next paycheck she didn’t know… anything.
Something hammered at him, and this time it wasn’t his heart reacting to the sight of a beautiful, not entirely dressed woman. No, this was the physical jolt of a whole different kind of frustration.
“So, what exactly do you do for the builder?” she asked, apparently unaware she’d hit a hot button.
But her casual question barely registered, her astounding near nakedness practically forgotten despite God’s professional lighting that gave him a perfect view of her body under those slips of white silk.
“Carpentry,” he said through gritted teeth, a little surprised at how much emotion rocked him. He had to remember what she’d gone through, what her father was in her eyes, but right now all he could think about was a harmless, helpless old man who had no one to call family.
Even though he had a perfectly good daughter standing right here.
“A carpenter just like your father,” she said, nodding. “I remember he was quite talented.”
“Speaking of fathers.” He dragged the word out, long enough to see her expression shift to blank. “I’m back in my parents’ house. They moved out to Oregon to be closer to my sister and her kids.”
In other words, I live next door to your father. He waited for the reaction, but she just raised her hand, halting him. “I really have to go, Will. Nice to see you again.”
Seriously? She wouldn’t even hear him out?
She backed into the opening of the french doors, hidden from view now. “I’m sure I’ll see you around, though,” she called, one hand reaching for the knob to close him out.
He grabbed the wood frame and held it as tightly as he had when he’d installed the very door she was about to slam in his face. “Jocelyn.”
“Please, Will.”
“Listen to me.”
“I’m sure our paths will cross.” But her voice contradicted that cliché. And so did history. One wrong word and Jocelyn would find another hiding place in another corner of the world.
Was he willing to risk that? If he so much as spoke the name Guy Bloom, she’d be on a plane headed back to California. But, damn it, shouldn’t she know?
He let go of the door and she pushed it closed. He thrust his boot in the jamb to keep the door from closing.
“Will, I have to—”
“Your father has Alzheimer’s.” He had enough strength in his foot to nudge the opening wider and see the shocked look that drained all the color from her cheeks. “I take care of him.”
He slipped his boot out and the door slammed shut.
Well, he was right about the winds of change. And maybe that change was simply that after half a lifetime, he could finally get over Jocelyn Bloom.
Keep telling yourself that, buddy. Someday you might believe it.
Chapter Four
Mimosa Key curved exactly like a question mark, forming the perfect metaphor for the childhood Jocelyn Bloom had spent there. As she took the curve around Barefoot Bay in the car she’d borrowed from Lacey—with the excuse that she had to go shopping for clothes—and headed to the south end of the island, Jocelyn considered the eternal question that loomed for the seventeen and three-quarters years she’d lived on this barrier island.
What would happen next?
With Guy Bloom, no one was ever sure. When she was very young, nothing had been terribly out of the ordinary. But then, overnight it seemed to her childish perception, he’d changed. He’d go weeks, even months, on an even keel—hot tempered, but under control, before he’d snap. Dishes and books could sail across the room, vicious words in their wake. And then he had to hit someone.
More specifically, he had to hit Mary Jo Bloom, who took those beatings like she’d deserved them. Of course, with maturity, perspective, and the benefit of a psychology degree, Jocelyn now knew that no one deserved that. No one.
Your father has Alzheimer’s.
Not for the first time that morning, she had to ask the obvious: Were his episodes some kind of early sign of the disease? When she’d been home for Mom’s funeral he seemed fine. But maybe the signs were there all along and she’d missed them.
Guilt mixed with hate and anger, the whole cocktail knotting her stomach even more than it had been since she’d seen Will Palmer.
Will.
She closed her eyes, not wanting to think about him. About how good he looked. How hours on the baseball field had honed him into a tanned, muscular specimen who still had see-straight-through-you Wedgwood blue eyes, a shock of unexpected