Beach Lane

by Sherryl Woods

  “You know it would be,” she said. “It’s not about being ashamed, Matthew. It’s about being prudent. This is Chesapeake Shores. You know the kind of talk it would stir up. In my position at the bank—”

  “Damn the bank!” he said fiercely. “This is not about the bank, Laila. It’s about you and your crazy idea that what we have can’t possibly go anywhere.”

  “It can’t,” she said simply.

  “Tell me why.”

  “Because…” She faltered. She could have listed a hundred reasons why their relationship could never work, but knew he’d find a way to counter every one of them. He was good at that, at making what was happening between them seem rational and potentially enduring. She just knew better than to buy it. Not a single one of her relationships with far more suitable men had lasted. Why on earth would this one?

  As he waited for her reply, he was clearly growing more exasperated.

  “If you throw the age thing in my face, I’m not sure how I’ll react,” he burst out finally. “I swear I sometimes think I’m more mature than you are.”

  Laila felt the sting of his words. “That’s a lousy thing to say.”

  “Hey, I’m ready to step up and acknowledge what we have. I care about you. This isn’t just a fling for me. How about you? Can you say the same?”

  Laila hesitated a little too long.

  “I thought so,” he said. “Well, great as the sex is, I’m not settling for just that. Go ahead and leave. You can call me when you decide you’re interested in more than my body.”

  She actually thought she heard a trace of hurt in his voice, but that couldn’t possibly be. Matt was the kind of guy who never had anything more than flings. He should be thrilled by this no-strings relationship of theirs, her desire to be discreet, to avoid complications. At one point he had been. Clearly, though, that wasn’t the case any longer.

  “Matt, what’s really going on here?” she asked, confused by his desire to change the rules.

  “I just told you. I’m tired of having you treat this as some kind of back-alley affair,” he said. He leveled a look into her eyes and added, “Either we go public and give it a chance to turn into something real, or I’m done.”

  His words rattled her more than she’d imagined possible. Did she really want this to end? It was certainly the sensible thing, but when she thought of the empty, lonely nights she’d had before this relationship had started, she felt sick inside. The question, though, was whether her feelings had anything at all to do with Matt himself or whether any intelligent, attractive man would have filled the void. She needed time to figure that out.

  “Maybe that’s a good idea,” she told him. “Calling it quits, I mean. It sounds as if we could both use some space to figure out what we really want.”

  He scowled at the suggestion. “I already know what I want, but if you don’t, then by all means, take all the time you need.”

  He started pulling on clothes, his movements jerky. “Let’s go.”

  “Where are you going?” she asked, watching as he grabbed his keys and headed for the door.

  “I’m taking you home.”

  “Matt, it’s two blocks. I can walk.”

  “Not in the middle of the night you can’t,” he declared, his scowl daunting. “I don’t care how safe Chesapeake Shores is, at 3:00 a.m. we’re not taking any chances.”

  “I’ve walked home before.”

  “Sure, when you’ve successfully slipped out without waking me. Well, tonight I’m awake, and I’m driving you home, or walking with you, or walking twenty paces behind. Take your pick.”

  She regarded him with frustration. “Geez, you’re stubborn.”

  “Not a news flash, darlin’. Now, what’s it going to be?”

  She relented. “You can walk with me.”

  “Thank you,” he said with exaggerated gratitude.

  “Starting the car might wake the neighbors,” she added, knowing perfectly well it would provoke him.

  He rolled his eyes. “Whatever.”

  They made the two-block walk in silence. Laila felt the tension between them getting thicker and thicker. By the time they reached her two-bedroom bungalow on Primrose Way just off Main Street, she was so rattled she couldn’t get her key into the lock.

  “Let me,” Matt said, nudging her aside.

  When the door swung open, Laila started to slip past him, but he blocked her way. She met his gaze, saw the anger blazing there. Or was it passion?

