The Doctor's Do-Over
Karen Templeton
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“You and I were friends, and you are back, and it’s high time we opened those closet doors, don’t you think? So. Dinner,” Ryder repeated. “Just you and me.”
“And if I say no?”
“I’m not above kidnapping you.”
“I don’t know, Ry. Could I at least think about it?”
“Of course.”
And that should have been his cue to haul his sorry ass through the door and out to his car. If he’d been inclined, that is, to listen to his head and not whatever made him instead lift one hand to brush his thumb across her rapidly cooling cheek, a move that sent his stomach into a freefall.
Mel sucked in a breath, her eyes going even bigger. “What the hell are you doing?”
“Seriously thinking about things I’ve got no right to think about.”
Dear Reader,
It always amazes me how often the tiniest seed of inspiration can grow into a whole story. Or, as with SUMMER SISTERS, an entire series. In this case I’m talking memories of childhood vacations spent in North Carolina with my two close-in-age cousins, when my father would take me to visit my grandmother nearly every summer.
I still remember long, jostling rides in the back of somebody’s Country Squire station wagon, cannonballing into assorted swimming pools and jamming out to the Beach Boys (guess that decade!).
Of course, this is fiction, and my cousins and I aren’t anything like Mel, April and Blythe. High Point, North Carolina, turned into make-believe St Mary’s Cove on Maryland’s eastern shore, and heaven knows none of us went on to lead lives anywhere near as tangled in secrets as those three. But the love and camaraderie, the shared silliness and laughter—those, the six of us had in common. Like all three of my heroines, I, too, was an only child, who cherished those weeks every summer when I had “sisters.” And writing these stories has allowed me to pay tribute to those gals … and those wonderful memories.
Enjoy!
Karen Templeton
About the Author
Since 1998, two-time RITA
Award winner and Waldenbooks bestselling author KAREN TEMPLETON has written more than thirty novels for Mills & Boon. A transplanted Easterner, she now lives in New Mexico with two hideously spoiled cats and whichever of her five sons happens to be in residence.
The Doctor’s Do-Over
Karen Templeton
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
To Amy and Lainey
Here’s to memories of hot summers,
frigid swimming pools,
sighing over boys
and more good times than I can count.
Miss you guys.
Chapter One
Her nostrils twitching at the putrid mix of mildew, ancient grease and whatever it was that had died in her grandmother’s Nixon-era refrigerator, Melanie Duncan could only gawk in horrified amazement. Holy cannoli—Amelia Rinehart had apparently kept every glass jar and plastic container she’d ever touched.
Along with—shuddering, Mel thunked shut the grimy, mustard-yellow cabinet door—decades’ worth of magazines, newspapers and junk mail stacked in teetering piles throughout the eight-freaking-bedroom house. And just think, she thought sourly, shoving up the nasty water faucet with her wrist and waiting for-ev-er for the hot water to meander up from the basement, it was all hers. Hers and April’s and Blythe’s, that is.
With that, her gaze also meandered, out the dirt-fogged window and beyond the weed-infested backyard sloping down to the inlet beyond, to the slate blue water glittering in the late September sunshine … and she could almost see those three girls sunbathing on the pier, stretched out on Walmart-issue beach towels as Green Day blared from somebody’s old boom box. Blythe’s, most likely.
The water suddenly went blistering hot, making Mel yelp. Cursing, she adjusted the handle, thinking maybe she was still in shock. Not so much about her grandmother’s passing—she had been nearly ninety, after all, even if Death probably had to hog-tie her and drag her away kicking and screaming. But, yeah, inheriting the Eastern Shore property, especially since her grandmother and she hadn’t spoken in more than ten years? That was strange. Far more strange than that, however, was finding herself in the last place she’d ever expected to set foot again.
Or wanted to.
Anxiety prickling her chilled skin—the thermostat didn’t appear to be working—Mel scrubbed her hands with the dish soap still sitting on the back of the pock-marked sink and turned, only to grimace at the M. C. Escher-like towers of long-since-expired bottles of herbal supplements smothering the chipped Formica counters … the jungle of dead plants at the base of the patio doors leading to the disintegrating back porch … what appeared to be hundreds of paper bags, undoubtedly loaded with mouse droppings, wadded between the fridge and the cabinets. Disgusting, as her daughter would say. Thank God the washing machine was working—go, Maytag—because no way in hell was she letting her child sleep on any of the musty sheets she’d found all jumbled up in the linen closet.
Had her grandmother always been that much of a pack-rat? Or had the three of them turned blind eyes to the clutter during those long, lazy summers when the world as they all knew it simply didn’t exist?
Shaking her head, Mel tromped to the dining room and yelled for her daughter, who, being made of sterner stuff than Mel, had gasped in utter delight the moment they’d set foot inside, then immediately taken off to explore.
