Did she really believe that about herself? He wanted to argue but she didn’t give him a chance.
“Thank you for walking me home. It’s been a long day and I need to check on my aunt again.”
She unlocked her door and hurried into the house, leaving him frustrated and cold and aching for something he suddenly realized he wanted more than anything else in the world.
20
BEATRIZ
“I miss Shane. Why did he have to move out?”
The question from Mari came out of nowhere, hitting her right in the solar plexus. She looked down at her daughter, sitting in the bleachers beside her as they waited for the Cape Sanctuary High School football game to begin.
“We talked about this, honey. He had his reasons.”
She couldn’t explain any of them to her eleven-year-old daughter, especially when she didn’t really understand them herself.
“It’s not fair. He’s supposed to help me finish my car for the Pinewood Derby. How am I supposed to do it without him?”
Oh, no. She had completely forgotten that. “I thought your dad was going to help you make one. At least you could have a backup.”
Mari frowned. “He said he wanted to, but every time I tell him we need to get started, he’s busy with something else.”
That didn’t surprise her at all. “I’m sure he’ll get to it,” she said.
“But school starts next week and I won’t have as much time, with homework and stuff.”
She was only too aware. This home football game on the Friday before the actual start of school was the kickoff to the new academic year. She was always a little melancholy when the summer ended and they returned to regular life.
“You have this weekend and Shane will still be in and out. You can ask him if he’s still going to be able to go with you and help you with a car.”
“I guess.” She still didn’t look happy about it. Bea didn’t know what to tell her. She wasn’t exactly thrilled about Shane moving out, either. All her worst fears were coming true. She had worried that telling him of her feelings, making a move, would jeopardize the close friendship they’d had for years. She should have just listened to her gut and buried how she felt about him. She would rather have some of Shane than none of him.
She was lost in those grim thoughts when she heard a commotion and looked over to see her ex-husband making his way toward them.
“Cruz!” she exclaimed as he slid into the seat on the bleachers next to her. “I didn’t expect you to be here.”
All around them, she could see high school students whispering among themselves and pointing. The man certainly knew how to make an entrance.
“It’s my alma mater. Why wouldn’t I be here?”
As if he cared about high school football. Or high school at all. Cruz had barely graduated. He had certainly never been very interested in athletics, in any form.
“Hi, Daddy.” Mari beamed at him, showing none of the resentment over the broken Pinewood Derby promises. One of the joys of being a single mother—Bea got the fun of trying to comfort her child through all those disappointments while Cruz only got the best of their daughter.
“Hi, pumpkin.” He smiled right back and Bea tried to swallow her annoyance.
Cruz loved Mari and wanted to spend time with her, which was a good thing and more than Bea’s own father had ever wanted.
She tried to turn her attention to the game and not spend too much of it staring at Shane’s back as he walked back and forth on the sidelines.
It was quickly obvious that the smaller Cape Sanctuary team was no match for the football players put up by the larger school. They were scrappy, certainly, but the other school had bigger, obviously more experienced, players. By halftime, Cape Sanctuary was behind two touchdowns.
Last year Stella had come with her to all the home games. Even Daisy had come to a few, when she could tear herself away from her paperwork and her numbers. It had become something of a tradition among the three of them, something she had come to cherish. They would eat popcorn and talk to neighbors and cheer on their local boys.
But when she stopped to check on Stella earlier in the day to remind her this was the opening game, her aunt had said she wasn’t quite up for it and probably should stay home to rest.
Bea couldn’t blame her, especially not with school starting the next week. While the ER visit and the subsequent anti-nausea medication she had been prescribed seemed to have helped with the effects of her acute morning sickness, it was obvious Stella was struggling with her energy level.
She was still worried about her aunt, though Stella seemed to be slowly regaining her strength. Bea could only hope Stella knew what she was doing and would be able to handle the responsibility of having an infant along with teaching full-time.
Daisy had turned down her invitation, too, citing work obligations.
She missed both of them, especially since that meant Cruz thought he could have her whole attention.
He was very solicitous. She would give him that. When she shivered, he took off his own jacket and put it on her shoulders. He slid down a little so she could see the action better. He offered to get drinks or popcorn refills.
While the halftime entertainment was going on, she finally excused herself to go to the restroom and headed down the bleacher steps.
What was she going to do about him? The man was driving her crazy.
After she fixed the lipstick she had chewed off watching the first half, she returned to the field in time to see the Cape Sanctuary team returning, followed by their handsome coach.
The lights gleamed in his blond hair and he looked so tough and gorgeous as he followed his boys that everything inside her sighed.
As she watched, the lovely new French teacher, Vanessa Martin, wearing a Cape Sanctuary High hoodie, hurried to the sidelines and handed him a water bottle. He smiled down at the woman and Bea stopped in her tracks, her heart pounding and her chest achy.
