by Robyn Carr
“Oh?” T.J. asked. “Dare I hope he sells insurance?”
She shook her head. “He’s an air force pilot. I knew him when I was an air force nurse. I ran into him the other night while I was out with some girlfriends.”
“Ah,” T.J. said, sitting back. “And can’t get him off your mind?”
“You can say that again,” she said, putting down her fork. Not only did she feel like getting this whole thing off her chest, she felt she owed T.J. an explanation. After all, they were a couple…“I haven’t told anyone this, T.J. Not my mom, not girlfriends, certainly not Rosie…”
“Should I be honored?” he asked, lifting his wineglass to his lips, taking a sip. “Or should I panic?”
“He is Rosie’s father,” she said, staring him straight in the eye. But then she glanced away.
He put down his wineglass. “You don’t say.”
She looked back. “I always knew the day would come when I’d have to face this, but I thought I’d get to choose when and where. Just by chance he saw me a couple of weeks ago, chased me down and asked to buy me a cup of coffee. He said our breakup was a big mistake that happened to a couple of stubborn people, and that we should talk about things.”
“Well, direct, isn’t he? Obviously you didn’t agree.”
“I told him to get lost, but that was just my anger talking. I have no right to keep him away from Rosie. I’m going to have to tell him about her, T.J. And I don’t look forward to it.”
“Uh-oh. This doesn’t sound good. When you said Rosie’s father didn’t know her, I always assumed it had been his choice to take off, ignore his responsibilities.”
“Not exactly,” she said, shaking her head. “It wasn’t like that. But it wasn’t a mistake, like he says. The mistake was us getting together in the first place. He always said he’d never get married or have a family. I always said that’s what I ultimately wanted for my life.”
“Well, hell—why were you with him, then?”
“I don’t know. Because I couldn’t resist him? Sounds like the pining of a teenager, doesn’t it? I wasn’t a teenager. And I had a wonderful time with him—it was just the whole marriage and children thing he couldn’t do.” She shook her head. “I knew either one of us would have to change our minds or we’d part ways. My date of separation from the air force was coming up, Sean had accepted a change of assignment and we’d been together almost two years. And guess what? I got pregnant. And being a nurse, I knew immediately. So I made him talk about what was next for us. Where were we going, as a couple. He said things like, ‘You’re getting out of the air force. You can go anywhere you want. You can move to where I’ll be, or not.’ It went downhill from there. I said I wanted to be married, have children, and he said, ‘Me? Not in this lifetime.’”
T.J. swallowed. He looked down for a moment. He picked up his fork and poked at his food but didn’t eat, a clear indication he was unhappy. When he finally did look up, he said, “And you didn’t tell him.” It wasn’t a question.
She shook her head. “The parting standoff was I needed to take the relationship to a committed level and he wasn’t interested. I said that if it was possible he’d never be ready, I should move on, and he said if I needed guarantees right then, I’d better start planning my move.”
“Well, the man clearly knows what he doesn’t want,” T.J. said with an unmistakable sneer.
“We were both angry,” she said with a shrug. “I told him if he wasn’t serious about a commitment with me, I was going to take the walk. He told me not to let the door hit me in the ass. We both said unforgivable things. I could have told him about the baby, T.J. I could have shouted it at his back as he was leaving. He probably would have done the responsible thing.” Her eyes glistened and she swallowed hard. “And I would never have known if…” Her voice trailed off. She inhaled deeply, straightened proudly. “I didn’t want it that way.”
“Good God, Francine,” he said. “You lied to him.”
“I always intended to tell him,” she said. “Really, I thought I’d tell him when I found out she was a girl, then I couldn’t. I thought I’d tell him before she was born, but I was still so angry, so lonely. I planned to tell him right afterward, but he left me a couple of messages—a couple of those arrogant, cheerful, we-should-keep-in-touch-babe messages, and I couldn’t do it then, either. Next thing I knew, four years had passed.”
He shook his head and frowned at her. “You should have told me this before—you owed me that much if we were going to be involved. And you should have told him.”
