One-Click Buy: April Harlequin Blaze

by Kathleen O'Reilly

  Speeding up the freeway, she thought about updating her résumé and beginning the search for a new job. She had a friend at an employment agency who could help her find openings, and though she might not get the salary she was making now, at least she’d walk away feeling empowered, reminding herself that she was the one in control of her career, not Brayton Hall.

  She liked that idea and the sense of freedom it gave her. Until the thought of not seeing Matt every day pulled the weight back onto her shoulders. It lodged a lump in her throat and stung the backs of her eyes.

  God help her, she loved him, and as much as it hurt thinking he’d only used her to get the promotion, the idea of never seeing him again hurt more. It crushed against her chest and quivered her chin, and by the time she got to her mother’s apartment she’d managed to work herself into a complete and total state of misery.

  Pulling into the complex, she saw that a midnight-blue Mercedes with shiny new Nevada plates was parked in the spot she usually took, so she rounded the lot and parallel parked on the street instead. She was a bit early, but given this was her mother’s day off work, she knew her mom would be there and there’d be something she could help with before dinner.

  At least twice a month Carly tried to spend some time with her mom and Jodi, often bringing Jodi back to her house for a sisters-only sleepover. With fourteen years between them, they’d both nearly been raised as only children, and she knew how much Jodi treasured the time they spent doing sisterly things.

  She used her key to let herself in, only to be greeted by the sound of her father’s voice.

  “There’s my girl!” he called out, pulling up from the couch and moving to the entryway to surround her in a bear hug.

  Carly was taken aback. The man had been gone four months, longer than he usually stayed away without so much as popping in for a weekend, and a side of her had thought this time he might not be coming back. Her father sold vacation property, his business taking him wherever there were new developments popping up. From what she understood, he was licensed to sell real estate all over the western half of the United States, and if that were the case, Carly didn’t understand why he couldn’t make a lucrative career selling homes around here. The agents she knew were doing well for themselves, none of them needing to spend weeks and months away from their families in order to make a living.

  And none of them leaving their wives and daughters nearly broke and having to fend for themselves.

  There was way more to the story than she’d ever know, and for the most part she’d stopped asking. Her mother was a fool in love, and she supposed, when looking at David Abrams objectively, Carly couldn’t blame her.

  The man was strikingly good-looking, with vivid blue eyes, thick salt-and-pepper hair and a strong jaw and nose reminiscent of a Roman warrior. In many ways he reminded her of Matt, and the irony of the situation wasn’t lost on Carly. She was finding herself quickly trailing in the path of her mother if she allowed her life to go that way.

  He pulled from the embrace and clasped his hands to her shoulders. “I think you’ve gotten more beautiful since I saw you last.”

  She tried to stretch her mouth into a smile, when Jodi jumped up behind him. “Dad’s home! And look what he brought me!”

  Jodi spun around, her long brown hair whipping around like a horse’s tail, her pink-and-yellow sundress twirling at her waist. And on her back was a bright purple backpack.

  “Oh,” Carly said, forcing the annoyance from her tone. “A purple backpack.”

  He placed an affectionate hand on Jodi’s head and gave it a rub. “Carol said she needed one. I found that in an outlet mall just outside Vegas.” He accepted another hug from his youngest daughter. “Is that what you were hoping for, sweetheart?”

  Carly seethed, not at all in the mood for dealing with any of this today. Life had already gotten bad enough without her father stepping in. She’d hoped a nice evening and some motherly advice might improve things, but instead David Abrams had shown up and worsened it.

  “I still love the one you gave me,” Jodi said to Carly. “This will be my school bag and I’ll use yours for camps.”

  “Oh, and I’ve got something for you, too,” their father said, pulling out a velvet box and placing it in Carly’s hands. She opened it, and inside was a tennis bracelet as sparkly and shiny as the smile on his face.

