A Forever Kind of Guy: The Braddock Brotherhood, Book 2 (13 page)

She escaped to the bathroom, hoping to distract herself from her dismal thoughts. Ridiculous, she thought. Maybe she couldn’t be like everyone else. Not like Trey’s parents, or Ray’s, still blissfully wed after so many years. So what? She’d survive.

The heat and humidity were doing a number on her hair and makeup. She pressed some powder to her nose and re-clipped her hair. She was digging in her purse for her lip gloss when she heard voices near the door, maybe coming from the bedroom at the end of the hall a few feet away.

“Who is this woman, that’s all I want to know.” It was a woman’s voice. Lena Braddock.

“Mom, I told you, she rents the other half of the duplex from him. I met her today for the first time.” That had to be Rick.

“And he hasn’t said anything to you about her before now?”

“Not really. I’ve only seen him a couple of times since he got back.”

“Your father says this Hayley was married to some football player who had a drug problem.”

“Yeah. He used to play for the Jacks.”

“And that little boy is theirs? He doesn’t look anything like her.”

“No, he’s not hers. From what Ray told me, she got temporary custody of him when her sister died.”

“Well, Ray certainly seems to be attached to him. I’m not sure it’s good for him. How does he seem to you?”

“He’s fine, Mom. He says he’s better than he was when he left. He’ll be okay. Stop worrying.”

“I never stop worrying. About either one of you, you know. But you, at least, I can see you’re happy.”

“I am.”

Their footsteps passed the door, and Hayley realized she’d been holding her breath. She let it out and stared at herself in the mirror.

Chapter Eleven

An hour later, Ray approached Hayley from behind. Leaning close to her ear he whispered, “Are you ready to leave?”

She shivered as his warm breath tickled her. “God yes,” she whispered back. She turned to look up at him and couldn’t help but smile at the thought that they’d both had enough at exactly the same time.

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Ray’s mother watching their exchange.

“Think you’ll be able to pull Fletcher away?” Ray asked.

Several other children around Molly’s age and a few more adults had arrived. After a break for food, cake and gifts, the kids were back outside having round two on the Slip ’N Slide. Rick and Kaylee’s backyard was a sodden field of well-trodden and muddy grass.

Fletcher took another turn on the expanse of wet plastic, running and sliding on his knees. Brutus bounded along next to him in the wet grass then followed him back to the end of the line. Fletcher petted his new pal while he waited his turn.

From the screened lanai Hayley called to him. “Hey, Fletch, I think it’s about time to go home.”

Fletcher paused and looked over Hayley’s shoulder to Ray as if for confirmation of her suggestion.

“I’ll help you find your towel, okay, buddy?” Ray opened the door and walked out, effectively taking the decision out of Fletcher’s hands. Hayley picked up her empty soda cup and their cake plates and went into the kitchen, feeling Lena Braddock’s curious gaze on her the entire time.

Luckily, Fletcher never outright defied her requests. Obviously he never argued. But there were times when he pouted as his way of showing her he didn’t want to cooperate. He would fold his arms across his chest, and his bottom lip would protrude. His normally placid expression would turn into a scowl. She’d never seen him do that when Ray was around, though.

Kaylee was in the kitchen with Tara Reichard, the mother of Molly’s friend, Hannah. Both greeted her. She deposited the plastic cups and paper plates in the garbage can.

“I think we’re going to head home,” she told Kaylee. “Thank you for inviting us. Fletcher had a great time.” To Hannah’s mother she said, “It was nice to meet you.”

“Same here,” Tara responded. “I was wondering about the gift certificate you gave Molly for the cheerleading class. How much do you normally charge for those?”

Hayley laughed. “I don’t. I’ve never done it before, actually. It was Ray’s idea.” She glanced at Kaylee. “I had no idea what to get Molly.”

Kaylee nodded. “It’s the perfect gift. She’ll be the envy of the other girls. They all love stuff like that.”

“I hope so.”

“Hannah’s birthday is in a couple of months. I was wondering if you’d want to do a class as part of the party. Maybe you could charge per head,” Tara suggested.

Hayley was a bit taken aback. “Oh. I hadn’t thought of it.”

“Why don’t you give me your phone number,” Tara insisted. “We can talk about it.”

“O-okay. Sure.”

