Home in Carolina

by Sherryl Woods

  Oh, Annie knew all the gory details. Not because Ty had told her, but because they’d been tabloid fodder for weeks. Obviously if Ty was home, so was his little boy. Now everyone in Serenity who’d been living on Mars when the story first broke would know just how big a fool she’d been to give her heart to some hotshot sports superstar.

  Worst of all, despite everything—the betrayal, the hurt, the humiliation—she still loved him. And that made her an even bigger idiot than he was.

  “You need to call Annie,” Maddie told Ty after seeing the headline about his return in the Serenity newspaper. “It was crazy to think we could keep your being back here quiet for long.”

  “Don’t you think Dana Sue probably filled her in?” he said, torn between dread and anticipation at the thought of speaking to Annie. Their relationship had ended really badly, and it had been all his fault. “Besides, Annie doesn’t want to talk to me. She made that plain three years ago.”

  “When Trevor was born,” his mother guessed.

  Ty nodded. He loved his son to pieces, but he knew that Annie would never in a million years get past the fact that he’d not only cheated, but fathered a child with someone else. There wasn’t an explanation in the world good enough to make her see past that one huge mistake.

  Claiming that they hadn’t been exclusive certainly hadn’t worked. Reminding her of the countless times they’d talked about how reasonable it was to date others while she was still in college and he was on the road with the team had only backfired.

  “That didn’t include getting another woman pregnant,” she’d retorted, her eyes filled with the kind of hurt he hadn’t seen since her mom had kicked her dad out for cheating when Annie was fourteen. “How am I supposed to forgive that?”

  “I don’t know,” he’d told her, defeated. “I honestly don’t know.”

  Truthfully, he still didn’t. But when he’d been injured, the one bright spot had been the chance to come back to Serenity and maybe take a stab at making things right with Annie. He could have done the rehab anywhere, had the best trainers in the world working with him, but he’d refused every option the team had proposed, packed up Trevor and come home. He wasn’t entirely sure why making amends to Annie was so important right now, but it was. One of the lessons he’d learned the hard way was that friendships were more valuable and lasting than casual sex. Too bad he’d had to lose his best friend before he’d figured it out.

  Now that he was here, though, he had no idea what the next step should be. Maybe his mom was right. Maybe it just needed to start with a phone call.

  “Does she ever mention me?” he asked, looking for some sign that Annie’s attitude had mellowed.

  Maddie shook her head. “Certainly not to me. Can you blame her?”

  “I suppose not.”

  “I so wish things had turned out differently, Ty. You two—”

  “Are over,” he said flatly. “Her decision.”

  “If you honestly believe that, then why did you come back here?”

  “I thought it would be good for Trevor to spend some time with his family.” That, at least, was true. His son needed more stability than he could get even from the most doting nanny and a dad who was on the road for days—sometimes weeks—at a time.

  His mother studied him skeptically. “Really? And that thought only occurred to you after I mentioned that Annie had moved back home?” Before he could respond, she continued, “Because it certainly didn’t cross your mind during the off-season last year, or the year before that.”

  “Coincidence,” he claimed.

  “Oh, Ty,” she chided. “At least be honest with yourself. You’re here because of Annie. Why bother denying it, at least with me? Now, what are you going to do to make things right?”

  He glanced across the table and saw the lingering disappointment in his mother’s expression. That was as hard to take as losing Annie. After the way his dad had cheated on his mom and the way Ty had hated him for it, surely he should have behaved more responsibly. Instead, he was apparently a chip off the old block, after all.

  “I have no idea what I can do,” he admitted.

  “Well, you need to come up with a plan. The two of you are bound to cross paths. Not only is this a very small town, but our families are connected. Dana Sue and I are friends. We’re in business together. Annie works for me, for heaven’s sake.”

  Ty winced at the complicated mess he’d managed to create. “I’m sorry, Mom. If this is going to become some big thing between you and Dana Sue, I can go somewhere else for rehab. There are plenty of facilities in Atlanta.”

