Page 19 of The Marine's Homecoming

The nausea catches up with me in the parking lot. It's been doing this for about a week and a half now, rolling in around mid-morning and just sitting there in my gut for a couple of hours before it finally backs off enough to let me function. I sit in the driver's seat with the door cracked and my feet on the pavement, breathing through my mouth and waiting it out. So incredible to have my own body attacking me like this.

I keep telling myself it's stress. I've been running on coffee and no sleep for months now, and that messes with your cycle. Everybody knows that. It's a perfectly good explanation and I'd love to believe it, except the nausea shows up every morning between nine and eleven. That's not stress. I know that's not stress. I'm just not ready to say out loud what it actually is.

It's been six weeks since I had sex with him, and three since my period was due and never came. I'm an idiot. And I'm too afraid to go get the damn test to prove it. Doing that would just make this whole thing real and I'm not ready to face that yet.

The nausea passes, so I pull the door shut and head home. When I turn onto Harborview, Luke's truck is in his driveway, and because the universe has a genuinely sick sense of humor, he's up on the roof. And he might as well be shirtless for what this view is doing to me. He's spreading pitch along the ridge line where the old shingles have been leaking. There's just something sexy about a man working hard like that, even if I can't see the flesh I know is there, covered in dark ink.

But this is the man who killed my brother. That used to be the singular certainty in my life—that I hated Luke Maddox for whathe did, and I will never forgive him. Falling for him isn't an option. He is Enemy Number One.

So why does my foot ease off the gas as I roll past, watching every fucking move he makes?

I have to steer clear of him. I've told myself that a hundred times already. But I keep feeling so drawn to him, and now this fear of being pregnant has me thinking about him all the time. What sort of father would he be like? Would he even want a baby? I'm going insane.

He sits up straighter and looks down, and I accelerate away, hoping he didn't see me, because sending him any sort of message that makes him think I'm interested would be a very bad idea. This festival is the only reason I'm in contact with him. And I'm hoping he will finish his job around here and go back to whatever rock he crawled out from under.

That’d make my life so much better.

Wouldn’t it?

13

LUKE

Istand on pier one with my coffee in hand leaning over the railing watching the men working on installing the second of six pylons needing replacement. At the rate of two weeks per pylon, it's going to be almost June before they're all repaired and we'll still have to install the new moorings, safety railings, and other finishes. Not to mention the cost. I'm eating it for now, but Hannah's benefactor’s money is looking more and more tempting by the day.

The warm sunshine is inviting this morning after a cold snap last week, but the weather is finally starting to turn toward spring weather, not the bitter bite of cold on the Pacific coast. Still, the temperature between me and Hannah is just as chilly as ever. She has been avoiding me except for the necessary inspections, one of which I have today. And I'm hoping she's not as quiet or withdrawn—not that I enjoy the angry hostility that preceded this withdrawn stretch after having sex with her. But something has felt off and I don’t like it at all.

"Not workin' today?" Paul asks as he walks past. He's been on pier one all morning, but the guys take breaks by shooting thebreeze with fishermen. Right now, he has a heavy metal thermos in hand and looks like he's on a mission to find Gary or one of the guys.

"Oh, I'll get there… Just taking a break myself." Things are picking up on pier one. Hannah's boats have been going out twice a week now, and as the weather warms, no doubt I'll see her out there daily with one party or another. And her office is a hive of activity.

But my office remains quiet as the weather shifts to warmer temps. Not as many charters have been booked, and there have been complaints of crowding, both from the customers we usually serve and the crews that usually man the vessels. No one likes the fact that their schedules are getting disrupted for the work, but they'll all be thankful for the new pier when it's all finished up.

"Old Tank came down to give us a hard time yesterday afternoon. These guys just don't appreciate a hard day's work, do they?" Paul twists the cap off his thermos lazily and watches the waves crest and crash.

"Nah, I suppose some of them don't. They're used to floating around on a boat all day." I grin at him and he gets my point. Those men work as hard as anyone else, but keeping the peace between my dock workers and my charter boat captains is important. One can't work without the other.

"Yeah, well I better get out there. Gary said something about donuts, and I don't want to get stuck with a Danish. I hate nuts." Paul stalks off, and I grunt a goodbye, then notice Hannah's office door open.

She walks out carrying her clipboard, wearing a bright yellow vest and an orange hard hat, which means she's ready for this walkthrough. The city has put her in charge of this project under Mrs. Reye's supervision because she's the closest to it. But I honestly think she volunteered. I know how much her business depends on this marina functioning well, and she seemed pretty uptight about the timeline. Now that she has my approval to host the festival, she's even more anxious about things. Or so it seems. She really must believe this festival is Bandon's salvation or something to be so tight-lipped about all that weight she's carrying on her shoulders.

When she walks up to me, her head is down, eyes poring over something on her clipboard. The wind carries just right for me to get a whiff of her flowery perfume and it makes something in my chest swell a little. I don’t need any reminders of how incredible it felt to kiss her. I have enough of those when I'm lying in bed at night. But God if she doesn't look good in pink.

"Mr. Maddox, if you have a moment, we'll go ahead and get started early today." She doesn’t look up from her clipboard, and I frown at the use of my full name. Mr. Maddox was my father. I'm just Luke, and for some reason she's slipped back into this ultra-professional demeanor where she talks to me like a colleague, not an old friend.

"Yeah, I have time," I grumble, already feeling my good mood fade a little.

"Good, we can start with the top side from where we can walk, and then we can go below, or we can swap that." Her eyes rise and meet mine, and I see apprehension dancing there, hesitancy.

"Okay, so before we do anything, can we get rid of this 'Mr. Maddox' crap?" I run my hand through my hair and try to relax. It's tense enough going through this official process. I'd rather just skip the honorifics and be human here. "We've known each other since we were kids, Hannah. The whole town knows me. Just call me Luke."

Her shoulders slump and her eyes drop, but when she sighs, I know she'll respect it. There are years of hurt between us, and now this wicked chemistry and tension that neither of us asked for. Never in a million years did I think I'd end up having sex with Nick's little sister. We made this pact in high school that she was off limits, as were any girls he'd formerly dated—which left so few girls in the dating pool of this town.

So when Hannah kissed me, it was a shock. It's not like I never thought about it, just that in high school she was younger than anyone deemed acceptable. And now Nick isn't here, which should make me feel conflicted, but I can't get my hormones to shut off. Years on a ship with other Marines makes a man crave physical contact with a woman all the more. And being desked in a city on a base with so few females made it worse.

Having sex with her awakened some beast in me, and there isn't a woman in this town I'd even think of going after now—except her.

"Fine," she grumbles and turns toward the stairs. "I changed my mind. Let's go below first."