  It was classic David Abrams. Her mother had a jewelry box filled with things like this, none of it coming in handy when tuition was due or the rent was late.

  She feigned acceptance for the sake of keeping peace, but it burned that her father could waltz in with the wind, throw presents around and make everyone swoon. Where had he been when she was driving all over Marin trying desperately to find her sister exactly what she wanted? What was he doing when her mother was sick but still pulling herself through finals on top of taking care of his daughter? And if he was such a master at selling real estate, why was his family living in this shabby little apartment?

  She stopped and stared as a chafing thought popped in her mind. “Is that your Mercedes out there?”

  He grinned. “Nice, huh?”

  “Did you know Mom’s Toyota has over two hundred thousand miles on it?”

  On that note, Carly’s mother whisked from the kitchen with a plate of cheese and crackers. “Let’s go sit down. I’m sure everyone’s hungry.”

  Carol Abrams was a woman who looked young for her age, she and Carly often being mistaken for sisters. In her jeans and tight sleeveless T-shirt, Carly knew she could have a dozen men interested in taking her out, yet she sat here in this dingy apartment trying to make ends meet while she stayed forever faithful to this man she called a husband. It was a situation Carly would never, ever understand.

  Dropping the bracelet in her purse, she followed them into the small living room.

  “I didn’t know it had gotten that old,” her father said. “We’ll have to take care of that.”

  “The Mercedes must have cost a fortune,” Carly said, ignoring the look of scorn in her mother’s eyes. Someone had to stick up for the family. Carol Abrams surely didn’t.

  “Now, Carly, I know what you’re thinking, but to make money in my business I’ve got to spend it. No one’s going to buy a lakefront estate from someone driving around in a rust bucket.”

  Carly took a seat at the small dining table that made up half of the living room. “And exactly what lake are you selling?”

  Her father rolled up the sleeves on his tailored dress shirt, then rested an arm on the back of the sofa. “We just wrapped up a new subdivision out near Vegas. Now I’m heading up to Shastina.”

  “That’s five hours from here.”

  He grinned. “I know. I’ll finally be able to start coming home on weekends.”

  Weekends. How lucky for them.

  She spent the rest of the evening trying to put on a good face for the sake of her mother and Jodi, deciding not to ruin a night with Dad by pointing out the obvious to everyone in the room. In Carly’s eyes, there was no way a handsome man like David Abrams would spend four months of celibacy—in Vegas, no less—being true to the woman he ignored. And while she’d long ago lost respect for her father, she’d never accept why a bright, attractive woman like her mother put up with it.

  It wasn’t until the next day when she showed up for Jodi’s softball game and her father was once again absent that the lid blew off Carly’s restraint.

  “Where is he?” she asked her mother.

  Her mother shrugged flippantly. “He just had to run some errands. He said he wouldn’t miss Jodi’s game. He promised.”

  “It’s the third inning. When are you going to stop letting him make promises to Jodi you know he won’t keep?”

  “This isn’t the time or place,” Carol said, resting a hand on Carly’s thigh.

  Carly lowered her voice. “Jodi keeps looking up here. If he doesn’t appear before the end of the game, she’s going to be devastated. Again.”
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br />   “Jodi will be fine,” her mother assured, and it was the last thing Carly could take before she snapped.

  “No, she won’t be fine. None of us will be fine.”

  Confusion, resentment and frustration clamped around her throat, and she shot up from the bleachers and stormed out to the parking lot. The week had finally caught up to her to the extent that she couldn’t handle any more. She wanted to step back in time, back when things were good and she was happy in love, sharing her days and nights with Matt. She wanted him here right now, calming her nerves, whispering sweet assurances and helping her gain perspective on this life that kept throwing her curveballs at every turn.

  But just like her father, Matt wasn’t here. Instead he was on a golf course, advancing the career that should have been hers. And later, when he was having cocktails at the nineteenth hole, she’d be consoling her sister after the other man in her life let them down again.

