“You wish. What I really want is a fish dinner.”
“Absolutely,” he said. She deserved that and more after what she’d accomplished today.
“You sure I look presentable enough to be seen in public?”
He lifted a brow. “You fishing for compliments? I didn’t think that was your style.”
“Every woman could use the occasional compliment,” she chided. “I’m no exception.”
“Then let me assure you that you look as beautiful as ever. Now grab a jacket and let’s head to the restaurant before I start getting other ideas.”
“To hear you tell it, you always have other ideas,” she retorted.
Seth laughed. “I do at that, so give me some credit for my amazing restraint.”
“I don’t know. It’s beginning to take a toll on me.”
“Me, too, sweetheart. Me, too.”
He noticed that she looked exceptionally pleased to hear that. This game to see which of them would fold first had probably been a bad idea. The stakes seemed to be climbing every time they got together.
At The Fish Tale, Seth and Abby found all the booths taken, so they took seats at the bar. Jack immediately served cold beers, then took their orders.
“You been painting?” he asked Abby.
She flushed and whirled on Seth. “You told me all the paint was gone,” she accused.
Jack looked bewildered. “I just heard a rumor earlier that you’d been tackling that house of yours on your own.”
Abby sat back, looking embarrassed. “Sorry. I have been, but I managed to paint myself almost as thoroughly as the living room. I’m a little sensitive about that.”
Jack frowned at Seth. “What’s wrong with you? Why weren’t you over there helping?”
“Hey, I volunteered. She has an independent streak. She wanted to prove something.”
Jack shook his head. “My Greta pulled that on me a time or two.”
“How’d you handle it?” Seth asked.
“I ignored her and pitched in, anyway. She scowled a lot but things got done a lot faster. Even she couldn’t deny that. She even thanked me once.”
Seth glanced at Abby. “That might not be the best approach with my friend here.”
She nodded approvingly. “Smart man. However,” she began with obvious reluctance, “if you offered again, I might be willing to let you help with the bedrooms.”
Seth caught her gaze. “Painting, you mean?”
Jack swallowed a guffaw, then quickly turned away.
Abby frowned at Seth’s teasing. “Yes, painting, though I’m suddenly having second thoughts about that.”
“Let the man help,” Jack recommended, giving her a wink. “It hurts our egos to think we’re not needed.”
“Seth’s ego seems just fine to me,” Abby commented.
“Nope, it’s seriously wounded,” Seth claimed.
Abby merely rolled her eyes. “Then the guest room is all yours,” she soothed.
“Not your room?” he asked.
She barely managed to conceal the grin tugging at her lips. “I thought we’d agreed that room was off-limits.”
Jack’s face turned red. “I’ll go get your meals,” he said, backing away.
“Now you’ve gone and embarrassed him,” Seth said.
“Me? You’re the one who kept poking away at all this talk about bedrooms. You seem a little obsessed.”
Seth held her gaze, then released a sigh. “I think maybe I am,” he admitted.
It was definitely worrisome.
* * *
It had been days since Seth had heard anything from either of his sisters. Crazy him, he’d assumed that meant they’d worked things out. Instead, he found legal papers seeking his presence for a deposition back home. It appeared Laura was going ahead with her lawsuit.
He punched in her number on his cell phone. “Why are you dragging me into this?” he demanded when Laura answered. “You already know what I’m going to say. I’m not going to be on your side. Didn’t you tell your attorney that?”
“He says he can make you a hostile witness,” she claimed defensively.
“So he can get me to say what? That Meredith is the wrong person to be handling the estate? She’s not. That you’re responsible enough to handle your own inheritance? You’re not. Stop this nonsense, Laura, before it gets out of hand and the only people with any money are the lawyers.”
“I don’t know what else to do,” she lamented. “I have to have that money, Seth. I’m in trouble and Meredith won’t help.”
He calmed down enough to hear the genuine panic in her voice. “What do you mean you’re in real trouble?”
“I can’t pay these credit card bills. I’m barely making rent and utilities. I’ve thought about trying to get a second job, but then I won’t have any time for Jason.”
Alarm bells went off. “Are you and Jason seeing each other again?”
“Not really, but I keep hoping he’ll change his mind,” she admitted.
“Oh, Laura, don’t count on that,” he said gently. “As for those bills, see a credit counselor. Maybe he can help you work things out.”
“Meredith could solve it all with the stroke of a pen,” she countered bitterly.
“Until the next time.”
“There won’t be a next time,” she promised. “I’ve learned my lesson. I’m determined to prove that to you, Meredith and to Jason.”
“Honey, I think your ex-husband might be a lost cause,” he dared to suggest.
“Don’t say that,” she pleaded, crying.
“It’s time to face facts,” Seth said. “He gave you plenty of chances to fix things and you kept right on spending.”
“It was an addiction,” she said. “Seriously. Like drugs or something.”
