by Mary Brady
Brianna’s large and dark eyes held a kind of desolation that twisted Delainey’s heart. She sat down on the floor and pulled Brianna into her lap. With her arms around her child, she sighed and knew she was going to have to find a way to explain something Brianna often asked about.
“Did someone say something to you?”
“Janis said my daddy left town because he didn’t want to be part of our family. She’s wrong, isn’t she?”
“Your daddy left before you were born, before he even knew about you.”
“But he could have come back. Did he stay away because he didn’t want to be my daddy?”
“My wonderful, beautiful girl, if he didn’t want to be a daddy, it would not be because of you.”
“If he came back and met me, would he love me?”
“If he didn’t love you, it wouldn’t be because you weren’t good enough or cute or funny enough. It certainly wouldn’t be because you weren’t smart enough.” She tugged a lock of her daughter’s abundant dark brown curls.
“What would it be?”
“It would be because of what he believes about himself.”
“Like maybe he believes he wouldn’t be a good daddy,” Brianna said, her words coming out slowly, thoughtfully.
“Like that. I like to think he’s out there in the world learning enough about himself to love himself. And if we ever find him, he’ll love you, too.”
“Do you love yourself, Mama?”
“I do, my little bean.”
Brianna giggled. “I’m not a bean.”
“You’re my fantastic daughter and I’m your fantastic mother. That makes us the Fantastic Family. When Janis says things like that, it’s because she’s feeling bad or scared about something.”
“Really?”
“Really. Next time, tell her to have a good day and walk away. Or you can ask her if she’s all right. You might be surprised by what she says.”
Brianna turned and snuggled close. “I’d like to have a daddy because sometimes I just get scared.”
Delainey leaned her chin on the top of her daughter’s head. Me too, my sweet little girl. Me too.
* * *
THE NEXT MORNING, Hunter let himself into the office before anyone else got there. He wanted to get started on Shamus’s files.
The day had started with a glorious sunrise. He had run through the village from Shamus and Connie’s house, where he was staying for a few days, and down along the docks and south to the rocky shoreline of Little Cove Park.
When the town was quiet and the streets sat deserted except for one curious brown dog nosing around and one runner from Chicago, Bailey’s Cove seemed to have barely changed since he left, except several stores stood vacant. Quirky, old and new meshed together to form one of those old-fashioned communities where people might stop for a short visit and move on. Too bad. With its position on the coast, the town could draw many tourists if it had more to offer.
He hung his trench coat in the closet.
Sleep hadn’t been easy last night. He kept thinking of Delainey and wondering if he had made another colossal mistake coming here. He had needed to leave Chicago, but come to Bailey’s Cove?
For the past three months he had been unengaged in law. He’d grown tired of jogging Chicago’s lakefront. The gym personnel called him by name when he went in to work out. He’d rebuffed so many invitations to be entertained it had become embarrassing from many angles.
When Shamus had called, it had seemed like some sort of divine intervention, but now he felt trapped by the machinations of life that ambled relentlessly on, chewing people up and spitting them out.
Shamus, for instance. Hunter was sure there was something about Shamus’s calling him now that had nothing to do with the desire to suddenly retire. That Shamus had called a Morrison wasn’t the puzzle. Morrison and Morrison had been founded by Harold and Hadley Morrison, his ancestral grandfather and uncle. That no one had ever changed the name spoke to the casual attitude he had already noticed at the law firm. Shamus had guaranteed this would be different than city corporate law, and Hunter knew before coming here Shamus wasn’t wrong.
For better or worse, he was here until Shamus didn’t need him anymore, because there was one thing he’d refused to give up in the big city and that was what his father had called the Morrison integrity. He had told Shamus he’d help out, and that he would do.
In the file room between Shamus’s office and Harriet’s, he helped himself to a few of Shamus’s files labeled Active.
The first case he opened had a big N/C for no charge scrawled across the top. He almost chuckled at the thought of seeing N/C written on one of the files in the records room at his old firm.
On the rest of the page Delainey’s neat penmanship filled in the blank lines.
Yesterday he had learned that Delainey Talbot was single or single again—the details were fuzzy. The “someone else” who had made her so cold after he left must be out of her life. That was too bad.
It was all too bad.
Too bad his goal had always been to leave Bailey’s Cove. Too bad and entirely his fault, he had thought it best to let Delainey go look for someone else.
Maybe he could have talked her into moving to Chicago, but would she have thrived there or just survived?
At Morrison and Morrison he had the right to read her personnel file, but he decided not to go there. All he had to do was to listen to the chatter and he was sure he could learn all he cared to know about any of the staff, including Delainey. Shamus trusted every one of them within their limitations and that worked for him.
The second client file he pulled out concerned one neighbor trimming the tree of another so it wouldn’t overhang the neighbor’s garage. The suing neighbor had already planned on moving out but was suing for pain and suffering because of the trim job on the tree. This one had one hour billed to it and a note in Delainey’s hand to “Call Mrs. Harrison’s daughter and see what’s really going on.”
