“So you lost touch?”
“We did. Isn’t that strange? Or maybe not—Blythe went on to college, of course, and Mel had a baby. Quinn. You met her at dinner the other night.”
“Right. Wait—is...that why they moved away? Mel and her mother?”
“Apparently so. And given our family’s propensity for keeping secrets from each other...” She shrugged. “Still. Until the house brought us back together, I hadn’t realized how much I’d missed them.”
“I can imagine.”
They passed at least three highway markers before April worked up the nerve to ask him, “Your family...I assume they’ve been a huge help with your recovery?”
“Yeah,” he said after a moment. “Not that they don’t drive me crazy, too, more often than not, but I know I wouldn’t have made it through without them.”
“And have you, um, had other kinds of help? Therapies? Procedures...?”
Silence.
“I’m sorry,” April said, “you don’t have to answer that.”
“Meds, for a while. But it seemed like cheating, somehow. Numbing things instead of dealing with them. For me, anyway. For other people they seem to work okay. Anyway, so I ditched those, did talk therapy instead. About talked my brains out, too.” He paused. “I am getting better. Like you said, my family, working—being with Lili—it all helps.”
“I’m sure it does.”
After another pause, he said, “Scaring you wasn’t part of the game plan.”
“Tonight, you mean?”
“Point to you,” he muttered, then pushed out a breath. “But back there...I couldn’t control that.”
“I understand,” she said softly, knowing better than to mention the fear in his voice. “I wasn’t, though. Scared. That time or this. Concerned, sure. But not for myself. For you.” She paused. “I don’t spook easily.”
“Really.”
“Yeah. Really.”
“This from the woman who was nervous as hell about the date.”
When her eyes cut to his profile this time, she caught the smile. Not a full-out one, perhaps, but enough to make her feel that maybe things had eased inside his head. About them. “Nervous is not the same as spooked. Lots of things make me nervous, but usually about my own abilities. If I’m gonna make the grade at something. Like if the inn will be a success. That, I worry about constantly. But very little actually frightens me.”
He chuckled. “Except my face.”
She slumped down in her seat. “That was shock. Not fright.”
Another soft laugh preceded, “Anybody ever tell you you’re nuts?”
“My mother.” April sighed out. “Every chance she gets. Especially about me and the inn. She’s not exactly on board.”
“Then
she’s
nuts. Sorry,” he said when April laughed. “But it’s true. Because even from what little I’ve observed, you strike me as...as somebody who knows the meaning of determination. I don’t doubt for a minute you’ll make a go of this, April. Not for one single minute.”
Bowled over by his unexpected support, April faced forward, blinking for a couple of seconds before saying, “Thanks.”
“No problem,” he said, sounding a little floored himself.
Moving
on,
she thought, then said, “And don’t look now, but you’re not doing a half-bad job at keeping up a conversation. And anyway, what about Lili? Don’t you guys chat when you’re together?”
He snorted. “Lili does enough talking for both of us. All I have to do is say, ‘Uh-huh,’ every so often. That’s the thing about a four-year-old, it doesn’t take much to make them happy.”
And there it was again, the melancholy he hung on to like a worn-out T-shirt, all misshapen and full of holes. Useless.
“You’re a good dad,” she said.
A moment passed. “You don’t know me well enough to say that.”
“Says the man convinced I’ll make a success of the inn.”
He shifted, as though loading up for another protest, then sighed. “I do my best. Whether that’s enough or not, I don’t know.”
“You love her. That’s enough.”
“Is it?” he said quietly, focused on the road. “Is love by itself enough?”
Oh,
Lord,
the man was pitiful.
Pitiful
. Yes, she understood there were mitigating circumstances, that some people might say he had every right to feel sorry for himself. But his family sure as heck didn’t, so neither would she.
“Guess that depends on the people involved,” she murmured.
“Exactly.” He glanced over at her, then back out the windshield. And practically growled, “Depends on the people involved.”
So much for prodding him out of his funk.
They pulled into the inn’s driveway as a piddly snow began to dot the windshield. Patrick sighed. “This was sure one lousy date, wasn’t it?”
