She could tell from the look of surprise on Carrie’s face and the relief on Caitlyn’s that she was on the right track. She reached up and managed to clasp one small, delicate hand of each girl.
“Listen to me,” she said quietly. “No matter what happens between your dad and me, you will always get to spend time with him. You will live with me, but you can see him whenever you want to.”
“Really?” Caitlyn asked, her relief evident. “You promise?”
“I promise.”
“I told you,” she whispered to Carrie. “I told you we could see Daddy.”
“But Daddy wants us to live with him,” Carrie said defiantly. “And you said on the phone that we have to live with you all the time.”
“Your dad and I will work that out,” Abby reassured her.
“Why can’t we live with him, like he and Gabrielle said?” Carrie asked.
The question cut right through Abby’s heart, but she couldn’t let them see how upsetting she found it. They were just little girls who adored their dad and feared that something in their relationship with him was about to change. She also knew Wes spoiled them during their time with him, while she tended to be a stricter disciplinarian. In their eyes that made living with him seem like an endless special occasion.
Abby regarded them seriously. “You’re just going to have to trust me when I tell you that your dad and I will always do what we think is best for you,” she said. With a little impartial help from a court.
“Are you going to punish us for running away?” Caitlyn asked, apparently satisfied for now with Abby’s promises.
“Yes,” Abby said at once. “What do you think it will take to make sure you never forget that running away is wrong?”
“A time-out?” Caitlyn asked hopefully.
“Carrie, what do you think is fair?” Abby asked.
“No dessert or cookies for a week,” she suggested, sounding forlorn.
Abby considered the suggestions. A time-out of some kind would serve no purpose with these two. Even if they were separated—something they hated—they could entertain themselves for hours on end. Sweets, however, would be a real sacrifice.
“Carrie, that’s a good one. No desserts, cookies or sweets of any kind for one week.” She gave them each a stern look. “And no trying to get Gram or Aunt Jess to break the rules or sneaking into the kitchen when no one’s around.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Caitlyn said.
Carrie looked disappointed by Abby’s additional admonishments. Despite having suggested the perfect punishment, she’d clearly had plans for getting around it until Abby had taken away those options.
“Okay, get some sleep,” Abby said. “We’ll talk some more in the morning.” She bent down and kissed them. “I love you girls more than anything. Please don’t ever forget that.”
Caitlyn sighed. “That’s what Mr. Riley said.”
Abby smiled. “Well, sometimes Mr. Riley is a very smart man.”
And tonight, for whatever reason he’d been in the right place at the right time, he was also her hero.
With the girls tucked in for the night, Abby poured two glasses of wine and went onto the porch to wait for Trace. She must have taken longer inside than she’d realized because she found him already there, his rocker squeaking rhythmically against the floorboards. He was staring off toward the bay, which could be heard, but which was invisible in the inky darkness of the night sky.
Every now and again, a firefly’s glow would flicker. The sight of them always took her straight back to childhood, when she, Connor and Kevin and later Bree and Jess would catch as many as they could and put them in old Mason jars with holes punched in the tops, then free them before bedtime.
“Are the girls okay?” he asked when she joined him.
“None the worse for their adventure,” she said, handing him a glass. “I, however, am still shaking.” She faced him. “Thank God you found them when you did.”
“I think they would have turned around soon on their own. It would have been dark in a few more minutes, and Caitlyn was already frightened.”
Abby smiled. “Yes, but you’re not taking into account that Carrie is determined enough for both of them. She never gives in to fear.”
“A scary thought,” Trace said.
“You should live with it.” She turned as she spoke and saw Trace studying her intently. “What?”
“An interesting idea,” he said casually. “Me living with Carrie’s daredevil nature. It would imply you and me being together.”
Even though her pulse skittered crazily at the intensity in his gaze and the offhand mention of some kind of future, she didn’t want to go there. Not after this afternoon when he’d once again dashed her hopes by saying he wanted to stay right here in Chesapeake Shores.
“We can’t, Trace. You and me.” She shook her head. “It’s just not going to happen.”
He frowned. “I had a hunch you were going to say that. Your reaction earlier today when I said I like it here was pretty obvious.”
“I feel as if we had this same conversation ten years ago,” she said wearily.
“No, Abby,” he said with surprising heat and more than a little bitterness. “That’s just it. We never had any conversation ten years ago. You leaped to some conclusions, made a decision that suited you and took off. I never had a chance to chime in.”
“The fact that you didn’t come after me spoke volumes,” she responded defensively.
“Okay, yes, you’re right. And we have had this conversation. I waited too long. My bad. I lost.” His gaze clashed with hers. “In the end, we both lost.”