Last night over after-dinner drinks, Shamus had talked about some of the workers. Patty, the receptionist, distracted the staff if left to her own devices. Carol couldn’t spell and even spell-checker could not save her. Shirley was just too cute to scold, Shamus had said of his granddaughter. Eddie would do everything to perfection—to a fault. The others each had some workable flaw except Delainey. Apparently the only thing she couldn’t do was walk on water. Shamus had said he might want to ask her about that someday.
A door slammed somewhere downstairs. The staff was beginning to arrive.
He could have guessed Patty’s flaw without Shamus telling him, as she had been happy to relate her life history, which, while fascinating to someone... Carol and Shirley had been more reserved, although he did now know Carol was thirty-eight, single and loved her collection of eyewear. Shirley was checking things out to see if she should follow in Shamus’s footsteps, but no way was she staying in this tiny town, she had said, and blushed. Eddie, who had graduated nearly a year ago from high school and had been a paid intern since, seemed happy just to be a part of it all and was clearly in love with an older woman, Shirley, who must have been all of twenty.
Eddie might be trying to decide on a career. With his goggle-eyed innocence, Hunter hoped it wasn’t law, at least not law in the big city. It just might break a boy like that.
He opened another folder. It felt strange, even after being out of the office for two months, not to have client meetings, teleconferences or even a court date scheduled. Several folders later and there hadn’t been a single file without Delainey’s neat handwriting in it somewhere.
Yesterday the rest of the staff had said hello and welcome and had enjoyed the champagne and cake. Except Delainey—she hadn’t had cake. She had slammed one glass of champagne and split as soon as she could get away from Shamus.
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Her hair looked as if it was still that soft, silky golden. Her figure had filled out, and long after she had left the room, he’d found himself wanting to touch her, stroke her hair, feel her body against his.
During the sleepless hours last night, he had refused to let his mind linger there. She had moved on.
But in the light of day, he couldn’t figure out what she was still doing in Bailey’s Cove working as a paralegal. She either hadn’t gone to law school or she’d given it up for some reason. That she wouldn’t have passed the bar was not an option, for she was the only person in their high school whose grades were better than his.
Once he had looked through the stack of files he had pulled, the chatter level downstairs had risen to boisterous. He doubted they knew he was here, as Shamus’s wife had insisted she make breakfast for him, and Shamus had driven him to the office. His rental car would arrive in two days. A reminder how remote Bailey’s Cove was from the rest of the world.
His office door stood open, so if anyone came upstairs, they would see him, but diplomacy dictated it was time to go downstairs to let them know he was here. He didn’t want to be charged with big-city guerrilla tactics or give anyone a heart attack by coming down later in the morning and have them get all paranoid about what he might have heard or seen that they didn’t know about. And he smelled coffee.
In a few moments, he was down the stairs and approaching the door to the coffee room. Break room, they called the fully equipped kitchen with three large round tables and a dozen and a half chairs. The closer he got, the more understandable the words were through the door.
Something indistinct and then clearly, “...Delainey.”
“She’ll be in after she talks to her daughter’s teacher,” Patty was saying to someone.
Hunter stopped cold. Daughter? Delainey had a child? Maybe she was married after all. Though her name was still Talbot, that didn’t really mean anything anymore.
“I guess she wants to bring dinosaur cookies for her birthday next week and the teacher is enforcing the sugar moratorium they agreed on for the class New Year’s resolution.”
“Well, that’s hardly fair to do to a bunch of six-year-olds.”
Hunter hadn’t gotten into a prestigious law school by being a dullard, and the math of that simple statement smacked him in the face.
Delainey had a child who would be six years old next week. Unless she was having sex with someone else at the same time she was having sex with him...his child.
How could she not tell him?
He spun around to head back toward Shamus’s office.
As he yanked open the door to the stairway, Delainey entered the building and looked at him, horrified, as if she had been caught after committing some horrible crime.
As far as he was concerned, she had.
* * *
DELAINEY FLED UP the stairs to her office. She was well aware Hunter followed her and as she turned to close her office door, he was there, his hand holding the door open, his eyes intense. “We need to talk.”
She looked at him today, whereas yesterday she could barely glance at him, afraid she’d give away too much. Today she studied him head to toe. His hair was still thick and that dark honey-blond lusciousness that she had run her fingers through. His face, cleanly shaven and smooth. She had loved to run a line of kisses from his ear, across his cheek and down his neck.
And his eyes. Navy blue. True navy, like lustrous jewels. A woman could get lost in their depths.
The strong, long-fingered hand against the door did not have a wedding band. She liked that, too, but surely she had no reason to rejoice in such a thing.
She had reveled in the happily-ever-after for those three weeks. That was gone now, forever. At twenty-two she had known she was a woman. Now she knew she wasn’t a very world-wise one.
When Hunter left her behind, he had taken all notion of happily ever after with him. She had come to understand that had been her dream and not his.
