Ex on the Beach (41 page)

“You were always the smart one.”

Andie laughed. She’d never thought of herself that way, but that’s what she and her two friends had always said as kids. She was the smart one, Roni the musical one, and Ginger the homemaker. From an early age Ginger had wanted a husband and kids. And now she ran her dad’s business all by herself, and Andie had never seen her happier.

She studied Roni.

Roni was hiding secrets herself, but Andie hadn’t pushed her. Something had happened to send her back here. Yet generally speaking, Roni was happy, too.

It was only Andie who had an issue.

They turned the opposite direction from the football game and began slowly walking along the shore.

“I’m going to start babysitting the wedding kids more,”Andie said. Since she was stepping away from the day-to-day activities of the company, she’d offered to take on more of the responsibility to watch after guests’ children. It would save Seaglass money they’d otherwise spend hiring sitters.

Plus, she enjoyed it.

“That’s good, sweetie.” Roni nestled her head on Andie’s shoulder as they walked. “What else?”

“What do you mean?”

“You like to fill your hours when you’re searching for answers. What else do you have lined up?”

Andie laughed again. Her friend did know her well. “I signed up to teach another class at the senior center. And I talked to the historical society. I’m thinking maybe Seaglass can partner with them for a fund-raiser.”

“That sounds good.”

They turned around and splashed back the way they’d come. Andie knew what was going on with the impromptu questions. Roni was helping her work through the madness inside her head.

Roni, Ginger, and Andie had gotten together several times over the past week just to talk. About Mark, about life in general. About her mother and how everything there seemed to be magically falling into place.

But her friends hadn’t pushed her. They’d merely let her be. Ready to be there for her when she fell. Because Andie knew she would fall. She might have had a good cry that first weekend, but she hadn’t hit rock bottom yet. She couldn’t start climbing out of the hole until she hit bottom.

“What do you enjoy doing?” Roni asked.

The question caught Andie off guard. “I like kids. I like volunteering. I like making a difference. I just…I want to take care of people.”

Andie grew quiet as a realization began to dawn.

What she wanted to do was take care of people.

Kids.

A husband?

She swallowed against a lump in her throat.

Mark?

A pain the weight of a semi pushed into her chest as she fought for a deep breath. She wanted to take care of kids and a husband.

After all this time, and all those fights, this was what she wanted?

She glanced at Hunter and Maggie, at the other children running around the sand, shouting out to one another, and she smiled. She began to breathe faster and tears started trickling from her eyes. That was what she wanted.

Toss in some volunteer work, maybe help out with a charity or two, and she would be content. She would thrive. She would be happy.

Andie knew it as deeply as she knew she wasn’t going to get over Mark.

She’d fought the exact thing she wanted because it had seemed beneath her. She was supposed to be like her mother, supposed to be somebody. Have a career.

Yet that hadn’t made her happy.

Heck, it hadn’t made her mother happy, either.

Though her mother was already happy here, working with Seaglass. That had become clear the instant she’d started helping last week. She was a force. And she and Kayla would make an exceptional team.

And Andie wanted to be a wife and mother.

She wanted Mark.

She dropped to her knees and let the water roll up over her hips as more tears came.

“Oh, Roni,” she whimpered.

Roni dropped beside her. Ginger appeared from nowhere and settled in on Andie’s other side.

Soon the three friends were soaking wet, with their arms woven together.

“I love him,” Andie admitted.

“I know.” Ginger murmured. She stroked Andie’s hair and cooed softly.

“You did before he ever showed up here,” Roni added.

“But I pushed him away. I turned down his proposal.”

“You had a good reason,” Ginger reminded her. “He walked away before. He didn’t think of you, and he just walked away. And if he doesn’t deal with his past…”

Nausea washed over Andie, and she bent at the waist, arms crossed tight over her stomach. The ends of her hair dipped into the salty water. “I didn’t try. I should be helping him.” She shook her head and squeezed her eyes shut. “I gave up on him.”

