by Robin Wells
Zack had figured that being the opposite of his father meant being in Gracie’s life, trying to form some sort of relationship with her and letting her know he gave a damn. He’d also figured that bringing Gracie and Katie together might, in some small measure, make things up to Katie. Hell. Was he succeeding at any of that?
Damn it all. He was accustomed to being sure of himself, to making decisions, taking action and not looking back. Ever since he’d set eyes on Katie, he’d been second-guessing just about every move he’d ever made.
He believed in playing by the rules, but he didn’t know what the rules were in this situation. He was in uncharted territory. He knew how to be a good friend, a good sex partner, a good card player, a good business associate, a good drinking buddy. He had no clue how to be a good father, or a good… What? What the hell was he to Katie? An ex-lover? An ex-lovee? Even with an “ex” in front of them, the words made him sweat.
“I think it’s time for you to go,” Katie said.
It was his turn to have Gracie for the night, but under the circumstances, he wasn’t going to force the issue. “Yeah. Talk to you tomorrow.” He headed to the foyer and out the front door, locking it behind him. The sun was setting, but it was still so hot and humid that the air seemed to cling to his skin like plastic wrap.
He’d been so sure he knew what was right—so sure that finding the baby’s father was the moral high ground. Now he wasn’t so certain. The odds of being right were somewhere around sixty-forty, or even fifty-five–forty-five—too close to call, really. If he knew more about what kind of guy he was dealing with, he could make a better decision. He wanted to do right by Gracie and Katie and the baby, but damn it, he didn’t know what the hell that was.
• • •
Gracie lay across the cream-colored duvet cover, iPod in her ears, looking at the ultrasound photo of the baby on her laptop, when the door opened thirty minutes later.
“Gracie?” Katie stood in the doorway, her face lined with worry.
Gracie yanked the buds from her ears. “Go away.”
Katie stepped back into the hallway, but she didn’t close the door. “Do you want something to eat?”
“No.” She was hungry—starving, in fact—but she refused to do anything that Katie or Zack wanted. A hard wad of anger balled in her chest.
“You need to feed that baby.”
Crap. Katie was right, but there was no way Gracie was going to admit it. She placed her hand on her stomach and sent a mind message to her baby. I’ll eat something later, after Katie goes to bed, she silently promised.
“Are you feeling okay?” Katie took a step forward, looking like she was going to feel her forehead or do some other kind of mom thing.
“I’m fine. Just leave me alone.”
Katie eyed her in silence, her eyes wounded. Oh, God. It was the same look her mother used to get whenever Gracie had treated her this way. Her throat tightened.
Katie moved to the door. “Well, there will be leftovers in the fridge if you change your mind. And I’m here if you need me.”
“Don’t hold your breath.” Hot tears burned at her eyes as the door closed. She didn’t want to need anyone, damn it. How dare they pry into her personal life!
She clicked on her phone. She had a text from Megan—no doubt in response to the photo she’d sent earlier.
Megan: OMG—Your baby pix are so cute!!!! Hard to believe that’s growing inside U.
Gracie’s fingers flew over the keys.
Gracie: No kidding.
Megan: Do U feel it moving?
Gracie: Yeah. I felt it while I saw it on the ultrasound.
Megan: When’s it due?
Gracie: November 21st.
Megan: Wow! That’s the day Thanksgiving break starts. Did I tell U my family’s going skiing this year?
The thought of Thanksgiving made Gracie’s chest hot and tight. Oh, Jesus—how was she going to make it through the holidays? Last year, she’d been xanaxed and numb. And the year before… She squeezed her eyes shut against the memory. Oh, God—her last year with her parents, she’d been such a brat. She’d pitched a huge scene because she hadn’t gotten the Nintendo she’d wanted. She couldn’t believe she’d been such a bitch.
Megan: I’m looking at ski clothes online. Gotta look hot on the slopes!
