But I did none of those things. She made me crazy. Instead I started up the staircase to the second floor preparing to continue my search.
Did I seriously plan to steal my cousin’s woman?
The thought stopped me halfway up the staircase.
Fuck, yes.
Regardless of the man that made me, I hadn’t stopped thinking of her since our very first encounter. She was nothing as I expected and yet everything more.
Pierce had been the playboy when we were younger, jumping from one woman and activity to the next. Nothing held his interest for long—not until he made his first purchase in Pelican Bay and then quickly after stayed in the city and made it his life project. I didn’t know what drew Pierce to the area. Originally it started out as a summer home for his family when he’d been a toddler, but then he stuck around for school. No one planned for him to last much past high school graduation. No one, least of all me, expected him to return and set up a permanent residence after college. I had a few suspicions, but I wasn’t sure what kept him here and I’d never asked.
I knocked gently on Mari’s door, and when no one answers twisted the handle hoping I would find her asleep in bed. My gaze took in the room and I found the sheets over her mattress perfectly made.
Either she was in the habit of making her own bed in the morning or she’d spent the night elsewhere. My stomach rolled again at the thought of her and Pierce cuddling on a lazy morning, taking their time to enjoy one another before they both set out on their day. I wanted to be lying beside her as the afternoon light cut across our bodies and tried unsuccessfully to rouse us.
Those were my fantasies, and they weren’t for Pierce to live.
My steps down the hall were faster, my panic urging me on. The vision, my worst nightmare, drilled itself into my brain and I was at a loss at how to move on from the images that burned my retinas as if I had seen them with my own eyes. It was an illusion, but right then it seemed real.
Even as my mind played tricks, I did my best to fight back against it. Mari showed no interest in Pierce and he none in her. She’d kissed me… twice! Besides the morning breakfast they took in almost companionable silence, they hadn’t spent any significant time with one another. I’d gotten the pleasure to know Mari more than Pierce in her time in Pelican Bay. He was waiting until he finalized the purchase on the bed-and-breakfast before he truly introduced her to town and made her earn the money, but what Pierce didn’t understand was that by then it would be too late.
By then I’d have swooped in like a hungry fox to steal her right from his nest.
My heart thundered in its cage as I twisted the handle and threw open the door to Pierce’s room, finding the space empty. My shoulders sagged in relief and I leaned against the door jamb gathering my breath and trying to quiet my rioting conscience.
The home was quiet, but I refused to give up until I searched the entire thing. Three guestrooms later I stopped at the end of the hall where an extensive set of double doors led into a massive library Pierce specially designed and remodeled, but never spent time in on his own. Whatever calling drove him to renovate the space his father was once use as a billiards room, he hadn’t seen fit to use it.
As I said, Pierce had many passing fancies.
One of the large doors was slightly ajar, and I pushed it further with my foot before sticking my head into the room. There, in one corner of the massive room, sat Mari. She was positioned sideways in a dark leather chair with her legs thrown over the arm and her head tipped forward as she read not from one of the hundreds of hard and paperback books that lined the shelf, but a slim black e-reader.
Her attention drew my way at the creak of the opening door, and she smiled with the lower half of her face, but the upper half furrowed in question. “I didn’t know anyone was here.”
The words weren’t a question or statement, something in the middle, but it didn’t matter. I was here, and it was time we talked.
“Are you avoiding me?” I asked, walking into the large room and stopping halfway into the space so there was still plenty of room between us. In case I wanted to turn away and run like a scared puppy.
Mari shook her head, her expression one of shock. “No.”
It was now or never, and if I was going to jump off the cliff and prepare myself to hit the ground hard, I preferred to do so from a comfortable position. There was a matching chair to Mari’s right, and I took a place in it aligning my body to hers so we faced one another.
“Do you know how many oceans I have sailed?”
Mari smiled and shook her head again. “No.”
I leaned forward in my seat. “All of them, but it wasn’t until I reached Pelican Bay, this silly little town off the coast of the Atlantic that I found something… someone… who made me consider for the first time in my life that maybe life wasn’t about how many at oceans you sailed across, but something more.”
Her nose crinkled as she squinted at me and I realized I wasn’t getting my point out the right way. “What you saying, Oliver?”
“Just, give me a minute. Let me try to get it right this time.”
She jerked her head once letting me know it was okay to continue, and I considered it a win she didn’t jump up and run away after my failure of a first attempt.
“Mari, I didn’t grow up as a child like you and Pierce. We may have been from the same family, but my branch of the Kensingtons has always chosen to live life differently. We didn’t search out money. I didn’t have summer horseback riding lessons or a nanny. When I came into my inheritance, I didn’t want to just make more money but spend what I had to help others. Most people don’t understand having a deeper calling, but something tells me you do.”
Mari’s smile grew. “If you’d asked me this three years ago, I would’ve laughed in your face, but you’re right. Now I understand there is more to life than organic apples or whose mansion is the biggest.”
Her words encouraged me to continue. “I don’t see my life as one whirlwind adventure to the next. I’ve spent years working in the solar project. Now it’s finally coming to fruition, and I can sail back to Africa and implement the project. I always pictured myself alone, but now that existence looks sad and unappealing. It’s no longer what I’m looking forward to when I consider the future.”
