“Yeah. I always have—”
His phone dinged. He tugged it out of his shirt pocket, tapped a brief reply, then replaced it. “Wes. Wondering where I am.”
“Oh, crap, he probably is.” And God knows he doesn’t need more reason to hate me. “Please, go, I’ll finish up, no problem—”
“Did I ever thank you? I mean, actually say the words, Thank you?”
Sabrina frowned. “For what?”
“Whatever else went down between us,” he said quietly, capturing her gaze in his, “I will never, ever forget how you were a friend to me—a real friend—when nobody else gave a damn, whether intentionally or not. Even more than that...you got me. Like you get my daughter. Those girls. The way you...I don’t know. Gain their trust. Same way you gained mine, a million years ago. That puts everything else into perspective. Because that soft heart inside a tough exterior thing? That’s you to a tee.”
“Soft? Cheah, right.”
In no great hurry, Cole closed the distance between them, his You will look at me eyes making her breath hitch.
“W-why are you staring at me like that?”
Then, slowly, he smiled...and tapped her nose.
“Pussycat,” he whispered, and walked away.
Chapter Nine
Standing at the stove browning ground beef—his son’s lone cooking skill—Wes shot Cole what was probably supposed to be a withering look.
“What took you so long?”
Dogs smothered his calves, trying to glean the answer to that question through their noses. “There was a lot to clean up. And I couldn’t leave Bree to do it all by herself. Whatcha making?”
“Tacos. Where’s Brooke?”
“She went off with Caitlin.”
“The one with the crazy hair?”
“Yep.” Cole walked over and inhaled deeply, then pulled open a drawer for the ancient, but still serviceable, taco holders. “That smells great. I’m starved—”
“Mom called me.”
He turned. “What? When?”
“While you were gone. Obviously.” The kid stirred the meat one last time, then killed the flame under the burner. “She wants to get together. On Saturday.”
“Here? Or Philly?”
“There. She said we could take the train, she’ll meet us at the station.”
“And that is not happening. I’ll drive you.” Wes glowered. “So sue me, I’m not letting you guys ride the train alone—”
“No, it’s not that.”
Cole frowned. “Don’t you want to go?”
“Does it matter?”
“Of course it matters, Wes. If she wants to see you—”
“What she wants is to not feel guilty.”
“You don’t know that—”
“Considering she said how bad she feels, like, fifty times? Yeah. I do. So I’m guessing this isn’t about wanting to see her own kids as much as it is making herself feel better about what she did.”
“And again, you’re not inside her head.”
Tears flooded the boy’s eyes, ripping Cole to pieces. Especially since he couldn’t remember Wes crying since he was a toddler. “We don’t even get to be alone with her, Dad,” he said, his trying-to-change voice cracking. “She said we’ll probably go to the zoo—like we’re little kids, jeez—but that since her new boyfriend’s never been, he’s going with us.”
Irritation spiked. “Oh?”
“Yeah. God, Dad, we haven’t even seen her in two weeks, so you’d think...” His lower lip quivering, Wes turned back to the stove. “But just like always, we’re not enough.”
Cole wished like hell he could refute the kid’s statement, but considering why they were living with him to begin with, how could he? He thought about Bree, how everything about her softened when she’d talked about “her” girls...kids she barely knew, for heaven’s sake. He could only imagine what she’d be like with her own—
He took a deep breath. “She say what this guy’s name was?”
“I think, yeah, but...sorry, I don’t remember. I wasn’t really hearing too clearly by that point.”
No, Cole didn’t imagine so. He did, however, foresee a chat with his ex in the near future. Was the woman really that selfish? Or simply clueless as crap? And what did it say about him, that after nearly fifteen years, two kids and a divorce, he didn’t know the answer to that?
He walked over to his son to clamp a hand around the back of the kid’s slightly sweaty neck and tug him close, his heart melting all over again when, instead of pulling away—which Cole would’ve expected—Wes hugged him back.
