The Sweetheart Rules

by Shirley Jump

  He had five days left. Five days until he had to drive back to Atlanta, drop the girls off, then hop a plane to Kodiak. Five days until he returned to the life he’d left.

  He should have been excited. Should have been itching to put on a uniform again, to get back out into the unpredictable Bering Sea. But he wasn’t.

  What he wanted to do was stay right here in Rescue Bay and finish whatever was brewing between himself and Diana. After the other night—that amazing, one-for-the-record-books night in her pool—he’d been thinking more and more about staying, building the one thing he had run from all his life—

  A future.

  A real relationship, not one that he’d launched into on the spur of the moment, then abandoned before the ink was dry on the marriage license. A real, honest-to-God commitment with Diana.

  The problem? He had screwed things up, maybe for good, with the way he had handled the Jackson thing. After several days of silence on Diana’s end, he had begun to wonder if he’d screwed it up beyond repair. Then he’d found a note under his door this morning, just a few simple words that fertilized a seed of hope in his chest.

  Meet me at the beach at five. Diana

  To talk? Or to tell him to get out of her life for good? He’d been tempted—so damned tempted—to just go next door to her office and ask. Instead, he kept busy and prayed for five o’clock to hurry up and get here.

  “Daddy?” Ellie asked. She and Jenny had been sitting on a makeshift bench, handing him tools from time to time and sorting nails to keep them busy while they waited for him to finish the work. He could have sent them out to Diana’s office—that had been the agreement, after all—but after the other night and the ambiguous note burning a hole in his pocket, he wasn’t so sure she wanted him on the premises, never mind dropping off his kids for babysitting.

  Plus he’d gotten used to having the girls around, asking him a thousand questions and helping the way only kids could help—by slowing him down and interrupting his every move. He kind of liked sharing the project with them, talking about what he was doing, breaking down the steps of repairing fencing or fixing a chipped concrete wall. It reminded him of being a kid, and helping his dad fix things around the house. It almost made Mike sentimental—and kept him from thinking about that note and the unforgettable woman on the other side of the wall.

  “Daddy?” Ellie said again.

  “What, El?”

  “Can we go see the kitties? I wanna hold one. I like the kitties. They’re warm and fuzzy and their tongues tickle.” Ellie giggled. “Kitties make me happy.”

  “And I want to see Cinderella,” Jenny added. “I haven’t walked her yet today. Dr. Diana said it’s really important that the shelter dogs get human time so they don’t forget how to be pets.”

  “Sure, girls. In a minute. I’m almost done.” As he was turning to pick up his tools, the door opened and Diana walked in. His heart stuttered and his breath lodged somewhere in his chest. Damn, he’d missed her. It had only been a few days, but he’d missed her with an ache that left a painful emptiness deep inside him.

  She looked like hell. Like she hadn’t slept in a month. Dark shadows dusted the delicate space under her eyes, and her hair was swept into a messy ponytail. Sympathy rushed over him—she hadn’t had it easy since everything that happened with Jackson, and all Mike wanted to do was draw her to him and promise it would all be okay.

  “You finished the renovations,” she said.

  “Yup. Just a minute ago. It’s all ready for some more temporary residents.”

  “That’s fabulous.” She turned around, taking in the repaired kennels, the new walls, the freshly painted concrete. “It looks awesome. You did a great job. Thank you.” She swiveled those big green eyes back to his face. “I really appreciate it, Mike.”

  Right this second, he didn’t give a damn what she thought about the renovations. All he could focus on was those shadows under her eyes, the worry etched in her features. He closed the gap between them and cupped a hand to her cheek. “You look like you haven’t been sleeping so well. You okay, Diana?”

  She let out a sound that was half sob, half laugh. “I’m… no. I’m not okay. Geez, you have no idea how much it takes for me to admit that. I’m the strong one, the one who has all my stuff together. And now I find out I don’t have a single thing together. My son is God-knows-where with my irresponsible ex, who hasn’t returned my calls or texts. Not to mention the trouble Jackson was in before he left, and…” Her voice trailed off as she glanced at the girls and realized they had an audience. “There’s a lot more.”