“Quinn! Where are you?” she bellowed again, fighting images of the child fending off a posse of rats, breathing a sigh of relief at Quinn’s faint, but strong, “Coming!” in reply.
She glowered at the behemoth of a buffet across the room, the blotchy mirror behind it nearly obliterated by more … stuff. Doodads and knickknacks and tchotchkes galore. And in every corner, packages of all shapes and sizes—some unopened, even—from every purveyor of useless crap on the planet.
So much for a quick in-and-out. What had clearly taken years to accumulate wasn’t going to simply go poof in a couple of days. And then what? What the hell were the three of them supposed to do with the place? Yes, St. Mary’s Cove was picturesque and all, but even divested of all the stuff, potential buyers would take one look and laugh their tushies off. And she sincerely doubted that either of her cousins had the funds, let alone the wherewithal, to fix it up. She sure as hell didn’t, a thought that only shoved Mel back down into the Pit of Despair she’d been trying—with scant success—to climb out of for what felt like forever.
With a mighty sigh, she hiked through the House of Horrors and outside to her trusty little Honda to unload the backseat, the tangy, slightly fruity bay breeze catching her off guard. Oh, no. Not doing nostalgia, nope.
And just like that, there he was. In her head, of course, not in person, since there was no reason for him to know she was even here—and God willing, that’s how this little episode would play out—but … damn.
She hadn’t allowed herself to think of him in years. Had almost convinced herself it didn’t matter anymore. He didn’t matter anymore, that what they’d shared was as firmly and irrevocably in the past as those long ago summers—
“Mom? Whatcha doing?”
Mel glanced up, smiling for the slightly frowning ten-year-old—her life, her love, her reason for living—standing on the porch, all turn-of-the-century charm fallen on hard times, and her heart turned over in her chest. Heaven knows she’d made a boatload of mistakes in her life—oh, let her count the ways—but the skinny fifth-grader with the wild red hair currently standing with her hands planted on her skinny, not-at-all-like-Mama’s, hips wasn’t one of them.
Although the circumstances of her conception? In a class by itself.
“Unpacking. And good news! You can come play pack mule.” Because there was no way she was leaving that half-finished cheesecake to rot back in Baltimore while they were here. Or the pumpkin soufflé. Or the …
Okay, she liked her own cooking. So sue her.
They carted the various Tupperwared goodies into the kitchen, at which point Quinn gasped, bug-eyed, then shook her head.” Looks like you and me have got some serious cleaning to do.”
“You might say,” Mel said as she cautiously opened the doors under the sink to find—booyah!—six half-empty containers of Comet and as many boxes of garbage bags, a bucketload of desiccated sponges and enough Lysol to disinfect a cruise ship. And, praise be, two unopened packages of rubber gloves. The good Lord will provide, she heard her mother say, and tears threatened. Not going there, either, Mel thought, standing and handing her daughter a pair of gloves, a sponge and one of the Comets.
“Start with the sink.” Gloves donned, Mel yanked out a garbage bag and faced the fridge. “This puppy is mine.”
“Got it.” Quinn dragged over a step stool to better reach inside the sink, wriggled into her own gloves and got to it, determination oozing from every pore in her little body … as she started to sing, loudly and very badly, a song from Wicked.
What a little weirdo, Mel thought, chuckling. A little weirdo, she thought on a sharp intake of breath, she’d protect with everything she had in her.
Especially from people who wanted to pretend she didn’t exist.
Looking up from Jenny O’Hearn’s chart, Ryder Caldwell stared at his father’s white-coated back, the words barely registering.
“What did you say?”
David Caldwell slid his pen back into his top pocket, then directed a steady, but concerned, gaze at Ryder before removing the coat and snagging it onto a hook on the back of his office door. “That Amelia left the house to the girls.”
Not that this was any surprise, Ryder thought over the pinching inside his chest as he watched his dad shrug into the same tan corduroy sport coat he wore to work every day, rain or shine—much to Ryder’s mother’s annoyance—then yank down the cuffs of his blue Oxford shirt. Made perfect sense, in fact, Amelia Rinehart’s bequeathing the house to the three cousins who’d spent, what? Nine or ten summers there? At least?
What was a surprise, was his reaction to the news. That after all this time the prospect of seeing Mel again should provoke any kind of reaction at all. After all, stuff happened. People grew up, moved on—
“You okay?”
Ryder glanced up at his father. Although David’s lanky form stooped more than it used to, and silver riddled his thick, dark hair, it often startled Ryder that it was like seeing an age progression image of what Ryder himself would look like in thirty years. Unlike his younger brother Jeremy, who’d inherited their mother’s fair skin and red hair. Among other things.