She had waited too long to let him know how she felt. It was obvious that Shane was moving toward a relationship with the teacher. Bea hated this jealousy inside her. It made her feel small and selfish and insecure. She ought to be happy for her friend, that he had found someone who interested him.
Perhaps Vanessa Martin was the reason he had moved out of her house and he had only used Cruz as an excuse. Maybe it was too awkward to be dating someone else seriously now that Shane knew Bea’s feelings for him went beyond friendship.
She should never have told him. She should have kept things casual and fun between them. Maybe then she wouldn’t be feeling as if somebody had just ripped out her heart and kicked it through the goalposts.
* * *
In the end Shane’s team pulled out an amazing victory, coming from three touchdowns behind to move the ball fast in the last quarter and win by a thirty-yard field goal.
Beatriz screamed so loud, she lost her voice, and she left Mari with her father so she could rush the field along with the rest of the fans in the stands, to hug the football players she considered her boys.
She hugged everyone in sight, and before she quite realized it, the crowd pushed her toward Shane and he was in front of her.
“Congratulations!” She had to yell to be heard above the sound of the crowd.
“Thanks!” he shouted back. His voice sounded hoarse. She hoped wherever he was living, he could get some tea with honey in it when he went home.
She was just about to hug him when the French teacher stepped forward and wrapped her arms around him.
He gave Bea a quick look she couldn’t read, then returned the embrace of the pretty new teacher. She was obviously angling for a kiss, lifting her mouth up to his, but Shane only pecked her cheek and released her.
Bea forced a smile, waved at both of them, then turned away to hug Tony Feola’s mother.
> She needed to figure out a way to get over him. If she didn’t, if she couldn’t manage to put away her growing feelings and regain a little perspective, she was afraid she would lose a cherished friendship.
If it wasn’t already too late.
21
STELLA
Usually the Open Hearts annual picnic was the highlight of her year, but right now Stella wanted to curl up on the grass under a tree at Driftwood Park and take a long, glorious nap.
She had never expected being pregnant to make her feel like she was eighty years old.
The anti-nausea medication she had been given for morning sickness was doing an excellent job of keeping her from feeling sick every moment of the day, but a side effect was sheer exhaustion. Considering she was basically a senior-citizen mother at forty and was still in the first trimester of the pregnancy, where fatigue was a common thing anyway, she hoped it was normal that she wanted to spend all day in bed.
She couldn’t, of course. She had people who counted on her, so she would persevere.
She couldn’t wait until she started having energy again. As soon as she had the thought, she pushed it away. She had made a vow to herself that she wouldn’t wish away any part of the pregnancy, good or bad. More than likely, this would be her only chance to give birth and she wanted to savor every moment of it—even the fatigue that left her feeling like a piece of seaweed that had been dashed against the rocks for a few weeks.
Clipboard in hand, Daisy approached where Stella was sitting on a lawn chair she’d brought along. “The caterers say everything is ready.”
“That’s good. As soon as a few more families show up, we can start.”
Stella tried not to feel guilty about having the event catered this year. Usually, they grilled brats and burgers and spent several days ahead of the picnic making salads and slicing fruit. After a surprise donation to the foundation a few days after Stella’s trip to the ER earmarked specifically for the picnic food, Daisy had wisely suggested they cater it this year.
Daisy had done all the work, arranging for one of Stella’s favorite restaurants, a local Mexican café, to provide all the fixings for street tacos, elote—Mexican grilled corn—and various salads.
It all smelled delicious and Stella was grateful her appetite was beginning to return a little.
Around her, she could see families from throughout the region arriving and greeting each other with hugs and exclamations of delight. This picnic was more like a family reunion, a beloved tradition among foster families in the area and among children who had “graduated” from foster care and were now young adults. Some even brought their own families now.
“It will be perfect. Thank you, darling,” Stella said to her niece. “Weren’t we fortunate to get that last-minute donation? It was almost as if someone knew I would be too tired to handle the food preparation this year.”
“It’s like a picnic miracle,” Daisy said, her voice so bland, Stella couldn’t tell if she was being sarcastic.
She didn’t care; she was just so grateful to Daisy for stepping up and handling the last-minute details. The cute little dog Daisy was fostering was attached by his leash to Stella’s chair so he didn’t run away. He sat up on his hind legs and Daisy reached down to pet his head with an affectionate look.
The dog had been good for her, Stella thought. Daisy needed something to remind her life was more than to-do lists. She adored Daisy but worried her niece hid so much of herself behind her need for order and control.
Mari and Ed’s daughter, Rowan, who had become fast friends since their trip to Universal Studios, came over to her, arm in arm.
“Our game is all ready, Aunt Stella,” Mari said.
“Which one are you doing, again?”
Every year they hosted a mini carnival for the kids, which was always a highlight.
