Alegra's Homecoming

Alegra felt his lips, his heat, the hardness of his body against hers

Almost of their own volition, her arms rose and slipped around Joe’s neck. She moved closer to him and felt his strength as his arms closed around her. In the next heartbeat she experienced the strange feeling of coming back to something.

He’d said she had more reasons to be here than the ones she’d given him. She could have sworn he’d been wrong, but now she wasn’t so sure.

It felt like a homecoming, a returning—but that made no sense, not any more than her next thought.

That maybe he was the one she’d come back for.

Dear Reader,

Going home means different things to different people, and “going home” to Shelter Island in Puget Sound, an island that still holds the legacy of Bartholomew Grace, who was an infamous pirate from the past, is totally different for Alegra Reynolds and Joe Lawrence.

Alegra goes back home to prove that a small child who was ridiculed and pitied has become a success beyond anyone’s imagination.

Going home to the island for Joe Lawrence is leaving his position as the editor of a major New York daily, and a life that has lost most of its meaning, to return to his roots and make a life for his son and himself.

When Alegra meets Joe, she thinks he’s a failure, that he’s given up everything she’s worked so hard to get herself, and Joe thinks that she’s so much like the way he used to be that it’s almost painful for him to watch. Neither one knows that their lives will change irrevocably when they start to fall in love and find that lost part of themselves in the other person. They’ll discover that “home” isn’t a physical location but the place where love binds people together forever.

I hope you enjoy the first book of the SHELTER ISLAND STORIES, and watch for the other two stories in the series—Home to the Doctor and Home for a Hero.

Mary Anne Wilson

Alegra’s Homecoming

Mary Anne Wilson

www.millsandboon.co.uk

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Mary Anne Wilson is a Canadian transplanted to Southern California, where she lives with her husband, three children and an assortment of animals. She knew she wanted to write romances when she found herself “rewriting” the great stories in literature, such as A Tale of Two Cities, to give them “happy endings.” Over her long career she’s published more than thirty romances, had her books on bestseller lists, been nominated for Reviewer’s Choice Awards and received a career nomination in Romantic Suspense. She’s looking forward to her next thirty books.

Books by Mary Anne Wilson

HARLEQUIN AMERICAN ROMANCE

1003—PREDICTING RAIN?*

1005—WINNING SARA’S HEART*

1009—WHEN MEGAN SMILES*

1062—DISCOVERING DUNCAN**

1078—JUDGING JOSHUA**

1092—HOLIDAY HOMECOMING**

1105—JACK AND JILLIAN**

For Joanine Hold on to your dreams and don’t let go. You deserve every good thing. Love you lots!

Contents

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Epilogue

Prologue

November—The Bounty Festival

Shelter Island, Washington

The pirate slipped into the crowd attending the last day of the Bounty Festival and no one noticed. Of course, every third person who attended the week-long celebration that commemorated the pirate Bartholomew Grace’s historic return from his summer of pillaging and plundering in the South Pacific, was dressed like a pirate. So one more didn’t stand out.

Ten-year-old Alegra moved through the throng, paying little attention to the parade that was almost done moving up the main street of the town of Shelter Bay. Other years she’d ignored the festival, but this year, after her father had brought home a pirate costume, complete with a hat, full-sleeved black leggings and plastic boots, she’d decided to walk the mile from her home in the center of the island and see what was going on.

No one gave her more than a passing glance. The hat was too big, riding low on her face, but that was fine by her. She trudged along the wooden boardwalk of the town, passing familiar stores and seeing people she’d known all her life mingling with the strangers who took the ferry from the mainland to attend the festival.

An announcement about music at the square in town where the statue of old Bartholomew stood watch was made over a loudspeaker, but before she could head in that direction, someone stepped right in front of her. As she pushed her hat back and looked up, her heart sank.

The one person she didn’t want to see was blocking her path, his band of cohorts with him. “Oh, it’s little Al Peterson,” Sean Payne drawled.

