Up to the Challenge ai-2 Read online

  Up to the Challenge

  ( Anchor Island - 2 )

  Terri Osburn

  Opposites attract in a sexy tale of unexpected love

  When the Dempsey patriarch suffers a heart attack, Lucas Dempsey steps up to keep the doors of the family restaurant open. The proverbial prodigal son returns home to Anchor Island—putting family first and his quest to make partner at his high-powered law firm on hold. Sporting a bruised ego after losing his fiancée to his older brother, Lucas would rather walk on glass than spend six weeks within spitting distance of the happy couple. But family duty calls. And that duty includes working side-by-side with a tantalizing spitfire intent on driving him mad.

  Tough-as-nails boat mechanic Sid Navarro is happy to trade her tools for an apron to help the Dempseys in their time of need. That is, until she realizes she’ll be working alongside Lucas, the man she’s loved from afar since she first laid eyes on him in high school. Lucas could charm the paint off a schooner, but Sid knows she doesn’t fit his girl-next-door type. To show her true feelings would mean certain heartbreak, but the temptation of Lucas in her bed might be more than she can resist.

  After a rocky start punctuated by verbal barbs and exasperating arguments, things heat up between them—big-time—but their steamy affair turns more than casual in a matter of weeks. Sid’s life has become the dream she’s always wanted, and Lucas has fallen hard for the last woman he ever expected to love.

  But this affair has an end-date, as Lucas must return to his life and career in the big city, a place where Sid would never fit in. When the end comes earlier than expected, walking away turns out to be a challenge neither of them wants to win.

  Up to the Challenge is a sexy, fast-paced, romantic story of family, island life, and finding love in unexpected places.

  Up to the Challenge

  Anchor Island 2

  by

  Terri Osburn

  For Fran. You’ve been with me from the beginning.

  Thank you for the push.

  CHAPTER ONE

  Sid Navarro considered calling a nurse to remove the stick of righteous indignation from Lucas Dempsey’s ass. If he tensed up any more, the thing would snap off and put an eye out. Observing from the back of the hospital room, she couldn’t help but pick up on the tension rolling through the broad shoulders of the man she’d been in love with for half her life.

  Not that Lucas knew about her feelings, which was the way Sid preferred it. His type was the simple, friendly, girl next door, always smiling and ready to mingle. Sid wasn’t overly complicated, but her unsociable nature along with an atypical job—foul-mouthed mechanic—meant she didn’t fit his mold. Best to keep her feelings on the down low rather than face the humiliation of rejection.

  Lucas stepped closer to the foot of his father’s bed, waging what looked to be a battle between shedding a tear and tearing someone’s head off. Her best guess for the head-ripping victim would be Lucas’s older brother Joe.

  Joe carried tension of his own where he stood four feet to Lucas’s right, holding hands with his girlfriend. Beth Chandler had been Lucas’s fiancée until six weeks ago, which justified the tension, but, since Lucas had supposedly given his blessing to the new couple, the blatant anger didn’t make much sense.

  Maybe the fiancée swap wasn’t the problem. Since Lucas had bolted from Anchor Island the moment the tassel on his high school graduation cap switched sides, he and Joe hadn’t seen eye to eye on much of anything. That made the rift ten years wide.

  Sid and Joe had been working together on his fishing boat for just over five years and spent so much time together, the Dempsey family had more or less adopted her as one of their own. Except Lucas, of course. He didn’t visit the island often enough to get sand in his shoes, let alone notice an extended family member.

  Sid couldn’t recall Joe mentioning anything about a new dustup with Lucas. Then again, Joe wasn’t exactly a talker. One of the things Sid liked best about him. She wasn’t one of those women who wanted a man to share his every thought and feeling.

  In Sid’s opinion, women were just asking for trouble with that nonsense. Raised mostly by her father and big brother, she had enough experience around testosterone to know the shit going through a man’s head at any given moment should never be revealed for public consumption.

  Especially not the female public.