“Of course, why wouldn’t I be?” he said, flipping closed Jenny’s file, then striding down the short hall to the empty waiting room to leave it on Evelyn’s desk to tend to the next morning. Outside, a light rain had begun to speckle the oversize windows of the small family practice clinic on Main Street his father had started nearly thirty years ago, where Ryder had joined him—again, much to his mother’s annoyance—after completing his residency five years ago. The clinic, his practice, had been the only constants in a life clearly determined to knock him flat on his butt with irritating regularity. Good thing that butt was made of rubber, was all he had to say. “But how did you—”
“Golf. Phil,” his father said behind him, rattling his keys. “Far as he knows they’ll be here today or tomorrow. To decide what to do with the place.” He paused. “Just thought you should know.”
“Because of Mel?”
A slight smile curved his father’s lips. “That little girl worshipped the ground you walked on. Never saw a pair of kids as close as you two were.”
Slipping into a tan windbreaker nearly as old as his father’s jacket, Ryder turned to the older man, now standing by the front door. “That was years ago, Dad,” he said over the twist of guilt, an almost welcome change from the pain he still lugged around after nearly a year. “We haven’t even spoken since that summer.” Another twist. “After her father died—”
“There’s a child, Ry.”
Again, the words weren’t making sense. How—why—did his father know this? And what on earth did it have to do with Ryder? “So she has a kid—”
“She’s ten.”
And that would be the sound of pieces slamming into place. “And you think she’s mine? Excuse me, Dad, but that’s not possible—”
“I know she’s not yours, Ry,” his father said wearily. Bleakly. “She’s your brother’s.”
His head still spinning, Ryder sat across the street from the massive quasi-Victorian, set well back on its equally massive, and woefully neglected, lot. He’d been there a while, parked in the dark, dead space between the street lamps and not giving a rat’s ass that the damp from the now full-out rain had seeped into his bones. He had no idea, of course, if the little white Honda with the Maryland plates was Mel’s or not, if the lights glowing from the kitchen window meant she was in there.
With her daughter.
You know, you tell yourself what’s past is past. That time inevitably fades reality. If not warps it into something else altogether. Then something, anything—a word, a thought, a scent—and it all comes rushing back.
His father hadn’t said much, muttering something about how his tail was going to be in a sling as it was. Meaning, Ryder surmised, that his mother had been behind whatever had gone down. No shocker there, given her obsessive protectiveness of his younger brother. Who, according to Ryder’s father, had known about the baby—
Holy hell. After an hour, the shock hadn’t even begun to wear off. He pushed out a short, soundless laugh—he’d finally gotten to the point, if barely, where he no longer felt as though he had a rusty pitchfork lodged in his chest, and now … this.
Even if he had no idea yet what “this” was. If anything.
Frankly, if the child had been his—if that had even been a possibility, of course—he doubted he could have been more stunned. Or furious. Hell, Ryder couldn’t decide which was eating him alive more—that Jeremy had knocked Mel up or that everybody had kept it a secret all these years. That Mel hadn’t told him—
You feel betrayed? Really?
The front door opened. Ryder slouched behind the wheel like some creepy stalker, even as he silently lowered his window to get a better look, rain be damned. So, yeah, the car was Mel’s—even over the deluge he could hear her still-infectious laughter before he saw her, and the memories flooded his thoughts like soldiers charging into battle. Somehow, he steeled himself against them as the kid emerged first, her tall, thin frame swallowed up in a lime-green down vest, the feeble porch light glancing off a headful of blazing curls before she yanked her sweatshirt hood up over them. She tramped to the edge of the wide porch to glare over the railing. At the weather, he guessed.
Crap. She looked exactly like Jeremy.
Ryder’s heart thumped when Mel backed through the door, her translucent, bright pink plastic rain poncho making her look as though she’d been swallowed alive by a jellyfish. He couldn’t tell much, other than she’d traded in those godawful Birkenstocks for even more godawful Crocs. In a bilious pink to coordinate with the poncho, no less.
Ryder felt his mouth twitch: fashion never had been her strong suit.
The door locked, Mel joined her daughter to give her a one-armed hug, laying her cheek atop her curls, and his lungs seized. Of course, between the downpour and the sketchy light from the streetlamp, he couldn’t really see her face, although there was no reason why she wouldn’t be as pretty as ever, her thick dark hair—still long, he saw—a breath-stealing contrast to her light, gray green eyes. Something he hadn’t dared tell her then, despite how badly he knew she’d needed to hear it. Her posture, however, as she held her little girl close, her obvious sigh as her gaze drifted over what must have seemed like a bad dream, positively screamed Just kill me now.
It occurred to him he didn’t know if she was in a relationship. Or even married. If she’d gone to college, or what she’d majored in if she had.
If she was happy, or heartbroken, or bored with her life—
No. Mel would never be bored.
