Summer Kisses (267 page)

“Thanks, I got your text, too. That was sweet.”

“Are you okay, Anna?”

She worked her throat a couple of times, but finally her answer emerged with a stiff smile. “I’m fine.”

“And how was Max?”

Fabulous
, Annabel wanted to say, but she supposed Carly’s question didn’t refer to his post-ceremony performance. “He seemed okay.”

“Did he have breakfast with you?”

With two used plates and cups on the table there was no way to deny it. “Yeah, we both needed company and a little cheering up.”

Carly sat forward, eager for details. “How long did he stay?”

“Awhile.”

“Annabel!” she huffed. “You forget that I’m almost eighteen. If you want to stop treating me like a twelve-year-old who’s never been kissed, you can.”

Annabel rested her head in her hand, choosing her answer with care. “It’s not so much your age, sweetie, as our relationship. I’m used to being the parent, and I still think I need to protect you.”

“My mom told me about the birds and bees a long time ago, you know.”

“Hey!
I
told you about the birds and the bees.”

Carly smirked. “Yeah, but her version was a lot better than yours.”

“Oh, really?” Annabel’s eyebrows skyrocketed.

“You’ve only been married to Dad, and so she knows more.”

“She’s only been married to your dad, too.”

“Yeah, but that was a long time ago, and no offense, but she’s made up for it since.”

“And she’s shared details of her sex life with you?” Annabel was past being appalled at Belinda’s idea of sound parenting, but she wished she’d known about this sooner. No telling what inappropriate stories Carly had heard.

“Some, so it’s all right if you want to talk to me, too. You’re always going on about how knowledge is power.”

“I wasn’t talking about sex!”

“Yeah, but I always thought that was because you didn’t know much about it. Mom says even though you have a college education, you may not be an expert on this subject.”

Annabel found herself caught between laughter and outrage. Maybe they were right about her sexual expertise, but she’d learned a lot in the last twenty-four hours. And she wasn’t about to share that information with Carly.

“How long did Max stay? Did you sleep with him? Did he spend the night?” Luckily the barrage of questions came too closely together to be answered individually.

“Until about two thirty. No! And no!” Annabel blurted out responses just to stop the flow. True enough, they’d planned for him to spend the night, but he hadn’t. And there had been absolutely no sleeping.

“Did
anything
happen?”

“Nothing worth talking about.” Her cheeks reddened, and she knew from Carly’s grin that the girl noticed.

“Then why are you blushing?”

“We really can’t discuss this. I still think of you as a teenage soccer-jock, not a young Dr. Phil.”

Carly leaned forward, a young beautiful girl, but nearly a woman. “I’ve had more boyfriends in the last three years than you have.”

Annabel remembered those boyfriends and remembered all the late nights watching the clock until the teenager got home. Still… “Max was wonderful, a gentleman, and he got called away for work before we got around to cleaning up this mess.”

“Oh, Annabel.” Carly shook her head in disappointment. “Only you would go out with a hunk like Max and send him home alone.”

Annabel fidgeted with the zipper pull on her robe, eager to halt the discussion. “Carly, I really don’t want to talk about this.”

Her stepdaughter studied her for a full ten seconds. “Why are you so upset if nothing happened? Is it because you expected something to happen and it didn’t? Or did he make a pass and you didn’t know how to handle it?”

“Of course not! Are these more of your mother’s ideas?”

“No, I’m just saying... You were used to Dad.”

Annabel straightened in her chair. “What do you mean by that?”

“Well, he was a professor of
literature
.” She wrinkled her nose. “Smart and sweet, but not real involved, and since there were very few PDAs, I’m guessing, not very demonstrative. And no offense, but Mom once told me that he was about as exciting in bed as a dead poodle.

“A dead poodle? What does that mean?”

“I don’t know.” Carly got up and opened the fridge, scrounging around for a container of yogurt. “I thought it was one of those expressions adults use that don’t make sense unless you understand the context. Maybe she said
wet
poodle. He was about as exciting as a wet poodle.”

“Did she say “wet noodle?”” The description didn’t flatter Carl, but at least it didn’t border on necrophilia. Or bestiality.

