“I wish you were my mother-in-law.” Autumn grimaced. “Mine is a—”
Nancy held up a hand. “You don’t need to tell me.” Jerry’s mom was a well-known bad-mouther, frequently at Autumn’s expense and regularly at everyone else’s. “She wanders all around the farmer’s market bad-mouthing anyone who won’t come down on their prices just for her.”
“Well at least it’s not just me.” Autumn took a bite of chicken finger and covered her full mouth with one hand. “Still, she’s a pain in my ass.”
Beth waved her hands dismissively. “We’ve established you’re great, everyone loves you, and Carol and Autumn’s mother-in-law suck.” Autumn propped her chin on her hands, elbows on the table. “What I really want to know now is, how’s Paul?”
Nancy looked at her plate, hoping she could poke an answer out of her baked potato with her fork as she stabbed at the fluffy, buttery flesh. No luck.
“Fine I guess.”
Mina groaned. “I’ll kill him.”
Nancy tipped her head Mina’s way and gave her a skeptical look. “You can’t kill him.” She bit the head off a floret of perfectly cooked broccoli. “Not until after Thomas’ house is finished.”
“I don’t know…” Autumn looked thoughtful. “If she kills him before, we could just dump him in when they pour the foundation.” The red-head nodded. “Yeah. That’s how they got rid of Jimmy Hoffa.”
Nancy looked around the table of women and couldn’t help but smile. They were her friends. Come hell or high water, these women had her back. Right now they were discussing how to murder and dispose of a man who wronged her. That was real friendship.
“It is what it is.” Nancy set her napkin on the table beside her plate. “I guess I was just more interested in him than he was in me.”
All three women shook their heads.
“Why in the world would he just drop off the face of the Earth then?” Nancy pulled out her wallet as the waitress reappeared. “That makes no sense.”
“Men make no sense.” Mina fished through her giant purse.
“Ain’t that the truth?” Their waitress snorted. “Not eavesdropping.” She passed out bills. “Just commiserating.”
The young woman left to process their payments and Nancy popped her complimentary mint in her mouth. “So what do I do?”
“Nothing.” Beth smiled.
“Nothing?” Maybe being single all these years was a blessing in disguise.
Autumn grinned along with Beth. “You wait.”
Nancy threw her hands up. Now they weren’t making any sense either. “For what?”
Autumn giggled. “For him to figure it out.”
****
“You’re awfully quiet this morning.”
“Just trying to get done.” Paul tucked his pencil behind his ear and pushed up off his knees to head out the front door. Now that the weather finally caught up with the calendar, he could prop open the front door, letting the lingering scent of paint and plaster blow away with the breeze. If only it would take his shitty disposition with it.
You would think, after all these years of dreaming about it, having Nancy Richards in his hands would have put him in a much better mood. Maybe if it happened before when he could do something about it, it might have. But as of now, it was only pissing him off.
He stomped off the low porch and lined the three-foot piece of baseboard up along the bridge of his saw, then pulled the blade down through the wood and walked back to the house.
The job he was stuck doing today wasn’t helping his mood either. Laying trim was his least favorite activity. At least it meant they were on the home stretch. And not a second too soon. The guys were scheduled to start digging the new foundation of Thomas’ house next week and Paul wanted to be there to make sure things went the way he wanted.
Paul brushed past Mina and crouched down to line up the baseboard he’d just cut. He reached for the nail gun, but his hand only found the thick brown paper protecting the high-grade laminate they’d installed last week.
“Why are you acting like an ass?”
Mina stood a few feet away, the nailer in her hand, one eyebrow up.
“I’m not an ass.”
“I didn’t say you were an ass. I said you were acting like an ass.”
He held out his hand.
She took a breath, her nostrils flaring, before she relented and handed him the tool.
This was one of the many reasons he’d used as an excuse to keep his distance from Nancy. Mixing business and personal relations was a bad idea. In this case especially bad because the very things that made him love Mina were making her a serious pain in his ass right now.
He held the baseboard in place as he pushed the tip of the gun against the wood. “I’m not sure what you’re talking about.”
She made some sort of a snorting noise. He ignored her and focused all his attention on attaching the baseboard to the wall, running a long, loud line of air-propelled nails through the trim.
He held back a smile as the noises kept coming. This one was a scoff, maybe. At least he was aggravating her almost as much as she was aggravating him.
“What do you mean you have no idea what I’m talking about?”
He stood up. “I’m not sure what you’re talking about unless it’s something that’s none of your business.”
“None of my business?” Mina crossed her arms and stood her ground. Paul stood a head taller and a good hundred pounds more, but he knew without a doubt, if she ever wanted to, this woman could most certainly put a hurting on him. It had been one of his favorite things about her. When the woman’s feathers were ruffled, she’d take on anything. Now that he was on the receiving end, it was less endearing.
“Your trying to nose around in things you don’t understand.” He tried to walk past her to retrieve another length of baseboard, but she sidestepped and blocked his path.
“You’re right about that. I can’t understand why you are being like this.” She paused. “Especially to her.”