“You know what, T.J.? I owe a lot of people a lot of stuff, but at the top of the list is Rosie. I owe her my absolute protection. Not just physical but emotional and psychological protection. I know Sean’s going to be angry—his mother’s going to be very angry and, trust me, she’s a force of nature. But, in the end, you know how much I meant to Sean? He let me go at the mere idea of a child!”
“Listen, there are men who don’t want children. But we still need to know the truth,” T.J. said.
“When Rosie was a new baby, just a couple of months old, I realized that I cried every single day. On and off for hours. I cried through the second half of my pregnancy and every day after she was born. And I made a decision—I couldn’t do that to her. If the only way Rosie could be raised by a happy, positive mother was to forget Sean Riordan, then that’s what I would have to do. Yeah, Sean might’ve been willing to do the right thing, but it wasn’t what he wanted. Rosie and I—we deserve to be loved and wanted. We deserve to never doubt it.”
They sat quietly for a moment before T.J. replied. “This explains a lot. You’ve always kept a part of yourself back. Tell me, Franci, just where did you think we were headed? You and me? Because your ex and I have a few things in common…”
“You and I aren’t headed for any kind of standoff, T.J. We seem to agree on everything. Everything except salmon,” she added with a smile. “I thought it was only fair to tell you why I’m a little distracted.”
“How’s that headache?” he asked.
“Actually, not a lot better.”
“I think I caught it,” he said. “I was very optimistic about where Rosie’s sleepover at Grandma’s was going to leave us.”
“I should have canceled,” she said, shaking her head. “I can’t invite you in tonight, T.J. I’m just not in the right frame of mind.”
He laughed a bit loudly. He leaned toward her. “Believe me, Franci—tempting as you are, I’m not getting in the middle of this situation. You work this out with the man, draw your single-parent lines in the sand, refine the details and, when you’re all set there, we’ll pick up where we left off. There is one more thing you might tell this guy, if you’re going to be completely honest.”
“Hm?” she asked, frowning.
“Tell him you’re not over him.”
She let a burst of laughter fly. “After all he’s put me through?”
T.J. wasn’t smiling. “Tell him you’ve had exactly one man in your life since you took that walk. One guy, in that intimate way.”
Shock was etched into her features for a moment. Then she attempted a recovery. “You don’t know that.”
“Yeah, I know it. You were damned hard to warm up. I couldn’t figure out what was holding us up. I had myself almost convinced it was Rosie, so young and all. But there was always a part of me that wondered what the hell was missing because I knew there was more passion in you. If you’ve made up your mind that he’s not going to screw up your life anymore, tell him and get this behind you,” he said. “Then when we’re together, maybe we can turn up the heat a little bit. Because I like what we have together, you and me, but I don’t want to be some platonic bed buddy.”
“Excuse me?” she said, pure shock keeping her from laughing out loud. “Platonic bed buddy?”
“I want more than a Friday-night girl who, when she’s with me, isn’t really with me. I knew something was missing when we crawled into bed.”
/>
“No,” she said, shaking her head. “No, we’ve had a very nice—”
When she got to very nice, he did smile. She didn’t go any further. Really, what man was looking for very nice sex? For that matter, what woman? And now the truth was out—he blamed her. And she realized with a guilty flush that he might be right. T.J. barely stirred a spark in her, much less a flame. She felt as if she’d cheated him.
Franci looked down at her half-eaten dinner. She couldn’t meet his eyes with what she was thinking—Sean had barely to caress her skin with his breath and she was on fire. He knew where to touch, how to tease, what to do, and nothing brought him greater satisfaction than to torture her with orgasm after orgasm. It had been like that with them since the first touch, the first night. They had never grown tired of each other—never bored, never disinterested. And absolutely never just very nice. Their sexual relationship had never been anything less than magnificent.
She was conscious of T.J. lifting his hand toward the waiter, asking for the check, instructing him to box up their leftovers. She almost smiled—there wouldn’t be any coffee and dessert tonight.