  “You want to talk about it?”

  She bit her lip. “No. Not really.”

  He could see the stress etched in every inch of her. He thought of his plan for the day, the schedule he’d penned over coffee today. He might have allowed cookies in the living room and a little chaos with the girls, but in the end, he always returned to the solace of a schedule. That itch to stay on track, to keep going from task to task, in that predictable loop that he had made of his life, burned inside him, almost like an addiction.

  Where had that gotten him? Yeah, organized and tidy, but not exactly happy.

  That truth struck Mike like a baseball bat. He’d always thought the regimented, planned, and predictable kept him content. When it really just kept him in this state of…

  Suspended animation.

  Not sad, not stressed, but not happy, either. Just… there.

  He didn’t want to be just there anymore. He wanted to be invested in his children, in his days, in everything. Okay, so he wasn’t going to give up the polished shoes and neat shelves, but he could stop planning out his days like an invasion of Normandy.

  “I have an idea,” he said. “Instead of waiting till five, why don’t we deviate from the plan a little?”

  “Plan? What plan?” Diana said.

  The girls sat on the makeshift bench, just watching the exchange between the adults. Ellie clutched Teddy and swung her legs back and forth.

  “The note you left for me,” Mike said, nodding his head as a hint-hint. “The beach meeting.”

  “I didn’t leave you a note, Mike. You left me one on my desk this morning. It was there when I got to work.” She reached into her lab coat and pulled out a white piece of paper. “You’re the one who asked me to meet you at the beach after work.”

  “Wait a minute.” He pulled out the pink paper he’d been carrying all day. “I found this tucked under my door this morning after I got back from taking the girls out for breakfast.”

  Diana put a hand to her mouth and laughed. He loved the way she laughed, how the laughter danced in her eyes. “Oh my. I recognize that move.” Diana shook her head. “Greta, that clever, clever woman.”

  Mike’s brows wrinkled in confusion. “Are you talking about Luke’s grandmother?”

  “The one and only. Not to mention the biggest matchmaker in Rescue Bay. She’s been hinting to me that I should…”

  When she didn’t finish, Mike took a step closer. “You should what?”

  She bit her lip. “Fall for you. I guess this was her way of nudging us back together.”

  He chuckled, then looked at the note again. “Gotta give Greta props for ingenuity. Pink paper with daisies on it from you to me, plain white from me to you. She left the notes when we were both out, so she clearly thought this through.” He fingered the pale paper. “Maybe she has the right idea. At least about the beach part.”

  Diana cocked her head. “What are you talking about?”

  “I think we could both use a break. What better place to do that than on the beach? We can take that dog Jenny likes with us…” He thought a second, then recalled the name. “Cinderella. Bring Mary along, too, and the dogs can wear themselves out chasing each other’s tails. We’ll pick up some subs, have a picnic lunch. The girls can play, we can talk, and everyone can get a recharge.”

  Jenny got to her feet, and Ellie scrambled up beside her. “Can we bring
a kitty, too?” Ellie said. “Kitties love the beach.”

  Jenny rolled her eyes. “Elephant, cats hate the water. You can’t bring a cat to the beach.”

  Ellie pouted and crossed her arms over her chest. She stood at least a foot shorter than Jenny, but when she got that determined, feisty look on her face, little Ellie seemed to grow a lot taller. “Then I wanna bring Teddy.”

  “Teddy is totally cool to go to the beach,” Mike said, then turned to Diana. “So, want to go to the beach with me, the girls, a couple dogs, and one teddy bear?”

  Diana shifted her weight, hesitating. “I don’t know if I should. I have patients…”

  “Reschedule,” Mike said. “It’s okay to take some time for yourself, Diana.”

  A wry grin crossed her lips. “My sister says the same thing to me all the time.”