“I’ll talk to your mom,” he said quietly, and Wes nodded against his chest, then sucked in a shaky breath that sliced straight through Cole. Releasing a none-too-steady breath of his own, he backed up enough to look into his son’s eyes.
“But I want you to know...you guys are definitely enough for me. In fact, you’re everything.” Which he’d best remember for the foreseeable future. “You got that?”
After a moment, Wes nodded again, then pulled away to shred the block of cheese sitting on the counter, swiping his forearm across his nose. Sighing, Cole yanked off a paper towel, handed it to him.
“Thanks,” the kid muttered, blowing.
“Sure.”
“Um...I made iced coffee?”
“A man after my own heart,” Cole said, and his son’s grin turned him inside out.
* * *
Fortunately, this thing called life kept Sabrina from having to interact with Cole or his kids over the next little while—overseeing the rest of the staging for her father’s house, schlepping into the city a couple of times for appointments, babysitting her nieces and nephew so Kelly and Matt could have date night. Didn’t keep her from thinking about them, however.
All of them, she thought, as she and her part-time assistant lugged bulging dress bags through the lobby of a swanky East Side apartment building.
She thought about Brooke’s smiles as she bonded with the other girls. Her hugs, wrapping around Bree’s heart as well as her waist. Wes’s glares that first day at the center. His rampant distrust. Cole’s coming to her rescue with the cookie baking... The way his pupils dilated when he approached her, there at the end. That tap on her nose. Especially that tap on the nose. Which, really, wasn’t even in the least bit erotic.
Really.
However, it didn’t matter how sweetly that laugh or those eyes or the smell of him sang to her libido, her tatteredbatteredsplattered ego. The issues with Wes aside, she was in major rebound mode. Signs of which she knew all too well. Only this time she was determined to actually pay attention to them. Instead of dragging some poor dude—and his kids—into the abyss with her.
“Hey. Sabrina.” Smushed into the elevator with the bags, she looked at her assistant, Frankie, an aspiring actress who was only too happy to pick up a few extra bucks by playing pack mule now and again. “You’ve said like two words to me since we left Bloomie’s. What gives?”
“Sorry, sweetie. Lots on my mind, that’s all. It’s not you.”
“Yeah? Oh.” The girl made a face. And she didn’t even know the half of it. “Right.”
The apartment was on the twenty-third floor. Great view. Long-ass ride to get there. Shifting the heavy bag in her arms, Sabrina rested her head against the burled-maple paneling, shifting a little to smile for the shaggy-haired blonde. Bright purple leotard, denim vest, yellow leggings, short checked skirt, vintage Jimmy Choo pumps. In silver. More holes in her body than a sieve. This could be Brooke in a few years, came the unbidden thought, and she shuddered.
Not that she’d ever know.
“Actually, I’m okay,” Sabrina said as the elevator gently bumped to a stop on their floor and they shuffled across black-an
d-white-checkered marble to the double-paneled doors leading to the sole apartment on the floor. “It’s been good, being back in New York.” The lights and noise, the perpetually comforting thrum of energy, embracing her like that in-your-face but much-beloved friend each time she returned. “Can’t wait until I can ditch the commute, though.”
“And I told you,” Frankie said, “you’re welcome to crash with me—”
“That’s very sweet, really. But I think my roomie days are behind me.”
“But the deposit and everything on a place of your own...?”
“Getting there.” Even if not as fast as she might’ve hoped.
“Whatever. If Jersey begins to drive you crazy, the offer stands.”
Begins? Another conversation like that with Cole, and she’d be certifiable—
A smiling, Chanel-perfumed Gilda Rabinowitz opened the door, ushering them inside as though they were visiting royalty. Clasping her hands in front of her flat chest, Gilda sucked in a breath at the sight of the bags.
“Oooh...those look promising...”
