Back to You (Short and Sweet Romantic Read)

by Ines Saint

  At four o’clock, after the last child had been picked up and all of her employees but one had left for the afternoon, Samantha sat down to do some busy work and ignored Marisol, who had plopped herself into the chair in front of her to watch her.

  “What?” Samantha gave up after a few minutes.

  “I didn’t want to interrupt you, but now that you asked, I just want to tell you that I think Dr. Tony Mancini is the most exciting thing to happen to you in years.”

  “Happen to me? He isn’t happening to me, okay? I used to babysit him, for Pete’s sake.”

  “There were sparks between the two of you, I saw them,” she sing-songed. “And you’re only four years older than him. Four years is nothing at our age. And you’re only thirty-three!”

  Samantha sighed. “Look, I admit Tony turned out… very well, but I’m sure he’s not interested in his old babysitter. And I’m not one to torture myself over aging and wrinkles and looks, but after everything that happened with Brad, and knowing the reasons he left me, that’s exactly what I’d start doing if I took an interest in a younger, hunky man. I’d be miserable. So please don’t mention it again.”

  “Hmm. That’s interesting.” Marisol sat back.

  “What is?” Samantha took the bait.

  “Any time I mention a man, you always tell me I should go after him myself. You didn’t do that this time.”

  “Go after him yourself, Marisol. Knock yourself out. You have my blessing. In fact, go after him right now, ‘cause I have a lot of work to do, and I’m guessing you’ll have plenty of competition. You may have to knock others out, instead.”

  ***

  By Friday, Samantha was happy she’d agreed to meet with Tony. Seeing him again had brought back sunny memories, and walking along the quaint downtown area with its two steepled churches and myriad of colorful clapboard houses, knowing they’d both somehow ended up back home made her smile.

  But as she crossed the park across Dr. Crisp’s old office, the old bench where Brad had proposed came to view, and her thoughts drifted to him. Would seeing Brad again bring her pain or the relief of indifference? She’d locked everything about her life with him up and shoved it into a corner of her mind, and she wasn’t sure what would happen if she picked that lock.

  When she found herself standing just outside Tony’s office, she held her breath, took her phone out of her purse, and sent Brad a short text message. Parisian Café, Burlington, tomorrow at 2:00 pm. The dark clouds that had settled on her shoulders lifted. Knowing whether she’d moved on or not was the right choice.

  On a breath, she released the thought, and instead took in the salty ocean air. She pushed open the door, a bell clanged, and Samantha stepped inside. Tony, who’d been looking at a computer screen on the other side of a Plexiglass window, glanced up at the sound and smiled brightly when he saw her. He held her eyes, her heart spun… and she felt ridiculous. “Come in this way and have a seat, I’m almost done,” he called.

  She entered his receptionist’s office, took a seat, and looked around while she waited for him to finish what he was doing. There was a drawing of Mighty Mouse on one wall and one of Sleeping Beauty on another. The wallpaper in the reception area was worn and peeling and a few framed pictures of the town were too faded to be recognizable to anyone who hadn’t seen them twenty years ago. “You know, I hadn’t realized it before, but this place looks exactly the way it did when I was a kid, which is funny because my mom used to say the same thing.”

  “It’s definitely outdated.” He continued to click away at the computer as he spoke. “I like what you’ve done with your preschool because it’s kid-friendly, but it won’t become outdated anytime soon.” He was leaning over the keyboard, and she had a great view of his backside. Broad shoulders, muscular arms, trim waist. Tony the Town Terror was terrifying in a whole new way.

  “I don’t know, vintage is in. I’m thinking you should get rid of the wallpaper and the old picture frames and maybe paint the walls a nice buttery yellow, but you should have the pictures and the drawings restored. You could get new colorful frames, and maybe commission a few more drawings. I think Woody, Buzz Lightyear, and maybe Snow White won’t go out of style. They’re classics.”

  Tony stopped what he was doing, followed her eyes around the office as she spoke, and then turned to tug at her hand and lift her off her seat. “I see it.” He nodded slowly. “And I like the idea of keeping a piece of yesterday in here. Tell me what you’d do with the rest of it.”