“Shhh.” Roni soothed her. She pulled Andie’s hair back behind her head and smoothed a loving hand down her back. “You had to protect yourself, hon. You had to do what you thought was right.”

“But I sent him home. I didn’t even consider trying to help him.”

“And he didn’t consider doing anything but exactly what he did before. And that didn’t work, right?”

Damn Roni and her common sense. Andie nodded, still bent over, curled into a ball.

“So you did the right thing.”

Andie turned her head to Roni. “You’re saying I’m supposed to be without him? I’m going to hurt like this forever?”

“No, sweetheart.” Roni pulled Andie into her arms and Ginger followed suit. “I’m saying he needed to go home without you. You aren’t the only one in love here. I guarantee he’s missing you as much as you are him.”

“But what if it doesn’t matter? What if he can’t change?”

“What if it does?” Ginger whispered. “What if he can?”

Andie tilted her head back and rested it against Ginger’s arm. With her face to the sky, that dark cloud finally opened up and raindrops started bouncing over Andie’s face.

She laughed at the picture the three of them must make. The kids probably all thought they were crazy.

But for the first time in her life, she thought she was fine. Really, truly fine.
Good
even.

“There has to be a way,” she whispered, smiling now as she thought about Mark and going to him, forcing him to face his past. “For something that’s lasted this long and is this strong, wouldn’t there be a way?”

Ginger pressed her cheek to Andie’s. “Ginny would call it fate,” she said.

Andie laughed freely and let her tears mix in with the rain. Yes, Aunt Ginny would call it fate.

And just as she’d seen Aunt Ginny sometimes twist fate to suit her needs, Andie suddenly knew that she was going to do everything she could to twist it to suit hers.

She didn’t want to give up on Mark so easily. She didn’t want to give up on them.

If she loved him, shouldn’t she be there by his side? Helping him through his past?

So they could figure out how to make
them
last forever?

The rain suddenly stopped and the clouds parted, and there above the three of them was a perfect rainbow stretching to the horizon. It looked like the beginning.

And it looked like forever.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

M
onday evening brought with it the same thing the previous nine days had brought. Exhaustion, and several more hours of work to take home with him.

Mark grabbed his suit jacket off the back of his chair and headed for the door. First he was going to the pub for dinner and a nice dark stout. Maybe he’d check out a hot girl or two while he was at it.

He snorted. “Check out” was all he would do. What was the point? Andie was still right there, messing with his mind. He didn’t get through a single hour without thinking about something she’d said or something she’d done. Or how much he missed her.

And he had those thoughts multiple times each hour.

He was sick of it.

“I’m out of here,” he muttered to himself. His brother had headed out earlier, so he stopped at his dad’s office and poked his head in to say good-bye. Instead of his father, he found someone else.

“Mom?”

Celeste looked up from the papers she was reading on the desk. “Hi, baby.”

“Don’t call me baby. I’m thirty-one years old.”

“And still my baby.” His mother rose, and he noticed she wore a slim-fitting black dress.

“Going to a charity event?” he asked.

She looked down at herself and smiled secretively. “No. Your father is taking me out.”

“Nice,” he said. “Tell him I’m out of here, will you?”

He turned to go, but his mother stopped him by calling his name. He looked back.

She pointed to one of the chairs on the other side of the desk. “Have a seat,” she instructed. She used the voice that meant he couldn’t say no.

Feeling like a teenager in trouble, he grumbled but crossed the room and lowered himself to the chair. He’d done a good job avoiding her since they’d been back in Boston, and knowing his mother well, he had a good idea what the topic of this conversation was going to be.

He didn’t want to talk about Andie.

“I’ve convinced your father to hire a replacement for when he retires.”

Not
what he was expecting to hear. “Excuse me? Seems that would be a conversation Jonathan and I should have been involved in, too.”

She nodded. “Jonathan was there.”

“Oh.” Well, hell. “Why exactly did you leave me out?”

“Because we knew you would resist.”

He narrowed his eyes. “What are you up to, Mother?”