Sean was two years older than she was and one of the island kids who enjoyed taunting her, never letting her forget who she was. Alegra Peterson, the daughter of a man who was drunk more than he was sober and a woman who’d walked out five years ago and never come back.

In the failing light, she stared up at him. Tall and skinny, he was in costume, too, but a far more elegant version than hers, with a billowing silk shirt, high leather boots with shiny buckles and a long white plume of a feather stuck rakishly in his hat. His narrow face was pale, the freckles that went along with his blond-red hair standing out starkly on skin that was just starting to get the first traces of teenaged acne.

His gaze traveled over her, too, then his dark eyes met hers. “Some costume, Al,” he said. “What’re you supposed to be?”

“A pirate,” she said.

“I don’t think so,” he said mockingly.

“I am a pirate,” she said emphatically, lifting her chin and standing her ground. She wasn’t going to cry and run away. She’d done that once, and it had only made Sean and his friends make fun of that, too.

“No, you’re a garbage picker.” Sean moved closer.

Kids had taunted Alegra for as long as she could remember, but Sean was different. To the others, she was an afterthought. To Sean, she was a target. Now he reached out and grabbed her arm, leaning down until his face was in hers.

“Garbage picker,” he sneered. “That’s a costume my dad threw out because it was a mess. He put it in the trash bin behind his office, right near the Ship’s Rail Bar.”

She hadn’t questioned where her dad had found the costume for her to wear. He’d just said that it fell in his lap. Now she knew. She also knew her face was flaming, and she hated her dad and Sean in equal measure.

“So, you or that drunk dad of yours had to be garbage picking to get it,” Sean continued. “Trash for trash.”

She was aware of everyone watching them and listening, even passersby, and anger raged through her. She narrowed her eyes and hissed back at him loud enough for everyone to hear, “I’d rather wear a stupid old costume than have zits all over my face.”

“Ooohhh,” rose in a chorus from his pals, and it was Sean’s turn to grow beet-red, which made his blemishes even more vivid. The instant he let her go and raised his hand, she made fists and held them up the way her dad had shown her boxers fought. “Come on, come on,” she yelled at Sean. “Hit a girl. Just try and I’ll beat you up.”

But Sean didn’t get a chance to do anything. Someone else was there, an adult who had the boy by the arm, pulling him back and putting his tall, solid body between the two youngsters. Alegra grabbed at the man’s jacket, trying to get him out of her way, and the next thing she knew, his other hand gripped her shoulder and held fast. “Hey, calm down,” he said.

That was when she looked up and recognized an islander, Mr. Lawrence. His son was in high school. Ignoring Sean’s shouts of outrage, he crouched and fixed his dark blue gaze on Alegra. “Aren’t you Peterson’s girl?”

She refused to answer. He was looking at her with the same expression most of the town used. She wasn’t sure what to call it, but she knew how it made her feel. “Are you okay?” he asked.

She’d never been okay, and as long as she was on this island, she never would be. She jerked and must have caught him by surprise, because she was free. Without missing a beat, she turned and ran blindly away from both him and Sean, ignoring the shouts of anger when she bumped into people. She finally broke free of the crowd and, breathing hard, kept on going.

She ran into the night, through the darkness where huge pines canopied overhead, blotting out any light that might have come from the rising moon. But she didn’t need light to know where she was or where she was going. She reached the old lighthouse—out of commission for as long as she could remember—skirted the fence around it, then scrambled down rough stone steps to the beach below. She stopped at the water’s edge.

Fog was rolling in over the dark waters of Puget Sound, blotting out the distant lights of Seattle. Alegra pulled off the boots and stripped off everything down to the jeans and thermal shirt she’d worn under the costume. Then she picked up the costume pieces and waded into the chilly water, not stopping until she was up to her thighs and shivering cold. She dropped the pieces into the shallow waves.

She waded back to shore and headed to a huge rock embedded in the bluffs below the lighthouse and scrambled up onto it. She sat as far back as she could, still shaking from the cold, but not caring. “I hate you all,” she screamed. And then she cried.

