Snow Day

by Shannon Stacey, Jennifer Greene

  Very reluctantly, she backed away from him. Her face felt hot and flushed, and he looked a little hot and bothered himself. “Let’s find some paperclips and get you back to your poker buddies before they come looking for us.”

  Brody held her hand for the walk back to the gym, and Delaney couldn’t help but feel things had changed between them. The hurt that had flared up when she saw him again had faded away and they were falling back into their old passionate but comfortable relationship.

  She needed to remember that relationship she’d been so comfortable in had ended in pain and tears, though. Five years ago, Brody had kissed her and held her hand, and then he’d taken off in the night. No matter how good it felt to have him back, Delaney couldn’t forget he was only there because he couldn’t leave.

  He released her hand before going through the doors into the gym, but not before giving her a quick kiss. Then he looked into her eyes for a few seconds. “I’d ask if you want to play with us, but now I remember just how bad your poker face is.”

  She wanted to ask him what he saw in her eyes, but before she could work up the courage, he’d opened the door, brandishing the boxes of paper clips as though he’d been foraging for food and returned with a bounty.

  Delaney watched as a group of kids swarmed him, their excitement obvious. But then she noticed Camille watching her watch her son and turned away. She was going to have to work on that poker face.

  * * *

  “HARD TO BELIEVE you made a living out of playing poker, son.”

  Brody snorted, but it was hard to deny the fact his pile of paper clips was significantly smaller than the old man’s. “Maybe it’s strategy. Sucker you in and make you feel safe so you start betting large.”

  “Or maybe you’re spending too much time watching that girl and not enough time watching your cards.”

  If Delaney had been in the casinos and back rooms, fussing over people and checking things off her clipboard, Brody would probably have about two dollars to his name and be living in his car. If he still had one. She was one hell of a powerful distraction.

  “What girl?” one of the kids asked. Jason, he thought his name was. He was the son of the guy who’d been a mouthy punk in school but was now, as Sandy had said, just a dad stuck in a room with his two boys waiting for the storm to end.

  “No girl. My dad thinks he’s funny.” But he couldn’t keep himself from glancing in Delaney’s direction.

  She caught him looking and smiled. He smiled back. The awkwardness between them had eased up and she wasn’t dodging his gaze anymore. He liked that. A lot.

  “Much more of this and I’ll take everything you own,” Donnie Cox said, laying down his cards and sweeping the pile of paper clips into his own growing pile.

  “Dammit.” Brody tried to force his attention back to the game.

  “That’s a bad word,” Jason said. Really loudly.

  “Sorry,” Brody said in the general direction of all the heads that swiveled to glare at him.

  Most of the younger kids had grown bored with all the thinking that went into playing poker and were, probably much to Delaney’s delight, off playing Go Fish along with some game that seemed to consist of the kids slapping each other’s hands every time a jack turned up in the pile.

  Once Jason moved on, probably lured away by the idea of slapping his brother, the guys played a few more hands before they lost interest. Brody shuffled the cards, strangely comforted by the familiar feel and motion in his hands, but he didn’t deal again.

  “Becks is after me to pump you for information, you know,” Donnie said. “Took you guys quite a while to find paper clips considering every room in this building is, you know, a school room.”

  “Delaney wasn’t comfortable taking them from just anybody’s classroom. One of the first grade teachers is a friend of hers, so we had to walk all the way to her room. And back.”

  “Not judging. I wouldn’t mind a little alone time with my wife right about now.”

  Brody wanted to point out he and Delaney hadn’t had that kind of alone time, but he figured it would go in one ear and out the other. People seemed to have made up their minds they were a couple again and nothing he said was going to keep the speculation down. It would only make them more determined to be right.

  Maybe they were. He really wasn’t sure what was going on with them, but whatever it was felt right to him. It felt natural to kiss her and hold her hand in the hallway. What hadn’t felt natural was ending things in the classroom before it got any more physical. He’d wanted her badly—hell, he still did—but he hadn’t packed condoms for his less-than-two-days trip back to his hometown.