She sat back down and crossed her hands on the desk in front of her. The innocent look wasn’t cutting it. “I don’t want you feeling as if you have to stay here your whole life just because your great-grandfather started the firm. There’s a whole world out there.”

Irritation snapped inside him. “I like it here.”

“Yes, but you might like it somewhere else, too. Civil litigation isn’t unique to Boston, you know? Your brother will be fine without you. Another partner—”

“Would be a decision I would be involved with.”

She dropped the act and eyed him. “You’re a moron, Mark. What did you do to lose Andie this time? Do you not know that she loves you?”

Irritation turned to anger. “Butt out.”

He stood.

“Sit
down
.”

Blood pounded through his system as he glared at his mother. “It is not your place to do this.”

“Someone has to,” she said. “Sit down, Mark. Tell me what happened.”

He paused, forcibly relaxing his fingers from their tight clench, and quickly came up with an easy explanation.

“It didn’t work out,” he said. He shrugged one shoulder as if he couldn’t care less. “We shouldn’t have gotten back together in the first place.” Lying sack of shit. He shouldn’t have let her walk away from him. “She wants something else.”

“She wants
you,
” his mother insisted. “What did you offer her?”

“What?” Uncomfortable now just standing there, he returned to his seat. “What do you mean, what did I offer her? Andie isn’t something you barter for.”

“I mean, did you offer to move there? Did it ever even cross your mind?”

“Of course it didn’t. Our firm is here. I live here.”

“And she lives there.” His mother shook her head at him, a look of disgust on her face. “Did you even consider that? She has a career there. She’s making a good life for herself. She can’t just pick up and leave because you would rather be here.”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about.” He did not want to get into all the problems between him and Andie. “And what makes you think I could just pick up and leave?”

She went quiet and sat back in the chair, pressing her shoulders to the leather. The look she wore was one of pride. “Because you’re a Kavanaugh. For the woman you love, you should be willing to pick up and go anywhere. You aren’t defined by your job, son, but by what you make of your life.”

If only any of it were that simple. “And you would be okay if I left Boston? I thought you liked us here. Aren’t you the one I hear complaining that you’ve already lost two sons to other cities?”

“I also get on a plane and go see them. And they come here.”

He shook his head, pain returning to his chest. He needed to move on and forget that he wanted Andie. “It’s not that simple for us, Mom. She…” He glanced away, embarrassed to admit that he couldn’t keep her. “She wouldn’t want me there.”

“Of course she would. Go to her, Mark. You can work long distance on the important cases. You can open a firm there. You don’t have to stay here for us.”

He closed his eyes, exhausted. “I’m telling you, Mother, she doesn’t want me there. Let it go.”

He knew this without a doubt. Andie didn’t trust him to follow through with marriage.

He was beginning to wonder if she had a point.

“That is the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard.”

It wasn’t as ridiculous as what Andie thought. That his problems stemmed from Tiffany.

An unmistakable sound registered, and he popped his eyes open. His mother had the phone’s handset to her ear.

“What are you doing?” he barked out.

“I’m going to call and ask her myself.”

“Like hell you are.” He reached across the desk and snatched the phone from her hand, slamming it onto the base. “Stay out of it.”

“I’m going to fix it.”

“You can’t fix it, Mother. It’s not fixable.” Their voices had risen until they were yelling at each other, both of them now on their feet, inches separating their faces.

“Explain why not,” she growled out.

“Because I killed Tiffany!” he shouted.

Silence echoed through the room as pain flashed across his mother’s face. She dropped back into her seat, and Mark forced himself to return to his, reality hitting him as sharply as a bucket of ice water in the face.

He couldn’t protect Andie because he’d killed Tiffany.

Son of a bitch
, she was right.

And he was screwed. Any way he looked at it.

Marriage wasn’t in the cards for him at all. No wife. No kids. No nothing. Just the damned job. The one his mother was trying to push him out of.

Andie had done the right thing by walking away.

They sat there staring at each other, neither speaking. His breathing the only noise in the room. He didn’t know what else to say.