the suggestions that were nothing more than a power play.

Mich.e.l.le limped toward her, then came to stop and frowned.

"What?"

"Go ahead."

"Go ahead and do what? I came up here because I haven't managed the stairs since I've been back. You're cleaning rooms. The least I can do is haul my a.s.s up here and look at the rooms. What if my mom turned this place into one of those theme places? With her c.r.a.ppy taste, G.o.d knows what could have happened."

The tension bled away, leaving her a little weak. "Oh."

"Oh? What's going on?"

"I thought you'd come upstairs to check out my work."

"You cleaned a room, Carly. You used to be a full-time housekeeper. What's to check?" Her brows drew together and she swore. "Let me guess. Yet another legacy from my charming mother. She used to do that to me, too. Offer suggestions."

Mich.e.l.le cleared her throat. "'Perhaps if you cleaned the toilet counterclockwise.' That was my favorite. Because what? The rotational pull of the earth makes the scrubbing better if it's counterclockwise?"

Carly laughed. "She always told me I was putting the things on the bath tray wrong. One time I wrote down what she said, then kept the note with me and showed it to her the next time she complained, so she could see I was doing exactly what she said."

"Pretty b.a.l.l.sy of you. I doubt she was amused."

Carly remembered the icy stare, the cool way Brenda had said perhaps Carly would be happier working somewhere else. How she'd had to beg to keep her job.

"No, she wasn't pleased."

Mich.e.l.le walked into the room and looked around. "It's nice," she said.

"You hate the bedding."

Mich.e.l.le glanced at the daisy-covered fabric. "Yup. Every inch of it, but that's just me. I'm sure the guests love it."

"They don't complain about it."

"Practically the same thing." Mich.e.l.le hobbled to the window and looked out. "I see our therapy people are busy."

Carly joined her. She could see the three couples at the far end of the lawn, near the beach. Seth and Pauline were talking to them.