  He glanced up again and caught Delaney looking at him. She was pretending to listen to the women around her talking, but the steamy look in her eyes almost made him flub his shuffle and blow cards everywhere.

  “You two have to stop making eye contact,” his dad said, “or your mother’s going to get all kinds of ideas in her head.”

  Brody jerked his attention back to the cards and dealt them out, without even asking if his dad and Donnie wanted in. He needed the distraction because he was starting to get ideas of his own in his head.

  And those ideas were going to get him into nothing but trouble.

  CHAPTER SIX

  THINGS WERE QUIET in the gym on Wednesday morning. Nobody was sleeping soundly and it was starting to take a toll on people. And the sense of adventure was wearing off for the kids. They wanted their video games and favorite foods and their freedom. Everybody was doing their best to stay upbeat, if only for the children, but spirits were flagging.

  Even if it came with an air of depression, Delaney was thankful for the quiet. She’d seen so much of Brody from a distance. He played with the kids and talked with the adults. Helped out wherever he could. Nobody would ever guess he’d been dragged back into the community against his will.

  But she liked sitting on the floor with him in a quiet corner, on small cushions he’d made by folding up their blankets. They were side by side, and he had a sleeping Noah cradled in his left arm and the fingers of his right hand were laced through hers.

  She’d be lying if she said it didn’t tug at her heart, the way they were sitting there like a little fake family. He was so good with Noah—and with the other kids—and she’d done a lot of thinking about what a good dad he’d be. Way too much thinking, actually. Images of him as a dad were getting all tangled up with her increasingly ticking biological clock and leading her down an imaginary path to heartbreak.

  He’d been telling her about his early days on the poker circuit, when he was scrimping and saving every dollar he could make at odd jobs to pay his way into tournaments. It didn’t sound as glamorous as she’d first imagined, and she wondered how she would have fared if he’d taken her with him. Probably not very well. She wasn’t much of a risk-taker and never had been.

  “I thought about you a lot in those days,” Brody said. “Correction—I still think about you a lot. I’ve missed you.”

  “Not enough to pick up a phone and give me a call?” It was hard for her to reconcile all the times he’d told her he missed her and thought about her with the fact he’d never reached out to her.

  “Sandy’s never forgiven me for the way I left, so she never mentions you on the phone and I was too proud to ask, but whenever I thought about you, I wanted to imagine you married, with some cute kids. A dog and a picket fence and a minivan.” There was a hint of sadness and maybe regret in his voice.

  “Haven’t gotten there yet. Seems a little odd, though, if you missed me so much, that you’d imagine me living happily ever after with somebody else.”

  “I needed you to be happy in my head, Delaney. If you were happy and had a good life, it made missing you worth it.”

  She leaned her head against the wall and
drew her knees up, wrapping her arms around them. “You felt less guilty, you mean.”

  “That, too. But mostly I’d picture you living a life I couldn’t give you and know I made the right decision.”

  “It wasn’t.”

  “I think you’re right.”

  “Tell me about your life now,” she said, because she was tired of rehashing the past. Maybe it was a little like rubbing salt in old wounds, but she wanted to picture him in his world.

  “I work a lot. Actually, that’s pretty much all I do. If I’m not on a site dealing with a remodel, I’m meeting with real estate agents or financial backers. When I’m home, I’m usually on the computer, researching foreclosure lists and property values and a whole lot of boring stuff.”

  “So what you do now is as risky as poker. You’re just gambling with properties instead of on cards.”

  He chuckled, then bounced his arm gently up and down when Noah squirmed. “Maybe, but luck gets less of a say. I have good instincts, but I also do my research. Flipping real estate might be a gamble, but I stack the deck in my favor.”

  “Where do you live?” It felt ridiculous, having to ask that question, but at least it was a reminder he’d made a life for himself somewhere else, and it didn’t include her.