“But you’re cured now?” Seth asked skeptically.
“I am. I see how messed up my life was because of all that shopping. I had closets filled with stuff I didn’t need or even want. It was crazy.”
Seth could hardly disagree with that. He wanted to believe she’d honestly changed, but how could he? All of her husband’s threats and pleas hadn’t forced her to get control of her spending habit. Why should he believe her now?
“These credit card bills of yours,” he began. “How recent are the charges?”
Silence greeted the question. “What do you mean?” she asked in a small voice.
“It’s an easy question. Are these old charges or recent ones?”
“I’ve bought a few things recently,” she admitted. “Just things I needed to fix up my new apartment and to look good for work.”
“You didn’t have enough furniture in that huge house you insisted Jason buy for you?”
“It was all wrong for the apartment,” she responded defensively.
“And the clothes, when we’ve already established that you had a closet filled with things you hadn’t worn?” he asked wearily.
“They were either too casual or too fancy for work,” she claimed.
“How much have you spent in, say, the last month, Laura?”
“A thousand dollars, maybe a little more,” she revealed eventually.
“How much more?”
“Okay, closer to three thousand.”
Seth heaved a sigh. “And you think that’s proof you’ve changed? Does your attorney agree? If he does, you need a new attorney, one who’s not just ripping you off.”
Laura began crying in earnest. “Seth, please, talk to Meredith. There’s plenty to pay these bills with enough left for me to start over.”
“Start over doing what? Going shopping? Sorry, I can’t do that. And you need to have this request for a deposition withdrawn, understood? I’m not being dragg
ed into the middle of this. And you’re just throwing good money after bad, if you keep pursuing it.”
“I hate you,” she shouted as he hung up.
Seth closed his eyes. Yeah, he got that. If there had been even a tiny hint that his sister had really mended her ways and was trying to get her life back on track, he’d have paid her blasted bills himself. How could he, though, when she clearly wasn’t even trying, just looking for an easy way out of the mess she’d gotten herself into. He shook his head and sympathized with his parents just a little. Tough love really was a pain.
* * *
Abby noticed that Seth was awfully quiet when he showed up to help her finish painting. He was brooding about something, but she wasn’t entirely sure whether it was her place to pry.
She put him to work in the guest room, then returned to the master bedroom to finish in there. The fact that he didn’t complain or utter even a single taunting remark about that was more proof of his lousy mood.
She finished the trim, cleaned up her brushes and took a shower, while he kept right on working, his silence deafening.
Once she was cleaned up, she popped a homemade lasagna into the oven, then went into the guest room.
“Dinner will be ready soon, if you want to wash up.”
“Sure,” he said. “I’m almost done in here.”
She stood in the doorway, hands on hips when he didn’t even turn to look at her.
“Okay, that’s it. Put down the brush right now.”
He finally glanced her way, his expression startled. “What?”
“You’ve been fretting about something since you got here. I swore I wasn’t going to pry, but I’ve changed my mind. I want to know what’s going on. Did something happen with a patient today?”
His expression shut down even more, something she hadn’t thought possible.
“No, nothing like that.”
“Then what?”
“I’m not going to dump my problems on you,” he said stiffly.
“You already have. You’re here, but you’d clearly rather be somewhere else. Talk to me.”
He finally met her gaze. “You’ll regret asking,” he warned.
Abby frowned. “Why would you say that? We’re friends. If something’s worrying you, maybe I can help. At the very least I can be a sounding board.”
“But we’re the kind of friends who joke around, maybe flirt a little.”
She had never been more insulted in her life. “If that really is all you believe is going on between us, maybe you should leave.”
He seemed genuinely startled. “You want me to go?”
“If you think our relationship is that shallow, then yes, I do.”
He stood there, the paintbrush in his hands dripping onto the drop cloth on the floor, looking so thoroughly bewildered that Abby almost took pity on him and retracted her words. Instead, she bit her tongue and waited to see what he would do. She sensed this was a real turning point for them. Either something of substance would evolve or the game would end.
He finally nodded. “Let me clean up and I’ll join you on the porch.”
“Is this the sort of conversation that could use a glass of beer or wine?” she asked. “Or will iced tea do?”
He smiled ever-so-slightly. “Tea will do.”
Abby rocked as she waited for him on the porch. When he came outside, he sat in the chair next to hers, but for once he didn’t set the rocker into motion.
“I had a conversation with one of my sisters earlier,” he finally blurted. “It didn’t go well.”
“I see,” she said, though that didn’t explain much. “Everything okay back home?”
“Hardly.” He took a deep breath and in halting, frustrated words explained the situation. “So here I am, caught in the middle. I feel like a heel for not helping Laura out, either by lending her some money or siding with her against our older sister, but I know neither of those solutions is really the answer.”
“It sounds to me as if you took the only stance you could,” Abby told him.
