Initiative (Suncoast Society #31)(29)

I’m so glad I came this weekend.

Grant cocked his head. “Where’d you just go?”

She blushed. “That’s spooky.”

“It’s a Dom thing. Tell me.”

“I’m glad I came this weekend and met up with you guys again.”

He smiled and kissed her. “So are we, sweetheart. So are we.”





Chapter Nine


After breakfast they returned to the room. Grant could tell both Susie and Darryl wanted to jump right back into playtime, but he wanted to do some talking first before they f*cked each other’s brains out all afternoon.

He sank onto the couch in the suite’s living room and patted his lap. “Come here.”

She eagerly sat, straddling his legs, a gorgeous, eager smile lighting her features.

He took her hands in his and held them pressed against his chest as Darryl settled on the couch next to them.

“We need to talk,” Grant told her. “Seriously.”

Her smile faded. “Why do I get the feeling this is the buzzkill to what’s been a fantasy come true?”

“I’m only going to ask you this once, because I don’t want you to have to talk about it more than that, if you don’t want to. But we need to know. How did John die? You mentioned his brother killed him. Why is he working at the dealership?”

They might as well have smacked her in the face with a block of ice. She rose, shifting positions even as Grant kept hold of her hands. She sat sideways on his lap, resting her head against his shoulder and closing her eyes as she draped her legs over Darryl’s lap.

It took her a moment to compose her thoughts and downshift from sexy funtime into serious emotionally charged time.

“Jackass invited John and some friends to go fishing with him. Out in the Gulf. There were eight of them total on the boat. John and four friends, and Jack and two friends of his. For starters, the boat was only rated for six passengers.”

The men didn’t interrupt her. She didn’t want to look at their faces, to see the expressions of sympathy—and probably anger—that they would go through as she told the story.

Been there, done that enough times already when she had to tell people what happened. Fortunately now it happened less and less, but there were still people she ran into from time to time who hadn’t heard the full story.

“It was toward the end of May, and we were in one of those late afternoon storm patterns. The sea breeze was blowing across from the east, and the storms formed over land and traveled west out into the Gulf. I asked John about that, and he said no, it was fine, he’d keep an eye on the weather.” She swallowed back her pain. “I was his good girl so I didn’t argue with him. Now, I wish I had.”

It took her a moment to continue. “So they went out fishing. It was only a twenty-three-foot boat, an open fisherman. Single outboard engine. It was kind of windy that day, but nothing worse than they’d been out in before, apparently. They were about twenty miles offshore when they had some engine trouble, and then a storm kicked up.

“Instead of calling Sea Tow, because Jackass didn’t have a membership and didn’t want to pay a hefty tow fee, he thought he could get the engine going. So he wasted time futzing around with it. By the time the weather deteriorated and John and the others finally demanded they call Sea Tow, the seas and wind had kicked up bad.”

This was the part she hated the most, especially remembering the haunted looks in the eyes of John’s friends as they’d recounted what happened.

“Sea Tow was on their way but the boat ended up capsizing before help arrived. They were anchored, and the way the current was flowing pushed them crossways against the waves and they swamped. No one is sure exactly what happened next, but when everyone came up, John wasn’t there. They tried to find him and couldn’t.”

She took a deep, ragged breath. “The coroner thought what happened is that he probably hit his head somehow when the boat overturned.”

She eased one hand free from Grant’s and touched the right side of her head. “Here. There was a huge bruise. And he drowned,” she quietly said before she blindly groped for Grant’s hands again.

His closed around hers.

Darryl’s hands stroked her legs, where they were draped across his lap. She didn’t want to open her eyes yet. “They found his body the next morning,” she softly finished. “I’d tried to hold out hope, that maybe the current had pushed him away from the boat. That he’d grabbed a life jacket and held on. That he was coming back to me.”

Her breath hitched in her chest. “I don’t remember much of the Coast Guard officer breaking it to me that they’d found him. Kristin said I turned and went after Jack and tried to claw his eyes out. Started screaming and crying. I really don’t remember any of that part. Ed and Kristin and the Coast Guard officer had to hold me down. They had to take me to the hospital and sedate me to calm me down.”

She took a deep breath. “Fortunately, I had Ed and Kristin there looking out for me. They made me snap out of it, made me focus on keeping the business going. I had Ed and Kristin and her husband, Ron. Somehow, I kept going.”

Grant nuzzled her head. “Why does Jack still work for you?”

“He worked for us before this. There was a provision in John’s will to assure him a job for a couple of years. John was seventeen years older than Jack. He’d set it up years earlier that way, wanting to make sure Jack was taken care of if his parents weren’t around. Hell, Jack was a teenager back then, just a kid.”