Damn. He’d been doing pretty well with avoiding this conversation with Mina, but from the looks of it, she had no intention of relenting this time and she knew exactly which buttons to push.
“I haven’t done anything to her.” That was a big part of the problem. He stared Mina down, clinging to the last little bit of hope he had that he could get her to drop this.
She scowled up at him, one hundred percent unintimidated by his attempt to back her off. “You can’t just disappear on her and act like that’s not going to be a problem.”
“I’ve been busy.”
Mina rolled her eyes. “Doing what? Your schedule is so full you can’t even give her a quick call?”
She pointed her finger and stabbed it in his direction. “You used to be fun and laid back and happy. Now you’re just… just…”
He crossed his arms and waited to hear just what she thought he’d become because he didn’t even know anymore. Life used to be quiet and boring and lonely, but at least it was easy. All the time he spent imagining a life with Nancy and never once did he consider how fucking hard it would turn out to be.
Mina raised her hands as she finally found the word she’d been searching for.
“Miserable.”
“That doesn’t make any sense.” He tried again to get around her. Once again, she sidestepped and blocked his path.
“I agree. So why is it the truth?”
“It’s not.” Why was she pushing this? He knew what he was and what he wasn’t.
She nodded her head. “Oh it definitely is, but for the life of me I can’t figure out why. You’ve loved her for forever and things are finally working out for you guys. You should be thrilled.” She paused and narrowed her amber eyes at him. “But you’re not, and you need to figure out why before you ruin this.”
She took a step toward him. “She’s been through so much Paul. She deserves a man who loves her like he’s never loved anything.”
Her word
s trapped the air in his lungs.
He couldn’t do what she was asking. What he knew Nancy deserved.
He couldn’t love her completely. With his heart, yes. That was something he’d done for years. But there was more to a relationship than that. You could say there wasn’t. That love was enough, but it wasn’t.
Mina was right. Nancy deserved to be loved completely. And as much as he wanted to believe he could be the man to give that to her, the truth was, he probably wasn’t.
Not because he didn’t want to, because he did. With every fiber of his being, he wanted to love Nancy in ways she never knew were possible. He wanted to make her his in every way. He wanted to show her how a real man treats the woman he calls his.
His body however, had other ideas.
“I’m not talking about this with you.” He pushed past Mina and out the door. He needed to get out of here before he lost his mind.
His shortcomings were all he thought about as it was. The last thing he needed were people pointing them out.
Paul slammed the door on his truck as the engine roared to life. He backed down the driveway faster than he should making his tires squeal as he swung onto the road and threw it into drive.
He was acting like a hot-headed kid and he knew it. If only he had the dick to match. He slammed his fist onto the dashboard in frustration. He wasted the best years of his life on women that didn’t matter like they should have. Like they deserved to.
Maybe this was his penance for being with them when he knew they could never be what he wanted. Maybe he deserved this.
He looked up as the small block building where he spent many lonely evenings drinking away his life came into view.
He shouldn’t be here, but right now, this place held the only thing that had any potential to make him forget that what he’d waited so many years to get his hands on was likely going to slip right through his fingers.
EIGHTEEN
“This is really good Nancy.” Carol shoved another bite of cake into her mouth.
Nancy didn’t tell her if she kept eating it like she was, her sister’s svelte figure would soon be a distant memory. Instead she just smiled.
The evening was going remarkably well all things considered. The house was full of most of the people she loved most.
And Carol.
Thomas and Mina brought the kids and Beth was there with the girls. All to ‘meet Carol’. Any suspicious looks from Beth or Mina appeared to go unnoticed, at least by Carol. Nancy caught and appreciated each one.
Beth hit the nail on the head at dinner. One of the main fears she had about Carol showing up was that she would sweep in and steal Liza and Kate right out from under her. For some reason, she worried biology would trump all. That because of Carol’s mere presence, they could no longer be hers. It was a stupid fear that seemed even dumber now that she saw Carol around the kids.
It was like they had the plague. And head lice. And maybe a booger on their finger.
If any one of them came near her, she would scoot away quickly, keeping a close eye on the offending child until there were at least ten feet between them.
Nancy considered telling Carol the cake she was enjoying so much had toddler spit in it, but decided that was a fun secret to keep to herself. It made each bite her sister savored a pleasure to watch.
“Maybe you can teach me to cook.” Carol licked the last of the frosting off her fork. “I’m still terrible at it.”
Nancy collected the girls’ abandoned plates from the table and deposited them in the sink. “It just takes practice.”
Carol stacked the remaining dishes on the table. “Well, maybe when I get a more permanent place with a kitchen I can start working on that.”
Nancy’s eyes widened and the food she’d managed to get down tightened into a solid ball in her stomach. “You’re staying?”
Carol picked up the stack of plates. “Well… yes.” She walked slowly to the sink. “I just thought, maybe it would be good to be,” she set the dishes on the counter, “with my family.”
She chewed her lip as she looked at Nancy. “I was hoping you would give me the chance to make up for all the awful things I’ve done, but if you can’t, I understand.”
