Marking Time

by Marie Force

  They got dressed, and Clare cleaned up the remnants of their pizza picnic. She tried twice to reach Kate but got her voice mail both times.

  Aidan followed her barefooted into the kitchen, where he stretched and ran both hands through his hair in an attempt to bring some order to it. “Do you think he’ll take one look at us and know what we’ve been up to?”

  “If something’s going on with one of the girls, he won’t be thinking about anything else.”

  “You never have a bad word to say about him,” Aidan said, studying her. “You compliment him without even meaning to. It’s admirable.”

  “He’s a good father.” She rested her head on Aidan’s chest. “I’m sorry this is happening tonight of all nights.”

  “I understand. You have kids, and they come first.”

  The doorbell rang.

  Clare’s stomach twisted with nerves.

  “I can make myself scarce if you want me to.”

  “No, come with me.” She reached out to him, and they walked hand in hand to the foyer. Clare released his hand and reached for the door only to be startled by the ravaged look on Jack’s face. “Jack! What’s wrong?”

  He stepped inside and stopped short when he saw Aidan.

  “Jack, this is Aidan O’Malley. Aidan, Jack Harrington.”

  Sizing each other up, they shook hands.

  “Pleased to meet you,” Aidan said.

  “Likewise.”

  Clare watched Jack’s eyes travel down to take in Aidan’s bare feet.

  “What’s wrong with Kate?” she asked.

  Jack released an exhausted sigh and went into the family room to sit down.

  Aidan and Clare followed him.

  “I made a terrible mistake letting her go there.” He dropped his head into his hands with despair.

  Clare put a hand on his shoulder. “What is it, Jack? You’re frightening me.”

  He looked up at her with broken eyes. “She’s having an affair with Reid Matthews.”

  Clare gasped and recoiled. “What? What?”

  “Yes, my good friend from college, the one who was going to keep an eye on her for me. Ironic, huh?”

  “Um, maybe I should leave you guys alone,” Aidan said.

  “No, stay, please.” Clare held out a hand to him. Her legs rubbery with shock, she sat down hard. “How do you know?”

  “I got a call last night from Reid’s son, Ashton. He’d just put the whole thing together himself. I gave him my card before I left there and asked him to call me if he saw her heading for any trouble. I guess this counts as trouble.”

  “But did he see them together? Did you?”

  “Yes, on both counts. Ashton had a big confrontation with his father and Kate last night before he called me. He said it’s been going on for months, almost since the very beginning. I didn’t want to believe him because I thought he liked Kate himself. Turns out I wasn’t far off on that front, but it wasn’t him she was interested in.” Jack ran a hand through his hair, agony marring his handsome face. “This is all my fault. I never should’ve agreed to let her do this.”

  Clare reached over to clutch his hands. “You can’t blame yourself. You did everything you could to make sure she’d be safe.”

  “Apparently I did a little too much by hooking her up with Reid.” He released a deep, rattling sigh. “I’ve got to tell you, Clare, I didn’t believe it. Not really. That’s why I didn’t call you right away.” He shook his head when his eyes filled. “But then I saw them. They didn’t know I was watching. They were all over each other in his car.”

  Clare shook her head with disbelief. “Did you talk to her? What did she say?”

  “That she loves him. I think she honestly believes that.”

  “Maybe she isn’t actually sleeping with him.”

  Jack snorted. “Of course she is. You should’ve seen them in the car. I told her I was taking her home with me, but she refused. She said she’s eighteen, and I can’t make her do anything. The bitch of it is, she’s right. I took her there, but I can’t make her come home.”

  “How did you leave it with her?”

  “I cut her off financially and told her to stay away from the rest of the kids. I don’t want them finding out about this, especially Maggie.”

  “You can’t cut her off!”

  “I’m not bankrolling her affair with a man old enough to be her father, Clare. No way. Besides, if what she said is true, she won’t be needing my money for much longer.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Buddy Longstreet and Taylor Jones have asked her to tour with them this summer. Do you know who they are?”

  “Only the biggest names in country music,” Aidan offered.

  “She really did it, didn’t she?” Clare asked with amazement.

  “Apparently, they’re going to produce a single for her, too.”

  “Wow, she must be thrilled. It’s what she’s always wanted.”

  Jack sighed. “What the hell was she thinking, getting involved with Reid?”

  “I can’t imagine,” Clare said, filled with dismay.

  “What’re we going to do, Clare? I left there so convinced I’d done the right thing by cutting her off, but now I don’t know. All during the flight home, I just kept wondering if I’d ever see her again.”

  He was so distressed that Clare’s heart went out to him. “You did everything you could today. Why don’t you go home and try to get some sleep? We can talk more tomorrow and figure out what we’re going to do.”

  Jack agreed and stood up. “Sorry to be airing the dirty laundry, Aidan. Good to meet you.”

  Aidan shook his hand. “You, too.”

  Clare hugged Jack at the front door. “Thanks for going to Nashville. I know it couldn’t have been easy for you.”

  “You look good, Clare,” he said softly.

  “I feel good.”

  He kissed her cheek. “I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”

  She closed the door behind him and rested her head against it.