“Yes, I suppose we did,” she admitted. “But I can’t regret having Caitlyn and Carrie.”
“I wouldn’t expect you to.” He leaned forward, turned his chair until he was facing her. “Can we have an honest, straightforward conversation now?”
She trembled under the heat in his gaze. “Okay.”
“Something’s happening between us again, Abby. All those old feelings, they’re still there, at least for me. I don’t want to pretend they don’t exist. I want to figure out where they can take us.”
She was shaking her head before he finished. “I don’t think I can handle that kind of complication in my life right now,” she whispered. “Everything’s such a mess.”
“At least let me be there for you. Lean on me. Don’t shut any doors.”
“And then what? I go back to New York and break your heart all over again?”
“Possibly,” he said, then reached for her hand, brought it to his lips. “Or maybe we talk it through like the adults we are now and find a way to make it work. We’re not immature kids anymore. Surely we can find a solution that will give us both what we want.”
Even as he spoke, Abby realized how desperately she wanted it to turn out that way. She just didn’t believe it was possible. So far in her life, love had never once led to a happy ending.
“Trace, I wish I could believe that this won’t end badly,” she said.
“Look out there,” he ordered. “Tell me what you see.”
“Where?”
“Up there in the sky.”
She gazed up into the sky and saw the scattering of stars. “Stars,” she said, taking him literally, but thinking he meant much more.
“Exactly,” he said as if she’d just passed an important exam. �
��You ever see that many stars at once in New York?”
She shook her head. “There are too many lights.”
“Which means there must be something special about this place if we can see so many,” he told her. “Have a little faith, darlin’. Sometimes those stars up there do align just right, and when they do, anything can happen.”
In that moment, with her hand in his and the waves rolling softly along the shoreline in the distance, she could almost let herself believe in happily-ever-after.
Mick walked out of a meeting with the building and zoning officials in San Francisco and turned to his associates. “That’s it,” he said. “I’m pulling the plug.”
Jaime Alvarez, his executive assistant and a talented architect in his own right who’d been working with Mick for months to get this latest development off the ground, stared at him in shock. “You can’t do that.”
Mick laughed, oddly relieved to have made the decision. He’d never have done it fifteen years ago, or even last year, but today it felt just right.
“I just did,” he told his staff. “I’m going home.”
The two other men with them were clearly stunned into silence. They turned to Jaime, seeking clarification.
“There will be no development?” Joe Wilson asked. Joe coordinated with all the subcontractors they hired for various jobs. “After all the work we’ve put in?”
“You were in that meeting,” Mick said. “They were going to keep us jumping through hoops, dangling promises in front of us for as long as they could drag it out. In the end, I suspect some of the permits will never be approved. It’s time to cut our losses, sell the land and move on.”
“And all the subcontractors?” Joe asked, looking shaken. “What about them?”
“They’re all excellent local companies and there’s plenty of work around for them. We’ve kept some of them on hold for too long as it is. All the contracts have out clauses. We’ll use them, make a few payments if necessary. They’re not going to be surprised, any of them. They knew going in, probably better than we did, that getting this development approved was a long shot.”
He turned to Jaime. “I’d like you to head up to Portland, take on that project and see it through, unless you have some objection. It was your baby in the first place.”
Jaime’s expression turned eager. “I’ll manage it?”
“Unless you think you need me hanging over your shoulder and getting in the way.” He’d made this decision last night in anticipation of having this morning’s meeting go exactly as it had—nowhere.
The young architect beamed. “No, I can handle it.”
“And I’ll just be a phone call away if you have questions,” Mick told him. “Joe, what would you like to take on? You interested in going with Jaime to Portland or do you want to get back home to Maryland? Dave, how about you?”
“Let me think about that,” Dave said. “We’ve been in this area for a while now and I like it. I might just stick around, see what work I can find.”
Mick nodded. “You know I’d be sorry to lose you, but if you need a reference, you can count on me giving you an excellent one. And if you do decide to come back to Maryland, I’ll put you to work back there. Up to you.”
“Thanks,” Dave said.
Joe looked vaguely envious of the two other men. “Much as I’d like to spend the time up in Portland,” he said, “my wife will kill me if she finds out I had a chance to come home and didn’t grab it.”
“Then you can fly back with me in the morning,” Mick said.
Jaime studied him. “I thought you’d be more upset about this. You poured a lot of work into designing this project.”
“It won’t go to waste,” Mick told him. “With modifications, it might suit another location.”
“This is the first time in the five years I’ve worked with you that you seem eager to be heading home,” Jaime said.
Mick thought about the observation. “You’re right. I am looking forward to it. My daughter and grandkids are there for an extended visit. I’m looking forward to spending time with them. They have some things going on in their lives right now. I’ll feel better if I’m close by.”
