“He told me,” she said, trying to keep Angie worry free and keep herself honest at the same time. “He was telling me about his reasons for seeking me out in the first place. Like I told you, his partner had been killed...”
“That didn’t mean he’d never been married.”
No, it didn’t. And she sure as hell wasn’t going to tell her sister about the man’s biggest desire being a wife and family, one wife for the rest of his life.
For a long time she’d believed her mom, that their father would be coming home. When they’d been little enough to play house they used to pretend that, every single time, their dad was home, and mention of him wouldn’t make their mother cry. It wasn’t until her mother had started dating Duane that Amelia had realized that her daddy wasn’t coming back to them. She’d been in third grade. That had been a tough year.
“He and Tricia were together from the time he graduated,” she said now. “And before that he’d shared an apartment with another medical student, a guy from here,” she added. “Here being Marie Cove. And I know this because his roommate’s mother works at the Parent Portal and that’s how he ended up getting involved with artificial insemination to begin with. A choice he now regrets. As I told you.”
She was overcompensating. She heard it happening.
“What?” she asked, noticing Angie’s frown. She had nothing to feel guilty for. Other than decisions of the past. And the fact that she hadn’t told her sister she was seeing Craig the night before—and that one was arguable.
“I’m confused. You saw him, at his request, so that he could learn enough about you to put his mind at ease about the well-being of the baby...”
“Right.”
“They why do you know so much about him?”
Because he’d been easy to talk to. Because they’d talked for hours. Because she’d made him dinner. Because she’d wanted to know.
He’d listened, really listened, without judgment...and had offered comment that rang true to her.
Because what she’d said, felt, experienced in her life, seemed to matter. It hadn’t just been all about what he needed.
All of which meant nothing other than that they were two human beings with something in common, being kind to each other.
But Angie wasn’t going to believe that.
“You’re attracted to him.” Angie’s tone had lowered. And then she stood. “You’re trying to hide it from me.”
Amelia stood, too. “Angie, please...”
“Answer me this, then...”
Nodding, Amelia waited, eager for the opportunity to show her sister that she was on top of things.
“Are you seeing him again?”
A lie was on the tip of her tongue. She hoped to God she hadn’t been about to utter it. Either way she never got the chance.
“You are!” Angie said, her voice raised enough that the pair of women seated closest to their table glanced over at them. “You’re seeing him again.”
She didn’t know what to say. Not standing there in a coffee shop.
“You’re her!” Angie said, pushing her way past a stool in her path. “You’re just like Mom!”
More people heard her than just the two women next to them. Other than a peripheral vision realization, Amelia didn’t bother checking to see who, or how many. Her eyes were focused on her sister’s back as Angie walked out on her. She was pregnant, attempting to build a family, and it seemed to be fracturing in front of her very eyes instead.
Chapter Ten
“Angie!” Chasing after her sister on the beach, Amelia called out to her a second time. Angie didn’t stop. Didn’t even slow down. Until, half a mile down from where they’d parked their cars, Angie suddenly dropped to the sand in her nice clothes, sitting with her legs up, her arms wrapped around them, staring out to the ocean.
Other people milled around.
Angie’s cheeks were wet. Two small streams still trickled down them.
“Angie... I swear to you...”
The woman shook her head of long, fire-red hair, strands sticking to the tears on her face.
“I’m so sorry, Mel.” She turned as Amelia dropped down beside her, the sand cold and hard against the butt of the leggings she had on, in preparation for bike riding that she might or might not be doing that afternoon.
If she couldn’t make this right with Angie, she wasn’t going.
“What are you sorry for?” she asked, genuinely confused.
“For what I said back there. About you being like Mom.”
The words had stung, particularly coming from her sister, but... “They’re true,” she said with a shrug.
“Yeah, in some ways,” Angie said, turning to look at her, her expression almost fierce. “But I said it like Duane used to, like it’s a bad thing, and it’s not, Mel. You’ve got her best qualities. Her compassion. Her loyalty. Her determination to love fiercely.”
Love stupidly. Unhealthily, she silently corrected.
“I just... I can’t believe I just...it’s like I heard Duane’s words in my brain, mixed in with panic and just spewed them.” Angie shook her head. “I can’t believe I did that.” She turned to Amelia again. “I’m just so sorry. That I would...me... I’m the last...”
“It’s okay.” Love flowed through Amelia as she put an arm around her sister. “He said a helluva lot worse things to me. And coming from you, no matter the tone, they don’t mean what they did coming from him.”
Angie nodded. Took her hand, and turned to face her. “But what if I meant them?” she almost whispered. They were far enough up from the water that the surf was like white noise in the distance. And in January, there wasn’t as much marine life around as there would be in a few months. Amelia thought about sand crabs for a moment. And then tides. She took a deep breath and reminded herself that she would always be okay. No matter what.
“I didn’t mean to spew them,” Angie finally said, her tone soft. As sweet as ever. Sorry. “I didn’t even mean to say them. But...”
