Searching for Sunshine

by Linda Seed

  Breanna had seen the house during the various phases of the renovation. She’d seen it as recently as a week before. But then, dozens of little details—a missing molding, a door with a round hole where the knob would be—had told her the place wasn’t ready for her yet, that it was still in its final stages of becoming.

  She’d told herself to be patient, to think about other things. And she had. She’d been so preoccupied with everything that had happened with Jake that she’d almost forgotten that her new home was waiting for her.

  But now, here it was, warm and gleaming, clean and made whole.

  “Oh, Jake.”

  She almost forgot. She almost threw herself into his arms with joy and gratitude. She could see that he’d almost forgotten, too. His eyes had been sparkling with pleasure, but then, suddenly, they hardened.

  She had taken a step toward him, but then, with the aborted hug, she retreated again.

  “Thank you. It’s beautiful,” she said.

  “It’s my job. I’ll have the final invoice over to you later today.”

  She shouldn’t have been stung by the tone of his voice—she knew that—but she was anyway.

  “When can we move in?” she said.

  “Whenever you want. It’s your house.” He dug a set of keys out of his jeans pocket and handed them to her. “I’ve just got a little cleanup to do, and I’m out of here.”

  He walked out of the room, his boots clomping on the hardwood floors. Sam hurried after him, his tail swishing.

  She was desperate to walk through the house taking in every nuance, caressing every surface. But she was just as desperate not to be in the same space as Jake any longer than necessary.

  If she stayed here with him, in this house where he was breathing the same air, one of two things would happen. Either she would have to endure the pain of his distance, or she would lose her last ounce of self-discipline and kiss him so long and hard that the sun would rise and set and age and eventually die without her ever letting him go.

  Her son was waiting for her out in the car, and they had a lot to talk about.

  She tucked the keys into her purse and went outside to deal with her boy.

  * * *

  “Michael, what were you thinking?”

  She’d waited until they’d gotten back to the ranch before she’d started in on him. Now she couldn’t put it off any longer, but she was trying to be reasonable and clear-headed. She tried to keep the mom-scold out of her voice.

  “I wanted to know what happened. Why you two broke up.” Michael was sitting on his bed, looking down at his sneakers.

  She stared at him. Had he really said that? How did he know what had happened between them? She’d tried so hard to keep the boys out of it, to keep them untouched should something go wrong between herself and Jake.

  Which it had.

  Had she let something slip? Had she been that obvious?

  “What do you mean?” She was stalling for time, and she hoped she wasn’t being transparent about that, too.

  “I mean, you were Jake’s girlfriend, but then something happened, and you were upset and wouldn’t let me go over there anymore. That’s what I mean, Mom. Obviously.”

  She ignored the snotty tone with which he’d delivered that last word.

  “I wasn’t his girlfriend.”

  “Mom, jeez. You don’t have to lie about it. I’m not a little kid.”

  Suddenly, a flare of anger shot through her. “Did he tell you that? Is that what Jake said? Because—”

  “Nobody had to tell me.” He rolled his eyes at her in the time-honored way of teens everywhere, since the first adolescent boy had crawled out of the cave to go mastodon hunting against his parents’ wishes. “I have eyes. I have ears. I notice things. God.”

  “But he talked to you about it.”

  “A little.” Michael shrugged.

  “What did he say?” she asked, exasperated. Sometimes, talking to Michael was like trying to push a rock up a mountain while wearing roller skates.

  Suddenly, the words that had been so hard to coax out of him began to come. “He said he loves you and wants to marry you and have kids and everything, but you don’t love him. Why not, Mom? Jake’s cool. He talks to me and shows me how to do stuff. And he doesn’t treat me like a kid, the way you do.”

  Breanna could have argued the last part, but there was so much to deal with here that defending her own treatment of Michael was low on the priority list.

  “He said I don’t love him?”

  “Well, you don’t, right?” Michael gave her a skeptical look. “You must not or you wouldn’t have broken up with him. And, you know, I guess that’s fine if that’s how you feel. But I don’t get why I can’t still go over there and work with Jake and hang out and stuff.”

  “It’s done,” she said. “The house. It’s finished. There’s nothing more to do.”

  So many thoughts were running through her head that she had to pick them out and address them one by one.

  “He said he wants to marry me?”

  “Well, not right now, obviously. But someday. And he said you didn’t want that. Even though it would be awesome.”

  Her head was spinning with all of this new information. Jake wanted to marry her? When had he decided that? She’d been telling herself that she was protecting her boys by slowing things down with Jake. Now Michael was telling her that he wanted them to be together. Had he been hoping for her to remarry all this time? Or had he only started having these thoughts since he’d met Jake?

  She raked her hands through her hair, trying to get her thoughts together. “Michael … you shouldn’t have gone over there when I told you not to.”

  “Mom, that’s not the point. That’s …”

  “It is the point. I told you not to go, and you did. Without even telling anyone where you’d gone.” Focusing on this—the thing he’d done wrong—put her on steadier ground, so she decided to stick with it.

  “Fine. I suppose you’re going to punish me.”

