by July Dawson
Sometimes, like now, it seemed like she was pretending to hate me. And sometimes it seemed very real. She talked to me the way I thought women should’ve responded to Mitch. I couldn’t even remember the names of half the women who had passed through this house, just like I wasn’t sure I could really remember my mother.
“This house is full of memories,” I said. “Bad ones.”
The French doors creaked slightly, as she stopped abruptly. “What is it, Rob?”
They were her usual brusque words, but her tone was different. Softer.
I glanced back at her, regretting that I’d said what I was thinking out loud. It wasn’t like me.
“Plenty of good ones, too,” I said lightly.
She walked to the edge of the patio and rested her elbows on the rail. I watched as the wind whipped her hair back, but I couldn’t see her face. That made it easier to talk. I figured I had one chance to remind her I was a person, not just a Delaney. A person she used to care about.
“When I was a kid, I thought I saw Mitch and my mom out here. He had his arm around her waist and he was whispering in her ear. I had come into the kitchen for Frosted Mini-Wheats and here I thought I was getting my mom back instead.” I shook my head. I’d run out there like an idiot, a big grin splitting my face, but when the two of them turned around, it was my dad romancing some sweet-faced co-ed I’d never met before.
“Who was she?” Naomi asked.
“I don’t remember.” She’d been nice. She had laughed a little too hard at both my jokes and my father’s, and taught me how to shuffle a deck of cards, which had turned out to be an essential skill in the military. I was starting to like her when she stopped visiting. I knew better than to ask too many questions. I couldn’t even get those answers about my own mother.
“What made you think of that? The surf?” Her voice was quiet, and the wind almost whipped her words away.
“The way you talk to me,” I said. “Like she should’ve talked to him.”
She turned, her eyes wide. “Rob, I didn’t—”
“I know,” I said gruffly. I didn’t know what she was going to say next, but I didn’t want to hear it. I didn’t need her pity.
Her cell pinged, and she pulled it out of her pocket. Her cheeks were flushed like she was upset. I wished I had time to talk to her.
“Your grandmother’s car just pulled in.”
I nodded. I was comfortable in my chair, with my bad coffee. I wasn’t sure why my grandmother was invading my vacation anyway, or how long she intended to stay.
She hesitated. "Aren't you going to go meet her?"
I wanted to say no. But if I didn't go unload the car, then my grandmother, Rebecca, would expect Naomi to carry the suitcases upstairs. I pictured petite Naomi bumping one of those heavy bags up the long, slick-marble staircase, and I rose from the chair.
As we walked back through the kitchen towards the foyer, she looked up at me shyly and asked, "So does this mean you won't be needing a chauffeur?"
"Are you kidding?" I asked. "I'm going to need someone to drive me away from her."
"I heard that, Robert," called my grandmother, her heels clicking across the foyer floor.
We turned the corner, and she came into view: tall and slender with her toned arms opened wide for a hug. She wore her white hair in a pixie cut, the same style she'd worn for almost as long as I could remember. Her navy dress and madras scarf highlighted her tanned and toned body. Except for her beautifully coiffed white-gray hair, she would have looked like she was in her forties.
"You look lovely and well-preserved as ever," I said, hugging her, breathing in the scent of her Chanel No. 5. In my head, I thought, half-fondly, you old vampire.
"Trying to win me back over after that little dig?" she asked, her eyebrows arching over crystal-blue eyes.
"Do I have to? I'm still your grandson."
She squeezed me a little tighter before her hug loosened, and she took a step back with her hands still gripping my forearms. She looked up at my face as if she wanted to stare at me, to take me in, after being apart for so long.
But what she said was, "You do have three brothers. You can be replaced. You're not even the only SEAL anymore."
"Do you brag about that at the tennis club?"
"All I can say is, thank god you became a SEAL. It didn't sound so great at first. Agnes' grandson is a big shot lawyer who's always on the TV—national—giving his opinion, Clary has two disappointment-grandchildren but at least the third is a Harvard-educated doctor." She switched into a falsetto imitation of her own voice. "My grandsons are such patriots. They all went into the Navy."
