“I am.” Her eyes brimmed with challenge. He guessed she wanted him to see what he was missing. He put a hand gently around her waist, prepared to withstand all she had to offer. “Anytime you’re ready,” he said, the notion that this might not be his brightest moment registering as her lips reached up for his.
* * *
SANDY DIDN’T UNDERSTAND why she was suddenly afraid—not of him, but of kissing him. She wanted the touch of his lips against hers so much—probably because she knew she couldn’t have it on a permanent basis. But she had the most unsettling feeling that having it now would make that loss even more difficult to bear.
His hand at the small of her back applied the slightest pressure. His head came down as she reached up so that their mouths almost touched, then he stopped, a sudden look of concern in his eyes.
She realized that he saw her confusion and wasn’t sure what to make of it since she’d asked for the kiss.
He allowed her a moment to withdraw.
She wrapped both arms around his neck instead.
She kissed him with all the passion she felt for him. Always hopeful, she pressed the kiss while he resisted, and was about to give up, when he responded with a passion that equaled her own and exposed all the tenderness she knew him to have. For a moment, she forgot where they were, even who she was. The kiss had so much promise of love and longing that she no longer felt like the woman every man in her life walked away from. She was a full partner in a special moment that opened the future and promised forever.
* * *
HUNTER FORGOT HIMSELF and gave her everything inside him to try to make the point that it wasn’t simple stinginess keeping them apart. He kissed her as though he were free of burdens, and in doing so, opened himself up to letting her feel how much he longed for her every day.
She kissed him back. That frightened look in her eyes when he took her in his arms had worried him enough to make him pause. But then she’d shaken it off, risen on her toes and looped her arms around him, waiting for the kiss.
He felt her silky hair under his hand, her soft, cool lips impressing themselves on his, one of her hands in his hair raising goose flesh on his scalp, the other flattened against his back, holding him to her as though she were afraid he’d get away.
There was some new fascination to having her wrapped around him. In the past, they’d always had her children with them, or their dates had involved shopping or errands. The moments together had seldom been just about them.
This time, he was just a man burdened with money issues he refused to share.
That honesty seemed to be making him over. His cautions were slipping away, and his arms were too full of her to catch them.
She finally freed his lips and, her arms still wrapped around him, held him with a desperation that made him want to reassure her. “You’re going to be all right,” he told her for the second time that day.
She nodded against him and expelled a little sigh. “Yeah,” she whispered.
Dropping her hands from him, she caught one of his arms and leaned her head against his shoulder. When she looked at him again, there was something different about her that had nothing to do with what had happened with her parents.
She seemed curiously whole, not the needy young woman who searched for love with such urgency. Weirdly, he felt as though he’d lost something.
Sure he had. His head. Or was it his heart?
She pointed across the street. “Can we get some curly fries for lunch and sit on the beach?” She pointed at the sky, at a frail sun peeking out. “I think the rain’s over.”
“Sure.”
He got a large order, loaded their take-out bag with ketchup packets and napkins and bought two cups of coffee.
“I have a blanket in the car,” he said. Hand in hand, they walked back to the parking lot, retrieved a ratty red blanket from the trunk, then continued down to the Promenade.
They walked for a quarter of a mile past the summer homes that dated back most of a century, then took a broken-down stone stairway to the sand. Hunter spread the blanket in front of the low stone wall. There were tourists all over the beach, but most of them were down at the water’s edge.
Sandy tore the paper bag down the middle, then opened several ketchup packets and squeezed their contents onto a corner of the bag.
“I love these,” she said with enthusiasm. They sat side by side on the blanket, leaning against the stone wall. “I don’t know what it is about the shape that makes them taste different from plain old French fries, but they do.”
“They probably don’t taste any different. You just relate to the curled, convoluted nature of the curly fry.”
She bumped him with her shoulder. “You mean I’m twisted?”
“I was trying to put it nicely.”
She ate quietly for a few minutes, then took a sip of her coffee and made a face.
“This is terrible,” she said. “But it’s so strong, it’ll wake you right up.”
He grinned at her. “The kiss already did that for me.”
She smiled into his eyes. “Yeah. We’d be good together if there wasn’t so much in the way.”
He sipped from his cup. It was terrible, but it did get the blood flowing—probably in an attempt to get away from the coffee. “Someday, if you’re still available...”
“Oh, I’ll be a mistress of industry by then.” She spoke airily, the intensity that was so her gone since the kiss. “Or, at least, the owner of a coffee cart chain. My mother says...” She stopped suddenly, apparently having forgotten, then remembering, that she was mad at her mother.
“She says what?” he prodded.
“That I’ll own ten carts in no time.” She twisted the bottom of her cup into the sand so the cup wouldn’t fall over, and put another curly fry in her mouth. “But I don’t want to talk about her. Her faith in me is misplaced, anyway. I couldn’t meet all the bills this month, and I’ve been racking my brain for a plan to plump up income.”
“The fridge set you back?”
