Seaview Inn (12 page)

“Well, heck, if that counts, I’m doing it, too.”

“There you go,” he said. “Maybe we’re a good influence on each other.”

“I think it’s going to take more than one walk on the beach and an ice cream cone to drag us out of the ranks of the compulsive workaholic,” she said dryly.

“Speak for yourself. I’m reformed,” he insisted again. He took her hand and wove his fingers with hers. “I’ll make you a deal. For as long as we’re both here, we will do something just for fun every single day. How about it?”

Hannah couldn’t immediately spot any drawbacks. “Sure. Why not?”

“It’s a deal, then,” he said, and lifted her hand to brush a kiss across her knuckles.

Heat shot through her at the contact, along with a sizzling awareness that had nothing to do with making an innocent pact. There it was, she thought with a shiver of panic. That was the drawback. She’d just committed to spending more time with a man who had the ability to distract her from all the things she should be dealing with. It wasn’t good. It wasn’t good at all.

Somehow, though, she couldn’t seem to regret it.

Every single day, Luke’s leg was a little less painful. He figured it was the combination of hard, physical work
and taking walks on the beach with Hannah that kept it limber, and the slanting rays from the afternoon sun as he sat on the porch that soothed the aching muscles.

So far, five days after they’d made their pact, he and Hannah had kept each other honest and spent a part of each afternoon doing something relaxing. He’d challenged her to a croquet match one afternoon after setting the wickets up in the backyard in preparation for the inn’s first guests after the reopening. The following day, they’d played a vicious game of badminton after he’d put the net up in the side yard. Hannah had beat the socks off him, though he’d blamed it on his injuries and dramatically limped away after the game. They’d walked on the beach and stopped for ice cream twice. Yesterday, he’d convinced her to take a bicycle ride around the island. He still hadn’t decided what today would bring.

He glanced up as Grandma Jenny emerged from the house carrying two glasses of iced tea. She handed one to him.

“You and my granddaughter seem to be spending a lot of time together,” she commented.

“She’s good company.”

“Yes, she is.” She gave him a hard look. “But she has an awful lot on her plate right now. I’d hate to see her get mixed up in something that has the potential to hurt her.”

Luke nodded slowly. “Warning duly noted. And just to reassure you, we’ve agreed that our lives are too complicated for anything serious to happen.”

Grandma Jenny chuckled. “You’ve agreed. Now, that
is
reassuring,” she said with tolerant amusement. “No wonder both of you are alone. You actually think you get to control these things. Trust me, Luke, if temptation’s got a foot in the door, all the logic in the world can’t fight it.”

He knew she was right, knew how tempted he’d been on more than one occasion to haul Hannah into his arms and kiss her, despite their agreement. He’d seized a few too many opportunities just to touch her as it was.

“Are you saying we should avoid each other?” he asked.

“Not for me to say. I don’t know what the complications are in your life, do I? I’m just saying if they’re insurmountable, then don’t start something with my granddaughter that will break her heart.” She smiled. “Of course, if those complications are just something you’ve blown up out of all proportion, then you have my blessing to get on with pursuing Hannah.”

Was that what he’d been doing? Pursuing her? Of course it was. He hadn’t been married for so many years that he couldn’t recall what it had been like to court a woman, to seek her out, flirt a little, relish the slow buildup of sexual tension. That was exactly what was happening with Hannah and more than likely, it was a huge mistake. She wasn’t the kind of woman to have an affair and walk away unscathed, and he was in no position to offer more.

He stood up abruptly. “I think I’ll walk into town, check out a few shops and have an early dinner at The Fish Tale,” he said.

Her gaze narrowed. “I thought you and Hannah did something around this time every afternoon.”

“We have been, but I think you’re right. It’s a habit we probably ought to break.”

“Then you should be man enough to stay here and tell her that face-to-face. Don’t leave it to me,” she said.

“Come on. Give me a break here. I’m trying to do the right thing.”

“Are you sure you know what that is?”

“I know what’s right for this moment. Long-term? Not a clue,” he admitted. He bent down and gave her a kiss on the cheek. “Thanks for the wake-up call.”

“That is not what I intended when I sat down here,” she grumbled.

He grinned. “I know, but sometimes when you start a ball rolling, it’s impossible to know where it will end up.”

She shook her head. “You’re starting to sound like me.”

He winked at her. “Sometimes you’re very wise,” he said before turning and walking away.

