Rick’s parents joined them and there were more hugs and goodbyes. Lena Braddock took Hayley’s hands in hers. “It was lovely to meet you, dear.” She moved in close, pressing her cheek to Hayley’s. “Hurt my son and you’ll have to deal with me.” The steel beneath the words belied the sweet tone she used. But she’d said it so softly Hayley knew no one else had heard.
Hayley stared at her for a moment after she released her, but Lena gave nothing away.
That night, with Fletcher in bed, Hayley lit a new candle and settled into her chair. Her glass of wine was on the table next to her, and she considered her cigarette for a moment before lighting it.
Such a stupid, stupid, habit, she told herself for the thousandth time.
She lit it and took a long, satisfying drag. Leaning back in her chair, she lifted the wineglass and savored the chilled, light fruitiness. She heard the door open on Ray’s side of the duplex and his footsteps as he crossed the small space between the screened decks. They greeted each other. Hayley didn’t change her relaxed position when he took the other chair and stretched out his long legs. But inside, the ripple effect was going strong.
Ray had an open bottle of beer with him. He tipped his head back and took a drink. Hayley smoked her cigarette and sipped her wine in silence. Again she thought how refreshing it was not to have to make small talk with Ray. He allowed her to have her own thoughts and didn’t intrude on them with his all the time. Her cigarette was almost gone before he spoke.
“Thanks for going to Molly’s party with me.”
“They’re a pair, aren’t they? Rick and Kaylee.” Hayley had been thinking about Ray’s brother and his wife off and on earlier in the evening. She had a feeling she understood exactly why being around them bothered Ray.
Ray didn’t pretend he didn’t know what she meant. “They sure are.”
He took another swig of beer.
“It’s pretty hard to watch them without being a little bit envious, don’t you think?”
“Yep.”
“They’re crazy about each other.”
“Oh yeah.”
“They don’t try to hide it. It’s who they are.”
“Seems to be.”
“If they weren’t such nice people, I could really learn to hate them.”
Ray chuckled and drank some more beer. “As it is,” he said, “you watch them and marvel that any two people could be that much in love. And on some level you wish you could find someone who felt like that about you, right?”
“There is a certain degree of envy, yes,” Hayley agreed. “Maybe that’s what makes us uncomfortable.”
Ray eyed her in the dim glow of the candle. “You think it’s only us?”
“I don’t know. Maybe I’m hyper-sensitive to it. I thought I had that once. But, as it turns out, I was fooling myself.”
“Maybe you’ll find it again.”
“Ha. I doubt it.” Hayley warned herself to keep the bitterness out of her voice. “I think I’m too afraid to try again.” Even with you.
“Well, it’s Rick’s second time around. So why not you?”
“Or you.”
Ray shrugged. “Yeah. Or me.” He drank some more beer. “Rick’s first wife—ooh, nothing like Kaylee. She convinced Rick to move to Atlanta. Got herself some high-powered job. Within a couple of years, she dumped Rick, married his boss and gave him full custody of Molly.”
“Wow. So he moved back here?”
“Yep. My uncle used to own that garage that belongs to Rick now. Rick was shell-shocked for the first few years. But I guess Kaylee came along and changed all that.”
“How’d they meet?”
Again Rick shrugged. “I don’t know the whole story. I was out of town at the time. And out of touch. I missed their wedding.”
“Oh.” Hayley sipped at the last of her wine. She didn’t want to pry, but frankly, she wanted desperately to know what had happened to Ray’s wife. Why had he left town?
As if he’d read her mind, he spoke again. “Caroline died shortly before that. I was pretty messed up. One day I closed up the shop, locked the door and started driving. I was gone for almost two years.”
“Did it help?”
Ray considered his beer bottle. He picked at the label with his thumb nail. “Hard to say. I like to think I’m slightly less messed up than I was when I left. I’m coping, let’s put it that way. I get up, I work. I eat. I try to sleep. Try to act like a normal person. Which is more than I was doing after she died.”