Nancy wanted to say no. It was too late. She’d hurt too many people in too many ways and she needed to go back to wherever she came from. Maybe give her a nice shove as she walked away.
But if Carol left now, she would take the only chance Nancy might have at closure on more than a couple important issues. Like why she fucked her husband for starters. Followed closely by why she left, abandoning not just her son, but her whole family. Nancy would put money down the two were related.
Nancy switched on the faucet and started to fill the sink. The farmhouse was old enough there wasn’t a good spot to stick a dishwasher. She usually didn’t mind, but when she had company, it would really come in handy to just push a button.
“I don’t know what’s going to happen Carol.” She pulled a fresh dishrag from the cabinet and tossed it into the steaming, sudsy water. “There’s a lot of hurt there and I just don’t know if I can get past it.”
Nancy certainly didn’t have a great history when it came to getting past things. She was trying, but it was a hard thing to do. Forgiving other people’s mistakes would make it ridiculous to not forgive her own and that was a major hang-up and apparently not just for her.
A lump formed in her throat. She focused on wiping the cloth around the plate in her hand. Scrubbing away the bits of food clinging to the white porcelain. Her hands turned pink in the almost scalding water. She hoped the discomfort could steal her thoughts away from the man who managed to bring her equal amounts of happiness, pleasure, and unfortunately now pain.
“I think it’s clean.” Carol’s voice snapped her attention from the man she was trying so hard to avoid thinking about, yet still managed to be the only thing to easily occupy her mind.
“Sorry. I zoned out for a minute there.” She rinsed the dish under cool water in the other bowl of the porcelain double sink. Carol took it gently and began drying it off with a towel she’d grabbed from the counter.
“I noticed.” She placed the plate on the counter and held her hand out for the one Nancy was rinsing. “Want to talk about it?”
Nancy almost laughed. She did want to talk about it, but certainly not with a woman she didn’t trust any further than she could throw her. Unfortunately, there was really no point in talking about it with anyone.
The only person she should actually talk to about it wasn’t much of a talker. Really, at all. Any time the conversation got even a little deep he ran like he was on fire. As much as it was breaking her heart, that was not the kind of man she wanted.
Did he have valid reasons for his behavior? Probably, but she’d never know because he wouldn’t freaking talk to her about it.
She handed Carol the plate and went in for another. “No thanks.”
Thankfully, Carol easily moved into a mostly one-sided conversation about the things around town that had changed while she was gone. Occasionally Nancy offered a couple words to avoid being a complete bitch. Carol was just trying to fill the time while they finished washing the dishes. She should be grateful for the help and the conversation but Carol’s small talk was aggravating when they had so many big things to discuss.
She hurried through the pots and pans. Carol’s constant chattering was wearing on her. At least she was self-aware enough to realize it was her, not her sister who was the current problem.
Who the fuck did Paul think he was?
Did he think he could just slip in and out of her life whenever he wanted? How could he seem so interested in her one minute and the next, she didn’t hear from him for days.
The last time she saw him he’d given her the first orgasm she’d had that wasn’t at her own hands. She thought he was finally past whatever was going on in his head. Why else would he be so passionate with her? What was the purpose of doing that to her
and then just disappearing?
He wouldn’t even let her return the damn favor. What kind of man insists on pleasing you, denying himself, and then stops calling?
Nancy pulled the plug on the drain and wrung out the dishcloth. It felt good to strangle something, even if it was just an innocent hunk of cotton.
Paul’s behavior shouldn’t have surprised her. In the short amount of time they’d been what she would consider, exploring their relationship, he’d been more than a little skittish and it was making her consider a possibility that was more depressing than she wanted to admit.
Maybe the Paul that lived in her mind, and the real Paul were two very different men.
The damn lump was back, but this time she was alone. Carol put away the last of the dishes and left to awkwardly join the rest of the family in the front room.
Nancy could hear the kids giggling as Charlie and Maddie played with the younger girls. Normally it would put a smile on her face, but today she couldn’t muster up much more than not frowning.
“Please don’t tell me you’re going to start being a pain in the ass too.”
Nancy jumped, bracing her hand over her heart like a startled old lady.
Mina propped against the counter unfazed by the reaction. “I can only handle one at a time and just because Don’s building inspection shenanigans are no longer screwing with my life that doesn’t free up a spot for you.”
“Jesus, you scared me.” Nancy turned her back to the sink and leaned against it as she waited for the beating of her heart to slow.
“I was talking to you and thought you were ignoring me. Were you deep in thought?”
Nancy rubbed her temples. She was getting a headache. “I don’t even know.”
“How’s it going?” Mina wrapped her arms over her chest and leaned harder against the island counter, crossing one leg over the other.
“I don’t know that either.” Nancy rolled her head from side to side. “What about you? How do you think it’s going?”
Mina raised her eyebrows and whispered across the island. “The woman does not like kids I can tell you that much.” She took a quick glance toward the front room. “Other than that, I’m not getting much from her. She seems really closed off. I don’t think she’s said much of anything to anyone besides you.”
Regret (Never Waste a Second Chance Book 2) Page 16