"Sorry to be such a hardship."
"Well, now if anyone starts bragging about their grandchildren, I can always say my grandson can kick your grandson's ass."
The word ass coming from my impeccable grandmother made me crack a smile. "You are incorrigible. I wouldn't put it past you."
"Of course not, sweetheart. You shouldn't put anything past me." She patted my arms with her wrinkled and tanned hands before she let go, gesturing towards the front door. "Would you go get my bags, please, before the limo driver decides he desperately wants a matched set of Hartmann luggage, or at least to go home to supper?"
“Sure,” I said. I took a step towards the door, turned and kept walking backward as I asked her, “How long are you staying, anyway?”
She just smiled in response.
Old vampire.
7
Naomi
I was buttering toast in the kitchen when Rob walked in the next morning.
He stopped in the doorway, running a hand through sweaty dark hair. “You’re making me breakfast?”
He was shirtless, wearing sweatpants low enough on his hips to expose hard hip bones below chiseled abs. Beads of sweat stood out along his glistening pecs and rock-hard biceps. I might have glimpsed a dark-haired happy trail beginning below his navel before I forced myself to look away through the French doors. I glanced out at the deep blue Atlantic waves. But damn it, Rob was the better view.
“I’m making your grandmother breakfast. Even though it’s not in my job description.”
He pulled out a stool at the breakfast bar, settling close enough to me that I could have sworn I felt the heat coming off his body.
I stared down at the toast like it was the world’s most fascinating grain product. “Just finished your workout?”
“Yeah, there’s a weights room in the basement. Sorry, I wasn’t expecting you here so early.”
“Or you would’ve put on a t-shirt?”
“Maybe.” The tiniest hint of a grin played around his lips as if he knew what effect his body had on me.
“You should go shower,” I said primly. “You’re sweating all over the kitchen.”
“Sorry.” He didn’t seem sorry.
My phone began to warble, and I shoved his grandmother’s breakfast tray across the island. “Would you bring that up to her?”
He nodded. “I better put on a shirt first.”
“That might be ideal,” I said. Even if it wasn’t my ideal.
Rob lingered in the doorway, though, probably dripping beads of sweat on his grandmother’s whole wheat toast, as I answered my phone. I tried to shoo him away. It was someone calling because they were pretty sure a cat was trapped in their neighbor’s abandoned townhouse.
As I hung up, he ducked out of the room. By the time I’d packed up my stuff, he came sauntering back in, pulling a polo over his head. While he was blinded by the fabric, I took one long look at his tanned abs and chest, studying the way his hip bones indented from his muscular abs, like they were made for my fingers to wrap around his hips while he pounded into me.
When his dark hair popped out of the collar, I slung my bag over my shoulder.
“What’s going on?” He yanked the hem down, and now there was no more temptation to follow his happy trail down those angular lower abs in my imagination. His shirt clung tightly over his p
ecs and then hung loosely over that lean waist.
“I have a cat to rescue.”
For a second, our eyes met. Then I lunged for the keys, just as he swiped the keys to the Suburban from the bowl at the edge of the counter.
“You know me,” he said. “I don’t like to be bored.”
“I’m pretty sure everything about rescuing cats is boring for you.”
“Well, you’d be wrong.” His tone implied as usual.
I shrugged. “Suit yourself, sailor.”
He led the way to the garage. His ass filled out his jeans way too perfectly, and I rolled my eyes at myself and at him. What the hell were we doing here?
Why couldn’t I stop?
As we drove over to the other side of Newport, Rob asked me, “How are we going to get into the house?”
“I have my ways,” I promised.
His eyes sparked with curiosity. Something about that look made butterflies rise in my stomach. It was probably just a reaction to that weird nut-and-seed bread of Rebecca’s that I’d tried when I was making her toast, though.