“I’m sorry.” Hayley didn’t know what else to say. She knew something of how he felt.
“Trying to run away from life doesn’t solve anything. I learned that much. Your past, your problems, whatever it is, you have to face it and deal with it and move on. Get past it and get on with your life.”
Is that what he thinks I’m doing? Hayley wondered. Trying to run away from my life? Escape from my past?
“She lied to me,” Ray said abruptly. He’d managed to peel a strip down the center of the bottle label, and he concentrated furiously on repeating the effort.
Hayley was afraid to say anything. She watched Ray, sensed his tension, the anger he held at bay over whatever his deceased wife had done.
“It’s pretty stupid and I didn’t handle it very well,” he admitted. He glanced at Hayley then back at the bottle. “We had a plan back then. We bought this place so we could live in one side and rent out the other. I had my shop in the back. We were going to work and save our money. We found a nice piece of land outside of town where we’d eventually build our dream house, and we’d have a big yard for a dog and our kids to run around in. The five-year plan,” he said, his tone turning to one of disgust.
“She got pregnant,” he said flatly.
“Oh.”
“Way ahead of schedule. On purpose. Stopped using birth control without telling me. Thought I’d be thrilled with the news she was pregnant. And I sort of was, until I found out she’d planned it. She didn’t want to wait. We’d talked about it a bunch of times, and she knew I wanted to stick with the plan. But what I wanted didn’t matter. In retrospect, I can see she might have felt the same way. That what she wanted didn’t matter to me.”
Hayley recognized the bitterness in Ray’s tone and the hurt behind it. She’d heard it often enough coming out of her own mouth. “Actually, you both wanted the same thing. Just at different times.”
“Yes. You’re right. Anyway, I wasn’t terribly gracious about it. Not because I didn’t want kids, but because I felt like she went behind my back. She didn’t include me. Didn’t tell me she was off the pill. Didn’t give me a choice.”
“She used you,” Hayley put in.
Ray’s head jerked up and he stared at her for a moment. “Funny how you get that. No one else did. But that’s what it felt like.”
He went back to contemplating what was left of the beer bottle label. “She didn’t get that she’d done anything terrible. Even though she waited until she was three months along to tell me, she didn’t get why I felt like I couldn’t trust her. She said pregnancy was a natural result of two people getting married and having sex, and the timing shouldn’t matter if they loved each other. She was ready. It shouldn’t matter if I was or not. I’d get used to the idea.
“She was sort of right about that. After a couple of months of being pissed off about it, I did resign myself to the fact that I was going to be a dad way before I expected to. I figured I’d deal with it when it happened, you know?” He glanced up at Hayley and she nodded. “I mean, I’d married her for better or worse. I wasn’t going to walk away from her because I didn’t get my way.”
Hayley bit her lip, trying to imagine what Ray had gone through to get to that point. His wife had hurt him, trampled on his trust and didn’t understand why he’d be upset by her manipulation. Yet he’d been willing to stick by her anyway.
“She was a kindergarten teacher. Man, she loved those little kids. She went to a training seminar in Jacks
onville one weekend. Supposed to be back Sunday afternoon. I decided it was about time for me to forgive and forget and stop sulking around. I called her cell and left her a message. Thought we could go to dinner, get things back on track, you know?”
Hayley nodded.
“Except she never made it home.” Ray coughed. He set the beer bottle on the table and leaned forward, elbows on knees, hands clasped, his gaze focused on nothing in particular. “She had something like a heart attack while she was driving. Pregnancy puts a strain on a woman’s heart. A weak aorta, which might go undetected otherwise, becomes even weaker until it can’t handle the strain. That’s what happened to Caroline. She veered off the road. Didn’t crash or anything. Didn’t hurt anyone else. By the time the cops got there, it was too late.”
Hayley touched Ray’s arm. “Ray, I’m so sorry.”
He glanced at her. “Yeah, well.” He lifted his shoulders and let them fall. “Sucks that I was ready to move past it and stop being pissed about what she’d done, and it was too little too late.”
