Beach Lane (14 page)

His usual calm facade looked a little rattled by the time she released him. “Um, Susie, don’t you think we should eat a little something?”

“Do you seriously want dinner more than you want me?” she inquired in a way that dared him to say yes.

“Of course not,” he said wisely, “but—”

She grinned at him. “You’re starting to get on my nerves.”

Whatever his reservations were, they fled. “Okay, then,” he said, scooping her into his arms. “You first. Dinner later.”

“Sounds like a plan,” she said happily.

For just a little while, in his arms, she could almost forget about her cancer, about the chemo, about being sick at all. She could be nothing more than a woman who was finally with the man she’d always wanted. And nothing else mattered.

Only after they were cooling down and curled together did she think to ask, “How’d things go at the bank?”

“We have a lot to talk about,” he said evasively.

“What does that mean?”

“It means we have a lot to talk about,” he repeated. “We can do that over dinner. Did you sleep all afternoon?”

“Mostly,” she said. “Then Matthew came by.”

Mack stilled, his expression guarded. “Really? Any particular reason?”

“He wanted advice about relationships, if you can believe that.”

“Did he give you any details?”

“Not a one, darn it. I do think it’s serious, though. He seemed really upset. I guess the woman dumped him, and he had no idea why. It must have been a huge blow to his ego. Matthew hasn’t been dropped by a lot of women over the years. He’s always been the golden boy.” She grinned. “He’s a lot like you. I think I was the only woman who ever said no to going out with you.”

He laughed. “And look where we wound up,” he reminded her. “For some of us,
no
must be some kind of aphrodisiac.”

“I wish I had some idea who this woman is. I hope it’s someone who’s worthy of my brother.”

“Did you ever stop to think it might be Matthew who’s not worthy of her?”

She frowned at the suggestion. “Why would you even ask something like that?” she inquired with sisterly protectiveness. “I always thought you liked Matthew. I know he idolizes you.”

“I think
idolizes
is probably too strong a word. We get along just fine. He’s a good guy at heart. I just wonder if he’s not in over his head in this situation.”

She studied him with a narrowed gaze. “That almost sounds as if you know something about this that I don’t. Do you?”

Mack leaned in and kissed her thoroughly. “Not at liberty to say,” he said. “And I’m starved. Let’s have dinner.”

Susie’s stomach rumbled. “Obviously, I’m starved, too,” she said. “Otherwise I’d never let you get away with an evasion like that. We’ll take this up again after dessert.”

“Not if I can help it,” he said. “I have much more interesting plans for after dessert.”

“Boy, you must really want to avoid this subject,” she said, studying him intently. “Makes me wonder why.”

“You don’t think it could be because I find my new wife ever so sexy and desirable?”

She laughed. “Well, of course, I know I’m all that, but there’s something else going on here. You might as well fill me in, because I’ll figure it out sooner or later.”

“I don’t doubt it for a minute,” he said. “But I look forward to the challenge of not being the one who tips you off.”

“Now you’re just taunting me,” she responded.

Mack winked. “Yes, I am.”

She met his gaze, saw the twinkle in his eye and marveled at how quickly they’d moved from being friends to having the kind of easygoing, loving marriage she’d envied between her parents.

Sobering, she touched his cheek. “Do you have any idea how much I love you?”

“Back at you,” he said softly. “I’m sorry it took us so long to get here.”

“But we did get here, and that’s what counts,” she said. “And we’re going to be exactly like this always.”

He pulled her back down onto the bed with him, dinner forgotten. “Always,” he murmured against her lips.

It was a promise she knew she would hold in her heart all during these horrendous treatments she was undergoing. Because in the end, it gave her a reason to fight.

Laila looked up from Mack’s business proposal to see Matthew O’Brien standing in the doorway to her office. To her annoyance, her heart leaped at the sight of him.

“I thought I told you it was over between us,” she said, trying to keep her voice cool and distant. She knew that giving this particular man the slightest opening would only lead to heartache. “I thought I made myself very clear at dinner at Mick and Megan’s a few weeks ago.”

“You did,” he said, walking into the room and settling into a chair across from her. He crossed his long legs at the ankles and surveyed her with a frankness that made her blood heat. “I decided to ignore you.”