  Anger boiled in her chest and tears of loss singed her eyes as she stepped to her mother’s beat-up Toyota and leaned against the hood.

  Why had she let herself fall in love with him? She knew from the moment she met Matt Jacobs he was destined to break her heart. The survey hadn’t lied. It had spelled out exactly the kind of man she was dealing with, but somewhere in all the confetti she’d let that fact escape her mind. How could she have forgotten? What had she actually thought would happen once he took the management job and didn’t need her anymore?

  “Carly, what’s gotten into you?” Her mother came up behind her and placed a hand on her shoulder. “Why are you so upset? Your father said he’d be here, and he will.”

  She spun around, hurt and ire spilling from her eyes and fisting around her chest. “No, he won’t. It will be just like always. He’s got an excuse, something came up. It’s the same thing he always does. He waltzes in with presents, throws money around for a minute, then walks out to spend the next four months doing what he wants.”

  “He’s got to make a living, Carly.”

  “And he can’t do that and have a family at the same time?”

  “He does have a family, we just have to make sacrifices on occasion. That’s how families get along.”

  “But why are we the ones doing all the sacrificing? What is he missing out on? While we do all the work, he walks in and grabs the credit, and in the end we’re supposed to smile and be grateful we helped him make it to the top.” The more she spoke, the angrier she became. “Just once I’d like to see him sacrifice something for me. Prove to me I haven’t been the stooge all along, working to get him promoted.” Tears rolled down her cheeks and she couldn’t catch her breath. “God, he hasn’t even so much as taken me out to dinner. I’m the one who put him there—and where is he? Playing golf with his new executive cronies.”

  “Carly, what on earth are you talking about?” Her mother’s eyes grew dark and concerned.

  “Dad! Where do you think he is right now? Poor Jodi’s there in the dugout, praying her father will watch her bat, and where is he?”

  “Honey, you’re confusing me.”

  Carly’s chest heaved, her eyes blurred. “How could I be so stupid? I saw it right on his survey. He’s just like Dad. He’s exactly like Dad. I even thought that to myself when I sat in Bev’s den and read the survey. How could I have just slid that under the rug?”

  Her mother grabbed her shoulders. “Carly, what are you talking about? What survey?”

  She stopped and stared.

  “Matt, Mom. He got the promotion and I’ve barely seen him since.” Saying it out loud released another wave of tears, and she clutched her mother and buried her face in her chest. “It’s just like Bev said. He was only using me to get the job.”

  Her mother held her tight. “Oh, Carly. Is that what he said?”

  “He doesn’t have to. It’s all playing out like I feared. He got my job, he got the big cushy office, and I’m left with nothing.”

  “Now, wait a minute,” Carol said, holding her daughter close but nudging them toward a park bench. “You aren’t making sense. Sit down and tell me what happened.”

  Carly did, starting with the survey and going from there. She told her about the management job opening and how she and Matt had both been in the running, about their agreement to work together and even the loving time they’d spent in each other’s arms. And then she detailed the events of the last week, how he’d been planning to meet her family, how excited Jodi had been about meeting a real baseball player and how it all fell apart the moment he got the job.

  And when she was done she felt tired and spent, as if a lifetime of dreams and failures had just played out in front of her.

  “I think you need to have a little more patience,” her mother said. “It’s like you said—he just got promoted. It’s a stressful time for him and he needs to focus on that. It doesn’t mean he’s stopped caring for you.”

  Of course her mother would think that. Carol Abrams was faithful to a fault, their whole family suffering because of her staunch belief in the good of human nature.

  Carly had always sworn she’d never be so foolish, and in a way she felt compelled to do the opposite of whatever advice her mom tried to dole out, wanting to make sure she didn’t end up in the same place twenty-six years from now.

  “Why do you do it, Mom?” she asked. “Doesn’t it ever cross your mind Dad’s cheating on you?”

  “I have to have faith in our vows, Carly. Without that, a marriage is nothing.”

