A Tender Touch

“I heard that,” Neda said as she passed by with flour and sugar for the cobbler, her eyes twinkling. “But you’re right. Fredrica is a pretty woman.” She gave Clay a meaningful look.

“Is everyone on the island determined to get Freddie and me together?” Clay asked.

“Pretty much,” Eloise said without a trace of guilt or coyness. “You’d make a perfect match.”

“I don’t even know the woman that well,” Clay countered, his easygoing nature being sorely tested.

“You have lots of free time to get to know her,” Eloise pointed out. “And didn’t you say you’d be working with her anyway, doing Samson’s therapy?”

“Twice a week,” Clay replied, already looking forward to that, although he would never admit it to his mother. “We’re going to do water exercises in Stone’s pool and out in the ocean. And we might drive into Savannah for some hydrotherapy in the whirlpool at this big veterinarian center Freddie suggested.”

“You mean, you and Freddie would both take Samson?”

“Maybe,” Clay replied to his mother’s question. “If she’ll go with us.”

“Ask her.”

Clay let out a long breath. “Mother!”

“Okay, okay, I’ll hush. But I was right about Ana and Tara. They’re both married to your brothers now.”

“Yes, I happen to have noticed that, since I attended both weddings.”

“Well—”

Clay sank back in his chair, rolling his eyes. Rock and Stone had warned him. “Mother.”

“Not another word,” Eloise said, her spangled earrings shimmering as she helped Neda finish the crust for the cobbler. “Dinner will be about another half hour, Clay. You could take Samson for a walk on the beach if you want.”

“Good idea,” Clay said, glad to be out from under her overbearing, well-meaning analysis of his sorry love life. “C’mon, Samson,” he called. The dog was immediately alert and jumped up. Clay noticed Samson wasn’t as fast as he once was, but he had improved since the injury. That was something to be thankful for. “We’ll be back around six.”

“Everything should be ready by then,” Eloise said. Then she came around the counter to touch Clay’s face. “It’s so good to have you home.”

Clay liked his mother’s hands. They were creative and graceful, just like her. He’d always tried so hard to please his mother, after they’d lost their father. He’d wanted to make her smile again. He’d failed miserably. But he remembered those hands, late at night, moving over his face when she thought he was asleep. He remembered her tender touch, even if he couldn’t remember her acting like a normal mother. Unlike Rock and Stone, Clay held no resentment toward his artistic mother. Maybe because he’d been too young to see the obvious, or maybe because he was so young at the time, he saw what his older brothers never had. His mother had lived for their father, and then she had lived for her work. Rock and Stone had resented her for that. They’d always thought their mother had neglected them.

But Clay knew better. He knew his mother loved her three sons, even if she didn’t go about showing it in the usual ways. He had always felt it in her touch. So tender, so loving.

He took her hand now and kissed it, noticing that it was veined and aged, but still soft and tender. “It’s good to be home.”

He turned to head up the long central hallway of the rambling Victorian beach house, Samson trotting eagerly behind him.

“Clay?”

He pivoted to see Eloise standing silhouetted at the end of the hall, her flowing skirts making her look as if she was from another time.

“Yes?”

“When are you going to tell me, Son?”

“Tell you what?”

“About that night, about how you got hurt that same night Samson was injured.”

Clay stiffened. “There’s nothing to tell. I’m over it now, Mother. I’m fine.”

“I wonder,” she said, one hand braced on the doorway into the kitchen.

“Don’t,” Clay said. Then he motioned to Samson. Together, they hurried out the front door and down the sloping yard to the dunes and the sea beyond.

As Clay followed the dog that had saved his life, he closed his eyes to the pain of his memories. He didn’t want to talk about that night. And he didn’t want to think about being a cop right now.

Chapter Four

She didn’t want to think about cops right now. Gary Hayes was dead. He’d died a violent death, a death that still haunted Freddie each time she remembered his father coming to her door to tell her that Gary wouldn’t be home that night. But then, Gary had lived a violent life, and he hadn’t come home a lot of nights. But she never would have believed it could end that way, with him dying in a shoot-out with a gang of drug dealers. Gary had always seemed so strong, so sure of himself.