  Flattered that he liked her ideas and touched that pieces of yesterday were important to him, too, she followed him from room to room until they’d come up with a plan for every space.

  They were in his personal office now and Tony was oozing energy. He’d always oozed energy. But sex appeal was coming out of his pores now, too. She crossed her arms and said, “Well, my work here’s done. That was quick. You were always easy to please.”

  Tony looked down at his watch. “Actually, you’ve been here for over an hour, and we’re not done yet. It’s time to catch up. What have you been up to the last eighteen years, Sam Presley?”

  Samantha hesitated. “A pretty tame life. Finished high school, majored in early childhood education with a minor in business, got married, moved to Colorado while Brad was still in the NFL, took a job as a teacher.” She took another breath. “Moved to Burlington when he blew his knee out, got divorced, moved back to Haven, and started a preschool. How about you?”

  “I don’t have your summarizing abilities.” He laughed. “We’d be here all night.”

  All night didn’t sound like a good idea, so she said, “Then tell me why you decided to become a pediatrician. I’m most curious about that. The little boy I knew would use his science homework to stop the blood flow from one his cuts.”

  “The girl I knew wasn’t such an outrageous liar, but I’ll tell you anyway.” He paused to give her a playful look. “I fell off my foster parents’ roof down in Virginia, they took me to a family doctor, and the moment he started yapping, I knew. Here in Haven, town folk scolded, preachers warned of wrath, and my grandmother threatened to ship me off to Siberia, but Dr. Crisp was always nice. In Virginia, my family doctor was always angry and impatient. And he had bad breath. I decided to be a nice, understanding doctor with minty breath, like Dr. Crisp.”

  Oh, the twinkle in Tony’s eyes. It was impossible not to smile around him. “Of course Dr. Crisp was nice to you, you were his bread and butter,” she teased. “And you forget I was nice to you, too.”

  “You were. But becoming a doctor was more appealing than becoming a babysitter. Doctors get to see guts.”

  “When you babysit a kid like you, you get to see plenty of guts.” They laughed, and the tension she was feeling melted away. “Why did you come back to Haven?”

  “Dr. Crisp and I kept in touch, and when he told me he was retiring and selling his practice, it made perfect sense. It’s a small town, so his practice was more affordable, and I loved living here when I was a kid, despite the threats, the scolding, and the lecturing.”

  “And what does it feel like to be back after so long?”

  “Kind of jarring at first, but now I know I’m home.” His eyes held hers when he said the last sentence, and tension coiled in her stomach again. It wasn’t unpleasant. In fact, it was a little too pleasant. Dizzyingly so.

  “I should go…”

  “Sure. I’m heading home, too. I’ll walk you to the door.” She waited as he got his wallet and keys out of a drawer, and pulled his arms into a leather jacket. All the while she tried not to watch him.

  At the door, he paused to look down at her. The deep, sensual notes of his musky cologne tickled her senses and she swayed toward him without even realizing it until she caught the flash in his eyes.

  “Thanks, Sam. I’m getting started on your ideas right away. The wallpaper comes down tomorrow morning, and the buttery yellow goes up tomorrow afternoon.”

  She chuckled, unsurprised.
Still impatient, still full of energy, and still so much under that surface. Could they become friends once again?

  Tony walked away, his heart full. His youthful memories of Sam were tinged with a hazy, sunny glow, and he often wondered if he’d cast her in too warm a light. But today he’d seen he hadn’t. As a boy, he’d sensed the deep understanding, bubbles of humor, and restless loneliness behind her sparkling eyes and bright smile. He’d been lonely too, and he’d latched on and held on tightly to her funny outlooks and her understanding nature. They’d been his safety net. Today, he’d witnessed them again as a man, and it made him wonder if they could share all they now understood as adults, and still laugh and be serious in turn, so he could fill a little bit of her loneliness, the way she’d once filled so much of his.