  “The nurse says five days in here, then six weeks recovery at home,” said Patty, Lucas and Joe’s mom. Technically, Lucas’s birth mother and Joe’s stepmom. She was talking about the boys’ father, who occupied the bed around which they all hovered. Technically, Joe’s biological dad and Lucas’s stepfather, who’d given the younger boy his name when he’d married Patty.

  The Dempseys were a complicated bunch even before the fiancée fiasco.

  Tom Dempsey had suffered a near fatal heart attack while tending bar in the family-owned restaurant during the lunch hour. Eight hours later, here he lay, prostrate with translucent skin and a mess of tubes sticking out of each arm. Cables looped into the neck of his hospital gown, assumedly plugged into stickers glued somewhere around the vicinity of his heart.

  For a giant of a man known to be a pillar of strength and good health, Tom was doing a damn accurate imitation of a beached jellyfish. Sid fought a tear of her own, wiping the corner of an eye with the sleeve of her hoodie. She’d lost her dad to a heart attack when she was fourteen. Losing Tom Dempsey the same way would feel like having a four-sixty engine block dropped on her chest.

  “But after six weeks he’ll be good as new, right?” Joe asked. Beth leaned closer and he tucked her under his arm. Lucas’s eyes narrowed, but he otherwise remained stoic.

  Patty swiped away a tear, her voice cracking as she spoke. “I’m not sure ‘good as new’ is in the cards, Joe, but he’ll be with us, and that’s enough.”

  “Is there still a chance he could …” Beth let the question trail off. The group exchanged glances as if daring one another to say the word no one wanted to hear. Sid kept her mouth shut, as unwilling as the others to tempt fate.

  “I’m not dying anytime soon,” Tom said in a low, gravel-choked voice. His eyes were still closed, making it seem as if they’d all imagined the words.

  “Tom? Honey?” Patty lifted his hand to her lips, pressing them against the tape holding an IV needle in place. “Can you hear me?”

  “The heart might be on the fritz, but my ears still work.”

  Relief swept through Sid. His voice wasn’t as strong as usual, but the words were so Tom, she knew he was going to be all right. The patient opened first one eye, then the other, licked his lips, then motioned toward a cup sitting on the tray to his right. After sipping through the straw Patty lifted to his mouth, Tom dropped his head back.

  “Do I look half as bad as that look on your face says I do?” he asked.

  Patty laughed as a tear slid down her cheek, unheeded this time. “Don’t you ever scare me like that again, Thomas Dempsey. I thought I was going to lose you.”

  Sid nearly added a “Hear, hear!” to Patty’s words. The man needed to take better care of himself, that was all there was to it.

  Tom smiled, ran a finger along Patty’s cheek, then shifted focus to his other visitors. “Now I know what it takes to get everyone in this family in the same room.” He bounced a raised-brow look between Joe and Lucas, then addressed the latter. “Thanks for coming all the way down here.”

  “Not a problem,” Lucas said, jaw tight with a smile that didn’t reach his eyes. “Though you could have just asked. No need to get so dramatic.”

  Noticing Sid in the back of the room, Tom asked her, “You think you could modify this bed to power me out of here?”

&nbs
p; Sid stepped up next to Lucas and tried to ignore how good he smelled. “Got my tools in the truck. We can have you doing thirty-five down the highway in no time.”

  “Don’t encourage him, Sid,” Patty scolded. “You’ll stay here until they say you can come home, and then you’re going to do everything the doctor says.”

  “I’ve got a restaurant to run, woman.” Sid wouldn’t put it past the Dempsey patriarch to leap out of the bed and stomp back to the island, ass cheeks shining through the hospital gown all the way.

  “You’re not running anything for at least six weeks,” Patty said, sounding as firm as possible under the circumstances.

  “Then tell me who’s going to run the place. We can’t close the doors. Not in July, for Christ’s sake.”

  “We’ll take care of it,” Joe said. Leave it to Mr. Responsible to step up. He needed to remember he couldn’t be in two places at one time.

