Chapter 21

Kenna

Time flowed through my fingers like salt water during my frequent late-night swims. Liz had to go back to San Francisco, tears in her eyes and a firm vow to move here with me the moment I said the word. As soon as I made the decision to live here beyond the year that Maeve had stipulated in her will. The moment I gained the courage to open my own publishing house for children's books. Just the thought of it made my heart pound, not in fear, but in that sense of finally being alive.

Mom stayed, blending into my life in a way that was not only tolerable, but healing. Daniel kept Mom out of my hair when I was working, somehow also putting a steady smile on her face that had been missing for years. She was less manic here in Florida. Not only were the crazy ups more regulated, but she rarely pitched down into the abyss either. Perhaps it was the steady roof over her head or the influence of Daniel. Either way, I was grateful for it.

Progress on the house had slowed since Liam started back to football practices with the approach of the new school year. Dec helped me when I needed strong muscles, but he was also busy getting the boat club ready for the busy season and he'd gone back to fishing every morning before I was even awake for the day. The house was still tarped off in areas as I slowly painted, tiled, and wallpapered my way through the sprawling house. Personal items were kept safe in closets so as to not be covered in paint droplets or drywall dust. The house still didn't quite feel like mine yet, but I supposed it would once the renovation was done and all my knickknacks were in place.

Speaking of knickknacks, Justin had cooperated when Mel sent word that I wanted my personal items shipped to Florida. My favorite mugs, the book collection of first prints, and even a box of old photographs was now in my possession. It wasn't everything, by any means, but it was a start. Mel and Justin's lawyers still had to work on splitting the assets gained during our marriage, but with each passing week, I inched closer to officially being a free woman. Justin had reached out several times on my cell phone, requesting to talk, but I always referred him to Mel with a simple text. I had nothing to say to the man. I may not have been spitting nails over his betrayal any longer, but I still had no desire to speak to him.

Everything was coming along nicely.

Except for Dec.

He'd retreated from me. We were still friends who shared the events of our day and even a few stolen kisses here and there, but we hadn't spent the night together since that first time. He held my hand in front of our parents and everyone in town, but we hadn't defined what we were. He'd closed me out at some point this summer, keeping me at a distance like he did everyone else. I hated it.

I'd been so passive with Justin, allowing him to run our marriage however he chose, a small girl just wanting the big man on campus to love her back. I would not be that way again. So when all the cajoling in the world didn't get Dec to open up to me, I accepted that we could only be friends. And that really sucked because the man was unfairly handsome and my body had some sort of inner sensor that flipped straight to hot and bothered anytime he was around. Sometimes when he wasn't around.

"Kenna, honey?" Mom yelled from upstairs.

"Yeah?" I was on my hands and knees, sticky white goop all over my body as I placed another decorative tile around the fireplace. I'd already installed a stained dark wood mantel that matched the stairs and nailed in shiny white trim that made the fireplace a work of art. These hand-painted Italian tiles would bring my dream fireplace to life.

Mom slipped down the stairs and clapped her hands when she saw my work. "Kenna! It's gorgeous!"

"Thanks," I muttered, pressing the tile into the goop and praying it stayed. I couldn't tell you how many hours of YouTube I'd watched over the summer, providing me with just enough renovation skills to get myself in trouble.

"Do you think we should pull in the deck chairs?" Mom asked.

I looked up, holding my hands in the air like I fancied myself a surgeon. Mostly it was because I'd already swiped hair out of my face earlier and sported a white streak across my forehead. I couldn't afford anymore accidental swipes or I might blind myself.

"Huh?"

Mom's hands were moving so fast I could barely focus on what she was saying. "The storm, Kenna! They say it might be a bad one!"

I glanced around her, now noticing the dark skies beyond the glass slider. The palm tree between my property and Dec's was already whipping in the wind. My heart began to pound. I knew Florida got hurricanes, of course, but I'd been so busy between the club and the renovation, I hadn't been watching the news.