  ~2~

  The next day, at two-fifteen in the afternoon, Samantha stood behind a telephone post and tried to spot Brad through the windows of the quaint café. Noisy traffic and pedestrian chatter faded to the background as she scanned the dark, snug room. Why had she chosen such an intimate setting?

  She caught sight of him then, and the parts of her heart that had been empty for too long ached with resentment. It wasn’t the reaction she’d expected. He kept casting glances toward the door, and he saw her the moment she walked in. Up close, he looked much the same except for a beard, fine lines on his forehead, and deeper crinkles in the corners of his eyes.

  “Samantha… wow. You look exactly the same. You look great.”

  “Not having children of your own does that to you, or so I’ve been told. Apparently, I don’t worry or stress as much as mothers do,” she said before she could stop herself.

  He sighed. “I thought we could talk a little about what we’ve been up to before digging up the past.”

  “You’re the one who wanted to meet, Brad. All I’ve been able to think about all week is the past. How could you think it would be any different?”

  “What do you want me to say? That I was wrong? I know I was wrong.”

  Samantha looked out the window toward the pole she’d been hiding behind a minute before. As much as she’d tried to pin the blame of everything that had happened on herself, the moment she’d seen him, her heart had told her what her mind had tried to deny. His decision had hurt her. She shook her head and looked back at him. “I don’t know that you weren’t wrong. You wanted your own children, the old-fashioned way, and I couldn’t give that to you. I gave you an out, and you took it. I see now that I resent your choice, but I can’t say that I blame you.”

  Brad picked a napkin up and shifted his gaze from Samantha, to the napkin, and back again. “Do you hate me?”

  She tilted her head to the side and looked past him, thinking. “No. I don’t.”

  “Then why do you sound angry?”

  She sat still, zeroing in on the angry fist pounding in her chest, thinking about why it wouldn’t let up from the moment he’d first called. “Because you called, and because I don’t know what it is you want.”

  “I called because…” Brad folded the napkin into a tight square, threw it on the table, and blew out a breath. “I called because I never stopped loving you. I called because I hated that we broke up, and I hated that, if we hadn’t, I would’ve ended up resenting you. And I called because Lilly and I broke up over a year ago, and...” he sighed and looked away, unable to finish the sentence.

  Samantha blinked. Thinking about Brad’s new wife always hurt, but at that moment, the old, useless self-pity was replaced with a deep sympathy for a woman who also hadn’t deserved to be hurt. “Why did you marry Lilly if you never stopped loving me? That—that wasn’t kind, Brad.” Confused, she reverted to speaking to him as if he were one of her preschoolers.

  “I loved her in a different way, and I thought it was enough.”

  Samantha wondered who’d realized it wasn’t enough. Who’d voiced the heartbreaking moment? Old feelings mingled with new ones, and there was no way to clear her heart while he was in front of her. “What do you want from me, Brad?” she asked, softly, not knowing what to think or how to feel.

  He looked at her, as serious as the day he’d said goodbye. “I’ve missed you, and I thought, maybe, we could try again.”

  Samantha closed her eyes. “So you have your two little girls now, and you think we can rebuild what we had, so you can have everything you want?” She opened her eyes and tried to look deeper into his, not wanting to believe he was as selfish as his words and actions made him sound.

  Brad didn’t meet her gaze, and for a while, he was silent. Finally, he raked a hand through his hair and sighed. “It isn’t easy to hear you put it that way. I know how it makes me sound.” He met her eyes. “But I want you to have everything you always wanted, too. You love children, and I thought…”

  Samantha didn’t like the way it sounded either, but she hated that it also wasn’t as repulsive to her as it should be. Brad was the only man she’d ever loved. They’d been together for thirteen years, and after everything that had happened, she’d never allowed another man to get close to her again. Six years and many events had transpired, and yet here he was in front of her again, still wanting to be the promise she’d loved at sixteen.

  “We had tons of plans, Samantha. So many things we wanted to do. You kept a notebook, and every time we thought of a new, exciting adventure we wanted to share, you’d jot it down, remember? We can still do all of it.”