With his hand on her elbow, T.J. escorted her toward his car rather quickly. As they walked down the sidewalk, Franci looked up to see a familiar figure walking toward them. His hands were plunged into his pockets and his head was down. Just as they were about to pass, he lifted his eyes briefly. Franci said nothing, gave no reaction, but managed to keep walking. She listened for his footfalls behind them, but there was no sound. She knew then that Sean had stopped dead in his tracks and was probably staring after them.
Afraid to turn around Franci sighed deeply. Ah, well. Now they knew about each other. And yet they didn’t know anything at all.
The drive back to her house was twenty minutes of uncomfortable silence. T.J. sulked and Franci realized she might have risked losing the best shot at a stable relationship she’d had in years. But maybe not—according to what he’d implied, she’d risked it the first time she’d crawled into bed with him and had proven to be a barely adequate lover. What she hadn’t quite admitted until tonight was that it wasn’t all it could be for her, either.
Finally, T.J. pulled into Franci’s driveway. When he walked Franci the short distance to her door, he said, “Remember our agreement, Francine. We’re exclusive. I have a feeling you’re forgetting that.”
“I remember our agreement…”
“I want you to give me your word that you’re going to take care of this matter. Get this guy together with his kid, if that’s what he wants. And then tell him you’re involved with someone.”
“I’m planning to take care of this situation the best I can,” she said. “I guess it’s best if you just give me a little time to work out the details.”
“Don’t take too long. I’m not that patient.”
“Thank you for the dinner, T.J. Sorry it ended on such a negative note.”
“Let me know when you get this worked out with Rosie’s father. And try to be smart, Francine. You may have run into him here, but he’s not hanging around. Not for you, not for Rosie. Get rid of him. When that’s done, let me know. Don’t make me wait too long. When he’s gone, we’ll have a second chance.” Then he leaned toward her, gave her a platonic kiss on the cheek. “You’ll be fine. Just do it.”
And after looking deeply into her eyes for a long moment, he got into his car and backed away.
Five
Tonight was the third time the completely impossible happened—Sean ran into Franci on a random street in a small town. At loose ends, he’d decided to go back to that bar where he’d seen her the first time, just on the off chance he’d meet her again, even though he knew the odds were slim. Before he even got inside the bar, he saw her walking down the sidewalk, a man guiding her along with a hand on her elbow. And he carried a take-out sack; they’d already had their dinner.
He considered this sighting some kind of miracle. It was meant to be.
He watched them walk down the sidewalk and turn the corner. He stood there like an idiot for a few moments and then, knowing it was wrong on every level, he headed back to his own car to follow them.
He had no way of knowing what was next on the agenda for Franci’s evening, but if that had been him walking her away from a restaurant, the night would just be getting started. He had an overpowering urge to know if Franci had moved on, if she had found love in her life…if it was time for him to disappear for good.
By the time he reached his vehicle he was too late to spot the make and model of the man’s car. He couldn’t follow them now, which was probably a blessing. But because he was unsuccessful in talking himself out of it, he drove to Eureka—to Franci’s street. When he got there he parked across the street, a couple of houses down, and killed the lights. He sat there for a moment. Well, this was just what he deserved—the joke was on him. Her house was dark but for the front door light, and there was no car in the driveway, nor on the street in front of her house. If there was more to Franci’s evening, it wasn’t happening here.
Just then a car slowly pulled up the street and into her driveway. Sean watched as the man got out of the car and went around to her side to open her car door. He guided her up to the door and Sean thought, If they go inside, I have to find it in me to drive away. Like she said, neither one of us stopped living. She deserves the same option to move on that I took for myself.
He told himself that, but it didn’t feel right.
Then he watched as the man spoke to her, then gave her a brotherly kiss on the cheek and left. Sean’s mouth hung open as Franci stood in the glow of her front door light, watching her date leave. And finally Sean’s head fell forward onto the steering wheel.
