Wind Chime Wedding (A Wind Chime Novel Book 2) (22 page)

“Holy shit,” Nate breathed as the governor’s press secretary walked quickly up to the podium, whispering something in his ear as the mass of reporters began cutting him off, shouting his name, and firing off a hundred questions at once.

“Damn it,” Becca
murmured, as she tried calling Colin for the fifth time that day and his voicemail picked up again. She’d heard the news about Richard Goldwater’s accusation on her lunch break and she’d been trying to reach him ever since. She didn’t believe it. Not for a second.

She had met Colin’s father. She had shaken his hand. She had looked him in the eye. He might be a professional politician, trained to say whatever his constituents wanted to hear to get elected, but he wasn’t a liar. And he wasn’t corrupt.

Richard Goldwater’s accusation was nothing more than a political stunt to sabotage the jobs program and to hurt both Colin and his father. And she had a feeling she knew exactly who was behind it.

Shoving her phone back in her purse, she walked out of the empty classroom and down the deserted hallway. She knew how much that program, and the veterans’ center, meant to Colin. She knew how hard he had been working on both all winter.

If she was right, and Lydia was behind this, then it wasn’t just about the school anymore. The school was only the beginning of her plot to take down the governor. She wasn’t going to let the fate of the island, and the future of the children who lived here, get wrapped up in some petty game of revenge. They had to find a way to stop her.

Pushing out the double doors, the wind whipped the hair back from her face. Pink petals snapped off from the branches of the dogwood trees, raining down on the few cars that were left in the parking lot. She ducked her head against the salty gusts and crossed the lot, slipping into the driver’s seat of her Corolla.

She sent Annie a quick text message, asking for Colin’s address, then tossed the phone onto the passenger seat and backed out of the spot. A small voice in the back of her head warned that going to him now might be a mistake, that showing up on his doorstep when he wouldn’t even answer her calls probably wasn’t a wise decision. But she needed to see him. She needed to talk to him. She needed to make sure he was okay.

Two hours later, she found a parking spot in his neighborhood, a few blocks from his apartment, and stepped out of the car. The scent of fried fish and hops blew through the streets, riding the heavy winds that pushed at the wooden signs hanging from the eaves of some of the restaurants. An inky blue dusk was settling over the harbor and gas lamps flickered outside a few of the historic homes, casting a warm glow over the old brick and cobblestone streets.

She read the numbers on the houses, searching for the address that Annie had texted back to her. When she found the three-story brick row house, she climbed the steps and knocked on the door to the first floor apartment. Nerves fluttered in her belly as she realized she hadn’t given much thought to what she would say. She heard footsteps coming toward her, and she stepped back, quickly running a hand through her windblown hair.

The door opened and, despite having two hours to prepare, the sight of him caught her completely off guard. He was wearing a gray T-shirt and mesh running shorts. His rugged, strong boned face glistened with sweat. The thick black hair that swept back from his forehead was damp with it, and from the looks of the dark V staining the thin cotton material clinging to the hard muscles of his chest and shoulders, he’d just gotten back from a run.

But it wasn’t the hard, athletic body in the doorway that had her heart skipping a beat. It was the gleaming contraption suspended from the lower half of his left leg. Her gaze flickered down—she couldn’t help it—past the washboard abs, narrow hips, and big powerful thighs to where his stump rested in a padded socket secured to a slim, high tech piece of curved metal.

It was the first time she’d ever seen him in shorts. The first time she’d ever seen the prosthesis.

She’d known it was there. She’d heard the story of how he’d lost his leg, but she’d never seen the physical proof of that injury. She’d never considered the reality of what Colin had been through, the shock and trauma of the actual event, the months of rehab and therapy that would have come afterward, the effect it must have had on him both physically and physiologically.

Ever since she’d met him, he’d seemed cool and confident and completely at ease with himself and his situation. But it couldn’t have been easy at first. It had to have been difficult for him, at least when he’d first come back.

“What are you doing here, Becca?” Colin asked, snapping her out of her thoughts.

Her gaze lifted, surprised by the cold, unfriendly tone of his voice. A wall of defense shielded the emotions in his eyes and she realized, to her horror, that she had been staring—that she hadn’t said a word since he’d opened the door.

She didn’t want him to think she was judging him, that she thought any less of him because of what she’d just seen. If anything, seeing him like this—exposed, vulnerable, wounded—made her feel more toward him. Made her feel like she was finally starting to understand him.

“I wanted to make sure you were okay,” she said.

“I’m fine.”

He wasn’t fine, she thought. Just like he hadn’t been fine the other night when he’d come to her house. “I heard what Richard Goldwater said about your father today, what he said about the veterans’ center. I know you’re not fine. That had to have hurt you.”

A muscle on the side of his neck ticked, a tiny betrayal of the emotions he was hiding underneath the stony expression. He had probably gone for a run to try to get some of the frustration out, to clear his head. And now, here she was, forcing him to face it again.

But she wasn’t leaving until she knew he was okay.

They were friends now.

Friends…

The word seemed strange, even to her, like it couldn’t possibly apply to them. But if they weren’t friends, what were they?