“Matthew,” she protested. “This thing between us, it’s crazy.”

“Possibly,” he said. “But that doesn’t mean it’s not incredible.”

“It can’t possibly go anywhere,” she continued. “I’m too old for you.”

“I hadn’t noticed.”

She frowned at his flippancy. “See, right there, that’s the problem. You don’t listen to a word I say.”

“I listen to
everything
you say,” he corrected. “And to what you don’t say, as well.”

“What is that supposed to mean?” she asked in frustration.

“It means that you’re saying what you think is appropriate, even though what you want is something else entirely.”

She scowled at his presumption. “You have no idea what I want.”

“Sure I do,” he said, grinning. “Want me to prove it?”

To her annoyance, her pulse scrambled the way it always did when he made some outrageous proposition designed to rattle her.

“Matt, this is my office. You can’t come in here and have this kind of inappropriate conversation. It just shows me how immature you are.”

Sparks of annoyance flashed in his eyes. She thought for an instant he’d turned the comment into some kind of a dare, and she knew from experience what a mistake it would be to let that happen.

“Don’t get any ideas,” she added quickly.

He laughed. “You always give me ideas.”

“Well, I shouldn’t. I don’t mean to,” she said, sounding a little desperate even to her own ears. “Go away. I have work to do.”

“So do I. I’ve been out of the office most of the afternoon, but I’m not leaving here until we’ve reached some kind of an understanding.”

“About what? It’s over, Matthew. It was a mistake. I don’t know how to be any clearer than that.”

Even as she said the words, a part of her was screaming that she was the one making the mistake. She hadn’t felt so desirable, so carefree, in years. Matthew had breathed new life into her stodgy, boring existence. If only it hadn’t felt so wrong. Then again, maybe that was part of his appeal, the idea of how shocked people would be if they knew about the two of them.

He leveled a look into her eyes that gave her goose bumps. “And I can’t make myself any clearer, either,” he said quietly. “It’s not over, Laila. Not by a long shot. You can tell me to go a hundred different ways, but I’m not letting you run me off.”

“Matthew, this is crazy,” she repeated.

“So you’ve mentioned. Nonetheless, I’m in it for the duration. I think we owe it to ourselves to see where this takes us.”

“Nowhere,” she said staunchly. “It’ll take us nowhere.”

He shook his head. “I’m not convinced of that.”

“Why are you being so stubborn about this?”

“I’m an O’Brien. Stubborn is just who we are.”

“But you’re supposed to be from the sensible side of the family,” she said in frustration.

“Have you met Susie? She waited around for years for Mack to get his act together. No one thought there was a chance they’d ever get together. Just look at them now. Their relationship might be implausible, but it’s working.”

“You’re suggesting that you and I have a similar fate in store for us?” Laila asked, unable to hide her astonishment.

“We won’t know unless we give it a chance,” he said. “Look, I’m willing to play by your rules for a little longer and keep this whole thing a secret, but I’m not willing to walk away without a fight.”

“But why? There are dozens of women in this town, in this region, for that matter, who’d be a whole lot less complicated than me.”

“That’s just part of your charm,” he said. “Apparently I like complicated.”

Laila sighed. It was clear she wasn’t going to get him out of here unless she agreed to whatever he wanted. Which was what exactly?

She studied him with a narrowed gaze. “Matthew, what’s it going to take to get you to leave?”

“You agreeing to let me fix dinner for you tonight,” he said at once.

“You can cook?” she asked, surprised.

“Well enough to keep us from starvation. So, is it a deal?”

“I suppose,” she said, desire trumping all of her very sensible reservations.

“Your place or mine?”

She hesitated, knowing that dinner was far from the only thing on the menu. “Your place,” she said eventually. There was something about having him in her space that made her start picturing the future, a future that simply couldn’t be.

“Seven o’clock?” he asked.

“I’ll be there,” she said.

He stood up then and brushed a lingering kiss across her lips. “That wasn’t so hard now, was it?”

She gave him an exasperated look as he walked away, looking thoroughly satisfied with himself. The man had no idea just how hard it had been. Another five minutes and she might very well have locked her office door, swept everything off her desk and dragged him into her arms right there.