  Everything Jake had said about Michael came back to her—that he had shown courage going to Jake, that he’d just been trying to protect his mother, and that she would be doing her son a disservice if she didn’t recognize what it had cost him to do it.

  “No. I’m not.”

  “You’re not?” His eyebrows rose in surprise, and in that moment he looked so much like his father that Breanna almost burst into tears.

  “Not this time.”

  “Why not?”

  She ruffled his hair—something she used to do when he was small but that he’d objected to for some time now. Somehow, she couldn’t seem to help herself.

  “Just don’t do it again,” she told him. “Don’t run off without telling me where you’re going. Okay?”

  “Okay.” He didn’t mention the much-hated hair-ruffling, but he self-consciously straightened his hair again the moment she released him.

  “Michael? I love you.”

  “I love you, too.” Even at thirteen, even with his need to be adult and cool and independent, he could still say the words. She hoped he would never stop.

  She started to walk out of the room, and he stopped her.

  “Mom?”

  “Yeah?”

  “I’m sorry. For leaving like that, I mean.”

  “All right.” She gave him a reassuring smile. She headed back toward the door, then hesitated. “You really like Jake?”

  “Yeah, Mom. I really do.”

  It was something to think about.

  31

  Breanna approached Lucas later that day while he was out at the stables grooming one of the horses. Lucas had been riding since he was small—both of the boys had—but he’d just gotten to the age where Liam had insisted that he learn how to do a proper grooming. Lucas hadn’t hit his growth spurt yet, so he had to stand on a step stool to reach the mare’s back with his curry comb.

  Breanna hadn’t been out to the stables much lately. She used to ride
a lot when she was younger, but somehow, that had fallen away along with so much else over the past several years.

  The place smelled like hay, manure, and above that, the gentle ocean breeze drifting in from the west. A fat black fly buzzed in front of her, and Breanna swatted it away.

  “How’s it coming?” she asked Lucas companionably.

  “Pretty good,” he said, stretching to comb the far reaches of the big animal. “I think Daisy likes it.”

  “I’m sure she does.” The mare snuffed out a breath as if to confirm it.

  “Did you have a good ride?” Breanna asked.

  “Yeah. Uncle Liam took me out to the southeast pasture. He said I didn’t really need him, but you told him I couldn’t go alone.” He shot her a tentative look, and her heart broke a little. If even her sweet, good-natured, go-along-with-anything boy was questioning her parenting, then maybe she really should consider whether she was being overprotective.

  Thinking back, she tried to remember when she’d been eleven. Had she been required to stay with her parents or her uncle on a ride? No, she remembered, she hadn’t. She’d spent most of her childhood on a horse, exploring every recess of their property and beyond. When had she decided that the freedom she’d enjoyed as a kid wasn’t good enough for her own boys?

  When she’d lost Brian—that was when. The world had shown her that pain and grief and even death were as close as a knock on her front door, and that lesson had pervaded her every action since then. How much had that cost her? How much had it cost her sons?

  “Lucas?”

  “Hmm?” He was focusing on the task in front of him, and the tip of his tongue poked out the side of his mouth in his concentration. He’d always done that—whether he was four years old and coloring, or five and learning to ride, or eleven and mastering the art of grooming. The sight of it caused a fresh wave of love to swell into her chest.

  “What do you think of Jake?” she asked him.

  “He’s cool. He let me hammer stuff and sand the deck, and I really like his dog.”

  Lucas climbed down off of the step stool and exchanged his curry comb for a dandy brush. He went back onto the stool and started brushing out the mare’s coat.

  She caught her lower lip lightly between her teeth as she considered her next conversational gambit. “Did you know that he and I … that we weren’t just friends?”

  Lucas threw her a disdainful glance. “Of course, Mom. Duh.”

  Just another way in which she’d underestimated her boys. Had she really thought they were so unobservant?

  “Why didn’t you say anything?” she asked.

  Lucas shrugged. “I dunno. I guess I just figured there wasn’t anything to say about it. Jake’s nice and you need a boyfriend, so …”

  This last bit caused Breanna to let out an unladylike guffaw. “Who says I need a boyfriend?”

  “Gramma Sandra. And Aunt Gen. And Aria. Lots of people.”

  Breanna wanted to be angry, but she found herself laughing incredulously instead. “Pretty much everybody, then. And they talked to you about it?”

  “No, they talk to each other. I don’t think they even notice I’m listening.” He stepped down off of the stool and began working on the horse’s flank with the brush.

  Breanna realized that what Lucas said was true—people just talked, and when a kid was in the room doing something else, they tended to assume that he didn’t have ears, or that those ears somehow didn’t work. But they did work—very well, indeed.

  “And you agree with them? That I need a boyfriend?”

  Lucas shrugged again—it seemed that had been the preamble to every thought he’d had today. “I guess. Why not? Uncle Ryan got married, and Uncle Colin, and Uncle Liam’s going to. If everybody else has a girlfriend or a wife or somebody, why shouldn’t you have a boyfriend?”

  He’d laid out his argument with such simple logic, it was difficult to disagree with it.

  “Unless you don’t like Jake,” he said.