He had no intention of ambushing her. Not yet, anyway. As it was, he was pressing an unfair advantage simply by being here, especially since he doubted she had any idea he knew she’d returned, let alone about Quinn. And he certainly wasn’t about to confront her—not the right word, but the only one he could think of at the moment—before the million and one thoughts staggering around inside his brain shook off their drunken stupor and started talking sense. Or before he shook loose the full story from his mother—the next item on his to-do list, in fact. But for reasons as yet undefined he’d simply wanted to … see her.
The poncho glimmered in the sketchy light as Mel said something to the girl. He couldn’t hear their exchange, but damned if Quinn’s dramatic gestures didn’t remind him exactly of her mother at that age, and it suddenly seemed incomprehensible, that he’d known absolutely nothing about the last ten years of her life when he’d been privy to pretty much all of it up to that point.
Those huge, curious eyes had hooked Ryder from the moment he saw her when she was two days old, as though—or so it seemed to his five-year-old self—she was asking him to watch out for her. Never mind that her parents lived in the groundskeeper’s cottage and he in the main house, the oldest son of her parents’ employers. He was hers, and she was his, and that was that, he now thought with a slight smile.
Images floated through, of her belly laugh when he’d play peekaboo with her, of helping her learn to walk, ride a tricycle, learn her alphabet. Then, later, how to throw a baseball, and cannonball into the swimming pool, and lob water balloons with deadly, and enviable, accuracy—activities his four-years-younger brother Jeremy, coddled and cosseted long after a full recovery from a severe bout of pneumonia as a toddler, found stupid and/or boring.
Of course, as Ryder grew older Mel’s constantly trailing him like a duckling sometimes annoyed him no end, when he wanted to hang with his fifth-grade homies or build his model airplanes without some five-year-old girl yakking in his ear. A five-year-old girl with no compunction whatsoever about slugging him, hard, when he’d tell her to beat it, before stomping off, her long, twin ponytails flopping against her back.
Until he’d come to his senses—or his friends would go home—and he’d seek her out again, finding her in the kitchen “helping” her mother, Maureen, cook, or building castles out of his cast-off Legos.
And she always greeted him with a bright grin, his rejection forgiven, forgotten, Ryder thought with a pang as, shrieking the whole way, Mel and the kid finally dashed down the steps to her car.
His window raised, he watched the Honda cautiously take off through the downpour, thinking how he’d always been able to count on that grin, even after he was in high school and Mel barely up to her ankles in the first waves of adolescence, when their mothers began to cast leery glances in their direction. Although it was absurd, that they’d even think what they were thinking. Mel was his little sister, for God’s sake, a take-no-crap punk kid who knew everything she needed to know about how boys thought … from Ryder. The boundaries couldn’t have been brighter if they’d been marked in Kryptonite.
Until the summer after she turned sixteen.
He’d just finished pre-med. And oh, how grateful he’d been, after that semester from hell, for Mel’s easy, no-demands company, even if the sight of her in that floral two-piece swimsuit seriously threatened those boundaries. She’d always been more mature than most girls his own age. That summer, when her body caught up to her brain … yowsa. And, yes, not being totally clueless, it was evident she no longer looked at him the same way, either.
However. He would have lopped off an appendage—in particular the one giving him five fits those days—before violating her trust. Except it had been that very trust that sent her into his arms, the day after her father’s sudden death, for the comfort she couldn’t get from anyone else. Especially not her wrecked mother.
Even after all this time, a wave of hot shame washed over Ryder as he remembered how desperately he’d wanted to accept what she was offering. How horrified he’d been. And he’d panicked, pure and simple. Pushed her away, walked away … run away, back to school weeks before he needed to be there.
She’d meant more to him than anyone else in the world, and he’d bungled things, big-time. Stomped on her already broken heart like a mad elephant. Worse, he’d never apologized, never explained, never tried to fix what he’d broken, partly because, at twenty-one, he had no clue how to do that.
But mainly because … he’d wanted her. And what kind of perv did that make him?
Groaning, Ryder let his head fall back, his own still-bruised heart throbbing inside his chest. This was the last thing he needed, to have that particularly egregious period of his life return to chomp his behind when his heart was still so sore. But chomp, it had.
He’d never expected to see Mel again, never imagined he’d have the opportunity to tell his side of the story. Not that there was any guarantee she’d even want to hear it after all this time. Nor would he blame her.
However—he finally started the car, eased down the road that led to his parents’ house, on the other side of the cove—he did want to hear Mel’s side. Which would be the side, he thought as bile rose in his throat, that explained how she’d come to have his brother’s baby.
“You told him?” Knowing, and not caring, that she probably looked as though she’d been goosed, Lorraine Caldwell gaped at her husband as a brutal cocktail of emotions threatened to knock her right on her fanny. “Are you out of your mind?”
