Love After Dark (35 page)

“That’s true,” Jenny said. “It took two years for her to get to this point. The next stage isn’t going to happen all at once.”

Their comments brought a small measure of comfort to Paul because they were right.
 

“Let’s get through the wedding, and then we’ll start to look for places on the mainland,” Paul said. “We can take turns going over to visit her. We’ll figure it out like we always have since this began.”

Ethan, who’d been watching a movie in Paul’s room, came bounding into the room, looking for his mother. He’d been clingy since she returned, which Paul could tell she loved. She scooped him up onto her lap and put her arms around him, kissing every part of his face that she could reach. He squealed with pretend outrage, but he loved the attention.

“I’d better get him home to start his homework,” Hope said. “We can talk more about all this after the wedding.”

“Thanks so much for everything today,” Paul said with the warmest smile he owned. “You saved me in there with the doctor.”

She returned his smile, but he noticed it didn’t quite reach her eyes the way it normally did. “I’m happy to do anything I can to help.”

Paul wanted to ask if he could see her later, but there was no way to do that in front of everyone. So he let her go. For now. As soon as the coast was clear, he’d seek her out to continue what they’d begun at the Cape. The thought of being with her later was the only bright spot in this otherwise dismal day.

Hope went through the motions with Ethan—homework, dinner, bath, bedtime stories, tickling, snuggling. After two nights apart, he wanted the full program, and she was happy to give it to him. His joyful giggles were a balm on the wound of this day.

Inside, however, she was dying from the realization that their idyllic time on the island would come to an end as soon as Marion was moved to a permanent care facility on the mainland. Just when they’d found their groove and settled into a new routine, it would all be upended again.

And Paul… She couldn’t allow herself to even think about the incredible interlude they’d had at the Cape. Other than every minute she’d ever spent with Ethan, it had been the most perfect time of her life.
 

“Are you sad, Mama?” Ethan asked, stroking her face.

He called her Mama only when he was sad or tired. Otherwise, she was Mom in the loudest voice he possessed.

“I’m just tired, honey, and so are you.” She kissed his forehead. “Time for lights out.”

“One more story.”

“No more stories. It’s a school night.”

“All right,” he grumbled, but his heavy eyes told the true story of how tired he was.
 

Leaving him with one last kiss, she turned on the night-light and left the door propped open so she could hear him if he needed her. She went into the kitchen to tend to the dishes and was halfway through them when the tears reappeared. The last thing she wanted to do was leave this wonderful place or the Martinez family, who’d begun to feel like family to her and to Ethan. He’d be heartbroken. But the fact was, she needed a job. After a costly divorce, she no longer had a cushion to tide her over between jobs. She’d managed to save some money since this job came with a free place for her and Ethan to live, but her small nest egg wouldn’t last for long if she was out of work.

Sighing, she reached for a bottle of wine on the counter and poured herself a healthy glass, feeling guilty for letting her own worries get the better of her when Paul and Alex had much bigger ones weighing them down tonight. She wouldn’t soon forget the utter devastation that had overtaken Paul in the doctor’s office. He was always so strong and capable. To see him in such a state of shock had been upsetting.

She hated that this was happening to him and Alex, but she especially hated it for Marion, who’d never really know her grandchildren or the women her sons married. It was so unfair.

Hope had just had that thought when a soft knock sounded at her door. She went to answer it, knowing it would be Paul. He stood with his hands propped on either side of her door.
 

“Can we talk?” he asked.
 

“Come in.” When he stepped inside, she said, “Wine?”

“I wouldn’t say no to that.”

While he took a seat on the sofa, she went into the kitchen to pour him a glass and to gather her resolve. If Marion were leaving soon, she and Ethan would be, too. It would be better, in that case, to end this before it really began. To let it continue would be to invite in heartache for herself and Ethan as well as Paul. Even as everything inside her cried out for him, she knew it was what she had to do.

She just couldn’t go through it again, even if the circumstances were vastly different this time. She couldn’t do it—and she couldn’t do it to Ethan either. He was already bonded to Paul, Alex, Jenny and Marion. It would be hard enough to leave as it was. To get even more involved would be a fool’s errand.

And then Paul was behind her, his arms encircling her waist and his forehead leaning on her shoulder. “Whatever you’re thinking, knock it off.”

“How do you know what I’m thinking?”

“I can see it in the tension you carry in your shoulders.” He gently massaged her neck and shoulders, sending a sigh shuddering through her. “Talk to me.”

“Is Alex with your mom?”

“Yeah, I asked them to stay so I could come talk to you. Tell me what’s on your mind, Hope.”

“This. Us.”

“That’s on my mind, too.”

“We need to stop this, Paul.” As she said the words, a sharp pain registered in the area of her heart, which was exactly when she realized that at some point over the last few weeks, she’d fallen in love with him.
 

