Angel's Peak (7 page)

Rather than answering the question, he said, “Maybe I’m not that guy anymore.”

“Oh?” she asked with a cynical tone. “And what guy are you?”

“Things changed, Franci. Starting with not having you in my life. I thought I’d just keep having fun, but fun wasn’t fun without you. I thought the Riordan men didn’t settle down, until I watched the last one I ever expected bite the dust…”

“There it is again—he bit the dust.”

“If you’d seen him fight it, you’d have been impressed. Bottom line, I was trying like hell to make it work without you because I thought I had no choice. And when I saw you at that restaurant in Arcata, I knew I wasn’t going another day without trying to see if…I just want to see if we can work this out. If we can’t, if you’re in a different place, I’m not a fool—I don’t want a woman who doesn’t want me. But…”

“Just like I didn’t want a man who didn’t want me,” she reminded him, lifting her chin proudly. Then, as an afterthought, she added, “Enough. Didn’t want me enough.”

“Touché. You can have that one. I made a mistake. But so did you. I was an idiot. You were in a big goddamn hurry.”

Well, he was right about that, she thought. She had been on the nest. She leaned toward him and shook her head. “I had no possible way of knowing if you would ever change. I couldn’t wait around for that. My biological clock was ticking.” Boy, had it been ticking!

Again, rather than responding, he asked, “Are you with someone now?”

She froze. In fact, she was. It had been a long time coming, too. But Sean’s reappearance had caused her to barely give the guy a thought. It occurred to her to tell Sean she had a guy, just to back him off a bit. The temptation was equally strong to tell him there was no one, which might encourage him all the more. In the end, she said, “I’ve been dating…trying to be social rather than a recluse. You? Are you with someone now?”

He shook his head. “Let’s try again,” he said in a soft, pleading voice. As if it had all been a minor misunderstanding.

“Not so fast,” Franci said. “I don’t know if I want to try again. We have issues. Unless you’ve changed a lot, we don’t want the same things out of a relationship, out of life. It’s too late for couples’ counseling. I’m willing to think about us being friends, but we have to take even something like that very slowly. The world didn’t just stand still after we parted ways, Sean. I went on living.”

“Of course you did, Franci,” he said, reaching for her hand. He held it on the tabletop. “We both tried to get on with things, and both ended up back here.”

“I’m sure we’re not talking about the same things,” she said. “I’m sure your dating was a lot different than mine,” she said, meaning he’d slept with a lot of women. He’d been a real playboy when she met him and she had been a little surprised when he became exclusively hers. Sean going back to his old ways of making the rounds was more what she had expected of him.

“I dated,” he admitted. “Not anything very…Nothing worked out.”

She lifted her chin. “And I became very independent. I hadn’t heard from you in years. I didn’t see this coming.”

“It’s coming,” he said, in a low voice laced with meaning. “Let me take you out to dinner tonight.”

“No,” she said. “I’m busy.”

“Tomorrow night, then.”

“I’m going out—I have plans. I’ll have coffee with you on Sunday afternoon, if you’re free. I’ll talk with you, Sean. Maybe we can put some of our conflict to rest and work out friendlier terms.”

“I want to spend time with you—”

“You better let me think about that. There have been too many changes in my life to step back into a relationship like I had with you.”

“Are you thinner?” he asked, changing the subject. “You seem thinner.”

“I took up running after…Once I moved up here, I started running. I finished two marathons.”

“No kidding?” he said, impressed. He grinned, then winced and touched his cheek. “Well, you look fantastic. I guess running is your thing. It works for you. And the hair—if you’d have said you wanted it cut to the scalp, I would have had a fit, but it’s…it’s hot, that’s what it is.”

She hated that she felt warm all over when he said that. “I’m completely different in a lot more ways than looks,” she said as a warning. “I have baggage that I’ve accumulated in the past few years. I have commitments. For example, my mother and I moved up here together. She was widowed, I was single—it made sense.”

“Sure. How is Viv?” he asked.