“We’re doing the fishing game.”
“And we have tons of prizes for the kids.”
“That will be so wonderful.”
“Is there something else we can do to help?” Mari asked Daisy.
“You can check to be sure there are enough paper products near the food table. If you want to set out more plates, they’re under the table.”
“Okay.”
The girls ran off, chattering with each other. Rowan was a sweet girl and Stella was grateful she and Mari had hit it off so well. It would make things much easier for Rowan to have a friend at school.
“Is Gabe coming?” she asked Daisy.
A strange expression crossed the other woman’s features. Something secretive and feminine. Stella was interested to see color seep across Daisy’s normally composed features. “He said he was. He’s planning to videotape the picnic and the games, as well as talk to some of the families. I’ll make sure we have releases from everyone.”
“Oh, lovely. He seems like a very nice man.”
“Yes,” Daisy said. “He does.”
She still didn’t quite understand how Daisy had become friendly with him but she wasn’t going to look a gift horse in the mouth.
“And didn’t Bea do a good job with the decorations?”
The large covered picnic area at the park had been transformed into a carnival tent, with red and white streamers billowing down from a center spot in the ceiling and strings of lights completing the effect.
“She’s amazing,” Daisy said. Stella gave her a careful look, wondering if the two had managed to make up after their little argument the other day at the board meeting.
A few more families started to arrive and Stella was busy talking to a friend from farther north in the state who had adopted two of her foster children when she sensed, rather than saw, Ed’s arrival.
She had been wondering if he would make it as he’d said he would but had felt weird asking Rowan.
He went straight to his daughter at their swimming pool fishing pond. Rowan hugged him and spoke animatedly, pointing to the pool and obviously explaining how it worked as if people hadn’t been doing fishing ponds at kids’ carnivals since carnivals were a thing.
Sunlight picked up golden highlights in his brown hair as he listened carefully to his daughter, asking questions and having her demonstrate how a child would throw the pole over the curtain and come back with a prize attached to it by Mari and Rowan on the other side.
They were so close, it warmed her heart. He was a wonderful father to Rowan—just as he would have been a wonderful father to Daisy and Bea, if Stella had given him the chance.
Everything inside her seemed to soften. Oh, how she had missed him over the years. She thought she was doing so well, going on to have a good life without him. Since he had been back in Cape Sanctuary, she realized how she was fooling herself. He had slipped past her defenses somehow and become once more vital to her existence.
He and Rowan stopped by almost every day after school, bringing dinner most nights but sometimes just coming to hang out and make sure she was all right.
She tried so very hard not to need him but it was becoming more impossible by the day.
She was more in love with him today than she had been when she was twenty-one and thought her heart would break apart at having to walk away from him.
How would her life have been different if she had made other choices back then?
She couldn’t think that way. She had done what she thought was right at the time. How could he have handled being an instant father to two needy preadolescents while going to medical school at the same time? He had spent his own childhood raising his siblings while his single mother worked multiple jobs and she knew she couldn’t have burdened him with her nieces.
After he left Rowan to help another child at the fishing pond, he looked around the busy park until his gaze landed on her. Was she imagining the way his eyes lit up? Her heart seemed to pound faster as he made a beeline to her.
“Hi,” she said, wondering where this sudden shyness came from.
He leaned in to kiss her cheek and she wanted to inhale the scent of him into her being, cedar and musk in some sort of citrusy base.
“Sorry I’m late. I got held up at the hospital. One of my patients had twins.”
“Are they all right?” She would have asked that question anyway, but it seemed more significant than ever, now that she was pregnant.
“Everyone’s doing fine. Except the dad, anyway, who passed out right around the time the second twin was making an appearance.”
This made her smile, even as she was aware of a little pang in her heart that her child wouldn’t have a father who would pass out during its birth and she wouldn’t have a partner to share all her joys and fears with.
She had made the choice to go through this alone. It wasn’t as if she hadn’t dated at all since Ed. She had, though at first she’d been too busy figuring out how to be a mom to the girls that she hadn’t had time to think about a social life. In the years since, she’d gone on plenty of dates and been serious enough to think about marriage to two men.
Both had been good men, decent and kind, but neither had been able to touch the place in her heart that had always belonged to her first and dearest love.
She sighed now, pushing away the past she couldn’t change.
“Where do you need me?” he asked.
She had a hundred different answers to that but forced a smile. “Daisy knows better than I do this year. She’s kind of taken over running things.”
“Good. You’re doing exactly what you need to be doing. I’ll find her.”
“Ed, thank you for making the effort to come and help. It means a great deal.”
“Are you kidding? Rowan’s been talking about nothing else for days. She would never let us miss it.”
He was here for his daughter, Stella reminded herself. Not for the pregnant, slightly queasy, exhausted forty-year-old woman who had walked away from him.
The Cliff House Page 21