Settled into his favorite wing-chair in the wood-paneled den, the dogs dozing at his feet, David swirled his two fingers of Scotch in his glass and shrugged. Even after nearly thirty-five years of marriage, Lorraine still hadn’t decided if his unflappability soothed her or unnerved her. Until she remembered they probably wouldn’t still be married otherwise, considering … things. Things not given a voice for more than three decades, but which still occasionally shimmered between them like a ghost that refused to move on. Now, underneath blue eyes that had knocked her off her feet as a girl, a slight smirk told her that he had the upper hand. And wasn’t about to let it go.
“And if you remember I was the one who said you were out of your mind, thinking you could keep this a secret.”
David hadn’t exactly been on board with the arrangement, Lorraine thought with a mix of aggravation and—dare she admit it?—admiration. Now. Then, however …
“She wasn’t supposed to come back! Especially with … She lowered her voice, despite their being alone. Even though they hadn’t had full time help in years, old habits die hard. “The child. That was the agreement.”
“Clearly you didn’t consider all eventualities. Believe it or not, Lorraine, you can’t control the entire world.”
Lorraine’s eyes burned. The entire world? There was a laugh. How about even her own tiny corner of it? “For heaven’s sake, David—maybe they wouldn’t even have run into each other. Why on earth did you jump the gun?”
“Because,” he said, standing, “it didn’t feel right to leave it to chance. Catching Ryder off guard if they did cross paths. Besides, aren’t you even curious about her?”
Talking about being caught off guard. Lorraine sucked in a breath: she’d never, not once, indulged herself in pointless “what ifs?” After all, she’d made the best decision, the only decision, she could have made at the time. A decision circumstances had forced her to make. To change the rules now—
“What about Jeremy?” she said, grasping at rapidly disintegrating straws. “And Caroline. They’ve only been married six months—” At her husband’s quelling look, Lorraine blew out a sigh. “What if Ryder confronts him? Did you think of that?”
“I imagine he will,” David said with a shrug. “Hell, I was all for making the boy own up to his idiocy at the time—”
“Then why didn’t you?” Ryder said quietly from the doorway, making Lorraine jump.
David waved his nearly empty glass in her direction. “Ask your mother.”
Wordlessly, Ryder turned his gaze on her, his hands shoved into the pockets of that awful old windbreaker he’d had since college. Whereas her younger son had always been given to flying off the handle—her fault, she supposed—Ryder had always been the even-tempered one, even as a toddler. Just like his father. That had unnerved her, too, his seeming imperviousness to anything that would try to unseat him. Now, however, Lorraine could tell by the glint in his dark brown eyes, the hard set to his beard-hazed jaw—another “style” also picked up in college—that his customary calm masked an anger so intense she almost couldn’t look at him.
Especially since that angry gaze relentlessly poked at the guilt she’d done her best to ignore for the past ten years.
Secrets, she thought on an inward wince. You would think she’d have learned her lesson the first time, wouldn’t you?
Apparently not.
Ryder watched his mother, still attractive in an old-money, take-me-as-you-find-me way, sink into the sofa’s down-filled cushions, sighing when one of the dogs heaved herself to her feet and plodded over to lay her head in his mother’s lap. A pair of silver clips held her fading red curls back from her sharply boned face; in her rust-colored cardigan, jeans and flats, she gave off a certain Kate Hepburn vibe most people found intimidating. And, to a certain extent, fascinating.
Most people. Not Ryder.
“Well?” he prompted.
She distractedly traced the design of the Waterford lamp beside her before folding her hands on her lap. “The thing between Jeremy and Mel … we had no idea. None. Until Maureen marched Mel in here—into this very room, in fact—that fall and announced that Mel was pregnant.” His mother shot a brief glance in his direction. “Frankly, we assumed the baby was yours.” Her mouth twisted. “Until we did the math.”
Too angry to speak, Ryder crossed his arms high on his chest. “And when you realized it wasn’t?”
“Jeremy was barely eighteen,” his mother said, her gaze fixed on the golden retriever’s smooth head as she stroked it. “He’d just started at Columbia …” She pushed out a truncated sigh. “It was perfectly obvious it was all a mistake. That it meant nothing. To him, especially, but even Mel admitted …”
When Lorraine looked away, Ryder prodded, “Mel admitted what?”
“That she didn’t love Jeremy. Oh, for heaven’s sake, Ryder—don’t look at me like that. It was a silly summer fling, nothing more. A silly summer fling with dire consequences,” his mother finished on a grimace. “But then, Jeremy could hardly be blamed, could he? Not with the way M-Mel kept flaunting herself in those short shorts and tight tops—”
As in, cut-offs and T-shirts. Same as every other high school girl wore.