It seemed Matthew O’Brien had the ability to rob her of common sense, reason, logic—all of those things on which she prided herself. And that made him not only the most inappropriate man she’d ever dated, but the most dangerous.

14

M
ack had intended to tell Susie about Kristen Lewis over dinner, but the evening had gotten away from them. He hadn’t wanted to spoil Susie’s rare upbeat mood and seductive overtures by introducing a topic that was bound to ruin the moment.

At least that’s what he told himself to justify putting the discussion on hold. But when he mentioned his meeting with Laila to Will and Jake, both men regarded him skeptically.

“You didn’t tell Susie because you were scared of her reaction,” Will argued. “You know she’s going to hate the whole idea of bringing one of your ex-lovers to town, no matter how innocent you claim it’s going to be.”

“Bree would tear me apart if I ever tried something like that,” Jake said.

“Ditto with Jess,” Will added. “It’s a really bad idea, Mack, especially now, with so much of Susie’s future up in the air.”

Mack wasn’t quite ready to concede defeat, despite the validity of their arguments. “But Kristen has skills that are critical to making this whole newspaper proposition fly,” he said. Even as he heard the words, he acknowledged they were outweighed by what Kristen’s presence might do to Susie’s fragile self-esteem right now.

“You can justify it all you want, and your intentions may be a thousand percent honorable, but look at it through Susie’s eyes,” Will persisted. “It has the potential to be seen as betrayal written all over it. Do you really want her worrying every second about whether you’re starting up again with this woman?”

“Come on, Susie’s reasonable,” Mack protested. “She’s going to understand.”

“Maybe,” Will said. “Theoretically.”

“But she’s a woman,” Jake said. “They don’t think like we do.”

“Isn’t there another person in the entire world of journalism you could recruit for this job?” Will asked.

“Probably,” Mack said. “But Kristen’s the one I know, and she’s damn good at what she does.”

“Is having her here worth risking your marriage?” Will asked pointedly.

“Come on,” Mack protested. “It’s not going to come to that. Susie wants this paper to happen as much as I do. She’ll go along with this once I explain how important it is. I’m not going to give her a single reason to doubt me and my love for her.”

“You can try,” Will agreed. “And I can tell your mind is made up, but if you want my advice, kill this idea now.”

Mack looked to Jake for support.

“Sorry, pal. I’m with Will on this. It’s just begging for disaster.”

Mack sighed heavily. He heard what they were saying. He’d known in his gut ever since his conversation with Laila that involving Kristen would be a risk to his marriage, but he also trusted in Susie and their feelings for one another. He didn’t have any doubts. Why should she? Even with the cancer in the mix, surely she would be able to take a pragmatic view of what was necessary to get this newspaper up and running.

He scowled at his friends. “I thought you’d be my backup on this,” he grumbled.

“We both get where you’re coming from,” Will said. “We just think you’re delusional where Susie’s concerned.”

“Big-time delusional,” Jake confirmed.

With those discouraging words ringing in his ears, Mack headed back home. At least he would run the idea past Susie. If she was uncomfortable with it, he’d drop the idea of hiring Kristen and find someone else for the job. He even promised himself he’d be attuned to more than the words she spoke. He’d watch and listen for the subtext, all the things she wasn’t likely to say for fear of letting him see her insecurities.

“Susie, you here?” he called out when he entered the apartment.

She came to the doorway of the bedroom, looking vaguely green, her eyes dull. “Where else would I be? I haven’t been able to get ten feet from the bathroom this morning.”

Mack winced. He should have realized the chemo aftereffects could have kicked in with a vengeance by this morning. Sometimes she was fine for hours after a treatment, sometimes even for a day, and then she’d get sick as a dog. A few days later the nausea would be a thing of the past…until the next time.

“What can I do?” he asked at once. “Want some crackers? Ginger ale?”

She shook her head.

“Get back in bed and I’ll get a cool washcloth for your head.”

She gave him a wan smile. “Thanks.”

He went in to sit beside her on the edge of the bed, putting the cool cloth on her brow. “Better?”

“For now,” she said. “I hate this, Mack. It’s not how I envisioned our first year of marriage going, with me so sick I can barely sit up in bed some days.”