“Great. Working in a family practice as a physician’s assistant. She’s glad she made the change—she likes the area and has friends here. And I have two jobs, Sean. I pull a couple of twenty-four-hour shifts with the airlift unit in Redding every week and I teach a couple of courses at Humboldt University—nursing courses. It’s a great schedule for me—gives me the time off I need so I can balance work life and home life. It works for me. I’m committed to both.”

“You’re teaching nursing?” he asked, surprised.

She nodded. “I’ve been doing that for the past year or so. Turns out I like it.”

“My new sister-in-law, Shelby—she’s a student there, in nursing. Cutest thing you’ll ever see. Best thing that ever happened to Luke. Any chance you know her?”

“What year is she in?” Franci asked.

“First year. She got married in her first semester because Paddy and Colin were done with their deployments—she waited for all the Riordans to be available. She’s way younger than Luke and is just starting college.”

Franci tilted her head and smiled, thinking how sweet it was that cranky, womanizing old Luke ended up with a sweet young girl who was determined to get an education. “I’m pretty sure I haven’t met Luke’s wife. Most of the freshmen are stuck in liberal-arts courses the first year. I teach one medical-surgical course and one that boils down to charting ER patients. I’m just one of many instructors. Mostly, I teach juniors and seniors. I share an office on campus with another nursing instructor and I only teach a couple of days a week. Except for meetings, of which there are too many.”

“You never did go for the meetings,” he said with a smile. “I’ll have to tell Shelby to introduce herself. You’ll love her. You’ll—”

“One thing at a time, all right?” Franci asked patiently. “How’s your mom?”

“She’s great. Greater since Luke got married and they’re on the baby trail. She might finally get a grandchild out of one of us, after all.”

Franci flushed. Oh, God, so many people were going to be pissed when they found out about Rosie. She had no idea how she’d have done it differently, however. Well, there was that one way—she could have told Sean about the baby. Good Catholic boy that he was, he’d have married her right off or his mother would have killed him. As she recalled, Maureen Riordan had powerful influence over her sons. “Good for her,” was all she could say. “Sean, this is going to take time. Things have probably changed too much.”

“Not as much as they’ve stayed the same,” he said.

“There’s only one way I can even think about this, and that’s if we get to know each other all over again,” she said. “We can’t go back four years and try to untangle that mess—we have to accept ourselves as the people we are today, and go from here. You said you’re not that guy anymore. And you know what, Sean? I’m not that woman anymore—the one who cried every day after we split up. I’m a lot stronger. We’re both different.”

“Maybe so,” he agreed. “Maybe better,” he suggested. “But, Franci, like it or not, we have history.”

She felt her heart take a fearful jump. “Yeah. You have no idea.”

As it happened, there had been a man in Franci’s life for the past few months. Meeting Dr. T. J. Brookner had been one of the great perks to that little part-time teaching job she’d taken at the college. He was a terrific guy—a marine biologist and professor of oceanography. The forty-year-old was a divorced father of two preteen girls. Franci was one of the few certified divers in the nursing department and was the instructor with the most “open time” in her schedule, so she had been recruited to teach a short first-aid course to freshman dive students. Since she loved diving she jumped at the chance, which is how she met T.J. They ended up going on a couple of dive dates, which led to a few phone calls, which led to a few getting-to-know-you dinners, and what she found was an entertaining man who enjoyed many of the same things she did.

She liked the fact that he was ten years older than she; he seemed settled and he was definitely sure of himself. He had a stable career and was happy with where he was in life. She respected his parameters for a relationship: if they were intimate, they had to be exclusive, and while he was open to the idea of a long-term relationship, it had to be understood up front—he wasn’t having more children. After his second daughter was born, he’d had a vasectomy and he steered clear of women with ticking clocks and the expectations that went along with it. As far as what he was looking for, Franci knew he wanted to meet a fun, attractive, intelligent and mature woman to spend time with.

Franci had no trouble signing on to that deal. It was nice to have someone to dive with, to go on long runs with, even to have sex with. Up to that point, Franci hadn’t done any serious dating—just the occasional evening out with a work colleague, or one of the guys from her running club. For the first time in a long time, she’d been feeling content—she had her little girl, her mom, a job she loved and a guy. What a relief it was to feel settled and on track!