An evening at The Fish Tale with some idle conversation with Jack, maybe a few minutes with Lesley Ann, and some time to figure out what the hell he was doing with Hannah, that was what he needed tonight. Tomorrow? Well, tomorrow would take care of itself.

Hannah flatly refused to let her grandmother see how disappointed she was by the announcement that Luke had taken off for town without her. Instead, she muttered something about having things to do and marched back inside and tackled the project she’d been putting off—organizing the inn’s business files.

As she’d suspected, her mother had been no better at record-keeping than Grandma Jenny was. Both of them preferred the interaction with the customers to the business side of operating the inn. Other than annual tax forms, which were handled by an outside accountant, there wasn’t a decent set of records since her grandfather had kept them. Receipts had been stuffed into file folders or envelopes, sometimes by year, sometimes by category, seemingly without any rhyme nor reason.

She found everything that appeared to pertain to the current year and spread it out around her in the middle
of the floor. She was trying to sort through it all when Kelsey came in.

“What on earth are you doing, Mom?”

“Trying to make sense of all the bills and receipts for this place. Tax season is just around the corner. Since the inn was closed for most of the year, it should be simple enough to pull everything together.” She shook her head in exasperation. “Or it would be if anything was ever filed properly.”

“The inn needs a computer,” Kelsey said. “I mentioned it to Grandma Jenny and she looked at me as if I was suggesting she make a pact with the devil.”

“It’s probably a waste of money,” Hannah said. “You won’t be here forever and she’ll certainly never touch it.”

“I could have my computer from school sent here,” Kelsey suggested. “Jeff could do that. In fact, I really need to have him pack up everything and ship it to Florida. There’s no point in paying rent for an apartment if I’m not going back.”

“Or you could go back and get it yourself. If you’re serious about quitting school, there are probably things you need to do.”

“I can’t leave now,” Kelsey protested. “There’s too much to do with the first guests arriving in a couple of weeks. Jeff can handle shipping the stuff and I can call the registrar’s office about dropping out. I can probably do the paperwork online.”

“Relying on Jeff is asking a lot of a man you refuse to marry,” Hannah suggested.

“He won’t mind.”

“Does he even know what you’re planning?”

Kelsey shook her head, her expression guilt-ridden.

“Why not?”

“Because he’s going to be really upset about it,” she
admitted. “He says we can’t resolve anything if I’m clear across the country.”

“He’s right.”

“But it
is
resolved,” Kelsey said earnestly. “I’m having this baby and I don’t want to get married.”

“But you love this boy,” Hannah reminded her. “That’s what you told me.”

“Yeah,” Kelsey said softly. “He’s a great guy.”

“Then I just don’t understand,” Hannah said with frustration.

“It’s too soon,” Kelsey said with finality. “I’m not ready to be anybody’s wife.”

“But you
are
ready to be someone’s mother?”

Tears welled up in Kelsey’s eyes. “Not that, either.”

“Sweetheart, what is it you’re not saying?”

“I want to give the baby up for adoption.” She put a hand protectively over her stomach. “It’s too late for anything else and I promised Jeff not to end the pregnancy, anyway. But I can’t raise a child. I’ve thought and thought about this, Mom. I’m not being totally selfish, even though it probably sounds that way. I’m trying to think about what’s best for the baby. I swear it.”

“How does Jeff feel about relinquishing his parental rights?”

“He says he won’t do it,” Kelsey admitted. “He wants the baby, no matter what.” She met Hannah’s gaze. “But I want the baby to have a dad
and
a mom. I just can’t be that mom.”

Hannah knew she had no right to try to influence her daughter one way or another. This had to be Kelsey’s decision, and Jeff’s. All Hannah could do was make sure they weighed all the options carefully and thoughtfully.

Once again, she suggested, “Maybe you should fly back to California—”

“No way,” Kelsey said before Hannah could even complete the thought.

“Just to pack up your own things and try to resolve all of this with Jeff.”

“No,” Kelsey said flatly.

“Kelsey, these are decisions the two of you need to be making together.”

“I’ll call him and tell him,” she said. “It’ll be better that way.”

“Because it won’t be as easy for him to talk you out of it if you’re not face-to-face?”

Kelsey nodded.

“That should tell you something, then, shouldn’t it? If your feelings for this young man are that strong, if your love and respect run that deep, then perhaps you should try to make this work.”