We parked in front of a row of rundown townhouses, and Rob followed me as we walked around to the back of the townhouse. I was trying to listen for a plaintive meow, but I found myself far too focused on where Rob was, the slight swishing sound of his jeans as he walked, the sense of his body towering over mine.
I stopped dead when I heard the cat. Rob, who had been following so closely, rested his hands briefly on my shoulders, catching himself, with his big body pressed against mine. Just for a second, I felt the full, muscular warmth of his body against mine. Then he was gone. And I shivered.
Standing next to me now, Rob listened, with his head cocked and his face intent. He nodded at the siding. “Two feet south of that bathroom window.”
Rob bounced onto the back porch and tried the door knob. It didn't turn. "Worth a try. Now what?"
"I was planning to break in. And if I get caught, explain to the nice police officer that I really, really love cats..."
"Has that happened to you before?"
"Once."
"And how did it go?"
"I don't have a B&E conviction."
He shook his head. "Well, how do you usually get into one of these houses? Because I can knock down the door..."
"No," I said. "That's so disrespectful of the property. Then anyone could just waltz in there..."
"Anyone like you?"
"I have a good reason," I said, gesturing him out of the way. Rob grinned slightly, crossing his arms across his chest as he leaned against the porch railing. That little smile on his soft lips, above that firm and masculine jaw, made my heart do a flip.
"There's a Youtube tutorial for everything these days," I told him lightly, unzipping the side pocket of her bag for her lock picking kit.
"Naomi Anne Papadopolous, is that what I think it is?"
I glanced down at my re-purposed purple makeup bag. "That depends. Do you think it’s a homemade locksmithing kit I loving crafted while watching Supergirl re-runs, with a Dremel tool, a scientific feeler gauge, and 1/4 inch flat rods, which the Internet told me work a lot better for making your own picks than the standard hacksaw blades?"
"You," he said, "are a wonder."
After we had wrestled the cat out of a wall and into the carrier and settled her in at my house, Rob and I headed back to the Delaney mansion, slightly covered in cat fur. It felt good to be a team.
He nodded his head in time to a woebegone love song by a U.K. rocker, and it made me smile; he stopped, crossing his arms over his chest.
“You like Cailim Reid?” I asked.
“Is that who this is?”
"He's just gotten big in the last year," I said. "After he was on Guitar Star. You were probably out of the country, being a hero."
"Okay." He gently nudged my shoulder, and the warmth of his hand on my body was electric. Even though he was pretending to shove me like we were kids. "That's fine from everyone else. But you need to stop."
"You don't like me making fun of you?" I asked. "Or really, of Amy? You make fun of me all the time."
"I don't mind you making fun of me. Just... not that."
I felt a lurch of dismay that despite his light-hearted chiding, maybe I had crossed a line. "I really do respect what you do. Obviously. Everyone does."
"Naomi. Stop." That reassuring smile was back on his lips. "If you ever need me to be the Navy SEAL, trust me, I can swim, fight, or MacGuyver just about anything. But when it's you and me, I want to be just Rob."
"Okay," I said. "Fair enough."
Except just Rob made my heart pound.
8
Rob
When we pulled back into the circle in front of the house, there was a catering van parked with its doors open wide and people in black chef’s coats moving to-and-from the house.
“What is that old vampire up to?” I asked.
“Rob!” Naomi’s eyes widened.
“I love her,” I said, unfastening my seatbelt. “But I don’t love her hijinks. And there are always hijinks.”
“I’ll put the car in the garage.”
I nodded, just because I needed privacy to talk to my grandmother. There were very strong Delaney rules about airing dirty laundry in front of the help, even though they were, literally, the people who washed our dirty laundry. I might feel differently about Naomi, but I wasn’t about to explain that to my grandmother. Just like I couldn’t begin to explain the complicated, fucked-up dynamics within the Delaney clan to sweet Naomi.