“It was different, I’ll grant you that, but lousy—”
“For God’s sake, April!” The truck crunched to a stop; Patrick cut the ignition and slapped one arm across the old-school bench seat, his gaze drilling into hers. “Why can’t you be like every other woman? I crapped out on you before we even got the main course, or you had a chance to tell me whatever you were going to tell me—yes, I remembered—then I don’t talk to you for most of the ride home, and you act like, like...like none of it bothers you in the least!”
“Well, it doesn’t!” she shot back. “Except now that you mention it, I am starving.”
He stared at her for a moment, then looked back out the windshield, shaking his head. “That doesn’t even make sense.”
“That I’m starving?”
He sighed. “No.”
Not sure where this was going, April snagged her purse off the truck floor, hugging it to her middle. “Would you rather I be whiny and pouty?”
“Yes, dammit!”
Biting her lip, she faced him again. “And you think
I’m
not making sense?”
“What I actually said was, that
this
doesn’t make sense.”
She cocked her head, frowning. “This?”
His gaze once again met hers. And held.
Oh.
This
. Got it.
Except...she didn’t.
Then he reached over to palm her jaw, making her breath catch and her heart trip an instant before he kissed her. Kissed her good. Oh,
so
good, his tongue teasing hers in a way that made everything snap into focus and melt at the same time—
Then he backed away, hand still on jaw, eyes still boring into hers. Tortured, what-the-
heck
-am-I-doing? eyes. “If things had gone like I planned, this would’ve been where I dropped you off, said something about, yeah, I had a nice time, too, I’ll call you, and driven away with no intention whatsoever of calling you.”
“With or without the kiss?”
“
That
kiss? Without.”
O-kaay. “Noted. Except...you wouldn’t do that.”
His brow knotted. “Do what?”
“Tell me you’ll call if you’re not going to. Because that is not how you roll, Patrick Shaughnessy.”
He let go to drop his head against the headrest, emitting a short, rough laugh. “You’re going to be the death of me.”
“Not intentionally,” she said, and he laughed again. But it was such a sad laugh, tears sprang to April’s eyes.
“No, tonight did not go as planned,” he said. “In any way, shape, form or fashion. But weirdly enough in some ways it went better.” Another humorless laugh. “Or would have, if you’d been a normal woman.”
“As in, whiny and pouty.”
“As in, not somebody who’d still be sitting here after what happened. Who would’ve been out of this truck before I’d even put it in Park. But here you are...” In the dim light, she saw his eyes glisten a moment before he turned, slamming his hand against the steering wheel.
“I don’t
want
this, April! Don’t want...you inside my head, seeing how messy it is in there! Don’t want...”
He stopped, breathing hard, and April could practically hear him think,
Don’t want my heart broken again.
She turned, fidgeting with her purse strap, considering the wisdom of taking his words to heart. Of saying, “Okay, if that’s what you really want...” and getting out of the truck, walking back to that empty old house and never pestering the man again. That would be the smart thing, all right. And heaven knew it would be the easy thing.
But that didn’t mean it would be the right thing.
Especially when she remembered what his mother had said, about his needing comfort whether he thought he did or not. And also, it was about this little voice—heck, a big, booming voice—telling her they needed each other.
She took a deep, steadying breath and said, “So does this mean you’re going to call, or not?”
Silence. Then a groan. April looked over, right as he dragged his gaze to hers. “Does that mean the evening’s over?”
Her heart did a somersault. “Don’t you have to get back to Lili?”
The corners of his mouth curved. A teensy bit. “Not until eleven.”
“Well, then,” April said, plopping her purse back down by her feet. “I don’t know about you, but I’d
kill
for a hamburger. And then, if it’s all the same to you? I wouldn’t mind a few more of those kisses.” She slid her eyes to his. “If you’re amenable, of course.”
After a moment, Patrick started to laugh. A big, full-bellied laugh the likes of which she’d never heard out of his mouth before.
“Oh, I’m amenable,” he said, finally, shifting back into Drive and pulling back onto the road, and she thought,
Hang on tight, honey
.
And she wasn’t talking about his driving skills.