Since Franci hadn’t been associated with the college for long, the gossip about T.J. didn’t reach her right away. She’d already been going out with T.J. for a couple of months when she learned he was known as Professor Hottie by the coeds. She was completely amused by the nickname and teased him about it, but learned fast that he didn’t think it was so funny. He said the girls flirted with him shamelessly and it was the sort of thing that could lead to irresponsible talk—something that could cause a lot of trouble for a man. T.J. allowed that this kind of talk might have even contributed to his bitter divorce from a jealous wife years ago.

“Good grief, I hope your ex-wife didn’t cave into jealousy just because freshman girls have crushes on handsome professors! We all did. I had mine and I bet you even had yours,” she added with a laugh.

“Trust me—I never had an older woman professor who looked like you!” T.J. informed her enthusiastically.

“Aw. That’s sweet. You should just be flattered by the attention. Professor Hottie.”

“I am, as long as no harm is done,” he admitted.

In all seriousness, he came by the nickname honestly enough; T.J. was divinely handsome and had a very sexy smile. Franci had no trouble admitting that his smile was the first thing to catch her attention. She immediately dismissed the giggles and rumors as predictable and didn’t give them a second thought.

But then, just as Franci thought her life had begun to resemble something close to normal, who should show up but Sean? Now that she thought about it, Sean’s timing had always sucked, and she had a little three-year-old redhead to prove it.

Now, out of the blue, Franci was conscious of a little problem: When she thought of T.J., she wondered what they’d find to do next weekend—movie or dinner out or maybe a dive? But when she thought of Sean, all she wanted to do was take her clothes off.

When Franci told Sean she couldn’t meet him on Saturday she didn’t explain fully—she had a date that night with T.J. But after Sean threw her world into a spin, she really wasn’t in the mood for a date with anyone. And there was no way the date with T.J. could culminate in the usual way. She was much too distracted for that and considered canceling altogether. She complained to her mother of a headache.

“Take something,” Vivian said. “Rosie and I have a big slumber party planned at my house. Go out. Try having fun. Either stay out very late or have a slumber party of your own.” Then she had winked.

“Oh, Mother,” Franci said with humor.

“Take a couple of aspirin and enjoy yourself!”

Franci hadn’t mentioned Sean’s sudden reappearance in her life because she knew Vivian would work it like a hangnail. She’d start all that business about Franci’s responsibility to level with him; she’d want to force the paternity thing. Franci was struggling enough by herself without Vivian nagging about it. So, more to keep her mother out of her business than to spend a nice evening out, she kept her date.

T.J. came for her at six and, when she opened the door to him, she was immediately reminded why she’d agreed to that first date—damn, but he was a good-looking man. It wasn’t hard to understand why there was always a long list of females waiting to go on dive trips, or on research missions, with him. It hadn’t been that long since Franci had been a college coed. She’d had a crush of her own on her biology professor. It hadn’t gone anywhere beyond a few delicious fantasies, but if he’d been game, she would’ve crossed the line in a second.

“I’m taking you to a fantastic new restaurant up near the campus,” T.J. told her, once they were in the car. “They specialize in salmon for obvious reasons—it’s our local catch. They have a salmon fettuccini that will knock you out.”

“You know I don’t like salmon,” she reminded him.

“You’re the only diver and fisherman I know who won’t eat salmon,” he said. “Will you try it? We’re bound to find a salmon dish you love eventually.”

“Will you order something I like so we can trade if it doesn’t work out that way?” she countered.

He sighed. “Don’t I always order the best for both of us?”

“No.” She laughed. “You order two meals you like. There’s no point in even showing me a menu.”

“Do you get enough to eat?” he asked, a little irritation in his voice slipping through.

“Oh, always. You’re never stingy about it—and I love the appetizers and salads you pick. By the time we get to your main courses, I’m usually full, anyway.”

“That sounds slightly ungrateful, if you ask me,” he grumbled.

“Absolutely not!” And she laughed. “You order enough for four people and I’m always happy to let the doggie bag go home with you so you can enjoy it all over again! Really, T.J., you should review restaurants! Now let’s stop arguing over the menu before we even get to the restaurant. Tell me about the trip to Cabo.”