  Aidan came up behind her to massage her shoulders. “Are you okay?”

  “I’m stunned. In the course of half an hour, I found out my daughter’s having sex, she’s involved with a man who’s my age, and she’s possibly going to be a big star. It’s a lot to take in all at once.”

  “Heavy stuff.” Aidan put his arm around her to walk her back to the kitchen. “He seemed devastated.”

  “He’s blaming himself because he introduced her to Reid.” She reached for the phone to dial Kate’s number again. “I just wish she’d answer her damned phone.”

  “What’re you going to do?”

  “I think I’ll ask Maggie to come to Vermont another weekend. I need some time alone with Kate next week. I’m sure she’s terribly upset after seeing Jack.”

  “You guys can camp out at my place, since the floors will be a mess at your brother’s by next weekend.”

  “Thanks.” She reached up to kiss him. Trying to recapture their lighthearted mood from earlier, she said, “You do know I won’t sleep with you while she’s there, right?”

  He groaned and steered her into the bedroom. “Why did I know you were going to say that?”

  “I didn’t say you couldn’t visit me.”

  His face lit up. “Now, we’re talking.” He pulled off his shirt. “I’ve gotta tell you one thing.”

  “What’s that?”

  “You weren’t kidding when you said Jill looks just like him. It’s crazy.”

  “I know. Wait until you meet my mini-me.”

  He kicked off his jeans. “I can’t wait.” After a long pause, he looked over at her. “I wasn’t expecting him to be so, so…”

  “What?”

  “Perfect. I mean the guy could be a freaking movie star.”

  Clare smiled, touched by the hint of insecurity. “I need to be very careful here because your fat head is always a concern to me, but have you looked in a mirror lately, O’Malley?”

&nbs
p; He seemed far too pleased by the compliment. “You really do love me, don’t you?”

  “I’m afraid so.”

  “He’s a nice guy, Clare.”

  “Yes.”

  “Now that I’ve met him, I’m more curious than ever about how you ended up divorced.”

  She shrugged as she stepped out of her jeans. “It just didn’t work out between us.”

  Aidan’s disappointment showed on his face when she once again dodged an opportunity to open up to him. Clare knew she was hurting him by holding back, but everything between them was going so well and felt so good, the last thing she wanted was to dredge up the past. Still, she couldn’t help but feel like she was living on borrowed time. He knew she was keeping things from him, and he wouldn’t wait forever to hear the truth.

  Chapter 30

  Since Aidan had been to Newport only one other time many years earlier, Clare and Maggie spent the next day showing him the highlights. They walked on the beach, window shopped on Thames Street, drove around Ocean Drive, and ended the day with New England clam chowder at the Black Pearl. By the time they dropped Maggie off at Jack’s house, Clare felt like she’d caught up with her youngest daughter.

  Maggie didn’t know what was going on with Kate, just that all the adults were upset about it, so she understood when Clare said she needed some time alone with Kate. Clare and Jack agreed she should go forward with her plan to see Kate in Vermont. He hoped Clare could talk some sense into their daughter.

  Clare tried several times to reach Kate during the day, but her voice mail picked up each time.

  “I hope she calls me back soon,” Clare said as Aidan drove them home.

  “After the showdown with Jack, I’d think she’d welcome a call from you today. Maybe you should try the boyfriend’s house.”

  “Ugh, I can’t think of a man who’s my age as my daughter’s boyfriend.”

  “Well, what would you call it?”

  “Sicko and pervert come to mind.”

  Aidan laughed. “He’s probably a nice guy. I mean, he was Jack’s friend at one time, right?”

  “You can’t be condoning this.”

  “I’m not condoning anything. I’m just thinking that things like this tend to flame out sooner rather than later. Plus, Jack said she’s going out on tour this summer. If it’s not over before she goes, it will be then.”

  “That’s true.”

  “And since she’s already sleeping with him, what’s the worst that can happen between now and when she leaves?”

  Clare shot him a withering look. “She could get pregnant.”

  “At least he’s old enough to know how to keep that from happening.”

  “So you’re saying we should just wait it out and hope it goes away on its own?”

  “That’s what I’d do. If you overreact, you make it more appealing.”

  “You would’ve been good at this, Aidan.”

  He shrugged. “I’ve wondered how I would’ve done if I’d been left to raise Colin on my own. I was such a mess after Sarah died, I probably would’ve screwed him up.”

  “I have no doubt you would’ve been a wonderful father.”

  “I hope so.”

  “Do you have one of those sexy black dresses all women keep in the back of their closets for special occasions?” Aidan asked the next morning after they’d slept much later than planned.

  “I might,” she said, intrigued.

  “How about a pair of heels about, oh, say, this high?” He spread his fingers apart by three inches.

  “Perhaps. Why?”

  “Well, since you finally agreed to go out with me, I was thinking you’d want to be prepared when we get back to Vermont.”

  “So we’re not talking about pizza and beer, then, huh?”

  “You insult me.”

  Clare laughed and rolled on top of him to kiss away his pout. “You know I don’t need all that, don’t you?”

  He wrapped his arms around her. “Maybe I need to give it to you.”

  She dipped her head to kiss him, and it was nearly noon before they came up for air.