  “Maybe because it’s good advice. Advice I’m taking today.” He tugged the schedule out of his pocket, crumpled it into a ball, then tossed it into the trash can. He was done living that life of suspended animation. He wanted more, wanted that gingham world that Diana inhabited, and wanted Diana, too. The trouble was, he couldn’t be sure she still wanted him.

  Mike took a step closer, and lowered his voice. “Come on, Diana, take a risk with me.”

  A faint blush bloomed in her cheeks, on her chest. “You make a very tempting offer, Mike Stark.”

  “That’s where you’re wrong.” He caught her gaze with his, and wished they were alone, and that he could turn back the clock to the other night, before everything with Jackson, before the hurtful words they’d exchanged. “Because it’s you who is the very tempting offer for me. The one I can’t refuse, no matter how hard I’ve tried.”

  • • •

  The instant Diana’s feet sank into the soft white sand of the Rescue Bay beach, she had to admit that Greta, Olivia, and Mike were right. Taking a little time off—and heading for her favorite destination—brought her an instant peace. She might not be any closer to solving things with Jackson, or figuring out where she stood with Mike, and whether she even wanted to stand wherever that was, but for a moment, she didn’t care. There were sand and surf and seagulls and serenity. She’d have to remember to thank Greta for the well-meaning subterfuge that had brought her here.

  “This is… perfect,” she said, loosening her hair from the ponytail that had held it tight all day, and letting the breeze off the Gulf tangle the locks around her shoulders. “Thank you for dragging me out here.”

  But then just as quickly, the worries returned, overriding the moment of peace like storm clouds obliterating the sun. She wrapped her arms around herself and looked out over the ocean. Somewhere out there, her son was on a boat with Sean. She prayed they were having a good time, and that Sean was being responsible. She had no way of knowing if they were even alive. Sean had either turned off his cell phone or was far enough out on the water to be out of the reach of the cell towers, because her calls had gone straight to voice mail, with both his and Jackson’s phones.

  Jackson.

  Her worries about him had quadrupled in the days since she and Mike had found him, high on marijuana, in that horrible house. How long had he been doing drugs? How could she have missed the signs?

  Every night she struggled with those questions, and with her own internal demons. She’d dumped out the bottle of rum, but the temptation hadn’t gone down the drain. She’d kept Olivia on speed dial, and had finally realized that opening up to Olivia that first night and all the nights since hadn’t been embarrassing or awkward or a show of weakness.

  Instead it had eased the weight on her shoulders, made her feel like she had someone to share the burden. She’d finally done what Mike had told her to do and admitted she needed help. Just to her sister, but it was a start, and had made everything since exponentially easier to bear.

  What if she did the same with Mike? Would he understand, or would he recoil, unable to understand a woman who had once put a bottle of rum ahead of her own baby? Far better to keep that part to herself, she decided.

  “Here, take a seat.” Mike gestured toward a plaid blanket he’d spread across the sand. A bag from the local sub shop anchored one corner, a six-pack of water bottles weighted another. Shoes held down the other two corners, the entire tableau all neat and square on a flat section of sand. Precise and meticulous, just like Mike did pretty much everything.

  “How do you do that? There’s not a speck of sand on anything.” She took a seat in the center of the blanket and leaned back on her elbows. “Ninety percent of the time, a trip to the beach for me results in either a lost shoe or a misplaced pair of sunglasses, and bringing home a whole lot more sand than I left behind on the beach.”

  “I’m a… recovering organizer,” he said with a chuckle.

  “Let me guess. You may have ripped up the schedule but your canned goods are still alphabetized and your cleaning products are organized by type of chore.”

  “Well…” He shrugged and grinned. “Yeah.”

  “You need help.” She laughed. “Or someone to mess all that up for you.”

  “I have two someones.” He gestured toward the girls as he settled onto the blanket beside Diana. “One thing I’ve learned with kids is that neat is a goal, not a reality. And I’m learning to be okay with that.”

  “Are you sure? So would it drive you crazy if I did this?” She scooped up a little bit of sand and let it drizzle through her fingers and onto the blanket.