“You aren’t wrong,” Amelia couldn’t bear to leave her sister hanging there, feeling awful for speaking the truth. “I am like her. Which is why I’ve made the life decisions I’ve made.”
Angie knew this. They’d talked about it.
But knowing and believing were two very different things.
“I’m not kidding around here, Ang. Or keeping a door open. There’s not even a crack in a window,” she added, panicking for a moment when she thought of the rush of attraction she’d felt for Craig Harmon. Several times the night before. All the guy had to do was say something that reached inside her and she’d melted.
But she’d never left her seat. Never even thought about doing so.
Because she couldn’t.
“I have to be accountable to what I know about myself. Just like Duane has to keep himself out of the bars with his friends.”
“He went to one yesterday for lunch,” Angie said. “Which is why I stayed in Santa Barbara so long. I had to make certain he came home sober.”
Sitting cross-legged now, her knees touching Angie’s as they sat like twins in the sand, facing each other, Amelia asked, “And?”
Angie’s nod sent relief flooding through her. For their mother’s sake. “He was dry as could be. It was kind of awkward, though,” she added. “He knew why I’d stayed, and instead of just letting it go, he looked straight at me and thanked me for loving my mother that much. And then told me that he wasn’t even tempted to take a sip of alcohol, and hadn’t been since...that day. He said...it...haunts him and any time he envisions himself holding even a bottle of beer, he gets a sick feeling inside.”
Mouth hanging open, Amelia stared at her. “He said that?”
“I know, weird, huh?”
Duane had written a letter of apology to Angeline. And to Amelia, too, shortly after
that horrible day. He’d made a brief mention of being sorry for anything he might have said drunk over the years that could have been hurtful. If he’d been able to remember any of those incidents, he hadn’t said so. The apology had rung hollow to Amelia. His words rang clearly in her mind—and he should know them. Own them. Anything less wasn’t enough.
But she let it be. And he hadn’t said an unkind word to either her or Angie since he quit drinking.
He’d been a jerk drunk, but sober, he’d provided for them, even when they’d been growing up. He’d helped them with homework. Attended some school functions. He hadn’t always understood them. Had often not agreed with them. But he’d tried a lot of the time.
Angie glanced down at the sand and then back up at Amelia. “Why are you seeing him again?”
They weren’t talking about Duane anymore.
“You remember how it felt when we were little and we found out ‘the father’ really wasn’t coming back, like Mom had always said?”
Angie nodded. “And the nights we’d sit up and talk about what he was like. Wondering where he was... And if he had red hair like mine,” Angie said, a note of bitterness in her tone. They knew now that he did because Angie had asked, but he hadn’t cared a bit to know that Angie had his hair.
“But more, think of how horrible it felt those times we got ourselves scared that he wasn’t coming back because of us. That he’d abandoned us, not Mom. Do you remember?”
The question was completely rhetorical. Angie nodded, anyway. “But this is different,” she said. “The baby will know that a father didn’t leave him or her.”
“I know, but I also know that I always wondered, since I am like Mom—I wondered what ‘the father’ was like. To know if I had some of his good qualities that were equally compelling...”
“We’re all a combination of the genes that created us,” she said, hoping so strongly that her sister could understand. “If we can give this baby a fuller sense of self...”
Her sister’s hazel gaze pinned hers. She put her heart into that shared silent communication. Her heart and a promise, too. “He wants to get married and have his own family, Angie. He doesn’t want ours. But he’s a man who spends his life trying to save lives. A man who’s watching the boy he’d raised fall into a bad way. He’s only asking to look out for my baby’s health and happiness. The very same things we want for it. He doesn’t want to be part of our lives. To spend time with the baby or attend functions. He isn’t asking to be considered at any decision times. He only wants to be present enough to ease the way if he can while he lives his own life, with his own family.”
Her sister didn’t look away, and Amelia took a deep breath. “He wants to meet you, Ang. He knows that you’re the baby’s legal guardian if anything were to happen to me, and he just wants to reassure you that he’s not going to get in our way.”
“You told him about me?”
“Of course I did. You’re a large part of the plan here, especially when it comes to security for this little one.”
Concern shone from every nuance of Angie’s presence.
“When are you going to see him again?”
“This afternoon.” Only to exercise. Her sister wasn’t going to believe that, though.
“This afternoon? As in Saturday night and Sunday afternoon? Two dates in the same weekend?” She looked away, stopped talking as she heard her voice rise. When she turned back, her tone was still shaky, but laced with kindness. “You’re scaring me.”
“You’re scaring yourself,” Amelia had to point out, able to remain calm because she knew the truth. “You’re imagining what you fear coming true, rather than hearing truth in what I’m telling you.”
“But what if you’re lying to yourself, Mel?”
Angie knew how to hit at her biggest fear, of course. And seemed to have a penchant for doing so—something she’d like to mention, but didn’t.
“I’m not.”