“I guess you’ve been told it wouldn’t have changed anything. If you’d been over the moon about the pregnancy, she probably still would have gone to the meeting. Nothing would have changed.”
“Yeah. I heard that a few times from people who knew what was going on. I’ve been told not to blame myself more times than I can count. And I don’t blame myself for her death. I blame myself for not being the man I should have been. Telling myself I wasn’t ready, and it wasn’t what I’d planned. Resenting the responsibility of my child instead of embracing it. Looking forward to it.
“After she died, I was pissed at the world, so mad at myself, I couldn’t stand being here one more day. So I left. Bummed around. Stayed with a couple different friends out west. Worked construction when I felt like it. Hung out in one place for a while before I moved on. Even ended up in Alaska for about six months. Which is why I missed Rick and Kaylee’s wedding. Found out you can’t run away from yourself.”
“I guess that explains why your mother was hugging you like she’d never let go.”
Ray ducked his head. “Probably.”
“She worries about you. She’s afraid you’ll get hurt again.”
“Maybe. She fussed the same way over Rick after his divorce. That’s what moms do, I guess.”
Not my mom, Hayley thought. Time to get off the subject of how mothers behaved. “Did it help, do you think? Getting away?”
“I don’t know. Gave me some perspective, maybe. There are still days when I get up and want to kick myself. But they’re less often.”
“Good.” Hayley smiled at him. She got to her feet and he followed suit. Without letting herself think too much about it, she hugged him. He probably needed a hug every once in a while, and if she didn’t do it, who would? He could have ten women begging to hug him, but she hadn’t seen any coming around.
He dwarfed her, and she felt like she was in a cocoon, snuggled up against his warmth, his arms around her, hers encircling his waist. They stood like that for a long time. She felt his lips against her temple. A ripple zapped through her. He brushed a kiss against her hair.
He cleared his throat. “I gotta go.” He gave her a little squeeze and released her.
“’Bye,” she said to the screen door when it closed behind him.
Now she understood why Lena had warned her not to hurt Ray. Ray was not a player, not the kind of guy who loved and left. If he gave a woman his heart, it was for keeps.
She went inside and locked the door and turned off the lights on her way to the bathroom. What she and Ray had joked about that night he’d kissed her didn’t seem so funny now. He was a forever kind of guy. And she had no intention of sticking around forever.
Chapter Twelve
While Hayley unloaded dishes from the dishwasher the following day, she noticed Fletcher staring out the sliding glass door facing the backyard. He’d cupped his hands around his face and inched as far as he could to the left so he could see to his right through the glass.
Curious, Hayley moved behind him to see what he was looking at. Ah. The male Braddocks were gathered on the concrete pad behind Ray’s side of the duplex. He’d added a new umbrella table and four chairs to the space. Smoke rose in a gray cloud from the grill and Ray, Rick and Ken were seated around the table having a beer.
Hayley couldn’t stop staring at the obvious male camaraderie any more than Fletcher could, apparently. It all looked perfectly normal. Like a picture postcard of small-town life with the caption “Sunday Afternoon Family Cookout”.
Rick’s wife appeared and spoke to him. After he answered her, she draped her arms around his neck from behind and kissed him before disappearing inside again.
Hayley stepped away. “Fletch, why don’t you come and help me change the sheets on your bed?” she asked.
Fletcher didn’t move a muscle. Hayley didn’t feel like dragging him away from the door. He wasn’t hurting anything by watching Ray and his family. She went into his bedroom and pulled the sheets off his bed.
She’d thought again about Lena’s warning yesterday. Not that she had any intention of hurting Ray. She wasn’t even involved with him. They were friends. Nothing more. Except for that interlude the other evening. Which she had no intention of repeating. She envied Ray. What if she’d had a mother like Lena? A protective lioness kind of mother who only wanted what was best for her children? One who wanted to see them happy and made sure they were loved?