  “If you’re going to run the restaurant, who’s going to run the charters?” Sid asked. Joe couldn’t afford to shut down his charter business any more than they could close the restaurant at the height of the season.

  And there was the little issue of her own income. Sid was so close to having enough money to buy the garage that would house her future. There had to be a way to make it all work.

  “I can find someone else to run the boat for a couple months.”

  Sid pointed out the obvious. “Every fisherman capable of running that boat is already running his own. And you’ve got charters booked for the next six weeks.”

  Patty interrupted before Joe could argue further. “You kids have businesses of your own. We’ll find someone to run the restaurant through Labor Day, then reevaluate for fall.”

  “I’ll do it,” Lucas said.

  He might as well have pulled a pin on a live grenade and held it over his head. Everyone fell silent, exaggerating the incessant chirping of the machines monitoring Tom’s every heartbeat.

  “You’ll what?” Joe asked, stepping forward. Sid stood her ground between the men. This was no time for Joe to do something stupid.

  Lucas crossed his arms, revealing impressive muscle below the rolled up shirtsleeves. “I said I’ll do it. I’ll run the restaurant while Dad recovers.”

  “You heard the part about six weeks, right?” big brother asked. Beth tugged on Joe’s belt loop and he stepped back.

  “I may miss a clue now and then, but I got that part.”

  Sid wasn’t sure if Lucas meant to take a shot at Beth, but that’s what he’d done. Joe stepped forward again.

  “As much as I want out of this hospital, I’m not getting kicked out because of you two.” Tom hit a button on the bed rail, sending the mattress into motion. Once he was satisfied with his new position, he released the button. “Lucas, I appreciate the offer, but are you sure you can get away from the law firm?”

  Lucas leaned on the bottom bed rail. “I’m sure. Do you trust me to run your restaurant?”

  Tom frowned. “I won’t dignify that with an answer.” He turned to Joe. “If he runs the place while you run the charters, can you cover some nights?”

  “I’ll be there whenever you need me.”

  “Nights,” Tom said again, as if passing down a final judgment. “Then it’s settled. You boys will run it together. I expect the place to still be in one piece when I come back. Understand?”

  Both brothers nodded but neither spoke. Tom’s head dropped, the brief exchange apparently taking what little energy he could muster.

  Patty gripped her husband’s hand and turned to Beth. “You’re running the art store, right?”

  Beth straightened like a soldier called to attention. “Yes, but only until Lola and Marcus come back from New Orleans.”

  “How long is that?”

  “Another month.”

  Patty nodded. “Sid?”

  “Yeah?”

  “I’m not letting Tom out of my sight, and that puts us two people down instead of one,” she said. “Could you help cover for me?”

  “If Joe recruits one of the high school kids to run the charters with him.” Sid looked to Joe for his reaction and got a nod of approval. “Then I’m there. But I just need to be available for mechanic work if a call comes in.”

  “I’m sure we can work around that,” Patty said. “It’s all settled then. Beth can work with Joe to cover nights, and Sid will help Lucas during the day.”

  With Lucas? Sid hadn’t thought that far ahead. She’d never experienced seasickness in her life, but the thought of working side by side with the guy for whom she’d secretly pined for more than ten years made her queasy. Or not so secretly, since Joe knew. And thanks to Sid’s brother, Randy, Beth did, too.

  Sid made eye contact with Beth, reading the unspoken question in her eyes.

  This is good, right?

  Then she turned to Lucas to catch his reaction. He looked like someone had just shit in his shoe.

  Not from where I’m standing, she thought.

  Life was about to become a living hell. Or rather, even more of a living hell than it had been since his fiancée had fallen in love with his brother. Lucas didn’t regret having been the one to convince Beth and Joe not to become martyrs for his sake. Lucas had loved Beth, or thought he had the night he’d proposed. And he loved his brother for all they understood each other, which wasn’t much.

  Something had happened to Beth back in May when he’d left her on Anchor with his family to head back to Richmond for a case. The change could have been caused by Joe, or the island, or maybe the distance from Lucas and the law firm where they’d worked together. Whatever the reason, the Beth he’d left behind was not the woman waiting when he returned.

