What's Left Behind (14 page)

Despite Abby’s and Charlie’s promise to put Luke before them, Luke had, time and again, ended up between them, trying to bring them back together.

Was that what Tessa was attempting?

Abby had told Celeste there was no Team Rob. But was Tessa rooting for Team Charlie?

It was obvious, now that Abby had figured it out. Tessa was the gossip who’d told Charlie about Rob. Abby had a spy in her ranks, sure as the days when Luke had, upon Charlie’s not-so-veiled requests, chronicled her personal life.

“Truce,” Charlie said. “Would you like to join us for dinner? We could agree to disagree about your lack of forgiveness and your propensity for unfairness. All while overeating.”

“That’s quite an offer. Thank you, but I have a date.” Abby didn’t mean to sound spiteful, but the tone crept into her voice, and she couldn’t say it displeased her.

“Rob?” Charlie said, and Abby nodded.

With one glance, Charlie took in her outfit and reflected his disapproval. So his next comment threw her off. “He’s a lucky man,” Charlie said, diffusing her anger. And then he pulled her into a hug, a ploy to whisper in her ear. “Temperature’s dropping fast. If I were you, I’d wear the sweater.”

That was all Abby needed to leave the damn cardigan with Sadie.

Abby sat across from Rob at the Lobster House, hiding behind her menu and trying to ward off the late-day chill and errant nerves with covert gulps from her glass of Sam Adams. The rich aroma of seafood and drawn butter filled the air. Cold beer sluiced into her stomach, and the alcohol rocketed to her brain, lending a hazy quality to her thoughts and reminding her how little she’d had to eat today.

A wagon-wheel chandelier hung above her. She wasn’t worried the fixture would fall, but she couldn’t shake off the awareness of a heavy weight hanging over her head. She couldn’t stop thinking about Tessa going off with Charlie on a Sunday visit, as though she were a child of their divorce. Or, as Luke had been fond of saying, a product of not-together parents.

How easily Charlie had stepped into his role of the father. How easily Tessa had stepped into the role of the daughter.

Where did that leave Luke?

Abby didn’t know how she felt about that. She took a gulp of beer and cared a little less about untangling the knot of her emotions. Tiny white lights were strung around the room’s perimeter. In an hour or so, the sun would set and the dim bulbs would fire to life. For now, the sun hung low over Casco Bay, shining way too brightly for what she had in mind.

Rob leaned his tanned forearms against the table. His direct gaze tumbled her heart. “Thirsty?” he asked, and then he sat back and took a conservative sip from his glass of beer, as if to both gain a wide view of her swigging and show off his restraint.

Abby set down the menu. So much for her cover. “Uh, hum.” She took a slightly smaller sip, and a shiver jostled her shoulders.

“Cold?”

“Not really.” A second twitch shook her frame.

“Got an idea.” Rob got up from his chair, slid onto the bench seat beside her, and slung his arm around her shoulders. With a slight flex of his bicep, he gave her a squeeze. His body heat warmed her arms, trickled through her chest, pooled in her jeans. She ordered her hips not to move. That only cranked her imagination into overdrive.

Abby pictured peeling off Rob’s jeans and lowering herself onto the wooden bench beneath him. She imagined the electric sensation of Rob moving inside her, his energy coursing through her veins. Ridiculous, there wasn’t enough room on the bench. Abby’s throat and tongue went dry. She took another swallow of beer and gazed out over the bay, rather than risk looking Rob in the eye.

Horny?

Their waitress, Janet, came to take their orders. One of Phippsburg’s seasonal residents, Janet taught high-school English, and found summer waitressing relaxing by comparison. With her hair piled on top of her head and her big smile, Janet looked closer to thirty than the fifty years she admitted to.

Abby considered asking for a shot of tequila. Instead, she settled for the mussels. Rob chose the lobster dinner and, just as Abby was finishing her first beer, ordered them two more.

“Warming up?” Rob said. His voice made Abby think of campfires and wood smoke, deep warmth in the chill of a night forest.

“Starting to.” Of course, she could sit on top of him. That would take care of the space issue, and save her tailbone from the abuse of the wooden bench.

Rob liked to talk while he worked, that much she knew. Did that mean he’d also like to talk during sex? Would he take verbal notes on the grade of her body, the way he’d mapped her yard? Would he ask to view her from every angle, the way she wanted to study him?