The efficient Tara produced a pad and a pen from a designer handbag. Hayley dutifully wrote down her phone number.

“How did you get into cheerleading?” Tara asked when Hayley handed the pad and pen back to her.

“Oh, that was my grandmother’s doing. My mother—uh, well, my grandmother took care of me quite a bit when I was younger. She decided I had too much energy, and it needed to be exerted somewhere besides her house. She’s the one who found gymnastics and dance classes and enrolled me. My aunt Glenna was around quite a bit too, and she signed me up for a summer cheerleading camp to get me out of the way.” Hayley shrugged. “I liked it. I was good at it, so I kept doing it all through high school. Money was tight, but they found sponsors or scholarships for me. I got into college on a cheerleading scholarship, believe it or not.”

Kaylee had paused in her cleaning up routine. “You know, that could be a good business. Well, a side business anyway, to your work at the Y. Doing some kind of program with dance and cheerleading. People are always looking for new party ideas for their kids.”

Hayley didn’t know quite what to say. It had never occurred to her that the skills she’d honed from childhood could translate into a profitable endeavor at her age. “I’ll be happy to talk to you about it, Tara.” To Kaylee she said, “Please give me a call and we’ll set up Molly’s class whenever it’s convenient. I spoke to the director of the Y. We can use one of the rooms there if we do it on a Friday night or a Sunday afternoon.”

“Great.”

Rick appeared, a stack of unused paper plates and utensils in his hands. Ray was right behind him, holding a towel-bound Fletcher. Rick set the plates down on the counter and slid his arms around what was left of Kaylee’s waistline. She was several months pregnant, and Rick seemed to never miss a chance to show his affection for her. Hayley’s gaze collided with Ray’s. He rolled his eyes. She pretended not to notice.

Rick’s parents joined them and there were more hugs and goodbyes. Lena Braddock took Hayley’s hands in hers. “It was lovely to meet you, dear.” She moved in close, pressing her cheek to Hayley’s. “Hurt my son and you’ll have to deal with me.” The steel beneath the words belied the sweet tone she used. But she’d said it so softly Hayley knew no one else had heard.

Hayley stared at her for a moment after she released her, but Lena gave nothing away.

That night, with Fletcher in bed, Hayley lit a new candle and settled into her chair. Her glass of wine was on the table next to her, and she considered her cigarette for a moment before lighting it.

Such a stupid, stupid, habit,
she told herself for the thousandth time.

She lit it and took a long, satisfying drag. Leaning back in her chair, she lifted the wineglass and savored the chilled, light fruitiness. She heard the door open on Ray’s side of the duplex and his footsteps as he crossed the small space between the screened decks. They greeted each other. Hayley didn’t change her relaxed position when he took the other chair and stretched out his long legs. But inside, the ripple effect was going strong.

Ray had an open bottle of beer with him. He tipped his head back and took a drink. Hayley smoked her cigarette and sipped her wine in silence. Again she thought how refreshing it was not to have to make small talk with Ray. He allowed her to have her own thoughts and didn’t intrude on them with his all the time. Her cigarette was almost gone before he spoke.

“Thanks for going to Molly’s party with me.”

“They’re a pair, aren’t they? Rick and Kaylee.” Hayley had been thinking about Ray’s brother and his wife off and on earlier in the evening. She had a feeling she understood exactly why being around them bothered Ray.

Ray didn’t pretend he didn’t know what she meant. “They sure are.”

He took another swig of beer.

“It’s pretty hard to watch them without being a little bit envious, don’t you think?”

“Yep.”

“They’re crazy about each other.”

“Oh yeah.”

“They don’t try to hide it. It’s who they are.”

“Seems to be.”

“If they weren’t such nice people, I could really learn to hate them.”

Ray chuckled and drank some more beer. “As it is,” he said, “you watch them and marvel that any two people could be that much in love. And on some level you wish you could find someone who felt like that about you, right?”

“There is a certain degree of envy, yes,” Hayley agreed. “Maybe that’s what makes us uncomfortable.”

Ray eyed her in the dim glow of the candle. “You think it’s only us?”

“I don’t know. Maybe I’m hyper-sensitive to it. I thought I had that once. But, as it turns out, I was fooling myself.”

“Maybe you’ll find it again.”

“Ha. I doubt it.” Hayley warned herself to keep the bitterness out of her voice. “I think I’m too afraid to try again.”
Even with you.