He turned her to face him, his hands on her hips. “Please don’t say that. I can’t take any more bad news today.”

“And I can’t take any more heartache in this lifetime. We’re setting up ourselves—and Ethan—for disaster by pursuing this when we both know it can’t last.”

He tucked her hair behind her ear, and the simple gesture made her heart flutter. “Why can’t it last?”

“Because! When your mom goes, I have to go, too. I need a job, Paul, and it’s not like there’re tons of nursing opportunities here.”

“If Lizzie succeeds in getting the rest home opened, they’ll need qualified nurses.”

“Who knows how long that’ll take? It could be a year or more before they get the renovations done, permits filed and the many other details seen to. Something like that doesn’t happen overnight. I can’t sit around and wait for something that may or may not happen. I don’t have that luxury.”

“Hope…”

“This isn’t what I want to do, Paul, but it’s what I
have
to do. I just can’t—”

He kissed her, and she forgot everything she’d been about to say, as well as the many reasons this was a bad idea. She could only remember the exquisite pleasure she’d found in his arms. Hungry for more of it, she returned his kiss with an ardor that equaled his.

“Please don’t take this away from me, Hope,” he whispered many passionate minutes later. “I need you.”

“I need you, too, but I can’t do this. I just can’t.”

He once again dropped his head to her shoulder.

She rested her hand on his neck, wishing with every beat of her heart that things could be different for them. But their reality was that once his mother was moved from their home, Hope’s job on Gansett Island would be done. Paul’s life and his business were on the island. So there was no point to continuing a romantic entanglement that would lead straight to heartache when it ended.

“I’m so sorry,” she said as tears slid down her cheeks. “You have no idea how sorry I am.”

“I think I have a pretty good idea.”

“It’s not what I want. If things were different…”

“I know.” He kissed her so softly, so tenderly that she wanted to whimper from the bolt of desire that zinged through her body and settled into a sharp throb between her legs. Drawing back from her, he looked at her for a long moment before he turned and went out the door.

The glass of wine he hadn’t gotten to enjoy stood beside hers on the counter as a metaphor for the many things they’d never get to enjoy together. Leaving the glasses on the counter, she shut off the lights and went to bed alone. She’d done the right thing sending him away. But knowing that didn’t lessen the ache of loss that had her crying herself to sleep for the first time in a long time.

Over the next few days, Paul forced himself through the motions. He got up, went to work, helped take care of his mother, attended an emergency town council meeting that turned out to be about nothing, made himself eat and sleep. He finalized the plans for Alex’s bachelor party, took Ethan with him to help harvest the pumpkins and worked with Jenny on the plan for closing the retail store for the month of November before reopening to sell Christmas trees in December.

He did what was expected of him. And every time he laid eyes on Hope, which was several times each day, he died a little more on the inside. They’d had a taste of heaven that had been yanked away before he’d begun to satisfy his appetite for her. Of course he understood where she was coming from. When his mother left home, her job would be done, and she and Ethan would have to go elsewhere.

It was the wise thing for both of them to take a step back, but knowing that didn’t make it any easier. Staring into the mirror as he got ready for Alex’s party, Paul tried to summon the cheerfulness he’d need to see his brother through the party and the wedding. He was determined not to let his own problems—and the larger, more pressing issue of what to do about their mother’s care—take anything away from the joy of Alex and Jenny’s big day.

A long, lonely winter stretched ahead of him. He could tend to his own wounds then. It occurred to him that if they moved Marion to the mainland and Hope and Ethan left, Paul would be alone in the house that now teemed with activity. Alex and Jenny would move into their own home, and with Marion gone, there’d be no reason for David and Daisy to come by every day or the women from the church, who had been so generous about providing regular meals for them during Marion’s illness.

The house would be awfully empty and lonely without the endless activity, a thought that only added to his profound depression.
 

“You gotta snap out of it, man,” he whispered to his reflection. “Alex has waited a long time for this. It wouldn’t be fair to bring him down.” He gave himself a couple of minutes to summon the celebratory mood the night demanded of him before he left the bathroom.

Dressed in a gorgeous black dress, Hope came into the house as he stepped into the kitchen.
 

Paul stared at her. “You look amazing,” he said after a long, charged moment of silence.
 

“You look great, too.”

His mother’s friends had taken Marion to bridge night so Hope could attend Jenny’s bachelorette party. The ladies were fully briefed on what to expect from Marion. Paul and Alex had agreed that they should let her spend as much time with her friends as she could, while she could. Ethan was spending the night with his friend Jonah. Paul couldn’t help but wish that he could look forward to spending the night with Hope after the parties, but he couldn’t let his mind go there.

“Have a good time tonight,” Hope said. “Be careful.”

“I’ll be fine. My job is to stay sober so he can go nuts.”