by JoAnn Ross
“Good for you.” His grandfather was right about family standing up for family. “I hope you were polite.”
“She was very annoying. But I didn’t yell. Or hit her.”
“Well, there’s a positive,” Mac said, stifling his laugh.
“Are you going to get married?”
“What?” Her question had him slamming on the brakes too fast and too hard as a young couple, obviously in love, jaywalked over to the seawall after buying a bag of saltwater taffy.
“Mrs. Fletcher told Peggy’s mother that she thought it was a shame I was growing up in a house with two men. That girls needed mothers, so you should get married again.”
Mac wasn’t surprised that his single-father status was garnering conversation. Gossip was part of life in Shelter Bay.
“Are you unhappy living with your grandfather and me?”
“No. Though I miss Mommy, even if she did wish she’d never had me.”
“That’s not true.” Some lies were justified.
“Sometimes, when I’d make her mad, she’d tell me she wished that. She said if she just left for good, the Air Force would have to make you come home and take care of me.”
Her matter-of-fact tone hurt more than the idea that Kayla had shared her unhappiness with their innocent daughter. “She also told Mrs. Young, the lady who lived next door in Colorado, the same thing right before she went away on that trip the day you came home from war. . . .
“And then she did it. Left for good.”
Her voice trembled, revealing that she was close to tears. Mac put a hand on his chest, surprised, not for the first time since his life had literally blown up, that a heart could actually ache from emotional overload.
Maybe Sax and his brothers, J.T. and Cole, were right. All three were war vets and they had advised him to get professional help instead of trying to gut out his survivor guilt himself. But isn’t that what his grandfather and father must have done? And they seemed okay. Well, except for Charlie losing his mind to Alzheimer’s.
Of course, none of the Douchetts talked that much about what they did while in Iraq and Afghanistan, either. Mac figured each generation of warriors probably had that in common.
“Your mother loves you.”
He was also beginning to realize that little girls, at least his Emma, were far more aware of what was going on around them than he ever would have expected. Apparently eavesdropping on adults was something she did often. And well.
“I know,” Emma said. “That’s why she sent me presents for Christmas and my birthday. And mommies always love their children. Like Bambi and his mommy. But sometimes, when I acted up, or when she couldn’t afford a babysitter, I just made life hard on her. . . .
“Poppy says that she probably wants to give you and me time together to make up for when you were gone at war.”
“Now there’s a thought.”
“And that she’s probably having to work all the time because of her new job in the big city.”
“It’s always hard changing jobs. If you want, we can call her tonight.”
“No.” She exhaled a soft little sigh. “That’s okay. I don’t want to make life hard on her. And besides, I have you and Poppy and Grandpa.”
As grateful as he was that Emma had Charlie to talk to about her feelings, when you factored in dementia, delusions, and just general confusion, his grandfather wasn’t exactly the most credible adviser these days.
Plus, dammit, that was Mac’s job. He was her father. And it hurt like hell that his own daughter didn’t feel free to share her innermost thoughts and feelings with him.
Could she be worried that he would leave if she wasn’t always perfect?
And wasn’t that a freaking shitty thought?
That provoked him to decide that he would ask his father for a referral to a child psychologist.
Passing the taffy couple, who had crossed the street and were now sitting on the seawall sharing their treat and a kiss, he continued beyond the colorful buildings flying their bright wind socks to Annie Shepherd’s scrapbook store. Which he must have passed several times before and never noticed.
“Maybe you could marry Sedona Sullivan,” Emma suggested helpfully, returning to the topic he’d hoped she’d forgotten. “Then we could have cupcakes every night for dessert.”
“They might not be such a treat if we had them every day.” He liked the cupcake baker, and couldn’t deny she made the best cakes and pies he’d ever tasted, but as gorgeous as she was, he had never felt even the smallest spark whenever Emma would drag him into Take the Cake.
Not like the spark he’d felt with Annie Shepherd earlier.
“Poppy’s nurse, Analise Peterson, at Still Waters, is really pretty. But she just got married.” Emma continued mulling the problem of his single state as he pulled into a parking space in front of the cheery white store with its yellow-and-white-striped awning and window filled with red, white, and blue patriotic displays. Which reminded him that he had noticed the store before, a few months ago when it had been decorated with yellow chicks, brightly painted eggs, and bunnies, all created from various colored papers.
He’d thought at the time that he should bring Emma here for drawing supplies, since she was obviously so into art, but then he’d gotten wrapped up in his new gig at KBAY and it had slipped his mind.
Old habits, it seemed, died hard.
“She went to Hawaii on her honeymoon. But I don’t know if she got a grass skirt while she was there, because she always wears her nurse’s outfits at Still Waters. . . .
“Ms. Shepherd’s pretty,” Emma pointed out as she climbed down onto the sidewalk from her backseat booster seat. “She smells like flowers and Poppy likes her a lot. Maybe you could ask her out on a date. Somewhere nice. Like the Sea Mist, where we celebrated Father’s Day with Poppy and Grandpa.”