“And Jess’s inn will be opening soon, too, right?” Joe said.
“A couple of weeks,” Mick confirmed. “I’m real proud of her. She’s worked hard to make that happen.”
Of course, the opening of the inn meant Megan would be in town, too. He was still trying to figure out how he felt about that. He was every bit as angry about the invitation Abby had extended to his ex-wife as he’d indicated to Abby, but there were other feelings, too. Unexpected feelings.
Megan had been out of his life for fifteen years now. It had been eight since he’d seen her at Abby’s wedding. Lord knew, he’d changed a lot in all that time. He wondered if she had. Or if she’d still make his heart race just by walking into a room. Damn, he hoped not. He’d been a fool for love once. At fifty-six, it was too damn late in life to do it again.
Still, he couldn’t help thinking about what the next few weeks might hold. And whether he could get through it without adding to the pile of regrets he’d stacked up fifteen years ago.
The sky outside was streaked with the first orange rays of dawn when Abby walked into the kitchen. She’d barely poured herself a cup of coffee when the phone rang. Fearing it would wake Gram at this early hour, she grabbed it.
“What the hell are you up to?” Wes all but shouted in her ear.
“Excuse me?”
“That barracuda of a lawyer you have has been all over my case since yesterday, making threats and demanding paperwork she’s not entitled to.”
“Not entitled to, or that you don’t want to give her?” Abby inquired mildly, refusing to get drawn into the fight. Stella had warned her to stay cool and calm if Wes called and she intended to follow that advice, no matter how hard it was when she wanted desperately to shout right back at him.
“We settled all this when we went to court,” Wes said.
“And then you or Gabrielle told our daughters that they were going to come and live with you,” she said. “Obviously you’ve decided that what we agreed to no longer works for you, so I had no choice but to protect my own interests.”
Wes sucked in a breath. Clearly he hadn’t expected her to find out what he was up to.
“The girls misunderstood,” he said, sounding tentative.
“Did they really? They’re pretty smart,” she commented. “But let’s say they did get it wrong. Why would Gabrielle have told them to keep it a secret?”
She could practically hear his mental wheels grinding in an attempt to come up with an explanation she would buy. She let him off the hook. “Never mind. There’s nothing you can say to make me believe Gabrielle didn’t tell them exactly that or that you didn’t put the idea into their heads in the first place.”
“Okay, fine,” he said testily. “I want to spend more time with them. With you dragging them down to Maryland, I figured I needed to stand up for my rights.”
“Is it your rights you’re worried about or your wallet?” Abby couldn’t resist asking. “If they’re with you, you’ll no longer be responsible for child support. Those payments must be taking a toll now that you’ve lost a lot of money with a bad investment. Were you hoping the court would make me give you child support so you could bail your girlfriend out of her financial mess?”
The silence on the other end of the line was deafening.<
br />
“Nothing to say?” she prodded. “I understand. What Gabrielle did is pretty reprehensible. In fact, if I were you, I’d forget about a quick wedding, because I see some jail time in her future. And if you’re with her, you can forget about custody of the girls. It will be impossible to convince a court that you can offer a better home when you’re preoccupied with your wife’s legal defense.”
“You can’t keep them from me,” he protested.
“I don’t intend to,” she assured him. “You can see them whenever you want. But forget about a change in custody. Frankly, I think you’re going to have enough on your plate with Gabrielle’s defense without going to court on any other matters.”
“She’ll never be charged,” he said confidently. “You know how this kind of thing gets swept under the rug. It happens all the time.”
“Not when there’s someone around who’s willing to lift up the carpet and show the media where all the dirt is,” she said quietly. “I hate resorting to threats, Wes, but you’ve left me no choice. I have to protect Carrie and Caitlyn.”
“When did you turn so vindictive?”
“The minute you decided to go behind my back and try to get full custody of my daughters,” she said heatedly, then uttered a sigh. “I’m really sorry it’s come to this. It’s so unnecessary. I accepted my share of the blame for our divorce and we both did everything we could think of to make sure the girls wouldn’t suffer. It was working. You and I had kept everything civil and then you had to go and pull a stunt like this. Maybe Gabrielle was behind it, or this financial disaster she’s created. It doesn’t really matter.”
“Let’s just forget this happened, forget we ever said anything to the girls, okay? You don’t know what it’s like right now, Abby,” he said, his tone pleading. “Gabrielle’s a wreck. Her career’s about to go up in flames unless she can find the money to fix everything. Maybe it will anyway. You can’t make it any worse, Abby. If you go public with what you know, or even think you know, consider the fallout for the girls.”
The Inn at Eagle Point Page 28