  In fact, she’d been Elizabeth to him. He still struggled to call her Beth. Back in Richmond, he didn’t have to call her anything. The gossip in the office had been a pain in the ass, but faded into ancient history as soon as Van Dyke got caught boffing his assistant in the janitor’s closet.

  Beth claimed she’d never set out to hurt him. She’d been living a lie for a long time, pretending to be someone else to make people happy, and somehow he’d become part of that lie. One more person she’d set out to please. The truth was, whether he’d brought her to Anchor or not, their life together never would have worked out.

  Which drove him nuts, but he wasn’t about to let Beth know that. Or anyone else. So she’d picked his brother over him. Nothing new there.

  Through no effort of his own, and exuding no discernible charm Lucas could see, Joe had always come out on top. People loved him. More importantly, they respected him. They listened when he talked, cleared a path when he crossed a room.

  Being Joe Dempsey’s little brother was like playing second fiddle to a set of spoons, which was why Lucas preferred to live elsewhere. In Richmond, he was the star attorney. The up-and-coming counselor. Or he had been until Beth dumped him for Joe.

  “Hey there,” came a soft voice from behind him. Speak of the devil. “This is a really nice thing you’re doing.”

  Lucas kept his eyes on the vending machine before him. “Yeah. Well. Mom and Dad need me. I’m here for them.”

  Beth leaned on the corner of the machine. “And you’re sure this won’t be a problem? Getting away from the firm?”

  He should have known she’d wonder about that. “Not a problem.” Lucas pushed the number-letter combination for barbeque chips, then watched the steel rod turn. The chips stayed put. “Damn it.”

  Beth ignored the expletive. “Leaving in the middle of a case isn’t going to cause issues? No one wants you to jeopardize your career.”

  Lucas smacked the glass between him and the chips. Nothing. “I’m not in the middle of a case.” Another smack. The chips didn’t budge.

  “Oh,” Beth said. “Then you just wrapped one up? Did you win?”

  Meeting her eyes for the first time, he blurted, “I’m on leave. I lost three cases in a month and Holcomb suggested I take a leave of absence until I’ve �
��regained my focus,’ as he put it.” Lucas turned back to the machine to stare at the unattainable bag of chips. There was a metaphor in there somewhere.

  His former fiancée stayed quiet, indicating she might hopefully be ready to drop the subject. No such luck. “I’m sorry. How long have you been off?”

  “Two weeks.”

  “And you didn’t tell us?” she asked. “Were you going to come down here?”

  He shook his head, filtering through the possible replies. He picked honesty. “If what I need is focus, Anchor is the last place I’m likely to find it.” Then before he could stop the words, he said, “That’s more like returning to the scene of the crime.”

  Beth inhaled sharply and his gut churned. He’d sworn he wouldn’t do this. “Look. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that.”

  Beth shook her head. “No, it’s all right. We knew this was going to be a transition.” She blushed. “That’s not the right word. I mean—”

  “I know what you mean,” he interrupted. No reason to make this more difficult than it had to be. “Don’t worry about it. We’ll make this work.” He tried a grin but his heart wasn’t in it. “Six weeks. We can handle six weeks, right?”

  Beth seemed to spot someone coming up behind him and straightened. “Right. Six weeks. I’d better get back in the room.”

  Lucas turned to see Sid Navarro coming down the hall. The pint-sized boat mechanic had been on the fringe of his reality since high school, but he wouldn’t say they were friends. Not like she and Joe were. In fact, Lucas couldn’t remember ever having a real conversation with the woman.

  Every time he saw her, she was either snarling at someone, or covered in grease and cursing a blue streak. She had to be the least ladylike chick he’d ever met.

  “How’s it going?” Sid said, joining him at the machine. He expected an assault of diesel fumes but instead caught the scent of … watermelon?

  “Hi.”

  Chocolate brown eyes met his for a brief moment, then turned to the display of junk food. “You getting something?”