“There’s a thought,” Mac said.
Unfortunately, it was one that was way too appealing, since in contrast to the strong emotional connection he felt toward Sandy from Shelter Bay, which had him inviting her to dinner at the Sea Mist, he’d felt the same sort of deep, almost painful physical pull around Annie Shepherd.
Although he might not have been a warrior, he’d had to go through basic training with the rest of his recruiting class and had spent a lot of time drilling. Mac hoped to never have to shoot a weapon in battle, but the one thing the military had driven home was that with enough repetition, muscle memory would always kick in. The electrical charge he’d been hit with when Annie had turned around today could’ve won him a Boy Scout tent-building badge for the boner it had sparked beneath the fly of his jeans.
As he parked in front of the store, a white crossover pulled up behind him and two little girls piled out. Assuring Mac that now that she was a big girl of six years old, she didn’t need him to go inside with her, Emma was out of the truck like a shot, running toward the pair dressed in frilly dresses.
They were chattering away like magpies as they literally skipped on shiny patent leather party shoes into the store. Mac decided the fact that she didn’t stop to wave good-bye was a good thing, showing that she’d gotten over her earlier sadness.
He also decided, as just the memory of his two meetings with Annie Shepherd had him adjusting his jeans, that it was just as well Emma hadn’t wanted him to come into the store, because one thing he didn’t need was having his body respond like that of a hormone-driven teenager in front of a bunch of little girls.
Driving over to Bon Temps for a game of pool with Sax to kill time before he returned to pick Emma up, he wondered what kind of man could be so attracted to two women at the same time?
A normal one, he reassured himself.
As he turned onto Harborview, Mac felt, for the first time in a very long while, as if, just maybe, his life, which had literally been blown out from under him, was getti
ng back on track.
21
The crafting room at Memories on Main looked as if a typhoon had hit it. The glass-topped tables were covered with sheets of designer paper, embellishments, ribbons, various punches, inks, stamps, and pens. Papercrafting was often a messy prospect, but fifteen little girls had brought an entirely new chaos to creation.
Still, the love they were putting into their cards was so obvious that Annie knew the recipients would be able to feel it. Which was all that was important.
There was a slight problem when Emma Culhane had plucked a marker from the box and begun signing Love, your friend, Emma in Day-Glo pink.
“You can’t use a girlie color like pink for a soldier,” declared Peggy Murray, the birthday girl, who’d already proven to be more than a little bossy.
“Can, too,” Emma said, putting that card away and reaching for another she’d made, this one with a smiling dog sticker on the polka-dot-covered front. “I always sign the pictures I draw for my poppy in pink and he loves them.” She tossed her blond head. “And he was a sailor in a big, big war, so he should know a lot more than you do about what soldiers like.”
She looked up at Annie. “Isn’t that right, Ms. Shepherd?”
“Your poppy does love those pictures,” Annie agreed. For a moment she’d considered suggesting that Emma, who obviously loved color, use a red pen for her careful childish printing, but then she decided she wasn’t about to stifle the young artist’s creativity. “I’m sure all you girls’ cards will make our soldiers happy.”
And who wouldn’t smile when they saw that blindingly bright pink ink and think of the little girl who’d made the card for them?
“See?” Emma told Peggy, whose scowl suggested that wasn’t the answer she’d wanted to hear.
“As soon as all the cards are signed, we can move on to the cupcake-and-ice-cream part of the fun,” Annie said.
Her attempt to smooth the troubled waters paid off when there was a loud cheer and everyone started calling out their favorite Take the Cake flavors.
• • •
Except for that brief little ripple between Emma and Peggy, the party had gone well. Better than well, Annie thought as she cleaned up the paper scraps, scrubbed the glue off the glass-topped tables, and tucked the cards the girls had made into the box where she’d been storing the cards for the schoolchildren to hand out to troops during the Fourth of July parade. Although Shelter Bay didn’t have enough veterans for every child to be able to hand out a card, before the school year had ended a couple weeks ago, two names had been drawn from each class, and—wouldn’t you know it—Emma Culhane had won one of the tickets for her kindergarten class.
Because Emma had rushed out of the store as soon as she’d seen her daddy’s truck pull up in front, Annie had avoided running into Mac Culhane again today. But, since Emma had won that ticket, like it or not, Annie would be forced to come in contact with the man again. Which was why she’d sworn not to listen to his program.
After ten minutes of NPR talk, and another ten of a jazz station from Newport, she’d given up and tuned in to KBAY, where he was talking about the challenges of being a single dad trying to comprehend a daughter’s mind.
“You have to understand, this is a girl who could be the poster girl for pink. Not the singer but the color. Her bedroom looks as if a bottle of Pepto-Bismol exploded all over the walls, and even the red, white, and blue cards she made at a party today at Memories on Main to give away to soldiers during the parade this week were signed in pink ink.”
Annie smiled at the memory
“So, you can imagine the reaction when we returned home to a letter informing her that her new grade school has a uniform code,” Mac was saying. “White blouses and plaid skirts, and no, like I tried to explain to her, neither can be pink.”