“Yes.” She crossed her ankles on the blanket and brushed hair out of her face as the ocean air gusted around them. “Daycare went up, business maintenance is costly, having employees is expensive, though very necessary. I hope they’re doing okay today.”
“Don’t worry about that. Calli promised she’d get through the day and I believed her.”
“I’m sure she will. She and Terri don’t always get along, though. Different personalities. Working with someone you can’t relate to is hard.”
“People do it all the time. You’re running a business, not raising a family—at least, not in the coffee cart.”
“They’re good employees.” She was silent a moment, then said, “Addie loves her car.”
“I knew she would.”
“Your mom bought the new Planes movie for the girls.” She turned to him and said with mock seriousness, “Promise me you won’t ever buy Addie a plane.”
“I promise,” he replied in the same tone.
She edged her hand under his to pinch his fingers. “You should get married someday. You’d be a good father.”
He kept watching the horizon so she wouldn’t see in his eyes that he’d known her father was home. “Seems to be a tougher job than it appears.”
“Yeah. I guess the hardest part is staying when things go bad. Mine wasn’t able to.” She drew her hand away and ate curly fries until they were gone. She put a hand to her stomach and groaned.
“Time for an antacid?” he asked, leaning forward to peer into her face. “You look a little green.”
She ignored his question as she watched the gray clouds moving along, uncovering small patches of blue sky, then covering them up again. “My mother lied to me,” she said in an unimpassioned voice, “and my father hid from me. I
apologize for belaboring the point, but...ouch, you know...I can’t get over being angry. I mean, really angry.”
She did look green, but he figured he’d have to help her with her emotional trauma before she could deal with anything else. “I don’t think either of them meant to hurt you, Sandy. You have to get over being angry long enough to imagine their motives in keeping their secrets.”
“Well, whatever his motives are now, he just left us. And he stayed away. The motive behind that has to be selfishness.”
Maybe it was, but Harry Connolly didn’t appear to be the selfish type. Unless life had changed him since he’d left his wife and daughter. “You’ll have to ask him that, I guess. The best thing you can do about all this is talk it out. He seems to want to make things up to you now.”
She turned to him, that suspicion from earlier this morning in her eyes. “How do you know?”
He resorted to this morning’s easy shrug. “Why else would he be back? He had to know you and your mom would be furious with him, that he’d have to deal with a lot of angry accusations.”
“And my mother. No wonder she didn’t want me to come by with food when I thought she was sick. She wasn’t there. She was with him.”
“They probably hoped to talk things out, or see if they could work things out, before getting you involved.”
He had to stop offering opinions. She gave him that look again. It was a little stronger this time.
The shrug covered a multitude of half truths. “Well, doesn’t that sound logical? If she told you he was back, but then they couldn’t solve their problems, wouldn’t you have been disappointed? Possibly a little heartbroken?”
She mulled that over, gave him one more suspicious glance, then settled back against the wall. “I guess. I just don’t understand why you’re on their side.”
“Sandy, I’m on your side. And talking to them, figuring out what made your mother lie and your father hide, is the only thing that will resolve this for you. It might even explain the past.”
She folded her arms and closed her eyes. “I hate it when you become the logical accountant.”
“Sorry. I’ll be quiet.”
“Hunter?”
“Yeah?”
“I’m going to be sick.”
CHAPTER TWELVE
“I’M MORTIFIED!” Sandy said to Hunter as she paid for toothpaste and a toothbrush at a Seaside drugstore.
“Relax. I belonged to a fraternity in college. I’ve seen lots of people throw up. And you had the grace to do it in a bag-lined trash can.”
“It was as far as I could get.” She’d made a mad dash for the Promenade, intending to run for the restrooms, then realized they were too far away, and settled for a nearby trash can instead. Afterward, Hunter had wrapped an arm around her for support to get her to the drugstore on the main street.
She took the bag with the items she’d just bought. “Well, that killed whatever mystery there might have been in our relationship.”
“As a rule, you don’t have a lot of secrets or private thoughts.” He opened the door for her and patted her shoulder consolingly as she passed through. “Whatever’s on your mind is pretty much out there. So, don’t worry about it. Nothing lost.”
Sandy excused herself to use the public restrooms in the parking area.
Nothing lost because it didn’t really matter, she wondered, brushing her teeth? Or nothing lost because it did matter and he accepted her as she was?
She was too tired and felt too conflicted to give the question a lot of thought.
“Your mom was making dinner for us,” she said to Hunter as he led her to the car. “I’m not sure I can eat anything.”
“No doubt because of all those curly fries on top of that full order of Swedish pancakes. And the shock of this morning probably upset your whole system.” He checked his watch. “We’ve got a couple of hours until dinnertime. We’ll go to my place. You can relax on the sofa and enjoy some peace and quiet before meeting up with my mom and your girls. If you don’t feel like eating anything, you can just tell her that, and I’ll take you to Safeway to pick up your car, then make sure you get home.”