  That thought was jarring to her, and she was a little taken aback. “I like him. But … what about your dad? I wouldn’t want you to ever think I was trying to replace your father.” Tears shimmered in her eyes at the thought.

  Lucas, who surely didn’t remember his father, stopped his work and looked at her thoughtfully. “If you love somebody, and then they’re gone and you love somebody else, that seems like a thing you should be allowed to do. At least, it would be if I were making the rules.” He applied his brush to the horse’s shoulder, having finished making his case.

  * * *

  Jake e-mailed Breanna the final invoice for the renovations, and she paid him electronically. The money had just plunked into his bank account silently and stealthily, without any words having been exchanged between them.

  That had to mean something, he thought. If she’d wanted to see him, bringing a check would have been a good excuse. But she hadn’t done that. She’d asked for wiring instructions via e-mail, and she’d finished the whole transaction without ever having to see his face.

  The whole thing seemed so final.

  He’d worked for her, and now the job was done. He’d loved her, and now it seemed like that was done, too.

  Jake was uncertain of what he’d done wrong, but it was surely something. You didn’t tend to feel this much like shit unless you’d epically screwed something up somewhere.

  Yeah, there’d been the thing with Kye—not his proudest moment—but that wasn’t what had ended things with Breanna. The problem had been his insistence on them moving the relationship farther and faster than she’d wanted to go.

  That was what people did, wasn’t it? They moved forward. They found something good and then they went with it. They didn’t just stand in one place, motionless while the world spun beneath them.

  Except, he realized, standing in one place was exactly what Breanna had been doing for nine years, ever since her husband’s death. At first, it had been understandable—smart, even. When you took a blow like that, you had to take time to regroup. But now, it seemed to him that Breanna’s failure to move on had become a bad habit that she would need to break if she ever wanted real happiness.

  But, hell, maybe he was kidding himself. Maybe she wasn’t stuck—maybe she just didn’t want to move forward with him. He couldn’t fool himself that a guy like him was a good match for a woman like her—a woman whose net worth rivaled that of third world dictators or titans of industry. Who was he, anyway? He was a blue-collar guy with credit card debt, a meager bank account, and only a vague sense of how he might change either of those things.

  She could do better than him. He knew it—and it was likely she did, too.

  Jake pushed himself off his sofa, determined not to sit and feel sorry for himself. Sam, sensing the possibility of a walk, got up from where he’d been sitting on the rug and looked at Jake hopefully, his tail wagging.

  “Not right now, big guy,” Jake told him. It seemed like Sam understood him, because the dog’s eyes took on a look of disappointment and sadness that had Jake feeling pangs of dog-owner guilt. He was probably projecting.

  He gave Sam a new rawhide chew toy out of a package on the counter and rubbed the dog’s head. “I’ve gotta get some work done. Can’t sit on my ass forever. Dog park later, okay?”

  The dog was too absorbed with the toy to respond.

  They were heading into the high season for construction in Cambria. Out-of-towners had a tendency to visit the town during the spring, fall in love with it, and buy houses that needed renovation. This wasn't the time to lie on the couch drinking beer and counting his problems. He had a meeting with a potential client in a half hour, and he needed to be ready for it.

  He went upstairs to shower, trying to put Breanna Delaney out of his mind.

  Fat chance of that.

  * * *

  Breanna had a lot to think about other than Jake Travis.

  She had to move herself and her boys into the new house, and that would, than
kfully, take all of her time and mental energy in the coming days.

  She’d been packing for a while now in anticipation of the house being finished, and she was almost done. Foolishly, she’d thought it would be easy because they weren't taking any furniture with them from the ranch. She hadn’t wanted to leave her parents with the depressing sight of empty rooms, so she was only taking their personal items. Beds, dressers, side tables—all of that would stay.

  So why were there so many boxes, so many things?

  There was nothing like a move to make a person realize how many useless items they’d accumulated over the years. Books, clothes, photo albums, the kids’ artwork from when they were small, the Christmas and birthday and Mother’s Day presents received over a period of years, the random tchotchkes picked up at this shop or that one on a vacation or at a local boutique.

  There was no way Breanna could sort through everything right now, no way she could make all of the necessary decisions about what to donate or throw away and what to keep. Plus, she was moving into a much larger space, so it didn’t seem essential to pare down her belongings. Wanting to get into the new house sooner instead of later, she opted to pack everything and deal with issues of storage later.

  She’d given each of the boys a stack of cardboard boxes and had instructed them to pack everything, leaving nothing in their rooms except the furniture. Michael had complained, but after a certain amount of motherly wheedling, Breanna had finally succeeded in getting him on task. Lucas was excited about the move and had needed no prodding.

  They would be ready to pile everything into Liam’s truck for the move to Moonstone Beach soon. But first, Breanna needed to deal with the issue of furniture delivery.

  Breanna rarely took advantage of her wealth, except for indulging in the pleasure of donating to the charities of her choice extravagantly and at will. She had always tended to live so simply that spending money just wasn’t a priority.

  But now, she had to admit that it was nice to be able to furnish a new home and guest house with the things she wanted without having to worry about the damage it was going to do to her bank account.