“There are plenty of other days when you can get up and even out of the house,” he reminded her. “The chemo won’t last forever. And you need to stop focusing on what it’s costing you and remember that this is the treatment that’s going to cure you. Concentrate on the goal. View all those nasty chemicals as your friends.”

She gave him a wan smile. “Whoever knew back when you were lighting up a gridiron that you also had amazing talents as a cheerleader, too?”

Mack laughed. “Just get me some pom-poms and I’ll do one of those old routines here and now. I’m pretty sure they’re burned into my memory.”

“Because you hardly ever took your eyes off Emma Martin,” she teased. “Or was it Bee-Bee Leggett?”

“Depends on which year you’re talking about,” he responded.

“Or which month,” she said.

“I was a cad, no question about it,” he admitted. He smoothed her hair back from her face. “But no more. You know that, don’t you? I’m all yours.”

“I want to believe it,” she said, a faintly wistful note in her voice.

“You can,” he said firmly. He drew in a deep breath, wondered if this was a good time or possibly the worst, but plunged in anyway. “There’s something I need to talk to you about. Are you up to it?”

“Sure. Anything to keep my mind off the fact that my stomach is dancing a particularly energetic jig at the moment.”

“We talked a little about my meeting with Laila yesterday, but we didn’t get into all of it.” He grinned. “You were having your wicked way with me, and I got sidetracked.”

“You said Laila had reservations about the loan.”

“She does, but I pitched an idea to her that seemed to relieve some of her concerns.”

“What idea?”

“There’s someone I’d like to hire to create the paper’s online presence, a woman I worked with in Baltimore.” He regarded her earnestly. “She’s good, Susie, one of the best in the business, and she’s way ahead of the trend. She’d be a huge asset. Laila agrees about that. In fact, she pretty much made it a condition of the loan.”

She nodded, studying him intently. “Okay,” she said slowly. “Then why not hire her, if it could clinch the deal at the bank? Why are you hesitating? Why even run it past me? The newspaper’s your baby, Mack. You certainly don’t have to get my approval for something like this.”

“I think I do,” he said.

“Why?”

Mack could hear the trepidation in her voice and knew she already suspected there was much more to the story. He looked away, drew in a deep breath, then said, “Because I slept with her.”

“I see,” she said softly, looking shaken.

“Sweetheart, it was a long time ago, before you and I started spending so much time together. It never meant anything to either one of us. There wasn’t a relationship, not even a short-term one. It was nothing more than a fling. You have to believe that.”

“Then why the big production about it?”

“Because I didn’t want you to find out about it later and wonder if the only reason I brought her here was because we still had something going on. I swear to you it was over practically before it got started, and it was way before you and I began spending all this time together. It’s been years, Susie, so you have to believe it’s truly over.”

Susie frowned, but she didn’t burst into tears. He considered that a positive sign.

“Okay,” she said softly. “Thank you for being up-front with me.”

“So how would you feel about it?” he prodded. “If it’s going to make you uncomfortable in any way or make things tense between us, it won’t happen.”

Mack saw the struggle she was having with herself, fighting her fears, trying to be fair. He should have called his plan off right then, but he didn’t. He waited.

“She’s the best person for the job?” Susie asked, her expression bleak.

“I think she is,” he said.

She lifted her chin. “Then there’s no choice,” she said, suddenly determined. “You have to hire her.”

“And you’ll be okay with it?”

“I’ll deal with it,” she said staunchly. “Don’t worry about me.”

Because he wanted so badly to make the deal with the bank come together, Mack ignored all the promises he’d made to himself earlier and chose to take her at her word.

Still, he felt compelled to add, “If you ever have a moment’s doubt about this, just say the word and she’ll go.”

“Do you love me?”

He held her gaze. “You know I do.”

“Then I won’t have any reason for doubts, will I?”

The words were brave, but there was no mistaking the flicker of worry in her eyes. It gave Mack pause, but in the end he convinced himself that hiring Kristen was the right thing to do. Making this newspaper happen was not just for him. It was for him and Susie, and for whatever family they were able to have down the road. The decision was for their future. The past simply couldn’t enter into it. He wouldn’t let it.