  “No,” she said, backing down at once. “Having you back home is such an unexpected joy for me and for your brothers and sisters. It’s giving us a chance to spend time with Trevor, too.”

  She drew herself up. “Dana Sue and I will figure out a way to deal with this,” she said confidently. “We’ve been friends a long time, and we’ve always known that something might come between you and Annie. That’s why we tried so hard to stay out of it.”

  “How about you and Annie, though?” he asked worriedly, wishing he’d thought his decision through before disrupting everyone’s lives. Coming back had been selfish, he could see that now. “She’s been like another daughter to you, and you work together. It’s going to freak her out knowing I’m around. What if she quits just to avoid me?”

  “Annie’s more mature than that,” Maddie said with certainty. “She’s a strong young woman. She’ll cope.”

  “What if it, you know…?” He hesitated, then voiced his greatest fear, the one that had nagged at him since the day they’d parted. “What if she goes back to being anorexic?”

  Maddie regarded him with dismay. “No, Ty! She won’t do that.”

  “She could, Mom.” He shook his head. “What the hell was I thinking? The stress of Ronnie taking off is part of what triggered her eating disorder in the first place. She felt like her life was a mess, and food was the only thing she could control. Now, having me in her face could do the same thing. I’d never forgive myself if that happened.”

  “It’s not going to happen,” Maddie said emphatically. “She was just a teenager when she got so sick. She’s twenty-three now. It’s been years. Believe me, Dana Sue and Ronnie know all the signs. Annie still sees Dr. McDaniels from time to time. They’ll be all over her if there’s even a hint that her anorexia is back. Besides, she didn’t fall apart when you two split up, so there’s no reason to think she will now just because you’re here in Serenity.”

  “I suppose.” Still, he couldn’t help worrying about Annie. She’d never been half as tough as she’d wanted everyone to believe she was. He was one of the few who’d seen her vulnerability way before she’d been diagnosed with anorexia. She’d looked up to him, trusted him, talked to him…fallen in love with him.

  Then he’d betrayed her. And for what? A string of casual flings that had meant nothing. He’d wanted to prove he was hot stuff. Hanging out with groupies had been a rite of passage into the big leagues. All the guys liked to unwind after the games. There were always eager women around.

  Unfortunately, it had taken too long for him to realize just how empty and meaningless all that was. Compared to what he had with Annie—the real deal, he knew now—it was just sex and a few laughs with women who liked to brag they’d hooked up with a baseball player.

  To his very deep regret, Trevor’s mom had barely stood out from the crowd. When they’d met after a road game in Cincinnati, she’d struck him as shy, with her big brown eyes and corn silk hair. She was quieter than most of the others, less aggressive. She’d actually been able to hold up her end of a conversation. Ironically, he’d seen a vulnerability in her that had reminded him of Annie.

  The next time he’d been in Cincinnati, Ty had seen Dee-Dee again, spent three nights with her. On his third trip to town, she’d told him she was pregnant.

  The news had hit him like one of his own fastballs in the gut, left him slack-jawed and s
puttering. He realized he didn’t even know her last name.

  Nor could he be sure the baby was his. He wanted proof, insisted on it, which set off their first huge fight. Dee-Dee, whose last name turned out to be Mitchell, was insulted he would even ask. He was appalled that she thought he was so stupid he wouldn’t.

  Struggling with years of conditioning to take responsibility for his own actions, Ty had turned to a buddy on the team for advice.

  “You in love with her?” Jimmy Falco had asked.

  “No,” Ty admitted. “I barely know her.”

  “Then you wait. You get a paternity test. If the kid turns out to be yours, you go from there.”

  Dee-Dee had been furious when he’d told her the plan. She’d threatened to go to the tabloids if he didn’t marry her immediately. Despite all the potential for very public ugliness, Ty held firm. That was when he should have gone to Annie and confessed everything, but he’d waited. And, of course, the news had leaked out.