No one heard her sobs or the moment when they stopped. Why weren’t there still pirates like Bartholomew Grace? Why couldn’t she stow away on his ship and sail away? Why couldn’t she pillage and plunder with him, until she came back here fabulously rich? She’d throw the money in their faces and if anyone so much as called her Al, she’d make him walk the plank.

She liked that idea very much. And before she nudged an offender into the briny deep, she’d make him bow to her and call her Alegra.

“I am Alegra,” she called into the fog, and heard a vague, muffled echo come back to her. “Alegra,” she said more softly, alone in her world.

Chapter One

Eighteen years later

“I am Alegra,” the woman said softly to herself.

She stood at the railing of the lumbering car ferry as it broke free of the docking area to make the trip across Puget Sound to Shelter Island. She stared at the distant dark blur of the island that was all but lost in the mists of the late-November day. “I am Alegra,” she said again.

The cold dampness brushed her skin, and she pulled her cashmere jacket more tightly around her. Tucking her chin into the faux fur collar, she never took her eyes off her destination. The island certainly didn’t look welcoming. She was the only one at the rail, the other passengers opting to stay in the warmth of their vehicles, but then again, they weren’t coming back here after ten years. They were mostly commuters who were just going home. She wasn’t.

She heard the muffled chimes of her cell phone and reached into her jacket pocket for it. Flipping it open, she glanced at the caller ID, then said into the mouthpiece, “Hey, Roz, what’s wrong now?”

Her assistant, Roz Quinlan, said brightly, “Calm down. All’s clear on the Alegra’s Closet front, or as clear as it can be at this time of year.”

The upcoming holidays increased the sales of their product—women’s intimate apparel—at their stores and through the mail. Nothing was simple with her business this time of year, but it kept going. So if Roz’s call wasn’t a business problem, what was it? She had no family, and her friends were all involved in the company. “Did you call just to hear my voice?” she asked.

“Not even close. It’s Beach Boy Ken.”

Alegra grimaced. Roz didn’t like Ken Barstow, the junior partner in the law firm Alegra’s Closet Inc. used, and although she was polite to him, when she spoke about him to Alegra, Ken became “Beach Boy Ken.” When Roz first met him, saw his tall, blond, tanned good looks and pronounced ingratiating manner, she’d decided he was “plastic and phony.”

“What about Ken?” Alegra asked.

“He’s been calling and leaving messages on your cell, he told me, and you haven’t picked up or returned his calls.”

Alegra had dated Ken Barstow off and on for almost a year, but whatever he’d thought might come from it was fading fast. She was too busy with her company to have time for a serious relationship, which in fact was the way it had been since she’d left Shelter Island. College had taken up four years of her life, design school a few more years, then there were the years spent getting her business up and running.

And, she hated to admit it, but Roz was partially right about Ken. He wasn’t plastic and phony, but he was on the fast track and doing everything he had to do to further his ambition. Sort of the way she was, she conceded to no one but herself. And she’d been pulling back ever since. “Tell him I’m swamped and I’ll contact him as soon as I can.”

“You got it,” Roz replied, then added, “So where are you now?”

“On the ferry,” Alegra said as the outline of the island became clearer, and she could see the ribbon of beach below the towering bluffs, a pale strip between the dark water and the darker land. Now she could even see lights from houses twinkling to life in the coming dusk. And there, silhouetted against the darkening sky, was the old lighthouse. She felt a knot grip her stomach at the sight.

“Well, good luck to you,” Roz said, which only made the discomfort in Alegra’s middle worse.

Roz had been with Alegra since the day her lingerie designs first went into production. She’d been there when the first Alegra’s Closet had opened in New York, and stuck with Alegra all through the struggles to get going and expand. Roz was as close as a sister in some ways, but even she didn’t know everything about Alegra’s past, just a general impression that it wasn’t great and that she was going back to her childhood home to settle a problem before she headed back to San Francisco.

Alegra cleared her throat before she murmured, “Thanks,” and flipped the phone shut.