  “I have a condo in Connecticut, but I travel a lot. I don’t have an office to speak of, even though Marjorie picked the title office manager for herself. She runs things for me, but out of her house.”

  He lived in Connecticut. Only a couple of states away. She couldn’t quite wrap her mind around that. She wanted to ask him what his condo looked like, maybe so she could picture him in it, but she didn’t want to sound weird.

  “Sandy doesn’t tell me much about your life,” she said. “I think she’s afraid to say something that might hurt me, so I know almost nothing about the last five years of your life.”

  “Just work, like I said.”

  What about women? Of course he’d dated. He was young and attractive and he’d never wanted for female attention, even when she’d been on his arm. But had he been in love since Delaney? She didn’t think a marriage and divorce would have stayed quiet with his family still in Tucker’s Point, but what about other serious relationships?

  He squeezed her hand. “If you’re thinking what I think you’re thinking, the answer is no.”

  “What do you think I’m thinking?”

  “I haven’t loved anybody else since I left you.”

  Delaney had to blink back the tears that suddenly blurred her vision. “I tried to replace you. It didn’t work.”

  “Good. That would make us sitting here together a lot more awkward.”

  She laughed softly and turned her head to see Noah looking at her with his solemn baby eyes. “He looks like you.”

  “He definitely has a lot of Rollins in him. Mike and Sandy should probably start bracing themselves for his teen years.”

  At the sound of his uncle’s voice, Noah shifted his intense gaze to him. He seemed fascinated by Brody’s face, not that Delaney could blame him. Brody was looking a little scruffy, like the other men at the school, but it only added a little edge to his good looks.

  Watching man and infant gaze into each other’s eyes was too much for Delaney, and she looked away. She couldn’t push back the resentment. Brody had taken her dreams for a family with him when he ran, and that was a hard thing to forgive.

  “He’s such a cute little bugger,” Brody said in a painfully soft voice.

  “How long do you think it’ll be before he starts wailing?” she asked, looking around to see if Sandy was in sight.

  Of course she was. And she must have been feeling the need to nurse because all Delaney had to do was look at her and the new mom was moving toward them. Once she’d taken Noah and gone back toward their cots, Brody slipped his arm around Delaney’s shoulders and pulled her close.

  When he kissed the top of her head, she sighed and tried to relax in his arms. There was no sense in holding on to past hurts. Life hadn’t turned out the way she’d thought it would, but she could embrace this moment for the short time it would last.

  * * *

  BRODY HELPED PREPARE the evening meal and serve it, so Delaney refused to let him help clean up after.

  “I like spending time with you,” he argued. “Even if it’s dish duty.”

  She laughed. “That’s really sweet, but there’s a rotation and some people have been getting lazy because you’re doing their share.”

  He caught her pointed look toward Alice. “Fine. I’ll go hang with Pop for a while. The more entertained we keep him, the fewer times he goes out in the cold for a smoke.”

  He found his old man stretched out on a cot, reading a hunting magazine. As far as Brody knew, his dad had never hunted a day in his life, so he assumed the magazine was borrowed from one of the other guys.

  “Learning anything?”

  “Yeah.” His dad closed the magazine and sat up on the cot. “Learning you can buy pretty much anything in camo.”

  Brody sat on the cot next to his dad’s, breathing a sigh of relief. He’d been on his feet a long time, and he couldn’t imagine how Delaney felt. “I think I saw a camo teddy bear at Sandy’s before the power went out.”

  His dad nodded, then fell silent for a few minutes. Brody got the impression he had something on his mind, but talking emotions didn’t come naturally to John Rollins. Usually it was Brody’s mom who conveyed their feelings back and forth. “You know your father loves you, Brody” and the like.

  “You seem happy, son. You’ve done well for yourself.”

  “Thanks, Pop. It’s a lot of work, but I’m pretty happy with where I am in life.”