  By the time Trevor was born, any faint feelings he might have had for Dee-Dee were dead and buried. The positive paternity test didn’t change that. In court, he acknowledged being the boy’s father, relinquished custody to Dee-Dee with visitation rights for himself, arranged to pay child support, and even agreed to a generous lump-sum payment to get Dee-Dee her own place, a two-bedroom condo in a very nice building.

  Two months later, he’d opened the door to his hotel room on a road trip to Denver to find Trevor in a basket on the doorstep, and Dee-Dee nowhere in sight. In an instant, he took on the role of single dad.

  Because of the prior arrangement and Dee-Dee’s disappearance, it had taken a year of wrangling in court to change their custody agreement so that he had sole custody. He’d struggled to balance parenthood with a physically demanding career that took him away from home too often. Finding a nanny he’d trusted had been a nightmare, but eventually he’d found Cassandra, an older woman who’d raised four children of her own and doted on Trevor as if he were one of her own grandchildren. To Ty’s amusement, she treated him as a son who’d gone astray and needed firm moral guidance. Cassandra had been a godsend for both of them.

  In the meantime, the whole thing had played out in the tabloids. He imagined that Dee-Dee had gotten a pretty penny for the inside scoop, to say nothing of what she must have gotten for tipping off a photographer before she left the baby outside his hotel room.

  And it had all hit the fan before he’d been able to work up the nerve to tell Annie about any of it. He’d been the worst kind of coward.

  What Annie thought of him—what he thought of himself—didn’t matter, though, not as long as she didn’t fall back into her old anorexic eating pattern. He didn’t think he could handle that. Hurting her was bad enough. He’d never be able to live with destroying all the progress she’d made, the normal, healthy life she was leading.

  Then, again, maybe he was exaggerating the pain he’d caused her. Maybe she’d made peace with what had happened, considered herself lucky to be rid of him. She could have moved on by now. It was certainly what he deserved, but the thought depressed him just the same.

  Because Annie Sullivan had slipped into his heart about a million years ago, and she was still there…despite everything he’d done to show her otherwise.

  2

  Helen Decatur-Whitney left the courtroom feeling triumphant. She barely resisted an urge to pump her fist in the air on the courthouse steps. Such gloating, she thought, might have been a bit unseemly.

  Still, she couldn’t help savoring today’s victory. Her client had gotten everything she deserved from her weasel of an ex-husband. Helen had enjoyed the man’s shell-shocked expression as the judge had handed down his ruling.

  A few years ago such a verdict wouldn’t have been worthy of note, because just about all her clients won, no matter how bitterly contested the divorce. Lately, though, ever since her marriage to Erik and the birth of her daughter, Sarah Beth, Helen had taken fewer and fewer cases. Her standing as the barracuda attorney of choice in the entire state of South Carolina was no longer assured, so today’s triumph was especially sweet. She was back!

  As she had for years, she wanted to celebrate with her best friends, the Sweet Magnolias, with one of their margarita nights. This victory had been a long time in coming. For quite a while, Helen had feared she’d lost her edge to the complacency of marriage and motherhood. After today, she almost believed she could have it all.

  First she punched in Dana Sue’s number on her cell phone. “My place, tonight at eight,” she announced. “We’re celebrating my courtroom comeback.”

  “Eight o’clock on a Friday night?” Dana Sue asked incredulously. “Haven’t you heard? I run a very successful restaurant. We’re packed at that hour.”

  “And my husband, your outstanding sous-chef, is perfectly capable of handling the last couple of hours on his own and closing up,” Helen reminded her. “When was the last time we all cut loose?”

  “It’s been a while,” Dana Sue conceded. She paused, then asked, “Have you spoken to Maddie?”

  There was a cautious note in Dana Sue’s voice Helen couldn’t quite read. “Not yet, why?”

  “She might be avoiding me.”

  Helen drew a blank. “Why? Did you two have words about something?” Over the years, there had been spats among the three of them, but they’d been healed almost before they’d begun.