“Well, it’s Rick’s second time around. So why not you?”

“Or you.”

Ray shrugged. “Yeah. Or me.” He drank some more beer. “Rick’s first wife—ooh, nothing like Kaylee. She convinced Rick to move to Atlanta. Got herself some high-powered job. Within a couple of years, she dumped Rick, married his boss and gave him full custody of Molly.”

“Wow. So he moved back here?”

“Yep. My uncle used to own that garage that belongs to Rick now. Rick was shell-shocked for the first few years. But I guess Kaylee came along and changed all that.”

“How’d they meet?”

Again Rick shrugged. “I don’t know the whole story. I was out of town at the time. And out of touch. I missed their wedding.”

“Oh.” Hayley sipped at the last of her wine. She didn’t want to pry, but frankly, she wanted desperately to know what had happened to Ray’s wife. Why had he left town?

As if he’d read her mind, he spoke again. “Caroline died shortly before that. I was pretty messed up. One day I closed up the shop, locked the door and started driving. I was gone for almost two years.”

“Did it help?”

Ray considered his beer bottle. He picked at the label with his thumb nail. “Hard to say. I like to think I’m slightly less messed up than I was when I left. I’m coping, let’s put it that way. I get up, I work. I eat. I try to sleep. Try to act like a normal person. Which is more than I was doing after she died.”

“I’m sorry.” Hayley didn’t know what else to say. She knew something of how he felt.

“Trying to run away from life doesn’t solve anything. I learned that much. Your past, your problems, whatever it is, you have to face it and deal with it and move on. Get past it and get on with your life.”

Is that what he thinks I’m doing?
Hayley wondered.
Trying to run away from my life? Escape from my past?

“She lied to me,” Ray said abruptly. He’d managed to peel a strip down the center of the bottle label, and he concentrated furiously on repeating the effort.

Hayley was afraid to say anything. She watched Ray, sensed his tension, the anger he held at bay over whatever his deceased wife had done.

“It’s pretty stupid and I didn’t handle it very well,” he admitted. He glanced at Hayley then back at the bottle. “We had a plan back then. We bought this place so we could live in one side and rent out the other. I had my shop in the back. We were going to work and save our money. We found a nice piece of land outside of town where we’d eventually build our dream house, and we’d have a big yard for a dog and our kids to run around in. The five-year plan,” he said, his tone turning to one of disgust.

“She got pregnant,” he said flatly.

“Oh.”

“Way ahead of schedule. On purpose. Stopped using birth control without telling me. Thought I’d be thrilled with the news she was pregnant. And I sort of was, until I found out she’d planned it. She didn’t want to wait. We’d talked about it a bunch of times, and she knew I wanted to stick with the plan. But what I wanted didn’t matter. In retrospect, I can see she might have felt the same way. That what she wanted didn’t matter to me.”

Hayley recognized the bitterness in Ray’s tone and the hurt behind it. She’d heard it often enough coming out of her own mouth. “Actually, you both wanted the same thing. Just at different times.”

“Yes. You’re right. Anyway, I wasn’t terribly gracious about it. Not because I didn’t want kids, but because I felt like she went behind my back. She didn’t include me. Didn’t tell me she was off the pill. Didn’t give me a choice.”

“She used you,” Hayley put in.

Ray’s head jerked up and he stared at her for a moment. “Funny how you get that. No one else did. But that’s what it felt like.”

He went back to contemplating what was left of the beer bottle label. “She didn’t get that she’d done anything terrible. Even though she waited until she was three months along to tell me, she didn’t get why I felt like I couldn’t trust her. She said pregnancy was a natural result of two people getting married and having sex, and the timing shouldn’t matter if they loved each other. She was ready. It shouldn’t matter if I was or not. I’d get used to the idea.

“She was sort of right about that. After a couple of months of being pissed off about it, I did resign myself to the fact that I was going to be a dad way before I expected to. I figured I’d deal with it when it happened, you know?” He glanced up at Hayley and she nodded. “I mean, I’d married her for better or worse. I wasn’t going to walk away from her because I didn’t get my way.”

Hayley bit her lip, trying to imagine what Ray had gone through to get to that point. His wife had hurt him, trampled on his trust and didn’t understand why he’d be upset by her manipulation. Yet he’d been willing to stick by her anyway.