She grinned. “But you’re not going to, are you? Admit it, Mack, this is the happiest you’ve been since you lost your job. You’re dying to take on the challenge.”
“I am,” he confessed. “I started roughing out a business plan last night, projecting costs and potential income. I can’t imagine that any bank will take a risk like this. I have some money of my own. I’ve been pretty frugal with my salary and I have my severance package, but that’s just the tip of the iceberg.”
“Talk to Laila,” Susie suggested. “Her father’s as conservative as they come. He wouldn’t even approve a loan for Megan to open her art gallery unless Mick backed her, which she refused to let him do, but Laila’s a different story. She’ll understand what a huge investment this will be, not just in you, but in Chesapeake Shores. A newspaper’s needed here. She has the vision to see that.”
“Maybe you’re the one who should be selling her on the idea,” he suggested. “You seem to know exactly what to say. Want to be my business partner? I don’t want your money, just your enthusiasm.”
“Hey, you’ve been charming women into doing what you want for years. Just think of Laila as one of your potential conquests.”
He frowned at the offhand comment. “The stakes are very different,” he pointed out. “I wanted to sleep with those women. I wasn’t asking them for huge amounts of money.”
“Going after sex and money aren’t all that different,” Susie insisted. “Ask any of those guys who managed to talk very smart investors out of their life’s savings what it took to do it. Charm was a big part of the package.”
“Plus a lot of rosy projections on paper,” Mack replied. “My projections are realistic. They’re not all that rosy. I’m not going to get rich doing this.”
“What do you want most? Money or satisfaction?”
“Some of both,” he said candidly.
“Won’t these projections of yours give you that much?”
“I think so. I’m not convinced the bank will.”
“You won’t know until you’ve talked to Laila.” She met his gaze, her expression earnest. “Do it, Mack. Life’s too short to play it safe. If this is something you want, do whatever it takes to make it happen.”
He studied her intently. “Why do I have a feeling you’re talking about more than me starting a newspaper?”
“Because you think you know me so well,” she retorted. “But not this time, Mack. This is all about you and what’s right for your future.”
“It’ll take me a little longer to pull everything together, but I’ll at least talk to Laila before I throw in the towel. I promise.”
“I can’t ask for more than that.” She met his gaze. “You know, I think I might be able to eat that piece of pie, after all.”
He watched as she dug into the warm apple pie with melting vanilla ice cream on top, then shook his head. “And here I thought you’d leave at least a bite or two for me,” he teased.
“Get your own,” she said. “This piece is all mine.”
Mack felt strangely relieved by her sudden burst of appetite. And yet the fact that he felt that way said way too much about just how worried he was about her.
Spending the afternoon with Mack, while a bit stressful, had been just the distraction Susie had needed. She’d almost forgotten about the ultrasound results. When she stopped back in the office, though, there was a message on her desk, taken by her father, to call Dr. Kinnear’s office.
She could feel her father’s gaze on her as she read it.
“What’s that about, Suze?” he asked, worry creasing his brow. “Why is the doctor’s office calling you?”
“Nothing to be concerned about, Dad. They just want me to schedule an appointment.”
He stepped out of his office and crossed to her desk, then perched on the chair beside it. “I’ve been married to your mother a lot of years, you know. When it’s time for her to make an appointment, she gets a notice in the mail.”
“And she probably does it right away,” Susie suggested. “I didn’t. Thus the phone call.”
“You’re lying to me,” her father said bluntly. “Don’t even try. You’re not that good at it. I grew up playing poker with your uncles. I learned to spot the signs of a bluff years ago.”
Though she refused to meet his gaze, Susie felt her eyes brimming with tears. “I can’t talk about it, Dad. Not right now.”
He stood up and suddenly she was in his arms, her head buried on his shoulder. She let the sobs come, soaking his shirt, while he murmured soothing words to her.
“I can let you cry, sweetie, but I can’t help unless you talk to me,” he said. “Would you rather I get your mother over here? Does this have something to do with why the two of you have been huddled together so much recently?”
“Don’t call Mom. I’m okay,” she said, though she clung to his hand. “Could you just sit here with me while I make the call? Then we can talk, okay?”
He nodded. “Whatever you need.”
Her hand shook as she dialed the number. “Is Dr. Kinnear available?” she asked. “I think he has my test results.”
“He’s with a patient, but I know he wants to speak to you right away,” the nurse said. “I’ll get him. Just sit tight, okay?”
Susie nodded, then realized the woman couldn’t see her. “Sure,” she managed to murmur.
As she waited, she avoided looking at her father’s face. She knew how frantic he must be. She was probably scaring him to death.
Then the doctor was on the line.
“It’s as I suspected, Susie. There’s a mass of some kind. Could just be a cyst. We could do an MRI that might tell us more, but I’d rather go straight for a biopsy. It’ll be more definitive, and we’re probably going to have to do it eventually anyway.”
“I see,” she said, hearing the words, knowing what they meant, but somehow unable to process all of the implications. “You’re pretty sure it’s cancer, aren’t you? That’s why you want to jump ahead.”