She narrowed her eyes on the lighthouse, standing like a dark sentinel on the northern end of the island. Suddenly the past two weeks of checking on stores in California, Oregon and now Washington, seemed like another life. All the years she’d been gone were merely a blink in time.

She found herself gripping the railing with both hands, so tightly that her fingers whitened. She was back to the day, after her high school graduation, she’d packed a bag and finally had made her escape. She’d walked the two miles to the ferry landing in the pale light of a June morning, taken the ferry away from the island and found a new life. Now the old life was rushing up to meet her.

She took a deep breath, reminding herself of the reason she was coming here: the need to put Al Peterson to rest. But now that she was getting closer and closer to the island, her eyes started to burn, then her lashes became damp. “Damn it,” she muttered and swiped at her tears. She never cried. She wouldn’t cry. And, as her stomach began to churn, she vowed she wouldn’t throw up, either.

She closed her eyes as she pressed her hand to her middle. She breathed deeply a few times and the urge to be sick subsided, though she still felt a bit nauseated.

“You shouldn’t stand out here on the deck when it’s this rough and this cold,” a masculine voice said by her right side.

Her eyes flew open and she turned to see the man who had spoken to her. The first thing she noticed were his eyes, a deep, true blue. He was tall, over six feet, dressed in what she used to call “island traditional.” That meant a flannel shirt, jeans, the more faded the better, and heavy boots. His dark hair, touched with gray at the temples, didn’t look styled at all. He wore it straight back from his angular face, longer than was fashionable, and now it was ruffled in the breeze off the water. The shadow of a new beard roughened a strong jaw, and grudgingly she had to admit that he was attractive enough to catch any woman’s attention. That sexy outdoorsman look…

“Excuse me?” she asked when she realized she’d been staring.

He leaned on the rail with his right arm and narrowed those blues eyes on her. “Are you seasick?”

That did away with having to explain why she’d started to cry. “A bit,” she confessed.

He shook his head. “That’s a shame. But it takes a while to get your sea legs.”

Her only response was a small smile. She turned back to the view of the island. The ferry was about halfway there now, and she was able to see the outline of the huge pines on the ridges and the stark rocks in the bluffs.

“At least the trip’s short,” he said.

It felt like an eternity since she’d driven her rental car onto the deck of the ferry to begin the journey back. “Thank goodness,” she breathed.

She thought he’d leave, that if she didn’t say any more, he’d drift off and leave her alone. But he didn’t. Instead, he leaned forward with both arms on the rail and stared down into the dark water. “Twenty-two minutes,” he said.

She frowned in confusion. “What?”

“The trip, it takes twenty-two minutes, if the weather’s good and the water’s smooth. If the weather’s like this, and the water’s choppy, it can take half an hour.”

She shifted to look at him. “And you know this because you’re a regular on this run?”

He cast her a slanted look. “A regular? I was, way back. I’ve only taken the trip a few times lately, though.” He turned toward her and tucked the tips of his fingers in the pockets of his worn jeans. “But some things never change.”

“You’re from the island?” she asked, already knowing the answer.

A rueful smile tugged at his lips. “Yeah, I’ve only been back there a few months, but I guess once an islander, always an islander.”

“If you say so,” she murmured as her stomach churned anew.

“And you’re here for the Bounty Festival?”

You’re going there for revenge? She remembered Roz saying in disbelief when she’d told her the reason she was coming back: she was going to show the people who’d pitied little Al Peterson and made her life miserable that the little girl was gone, that she was now Alegra Reynolds—she’d taken her grandmother’s surname—successful designer and businesswoman.

She’d denied Roz’s accusation

Roz had studied her and finally said, “Honey, success is the best revenge.” But unless they knew who Alegra Reynolds was, they’d never realize how far Al Peterson had come.

“So are you here for the festival?” he repeated.

“Isn’t everyone?” she asked.

“Well, not always,” he responded. “Some come over to visit friends and relatives.”

