Beyond the Waves (Pacific Shores Book 1) (23 page)

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Thanks for reading, and I hope you’ll enjoy Reece and Marie’s story, Caught in the Current.

Caught in the Current, Pacific Shores, Book 2

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Chapter 1

“Alyssa Anne Sinclair, you come back here right now!” Marie dashed down the cereal aisle after her precocious three-and-a-half-year-old.

“But Mommy, I want the chocate kind. Wif mashmallows.” Alyssa stopped directly in front of a box at kid eye level with enough cartoon characters on it to start a new animation network.

Marie sighed and squatted down next to her daughter. Running one hand over her little one’s disarrayed hair, she pondered several things all at once. First, how did Alyssa’s hair always end up in so many tangles only an hour into the day? Second, how was she going to talk her out of the chocolate cereal that should come standard with a vial of insulin? And third, and certainly not least, what was she going to do if she couldn’t find a sitter?

She certainly couldn’t afford to take time off work. And Taysia was already much too kind to her when it came to taking time away from the gym to be with Alyssa. The problem was, she’d known for several months that Mrs. Hernandez was moving to Arizona to live near her daughter. Just…procrastination had gotten the better of her—again. Now she had a week to figure this out, or she’d be forced to request time off.

Beside her, Alyssa pooched out her lower lip and gave her a good dose of the best pleading expression she could apparently muster. Marie bit back a grin. She had to have a heart of stone, because the look wasn’t doing much for her.

“Honey, I know Aunt Taysia and Uncle Kylen let you have that kind sometimes when you go to their house, but it’s really not good for you. Mom grabbed you the crunchy kind with raspberries that you like so much.” She resisted the urge to stick her tongue into her cheek and prayed Alyssa would fall for it.

“But I only like that kind when the chocate kind isn’t in the cupboard.”

“Well.” Marie stood and tried another tactic. “I’m sorry, but I don’t have enough money to buy both, so we have to leave this one here today.” She cringed, knowing how ineffective that argument would be, since her three-year-old had no understanding of income versus expense.

“But Mommy!” Big tears pooled on Alyssa’s lower lids.

Oh boy, here we go. “Hey, how about if we go pick out some yogurt for you to pack in your lunches this week, Superwoman?”

“Yogurt! Yum!” With one blink, and not even a telephone booth in sight, the transformation from pout to glee was complete, and Alyssa dashed down the aisle.

Swinging the cart around, Marie called, “Wait for me, sweetheart. And no running in the store, please.”

Alyssa obediently slowed to the fastest “walk” she could possibly muster.

Yogurt. Who knew? Marie tucked that little weapon into her mommy arsenal for future reference.

Alyssa disappeared around the end of the aisle, and Marie picked up the pace, even though she wasn’t really worried. Marinville was a fairly small, quiet town, and almost everyone knew and loved Alyssa, who’d never known a stranger.

But before her cart had even reached the main section by the yogurts, there came the loud crash of breaking glass, a masculine grunt, and a three-year-old gasp.

Marie cringed to a halt and held her breath, sure more damage loomed. She could envision a whole endcap display crashing to the ground.

Thankfully, only Alyssa’s voice broke the silence. “Uh-oh! Sorry!”

Alyssa did sound truly sorry, but her repentance didn’t ease the stone of dread that dropped into Marie’s stomach. Whatever had just broken sounded expensive, and she was going to have to pay for it. Why hadn’t she insisted Alyssa sit in the cart, like a normal mother would have?

Well, the only thing to do was to go see what had happened. She started forward.

“Hey there, Superwoman. I’m sorry—I should have been watching where I was going more carefully, I guess.”

Marie jerked the cart to a stop with such force her stack of soup cans toppled.

That voice. He really was here! Her heart lodged in her throat, and she prayed Alyssa would come looking for her so she could go down the aisle the other way and not have to face the man currently talking to her daughter. She’d known he was supposed to be coming home to help his mother run their bed-and-breakfast, since his dad’s cancer had taken his strength. Still…maybe it wasn’t really him? She froze and listened with all her might.

“Hey!” Alyssa’s tone rang with indignation. “How did you know I am Superwoman?”

Marie heard the sound of glass tinking together and some scuffling like he was using his foot to scoot the shattered shards into a pile. “Well, by the big S on your pink shirt, I guess.”

“You’re tall.”

The man chuckled.

A sweet sensation like a drizzle of honey on sourdough toast settled into the pit of Marie’s stomach. How long had it been since she’d heard that oh-so-familiar, gentle laugh? Reece Cahill. Marie’s eyes dropped closed. It really was him.

“I guess I am tall, now that you mention it.” A boot squeaked on the tiles, and this time when Reece spoke, his voice seemed to be coming to her from a drastically de-elevated level. “How’s that? Better?”

“You have eyes like grass. My mommy likes grass eyes.”

Reece’s chuckle again, full of curiosity this time. “Grass eyes?”

“You know, the color of grass.”

“Oh!” Reece’s boots squeaked on the tiles again. “Speaking of your mommy”—his voice emerged slightly muffled—“is she around here someplace, tyke? Do you know her name?”

Marie jolted into action. Great. Now he would think she was a terrible mother who couldn’t even keep track of one little girl, on top of all the other things he already knew about her. She forced one foot in front of the other and rolled her cart out into the open.

Reece squatted on the balls of his feet before Alyssa. His typical attire of cowboy boots, jeans, T-shirt, and Stetson hadn’t changed over the years, she noted. What had changed was his lankiness. The man was no longer tall and straight. He was tall and…chiseled. There was no other way to put it. He’d always been strong and athletic, but now…muscles stretched his T-shirt in all the right places to mouthwatering degrees.