“And that bathing suit—”
“So, what? She’s automatically the guilty party because she grew breasts?”
Twin dots of pink bloomed on his mother’s cheeks. “Of course not. But she didn’t have to be so, so blatant about them. She could have dressed less … enticingly. I mean, you know your brother—”
Behind them, his father huffed out a breath. “Lorraine, for pity’s sake.”
“Well, it’s true. She played right into his hand.”
“Literally,” Ryder muttered, his own fisting inside his pockets. “You know, being neither blind nor gay, I was pretty aware of Mel’s … assets, too. Assets she didn’t flaunt any more than any other girl her age. Less, in fact, than most. That bathing suit—sure, it showed off her curves, but we’re not talking a string bikini, for heaven’s sake.” Ryder glowered at his mother. “Yeah, I know Jeremy. But I would’ve thought …”
His mother stood. “You can’t lay this whole thing at his feet, Ryder. Even though I know you’d love to do that. I never did understand why the two of you never got along, which is one reason we decided it was better to keep this from you. Because I knew how much it would hurt you, that Mel …” At Ryder’s glare, Lorraine pressed her lips together, shaking her head.
“However, I refused to let one mistake derail Jeremy’s plans. Not after he’d had to work so hard to get into Columbia. So we struck a deal—one Maureen agreed to, by the way—that in exchange for our financial support they’d leave St. Mary’s for good and we’d never speak of any of this again.”
As livid as he was, Ryder felt his eyes narrow. Something was off. Not so much what his mother was saying but how she was saying it. But right now he just wanted the facts.
“So it never occurred to you to make Jeremy own up to his part in this?”
“At eighteen? What on earth was he supposed to do?”
“And Mel was sixteen. Something tells me she definitely got the short end of the stick—”
“I tried to make her see reason!” his mother said, and he caught the flash of desperation in her eyes. “To explore her … options, but she was having none of it. She insisted on having, and keeping, the baby, although for the life of me I never understood why. That was her choice, Ryder. Our choice—”
“Was to let my brother off the hook by sweeping the whole thing under the rug?”
“There’s a trust fund for the child. And we sent enough money through the years so they were never in any danger of starving. We honored our obligations, believe me. In the way we best saw fit. Your sister-in-law has no idea, by the way. And we’d appreciate it if you didn’t tell her. It could ruin their marriage. And I’m sure you wouldn’t want that on your conscience.”
Ryder smirked: although the news had gobsmacked him, nothing coming out of his mother’s mouth now surprised him in the least. To say Lorraine Caldwell was a control freak didn’t even begin to cover it. As far back as Ryder could remember his mother had ruled the household—in her childhood home, the estate having belonged to her surgeon father, her D.C.-socialite mother, long before she’d married the gentle GP who’d stolen her heart, as lore would have it, that summer when she was nineteen. As far as Ryder could tell she’d been Daddy’s spoiled little princess who’d seen no reason to change her modus operandi—as in, always getting her way—when she grew up. That she still seemed to have his father, as she’d had her own, so tightly wound around her little finger was a mystery he doubted he’d ever solve.
Except Ryder now looked to his father, seeing for the first time in David’s chagrined, embarrassed expression the older man’s constant acquiescence to his mother’s whims for what it was—weakness, pure and simple. For God’s sake, grow a pair! he wanted to shout, even as his heart cracked a little more, that the man he’d so wanted to believe in, look up to, apparently didn’t really exist. For his dedication to his work, his patients, Ryder would always admire him. But respect him as a man? As someone he could count on to do the right thing?
Not so much.
Disheartened, he thought back to that silent promise he’d made to that chubby, bald, two-day-old baby, to look out for her. Protect her. Only he’d no idea at the time it would be his own family he’d have to protect her from. Or at the very least, try to undo ten years’ worth of damage.
“No,” he said to his mother. “I swear I won’t breathe a word to Caroline. That’s not my place, it’s Jeremy’s. Whose conscience, frankly, could use a good swift kick in the ass. But whatever. However, now that I know I have a niece, you better believe she’s going to know at least one member of this family gives a damn about her.”
“And what if Mel isn’t on board with that idea?”
He looked from one to the other. “That’s between Mel and me. Because you two officially have nothing more to say about it.”
Chapter Two
All that food in the house, and Mel and Quinn both decided they’d rather have stir-fry. Go figure. But at least by the time they finished shopping at the only decent supermarket in town, she’d stopped looking over her shoulder, convinced Ryder—or worse, one of his parents—was going to appear at the end of every aisle. She’d driven by the clinic, seen his name beside his father’s; a quick Google search on her phone revealed that Jeremy was a junior partner at some hot-shot law firm in New York.