She lifted her chin. Whatever they were, she wouldn’t let a friend off the hook on a night like tonight. And she wasn’t letting him off either. “I know it’s not true. I know it’s a set up. Lydia’s behind it, isn’t she?”

He didn’t confirm it or deny it. He just stood there, looking down at her, his hand still on the doorknob, waiting for her to leave.

“I wish you would tell me what happened between you and your mother,” Becca said. “I might be able to help you.”

“I don’t need your help,” he said and the words cut through her like a knife. Because that’s what she did. She helped people. She couldn’t stand seeing someone in need and not offering some kind of assistance or support.

But not everyone wanted help, did they? Colin was probably the last person who would admit that he needed it. As a SEAL, he had been the one who provided the help, the one who carried out the missions that were too dangerous for everyone else. SEALs were the ones who got the job done when no one else could, not the ones who called for backup.

She thought about everything he had done in the past year—launching the jobs program, setting up the veterans’ center, stepping in for Will whenever Annie needed a hand with Taylor, offering to help save the elementary school. And it didn’t stop there. When he’d found an eight-year-old boy wandering alone down the side of the road two days ago, he hadn’t called someone else to deal with it. He had picked him up, brought him back to school, and became that little boy’s hero in the space of less than an hour.

Maybe that was why she was so drawn to him. Maybe that was why she couldn’t seem to shake him from her thoughts, no matter how hard she tried. If it was just attraction, she could have pushed him out by now. But it was more than that. She admired him. She respected him. And the more time she spent with him, the harder he became to resist.

The voice in the back of her head, the one that had warned her not to come in the first place, told her that it was time to go. That she should turn around, walk back to her car, get in, and drive away from this man as fast as possible. But she couldn’t leave. Not yet. Not until he told her what was going on.

If Lydia was behind this, then they were in this together. He was going to accept her help, whether he liked it or not, even if she had to use another tactic. If offering help wouldn’t get him to open up, then she would have to push him, make him angry, force him to fight with her.

“I would have thought,” she said, her gaze dropping briefly to the sweat staining his T-shirt, then back up to his face, “that after what happened today, you would be working on trying to find a way to discredit your mother, not taking time off for a run.”

The stony expression remained intact, but she caught the flicker of anger deep in his eyes, a tiny crack in the veneer.

“But maybe none of this really matters to you,” she challenged.

“What are you talking about?” he asked tightly.

“You never wanted to work on your father’s campaign,” Becca said, angling her head. “Maybe you knew all along that he was corrupt, and you’re just pissed off now because the truth came out and screwed up your precious veterans’ center.”

Colin’s eyes flashed. “That’s bullshit and you know it.”

“Is it? Or have you been working in politics for long enough now that you can’t even tell the difference between a truth and a lie?”

He turned, stalking back into the apartment and over to a table by the fireplace where a large stack of papers was piled beside a laptop and a few empty coffee cups. He grabbed a handful of papers off the table and held them up. “Do you know what these are?”

She shook her head, following him inside.

“Resumes,” he said, still struggling to keep his emotions in check as he turned back to face her. “I get at least twenty-five a week from vets who need jobs. And you know what I do? I try to help them. Because it’s the least I can do.” His fingers curled around the papers, crumpling them. “You know what pissed me off the most today?”

She shook her head again.

“It wasn’t finding out that my father might be corrupt. It wasn’t hearing from three different donors that they were pulling their funding for the veterans’ center. It was when that son of a bitch, Goldwater, called it a charity.” He threw the papers against the wall, scattering them. “It’s not a fucking charity!”

He grabbed another stack of papers off the table. “None of these guys are asking for a handout. They
want
to work. They
want
to be useful. They were willing to go to war—to lay down their lives for their country—and now they don’t even have a way to feed their families.”

He squeezed the papers, the muscles in his forearm flexing. “We have vets living on the street now. We have vets who are so messed up with PTSD they can’t even leave their homes to try and find a job. We have vets who are so badly wounded they would rather put a gun in their mouth and pull the trigger than try to find someone who might hire them and give them a chance.”

He wasn’t angry with her for barging in on him like this, Becca realized, her heart going out to him. He was angry because Goldwater’s accusation had undercut the importance of the program his father had been planning to announce today. He was angry because he knew the system was broken and no matter how hard he tried to fix it, he would never be able to save every man and woman who carried those scars of war. And, mostly, he was angry because in comparing his veterans’ center to a charity, Richard Goldwater had reduced him and every other wounded warrior out there to nothing more than a charity case.

“Colin,” she said softly, walking toward him.

His jaw was still clenched. The muscles of his shoulders and chest were coiled so tight, it looked like he could snap again at any moment. But beneath the anger, she could see the pain in his eyes—the pain of what he had been through, and the desperate need to protect others like him from ever feeling that helplessness, that hopelessness, that despair.

“Don’t,” he said, his voice hoarse with emotion when she reached up and laid a hand on his arm.

She could hear the warning in his voice, feel the low thrumming of blood through his skin, warm beneath of palm. “What?” she asked gently.

He looked away. “I don’t need your sympathy.”

No, she thought. He didn’t. No one who spent five minutes with this man would think he needed an ounce of sympathy from anyone. But she couldn’t stand the fact that what had happened today had hurt him, that it had added to his pain in any way.