Jeez, Megan’s life wasn’t just happening in another town; it was happening in a whole other galaxy. Here she was, getting fatter by the day, and Megan was looking at ski clothes. Gracie drew a deep breath and typed.
Gracie: For sure.
Megan: So what R U doing now?
Gracie: Nothing. U?
Megan: Getting dressed 2 go 2 the mall with Christa and Sarah.
Gracie: Wish I could go.
Megan: Me, 2. How are things with your BM and BD?
Gracie: Awful. Zack’s prying into my life. He called my old teachers.
Megan: He called my mom, 2.
Gracie stared at her phone for a moment, then texted furiously.
Gracie: Why didn’t U tell me?
Megan: Mom said not 2. Plus I didn’t wnt 2 make U mad @ your BD.
Gracie: U shld have told me!
Megan: Sorry.
Gracie: What did he ask?
Megan: Whoz the Dad. He wanted 2 know if it was Justin.
Gracie: As if.
Megan: Yeah. Mom told him not likely. When they hung up, Mom pumped me for like ten minutes.
Gracie: What did U say?
Megan: That I don’t know. U wouldn’t tell me because I’m a lousy liar.
Gracie: Which is the truth!
Megan: Yeah. You’re a brainiac 2 keep me in the dark.
Gracie: Yeah. I’m a real genius. Ha ha.
The only problem, Gracie thought, placing her hand once more on her stomach, is that I’m in the dark as well.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
“Hey.”
Annette looked up over her reading glasses to see a black-and-blue-haired girl in her doorway. “Gracie!” Taking off her glasses, Annette put down the book she was reading and smiled. “Come in, come in. Katie told me you got a job here.”
Gracie stepped inside. “Yeah. I’m the recreation assistant. We’re going to be doing a picture-frame craft at two this afternoon, if you want to come.”
“Thanks, sweetheart, but I have rehab then.”
“Oh.” Gracie looked at the book on her bed. “What are you reading?”
“The Awakening, by Kate Chopin. Dave brought it to me. He brought me a stack of stuff.” She indicated a pile of books on the built-in chest by the bathroom.
Gracie looked through them. “Oh! The new Stephenie Meyer! I love her stuff.”
“Feel free to borrow it.”
“Okay. Thanks.” She tucked the book under her arm and turned back to Annette. “How’s your leg?”
“Getting better. Want to see?”
“Yeah.”
Annette swung her leg out from under the covers and displayed the long scar.
Gracie peered at it intently. “Wow. That looks pretty good.”
“Yeah. They took the staples out earlier in the week.”
“Staples! Awesome. So if I become a surgeon, I won’t have to learn how to sew.”
Annette smiled. “I think you’d still need to know how. They use dissolving stitches for sewing up things on the inside.”
“Oh, yeah. I guess that’s right.” Gracie looked at the book facedown on top of her bed. “So it must be cool, owning a bookstore.”
“The store’s not mine. It’s Dave’s. He opened it after he sold his insurance agency.”
“But he’s your husband, right?”
“Ex-husband. We’re divorced.”
The girl’s eyebrows rose. “Really? You don’t act like a divorced couple.”
She supposed they didn’t, Annette thought with surprise. Not lately, anyway. Dave came to see her every day—lately, twice a day.
“When did you two split up?”
“Four years ago.”
Gracie sat in the chair by the bed. “How long were you married?”
“Thirty-two years.”
“Wow.” Gracie tipped the chair back into its recline position. “What happened? Another woman?”
Annette averted her gaze. “That’s a rather personal question.”
“So he did screw around.” The girl eyed her somberly. “Wow. That sucks.”
It did indeed.
“That happened to the mom of one of my friends, Gracie continued.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. But she didn’t know it.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, my mom was driving me home from art class and I saw my friend’s dad with another woman in the parking lot of the Holiday Inn.”
Annette believed in giving people the benefit of the doubt. “Maybe it was perfectly innocent. He could have been there for a business meeting. The woman could have been a colleague or his sister.”