  “This isn’t over,” he said quietly. “Not by a long shot.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  He smiled then, even though it didn’t quite reach his eyes. “No need to be. I’ve always loved a good challenge.”

  Before she could move, he kissed her soundly, then headed down the block, whistling softly. It was an airy little tune, Irish, if she wasn’t mistaken, a reminder of the O’Brien stubbornness, perhaps.

  The sound faded as he turned back onto Main. Only then did she go inside and close the door. Leaning against it, Laila breathed a sigh of relief. She’d done it. She’d called it quits. Again. Or he had. It hardly mattered which of them had first said the words. The whole thing had never made a lick of sense in the first place.

  Then she thought of the way Matt’s lips had felt against hers just now—knowing, persuasive, determined. She thought of the immediate heat that had stirred at his touch, and knew with absolutely certainty that Matt had gotten it just right. They were far from done.

  Matt showed up at Susie’s just before dinnertime. “I come bearing gifts. Does that earn me the right to stay for dinner?”

  Susie grinned at her brother, then caught a glimpse of the rolled-up pages he was carrying. She knew an architect’s drawings when she saw them. “Our house?”

  “Just some preliminary sketches, but yes.”

  “Gimme,” she said eagerly, wiggling her fingers to grasp the pages.

  “Not until you invite me to dinner,” he said, holding them aloft. “What are we having?” He sniffed the air. “I don’t smell anything cooking.”

  “Mack’s bringing home Chinese. I’ll call him and tell him to add another order of egg rolls, some sweet-and-sour soup and whatever else you want if you’ll hand me those drawings now.”

  “Call first,” Matt said. “You might back down if you don’t like the drawings, and I’m starved.”

  Susie laughed, but she made the call and told Mack about her brother’s impromptu visit. “And hurry, Mack. There’s something you have to see.”

  “What?”

  “You’ll see when you get here.”

  He hesitated. “Look, as long as your brother’s there, why don’t I bring Kristen along?”

  Susie froze. “Tonight? You want to bring her here now?”

  “It just seems like the perfect opportunity for you to get to know her. Maybe she and Matthew would hit it off.”

  Susie thought of the drawings of their dream house that her brother had brought. She didn’t want to share those with her husband’s ex-lover. “Not tonight,” she said tightly.

  “You’ve said that every other time I’ve suggested it, too.”

  “Then maybe you should take the hint,” she said, slamming down the phone.

  She looked up to find her brother staring at her worriedly. “What was that about?”

  “Nothing to concern you,” she said, trying to inject a chipper note into her voice.

  Matthew clearly didn’t buy it. “Susie, what’s going on? Are you and Mack having some kind of problem?”

  “No,” she said at once, determined not to stir up his protective instincts. Next thing she knew the entire family would be on the warpath. While that might be satisfying on some levels, it wasn’t the way to handle any issues in her marriage.

  “Do I need to have a talk with him?” Matthew persisted.

  “Absolutely not. Now, let me see those drawings.”

  “Don’t you want to wait until Mack gets here?”

  �
��There’s no telling how long he’ll be. Show me,” she commanded.

  Matthew rolled out the drawings on the dining-room table, then stood back while she studied them. She’d seen enough architectural plans in her lifetime to know exactly what she was seeing. She blinked back tears.

  “Oh, Matt, it’s perfect. It’s exactly the way I envisioned it.”

  “Four bedrooms and a study, just the way you wanted. There’s a lot of glass facing the bay upstairs and down, so the light should be amazing.” He gestured toward the foundation. “I’ve used fieldstone here, and a grayish-brown siding with white trim. I think it’ll make the house blend into the woods surrounding it, so it looks almost like part of the landscape.”

  “And you can avoid tearing out all of the beautiful old trees?”

  “Of course. We’ll do as little damage to the area as possible. I didn’t grow up around Uncle Thomas without learning a thing or two about protecting the environment.”

