by Mary Brady
She gestured for him to go on.
“I was devastated.”
With her elbows still on the table, she clasped her hands and dropped her forehead to rest on the steeple of her fingers. And this was the heart of what he wanted to know. She was going to have to tell him what had happened to her.
“I’m ready to hand the floor over to you for a while,” he said carefully as he pushed the loose lock of hair back off her face.
Looking up at him, her lips trembling, she dipped her chin once.
“I fell in love with you.” She spoke slowly, as if laying out each word for examination, her gray eyes dark as the storm clouds, her face telling him her remembered pain.
Hunter watched Delainey quietly. Did that mean she’d loved him all along until they had killed it that summer? Until he had killed it by walking away?
“The first day you showed up at school, you were wearing that dark blue sweater with that holey T-shirt underneath. You said it was your lucky one.”
He nodded in acknowledgment. “I was goofy back then. Unfortunately, that shirt didn’t make it out of the laundry one day.”
She chuckled low and throaty and he wanted to lean across the table and put his mouth on hers.
“I was at the top of our class.” She paused for an uncertain breath. “Because I had to be smart enough so you would always want to study with me. Does that make me the biggest nerd or what?”
He shook his head, wishing he had something to say to that. He’d made good grades because he’d studied with her. That she studied with him just to be with him had never occurred to a knuckleheaded kid.
When she spoke, a smile curled the corners of her mouth, lighting her lovely face. “I spent six years, no, nine and a half years waiting for you to recognize how I felt and whether you felt the same thing, but you never seemed to stand still long enough. Even then I guess you were anxious to leave Bailey’s Cove and return to the big city.”
He found he wanted to reassure her, to tell her everything would be all right, but he couldn’t. For almost two years he had thought his life would get back on a sane trajectory, but he had been wrong. “You were always my anchor,” he said instead.
“I was jealous of every girl you dated and when Susan Carter came into the locker room and said you and she had done the deed, well, I wanted to...” she stopped and gathered her long hair in a bunch behind her head and then let it drop down her back “...I don’t know, murder you both.”
He laughed out loud and then held his hands palms out to ward off her glare.
“I never did it with Susan Carter.”
She narrowed her eyes at him.
“There were others, but not her, and I certainly never knew you felt that way. You hid your feelings well.”
“When you did finally choose me after college, I thought I’d die of happiness.”
His gut twisted harder at the thought of how much she had put into their relationship while he’d just taken it for granted. Thought it would always be there.
“When you left me behind, it felt like the world would stop rotating. When two weeks went by and it didn’t and a hot guy on a motorcycle came into town from out west, I was ready to see if all men were love-’em-and-leave-’em.”
She leaned over and put her soft, beautiful hands on his. He knew the ring she wore on her finger had been her grandmother’s. He knew the little scar at the corner of her left eye had come from a sledding accident when they were sophomores in high school. He knew there was a birthmark on her left thigh too high to see unless she was wearing a bathing suit or...nothing at all. He knew so much about her, but he hadn’t known she’d loved him.
He was a fool and it was too late.
“I am absolutely the first to admit,” she continued, “I made many bad choices where that guy was involved, and he wasn’t the someone else. And I didn’t say I found someone else, I said I had someone else. When he left two days later, I didn’t know I’d need his phone number or address. All I knew was he was from Arizona and he rode a motorcycle. I kept a picture of him because at first I thought he might come back. Then when I found out I was pregnant, I thought someday his daughter might want to see what he looked like.”
She picked up her napkin and pressed it to her lips. He remembered how firm those lips were, how lively under his. How little value he had given to something he found himself trying to recapture with other women and failing again and again.
“Now I can’t stand the thought that someone has the power to come and demand partial custody. Hunter.” She stopped and looked at him with pleading for understanding in her eyes. “If someone took my daughter away, I’d die, so please don’t tell me the father has rights. I know that. We looked for him for almost two years. Jed Stanley, the private investigator the firm uses, has tried. We advertised in papers and on the internet with only crackpots responding.” Her words were not vindictive or even particularly judgmental. They were just matter-of-fact.
“Deelee, I won’t go chasing after some biker to tell him he has a kid.”
They ate for a while silently until she sat up and put her napkin down. “Well, it seems my story is much longer than yours.”
“Hey, I’m a guy.”
He leaned toward her, interested, questioning what he would have done if he had known she was pregnant. Would he have offered to marry her? He was certain he would have if the child were his. What would he have done if the child were his and she refused to let him into their lives?
“You are such a guy. That’s why I won’t ask you what you were thinking just now. Stuff is never really a good answer.”
He smiled. She could still make him smile even after all these years of thinking she had chucked their friendship so easily. “Please, go on.”
“When I was first pregnant I didn’t know what to do. I was in a state of shock and denial and that’s when I cut things off with you. It seemed somehow wrong to keep emailing you when I was going to have another man’s child.”
