by Debbie Mason
A touch of regret shadowed her eyes, and then she lifted her chin. “It’s not my fault your family’s ticked at you because you’re making an ass out of yourself over a woman who dumped you more than a decade ago.”
“You’re the one making this about Ava. It has nothing to do with her, and you know it. This is about you and me and the baby. Maybe, if you hadn’t made such a big deal about keeping your pregnancy a secret, we could have avoided this. It might have been nice if you let me know you were planning to visit, Lex.” He pushed the button on the elevator.
“I’m not visiting. I got an offer on the house that I couldn’t refuse. So I packed up my stuff, and here I am.”
“And you didn’t think you should tell me? What about your job?”
“I don’t know why you’re making such a big deal out of this. You were all for the idea before you moved back.” There was something desperate about the way she added, “You can’t change your mind now. This is happening. We’re doing this. It’s important for the baby to have family nearby. He’ll—”
“He’ll? We’re having a boy?” Griffin hadn’t let himself think about the baby. He didn’t want to get his hopes up again. But hearing he was having a son suddenly made it all seem real, and he felt a small measure of excitement stirring inside him.
Lexi stepped inside the elevator and nodded. He frowned at what sounded like a sniff. He followed her inside the elevator, took her by the shoulders, and turned her around. “Lex, honey, is something wrong with the baby?” He ducked to look her in the eyes.
She swiped at her damp cheeks. “No, he’s doing great. The doctor says he’s going to be a big, healthy boy.”
“Why are you crying then?” Probably a stupid question after what just went down in the ballroom, but Lexi rarely cried.
She scowled at him. “I’m not crying. I’m mad at you. You spoiled my surprise and made me feel like you didn’t want me here. Didn’t want us here.” She touched her rounded belly.
“I’m sorry.” He took her in his arms and kissed the top of her head. “We’ll work it out. Everything will be fine.”
She’d been right earlier. None of this was her fault. He should have told Ava and explained the situation. Eased Lexi into the idea that Ava would be a part of his life. Waited until the baby had arrived and they’d settled into a routine. Who was he trying to kid? He couldn’t have stayed away from Ava if he wanted to.
Lexi drew back. “Just don’t expect me to have anything to do with that woman.”
“That’s going to be a little tough, babe. Ava works here.”
“So she can get a job somewhere else. I don’t want to run into her every time I turn around. It shouldn’t be that difficult for her to get one. She’s just a maid.”
Chapter Sixteen
Griffin walked up to the side door of the white bungalow on South Shore Road. It looked different than he remembered. The house might be small and modest, but Gino’s pride of ownership had always shone through. So had Ava’s love for the gardens that her mother had started decades before. Now the house just looked unloved and uncared for with its peeling paint, crumbling sidewalk, and a roof in obvious need of repair. There was no sign of the gardens under the small patches of snow. Ava must have given up on them too.
The last memory Griffin had of being in the house was a late August morning before Ava went back to school and he deployed. It’d been about six months before she’d asked for a divorce. A warm breeze had been blowing off the harbor, ruffling the white lacy curtains and filling the house with the scent of lavender and basil from the herb garden in the flower boxes outside the kitchen window. Gino had already left for work, and Ava had been making Griffin breakfast, experimenting with some kind of omelet. It didn’t matter what she made, it was always amazing.
She’d been laughing herself sick over something as she stood by the stove with sunlight dancing in her long, curly hair, her eyes lit up and her skin tanned and glowing. He couldn’t remember what it was that made her laugh, probably because he’d been looking at her and thinking how crazy beautiful she was and how much he loved her and how he couldn’t wait for the day when they were living together full-time.
Ava had only been eighteen when they married, and he hadn’t felt right asking her to move away from her family and friends with a baby on the way and him set to deploy. And then she’d lost the baby, and he felt she needed their support even more. So when she decided to go to school for her nursing degree and received a scholarship from the university in Boston, they’d both agreed she should accept. She’d spent long weekends and holidays with him in Virginia or at one of the cottages at the manor when he was on leave. It wasn’t perfect, but they’d made the best of it. That August morning they’d been planning their future, counting down the days until she’d finish her degree. Only none of those plans came to fruition. He never did get to eat the omelet either.