Angie nodded again, but Amelia knew her sister wasn’t convinced.
Not yet.
But she would be.
Time would tell.
* * *
The bike he had for her was blue, Amelia noted as she got out of her car and walked toward him. They’d met at a fruit market not far from the neighborhood where they’d be riding, Craig pulling both machines down one at a time from a rack on the top of his SUV. He slung them around as though they were grocery bags, setting his sleek black men’s ten-speed up on its kickstand and then settling hers beside it.
The bike had a compact crankset, which meant twenty gears, he’d told her the night before. While she’d loved to ride when she was in high school, that was mostly to get out of the house and clear her head, and he’d assured her that she’d do just fine with Tricia’s ten-speed. It was all a foreign language to her, but she wanted to give it—and being around him—a try.
Regular exercise would not only make her delivery easier, but it would lessen her recovery time, as well, which was why she’d already started a low-impact regime at a local gym. With a business to run, she couldn’t afford to take weeks and weeks away from the office recovering from childbirth.
The gym work was boring her so much she dreaded going. Which was why she’d eventually accepted Craig’s offer of a bike to use. Which was exactly what she’d told him when she’d finally given him her answer.
“Here’s a water for you,” he said as she approached, offering her a plastic bottle that was sweating from the cold liquid inside.
“I’m good,” she told him, avoiding looking directly at him. The sight of the man in riding gear—long tight black pants—was...completely unexpected. “I’ve got one here.” She forced the words, turning to show him the bottle resting against her lower back, held there by the belt strapped around her waist. He couldn’t see the belt from the front because of the T-shirt she was wearing on top of her leggings. And when she was turned around she couldn’t see him.
Or that...bulge.
Her heart thumped and she wet her lips.
The water-bottle belt was new. As were the black-and-white-and-silver tennis shoes she’d picked up after bagels with her sister.
Amelia knew she didn’t do anything in half measures.
A trait she got from “the father”? Assuming he had at least one good one?
Get a woman pregnant, not once but twice, and then not just leave her, but do it without warning, without any means of support forever.
Shaking her head, she listened as Craig told her about the bike’s gears. A little different from the ten-speed she remembered, but enough the same that she knew what she was doing.
“Let me know if I go too fast,” he told her as they mounted their bikes, and she wanted to nod vigorously. To just put it out there and tell him, Yes. Yes to having him in her life, looking like that—it was too fast and too much. Way too much. “We want aerobic exercise,” he said, mentioning heart rate information that she already knew.
Clearly the man wasn’t at all affected by her thighs showing at the bottom of the long-sleeved and long-bodied T-shirt she’d worn to cover up ass...ets.
“You want to stay in good physical shape, but now is not the time to push yourself.”
Yeah, she knew, but nodded, anyway. And again when he asked if she’d eaten breakfast and lunch.
Yep, she’d eaten. With Angie. Who would be having apoplexy if she could see her right now, reacting to that bulge in those biker pants as though she’d never seen a man’s penis area clearly delineated before.
He handed her a helmet. Put his on. And asked if she’d taken her vitamins, and she nodded again, too het up to get defensive about his invasiveness.
She’d have stopped him if he’d pulled out a stethoscope or tried to check her vitals. She wasn’t his patient, but as they set off, helmets on heads, it kind of felt like he was just another medical pers
on on the team who was helping her bring a healthy baby into the world. The trainer at the Parent Portal, for instance, was one. She’d met with the woman once. Took down all the necessary information and had pretty much followed her suggestions, too. She’d just been bored to death at the gym.
So yeah, the bike riding, Craig and his questions...it was all just part of the medical process.
Did men wear cups when they rode bikes? The question, brought on by that brief glimpse of bulge she couldn’t get out of her head, made her miss the pedal as they started out. Had to start a second time, her hands a little shaky on the low handlebar grips.
Concentrating on staying upright was a godsend. Let her catch her breath. And get her sanity back.
She stayed far enough behind him that there was no chance for conversation. Partially on purpose. Partially because she was regaining her bike riding confidence and her decorum.
The first time she glanced ahead, she almost lost all confidence, and her balance, as well. The sight of his backside in those pants, as Craig sat half-bent over to steer his bike, seemed to have some invisible cord attached to the seat she was on, sending electric shock waves to her crotch.
Jeezy Pete. It wasn’t like she hadn’t had sex before. A lot. As recently as the previous summer when she’d had a fun fling with a recently divorced lawyer friend of Tanya’s. She’d enjoyed the sex. And him.
There’d been no electricity.
She couldn’t actually remember a time when there had been, but those things came and went. One didn’t always commit them to memory.
Half a block from their cars, they entered an elite neighborhood. Craig swiped a card at a locked gate to enter.
He lived there? He’d never mentioned that he was taking her to ride in his own neighborhood. Not that it mattered, really.
Just seemed...a little too personal.
“Why not just have me meet you at your place so you didn’t have to pack up the bikes?” she asked when they stopped together.
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