Two upcoming weddings, three charity functions, and a few pieces to “freshen” up a wardrobe enjoying the high life in a cedar-lined walk-in closet larger than Sabrina’s first apartment. Insane. But, hey, if it paid the bills...
Or, in this case, enabled her to get away from a pair of sexy silver eyes...not to mention a pair of kids who needed more than a mother-of-convenience...
Her phone signaled an incoming text. As Frankie hung the clothes on a portable garment rack, Sabrina dug the phone out of her purse, her breath catching in her throat when she read it.
“What?” her assistant whispered. Sabrina turned the display toward her. Heavy brows shot up.
“Dude,” she whispered. “You gonna do it?”
“Why not?” she said brightly, leaving Frankie to shake her head as Sabrina quickly texted back, Sure thing, see you then, to the woman who’d come within a hairbreadth of becoming her mother-in-law.
* * *
“Can’t quite believe it myself,” the Colonel said, flipping first one, then the other steak on the old charcoal grill. “But the first open house is on Sunday. Not expecting anything right away, of course. This isn’t some TV show, after all. And the market being what it is...”
The sentence left dangling, the older man picked up his can of soda from the attached tray on the grill and joined Cole, lowering himself into the newly cushioned iron chair across from his. Out in the neatly trimmed yard, where Jeanne Noble’s roses reveled in the mid-July humidity, the pugs romped and yipped, all grinning their little puggy grins. The invitation had been a surprise. But the older man said he wanted to give the old grill one last whirl before the for-sale sign went back up. And everybody else had plans.
“Or, as they call them, lives,” he’d said with a grunt, and again Cole found himself hard-pressed to refuse the invitation.
“So. Anyway,” Sabrina’s father said. “Glad you came. Sorry the kids aren’t here, though.”
“Me, too.”
Preston frowned. “You worried about them going with their mother?”
“Now that we’ve ironed out the details?” Cole said with a tight grin. “No.” He’d given Preston a recap, including how he’d basically shamed his ex into seeing her kids without a tagalong boyfriend who probably wouldn’t last the month. His finest moment, no. But a father does what he’s gotta do. And right now—okay, forever—it was all about the kids. What was best for them, not what was convenient for the grown-ups.
The upshot was, Erin had driven to Maple River—alone—to pick them up for the whole weekend, promising it would only be the three of them the entire time. Brooke, bless her heart, was thrilled. Wes, however, was skeptical. Understandably enough.
“I do miss the little stinkers, though,” he now said with a half smile. “Funny, how used you get to having them around.”
“Yeah,” Preston said on a pushed breath, and Cole saw the loneliness in the older man’s eyes. That unsettled feeling of not being sure what came next. A feeling Cole knew all too well.
“Wasn’t Bree supposed to return tonight?”
The Colonel pushed himself to his feet to poke at the steaks, sending their mouthwatering smoke across the yard and to the dogs over at the patio, tongues lolling.
“She was. But she got an unexpected appointment for tonight.”
Cole somehow doubted Bree had thought of Maple River as home for years. He, however, had no problem acknowledging that he was not a city person. Not even after living in Philly. Or maybe because of it. The thought of making his home in crowded, smelly, noisy New York made his skin crawl—
“What?” he said, suddenly catching a word or two of what the Colonel was saying.
“The client. It’s Chad’s mother. Kathryn. Who introduced them, actually. Did you know that?”
Cole shook his head. After their initial, not-exactly-detailed conversation about what had brought her back to Maple River, the subject hadn’t come up again. Not that he’d expected it to.
“Nice enough gal, I suppose, although we’ve only met once. The engagement party, at the Davies’s place out on the Island. Anyway...” The Colonel moved the steaks to a serving platter, shut the lid on the grill. “So she called. I could tell, Sabrina was surprised. You know, given the situation and all. But that’s where she is tonight. Out on the Island.”
“With her ex’s mother?”
“Yep. Um...I bought some rolls and potato salad from the supermarket, some bagged salad. That good enough for you?”