“I have no friends or any family on the island,” she said, and hoped her tone sounded normal.

“A true tourist?”

She shrugged and the fur on her collar brushed her chin. “Just curious,” she murmured.

Her phone rang and she opened it to see Roz’s number on the readout again. She hit the “ignore” button, just as another spasm of nausea clutched at her stomach. She hugged her arms around her middle and bent forward to try to minimize the discomfort. “Damn it,” she said.

She felt a hand on her shoulder. “Are you okay?”

Simple words. Yet they echoed in her mind, bouncing off the past, and pulling a day from eighteen years ago right into the present. She made herself look up. He still held her shoulder, and his head was cocked to one side, those blue eyes intently surveying her. The festival, Sean taunting her, humiliating her, then Mr. Lawrence standing between her and Sean, holding both of them back, his hand on her shoulder, him leaning over, looking at her intently, asking, “Are you okay?”

Just like this stranger, but he was leaner and darker than Mr. Lawrence had been back then, maybe younger. Around forty or so, and Mr. Lawrence had been…well, to a child, old, maybe fifty. But the tone of the voice and those blue eyes, along with the strong hand on her shoulder, confused her. If she narrowed her eyes, blurred her vision, it could have been Mr. Lawrence talking to her. She shook her head to clear her thoughts, then straightened up. Thankfully he let go of her. She grabbed the rail with her left hand and exhaled. “I’m fine. It’s just so rough. The water and the wind and the cold.”

“This is actually pretty nice for this time of year,” he said, and she knew it was true. “I’ve always thought it was crazy to have the festival in November. But it was November when Bartholomew Grace got back here safely from his pillaging and plundering, and celebrated. So who’s going to go against the tradition set up by one of the most feared pirates who ever sailed the seven seas?” The man grinned at Alegra, obviously enjoying his little explanation. “His ghost would rise up and make us all walk the plank if we dared to mess with his plans.”

Pirates and ghosts, her wishing she could have gone on a pirate ship and gotten rich, then come back and made anyone who called her Al Peterson walk the plank. The past was alive around her, and her mind raced. Mr. Lawrence had a son. The boy had been in high school or maybe he’d just graduated and gone off to college around the time of Alegra’s run-in with Sean. She couldn’t remember much about the Lawrence kid, since he was so far ahead of her in school, but she thought his name had been Joe.

“The old guy loved the celebration as much as he loved the pirating, from all accounts. It was a debauchery, to all intents and purposes. Now it’s a week full of art shows, crafts, wine tasting, sailing on the sound, parties and a parade, all topped off by a charity ball on the final evening. Not quite the definition of debauchery.” He went on as if reciting directly from a book. “A debauchery is a wild gathering involving excessive drinking and promiscuity. From what I’ve seen over the years, the label ‘festival’ is definitely more fitting. A festival is an occasion for feasting or celebration.”

She smiled weakly. “Is your middle name ‘dictionary’?”

“No, my middle name is Preston. Joseph Preston Lawrence.”

JOE LAWRENCE watched the blond woman as he told her his name. He wasn’t sure what he’d expected when he stated all three names to her, but it certainly wasn’t to see those finely etched cheeks blush or those deep amber eyes widen. She recognized his name? That shouldn’t have surprised him, although being on the island for six months and being out of the limelight had certainly lessened the chances of anyone knowing him, other than the islanders he saw day in and day out. And none of them were too impressed by Joey Lawrence.

Her tongue touched her pale pink lips, before she simply said, “Oh.”

“And you’re…?”

She stared at him, as if he was suddenly speaking a foreign language, then she swallowed and softly cleared her throat. “Alegra Reynolds.”

Joe had spotted her at the booth where the ferry tickets were bought before they’d boarded for the trip to the island. She’d stood out in the sea of commuters getting on the ferry’s last run before it shut down for the night. Her clothes had certainly made her conspicuous: the thigh-length jacket with what he’d guess was politically correct faux fur at the collar and cuffs, to the pencil-legged jeans, and the narrow high-heeled boots.