I’m away from that now. Away from that life.

Freddie closed her eyes and felt the rush of the ocean’s balmy winds moving over her with a soothing touch, the sound of the waves crashing against the shore an endless reminder of why she’d come to Sunset Island. It was almost as if the waves were telling her to “be still, be still.”

Freddie took a long breath and did just that. Then she opened her eyes and watched as her beautiful son built a sand castle near the waves. Ryan looked so much like his father with his dark hair and olive skin, his big blue eyes so trusting, so loving. That was the difference though; that was where the similarities ended. Gary’s eyes had always held a kind of cynical arrogance, as if the world owed him a favor. Her son’s eyes held a mixture of hope and wonder and love. Her son loved her. She intended to live up to that love. She’d tried to live up to her husband’s expectations, and now she was terrified her son would have too many expectations, and she’d fail him, too. Not if I teach him the right way.

I loved Gary so much, Lord. But that love hadn’t been enough. Freddie had never felt as if her love was truly returned. Gary had always managed to find something wrong with her. He’d teased her about going to church, about how she was trying to raise their son to be less violent than his father and uncle and grandfather.

“You treat him like a baby, Freddie. He has to learn to be a man.”

A man like his father? she wondered now. She wouldn’t let that happen. And since Gary’s family had treated her as if she’d been the one to pull the trigger that night, Freddie had felt compelled to get her son away from the Hayes clan back in Dallas. They hadn’t liked it, had threatened her with custody battles and all sorts of dire consequences, but in the end, Ryan’s grandmother, Pearl Hayes, had calmed her husband and her son down enough to make them see that Ryan belonged with his mother. Yet Freddie couldn’t forget the open hostility in Pearl’s eyes the last time she’d seen her. Since then, she’d been waiting and wondering if they’d try to make good on their threats.

So far, so good. No news was good news wherever the Hayes bunch was concerned.

She glanced back at Ryan. She had to shield him from the kind of violence his father had thrived on. She had to teach him to stand up for the things he believed in, without sacrificing his soul to the evils of the world, the way his father had. Gary had been a bad cop, as corrupt and conniving as the thugs he put in jail every day. She was pretty sure that’s why he’d died in such a horrible way. And she was pretty sure Gary had learned it from Ned Hayes. Ned had taught his two sons to be domineering and macho. She couldn’t let Ryan become that way. In her heart, she knew Ryan could be a good man, like her father, Wade Noble, if she taught him the lessons from the Bible. The same lessons her parents had taught her.

I won’t let him be tempted, Lord. I’ll try to teach him the right way to be a man.

She’d already taken Ryan to church here. That’s how she’d met Rock and Ana. Rock had helped her so much when she’d first come to the island. Freddie intended to make sure her son had a solid foundation, a foundation built on the strength of Christ, and not the things her husband had craved and wanted.

But where is your strength? she asked herself. When are you going to be able to trust God again?

I’m trying, Lord. She’d brought her child here to this tiny island because it was about as far away from Dallas as she could get. She’d found the ad for the clinic while sending out résumés on the Internet and got an interview with Dr. Bates. Somehow with her father’s help, she had managed to swing the loan for the down payment, then she’d signed a contract to lease the clinic with an option to buy it. After that, she’d packed up a few things and she and Ryan had driven until they’d reached the ocean. But was it far enough away? Could she ever escape the memories of her failed marriage and the bitter in-laws she’d left behind?

Could she ever escape the guilt, the nagging thought that maybe Gary’s parents and brother were right? That she had somehow contributed to his death?

“I need a new life,” Freddie said into the growing dusk. The wind lifted her long braid away from her shoulder. She tossed her head, about to call Ryan in for the day when she heard a distinctive running, the sound of four paws hitting wet sand, the bark of an excited dog.

Samson.

Then she saw Clay Dempsey walking up the beach toward her, his grin full of surprise, his eyes full of hope.

Freddie didn’t have any hope to give him. She couldn’t encourage his tender attention. She couldn’t and she wouldn’t. Couldn’t. Wouldn’t. Shouldn’t.