“So, about yesterday,” Rob said, and Abby stiffened. She thought they’d put their little Charlie misunderstanding behind them, between their cryptic speeches and the mind-clearing, hail-pelting labyrinth walk. Then he’d asked her out.

“Sorry about getting to your place late. I’m usually ridiculously punctual.”

“That’s okay.”

“It’s not. I don’t let my crew get away with being late. Ever. Kind of have a thing about it.”

Something in Rob’s voice made her look him in the eye. Not quite a catch in his voice, but a slight alteration to his usual breezy tone.

“Was something wrong?”

“Kind of. Not really.” Rob took a swallow of his beer. More than a sip, but short of a gulp. He ran his thumb over the edge of his beer label.

“Rob?”

He gave a slight chuckle, but she wasn’t buying it. “Ex called me to the house again . . .”

Through her beer buzz, Abby noted the use of the word
again,
the antecedent
the
in place of the possessive
her.
Did Rob still consider his ex-wife’s house his home? Abby seemed to remember a previous call when the electricity had inexplicably failed or a circuit breaker had tripped. Or was it the plumbing? Rob’s ex sure seemed to consider
her
house
their
home.

“Maintenance issue?” Abby asked.

“Grace.”

Automatic, Abby’s heart dashed to her throat. “Is she all right?”

Rob rubbed her back. “Oh, yeah, she’s fine. It was just . . . ex overreacts sometimes, as in a lot. Grace had a boy up in her bedroom, and Maria walked in on them.”

“Oh, wow. That must’ve been a shocker. Hard to underreact to that one,” Abby said, remembering the time she’d walked in on Luke and noticed a pair of tan feet with ten bright-blue toenails poking out from beneath his comforter. Then, a few months later, Abby had gotten down on her knees and invited the high-school principal’s shaking daughter to come out from under Luke’s bed. Different girl, pink toenail polish.

Sure, Abby had been frazzled. But clearly not as horrified as she should’ve been. She’d slipped a box of condoms into Luke’s college trunk. She’d threatened to give a demo, if he had no idea how to use them. Yet, a small voice at the back of her mind had played the ill-conceived reassurance. Boys being boys couldn’t get pregnant.

A girl being a girl was still someone’s daughter. She should know.

How was Tessa’s father handling all of this? Abby had been planning on giving him a call. But, frankly, she was hoping he’d phone her first.

Rob took a deep breath, held the inhalation a beat before the exhale. “Yeah, Grace has a good head on her shoulders, but I still came down on her pretty hard.”

Rob shared the tale with Abby, from his ex-wife’s overwrought call to his daughter’s relationship with the buddy-turned-lover. Behind Rob’s words, Abby saw a dad having a hard time watching his only baby grow up. A dad struggling with the inevitable letting go.

Not the same as losing a child, but Rob could relate. Once a parent, always a parent.

“I’m not sure who was more embarrassed, me or Grace. But I had to let her know I’m worried about her getting pregnant.” Rob turned his gaze from the label he’d one-handed shredded into table scraps. “Worried about her getting hurt, too.”

“Ah, my visitor’s story hit close to home.”

“Guess so.”

“It’s not every day your late son’s pregnant girlfriend lands on your doorstep.” Sadness washed over her, overriding her attempt at a flippant tone. “Grace is lucky to have you for a dad.” Tessa hadn’t shared much about her relationship with her father, but Abby could bet it wasn’t this sweet. Not sweet enough to keep her from leaving.

Janet brought the side salads, cloth-covered basket of warm rolls, and second bar order. Rob poured Abby’s beer into her glass and then filled his own. Abby bit into a tomato and chased it down with a healthy gulp of beer. Her fingers tingled, her head floated. Her gaze went to Rob’s forearm, the sun-bleached hairs, and she rubbed his arm. The conversation was taking them down a serious road, too serious, as though her heaviness had seeped into Rob.

Rob kissed the top of her head.

Abby wriggled out from under his arm. She took one look at the strangely sad look on his face and swallowed against sudden reflux. “What’s wrong?”

“I don’t want to hurt you.”

“Then don’t,” Abby said, and her words came out in a breathy whisper.Was he breaking up with her on their first official date?

“I know how much you want to adopt Luke’s baby.”