Even if Ray’s mother was out of line—after all, Ray was an adult and able to take care of himself—Lena made it clear she was still there for him. She didn’t want him to suffer if she could do anything to prevent it. Love made you do stuff like that, Hayley supposed.
She made up Fletcher’s twin bed and bundled the dirty sheets along with the towels from the bathroom into a laundry basket. As she crossed the living area, Ray knocked on the sliding door. Molly was at his side. Fletcher stared up at Ray. Hayley crossed to unlock the door and open it.
“Hi.” Ray grinned at her.
“Hello. Hello, Molly.”
“We’re having a cookout,” Molly informed them. “You guys are invited. Come on, Fletcher.”
She grabbed Fletcher’s hand and pulled him out the door with her.
“Wait. What—”
Perplexed, she stared at Ray. She set the laundry basket down as he stepped inside and closed the door behind him. Evidently her acceptance of the invitation was a foregone conclusion. But she hadn’t been invited in advance, which meant including her and Fletcher was an afterthought. She’d been treated as an afterthought a few too many times not to know what it felt like.
“Sorry,” Ray said. “We sort of decided to throw this together before Mom and Dad leave tomorrow. Molly’s bored. She asked if Fletcher could come over.”
“Oh, well. That’s fine, I guess, if Fletcher stays to keep Molly company.”
“You have to come over too, though.”
“No, I don’t.”
“Yes, you do. Who’s going to save me from exposure to my brother and his lovey-dovey wife?”
Hayley chuckled. “Aww, what’s the matter? Can’t take the heat?”
“Are you kidding? I probably didn’t even need to fire up the grill. I could cook ribs on the sparks between the two of them.”
“Poor baby,” Hayley told him in mock sympathy. “But you don’t want me horning in on your family time.”
“You’re not horning in, believe me. We’ve got enough food for a small army.”
“Ray, you don’t have to include me just because of Fletcher.”
Ray looked taken aback. “Is that what you think?”
“Sometimes with you, I don’t know what to think.”
“Come on. Be a good neighbor and save me from my family.”
“Stop it. Your family’s great.”
“Yeah, but they keep looking at me weird. Like they think I’ll fall apart any minute. If my mother asks me one more time how
things are going and how I’m doing, I think I’m going to snap. You can distract her.”
“Ah, so you’re using me.”
“Yes. But, I’m also going to feed you dinner. What do you say? Fair trade?”
“I’ll be the fifth wheel.”
“Nope. I’m the fifth wheel at the moment. You’ll be the sixth wheel that balances everything.”
Hayley couldn’t forget Lena Braddock’s parting words of yesterday. Hurt my son and you’ll have to deal with me. Was that her way of warning Hayley to stay away from Ray? If so, Lena would be none too happy to have her in the midst of today’s family gathering.
“Did I say ‘please’ yet?” Ray’s inquiry broke into her thoughts. “If not, I’m saying it now. Please come.”
“Does your mother know you’re inviting me?”
“By now, she probably does. Why? What difference does it make?”
Hayley glanced away for a moment, still unsure what to do. Keep her mouth shut about his mother’s warning? Stay home? Accept Ray’s invitation and damn the consequences?
Her stomach gurgled. It had probably overheard that ribs were on the menu and a ton of food was available next door. Fletcher was already over there. Ray was offering her a meal she wouldn’t have to plan or cook. What was she waiting for?
“I guess it doesn’t make any difference to me,” she decided. “And since you did say please, I’ll come.”
“Great!” Ray took her hand and started to open the sliding door.
“Hey, wait.” She withdrew her hand from his and looked down at herself. “Do I look okay? Do I need to change?”
Ray’s gaze ran over her from the top of her head to her feet. She certainly wasn’t dressed up, since she hadn’t planned to go anywhere. She had on white shorts and a navy blue cotton top covered with tiny white flowers. She hadn’t clipped her hair up or put on much makeup.
A Forever Kind of Guy: The Braddock Brotherhood, Book 2 Page 11