He shook off the memories as the door started to open and Rosa appeared. Afraid she’d slam the door in his face when she saw who it was, he raised his hand. “I have to see her and explain.”
She stepped back. Dorothy was at the table and gave him a wan smile. “I hope you can get through to her, Griffin. She’s—”
“I’ve only seen her like this twice before, the day her mother died and the day she lost the baby. Her heart, it’s broken.” Rosa sat down, placing an elbow on the table to rest her face in her palm. Until that moment, he’d never thought of her as old.
If he’d been worried about Ava before, he was doubly so now. “Is she in her room?”
Reaching across the table to pat Rosa’s hand, Dorothy nodded. “Don’t give her a chance to turn you away. Just go in.”
He strode through the house, barely registering the changes as he made his way to Ava’s bedroom. Her room looked the same as he remembered. Ava lay on top of the double wedding ring quilt her mother had made for her daughter before she died. She’d used fabric from Ava’s summer dresses and her own to make the colorful rings. Ava used to bring it with her when she came to visit him. She was curled on her side away from him, still wearing the wedding gown. He started across the room, and then his eyes caught the framed photos on her nightstand, and he couldn’t move.
He stared at their wedding photo, at a picture of him surfing, one of Ava pregnant with him standing behind her, his arms around her. He half turned to her dresser, almost afraid to look. It was the same as her nightstand, covered with framed photos of them, her mother and father, Griffin’s mother and sister. Something told him that the photos weren’t recent additions, and his legs went weak at the thought. He reached for the edge of the bed, slowly lowering himself onto it.
The movement must have alerted Ava to his presence because she turned. She looked like she’d cried herself to sleep. “What are you doing here? You shouldn’t be here,” she said, her voice husky and tinged with panic.
The way her eyes darted from him to the nightstand, he didn’t think the panic had anything to do with Lexi. Ava didn’t want him to see the photos. His head was spinning with what that seemed to imply. Something inside him said to let it go. That he didn’t really want to know.
But he couldn’t let it go and leaned over to pick up their wedding photo, the one of her pregnant. “Why, baby? I don’t understand. If you didn’t love me anymore, why would you have all these pictures of us, of me?”
Some of the pain, the frustration from the past, leaked into his voice. He’d deleted their photos from his computer and his phone. Boxed up the others, along with his memories of the moments, and put them away.
“It doesn’t matter anymore. You have a wife and a baby on the way.” She rolled onto her back, swiping away the tear that slid off her cheek and into her hair. “You should have told me,” she said, her gaze on the photos in his hands. “It was wrong. What we did and said, it was wrong.”
He was close to losing it, walking a tightrope between hope and fear, frustration and relief. “Lexi and I aren’t married. We’ve
been divorced for more than three years.”
He felt the need to reiterate that even though she knew exactly how long it’d been. Then he explained the promise he’d made to Lex the night they’d met up to sign the divorce papers, sharing some laughs and a bottle of wine. He shared a bit about how the baby came to be. Not enough to make either of them uncomfortable, but enough that she’d understand that he hadn’t done anything wrong. He ended with the reasoning behind their decision to move back to Harmony Harbor and raise their son. “I should have told you, but Lexi wanted to keep it quiet until she was further along. If I’d known she was coming today, I wouldn’t have waited.”
“You’re going to get the baby boy you always wanted,” she said, a soft, wistful smile on her face. She lifted her gaze from the photo in his hand. “I’m happy for you. You’ll be a wonderful papa.”
And there it was, the reason he’d put off telling her. “I wish—”
She reached over, giving his hand a gentle squeeze. “Don’t. It wasn’t meant to be. You’ve got a second chance. Enjoy every precious moment of it.”