  “Mom, don’t be stupid.”

  Her mother held up a hand the same way she always did when Carly went down this path, but this time Carly saw things differently. She’d had a taste of a man like her father, and as exciting as Matt was, as thrilling as he’d been to be with, she could never play second fiddle in his life the way her mother did in her dad’s.

  “I know he’s not the father you wanted.”

  “Is he the husband you wanted?” she asked.

  Carol cocked a crooked smile. “I don’t have a choice. I fell in love with him and I’ve never fallen out. Besides,” she said, staring off toward the football field in the distance, “I knew what I was getting into when I married him.”

  “He’s always been like this?”

  “He could never settle down. And all I have to do is say the word and he would take me with him wherever he went. But I didn’t want that for you and Jodi.” She eyed her daughter, for the first time explaining this strange relationship of hers. “It’s my choice to stay here in one place, not his. If I said so, we’d all be living as a family and probably much better off without the added expense of maintaining two households. But your father’s not going to change, and I never wanted you girls to have to move around along with him. So this is the compromise we made.”

  It shed some light on the situation but did little to help Carly’s opinion of him. “And he couldn’t make sacrifices to keep us together as a family? Would it really kill the guy to make a living in one place for a while?”

  Carol bit her lip and darted her eyes. “It’s like I said, Carly. I knew what I was getting into when I married him.”

  Carly looked across the large grassy field where dozens of little boys in oversize shoulder pads were getting ready for Pop Warner football. And as she watched she realized she’d been given the same view of Matt. She’d read his survey, she’d known exactly who she was dealing with and what she was getting into. The survey hadn’t lied and neither had he. She’d simply been her mother’s child, the fool in love who’d turned her back to the grim reality and hoped somewhere it would have all played out differently.

  But it hadn’t. Life turned out exactly as she should have expected all those weeks ago, and it was silly, really, to be sitting here shocked and dismayed in the aftermath.

  It wouldn’t have taken a psychic to figure out that Matt was destined to walk away with the job and she was destined to end up with nothing. And as she sat here in the sisterhood of another woman who’d lost her heart to the
wrong man, Carly went back to the promise she’d made to herself years ago.

  Love or not in love, she wasn’t going to end up like her mother.

  17

  MATT WALKED INTO the Dugout only three minutes late, having had to duck out of the office in order to keep his meeting with Tommy, the boy he’d been helping with batting lessons. After the golf game Saturday, Hall had pulled him along for the weekend, entertaining prospective clients and keeping Matt at his side until late last night. He’d wanted to meet up with Carly, try to make things right between them, but every chance he’d had to call her she’d cut him off short.

  And this morning seeing her in person hadn’t gone much better.

  Truth was, she was pulling away from him, creating a valley between them he couldn’t seem to cross, and with every moment that passed more and more he feared he might not get her back again.

  That was one problem he’d been dealing with, the second being keeping up with Hall’s new schedule without letting down his new student. He’d literally run from the office, disregarding an electronic calendar invite for yet another meeting in order to keep this lesson with Tommy. Job or no job, Matt wasn’t going to let the kid down.

  He rushed up the old wood stairs to the cages and pro shop, expecting to see Tommy sitting at their favorite table next to the Gatorade machine, but the table was empty.

  Stu’s daughter, Patsy, called from behind the counter. “Tommy had to cancel. Orthodontist appointment. Didn’t you get the message?”

  Matt’s shoulders slumped. “No, I haven’t had a chance to check my messages today.”

  Patsy smiled apologetically. “Yeah, well, he said he’d see you next week at the regular time.”

  Matt slipped into a chair and ran a hand over his face. He wanted to catch his breath after the mad rush here and decided, as a consolation, he had an hour to kill before returning to the chaos Hall had been keeping him in.

  “Dad’s in the cages if you want to say hi,” Patsy said. “He’s recalibrating machine number three.”