She turned and walked to her desk. Today she had decided to be herself. Though her faults were varied and many, they did not lessen her. Whatever Hunter Morrison’s problems were, they did not belong to her. She had a child to think of and being the best mother possible was, had to be, her focus.
Hunter stayed in the doorway. He wore a soft-looking dark green V-necked sweater with the unbuttoned collar of a crisp white shirt standing up underneath. The jeans he wore looked as if they had just come off the rack at a fancy department store and had never been washed, certainly never worn before today. She smiled at his first attempt to try to fit into the office’s milieu. He couldn’t give up his fancy lawyer shoes, though.
Contrived and uneven, the ensemble looked good on him. Probably most things looked good on him.
She shook her head in disgust with herself, then nodded. “Of course we need to talk, but I can’t do it now or here. You can’t do it here. We have to work with these people and I’m already late to see a client.”
“I’ll come to your house after work.” He looked fierce when he spoke, and it seemed aimed at her.
“No. No, you won’t come to my house.” What had she done to deserve that?
He drew his dark blond eyebrows together, making the frown creases visible, a reminder they were no longer twenty-two with very little life experience. “There are still few places in Bailey’s Cove where whatever we say won’t be open to public speculation.”
She searched his face, his eyes, trying to learn what she could, maybe find out what had happened to him in the intervening years. It seemed the time had robbed him of his lighthearted jock look and substituted a stern, suspicious one for the carefree college graduate.
Maybe the high school Delainey and Hunter, the prom queen and king, the pals and study partners, deserved to know what had happened to each other. “Do you have a car?”
He dropped his hand from the door. “It’s coming in two days.”
“I’ll pick you up.”
“I’m staying with the Murphys. I can borrow Shamus’s car.”
“I’ll come there and get you. We can have dinner at the diner out at the highway intersection. It’ll be nice to have a chicken wing or two for the awkward silent moments.”
“Are you sure?”
She had expected one corner of his mouth to lift, but that it did not was just as well. If he was attractive when he scowled, she knew he was devastating when he grinned. She couldn’t let that happen, not up close and personal. Not yet. Not until she was sure she had control of her reaction.
Breaking eye contact, she retrieved files from the cabinet near her desk, and holding them against her chest as a shield, she tried to brush past him.
He grabbed her arm before she could escape and she looked up into his eyes. He studied her face for a long moment. Long enough to light an unbidden, unwanted fire inside her.
And just when the feelings building in her were about to explode, he let her go.
She stayed close, as if he still held her arm. “My client is down near the harbor. I’ll be back when I’m finished. If you need anything in the meantime, I’m sure Carol or Shirley can help you.”
He nodded and she had to force herself to walk calmly away when all she wanted was to flee as fast as her feet would carry her.
She was on her way to see a client, sort of a client, a client who wouldn’t be paying anytime soon, or ever.
Christina would be waiting for her. Delainey had promised to bring over samples of contracts she could use to base her wants-and-needs list on for the renovation of the old Victorian homes. She had no doubt her sister had the seed money to begin, and Delainey wanted to make sure the cash flow was protected from the unscrupulous by black-and-white documents spelling out each party’s responsibilities.
After slowly crossing the parking lot,
she climbed into her car and tossed the files on the seat next to her. When she had to drive near the building to get out of the staff lot, she could see Hunter standing in the window of her office looking bleak. He raised a hand to her in acknowledgment and she waved back.
Hunter, what happened to you? she thought.
* * *
“WHY DIDN’T YOU tell me?” Christina demanded once they were again sitting in front of the fire inside Cora’s cozy but shabby “front parlor,” as Christina had informed her when she asked what the room was called.
“Well, at first I couldn’t believe he was actually in Bailey’s Cove, and then I didn’t know what it meant. Today it seems that while I might have known the boy, I don’t know the man at all.” She chugged a few swallows of coffee and sighed.
“Did he want to fire you or something?”
“No, nothing like that—yet.” Delainey laughed. “Well, actually, I don’t know. I didn’t give him a chance to say much. For all I know, he had come to hand me a pink slip.”
“What exactly did he say?”
“He said we have to talk.”
“You got all that angst from ‘we have to talk’?”
“He’s angry at me and I don’t know why, but something besides me is bothering him. I have no idea what he’s doing here. I don’t know why Shamus called him or why he accepted. I’ve asked, but Shamus has been very vague and I didn’t feel it was right to press him.”
“Maybe Hunter wanted to come back home. He was born here, wasn’t he?”
“No. He was born in Chicago, and most of his family is from that area. His grandmother was from Maine. He lived here from the time he was in sixth grade until he finished high school. His parents moved back to Chicago and he followed them to go to law school, but he came back for the summers and lived in his grandmother’s house. His parents would come for a week or two when he was there.”
“So how long were you in love with him?”
This time Delainey snorted, drank more coffee and took another bite of the Pirate’s Roost sausage-and-egg breakfast-bake special of the day Christina had been keeping warm in a toaster oven. “I guess from the time he came in the door of the sixth-grade classroom until he drove away for good.”