The doctors hadn’t been able to find a reason as to why their baby boy was stillborn. But they did discover that the doctor who’d delivered the baby via C-section hadn’t been qualified to do the surgery. Ava not only lost the baby that night, but she’d also lost the ability to conceive another one.
He looked down at the photo in his hand, of Ava heavy with their child, her beautiful, radiant smile. “I will, but it doesn’t mean I can or want to forget what we almost had. He’s a part of me too.”
She nodded, her small smile forced as she fought back tears. So brave, so good, so kind. He placed the photos on the nightstand and stood to remove the black jacket from Tie the Knot. He hadn’t taken the time to change after the meeting with his family. As he was reminded of the conversation with his dad and grandmother, the anger that had been riding him since Lexi arrived spiked.
His grandmother had all but chased down Father O’Malley, and his father hadn’t been far behind. The only thing that had kept Griffin from losing it on them was his baby brother, who’d acted as the voice of reason. At least in Colin’s and Kitty’s presence. Liam had kinda blown it when he’d walked Griffin to his truck. His brother had appointed himself Lexi’s protector. Liam didn’t know Griffin’s ex as well as he did. There was only one woman who needed protection, and she was lying in the bed looking up at him.
“What are you doing?” she asked as he toed off the black dress shoes.
He carefully moved the reams of flowered fabric. “I’m hoping to do what I’ve wanted to since I moved back to town,” he said, and lay down beside her. “I forgot how small your bed was.”
She shifted onto her hip. He took it as a good sign when she rested her cheek on his chest and didn’t object to his arm going around her. “You used to say it was cozy.”
He laughed. “I lied. Now”—he gently tipped her face up with two fingers—“let’s get the hard stuff out of the way so we can get to the good stuff.”
“Can we reverse the order?” she asked, placing her hand on his stomach.
Holding her gaze, he moved his fingers along her jaw until they tangled in the mass of her long, dark curls. He touched his mouth to her soft lips, smiling against them at her sweet, breathy sigh. He drew back just enough to look in her eyes. “You aren’t trying to distract me, are you?”
Slowly smoothing her hand up his stomach to his chest, she gave a tiny negative shake of her head and stroked her fingers in the opening at his neck. “I didn’t put the photos away because I wanted you, us, to be the first thing I saw when I opened my eyes in the morning and the last thing I saw when I closed them at night. I never stopped loving you. I never will.” She lowered her head to replace her fingers with her warm lips.
He lay there, unable to speak, unable to move. He’d been trained to act quickly, efficiently, eliminate the threat without thought or emotion. That last month with Ava all those years before he’d been in a battle—for her and for her heart. He hadn’t known who or what he was fighting. He’d done everything, tried everything, and still he’d failed, both her and himself.
She lifted her hand to stroke his face, pressing her mouth to the underside of his jaw. Her lips trembled against his skin, a hot tear splashing on his neck, and then she trailed small kisses all the way to his ear and whispered, “It wasn’t your fault. You did nothing wrong. There was nothing more you could have done to help me. I had to help myself.”
Her admission cut the thread that had been holding his anger in check, unlocking his muscles, his voice. “No, all you had to do was let me in. We said the vows, made the promise to be there for each other in sickness and in health, in the good times and in the bad. That’s the promise I made to you, Ava.” He cleared the emotion from his throat, his eyes burning. “You didn’t let me keep it. I shouldn’t have let you go. Should have fought harder.”
“I tried to fight. I did fight, but I wasn’t strong enough. I never meant to break my vows. I never meant to break my promise to you.” Her fingers clutched his shirt, her eyes desperate and pleading. “I loved you. I love you. You are the only man I’ve ever loved. You have to believe me. You have to—”
She was beside herself, almost beyond reason. Why couldn’t he have just left it alone? He pulled her into his arms and rocked her. “Shh, it’s okay, baby. It’s over. It was a long time ago. We’ll put it behind us, okay? We’ll start over.” His gut twisted as he remembered what a mess he’d been when he’d lost her. He couldn’t go through that again. Smoothing his hand down her hair, he rubbed her back, waiting until he felt the tension release. “Ava, baby, look at me a minute.”