“Haven’t you heard a word I said?” Kelsey demanded in frustration. “I won’t give up my chance to figure out who I am. Just me, as a person. Not as somebody’s wife or mother.”

“But you are going to be somebody’s mother, whether the timing’s right or not,” Hannah said. “You
are
responsible for the baby’s well-being.”

“I
know
that,” Kelsey replied. “And the responsible thing is to give this baby to two people who desperately want a family.”

She sounded so sure of herself, but Hannah knew she’d live to regret her choice. Maybe not right now when desperation had her grasping for an easy solution, but later when she thought about the child she’d given away.

“Why are you so determined not to marry a boy you love, if you’re having his child? I don’t think you’ve told me the real reason yet.”

“I won’t do it, because that’s what you did when you married Dad,” Kelsey blurted. “You got married too young. You had me too soon and just look how that turned out. It ruined everything for you.”

She whirled around and left the room with her words still hanging in the air. Hannah stared after her in shock. That was what Kelsey thought? That Hannah’s life had been ruined by her ill-fated marriage and by Kelsey herself? Nothing could be further from the truth.

But how on earth was she going to undo twenty years of actions that had led to her daughter reaching that conclusion?

S
ince Luke had slipped away from the inn specifically to avoid Hannah and had spent the entire evening fighting valiantly to keep her out of his head, it was disconcerting to come home at midnight and find her on the front porch, staring morosely out into the darkness.

All of his resolve and good intentions went up in smoke. He walked over and took a seat beside her.

“I thought you’d be in bed long ago,” he said, sliding a glance in her direction.

“Is that why you stayed out so late, to avoid me?”

“Pretty much,” he admitted.

He caught her faint frown.

“Why?” she asked.

“Something your grandmother said earlier.”

“Was she matchmaking again?”

“No, to the contrary, she was warning me off. I have to admit it came as a surprise, since she’d clearly been advocating earlier for something to happen between us.”

Hannah seemed as startled as he’d been.

“She’s been trying to throw us together since you got here,” she said. “I wonder what suddenly changed?”

“She said you had enough on your plate and that unless
I was serious, I should steer clear.” He shrugged. “Or words to that effect.”

“And you actually took what she said to heart?” she asked, sounding incredulous. “You ran off because she told you to? That doesn’t sound like you.”

“Truthfully, I ran off because it seemed like the wise thing to do.” He met her gaze, held it. “You should probably know that under other circumstances, I probably would have taken her warning as a challenge, tried my best to get you into my bed, preferably tonight.”

Beside him, Hannah’s lips curved. “Now I may have to kill her,” she murmured.

Luke studied her, tried to decide if she was serious about wanting him. It would change a lot if she was. Though he thought he was getting to know Hannah well, he couldn’t tell, so he gave her a rueful glance. “Please don’t. She was one hundred percent right about one thing. I need to be fair to you. I don’t know where this thing with us is going, if anywhere. To be honest, I don’t know much of anything these days. I’m just getting to a point where I can look beyond the next hour.”

“Well, join the club,” she said with surprising bitterness.

He gave her a startled look. “What happened?”

“Apparently I have inadvertently given my daughter the impression that my life was ruined because I married young and then divorced her dad. Never mind that he had commitment issues and walked out on us more than once until I finally told him he had to stay or go for good. What stuck with Kelsey was that I had to raise her on my own with very little help from her father beyond child support.”

Though Luke was relieved by the abrupt change of topic, he was stunned by what Hannah was telling him. “She said that?”

“Yep. She said that’s why she flatly refuses to marry the father of her child.” She regarded Luke with a bemused expression. “I worked so hard to make sure she had everything she needed, yet somehow she interpreted that as struggle and sacrifice, and she wants no part of it.”

“She’s young,” Luke reminded her. “The world is just opening up to her. She doesn’t know what she wants.”

“So she’s said, again and again. I’ve had to bite my tongue raw to keep from telling her how short-sighted and immature she’s being.”

“Maybe you should call her on it, if that’s how you really feel,” he suggested. “But I take it you didn’t do that.”

She shook her head, the slump of her shoulders revealing just how hurt she’d been by the whole conversation.

“I couldn’t get my brain to kick into gear after she hit with me with that,” Hannah admitted. “It didn’t matter, anyway, because she took off as soon as she said it.”

“Where’d she go? Timbuktu?”

“Of course not.”

“Then why didn’t you follow her? Straighten things out? I assume she had it all wrong.”

“This from a man who slipped away to avoid talking to me directly about something that concerns me,” she commented wryly.