Putting down the next tile and the tub of thinset, I ran to the door, nose pressed against it. Shit. That didn't look good. The sky was dark, but there was also an eerie purple tone to it.

I spun back to Mom. "Pull in all the garden items and I'll wash my hands and get the chairs. Anything that can blow away needs to be pulled inside."

We both darted into action, doing what we needed to do to secure the outside. We were still struggling with the metal table when I heard Dec call from the front door.

"Kenna?"

"We're in the back!"

He stalked through the living room like a man on a mission, his jeans plastered to his body and muscles bulging from beneath the Salt Life T-shirt. Daniel followed at a slower pace behind him, concern etched across his face.

"I've got it, Mona," Dec murmured, taking her end of the table and lifting it into the living room with very little help from me. He closed the door and locked it, turning to survey the house. "All the windows and doors closed and locked?"

I nodded. I knew the windows and doors were all hurricane rated because Dec had told me at the beginning of the summer that Maeve had at least made those necessary renovations. My brain was already in its own whirlwind, trying to think of all the things I needed to do to prepare. I was a girl raised in California. Preparation for earthquakes was nonexistent and certainly didn't have much crossover with a possible hurricane. Daniel put his arm around Mom, who was at the whimpering stage of her theatrics. Then I gasped.

"The boats!"

Dec put his hand up. "I was just down at the docks helping Johnny do whatever we could to save the boats if it gets rough."

My eyes were so wide the air-conditioning was drying them out. "Now what, then?"

Dec shrugged, but the lines around his eyes told me he wasn't as nonchalant as he was pretending to be. "We hunker down and wait it out. Mind if we stay here?" His gaze flashed to our parents who were already in their own little world together.

I never thought I'd see my mother fall in love with my boyfriend's—friend? Neighbor?—father. Perhaps that was just my crap luck.

"Sure," I murmured, putting all of that aside to deal with the current emergency. "Isn't it a little late in the season to be getting a storm like this?"

Dec waved his hand for me to follow him as he went into the garage to peruse the supplies Maeve had stored there. "Hurricane season goes through the end of November. This one isn't slated to be bad though. Might even just be a tropical storm, but you never want to underestimate Mother Nature and find out you were wrong."

He handed me flashlights and a pack of batteries. He held on to the hand-crank radio and checked the stack of water bottle pallets. "Plenty of water and I know she kept frozen water bricks in her freezer. You didn't remove those, right?"

"No. Although we did drink some of the water bottles."

Dec ushered me back in the house. "That's fine. She had plenty and I have more at my place. If the power goes out for any length of time, we'll want light, clean water, and plenty of nonperishable food."

I was officially freaked out. I put the flashlights and batteries on the kitchen counter and spun back around to Dec. "I'm scared," I said simply.

The next moment I was in his arms, the steady beat of his heart below my ear. "I'll keep you safe, I promise. If I thought this one would be bad, I would have already evacuated all of us."

Mom, having gotten over her fear rather quickly with Daniel's arrival, broke out a bottle of wine and Dec moved us all into the living room for a rousing game of Go Fish on the floor. As the evening went on, the wind began to howl and the rain pelted the roof and windows, but there were no clatters of objects hitting the house. It got late and still the power hadn't gone out. Mom and Daniel went to her room to sleep the storm away. If anything else was happening in her bedroom, I didn't want to know about it.

Dec turned all the lights out except for one, casting the room in a soft yellow glow. He got a gleam in his eye that automatically allayed some of my fears. "Have you ever built a blanket fort?"

I shook my head and he pretended to be appalled. Gone was the stranger of the last few weeks. Dec was back to being charming, warm, and someone who knew me almost as well as Liz. He held out his hand and helped me to stand. We used every last blanket in the house to make a fort in the expansive living room, chairs, couches, and lamps making the walls. We had to crawl inside the fort at the flap between blankets, but once there, the place was small and intimate and perfect for blocking out everything happening outside. Dec pulled me into his arms, my back to his front, as we lay inside the blanket fort, propped up by pillows. His thumb brushed back and forth across my wrist, a metronome of comfort.