She paused for a breath. This was the Deelee he knew. She summed up the facts and she did what she thought had to be done. There was nothing he could add that would make her telling this any easier, so he kept his mouth shut.
“I knew I was young and strong and healthy. I did another dumb thing. I put off telling anyone and I put off seeing a doctor. I got lucky. My baby didn’t suffer for it. When I did see the doctor, she thought I might be four months pregnant. When she asked me when I thought I might have gotten pregnant, I calculated the time and knew it wasn’t yours. It had to be Micky’s baby.”
Hunter stood up and took the plates to the sink and she let him.
“There were many times I tried to convince myself the baby might be yours and not because you would have helped me or anything.” She must have seen the expression on his face, because she hurried on. “Of course you would have helped me if you knew I was having your baby. Heck, you would have offered to help even if it wasn’t yours, but I couldn’t have let you. You didn’t mess things up. It’s just if I was going to raise a daughter on my own, I would have loved for her to have been yours.”
She brought the glasses over to the sink and he washed and she dried the dishes. When they were finished, she stood with her hip against the counter as she folded the towel. He leaned on the sink with both hands. The knowledge she was still the wonderful woman he remembered had him closing his eyes and feeling regret. Regret that he had made his life an impossible place for her to be.
When he turned toward her, she put a hand flat on his chest and looked up into his face.
“Please know, if there had been any real chance Brianna was yours, I would have let you know about her right away. When I went into labor weeks early, I had those thoughts all over again, the prayers that she would turn out somehow to be yours. And then she was born. She was only six pound
s. She has had almost-black hair and eyes since she was born. And as soon as I saw her face, I knew she was perfect. She was exactly who she was supposed to be. She was Brianna Talbot. A little person who would be depending on me for twenty or so years and I was going to be there for her. I know other people do it, but law school seemed impossible while I was pregnant and unfair after Brianna was born.”
He pulled her against his chest and wrapped his arms around her. “You are still amazing.”
They stood like that for what seemed like only a few seconds but was probably a few minutes.
“Thank you, Hunter, for coming back to me. There is something more right about the world if you’re my friend again.”
She stepped away and flicked on the coffeepot. “I have to raise my daughter among this village of folks who have loved and supported us these past six years. And I have to protect her from...”
“From me.”
“From people who might come into her life, make her fall in love with them and then leave. She’s so sweet, so vulnerable. I could break my own heart a thousand times, but never hers.”
“No men in your life?”
She shrugged one shoulder again. “If I don’t think there is a chance for a long-term relationship, I don’t let her meet them.” She looked up at him. “Her meeting you at Miller’s was an accident.”
“Not as far as I’m concerned. Meeting Deelee’s little girl was a pleasure.”
“She’ll be back soon and I’m trusting you to be friendly but formal. I can’t have her falling in love with you and she would. She loves people easily and I adore her for that. I need to protect her above all things.”
He didn’t answer. She was right on so many levels.
“I’m sorry, Hunter. I can’t let you break her heart.”
As he had broken hers. He wished there were some way he could make this up to her. Maybe there was....
“Shamus told me you got accepted to law school. Congratulations.”
She didn’t smile as he’d thought she would.
“What’s the matter?”
“Straight and unvarnished?”
“Straight and unvarnished.”
She pinned him for several seconds with her smoky gray eyes and nodded once. “You took my job. Shamus was supposed to stay for a few more years. Harriet would take over and I’d step in on the bottom rung and someday I’d be able to buy into the practice.”
“I can see from the active cases, there isn’t much use for a third attorney at that office.”
“I have to live, eat, take care of my daughter and repay college loans. I won’t be in a position to open an office or to work in an office that can barely pay me.”
“I’m leaving.”
She stiffened.
And he hated himself for all the things he had ever done to hurt her.
“I promised Shamus a year. He said after that he might be able to step back in a bit if need be.”
“I know I’m being selfish, but if Shamus can’t step back in, he’ll have to fill the position with someone who might stay permanently. I need the job, so it should make me happy you don’t plan to keep it forever. I can’t ask Shamus to offer the job to someone just for a couple years. After chatting tonight, I’ll be sad to lose my friend again.”
He chuckled.
“Why are you laughing?”
“You are adorable when you can’t put the pieces in a straight line. You always were.”
“Adorable. Yes, that’s what I strive for in life. Adorable.”
“And sarcastic. That’s a new one for Deelee.”
“I have lots of new characteristics since I tried to ruin my life.” She pulled her hair back from her face and flipped it down her back.
“I don’t know. Not so much ruined as sailed off course for a few years.”
“You’re right. I can’t look at my daughter and think anything except ‘Thank you.’”
Her phone rang with Monique’s name in the caller ID.