“Guilty as charged,” he agreed. “But why didn’t you go after Kelsey? You’re not a coward, Hannah. Everything about you tells me you confront most things head-on.”

“I certainly used to,” she said. “Lately, I seem to be quite comfortable sticking my head in the sand. Besides, I didn’t know where to start.”

“The beginning’s always a good place. You weren’t pregnant when you married her dad, were you?”

“Of course not,” she said, indignation putting a blush on her cheeks.

“Then you must have married him because you thought you loved him.”

She nodded.

“Well, it seems to me that even when things don’t work out, sometimes the beginning is as simple as that,” Luke said. “Two people love each other. Marriage is a huge leap of faith based on hope as much as love. In reality, though, it doesn’t mean they have the fortitude or the passion to make it work over the long haul, not with all the crises likely to crop up along the way. There are probably thousands of things—big and small—that can trip up a marriage and make it fail.”

She turned toward him, her expression curious. “Is that what happened to your marriage? It couldn’t withstand the separation of you going to Iraq? Or did you go to Iraq because there were already problems?”

For a moment, Luke was taken aback by her insight. As much as he hated admitting it, there
had
been problems. Maybe they hadn’t pushed him toward the decision to reenlist, but they’d been there, lurking just below the surface of the mostly separate lives he and Lisa had begun to lead because of the demands of his work and her social nature. He considered not answering Hannah’s questions, partly because it was so much more complicated than that and partly because he didn’t especially want to reveal just how badly he’d been betrayed. Maybe he wasn’t even ready to face the self-examination of his own role in what had happened.

“Did I touch a raw nerve?” Hannah asked, not sounding especially contrite about it if she had.

“Yes,” he said honestly. “And we were talking about your marriage, not mine.”

Her gaze locked with his. “Maybe we
should
be talking about yours. You’ve been awfully evasive when it comes to discussing anything the least bit personal. If Gran hadn’t told me you’re a surgeon, I wouldn’t even know that much. Why is that, Luke?”

“I thought we were trying to figure out some way for you to make things right with your daughter,” he said testily. “That’s the more immediate problem.”

“True, but maybe what I really need right now is for you to tell me why it was so easy for my grandmother to warn you off of spending time with me. Are you still married, Luke? Is that it?”

He was dismayed that she even felt the need to ask. “No,” he said at once. “The divorce is final.”

“But you’re not really over it? Are you hoping to win her back?”

“Absolutely not,” he said fiercely. “But I do have two kids and I haven’t figured out how to make all this work for them. I’m so angry I can’t even imagine being in the same town with my ex-wife, much less in the same room.”

“Anger implies that the feelings still run pretty deep.”

Luke considered the comment. She was right. His feelings did run deep, just not the way she meant. At least he didn’t think it was because he still loved Lisa. He was pretty sure anything he’d ever felt for her died the day she’d told him about her relationship with Brad.

“Okay, here’s the condensed version,” he said, avoiding her gaze. He stood up and began to pace, agitated just thinking about how his life had unraveled. “I decided to reenlist without talking it over with my wife. I suspect my motives were less clear-cut than I pre
tended they were. Our marriage was in trouble. I just didn’t want to see it. I guess I thought a break would help and I did think I had a duty to do whatever I could in Iraq.”

Hannah gave him a knowing look. “You ran away. I’m sensing a pattern here, Luke.”

“Do you want to hear this or not?” he said, annoyed that she’d called him on his cowardice.

“Please,” she said.

“Lisa was furious, which she apparently thought justified her having an affair with my business partner, Brad, and then asking for a divorce just two weeks before I was due to come home to my loving family. The request came in an e-mail.” He clenched his fists, because just the memory of that made him want to break things. “She didn’t even have the guts to try to reach me by phone or to wait a couple of weeks until we were face-to-face. She just laid it all out in an e-mail, how they’d fallen in love while I was gone and wanted to get married.”

Hannah stared at him, her eyes filled with dismay. “Oh, Luke, I’m so sorry. How could she have done such a thing? Not just betraying you, but telling you like that?”

“I guess she thought it would be easier for me to come home without any expectations of picking up where we’d left off,” he said, trying for once to see it from Lisa’s perspective. He hated to think that she’d intentionally gone out of her way to add to the pain she knew she’d be causing him.

“How considerate of her,” Hannah said sarcastically.