“Then why do I feel so lousy?”
“Because you’re a good guy. You love your sister and want her to straighten out her life, but you can’t make that happen, Seth. It’s up to her.”
“She is right about one thing. The inheritance could get her out of this financial mess.”
“And then what?” Abby asked reasonably. “It seems to me your parents knew what they were doing.”
“Yeah, I think so, too,” he admitted. “That doesn’t make it any easier to see her hurting.” He glanced at Abby. “Thank you.”
“For what?”
“Listening, I guess. Not making me feel like a louse for not bailing her out.”
“What you did took guts,” she told him. “It would have been easy to give in, then turn your back on the consequences. You’re trying to help. So were your parents, even though it sounds as if they were at least partly responsible for Laura’s attitude toward money. Your older sister must feel terrible, too.”
“Meredith’s a wreck,” he acknowledged. “She’s ready to cave in, let Laura have the money and call it a day.”
“But that wouldn’t be the end of it. It sounds as if Laura needs help with her problem. She’s right. It probably is an addiction. She wouldn’t be the first woman—or man, for that matter—to go wild with money. And I suspect she’s far from the first to have it cost her a marriage.”
She studied Seth for a minute. “Does all this have something to do with why you’re so sensitive to financial stuff with me?”
“Sure,” he said at once. “Having money can be great, but it can also change people. My parents were driven to stash away what to them seemed like a small fortune so they could leave behind something for the three of us. I didn’t want or need some nice inheritance. I’d have preferred it if they were around more. Meredith gets what they sacrificed and appreciates it, but not Laura. She just feels entitled.”
Abby frowned. “And you see me in whom? Your folks? Laura?” Neither was particularly flattering.
“No way,” he said fervently. “But at first, I wasn’t so sure how having money had affected you. It made me skittish, no question about it.”
“And now?”
He smiled. “I’ve discovered that you may be the most sensible, grounded woman I know.”
“Thank you for saying that. I didn’t always have money, Seth. I’ve told you that. I don’t think having it has changed me. I certainly don’t want it to. And if you’re worried about whether I’m anything like your sister, you can go inside and check my closets.”
“Aren’t they in that room that we’ve agreed is off-limits?” he teased, lightening up for the first time since the sensitive conversation had begun.
“I’ll make an exception for this,” she told him, chuckling. “But I can tell you what you’ll find. They’re half-empty. I have a few designer things because they were expected with the restaurant clientele, but you’ll mostly find things just like this.” She gestured toward the jeans and T-shirt she’d put on after her shower.
“Good to know,” he said, his eyes darkening with desire as he took a lingering survey. “You look great, by the way. My kind of woman.”
Abby allowed herself a smile at that. It was the sweetest, most promising thing he’d ever said to her. Maybe they were finally edging toward that relationship of substance she’d hardly dared to imagine. She couldn’t help wondering, though, how many more hurdles they’d have to face before Seth acted on the unmistakable desire that was always simmering between them. Or what it would take to allay his deep-rooted fear that her money would somehow come between them.
13
By Saturday Abby knew that Hannah and Luke had to be back from their trip to New York, but she’d heard no news abou
t how the cancer screenings had gone. It was one more reminder that she and Hannah weren’t back on their old footing, not like the days when they’d been on the phone a half dozen times a day to share confidences about everything going on in their lives.
She debated barging in on Hannah and pushing for answers, but that didn’t seem wise. Hannah had to come to her.
But, Abby argued with herself, what if the news had been bad and she needed support, but couldn’t bring herself to ask for it? She tried reminding herself that it was unlikely that Hannah even had the results yet, but surely she’d developed instincts about how things had gone.
“I’m at a loss,” she told Seth when she met him for Sunday lunch at The Fish Tale. Grandma Jenny, Hannah and Luke, and Kelsey and her husband had begged off this week, according to Seth. She found that even more worrisome. “Has Luke said anything? Were the test results bad?”
“He hasn’t said a word to me. They may not even know the results yet.”
“And I don’t suppose you’ve thought to ask,” she said with frustration.
“I figured Luke would tell me whatever he wanted me to know,” he said.
“Of course you did.” It was a typically male attitude, she thought irritably. Even she subscribed to it on occasion, but not when it came to something this important.
Seth frowned. “If you’re really worried about Hannah, go by to see her.”
“We’re not exactly there yet,” Abby admitted.
“Thanksgiving’s later this week. You’ll see her then,” he reminded her.
“That’s hardly the right occasion to get into the state of her health. From what she told me, Thanksgiving dinner is bound to be chaotic.”
“Then I don’t know what to tell you,” he said, clearly giving up any attempt at a solution and apparently tired of the topic.
She regarded him with amusement. “It’s a good thing you have lots of other things going for you, because you’re not being real helpful right now.”
“Hey, I’m a guy. I don’t meddle. That was my best attempt at being supportive.”
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