“Of course, it’s fine.” Cole rose from his chair, the older man’s words roiling in his brain. “It’s certainly better than whatever I would have scrounged up.”
“Everything’s in the fridge. Why don’t you go grab them? And some plates and utensils, too, while you’re at it.”
Once inside, Cole yanked open the fridge, staring blankly inside. Then he shut it. Opened it again, grabbed the bagged greens, the tub of potato salad.
Then he dug his phone from his pocket.
Texted Bree.
Having dinner with ur dad. He told me where u were. U OK?
He’d just dumped the greens into a bowl when his phone dinged.
1—Write in real English. And 2—Why wouldn’t I be?
He smiled. And texted back:
Because it can’t be easy.
A search for salad dressing turned up a single, nearly empty bottle of old-school French. Shaking his head, he loaded everything on a tray—
It’s not.
Then why r
He backspaced.
Then why are you doing it?
Because the breakup had nothing to do with her.
A second passed.
Also, she pays well.
Like, VERY well.
“Cole? What’s the holdup, son?”
“Be right there!”
So this is only about money?
He stared at the screen, waiting.
It’s my job, Cole. And some of us can’t afford to be choosy. Gotta go, the Davies are taking me out to dinner. TTYL.
He hauled everything outside, and they tucked in, Cole’s attention wandering as they worked their way through steaks a little underdone for his taste. Suddenly he realized Preston had stopped talking, instead watching him intently as he chewed.
“Sorry,” Cole muttered, with what he hoped was an apologetic smile. “Lot on my mind.”
“About the kids?”
“Among other things, yeah.”
“Like my daughter?”
And how the hell was he supposed to answer that?
“I—”
But Preston held up a hand, then said softly, “You probably have no idea, the look on your face when I
bring up her name. Which pretty much matches the look on hers when I talk about you.” Then he sighed. “Would somebody please tell me why you young people make everything so damned complicated?”
Because it was. That’s why.
* * *
For a moment, Sabrina thought her eyes were tricking her when the train pulled into the station, and she saw, through the grimy window, Cole standing on the platform, all hunky and such in khaki shorts and a knit shirt that actually fit. And dammit, her empty stomach went kaflooey. Especially since, after the excruciatingly boring, nearly two-hour trek that always left her ready to chew her arm off, anyway, this was the last thing she needed.
“Hey,” he said softly when they met, and No! and Oh, yeah clashed inside her head like a pair of cymbals. “Glad to be back?”
Looking at him as if he was speaking Sanskrit, Sabrina hiked her supersize tote bag up on to her shoulder. “Since every time I do, I feel as though I’ve left part of myself in New York, I’m gonna say no to that.”
Never mind that the whole time she’d been in the city, she’d also felt as though she’d left part of herself in Jersey. So sad.
“So, what are you doing here?” She looked behind him. “Alone?”
Cole reached for her bag, then started toward the stairs leading down to the parking lot. “The kids are with their mother. And your dad asked me to pick you up.”
Speaking of thoughts colliding in her head.
“What?” she said, following him. Trying not to gawk at his calves.
“Apparently Erin remembered she had kids. And your dad got sucked into emergency babysitting—”
“Ohmygod! Is everything okay?”
“Kelly’s son broke his wrist or something? And Matt’s at work. But, yes, to answer your question.” They reached his car; he opened the door for her, giving off a whiff of yummy man-scent that sent her hormones into a feeding frenzy. “So how’d it go?”
At least by the time they’d both gotten into the front seat she’d recovered enough to say, “By ‘it’ I assume you mean the Long Island side trip?”
“Uh-huh.”
“It was fine. No, really. I like Kathryn. Tom, too. He’s totally down-to-earth and she’s a great client, doesn’t treat me like the hired help—hell, she doesn’t treat the hired help like the hired help—and nobody mentioned the elephant in the room. We were all on our best behavior, you would have been proud.”
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