Susie told herself she was fine with Mack’s plan to bring an old lover into town. She had his ring. She had his devoted attention. But it was a lot harder to remember all that once the bank had approved the loan and he was fully engaged with actually getting the business off the ground. It was even harder once she’d gotten her first glimpse of Kristen Lewis.

“She’s a blasted cover model,” Susie griped to Shanna while having coffee at Shanna’s bookstore. “Have you had a look at her? What was I thinking?”

“You were thinking that she was the key to getting this newspaper venture off the ground,” Shanna reminded her. “Mack laid everything out for you. If you had reservations, you should have spoken up. He gave you every opportunity to do that.”

“And I would have sounded like some insecure woman who was terrified that someone was going to steal her man. I couldn’t do that, not with him looking at me like I held the answer to his entire future.”

“Don’t be dramatic,” Shanna scolded. “That’s Bree’s domain. She’s the family playwright.”

Susie sighed and sipped at her cappuccino. For once it wasn’t making her stomach flip over. It might be decaf, but it was better than nothing. She’d missed these afternoon gabfests with her friend, though not so much Shanna’s straight talk that called her on everything.

“Invite her to dinner,” Shanna suggested.

Susie stared at her incredulously. “You want me to invite Mack’s ex-lover into my home?”

“You want reassurance, don’t you? Get a good look at how they act together. Mack loves you, sweetie. I think you’ll see that their relationship now is strictly professional. He knows an entire town will come down on him hard if he allows anything else.”

Susie permitted herself a grin. “That might be fun to watch. Maybe I should tip off Matthew and Luke, or even Uncle Mick, and let them have at her.”

Shanna shook her head. “You are a perverse woman.”

Susie laughed. “Apparently so. Okay, enough about me. How are you feeling? Is the pregnancy progressing the way it’s supposed to?”

“Everything’s right on schedule,” Shanna said, beaming. “We might be able to tell the baby’s gender on the next sonogram, but Kevin and I are arguing about whether we want to know. He’s all for waiting. I want to know now, especially if it’s a girl.” Her expression lit up. “We are going to have so much shopping to do, if it is. I can hardly wait to start buying frilly little pink dresses. This family already has too many rambunctious little boys.”

“Don’t forget Caitlyn and Carrie. Once upon time, they were little angels, but now they’re twin troublemakers,” Susie reminded her. “I can hardly wait to see how Abby and Trace cope with them once they hit their teens.”

Shanna chuckled. “Something tells me that Trace is going to be one of those fathers who scares off every boy who comes to the house. He might be their stepfather, but he’s the kind of dad who pays attention to everything those two are up to. Since he works at home, they certainly won’t be able to sneak anything past him.” Shanna’s grin spread. “Abby’s counting on that, I think.”

She hesitated, then added carefully, her worried gaze on Susie as she spoke, “She’s thinking it might be a good time for them to have a baby. They’re talking about it. I think she’s finally convinced that Trace isn’t going to demand she quit her job the second she gives birth the way Wes did when the twins were born.”

Susie felt a momentary twinge of jealousy at the news, then forced a cheerful expression. “That’s great!”

Shanna regarded her apologetically. “I’m so sorry, Susie. It must be hard on you hearing all this baby talk.”

“It was when you first told me you and Kevin were expecting, but I’m past that now,” Susie assured her. “There’s no point in looking back. I can’t have my own biological children, but as soon as things settle down and my treatments are behind me, I’m going to talk to Mack about starting the adoption process.”

“How does he feel about that?” Shanna asked. “Did you discuss it before your surgery?”

Susie nodded. “He said he was open to the idea. It can be a lengthy process, so I don’t want to wait too long to get started. Connor said he’d help me try to find some kind of private adoption if that’s the way we decide to go. His old law firm in Baltimore has some experience with those.”

Shanna looked genuinely pleased for her. “Oh, sweetie, I’m so happy for you. That would be fantastic! You and Mack will make amazing parents.”

“You might mention that to him sometime. He’s not so sure about his own parenting skills, given his lousy examples, but I think he’ll be a great father precisely because of what he went through.”

“Childhood experiences certainly mold us into the adults we become,” Shanna agreed. “Sometimes for the better, sometimes not. I think Mack is one of those who learned from all the mistakes his parents made.”