“I don’t think he’d be playing squeeze-ass with a colleague or kissing his sister on the mouth.”
“Oh. Good point.” Annette couldn’t help but wonder if any of her friends had ever seen Dave and Linda in a compromising position. How mortifying. “Maybe it wasn’t really your friend’s dad, but just someone who looked like him.”
“Oh, it was him, all right. It was his car. I even memorized the license tag and checked it the next time I was at her house. They matched.”
“Oh, dear.” That was pretty damning evidence, all right. “How did your friend take it?”
“I didn’t tell her.” Gracie examined her nails. “I figured there wasn’t really any point.”
That took a surprising amount of restraint. “Did you tell her mom?”
Gracie lifted her shoulders. “I was going to, then I decided against it.”
After she’d discovered Dave’s affair, Annette learned that several of her friends had known for some time. “Why on earth,” she’d demanded, “didn’t you tell me?”
“I didn’t want to hurt you,” one had said. As if my husband’s continued infidelity would hurt less?
“I figured you already knew,” said another. And you thought I wasn’t doing anything about it?
“I didn’t want to embarrass you,” her next-door neighbor had said. As if being utterly humiliated behind my back was somehow better?
Annette regarded Gracie now. “Why didn’t you tell his wife?”
“Well, I figured if she knew, she’d confront him, and then there’d be a big fight. She might leave him and divorce him, and that would mess up my friend’s whole life. Or she might not even believe me, and I’d never get to hang out with Sarah again.” Gracie leaned her head back in the recliner. “I guess that last reason was kinda selfish.”
“It was honest,” Annette said. And showed a high degree of perceptiveness. When you don’t want to hear something, it can be easy to discount the source. Would she have believed a teenager telling her something like that? She wasn’t sure. “So you just kept the whole thing to yourself?”
“No. I talked to Mr. Malbury—I mean, my friend’s father.”
Annette raised her eyebrows. “No kidding! That took some courage.”
“Yeah, well, I did it in kind of a cowardly way. I called him at work and pretended I worked at his bank, and that there was a problem with his checking account. I figured I could get past his secretary that way.”
The girl was clever, she had to hand her that. Annette grinned. “So what did you say?”
“That I’d seen him kissing a blonde at the Holiday Inn and that if he didn’t stop seeing her I was going to call his wife. He totally freaked and begged me not to.”
“Wow. It must have been pretty awkward the next time you saw him.”
“Nah. He never knew it was me.” Gracie straightened the recliner. The footrest folded with a soft thud. “You know what I don’t understand? He seemed like a really nice guy. He was a really good dad—he took my friend and her brother camping and canoeing, and he was always doing stuff with them.” She shook her head. “I just don’t get how he could be that two-faced.”
“No one is all good or all bad, Gracie. Everyone does things they’re ashamed of.”
“Yeah, I guess.” She placed a hand on her belly, looked down and sighed. “I mean, I’m not one to talk.”
“Did you love your baby’s father?” Annette asked gently.
Gracie let out a snort. “As if. Hooking up with him was the second worst mistake of my life.”
“What was the first?”
Gracie rose from the chair. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
“I understand. I’ve made mistakes I don’t like to talk about, either.”
“They probably weren’t very big ones.”
Unwanted memories flooded Annette’s mind. The night Dave had come home late after a night out with his buddies, reeking of beer and cigar smoke, and crawled into bed. His legs had pressed against hers, his chest warm against her back. His arm had reached around and his palm circled her breast. She’d slapped his hand away, angry that he’d spent yet another evening with his cronies instead of home with her. “Don’t you dare touch me,” she’d snapped, pulling away. “Go sleep in the guest room. In fact, I want you to move there permanently.”
And so he had. It was just down the hall, but it might as well have been halfway around the world. The distance between them had just grown and grown. When she’d learned of the affair, they hadn’t made love in more than a year.
By driving him from their bed, she’d destroyed more than their sex life. Too late, she’d realized that she’d destroyed another type of intimacy. Sleeping together had somehow calibrated their hearts.