“I didn’t say that,” he said, his tone deliberately calm and soothing. “I’m just trying to cut out an intermediate step that will only give you longer to worry about this. We can get the biopsy scheduled by next week, more than likely. Getting you in for an MRI could take a lot longer. And, like I said, you’d most likely wind up in an O.R. down the road, anyway. Do you want to come in and talk about this? I’ll have Jane fit you in this afternoon, if you like.”
“No, that’s okay,” she said dully. “Go ahead and schedule the biopsy. What you said makes total sense. I want answers sooner rather than later.” She drew in a deep breath. “What’s actually going to happen? If the biopsy results are bad, will you do surgery right then and there?”
“Probably not. We like to do it that way with breast cancer, but with this we like to think about all the treatment options depending on what we find, then schedule the surgery. We’ll want to get a surgical oncologist involved, as well. I have someone I usually recommend, if that’s okay. I’ll work with him on the scheduling.”
“That’s fine,” she said, feeling mostly numb. All she could sense was her father’s reassuring grip on her hand. It had tightened as he listened. She knew he must be devastated by what he was hearing.
“Jane will call you when she has a time for the biopsy.”
“Thank you.”
“Susie, I know it sounds impossible, but try not to worry,” the doctor said, doing his best to reassure her. “Approach this one step at a time, okay?”
“I’m doing the best I can,” she told him. And that was true. It was just that at the moment, her best wasn’t very good. She felt as if her head were about to explode, and her pulse was racing a mile a minute.
When she’d hung up, she couldn’t seem to bring herself to meet her father’s gaze.
“Suze, what is it? What’s the biopsy for?” His voice hitched. “Is it breast cancer?”
She shook her head. “Worse. It’s possible that I have ovarian cancer,” s
he said in a choked voice. “I might never have kids, Dad.” Then it hit that not having children was far from the worst-case scenario. “I…” She blinked back fresh tears. “I could die.”
Her father sucked in a shocked breath, but he didn’t let go of her hand. “That is not going to happen. Do you hear me? It’s not. Whatever it takes, wherever we have to go for the best treatment, that’s what we’ll do. There are specialists at Johns Hopkins in Baltimore. Call Dr. Kinnear back and tell him that’s where you’re going. I insist on your seeing the best.”
She almost smiled at the force behind his words. “Do you know you sounded exactly like Uncle Mick then, as if you could command the world to do your bidding. I’m okay with Dr. Kinnear and the oncologist he’s recommending, at least for now, Dad. I’d like to be with someone I know, okay?”
“Whatever you need, Suze,” he said with obvious reluctance, then muttered, “I wish to God you and your mother had told me about this sooner.”
“So you could do what? Worry with us?”
“Exactly.” He frowned. “Does Mack know?”
“No one knows besides Mom and now you. I want it to stay that way,” she said emphatically. “You know how our family is. They’ll hover. I don’t think I could take that right now.”
“Okay, I get why you might not want to drag the whole family into this, but you need to tell Mack.”
“No,” she repeated.
“Aw, Suze, come on,” he coaxed. “The man would want to know.”
“Dad, you know the kind of guy Mack is. He keeps things light and casual. This is anything but that.”
“He loves you,” Jeff said adamantly. “Anyone can see that. He’s going to be furious if he finds out about this later. He’d want to be with you, right by your side.”
“I’m not so sure about that,” Susie said, wishing she could believe in Mack’s devotion as fervently as her father did. “I don’t want to put him to the test, especially now when he has so much else on his mind. Once I know how this is going to turn out, I’ll tell him. That’s soon enough.”
Her father looked disappointed by her response. “I think you’re making a mistake—not just for Mack, but for yourself. You need him in your corner, possibly even more than you need your mother and me.”
She frowned. “What do you mean?”
“Let’s face it, honey, that man can give you a reason to fight. He can give you the will to live, no matter how dark things appear.”
Susie shook her head. “No, I won’t put that kind of pressure on him. I don’t want him with me out of pity, or as some kind of cheerleader.”
“I’m not suggesting you have to marry him. Just let him be there for you the way I know he’d want to be there. Shutting him out is the kind of behavior that he might never be able to forgive.”
There was a tone in his voice that rattled her. “Why do you think that?”
“Because your mom almost didn’t tell me what was going on with her after Matthew was born. When she finally had to fill me in because of the problems she had with Luke’s delivery, well, it tore me up inside thinking of her going through that all alone, making the decisions about our future without any input from me.”
“What did you do?”
“I’m ashamed to say I walked out,” he admitted. “It was only for a couple of days, but I had to wrap my head around the fact that your mother could keep something so important from me. In the end I realized she’d done it, at least in part, to protect me, but that didn’t seem to matter. It took me a while to trust in what we had again. Mack could feel the same way, that’s all I’m saying.”
He met her gaze, gave her a weary smile. “Just think about what I’m telling you, okay? Think about how you felt when he kept his job loss from you. Don’t wait too long to bring Mack into the loop on this.”
