“There.”
She took off the skirt she was wearing and hung it in the closet, and changed into her favorite jeans. She’d just slipped her feet back into her shoes when she heard the front door slam.
“Ness?”
And damn it, didn’t her heart flip just a little at the sound of his voice?
“I’m up here,” she called.
“Got my stuff from the Inn… hey, you look pretty.” He grinned as he came in the room. “Got a hot date?”
He crossed the room and kissed her.
He came back, was all she could think of. He came back…
He looked down at her feet. “Do you have any other shoes?”
She was still trying to catch up to the fact that he hadn’t left her after all.
“You are kidding, right? Of course I have other shoes. Shoes are my life.” She walked to her closet, opened the door, and pointed to a row of shelves lined with boxes. “Shoes.”
“I meant, any other kind. Shoes you could walk in.”
“I walk in these.” She turned her foot to show off the pretty brown leather pumps with their four-inch heels. “I walk to work every day in shoes like this.”
“How ’bout shoes you can comfortably walk a distance in.”
“Oh. Well, sure. I have some really cute flats.” She pulled a box from the shelf. “Aren’t these the cutest? I just got these.”
“Let’s rephrase.” Grady’s mouth twitched at both ends. “What would you wear if you went walking in the woods?”
“Nikes?” She frowned.
“You’d wear hiking boots. Where’s your computer?”
“It’s in the kitchen.”
“Come on. We’ll look up the closest athletic equipment store.”
“We don’t have to look it up. Mickey Forbes has a place right outside of town.”
“Great.” He tugged on her hand. “Let’s go.”
“Well, God knows I’m not one to pass up on a shopping opportunity, but I thought you were leaving to go on your hike.”
“I am. You’re coming with me.”
“What?”
“You don’t really think I’d leave you here, with all that’s going on?”
“You want to take me with you?”
“Sure. You won’t mind roughing it a little for a couple of days, would you?”
“How rough is rough?” She frowned again.
“Not as rough as it could be if whoever is stalking you catches up.”
“As much as I’m sure I’d love roughing it with you-there’s no one I’d rather share a tent with-but I can’t leave St. Dennis. I have to go into Bling tomorrow and figure out what I’m missing so I can meet with the insurance company. We’re coming into our busy season. I have to get Bling open as quickly as I can, or I won’t make enough this summer to carry me through the winter.” She sat on the side of the bed and he sat next to her. “I appreciate the thought, I appreciate you offering to take me with you, but I can’t go.”
Grady nodded. “I understand. I probably should have thought of that myself. In that case”-he leaned over and kissed her-“I suppose I better go get my stuff.”
“What stuff?”
“My clothes.”
“I thought you said you just picked them up from the Inn.”
“I did. They’re in the car. If you can’t come with me, I’m just going to have to stay with you. So until this is over, I’m afraid you’re stuck with me. Think you can handle sharing your space? Unless you’d rather stay at the Inn-”
“What about your trip? The hike you had planned?”
“The mountain will be there when all this is over.” He started toward the steps. “I want to make sure you are, too…”
Chapter 13
DIDN’T I tell you she hated me?” Maggie slumped in the front seat of Hal’s car.
“Well, now, hate might be too strong a word.” Hal drove away from the curb, mindful of the group of teens who for unknown reasons did not seem capable of walking on a sidewalk in this town. “I think she’s got issues, Maggie, but I don’t know that she hates you.”
“She’d rather take her chances with some crazy guy in a ski mask than have me stay with her.”
“Let’s be fair, now.” He paused, trying to choose his words carefully. “I’d guess that she’s a little put out on Beck’s behalf. You know he wasn’t expecting to see you at the wedding, Maggie.”
“You think I was wrong to come.”
“I think if he-”
“You think if he’d wanted me at his wedding he’d have invited me.”
“That isn’t what I was going to say, but yes, I think that’s probably true.”
He rolled to a stop sign, looked both ways to see what was what on Rayburn Road before continuing on his way.
“So what were you going to say?”
“I was going to say, if he’d had some time to prepare himself, if he’d had some contact with you over the past few years, he’d have taken it a little better.”
Tears welled in Maggie’s eyes. “I’ve never done a damned thing right where that boy was concerned. I didn’t know how to handle him when he was a child, or when he was a teenager, or now that he’s an adult. I’ve never known how to talk to him, Hal. I think it would have been easier for all of us if you’d been there…” She swallowed hard. “That was not what I intended to say, so forget that part.”
“Maggie, once something’s been said, it’s said.” He drove around the block to Charles Street. “You can’t take words back and pretend they weren’t spoken.” His voice softened. “Just like you can’t take the last twenty years back, and expect your children to pretend those years never happened.”
Maggie stared out the window.
“What should I do, Hal?”
“You have a lot of explaining to do to both of them,” he told her. “If you want them to let you into their lives, you have to let them into yours. From what you’ve told me, you’ve made a lot of mistakes in your life.” He hastened to add, “We all have. But you have to own up to them if you’re going to move past them.”
“What if I tell them, and they still don’t like me?”
“Well, then, I suppose that’s a chance you have to take. The way it stands right now, they both have problems with you but they don’t understand why you acted the way you did. There is a chance that they could hear the truth and still have a problem with you. That’s the chance you take. But they’re your kids, and if you want them back in your life, you’re going to have to step up and talk to them, and tell them everything you’ve told me over the past twenty-four hours. Maybe they’ll understand and forgive, maybe they won’t. I’m seeing that as fifty-fifty. But if you don’t have those conversations with them, your chances of reconciling with your kids are zero.”
“What if they dislike me even more?”
“Like I said, that’s the chance you take.”
“Where should I start? What would you do, if you were me?” she asked.
“I guess I’d start by taking Ness out to dinner and just talking to her. Get to know her a little, find out what’s happened in her life since she’s come here.”
“Well, I know what’s happened in her life. I know that you took her under your wing and helped her to get her business started. I know that you financed that little house of hers. I know that she thinks of you as the father she didn’t have.”
Hal couldn’t tell if she sounded happy or annoyed.
“You know that much, seems to me that’s a starting point.”
He drove down Kelly’s Point and parked in the spot that was reserved for the chief of police. He never got tired of remembering that the chief was his son. He opened his car door and started to get out.
She reached for the door handle and asked, “Do you hate me, Hal?”
He shook his head. “No. I never hated you, Maggie.”
“Not even when you came back from Nam and found out I was married to someone else?”
“Maybe for a while, back then,” he admitted. “But I started thinking about how hard things must have been for you. Pregnant, not knowing if I’d come back alive, your parents pressuring you to marry this other man. After a time, I realized you did what you thought you had to do. I understood.”