She looked at Gracie. “Some of my mistakes have been doozies.”
“At least you didn’t get knocked up.”
“Well, actually, my son wasn’t a planned pregnancy. Dave and I thought we’d wait a few years before having a child.”
“Really?”
Annette nodded. “He turned out to be the biggest blessing of our lives.”
“I hope this turns out that way.” Gracie put her hand on her stomach. “I hope I can be a good mom.”
“You already are.”
Gracie looked at her dubiously.
“You’re feeding your baby. You’re keeping him—or her—warm and safe. You’re rocking him to sleep as you move. He thinks your voice is a lullaby. He’s connected to you in a way he’ll never be connected to anyone else, ever again.”
“Wow. I never thought of it like that.”
“The way you’re feeling about your baby, Gracie… Well, that’s the way Katie feels about you.”
Gracie stiffened. “She gave me away.”
“She gave you life, Gracie. She didn’t have to do that. And she gave you the best circumstances to live that life that she could manage. If she had kept you, she would have been doing you a disservice.”
“Do you think I’m doing that with my baby?” The defensive tone of Gracie’s voice was offset by her wobbling lower lip. “Do you think I’m doing it a disservice by keeping it?”
A lump of sympathy formed in Annette’s throat. “I can’t answer that for you, honey.”
“Well, when I turn eighteen, I’m going to get some insurance money, and I’ll be able to support us.”
“Money is important. But so is family. You’re lucky to have Katie and… and…” Why was it so hard to say the man’s name? A part of her, a dark, jealous part, hated that he existed. “… and Zack.”
Gracie lifted her head. “They’re not really family, and I’m not going to pretend they are.”
“Shutting them out of your baby’s life would be a mistake, Gracie. In fact, that might be one of the biggest mistakes of your life. You don’t want to deprive your child of people who would love it.”
“I’ll love it enough to make up for it.”
“You’ll love it with everything you’ve got, I’m
sure of that. But the love that surrounds a child in a family… well, that’s something special. That makes a child feel connected. That makes a child feel like it belongs.”
Gracie headed for the door. “I’ve got to go.”
“All right, sweetie. Enjoy the book.”
Annette leaned back against the pillow and stared at the blank screen of the turned-off TV mounted on the wall. She and Gracie had a lot in common. It was hard to put aside loyalties that you’d held for years. It was hard to look at things in a new way, hard to open your heart to the possibility that there was another side to the story. It could be really, really hard to admit that maybe you’d been wrong—or at least, not entirely right.
You teach what you need to learn. The old saying ran through Annette’s mind like a burglar, unwelcome, startling, and intrusive. Not wanting to think about it anymore, Annette blew out a hard sigh and reached for the TV remote.
Zack pushed open the door of the tiny hair salon at the assisted-living center to see Katie standing behind the lone stylist chair, rolling a pink curler into the white hair of a little dumpling of an elderly lady, laughing at something the woman had said. Katie wore flat sandals, a sleeveless blue-and-white-striped shirt, and a short white denim skirt, and her hair was pulled up in a messy updo. His heart chugged hard at the sight of her.
He’d been out of town for the last three days—he’d had a presentation in New York that had been in the works for months—but Katie had been on his mind the whole time.
She was turning into an obsession. At first he’d told himself that it was because he hadn’t been with a woman in a while—too long of a while, now that he thought of it. He’d told himself that while he was in New York, he should call one of the models he used to date and blow off some steam, but he hadn’t been able to work up the interest.
He didn’t just want to be with a woman; he wanted to be with one particular woman: Katie.
Which made no sense. Katie was a full-commitment kind of woman, and he was a live-for-the-moment kind of guy.
Still, she was driving him crazy. The memory of that kiss replayed in his mind over and over, popping to the forefront of his thoughts at the most inconvenient times. He couldn’t recall ever being so haunted and intrigued and bewitched by a woman.