  The front door opened then and Mack walked in, saw the two of them huddled over the drawings and crossed the room. “What do we have here?” he asked as he set aside the bags of takeout.

  Susie ignored the remnants of her earlier annoyance and beamed at him. “Plans for our house on Beach Lane,” she told him, then quickly added, “They can be modified if there’s anything you hate or anything I didn’t think of. Matt wanted to do them for us as a wedding present.”

  Mack nodded. “It’s an amazing present,” he told Matthew, though Susie heard the reservation in his voice. “Let’s take a look.”

  Susie left it to her brother to explain the drawings while she got out plates and silverware for their dinner. She set the far end of the table, and Mack pored over the drawings at the opposite end.

  “Well?” she prodded eventually, studying his expression. “What do you think?”

  He met her gaze. “Is this the house you want?”

  She nodded. “I think it’s perfect.”

  “Then it’s the house we’ll build,” Mack told her. “We won’t be able to get started on it right away. Every dime I have is tied up in the paper.”

  Susie started to tell him that her father had offered to front them the money, but now wasn’t the time. Mack would turn the offer down flat, especially if she made it in front of her brother.

  “I know, but it’s great to have the design ready to go when we are,” she said enthusiastically.

  Mack nodded. “Absolutely.” He clapped Matthew on the back. “Thanks. You did a great job. It’s an amazing present.”

  “I was happy to do it,” Matthew said, looking from Mack to her and back again. “Look, I know I planned to stay for dinner, but I think I’ll take off. You all probably don’t get a lot of time together these days. I shouldn’t intrude.”

  “Don’t go,” Susie pleaded. “I promised you dinner.”

  “I’ll just take my egg rolls and soup home,” Matthew said. “No big deal.” He leaned down and kissed her on the cheek. “See you soon.”

  He left before she could summon up another argument. She whirled on Mack.

  “Why did you run him off?”

  He stared at her incredulously. “Me?”

  “He obviously felt the tension between us.”

  “Probably because he knew you’d hung up on me earlier,” Mack said. “Why did you do that, by the way?”

  “Because I couldn’t believe you wanted to bring your ex-lover over here to meet my brother. I don’t want her in our personal lives, Mack. It’s too much.”

  With that, she burst into tears and left the room, cursing herself for being so foolish and letting him see how just the mention of Kristen was so upsetting to her.

  Mack followed her into the bedroom, then sat down beside her.

  “Susie, I thought you were okay with her being here,” he said.

  “I was,” she murmured. “I am. Theoretically, anyway.”

  She looked up and caught the beginnings of a smile on his lips. “Don’t you dare laugh at me.”

  “I’m not. I’m just thinking about how Will pegged it exactly right.”

  “Will? What does he have to do with anything?”

  “He told me you’d say what I wanted to hear, then regret it later.”

  “I’m sorry. I know I’m being unreasonable. And I probably would feel a thousand times better if she were involved with someone else, but my brother, Mack? Come on. That’s a little too close to home.”

  He shrugged. “And probably a pipe dream anyway, if he’s involved with someone else.”

  Susie frowned. “I wonder about that. He hasn’t mentioned anyone recently.”

  “He’s not likely to,” Mack said, his expression grim.

  “What is that supposed to mean?”

  “Just that he seemed determined to keep the relationship under wraps.”

  “He did, didn’t he? I wonder why that is?”

  “Probably because he knows it’s doomed,” Mack said direly.

  Susie sat up. “There it is again. You know something, don’t you?”

  Mack touched her cheek. “Still not at liberty to say.”

  “But you must not approve if you were so eager to set him up with Kristen,” she persisted, trying to pry it out of him bit by bit.

  “It’s not up to me to approve or disapprove,” he said, “and that is all I intend to say about that. Do you think you can stop being mad at me long enough to go in there and take another look at those house plans? I’d love it if you’d walk me through them, tell me exactly what you’re envisioning.”