I found my grandmother on the deck, which was set with a long table covered in white linens. I pulled out one of the chairs and sat opposite her. Her pixie cut was ruffled by the breeze. Her red lips were perfectly polished and smug, and she took her oversized sunglasses off to lay them next to her place setting.
"I thought we were ordering lunch in for the two of us," I said evenly. "Not for a guest list."
Through the French doors, I could glimpse the caterers moving around in the kitchen.
She wrinkled her nose. "Honey, where did you go? What's that on your shirt?"
"Cat fur," I said shortly, brushing a tuft of white fur off the front of my polo. The breeze lofted it, and it sailed over our heads towards the house.
"Well, the guests should be here in ten minutes, but you might as well take the time to shower."
"Like I said, I wasn't expecting guests."
"Kate's allergic to cats.” She waved me off. "Go! Shoo! Take a shower!"
"Kate?" I asked. "What's Kate doing coming?"
"Good lord. You went to BU and that's the best sentence you can form?" She smiled slightly.
"You're being awful," I warned her as I stood.
"You can't blame me, sweetheart," she said. "I want grandchildren."
"Awful," I said again, knowing it would make her smile, and headed inside. I looked for Naomi as I crossed the house for the stairs, eager to warn her— somehow the thought of Naomi and Kate coming face-to-face made me uncomfortable— but I couldn't find her.
Twenty minutes later I came back down, clean-shaven and freshly showered, in a crisp blue button-down and dark wash jeans. I’d purposefully grabbed the first few pieces of clothing at the top of my suitcase. I wasn’t going to worry about how I looked to my ex.
Grandmother mingled out on the deck with her guests. One of them stood with her loose brown curls blowing in the breeze, wearing a summer dress and strappy sandals. I glanced away quickly, taking in the rest of the crowd.
I knew Senator Gray and his wife from his childhood, when they had been frequent visitors, and I remembered the slender, magenta-haired professor of poetry as one of Grandmother's best friends when she had lived in Rhode Island. The others I didn't know.
Senator Gray turned when he saw me coming down the stairs, his eyes widening slightly. Then he smiled, extending a tanned hand to me. “Rob Delaney. For a minute, I thought you were your father. Spitting image.”
“Senator
Gray,” I said, shaking his hand and pretending the rest of that greeting hadn’t happened. I didn’t care to have anything in common with my father.
“I want you to know, Rob, you’ve made us all proud here in Rhode Island. Not many people with the world at their feet would choose to spend their life in service.”
“Thank you.” I didn’t really want to thank him. Senator Gray had been my father’s mentor when my father was a junior congressman. The two of them had been thick as thieves and twice as dishonest. But when my father wrecked his car and his political career in one drunken afternoon, Senator Gray had suddenly disappeared from our lives.
"Oh, Rob, come greet Kate," Grandma said, waving me over.
Kate turning, smiling brightly. Her face was leaner, faint wrinkle lines around her eyes and the corner of her lips, but she looked very much the same as she had for the eight years we had dated on-and-off. Her cheeks still dimpled the same as they used to.
Grandmother hadn't thrown together this luncheon just that morning. She must have started planning when she heard I was here, maybe before she even bought a plane ticket out from JFK.
"Hi, Kate," I said, hugging her easily. It wasn't her fault that Grandmother was being a nut.
Kate felt very thin, hard-edged, and she smelled like the perfume she'd always worn. Happy. I remembered picking up the bottle in her college dorm room, sniffing it, telling her, "You certainly make me happy."
"Hi, Rob," she said. There was a mischievous bob in the way she launched herself onto her toes to hug me. "It's been a while."
"It's been too long," I admitted, because no matter that we'd broken up, we'd been important to each other for a long time. I should have kept in touch.
Grandmother smiled at us and slipped away to chat with her other guests. Kate raised her eyebrows; she knew my family all too well.
"Sorry," I mouthed at her. I slid my arm around her waist to pull her to the deck railing, where the sound of the surf would give us privacy. "The lobster rolls should be good, anyway. She ordered from McLane's."