Her groan vibrated against his chest, and then she raised her head. “You said we were putting it behind us.”
He smiled. Her reaction was more typical of the woman he remembered. He took her face in his hands and kissed her long and deep, feeling a little panicked as his need for her almost overrode the need to protect his heart. He slowly drew back, searching her face, relieved to see the color in her cheeks and the dazed and heated look in her heavily lidded eyes.
“We are putting the past behind us. I won’t bring it up again. But before we do, I need one promise from you.”
She gave him a wary look. “What?”
He kissed her again, a little longer, a little deeper, and then like she had done to him, trailed his lips along her delicate jaw to her ear. He gently nipped the lobe, then soothed it with a kiss before whispering, “All I ask is that, if you ever feel yourself slipping, you have to talk to me. You can’t try and deal with it on your own. If it happens again, we’ll deal with it together and see a professional. I talked to Doc Bishop about it, and he thinks it wasn’t just one thing that led to your depression.”
She pushed herself onto her knees. “You talked to Dr. Bishop about me?”
“Yeah, when you ended up in the hospital for exhaustion,” he said defensively. “And don’t tell me it wasn’t my place because—”
Her face softened. “It’s okay. I understand why you did and why you’re worried. But you don’t have to be. It won’t happen again. But I promise, if I have any concerns at all, I’ll talk to you about it. And I’ll talk to Dr. Bishop.”
“You won’t try to diagnose yourself again? Because, babe, you have a tendency to think you know better than the doctors.”
She arched an eyebrow, took his arm, and unbuttoned the cuff, pushing it up to reveal the thick scar on his forearm. “The quack stitched this,” she said, referring to the medic on the base. Leaning in, she traced the barely visible scar that bisected his eyebrow. “I stitched this.”
He laughed, pulling her on top of him. “Okay, so you’re good at taking care of other people, just not yourself.” Wasn’t that the truth, he thought, thinking about her father. But right now he wanted to stop thinking about anyone else but them. “Time for the good stuff now?” He waggled his eyebrows, trying to make light of a moment he’d been
dreaming about for years.
“Ava, Griffin, the lasagna is ready,” Rosa called through the door.
“We’ll be right there, Auntie Rosa.” Ava smiled when he groaned his frustration. “The good stuff will have to wait. She needs to know I’m okay. I worried her.” She got off the bed. “Would you mind undoing me?”
“Is that a trick question?” he asked, coming to stand behind her. He moved her hair over her shoulder, pressing his lips to her nape. “You never looked more beautiful than you did today, Ava. That song was for you. I meant every word.”
She shivered as he trailed his fingers up and down her bare back, then turned her face to look up at him. “Will you stay with me tonight?”
“There’s nowhere else I’d rather be.”
Ava had a feeling Griffin would rather be anywhere else than at her kitchen table being grilled by her Auntie Rosa.
“So, you’re in love with our Ava again. Is that what you’re telling me?”
He wasn’t the only one who’d rather be anywhere but here.
Griffin looked across the table at Ava, his dimple deepening in his cheek. “No, not again. I never stopped loving her.”
In a way, she was surprised Rosa even had to ask with the meaningful glances Griffin had been sending Ava’s way since they sat down. Despite looking like a hot mess with her bloodshot eyes and disheveled hair, Griffin hadn’t taken his eyes off her.
Rosa patted his arm. “Okay, now I understand.”
Looking pleased that he’d finally gotten through to her aunt, Griffin started eating again.
Rosa leaned down and came up with her cell phone in her hand. As she typed impressively fast with two thumbs, she said, “You were married on the beach last time, so this time, maybe in the church, sí?” She waved her hand at what must have been Ava and Griffin’s slack-jawed expressions. “It’s okay, Kitty and I will look after the detail—”