“Hey, Virginia plates,” Quinn said as Mel’s headlights stabbed at the weather-and-time ravaged house, as well as the late model Lexus parked in the driveway. The rain had finally let up, although it had turned bone-chillingly cold. Welcome to early fall on the Eastern Shore. “Whose car is that?”
“I’m gonna guess April’s,” Mel said, all bittersweet ache at the prospect of seeing her cousin again after more than a decade. She and April had chatted briefly the day before, but only long enough to coordinate their schedules. And unleash a boatload of memories.
And laughter.
We were happy here, Mel thought on a smile, even as the backs of her sinuses twinged. She’d been happy here, during those summers when Amelia called enough of a truce with Mel’s mother to allow Mel to hang out in the rambling old house with her close-in-age cousins. Summer sisters, they’d called themselves—
“Ohmigosh! There you are!”
In a flippy little plaid skirt and coordinating cardigan, April—still tiny and bubbly and strawberry blonde—burst out of the front door and down the steps before they’d even climbed out of the Honda, where she grabbed Mel in a hug hard enough to do damage, then let go to fan her now tear-streaked face.
“Honest to Pete,” Mel said, laughing, digging in her gargantuan purse for a pack of tissues which she handed to her cousin. “Still?”
“I know, I know, I’m terrible!” Gal always had cried at the drop of a hat. “But I can’t help it, it’s just so good to see you … wait,” she said, her soggy gaze turning to Quinn, standing off to one side. “Oh, my word—is that your little girl?”
“Little girl?” Mel said, pretending to look shocked. “What little girl? For heaven’s sake, she must’ve crawled in the backseat while I was at the store—”
“Mo-om, geez,” Quinn said. Rolling her eyes. Then she extended her hand to April. “I’m Quinn. The sane one—”
“Don’t you go giving me your hand—come here, sugar,” April said, hauling Quinn into her arms, and Mel’s own eyes watered. Yes, April had cried more than ten girls put together, but this was what Mel remembered most about her cousin, that she loved more than any human being she’d ever known. That her tenderheartedness was only surpassed by an unfeigned generosity that put most people to shame.
Then she noticed how the feeble porch light glinted off the tasteful, but impressive, array of diamonds on April’s ring finger. Between those and the car, Mel got the feeling her cousin was a lot better off than when they’d been kids. Not that they’d ever discussed such things, even when they were all old enough to figure out that while their grandmother obviously had money—then, at least—her three daughters had all somehow bounced well out of range of that particular tree.
“Aren’t you the prettiest thing?” April now said, holding Quinn at arm’s length before turning to Mel. “I take it she looks like her daddy, since I’m not seeing a whole lot of you in that face—”
“Quinn, let’s get this food out of the car,” Mel said, smartly going around to the trunk. “Stir-fry for dinner okay with you?”
April shot her a look, but took the hint and simply said, “Sure thing. I’m starved!”
Despite their earlier attack on the kitchen, the cloying dampness assaulted Mel’s nose as they carted the groceries through the conglomeration of dusty wicker and sisal and faded pastels hunched together on scabrous floors in the large gathering room, every surface obliterated by their grandmother’s “collections.” Dusty paintings hung askew on walls gone cobweb-gray; mismatched shelves bowed under the weight of hundreds, if not thousands, of books and DVDs and videotapes. At least there weren’t any cats.
That they’d found, at any rate.
“I had no idea the place had gone to seed like this,” April whispered to Mel as they loaded the bags onto the now disinfected pine table in the middle of the oversize kitchen. Quinn dumped her bags, as well, then took off to continue exploring. Mel was half tempted suit up the kid in hazmat attire. And maybe a cross.
“Seed, hell,” Mel muttered as she hauled two gallons of milk onto the top shelf of the fridge, which at least was no longer toxic. “The ancient Greeks had nothing on the civilizations growing in there.”
“So you’re saying it was worse?”
“Heh.” April stared at one of the kitchen chairs; Mel chuckled. “Your butt might smell like Pine-sol when you get up, but you’re good.”
“The lawyer said Nana died virtually broke,” her cousin said, sitting. “That the house … this was all that was left.”
“Because she clearly spent everything she had on crap she didn’t need,” Mel said. “Have you been upstairs yet?”
“After seeing the gathering room? I didn’t have the nerve. Not alone, anyway. And you let Quinn go up there?”
“She’s an intrepid soul, she’ll be fine.”
April sighed. “I cannot imagine how long it’s gonna take to sort through all this junk. Although I don’t suppose it was junk to Nana. And who knows? There might be some valuable stuff in amongst all that …” She waved her hand, searching for the right word.
“Trash? I seriously doubt it. Frankly, my vote is for lighting a match.” Mel lifted her hands. “Oops.”