“I’ll think about it,” she whispered, shaken. “I promise.”
But though her father had raised a lot of very valid points, she was almost as scared of talking to Mack as she was of facing the biopsy next week.
What if she was right? What if go-with-the-flow Mack couldn’t handle the kind of devastating news she might be facing? She thought she knew him better than that, better than he knew himself, but right now being wrong wasn’t a chance she was willing to take.
8
Mack’s blog had been up and running for a couple of weeks when his old boss called.
“Hey, pal, I saw the blog. It’s good to see you’re still writing,” Don Richmond said. “One of the guys in the sports department told me about it. Based on the comments flowing in, it looks as if you still have your knack for stirring up controversy.”
“Just trying to keep my finger on the pulse of the sports world,” Mack said.
“So, are you making any money at this or are you still actively looking for another job?”
“I’ve sent out a couple of feelers, heard from a few papers, but I have some other things I’m following up on in the meantime.”
“Such as?”
Mack wasn’t ready to share his idea for starting a newspaper with anyone outside his immediate circle of friends. “I’ll fill you in if it works out.”
“Does that mean you’d still be open to another suggestion?” Don probed.
Mack knew it would be foolish not to be open to anything and everything right now. “Why? Do you have a lead on a job?”
“It’s not a job. More of a freelance assignment.”
“That might be a real possibility,” Mack said, thinking of the income it would provide while he was waiting to see if he could pull together the newspaper. “What’s the deal?”
“I had a call from a publisher the other day,” Don explained. “They’re looking for someone to ghostwrite a book for a sports figure. They want someone who knows the sports world and can spin a good story. The book’s about someone big, though they don’t want me to mention the name. They’ll pay a sizable flat-fee advance. You’d be perfect for the job. Are you interested? If so, I’ll pass your name along. I didn’t want to do that without discussing it with you first.”
“I’d be writing anonymously, basically putting this person’s words down on paper?” Mack asked.
“That’s the way I understand it.”
Mack hesitated. He recalled a friend spending months on one of those deals, only to have the book pulled because the athlete in question balked at the last minute. “What if the person’s not being candid and I know it? Or what if I write the book and the guy won’t okay it?”
“All things you’d need to discuss with the publisher,” Don told him. “It’s worth a conversation. You could fly up to New York next week and sit down with the editor, then meet the celebrity to see if it’s a comfortable fit.”
“Any idea what kind of money they’re talking about?”
Don named a figure that would fatten his bank account nicely and would allow him to remain here in Chesapeake Shores while he wrote. Or at least he thought it would.
“Would I need to relocate?”
“I’m sure you’d have to spend some time with this guy, and he’s not local, but I imagine you could do the bulk of the writing anyplace you wanted to.”
“What’s the timetable?”
“The way I understand it, they’re hoping to jump on a current news situation. That’s one reason they were looking for a journalist who’s used to writing under deadline pressure.”
The idea was intriguing and lucrative enough that Mack knew he couldn’t possibly dismiss it out of hand. “Sure, tell the publisher I’m interested,” he said.
It didn’t mean he had to forgo the whole newspaper thing, especially if this project required a tight turnaround. It would just give him something to do while that plan came together, assuming it did. He told himself it was smart to hedge his bets, since getting financing for the newspaper was far from a sure thing.
But later, as he made the arrangements to fly up to New York for the meetings, he couldn’t help wondering if Su
sie would see the opportunity as he did, as a means to an end, rather than as the first step to moving on to an entirely new life.
That evening, as Susie helped Mack decorate the small Christmas tree they’d bought for his apartment, she listened as he explained his upcoming trip to New York.
“I see,” she said eventually, her heart sinking. “It sounds like a terrific possibility.”
Mack frowned. “You don’t sound all that thrilled about it. I wouldn’t be moving away, Susie. If anything, this could be a way to stay right here and build an entirely different career.”
She shrugged. “I guess I’d let myself get too excited about the whole newspaper thing,” she said. It had been a surefire way to keep him close.
“Is that it, or are you worried that once I’m off traveling or whatever for the book, I might find someplace I like better than Chesapeake Shores?” Mack asked perceptively.
“Maybe so,” she admitted. “Do you want to write this book, Mack? If you do, then that’s all that really matters.”
“Frankly, I see it as a way to get an infusion of cash that would tide me over until I see how this newspaper thing comes together, or even if it does. If it opens the door to other book deals, that might be good, but that’s not how I’m looking at it. It’s a onetime thing.”
“The newspaper will never fly if you’re not a hundred percent committed to it,” Susie argued. “Laila will see right away if your time’s going to be too scattered. She’ll never approve a loan then.”
“You probably have a point,” Mack conceded. “But it’s a couple of days in New York. I’ll know more by the time I come back. Then I can make an informed decision.”
Susie didn’t want him to guess there were other reasons she didn’t want him out of town right now. She forced a smile. “Right. Just a couple of days. When will you go?”
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