“She’s asleep.” Monique spoke in a whisper, so Brianna must have been nearby. “Even the movie couldn’t keep her awake.”
“I’m sorry. I thought she might.”
“She can stay the night if you want.”
“I’m feeling kind of— Well, I’d like her here tonight. I’ll come over and get her.”
They rung off and she turned to him. “Brianna’s asleep. I’m going to go over and get her. I guess I didn’t have to worry about her bonding too much with you tonight.”
“I can help.”
Delainey faced him, hands on her hips.
“She’s asleep, Deelee. She won’t even know I’m there.”
“Really. I can do it myself. You can go. You need to get Connie’s meds to her.”
“Let me help.”
Fifteen minutes later they walked side by side in the snow. He carried Brianna, a mere feather’s weight draped over his shoulder. The small warm body so dependent on him without even knowing started him thinking. He might be able to be a dad someday—far into the future, long after Delainey was able to move on. He’d be one of those gray-haired dads walking down Michigan Avenue in Chicago pushing a baby stroller. People around him would be making up all sorts of things about him while the truth would be he had to outlive making a crazy woman disappear.
Even though he hadn’t harmed Callista White, he had to admit, at least to himself, he had been instrumental in her disappearance. It might have been the next Joe Schmoe who came along, but it hadn’t been. It had been him. For that he hoped he got to stop paying someday, because he would never put anyone else in harm’s way, especially not Delainey and her daughter.
The wind had died down, making the cozy world of Bailey’s Cove seem even smaller in the heavy snowfall. The sound of the ocean seemed more distant, dampened by the sheer volume of moisture in the air and on the ground. The tread of their boots fell silent in the accumulation. He walked carefully, conscious of his precious package with every footfall.
Wrapped in a blanket of snow, they would seem like a family to anyone who saw them, though no one did on the deserted street.
This was the family he would have had if he could have stayed in Bailey’s Cove. If he hadn’t left to help his parents, could he have lived here in this small town?
The question was pointless.
Delainey had made it clear that Brianna came first—and if need be, only—in her world. With his world mired in uncertainty, he would not bring a wacko into their lives.
When he met Callista White two and a half years ago, she was a delightful client. In great need of a good attorney, she’d worked to wrest her business back from an abusive husband so she could divorce him without losing everything. When his firm, led by him, had accomplished just that after eighteen arduous months of depositions, veiled threats answered with legal rejoinders, charges by the district attorney and unearthed precedents from the past, Callista got her divorce simply and quickly.
She’d invited Hunter and his staff to a celebration in her penthouse condo. When he got there, he found everyone else had come up with an excuse not to show up. Later he learned it was things like a flat tire, a babysitter who canceled, stomach flu. But he and Callista had had a great time. Floating high on the champagne and the red-hot energy of a big win, he had slept with her that night.
They were both shocked, but she had said she was glad they were together, that they belonged together. The thing was, they weren’t together. Before that, they hadn’t said a personal word to each other outside her case. Anything that might have seemed personal was, at least on his part, diplomacy.
That party had been the first real clue and her assuming they were together for life had been the second. He had ignored both as unrelated and of marginal importance. After they had seen each othe
r several times over the course of a few weeks, she began to act paranoid about his seeing other women. When he tried to break things off completely, she became covertly vindictive. Six months ago she disappeared, leaving behind clues that would implicate him in her disappearance.
Delainey held the door open and directed him down the hallway to Brianna’s bedroom. How different the two women were. When he stopped to slide his boots off, she whispered, “Don’t bother. It’s only clean water.”
In a room decorated with pink and dinosaurs, he helped get Brianna’s coat off and then left the two of them alone so Delainey could get her tucked into bed.
He hung Brianna’s coat, covered with melting snow, over the back of a kitchen chair and scrubbed his hand over his wet face to wipe away the melted flakes. The sleeping child had reinforced the need to keep out of Delainey’s life. If there was anything more innocent or more vulnerable than a trusting child, he could not think of it.
A few minutes later when Delainey came out, he had his coat unzipped against the heat of the house but still on. It was time to go. There was more to say, but there was only so much snow Shamus’s car would be able to navigate.
“Thank you, Hunter. Thank you for sharing with me.” She looked relieved, more relaxed than he had seen her since he arrived.
With the towel she had in her hand, she wiped more of the water from his face, his eyelashes, his throat. “Sorry we got you all wet.”
When she rubbed down the V of his sweater, he suddenly had no voice. He suddenly had no promises he had made to himself. He stared into her fathomless eyes and she stared back into his.
When she moved in closer, he lowered his head slowly, knowing he was crazy, until his lips touched hers.
Full and warm, she responded first with just her mouth and then the sigh of her breath. She moved her mouth under his and pressed against him.
With his hands on the sides of her head, he broke the kiss and held her gaze.
She nodded as if she knew he couldn’t give what she wanted.
* * *