  “No.” But he grimaced when he said it.

  She laughed, and dumped the rest of the sand back on the beach. “I won’t torture you anymore.”

  “Diana, you torture me just by being here.” He shook his head. “Okay, that came out wrong. What I mean is that every time I look at you, I want… what I may never be able to have.”

  “Why?” She wasn’t sure if she was asking why he wanted her or why he wanted things he couldn’t have. Or if she was really asking herself why she felt the same way. She’d sworn him off, kicked him out of her house after what happened with Jackson, yet here she was, drawn to the very thing she told herself she didn’t want.

  “Because I wouldn’t blame you if you never forgave me,” he said. “If you told me to walk away and never talk to you again.”

  “To be honest, I’ve thought about saying that,” she said. “But I couldn’t stay mad at you.”

  The straw that broke her resolve’s back was seeing the finished renovations. He could have walked away, left the job half done, but he’d shown up and worked for free, even after she had kicked him out of her life.

  Between the renovations and the sub sandwiches and the picnic blanket, Mike had done the one thing no other man had ever done:

  Taken care of her.

  Even after she had broken up with him, and hurt him. He was either a glutton for punishment or a seriously good guy.

  She toyed with the edge of the blanket. “I’m sorry for the hurtful things I said in the driveway about your kids and Jackson. I was just so angry. A part of me wanted to blame you for the mistakes Jackson made. The ones I made.”

  He covered her hand with his own. “I never should have gotten in the middle of you and Jackson. It was wrong and I’m sorry. I’m not the expert at this parenting thing, you are, and I had no business trying to step on your toes.”

  “It’s okay, Mike. You did the best you could. Sometimes that’s all you can ask of yourself.”

  “Do you believe that about yourself?”

  She looked away and tugged her hand out of Mike’s. Had she given her best as a mom? Had she been the best example, the best leader, for her little family of two? She used to think so, but maybe that was all that was—a delusion in her own mind. That same delusion that had told her she could keep that bottle over the stove and never open it. “I… I don’t know.”

  “Diana.” He waited until she met his gaze. “You are one of the best parents I know. No, don’t disagree with me. Jackson got into a little bit of trouble, but wh
at teenager doesn’t?”

  She shook her head. “I have no idea what the hell I’m doing. You can’t call me a good parent.”

  Mike didn’t know her. He didn’t know how close she had come to putting her son at the bottom of her priority list again. She needed to stay focused on Jackson and not lose that grip she had on what was important.

  “Every time I struggled with the girls, I’d think of some piece of advice you gave me. You taught me to loosen up, to get messy”—he scooped a little sand onto the blanket—“and to not be so…”

  “Controlled, neat, and organized.”

  “Exactly.”

  “Life is never controlled, neat, and organized. I’ve learned that firsthand.” She drew her knees up to her chest and looked out over the ocean, so vast, so deep. Somewhere out there was her son, far from her grasp, her heart. Her own child, out of her reach for who knew how long. “When you think it’s all under control and neat, that’s when there’s something about to go wrong.”

  Mike took her hand in his again, a big, strong grasp that tethered the loose strings in her chest. “He’ll be okay.”

  “You don’t know Sean, Mike. You don’t know how he’ll just leave Jackson somewhere because a better offer came along or a pretty girl caught Sean’s eye. Did you know he once left Jackson in the middle of Target because a fan wanted Sean to come outside and meet her family? Jackson was three, Mike. Three. Don’t even get me started on how many times Sean forgot to pick him up from school or blew off visitation without so much as a phone call. You don’t know my life. So please don’t try to fill me up with platitudes.”

  He sat there and took her anger, letting it hit him square in the chest, then bounce off again. “I don’t, you’re right. But I know that when I was young, I used to be a lot like Jackson, and though I was lost for a while, I found my way. Jackson will, too, Diana. I know he will.”

  “How?” Her eyes filled with tears, and she hugged her knees tighter, as if doing so would gird her against the tough road ahead. “How did you find your way?”