  “So much for getting an early start,” Aidan said when they were finally on the road to Vermont.

  “If you’d let me get up the first time I tried, it wouldn’t be afternoon now.”

  “I didn’t hear you complaining,” he said with a cocky grin.

  “That’s not the point.”

  He laughed. “What is the point? I can’t wait to hear this.”

  “We said we were going to leave early because you wanted to work this afternoon, and then I couldn’t get you out of bed.”

  He reached for her hand. “It was time well spent. Very well spent.”

  “Are you okay to be missing all this work? I don’t care about when the house gets done. You know that. But between me being sick, and then your dad—”

  “Don’t worry about it.”

  “Okay, I won’t,” Clare said, surprised by his curt tone.

  Several moments of uncomfortable silence followed.

  Aidan glanced over at her and appeared to be wrestling with something. “I don’t work because I have to,” he finally said.

  “You don’t?”

  “Remember when I said Sarah’s grandmother left her some money?”

  She nodded.

  “Did I mention it was five million dollars?”

  Clare choked. “No, you didn’t say that.”

  “We didn’t know what to do with that kind of money, so we used some to buy a place in Boston and the land in Vermont. Sarah’s dad invested the rest of it for us. After she died, I tried to give it back to her parents, but since they’d gotten plenty themselves from her grandmother, they wouldn’t take it.”

  Clare cradled his hand between both of hers.

  “Besides, her grandmother always liked me, and her parents insisted she’d want me to have the money. After everything happened, I didn’t care about anything, let alone money. I had all but forgotten about it until about a year later when her father came to see me. He said it had grown to more than seven million, and I needed to do something with it or lose a big chunk to taxes.”

  “Is that when you built the house?”

  “Yeah. I also paid off my parents’ mortgage and gave them and each of my siblings two hundred and fifty thousand. I paid off all the debt for my father’s business, which still left me with almost five million. So I gave two million to breast cancer research and invested the rest. It’s grown again to something like five and a half million, but I never touch it. I live on what I make with my business, but knowing it’s there gives me the freedom to do whatever I want.”

  “You have all that money, and yet you still work twelve hours a day,” Clare said, amazed.

  “What the hell else was I going to do? I couldn’t just sit around and think about how screwed up my life was. I had to find a purpose, and my business gave me that. It got a little out of hand in the last couple of years, and right around the time we met, I decided to scale back on the new construction part. It just wasn’t fun anymore. It was too hectic.”

  She smiled. “I remember. Whenever I think of the first time we met, I’ll picture cell phones and a pager.”

  “I do not miss them.”

  “You helped me to see I don’t want that kind of life anymore, either. That’s why I’m not going back to real estate.”

  “What’re you going to do?”

  “I’m not sure yet, but I have a few things I’m considering.” She leaned over to kiss him.

  “What was that for?”

  “You’re a good man, Aidan O’Malley. You’ve made the best of the hand you were dealt. And even in the midst of your own pain, you thought of others. You made life easier for your family, you gave all that money to cancer research, and you work so hard even though you don’t have to.”

  “I still feel guilty sometimes about how I came to have it.”

  “It’s much more important to consider what you did with
it.”

  He took his eyes off the road long enough to glance over at her. “You’re very good for me. You somehow manage to always make me feel better.”

  She smiled. “You do exactly the same thing for me. While we’re talking about your millions, I guess I should tell you the house wasn’t the only thing I got out of my divorce, even though it was the only thing I asked for.”

  “What else did you get?”

  “Three million. Jack made a fortune while we were married, and he made sure I’d never have to think about money again.”

  “Which was only fair. You raised his children for him.”

  Clare shrugged. “That was the very best time of my life, when my girls were small. I didn’t expect or even want that kind of money. He did it without telling me.”

  Aidan sighed. “That guy is just too much. I can’t compete with him.”

  She squeezed his hand. “There’s no competition, Aidan. He’s my past. You’re my present, and I hope my future.”

  “I hope so, too.”

  “Do you mind if we stop to stretch?” Clare asked when they reached the outskirts of Boston. “I’m getting stiff from sitting so long.”

  “No problem. I’m a little hungry anyway.” A few minutes later, he took a rest stop exit and held her hand as they jogged through the frigid cold to a restaurant complex.

  Aidan carried a tray with deli sandwiches and sodas to a table. While they were eating, Clare noticed him watching a boy sitting with his parents at the next table. He was about eight or nine, and his hands danced through the air as he talked with animation to parents who hung on his every word. The boy wore a Red Sox hat and jersey with high-top sneakers. A hand-held electronic game sat on the table next to a can of Dr. Pepper.

  Only when Clare reached for his hand did Aidan seem to realize he was staring.

  “I see boys that age, and I wonder about Colin,” he confessed.

  “It’s only natural.”

  “I wonder all the time what he’d be like. Would he be a Red Sox fan like I am? Like that boy over there? Would he play football? Would he have read all the Harry Potter books by now or loved Star Wars?”

  “You know, you can make him into anything you want him to be. He can be a Red Sox fan who plays football and reads Harry Potter. And then whenever you want to, you can visit him in your mind.”