She’d felt a strange sort of clarity since that kiss this morning. He didn’t want to push her away any more than she wanted to be pushed. He cared. She’d stake everything she had on it. Their relationship wasn’t dead after all. That kiss had held serious affection, and he hadn’t hesitated to come to her aid. He’d done it in friendship, true, but didn’t he realize that friendship was an important part of love? Didn’t someone quotable say love was friendship that had caught fire? Certainly, something could be built on that. Did that mean she was learning patience? “You’re a good friend,” she said.
When they reached his apartment, he encouraged her to lie down on the sofa, covered her with a blanket, and that was all she knew until she awoke with him leaning over her. His eyes showed indulgence. “You slept like a rock. Feel better?”
The sweetness about him stole her breath and made her heart beat a little faster.
She sat up to assess how her stomach felt. Still delicate, but considerably better. “I’m fine,” she said with some surprise. “Are you okay? I got you moving kind of early this morning.”
“I’m good.” He glanced at his watch. “It’s almost six. You go freshen up and I’ll call Mom and tell her we’re on our way.”
Zoey and Addie were happy to see her, and Sandy held them a bit longer than necessary, delighted that something in her life was familiar and steady.
The girls were thrilled to see Hunter, and hung on him as he wandered around the kitchen, helping his mother get dinner on the table. Stella had prepared a chicken casserole with rice and vegetables, which would likely be easy on her stomach.
“I’m so grateful for your help this week,” Sandy said to Stella as she carried a basket of rolls to the table. “I couldn’t have managed without you.”
“I was happy to help. It’s lovely to have children around.”
“We saw Planes!” Addie said, bored with the adults’ conversation. “And we made thumb cookies!” Addie help up her thumb as though she were hitchhiking. “I made the holes.”
“Thumbprint cookies,” Zoey corrected knowledgeably. “Her thumb isn’t very big, so Stella had to make bigger holes.”
“We put strawberry jam in them!”
Hunter got up to investigate the cookie jar.
“They’re on a plate on the counter,” Stella said. “You want to dish up ice cream and bring the cookies? Use those green glass pedestal cups.”
“Right. You girls want to help me?”
The girls ran to do his bidding.
“So, are you doing okay?” Stella asked, pushing her plate aside and leaning toward Sandy. “Hunter called me once today just to report in and he said you’d gotten sick.”
Sandy shrugged off the episode. “I ate too much. Swedish pancakes and curly fries. Not a great combination.”
“Yes. I eat when I’m upset, too. But usually pretzels and chili.”
“Together?”
“For sure. They’re delicious. Better than crackers or corn chips. Sometimes when life beats you up and takes away all your choices, it’s fun to at least be able to decide what you want to eat.”
A quiet moment followed, then Stella said in a rush, “Your mom’s upset at the way things happened.”
Sandy knew her mother and Stella were in touch all the time, but Sandy didn’t want to talk about this with Stella—or with anyone. She nodded politely. “I imagine she is.”
“She thought she was doing the right thing.”
How could lying to her own daughter be the right thing? But Sandy kept that question to herself.
Zoey brought her a pretty cut-glass cup of vanilla ice cream with one of the cook
ies they’d made tucked into the side.
“Thank you, Zo.”
“You’re welcome.” Zoey skipped back to the kitchen.
“And your father...well, obviously I don’t know what happened, but Hunter thought he seemed like a good man. And he wants to do so much for Ast—”
Hunter thought he seemed like a good man. Something in those words wasn’t right, but it took Sandy a few seconds to realize what it was. Then it hit her like a sledgehammer: Hunter had met her father?
Sandy felt all the strength the day had given her evaporate.
Stella stopped talking as she looked into Sandy’s face. Sandy heard her own gasp and turned toward Hunter, who was still in the kitchen. She saw him looking at the table, before he closed his eyes in grim acceptance of his mother’s slip.
“Hunter,” Sandy said to Stella, forcing her voice to remain calm, “has met my father?”
“Well...your father...went to his...office.” Stella appeared to realize she’d said something she shouldn’t have.
Hunter walked out of the kitchen, his expression defensive. “Sandy, don’t get all upset.” He held up both hands in a calming gesture. Zoey and Addie stood off to the side, sensing trouble.
Sandy stood, demanding quietly, “How do you know my father?”
“He came to the office to do business,” he replied. “He’s our mystery money man.”
“What?”
“Yeah. It’s a long story, one I’m sure he’ll want to share with you.”
She folded her arms, as though that would help her hold herself together. “You’d think so, wouldn’t you? But, no. So, you knew my father was in Astoria and you didn’t tell me?”
“I didn’t know he was your father. His name was Connolly, your mother’s name is Conway. She said she went back to her maiden name after he left. There was no reason for me to know. And he wanted his charity kept anonymous.”
* * *
HUNTER THOUGHT THAT explanation almost put him in the clear. Sandy was measuring his honesty against what she knew. Then his mother added, intending to help, “Hunter didn’t know until I sent him to your mother’s to...” She stopped abruptly, realizing again when they both stared at her that she shouldn’t have spoken. She gave Hunter a regretful look then dropped her face in her hands.
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