  He tried to reach for her hands, but Samantha shoved her chair away from the table. He flinched at the scraping sound. “I’ve got to go,” she said.

  He stood up. “Do you want to meet them?”

  “Your girls? Lilly’s girls?”

  She watched Brad’s throat work. “Yes,” he said.

  Samantha knew then she wanted to meet them, but she wasn’t quite sure why. The idea of it hurt. “When will they be with you?”

  “They’re over at my house right now. They’ll be with me over the holiday weekend.”

  Samantha hesitated. This couldn’t be good for her. Taking a breath, she said, “Maybe you can all meet me here on Monday, same time as today.”

  “I was thinking we could all meet at my new house. It’s an old colonial, blue with white trim and black shutters, up on a hill.” She’d once seen a house just like that, in Colorado, and she’d told him it was her dream house. The way he looked at her told her he remembered.

  She gave her head a shake. “I’ll let you know.”

  ***

  That evening at McGruber’s, Tony stood at the door and scanned the inviting, rustic room for Sam, Marisol, and their friends. He spotted Darlene, and next to her, Sam, in a crowded booth. The music, the possibility of new friends, and the smell of wings and spirits welcomed him in, and he strode their way. Sam’s hair was loose, and the dim light from the lamp above played with its highlights, making them shimmer as she shook a French fry at one of her friends. Not exactly a romantic picture, but more in line with what he preferred.

  Darlene caught sight of him and waved, making room for him in the small booth by practically shoving Sam to the side. Sam, who had been taking a sip of her drink, was unprepared for the momentum caused by the force of Darlene’s hips, and she thumped the side of her head with a frame on the wall, spilling some of it. She looked up to see Tony, and shook her head, amused at the true cause of her spill.

  Tony slid in next to Darlene, and Darlene reintroduced him to Dennis, a guy he’d already met at the hardware store a few days back, and Craig, the town’s dentist. Marisol was sitting between them. “So, this is how you spend Saturday nights,” he said.

  “Mostly,” Darlene turned to him. “But once a month we get all dolled up and drive up to Burlington to go bar hopping or wine tasting or dancing, depending on our mood.”

  “And sometimes we go to concerts or festivals. Depends on what’s going on,” Marisol added.

  “What do you usually do for excitement on Saturday evenings?” Darlene asked, her fingers brushing his ha
nd and lingering.

  Tony casually took his hand away and brought it to his thigh, hoping she didn’t follow him there. He’d caught how Darlene had tried to put Samantha down earlier that week, and he had a low tolerance for people who built themselves up by tearing others down. “I shoot rats in alleyways.” He couldn’t see Sam, but he heard her almost choke on her beer.

  Darlene apparently couldn’t detect the mischief in his voice because she sounded disgusted when she exclaimed, “You what? I thought doctors were supposed to save lives, not end them.”

  “I save human lives, not rat lives.” He paused as if to consider his statement. “Unless I accidentally shoot a rat mommy. Then I have to revive her so she can take care of her rat babies. I don’t harm the babies. I’m a pediatrician, after all.”

  “Do you use electrical shocks, or do you give the rat mommy mouth to mouth?” Craig asked with a grin.

  “I bring along this tiny battery-powered defibrillator,” Tony explained, gesturing with his hands to show he shocked the little patient.

  Everyone except Darlene was either rolling their eyes at Tony and Craig, or chuckling. Darlene huffed when she realized she had been the only one to fall for the joke, but quickly got over it to try to get him to dance with her. When he declined a third time, and began talking about rats again, she pasted a tight smile on her face and dragged Dennis over to the dance floor instead.

  Tony promptly scooted closer to Sam. “Hey, I thought that was you way over here.”

  “You’re going to have to teach Dennis how to resist Darlene,” Marisol remarked with a smile. “He never can.”

  Tony took a long pull of beer. “Well, I find her pretty easy to resist. Especially after she shoved Sam so hard she smacked her head against the wall.” He kept his tone light, but he meant his words.

  “It wasn’t that bad,” Sam said, touching the side of her head.