  “Ty and Annie,” Dana Sue said succinctly. “It all hit the wall today. Annie found out that Ty’s home. Erik saw her right after she found out, and he says she’s livid because none of us warned her. I called the spa earlier, and Elliott told me she called and took the day off. Now I can’t find her.”

  Helen muttered an expletive she rarely used. “Ty and Annie’s issues have nothing to do with you and Maddie,” she said. Then amended, “Well, of course they do, because they’re your kids, but didn’t you resolve years ago to let them work out their own problems?”

  “It’s harder to stick to that now that they so obviously have big-time issues,” Dana Sue said. “Ty came back here with a little boy, for goodness’ sake! How’s that for rubbing it in my daughter’s face that he cheated on her?”

  “It stinks,” Helen agreed. “And if you want to torture Ty, I’ll help, but please, please don’t let it come between you and Maddie. You two are my best friends in the world. I don’t want to have to start tiptoeing around or seeing you separately because the two of you aren’t speaking.”

  “Look, I know this isn’t Maddie’s fault,” Dana Sue acknowledged, then added with real heat in her voice, “but how are we supposed to pretend that her son didn’t rip out my daughter’s heart? Am I supposed to ignore that?”

  “Don’t you think Maddie’s as upset about that as you are?” Helen suggested. “She loves Annie, too.” She thought about it for a minute, then said, “How about this? We’ll just declare the topic off limits. Or else I’ll negotiate a truce. I’m very good at negotiating things, in case you’ve forgotten.”

  Dana Sue laughed at last, cutting through the tension. “As if you’d let us forget.”

  Helen seized on the tiny opening. “Come on, sweetie, don’t say no. I want you there. It won’t be a celebration without you.”

  “Okay, fine, but if things get tense, I’ll leave.”

  “Let’s just cross that bridge when we come to it. I’ll see you at eight,” Helen said, determined to make sure her friends made peace before the night was out.

  “I’ll bring the food,” Dana Sue said. “I’ll make a fresh batch of guacamole and steal some appetizers from the freezer here.”

  “Can’t have margaritas without that killer guacamole,” Helen agreed.

  After she’d disconnected the call, she dialed Maddie and repeated the invitation. When Maddie hesitated, Helen jumped in. “Dana Sue’s coming. The subject of Ty and Annie is off limits. We’re only going to talk about me.”

  Like Dana Sue, Maddie laughed. “Not much new about that. Okay. I’m
not convinced you can keep us from veering off onto the subject of our children, but I don’t want to miss out on watching you try. Should I tell Jeanette?”

  “Absolutely,” Helen said. Jeanette, who was in charge of the day spa services at their business, had become an honorary Sweet Magnolia. Though she’d only been around for a few years now, she was definitely one of their own. “If you’ll invite her and maybe pick up some chips and cut veggies for Dana Sue’s guacamole, that’ll give me time to buy the biggest bottle of tequila at the liquor store and to spend time with my daughter before she goes to bed.”

  “By the way, what are we celebrating?” Maddie asked.

  “I took Henry Porter to the cleaners in court today, pun intended.” Porter ran a chain of dry cleaners in the region. He’d hoped to leave his wife of thirty years with next to nothing, even though she’d worked right alongside him building that chain from one little neighborhood shop to the dozen outlets they had now. Helen had seen it differently, as had the judge, especially after the testimony of the Porter children about how involved their mother had been in the business.

  “Good for you,” Maddie said. “I hate men who minimize their wives’ contributions to their success.”

  Maddie knew more than some about that, since she’d had just such a husband before divorcing physician Bill Townsend and winding up with the high school baseball coach, Cal Maddox, who was ten years younger. In Helen’s opinion, that particular revenge had been especially sweet.

  “Well, we can toast to all the women who’ve been mistreated like that and emerged victorious,” Helen said.

  “Sounds like fun to me,” Maddie said, then hesitated. “Helen, how did Dana Sue sound really? Is she very upset that Ty’s back? I know it’s awkward, and I feel awful for Annie, but I’m so happy to have him and Trevor here for a while.”