Chapter Seven
R
ound Two,
Patrick thought twenty minutes later, after they’d loaded up on burgers and fries and shakes at some fast food joint out on the highway and were headed back to her place, the truck’s cab filled with the scent of frying oil and April’s perfume. Apparently she really was starving, stuffing fries in her mouth at an alarming rate as she bopped along to something their parents might’ve listened to in 1974.
“There are other stations, you know.”
“No, I like this,” she said, scrunching down in her seat as much as the seat belt would let her and propping her feet—in little black flat shoes that were strangely sexy—on the dashboard. The snow was too half-assed to be of any real concern, the soft flakes lazily slithering down the windshield. “Makes me feel like a little kid again—oh, I love this part!”
Waving a fry for emphasis, she belted out the refrain. Yep, nuts, all right.
She held out the bag of fries, shaking it until he took one. Not that he was particularly hungry, his stomach still knotted from both the attack and that kiss.
Oh, man...that kiss. Talk about not making any sense. And he sure as hell hadn’t seen it coming, any more than April probably had. Hadn’t been any real thought behind it, just...instinct. And a purely selfish instinct, at that, some primal need to connect, to make everything stop spinning, to feel like a normal human being again.
By rights she should’ve been appalled. Or at least put off. But no. Oh, no, she’d...she’d melted into the kiss like she’d been waiting for it all her life. Kissed him back, too. Kissed him back good.
And then asked for more.
Kee-rap.
She crumpled the empty fries box and stuffed it back into the bag, then sucked loudly on her milkshake straw. Exactly like a little kid. Despite himself, Patrick chuckled. In another life, another world, he could fall for this little nutjob. Fall real hard. But he wouldn’t. Couldn’t.
“You act like you never had one of those before.”
She laughed. “I don’t very often. But when I do, I make it my business to thoroughly enjoy it. Maybe because when I was a kid, fast food was a special treat.”
“Because your parents wouldn’t let you have it?”
“No, because we could rarely afford it. True, my arteries will thank me some day, but...”
“But what?”
“Nothing,” she said, squeaking her straw in and out of the shake’s lid.
“And nothing grinds my gears worse than when somebody doesn’t finish their sentence. Unless it’s that godawful sound you’re making with the straw.”
“Sorry,” she said, setting her cup in the holder in her door before folding her arms across her stomach. “It’s like I have a split personality or something. Not in a psychotic way, I don’t mean that. But there’s part of me—a big part—that has a real problem with keeping secrets. Unfortunately there’s a lot of stuff in my past that either makes people uncomfortable or makes them feel sorry for me. Only if I don’t feel particularly sorry for myself, I don’t see why anybody else should feel that way.” Her eyes cut to his. “You know what I mean, right?”
“I do. So?”
“So...I had kind of an unusual childhood. Although of course I didn’t realize it was unusual until I was a teenager. See, my father was—still is, I suppose—a dreamer. Always had these big ideas, big ideas that would liberate him from working for The Man—although he rarely worked for The Man in the first place,” she said with a grimace. “And my mother, bless her heart, she bought into his dreams. Every single time. She was a teacher, so we could’ve gotten by on her salary—if barely—if it hadn’t been for all of Daddy’s ‘investments.’”
“And she never put her foot down?”
“Oh, she made noises about it, had periodic conniptions. And then my dad would promise to find a ‘real’ job—which he would, for a few months, a year—until he’d come up with another idea, and the cycle would start all over again.”
“Is he...are your parents still together?”
“As in, joined at the hip.” She paused. “Dad was real sick, though, a few years back. He’s much better now, but that seemed to put the kibosh on his ambitions.” Her mouth twisted. “For now, at least. But long story short, I know what ‘poor’ is. And I know I like where I am now a lot better.”
“Which I suppose is why you don’t feel sorry for yourself.”
“Because I’m no longer indigent? No.” She picked up her shake again, took another pull on the straw. “Not that I’m not being smart about my money—although it still feels weird to call it ‘my’ money—but that’s not where my trust is. No, my confidence, I guess you can call it, comes from knowing I’ll always have choices.” A van pulled up behind them, passed on the left, the snow sparkling in the red glow from its taillights as it zoomed ahead. “That I’m a lot more in charge of my own destiny than I might’ve thought when I was a kid.”