“Of course.” The ambient noise of restaurant conversations buzzed in her ears. Two tables over, a young mother cut up a chicken finger for her pig-tailed toddler. Beside her bearded husband, a school-aged boy slid his peas one by one onto the tines of his fork. How would the couple feel if someone walked in and stole their children? Abby’s situation was no different. “Luke’s child is my child. I can’t let Tessa give the baby away to someone else. I can’t let her make a terrible mistake. I can’t—”

Lose Luke again.

Rob caressed her cheek with a calloused finger, sending a shock through her center. “I admire what you’re doing,” he said. Abby thought of his blush-inducing words from yesterday’s groundbreaking. Her strength had inspired him. Then why did she still feel as though he were trying to give her the brush-off?

“But?” Abby said.

To Rob’s credit, he didn’t miss a beat. “But I think it’s only fair to let you know, at this point in my life, I’ve no interest in becoming a dad again.”

This took a couple of seconds to sink in. Then, “I’m not looking for a baby daddy,” slipped from her brain through her lips. An amalgam of relief and annoyance flashed through her. Or maybe it was just the alcohol. Celeste was right. Abby was Little Miss All or Nothing. Either buttoned-up or give everyone an eyeful of her secret weapons. Celibate as a nun or hankering to throw caution to the wind and launch herself at Rob.

At the moment, Rob didn’t exactly look as though he were predisposed to catching her.

Rob angled away from her, and his expression went from guarded vulnerability to simply guarded.

Another Little Miss All or Nothing-ism. Get a little buzzed, and Abby tossed her tight-assed filter out the window.

Okay, she was a little more than buzzed.

Janet brought their dinners and set their plates before them. Lobster, baked potato, coleslaw, and corn for Rob. Mussels in a broth of garlic and white wine for Abby. Slices of crusty bread edged the generous plate. Her stomach rumbled in appreciation. “Anything else I can get you?” A frown pulled at the corners of Janet’s grin. She looked from Abby to Rob and back again.

“I’m good,” Rob told Janet, although he clearly was not.

Abby ordered a rum and Coke.

She placed her hand on top of Rob’s. “Hey, I’m not angry with you. I appreciate your honesty. It’s just, this situation.” She shook her head. “I’m having a flashback.”

Why else would she have ordered her favorite cocktail from twenty years ago?

Rob leaned in the tiniest bit, and the line between his eyes softened.

The first summer after Luke had been born, Abby manned the register at Heart Stone. An ocean sounds CD piped through the shop’s sound system while Luke napped behind the mesh of his Pack ’N Play. Summer boys looking for seasonal hookups would stroll into the shop, zip past the candles with inlaid shells, the collections of mermaids and aquamarine, and head straight for the blonde wearing a snowdrop anemone behind her left ear and a knowing smile.

Until they figured out that the baby behind the counter was Abby’s, and not Lily Beth’s.

“When Luke was about four months old, I started to date again and . . .” Abby shrugged. “What would you expect from guys in their late teens and early twenties?”

“You got the same reaction?”

Abby pressed a finger to her nose. “Not all of them, but a lot. I used to work at Lily Beth’s shop. Got a lot of boys parading in and out, so I developed a strategy.”

Abby launched into her routine. “Hi, I’m Abby, and I have a baby. I’m not looking for a baby daddy. My son already has a father. But if my having a kid still freaks you out, then we’ll pretend you didn’t just ask me out. Skim boards are ten dollars. Boogie boards will cost you fifteen.” Unfortunately, the feelings returned along with her practiced speech. Anger and hurt and injured pride. She’d wanted to make sure the door hit those boys on their way out. She’d wanted to stand in the doorway and call them back to her.

Abby looked straight at Rob. She softened her tone and rephrased to avoid the rude expression from her youth, but the sentiment remained the same. “I’m not looking for a father for Luke’s baby.” She didn’t need anyone to save her. She’d operated as a single parent her entire life, managed to raise a great kid, managed to grow a respected business. Eventually, even those boys looking for summer hookups had grown up, married, and divorced. Men weren’t as squeamish about her having a kid once they had a few of their own.

So what if she was starting over with a new baby? So what if that status once again deemed her untouchable? She had a lot going for her. Like the rum and Coke Janet had delivered to the table, for instance. Abby gave the alcohol fumes a moment to play with her nose before she gulped down a third of the drink. Straight to her head, just like old times. She scooped a tender mussel from its shell, popped the morsel in her mouth. She savored the juicy shellfish, the bite of garlic, and sunk her teeth into the crusty bread.