Luke liked the fact that she was immediately on his side. It felt good to know that someone was. “Yeah, that’s what I thought,” he replied. “Instead of being prepared, though, my anger consumed every waking minute. I think that’s why I ended up wounded. I wasn’t paying atten
tion when I went outside the gates of the compound to treat soldiers who’d just been wounded by a car bomb. I didn’t see the person sneaking into the middle of the chaos, didn’t suspect a thing before he detonated
another
car bomb not fifteen feet away from where I was working on someone, trying to get him stabilized enough to take him inside. So, I suppose I blame Lisa and Brad for that, too. If I could lay blame for global warming on them, I’d probably do that as well.”

Hannah’s cheeks were damp with tears. She reached for his hand. “I am so, so sorry. No wonder you’re angry.”

“When I can see past that anger, I can manage to count my blessings,” he said. “For one thing, I’m lucky to be alive. And my leg’s doing better than I had any right to expect when they first took me in. I think that was the worst part of all. I knew just how bad my injuries were. I knew it would take a miracle to save the leg. Ironically, I was the surgeon whose job it would normally have been to try. Thankfully one of the other docs had been working with me on some of the more complicated cases. He did just fine on his own. I owe him. Otherwise…” Luke couldn’t even express what might have happened.

He waved off her sympathy before she could express it. “Hey, I’m here now. I’m almost back to a hundred percent. I have a lot to be thankful for.”

“Have you seen your kids since you came home?” she asked.

“Lisa brought them up to D.C. while I was in rehab. We got to spend a couple of days together. It was awkward as hell, though. I couldn’t really get around yet, so we couldn’t go out and do stuff. Kids that age need to be active. They were just seven and nine the last time I saw them, but they’ve both had birthdays since
then. Lisa offered to bring them back, but I told her not to. They don’t need to be cooped up in some hospital room, especially when there’s so much tension between their parents.”

“But they do need to spend time with you,” Hannah protested.

“We had e-mails and phone calls, at least for a while. The past couple of weeks I haven’t been in touch. Lisa said they were getting too upset.”

“Which meant she didn’t want to keep having to explain things to them,” Hannah said dryly.

“More than likely,” Luke agreed. “They’re too young to fully appreciate the whole situation. Meantime, back home, they’ve had to adjust to this new guy being around all the time, the man formerly known as
Uncle
Brad, though he’s now acting as a surrogate dad. They don’t know what to make of that, either. They’re totally mixed up about where their loyalties should lie. They’ve always liked Brad, but now their dad is gone because of him.”

He regarded Hannah with regret. “I get that they need my permission to be happy with the way things are now, but I’m sorry, I’m just not quite ready to forgive and forget.” When she was about to speak, he held up a hand. “I know that I need to for their sakes, and I will. Just not today. Or even tomorrow.”

“What a mess!” Hannah said. “I know marriages are complex and that there are two sides to everything, but this just seems flat-out wrong to me.”

“Me, too,” he said. “But I’ve stopped trying to analyze why it happened. I had a few minutes alone with Lisa when they came up to D.C., so I could have asked her, but I didn’t. It was too obvious that it was over for her, that she couldn’t wait to move on. Since it’s too late to
change anything, I need to figure out how to pick up the pieces and move on myself.”

“I’ll tell you what I told Kelsey earlier,” Hannah said. “This may not be the best place for you to do that. She needs to be with Jeff, working things out. You need to be where your kids are. That’s where the answers are.”

“And I will be with them, eventually,” he said. “However that works out.”

“Meaning?”

He shrugged. “I wish I knew. I don’t know what’s going to happen next, Hannah. I don’t know what I’m going to do or where I’m going to live, much less how to go about building a whole new relationship with my son and daughter.”

“You didn’t give your wife full custody, did you?” she demanded. “Please tell me you didn’t do that. I asked for and won that from my husband, but now I see that it wasn’t in Kelsey’s best interests, any more than it had been when my mother got full custody of me after my dad left. If Kelsey’s dad had been in her life more regularly, if I’d helped to facilitate that, maybe she wouldn’t have such a skewed view of marriage and divorce. Ironic, isn’t it? I knew what having my dad cut out of my life felt like, but I turned right around and did it to my own child. Now Kelsey’s about to repeat the pattern by skipping the marriage altogether.”

Luke gave her a penetrating look. “Hannah, we all do what we think is right at the time. You can’t second-guess yourself now.”

“Oh? The way you’re second-guessing your choices?”