“Wet noodle! Yes, that’s it.” At that, Carly must have caught a glimpse of Annabel’s disapproval. “Eewww. Believe me, that’s a lot more than a girl wants to know about her father. Please, don’t feel the need to confirm, deny, or share similar confidences.”

Annabel had no intention of doing so. Her thoughts reeled wildly away from the direction the conversation had taken.

“You know I love you, Anna. I can’t imagine my life without you, but…” Carly bit her lip and dropped her gaze before finishing in a rush. “One thing I always wondered is why you married him. He was crazy about you, in his own quiet way, but I don’t know what you saw in him.”

Many people had been surprised about the mismatch in their ages, but it hadn’t seemed odd to her. “He gave me so much, honey. A home, security, love, all the things I lacked after my parents died.”

“But did you love him?”

“In some ways, I did.” Annabel smiled at the thought of her husband’s many fine qualities. “I admired his intelligence, his gentleness, his dependability. He really needed me in his life, and I liked that.” She’d found the idea fulfilling at the time, but she’d given up a lot of herself to please Carl and make the marriage work. And she hadn’t realized until last night how much had been missing. “And if I hadn’t married him, I wouldn’t have you in my life.”

“I’m glad you were happy with him, and for purely selfish reasons, I’m glad you married him.”

Annabel pulled her into a hug, pushing away pointless regrets at the same time. “Me, too, honey.”

“But Max, now.” Carly awarded Annabel with an impish grin. “He looks like a complete stud. He’s got a sexy smile and a great butt. And I love how he follows you with his eyes. I thought from the way he looked last night when he saw you in that dress that he wouldn’t be able to keep his hands off of you.” She waited expectantly, but Annabel’s tongue remained glued to the roof of her mouth.

Carly shrugged. “Of course, if you say nothing happened, I believe you, because you never lie. But I hoped you’d have someone special in your life.”

“I have you in my life, and you’re special.”

“That’s not the kind of ‘special’ I mean. I’ll be leaving soon, and I wanted you to have someone you could count on besides me.”

“Well, I appreciate the thought, sweetie. Really I do, but I don’t need a man in my life to be happy, and Max would only be a temporary fix at best.”

“Yeah,” Carly said, laughing. “But he’d be good for some excitement.”

“Until he’s gone.”

“Gone? Where’s he going?”

Annabel lifted her cup for a sip of stone cold tea. She returned it to the saucer with a clink. “News people tend to move from market to market. It’s not a very stable lifestyle.”

“Oh, shoot,” Carly huffed. “I hadn’t thought of that. Where would he go after here?”

“New York, maybe.”

“New York! That’s great! You should go, too. There are plenty of career opportunities in New York.”

“Sure. Documentary companies there are dying to give high-budget projects to unknown women with nothing more to recommend them than having been an also-ran for a local media award.”

“You have more to recommend you than that.” Carly shook her head. “The only thing keeping you from trying is you.”

“That and the desire to keep a roof over my head.” Although her current roof required about twenty grand she didn’t have to get it reshingled before the next deluge.

“All right, maybe that plan’s too aggressive for you. Max and New York are big leaps for someone with your timid nature, but I’ll keep thinking. Maybe I can scout up someone more suitable for you. The new boys’ soccer coach is built like a Greek statue, thirty, and single.”

Timid nature?
Ouch, that hurt. Especially after her recent progress. Of course, Carly hadn’t seen Annabel in her trench coat last night, eluding a criminal and aiding in his capture. And she wasn’t at liberty to mention anything about it yet.

“Or,” Annabel said, deflecting the suggestion, “I can decide what to do with my life all by myself.”

“Yeah, right.” Carly shook her head and snorted, as if she found the possibility farfetched. She stood and stretched. “I’m going to take a shower, then head over to school for soccer practice.”

“How long will you be gone?”

“Back by two. How about you?”

“I’m feeling lazy today.” Annabel yawned to emphasize the point. “Maybe I’ll just stay around here.”

“Says the lady who thinks she can manage her own love life.” Carly left the kitchen with a parting shot. “You won’t find any available males if you don’t get out there and look.”

Annabel knew that. She did. She just couldn’t handle it today. Dropping her head in her hands, she rubbed her temples and contemplated cleaning the kitchen.