Now he really had to make himself drive away! He shouldn’t be here in the first place, and he definitely didn’t have the right to push himself on her now! This could ruin any efforts he made at reconciling and he damn sure wasn’t going to—
Tap-tap-tap at the window completely interrupted his attempt at sanity. He looked up and there was Franci, smacking his car window with a key. He brought down the window.
“Now you’re following me?” she asked, outraged.
“Not exactly,” he said. “I’m sorry. You know I’d never scare you on purpose.”
“You don’t scare me, Sean! I think you’re an idiot!” she said, turning to walk back across the street to her house. She stopped in the middle of the road and, over her shoulder, she said, “You are a truly clumsy spy! I saw you in Arcata! I saw your car when we turned onto my block! I know your car, you dope, from when we met for coffee!”
Sean jumped out and went after her. When he was right behind her, he asked, “Is that why you sent your date away?”
“No!” she said. She kept walking. “I said good-night, just as I’d planned! And what were you going to do if I’d invited him inside? Pound on the door? TP the yard?” She got to her door, stuck her key in the lock and turned it.
“I was going to leave,” he said in his quiet voice. “It wasn’t going to be easy, either. But I knew it was wrong to come here, to watch your house, to spy on you. It was bad and wrong and I’m sorry—and I couldn’t help it. I’ve never been like this before.”
She turned and faced him. “Like what? Nuts?”
He nodded. Then he grinned that Sean grin that melted her, even though he had a black eye and a weird-looking nose.
“I know good doctors,” she said. “We can get you medicated for that.”
His hand came up to cradle her jaw, his fingers reaching into her short hair. “Before we do that, let’s just talk about it.”
“What do you want from me, Sean?”
He moved still closer, leaning down, his mouth just barely above hers. “I want you, Franci. I shouldn’t have let you get away.”
Tears gathered in her eyes. There was a time she’d have given anything to hear that! Oh, who was she kidding—she still wanted to hear that! And tonight was one of those very vulnerable
nights! She had just been informed by Professor Hottie that she wasn’t very exciting in the sack. She had tried to be with someone who was right for her, and it obviously hadn’t been working all that well. “What if it’s too late?” she asked in a whisper.
“Don’t we have to know?” he asked. “Don’t we both have to know?”
“Most of the time I think I’d be happier not knowing…”
But instead of speaking, he lowered his lips to hers. He slipped an arm around her waist, pulling her against him, and kissed her. And there it was—the feelings that rose up in her instantly! With a defeated moan, she melted to him and opened her lips under his.
Franci had what can only be described as a flashback, an out-of-body experience, while Sean’s lips hovered close to hers. As he held her there, their mouths slightly open, breathing each other’s warm breath, images from another time and place filled her mind. It usually came to her in the form of dreams that left her moody for half a day. She felt herself wrapped in his old red sweater, the one she kept at her apartment for cold nights, the thing steaming with his scent, his musk. She heard their laughter as she chased him down a ski slope and he made away; laughter as they played in the lake, splashing each other; in bed after satisfying lovemaking, still wrapped around each other. Scenes popped into her mind—standing in his kitchen, fluffing up a big salad while he turned steak or fish on the grill; washing their cars in his driveway; working together to put fresh sheets on the bed; sitting by a fire in the vast Arizona desert, talking softly under a million stars in an endless black sky. She imagined herself in his arms, just like now.
Once, when they’d been skiing in Colorado, her lips were so chapped and cracked, she didn’t dare smile. She told him that if they made love, she couldn’t use her lips in any way. He told her to lie down on the bed and close her eyes. He began to smooth healing bag balm salve across her lips in long, slow, careful strokes. Not just enough to coat her poor lips once, but over and over and over for long minutes, a lip massage, until they had become as soft and plump as a baby’s butt. He didn’t stop, but kept stroking the salve on her lips, putting her in a trance. Gently, sweetly, perfectly, healing her, taking care of her. Sometimes when she dreamed or remembered that, she felt hypnotized; sometimes it caused her to wake up crying out for him. Remembering all of this and more, and feeling it now, she was in a deep state of longing.