"My dad used to build these with me when I got scared as a little kid," Dec said quietly. "Sometimes I wish I could still build them."

I raised my gaze to the blanket ceiling. "You clearly still can."

He squeezed my waist tighter. "I just mean I wish I could have that same level of complete comfort again. That feeling like the outside world can't touch you here."

I turned, his hand now on my lower back where my shirt had pulled up. I curled my arms around his neck, living for every twitch of his fingers against my skin. "What is it you fear, Dec Boggs?"

His dark eyes burned as hot as the lamp in the corner. "You. This. Us."

"I won't hurt you." I wouldn't. After all the damage Justin had done to my heart, I would rather face that damn gator again than hurt someone I loved. And I thought I did love Dec. Not as a friend as I'd been trying to convince myself these last few weeks.

"That's not what I fear, sunshine." He leaned into me, his face burying in my neck, his lips plucking the tender skin there as he spoke. "I worry I'll hurt you and you've been through enough."

But that was just it. I'd learned this summer that I was much stronger than I gave myself credit for. My life had changed in every way and yet here I was, thriving, happy, making plans for the future. It was time to be a big girl and ask for what I wanted.

"You can only hurt me if you keep pushing me away."

Dec pulled back enough to stare into my eyes. I held his gaze, determined to make him see that I was stronger now. I was ready for whatever came from us giving this thing between us a true try.

His lips came down on mine, soft at first, always so careful before the heat between us blazed out of control. His hand slid into my hair, tilting my head exactly where he wanted me, our bodies plastered together. Light shot behind my closed eyelids and Dec hesitated. I blinked open my eyes to see that it was pitch black in the blanket fort.

"Power's out," he mumbled.

I pulled on his head and rolled to my back. "What will we do to pass the time?" I asked innocently, rubbing my hips against the obvious answer in his shorts.

He chuckled, the sound a vibration that made me shiver. We slid out of our clothes, still kissing as often and as long as possible, careful to keep our voices down.

"I don't…"

I sealed my lips to his and wrapped my legs around his hips. "I'm on birth control," I managed to say.

The man didn't waste any time. The head of him was right there, and with a quick thrust of his hips and a growl from his mouth, we were joined. I groaned, my head falling back at the sense of delicious fullness. His lips kissed down my throat and to my breasts, praises spoken against my flesh as he went. God, I'd missed him. Missed this. Missed this feeling of being connected to someone so intimately that for a short period of time we were one and the same. He moved, I followed. He gave and I received. The storm howled outside, a nonevent for us as we made our own heat in this blanket fort where nothing could harm us.

Dec pushed onto his arms and knees, looking down at us in the almost complete darkness. His hands pushed on my knees, opening them wider. "I wish I could see every inch of you. See you spread out like this for me. God, Kenna, I'm crazy for you." He pulled almost all the way out and thrust back in, both of us groaning. "Can't stop thinking about you. You've taken over my brain."

I grinned, but he couldn't see it as he was staring down at where we were connected. Ultimately I wanted his heart, but for now, I'd take his brain. "Quit ignoring me and maybe you won't be so obsessed."

The flash of his white teeth was visible. "Oh, I'm not ignoring you now. Tried that. Didn't work."

He leaned over me, sliding his arm behind my back and pulling me up as he sat back on the floor. My sensitive nipples rubbed against his chest in this position. He felt impossibly bigger as I sat on his lap. I dug my heels into the rug and took over the pace, desperate for more. He let me, his face a mask of pain or pleasure or perhaps a bit of both. But when he felt me tightening around him, when my breath came in short pants, he palmed my face and kissed me, swallowing my shout and giving me his. Warmth flooded my core and both of us sat there trembling together, the kiss turning lazy and sweet.

My first tropical storm in Sunshine Key and I'd spent it completely distracted with the man I was falling for.