  “It’s all there on paper, pretty much the way you described it to me that day at Beach Lane a few months ago. I’ve added a few ideas of my own, but it’s your house, Mack.”

  He draped an arm around her shoulders and drew her close. “No, it’s our house, Susie. And we’re going to make a lot of memories there, enough to last a lifetime.”

  She leaned against his chest and closed her eyes. “I want to believe that, Mack. I really do.”

  “Then believe it,” he said. “Hold on to it with everything in you. It’s one more reason to keep fighting the cancer with all you’ve got.”

  Right now, in his arms, that was easy enough to do, but tomorrow, when those poisonous chemicals were dripping into her body once again, it would be a whole lot harder to hold on to the dream.

  Mack had just stepped out of his car in front of the newspaper office a couple of hours after dinner when his brother-in-law came out of the shadows, his expression grim.

  “What’s going on with you and Susie?” Matthew demanded. “Don’t lie to me and tell me everything’s fine. You could cut the tension tonight with a knife. And I was there when she snapped at you on the phone and hung up. What was that about?”

  “I’m not discussing my marriage with you,” Mack said. Only the knowledge that Matthew truly cared about his sister kept Matt from saying more about his brother-in-law’s interference in something so personal.

  “So help me, if you’ve done something to hurt her, I’ll break your neck. Don’t you know she can’t take any stress right now? She has to save all her energy for fighting the cancer.”

  “I know that,” Mack said.

  “Then why are you deliberately upsetting her?”

  “Let it go, Matthew. Susie and I will work things out.”

  Matthew frowned. “That tells me there’s something that needs to be worked out. What is it?”

  Just then he glanced toward the newspaper office and caught a glimpse of Kristen through the window. He muttered an expletive under his breath. “It’s her, isn’t it? She’s the problem.”

  “Kristen is not a problem. She’s creating the paper’s web presence. That’s it.”

  “But Susie’s freaking out about her, isn’t she?” He gave Mack a disgusted look. “Man, do you know nothing about my sister? She’s always been insecure where you’re concerned. Having your ring on her finger should have changed that, and maybe without the whole cancer thing it would hav
e, but come on.” He gestured toward Kristen. “You bring a woman who looks like that into the middle of your life now? Are you crazy? Even I would have had better sense.”

  “My relationship with Kristen is totally innocent,” Mack said, “and I certainly don’t have to justify my hiring decisions to you.”

  “Did you run it past Susie?”

  “As a matter of fact, I did.”

  “So you knew it could cause a problem and you did it anyway,” Matthew said, regarding him with dismay. “What were you thinking?”

  “That I wanted this paper to be a success, and Kristen could help me make that happen,” Mack said. “Susie agreed. Now, go home, Matthew. I have work to do.”

  Matthew cast another look inside. “I’ll go, but so help me, Mack, I’d better not find out you’ve been cheating on my sister.”

  Mack regarded him solemnly. “It’s not going to happen, Matthew. I give you my word on that.”

  Matthew didn’t look entirely appeased, but he nodded eventually. “Okay, then.”

  Mack hesitated, then thought of his earlier plan to introduce Matthew and Kristen. “Want to come inside? You can meet her and see for yourself that nothing’s going on.”

  “I’ll pass,” Matthew said a little too quickly.

  “Not interested?”

  “I’d have to be dead not to be a little intrigued,” he said, casting another surreptitious glance through the window. He shook his head. “No way. I’ve got enough female problems on my plate these days without adding anyone else into the mix.”

  Mack seized on the opening. “Are you and Laila having problems?”

  “What we’re having is a stupid, unnecessary separation,” Matthew said. “Her choice. Or maybe mine. It got a little muddy when it came right down to it.”

  “Then it’s over?”

  “Of course not. She just thinks it is.”

  Mack chuckled. “You know I had my doubts when I first figured out what was going on between the two of you, but I’m starting to rethink that. Laila may be exactly the right woman for you. Like Susie did with me, Laila’s not going to let you get away with a thing.”