The sigh floated over the airways like an arrow straight into Annie’s heart.
The child was not only darling; she was an original.
Just like her father.
Yet another reason Annie was not going to call.
“So, a day that began with French toast topped with whipped cream in the Grateful Bread’s bus and was highlighted with a little girl’s card-making birthday party, complete with cupcakes, ended in tears.”
Another long male sigh.
“And speaking of tears, here’s ‘Someone Else’s Star,’ a tearjerker by Bryan White about a guy who’s been spending too many nights alone, wishing for a love of his own, when he finally comes to the conclusion that he must be wishing on someone else’s star because it seems like everyone around him is in love with everyone else. But unlucky him.”
Less than twenty seconds into the perfectly described tearjerker country song, Annie’s phone rang.
Expecting Sedona, she snatched it up.
“I’m not calling him,” she insisted yet again.
“Yeah, I got the idea when you gave me that chilly reception at Still Waters,” the all-too-familiar voice said.
Oh, God. Why hadn’t she taken that one extra second to check the caller ID?
“I was not chilly toward you.”
Okay, so maybe she wasn’t exactly enthusiastic, but she’d certainly been polite to deter Charlie or Emma from picking up on the fact that he was the last man on the planet she wanted to run into.
“Sweetheart, the second you figured out I was the guy Charlie’s been trying to hook you up with, there was enough ice surrounding you to freeze the bay.”
“That’s an exaggeration. And I’m not your sweetheart.”
“Point taken. That was admittedly chauvinistic. What can I say? Men are pigs.”
“How did you figure out who I was?”
“Your voice sounded familiar the first time you called. Then I had the same feeling today at Still Waters, though it took a while to sink in that you and Sandy were the same person. . . .
“But here’s the thing. We have less than three minutes and eighteen seconds before I have to pay the bills with a promo spot for Bennington Ford. So I have one question.”
“What?”
“Are you making a basket for the Fourth of July picnic charity deal?”
“Yes. Why?”
“What does it look like?”
“It looks like a basket. The old-fashioned wicker kind.” Perhaps she had embellished it a bit with some stamped flag images, but he didn’t need to know that.
“Is your name on it?”
“No, because it’s supposed to be a blind drawing. And that’s technically three questions and why are you asking?”
“Because I intend to bid on it.”
“Why?”
“Because I figure it’s the only way I’m ever going to get you to go out to eat with me.”
“Even if you did win my basket, the rules clearly state that the maker isn’t required to eat with the winner. The auction isn’t a date fix-up. The idea is to raise money for school arts, creative writing classes, and music education. And given that your daughter is so artistic, you should be all for that.”
“I am. But are you telling me that if I win your basket, you’re going to refuse to eat with my daughter, who couldn’t stop talking about how much fun she had at your store today?”
“That’s playing dirty. And you’ve gone way over your question limit. Plus you’re running out of time.”
“So give me a hint. Not only do I still want to spend time with you, even though you did, for some reason we’ll talk about later, lie about your name, but you’ve got to protect me from Connie Fletcher.”
“Ah.” Annie laughed at that. Connie’s intense quest to snag husband number four was providing a great deal of grist for Shelter Bay’s gossip mill. It only stood to reason that she’d have zeroed in on the way hot midnight deejay as her next target.
“Don’t tell me that after having served multiple to
urs in war zones, you’re afraid of a mere female.”
“Hey, I’ve seen females capable of wielding automatic weapons better than a lot of guys, so I know exactly how dangerous you people can be. But this particular female’s a barracuda. And I wasn’t fighting while I was deployed. I was just the— “
“Guy on the radio. I know. And I also don’t believe it. Sedona told me that Kara told her that Sax told her that you used to go outside the wire all the time to report on troops stuck out in forward operating bases.”
“The troops didn’t get a lot of visitors out there in no-man’s-land. Those guys were working their tails off, so those of us who’d landed easy duty just wanted to show them we appreciated it.
“But you’re right, the clock’s ticking. So yes or no, and I’m giving you fair warning, if we’re still on the air when this song is over, I’m risking having the entire late-night audience of Shelter Bay hear my manhood crumble when you turn me down on live radio.”
“Somehow I suspect you’d survive.” She also suspected he was unaccustomed to being turned down by a woman. Which made her wonder why his wife had left.
“And how did you figure out who I was?”
“It was partly your voice. And partly because, ever since leaving Still Waters, I’ve been trying to figure out how I could have such a strong response to two different women. “
“You wouldn’t be the first man to have feelings for more than one woman at a time.”
“That’s not me. Not anymore, anyway. Then, driving to the studio tonight, it finally dawned on me that both women were you. . . .
“Say yes, Annie.” His voice deepened seductively. “What could it hurt? We’ll be in a public park with not only most of the town around us, but my daughter, too. I realize you don’t want to spend any time with me because of how we first met, but surely you’re not going to take the fact that I dissed cats out on a six-year-old motherless little girl?”
It was Annie’s turn to sigh. “You really don’t fight fair.”