Out in the foyer, Carly’s footsteps paused halfway up the stairs, then stomped back to the kitchen.

“Uh huh,” she said, with one fist planted on her hip and a bow tie dangling from the fingertips of her other hand. “What is
this
?”

Annabel willed herself to stay calm. “Max’s tie. He hates wearing them and says he feels like they’re strangling him, so he took it off when we got here. I guess he forgot it.”

“That makes sense.” Carly lifted her other hand from her hip and revealed a black dress sock balled up in her palm. “Does he feel strangled wearing socks, too?”

Oh, God, busted!
Teenagers were far too knowing these days to let a parent get away with anything. Annabel expected Carly to ground her any minute now.

“I guess so.” She plucked both items from Carly’s grasp. “I’ll make sure he gets them back.”

To Annabel’s vast disappointment, her phone remained silent throughout most of Sunday. And when it did ring, it wasn’t who she wanted to hear from. No calls, no texts from Max. Her phone worked both ways though. She debated calling him. A daring step for her, but she didn’t want him to interpret the action as needy, or desperate, or smitten.

No matter how much she wanted him, they were still all wrong for one another. She could never be with someone who treated women as callously as he’d treated DeeDee, but then again… Now that she knew him better, she couldn’t picture him actually treating a woman that way. Rumors could be wrong. And DeeDee never actually said she was hung up on Max. Or that the baby was his. Maybe Annabel had mistakenly assumed those things.

She stewed over it for a few minutes before pulling up DeeDee’s Facebook page to catch up on her recent posts. Loved her new job. Cute baby. Newly engaged. To her baby’s father, Jonathan Andrews.

Ah ha! Jonathan used to work on the WKLK news team with Max. The guy had been married when he lived and worked in Cincinnati. That provided an explanation for Max not wanting to explain more about his relationship with DeeDee. Maybe he hadn’t really had one, just provided a smokescreen for the relationship between DeeDee and Jonathan. Or he loaned her a sympathetic ear when she needed one. Now, that made more sense.

If the grapevine had been wrong about Max and DeeDee, it probably misfired about Max and the intern, too. Annabel would check it out later, but she felt more confident that it had been completely misconstrued.

With the first objection swept away, she still wasn’t sure he was interested in her, or that they had any kind of future.

After another fretful night, she put the sock and tie in her messenger bag and took them to work with her on Monday. She stuffed them in her desk drawer before anyone could see her mooning over them like an idiot. Occasionally, she reached in and rubbed the tie between her fingers like a lucky rabbit’s foot.

A couple of times—or a couple of
dozen
times—she started to call Max, but each time she returned the phone to her pocket undialed.

If she called him, he’d think she couldn’t resist him. He’d think she’d use any trumped up excuse to contact him. He’d think she couldn’t stop thinking about him.

And of course, she couldn’t, whether she wanted to or not. His face loomed everywhere today. Not just on television, but in the newspaper too. This morning’s
Enquirer
blared its praise of his exposure of corruption in the city government. Key figures had been brought in for questioning. Arrests had been made.

Still, she couldn’t forget she’d let him see her at her most vulnerable. Let him see her with her guard down.

Let him see her naked.

Even editing her latest project in her tiny but tidy office, her mind filled with images of Max in every pose from unaware to interested to aroused. And it was pointless to let her thoughts linger on any of those areas.

His latest coup would probably cement the network deal. He’d be moving to New York any minute now.

The Big Apple.

Good for him.

She’d dreamed of living and working in New York once upon a time. Carly’s recent prodding reminded Annabel of that forgotten goal and many other dreams she’d put on hold. A temporary hold that had lengthened from one or two years to a full dozen.

Just because there wouldn’t be anything to tie her to Cincinnati after Carly left didn’t mean Annabel should give up the security of her low-paying, unfulfilling, dead-end job and sell her paid-for-but-in-need-of-a new roof home to take a long shot at achieving some vague and unpredictable dreams. Disheartened, she sighed and rubbed Max’s tie again.

Maybe Carly was right. Maybe Annabel lacked the guts.

An intern named Brittany, not much older than Carly, came in to drop off a stack of mail. Annabel usually took the time to encourage the girl’s interest in producing documentaries. The girl was nice, talented, too, but prone to gossip.