  “Wish you hadn’t broken your mother’s heart doing it, though.”

  Brody bowed his head, focusing all his attention on a fuzz on the cuff of his sweater just so he had a place to look. “I don’t know how to explain why I left the way I did without sounding like I’m putting you down.”

  “Son, you think I don’t know my work is hard and pretty thankless? Nobody knows more than me that my house ain’t grand and my wife doesn’t have a diamond ring and my truck don’t run half the time. But you and your sister never wanted for a meal, dammit.”

  “I wanted more. There was always food on the table and I appreciate that, but I wanted more for myself and if I talked about doing something else, you’d just shake your head and walk away. Fishing was good enough for you so, by God, it was good enough for me.”

  His dad was quiet until Brody finally looked up. The old man’s voice was as sad as his eyes when he did speak. “I didn’t know how to want more for you, Brody. I’m a fisherman, just like my father and my grandfather and two generations before him. Hell, your mom’s mother was a fisherman’s wife and so on before her. We don’t know any life but this.”

  Brody had to swallow past the lump in his throat. “Maybe it’s because Delaney came from a family that didn’t fish, but every time I’d try to picture our future, I saw her looking tired and older than her age, with worry lines from years of juggling bills.”

  “And you saw yourself being me.”

  He didn’t know what to say to his dad. The words were true, but admitting it out loud seemed like a cruel blow for a man who’d done his best. He hadn’t been running away from his parents. He was running to the man he wanted to be.

  “I went through the same thing,” his dad said. “I was maybe a little younger than you were when you left. Looked around and realized I was going to spend my whole life fishing like my old man and I’d end up just like him. The only difference between you and me at that age is that you had the guts to leave.”

  It had never occurred to Brody that his father might have felt that way. And maybe his father before him. “I love you and Mom. I hope you know that.�
�

  “We do. And even though we hated losing you, we’re both proud of what you’ve made of yourself.”

  Brody had to clear his throat twice before he could speak. “Thanks, Pop.”

  “Your big screw-up, though, was not taking your girl with you.”

  Yeah, he knew that now. But at the time... “I had two hundred bucks in my pocket and no plans. No safety net. No family. No nothing.”

  “Once you started making some money for yourself, why didn’t you call her?”

  Brody couldn’t meet his dad’s piercing gaze, so he focused on the sweater fuzz again. “I didn’t have the guts to tell anybody I was leaving. I didn’t say goodbye to her. I guess I didn’t have the guts to call her, either. I thought about it. A lot, actually. But I didn’t think I could take her hanging up on me.”

  “Kind of gutless for a young man who left everything he’d known to go off into the world with only two hundred bucks in his pocket.”

  “Being cold and hungry wouldn’t kill me, but Delaney turning a cold shoulder to me might have.”

  “And now you made the girl fall for you all over again and we all know you won’t stay. Guess that makes you a... What’s that word the young people use nowadays? Douche bag?”

  Brody almost choked. “Pop! What?”

  “Pretty sure that’s the word I’m looking for.” He gave Brody a sly look. “Unless you’re planning to stick it out this time.”

  He wasn’t sure yet what he was going to do, and he couldn’t come up with the words to explain that since his brain was busy trying to wrap itself around the fact his old man had called him a douche bag.

  “Sure is a pretty lady,” his dad continued, his eyes fixed on Delaney across the room. “Your mom told me this morning you guys would make pretty grandbabies.”

  Babies. Brody watched Delaney lean down to speak to one of the kids and his gut tightened. It was too easy to picture her with a smaller version of herself and maybe a little Brody. She’d be a great mom.

  What wasn’t easy to picture was the home they’d live in. Not his condo. It not only wasn’t kid-friendly, but he couldn’t imagine Delaney away from Tucker’s Point. This wasn’t simply the town she lived in or the people she knew. This was her home and they were like family to her. Even an idiot could see that after the days they’d all spent cooped up together.