She swallowed and focused on her daughter, who stood right in front of the man with his cheeks cupped in her chubby hands as she closely—very closely—examined his eyes. Eyes Marie well remembered, and likely the reason green was her favorite color.

Reece must have caught sight of her shoes, because he tipped his head ever so slightly and peered around her daughter. His gaze started at her grimy, Saturday-chore tennis shoes and traveled all the way up past her jogging shorts and paint-splattered T-shirt to her face.

His eyes rounded. “Marie!” He stood slowly, reflexively picking up Alyssa and settling her on one very sinewy forearm. He pushed his hat back on his head and swept a glance from her head to ankles and back again. Then he looked from her to Alyssa, a light of understanding dawning on his face. His focus dropped to where Marie’s ringless left hand rested on the handle of the shopping cart.

Marie’s face flamed so hot it likely could have sizzled bacon. Yeah, he probably wouldn’t be surprised to note she still wasn’t married. “Hi, Reece. I’m really sorry about all this.” She swiped a gesture to the three jars of pickles broken open by his feet. “Just tear off the bar codes, and I’ll pay for them when I get to the front.”

Oh boy… She resisted the urge to cringe, and really hoped that hadn’t sounded like she’d done this before half a dozen times…or so. She chanced a glance at his face.

But Reece’s attention had zoned in on her daughter, his head pulled back to make focusing on Alyssa’s face easier. “You’re an old pro at this, huh?”

Alyssa shrugged. “Mommy says my feet move faster than my brain sometimes.”

To his credit, Reece withheld the bark of laughter Marie could tell wanted to burst forth. He only nodded sagely. “You know, I think my feet did a lot of going faster than my brain when I was your age too.”

“Really?” Alyssa swung a look her way. “Mommy, he broke pickles too!”

Marie smiled, but all she really wanted to do was escape from the presence of the only man she’d ever had any real feelings for. From the only man who’d ever broken her heart. She stretched a hand out to her daughter. “Come on, Superwoman, we need to go find someone to clean this up. Then we need to grab your yogurt and get back home.”

Reece complied with her unspoken request and put Alyssa on the floor. Marie took her little convict’s hand in a firm grip.

“Welcome home. Nice to see you again,” she offered in parting and hurried to make her getaway.

But as she started away, Alyssa stiffened and hung back. “Mommy, we have to get the scanny things so we can pay.”

“Right.”

Drat. No chance for escape yet.

“And I don’t want to do dishes this time. That was no fun.”

Marie pressed her lips together and didn’t meet Reece’s gaze. He had remained stock still, his hands resting on slim hips. He probably thought she and Alyssa had come here straight from the loony bin. “Well…you have to do something to work off your debt. We’ve talked about running in the store lots of times. This”—she held a hand out to the spreading puddle of pickle juice—“is what happens when you do.” She was trying to tamp down her irritation and keep her words loving, but as if it wasn’t bad enough that Alyssa had done something like this again, it had to have been Reece!

She squatted next to the mess of pickles and glass.

Where had he been for all these years, anyway? She hadn’t seen him since…when? Four years at least. She’d still been pregnant with Alyssa when she’d heard he’d left town, and no one seemed to know where he’d gone off to.

As she found the shards of the jars with the bar codes and worked to pull one of them free, she noticed he’d been buying some sort of organic, all-natural pickles. Of course he had. Because Alyssa couldn’t have run into someone buying just one jar of the el cheapo store brand. Why was he buying three jars of pickles, anyhow? This was probably going to cost her at least fifteen bucks after tax. She mentally recalculated the items already in her cart that she could return to the shelf.

Reece was suddenly squatting by her side. “Listen, this really wasn’t all her fault. I was carrying three jars of these things, and if I hadn’t left my cart over there by the cold foods section, the jars never would have fallen. Why don’t you let me cover it just this once?”

Simply his nearness and the sound of his voice were doing things to her pulse that could set off all sorts of alarms if she were hooked up to a monitor. She kept her focus on the floor, not daring to meet his eyes. “No. No. I couldn’t let you pay. If she hadn’t been running, your pickles would have made it to your cart just fine.”

Why was this sticker being so stubborn about coming off the glass? The thing was soaked in pickle juice; if anything, the liquid should help it come loose easier.

“Your daughter is beautiful.” His words were low and raspy.

That did it. She stood and tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. “Thank you. Nice seeing you again. Alyssa, come on, honey.” She would just take the whole broken piece to the register and tell them to ring up three of them.

Reece rose with her. “Marie…” His tone said she was being stubborn.

Well, that may be, but she wasn’t about to let him pay for Alyssa’s rambunctiousness. She chose to ignore his chiding. And the fact that he hadn’t taken his gaze off her face for the past several minutes.

Alyssa had ignored her call and squatted next to a seep of pickle juice. Chubby hands resting against little knees, she scooted along with it, following the trickling green river as it expanded across the tiles.

As Marie reached to set the broken jar into the child seat on the cart, her peripheral vision caught one chubby hand reaching toward a shard of glass. “Alyssa! Don’t touch that! I don’t want you getting cut.” She glanced over to ensure her daughter was going to listen, but doing so made her hand miss the seat. Her grip slipped on the juice-greased glass. With a jolt she tried to catch it. A sharp slice of pain angled across the pad of her finger and over one knuckle. She hissed and reflexively dropped the piece of the jar, which shattered it into several more shards.

Reece was immediately by her side.

She had instinctively clamped the fingers of her other hand around the injury.

He reached for it. “Let me see.” He stepped so close his hat brim brushed her cheek when he leaned forward to look at the cut. His touch was gentle and probably meant to be soothing.

But her heart had apparently received some sort of errant signal, because it was beating fast enough to count as aerobic exercise.