“Bite your tongue,” her cousin said, coloring. “And you know she used to have good things. I remember the crystal. And the china. And some of the furniture dated back to when the house was built—”
“And sometimes, old is just old. April—the place is about to collapse, from what I can tell—”
“I’m sure most of it’s cosmetic!” At Mel’s snort, she added, “You mark my words, once we get it all cleared Out …” Her eyes filled. “We can bring it back to life, Mel. I’m sure of it.”
Too tired to argue, Mel changed the subject. “So … you’re married, huh?” April frowned slightly. Readying the veggies for slaughter on a cutting board in the middle of the kitchen table, Mel pointed to her cousin’s left hand with one of the knives she’d hauled from Baltimore. Because some things, a real cook doesn’t leave home without.
“Oh,” April said, touching the rings. “I am. Or rather, was. Clayton—my husband—died a few months ago.”
“Oh, God, honey—”
“It’s okay, he’d been ill for a long time.” Then she squinted up at the forlorn schoolhouse-style fixture dangling in the center of the room. “That has got to go.”
“And it will, when the flames reach the kitchen.” Mel clanged her iron skillet onto the gas range, turned the heat on high, then returned to the table. “I take it you don’t want to talk about your husband?”
“Not any more than you do the house, apparently.”
“I did talk about the house, I suggested we level it and collect the insurance. That, or turn it into an annual Halloween attraction.” At her cousin’s silence, she frowned. “What?”
“Nothing.”
“Nothing, my hiney.” Mel waved the knife in April’s direction. “I remember that look. All too well. That look spells trouble.”
On a soft laugh, April reached across the table to briefly squeeze Mel’s wrist, before grabbing a red pepper slice and nibbling on it. “It’s nice, being here with you again.”
“Ditto. Although … I’m not the same person I was then.”
“Who is?” April said on a sigh. “Even so, despite the clutter and the filth and wildlife I don’t even want to think about, being back here … it’s like time stood still. Not that I feel like when we were kids—and heaven knows I wouldn’t want to—but it’s like the me I am now can feel the me I was then looking over my shoulder. Didn’t expect that.” She paused, then said, “So did you keep up with Ryder or what?” When Mel shot her a what-the-hell look, April grinned. “It’s hardly an illogical question, Mel. Well?”
“No.”
“Really? I mean, I know how close you two were—”
“We were childhood buddies, that’s all,” Mel said, wondering if it was too late to bake something. As if that was a serious question. “Besides, he went off to med school, and Mama and I moved to Baltimore after Dad died, and … we lost touch—”
Quinn bounded into the kitchen—Mel had often wondered if the child had springs on the soles of her feet—and straight to the table to snatch a carrot slice. “When’s dinner? I’m about to expire from hunger.”
“Ten minutes,” Mel said, carting the chopped veggies to the stove to dump them into the sizzling oil. “You can set the table. Dishes are up there.” She nodded toward the cupboard next to the sink. “Used to be, anyway.”
After filching a pepper slice, Quinn swung open the cupboard door, nearly gagging when she pulled down an avocado-green Fiestaware plate that looked like it hadn’t been washed in twenty years. “Gross!”
“Hey,” April said with a laugh. “When we were kids we’d’ve rinsed it off and called it good.”
“And you, child of mine,” Mel said as she stirred, “used to lick the kitchen floor.”
Shock and horror bloomed in Quinn’s blue eyes. “Did not!”
“Got the video to prove it. You apparently have the immune system of an android. Palmolive’s right on the sink, baby. Go for it.”
After dinner, during which they talked, and laughed, and reminisced more than Mel had any idea they could, Quinn disappeared again to poke through those ten thousand books—heaven!—while April and Mel cleaned up. Her hands deep in Palmolive suds, April looked over at Mel, drying the dishes and stacking them on the counter rather than putting them back with their disgusting little friends.
“Dinner was fantastic. You always cook like that?”
“Thanks. And yes. Cooking’s my thing.”
“Really? Huh.” Behind her, Mel heard sudsy swishing. “So … is Quinn’s father in the picture?”
“Nope,” Mel said lightly. “Never has been.”
More swishing. Then: “Is she Ryder’s kid?”
Yeah, she’d expected that. Still, the assumption needled. Especially since there were other people in town who’d be all too eager to leap to the same conclusion. “No. As I said, Ryder and I were friends. Good friends.” She felt a tight smile tug at her mouth. “There was no way anything untoward would have happened between us. He would have never let it.” At her cousin’s silence, Mel turned. “What? You don’t believe me?”
“Oh, I believe you. But I also remember that last summer we were all together, when Ryder took the three of us out on his dad’s boat.” Hauling the clean skillet onto the drainboard, April slid Mel a devilish grin. “I also remember the way he looked at you when he thought nobody would notice.” A wet hand pressed to her chest, she released an exaggerated sigh. “And I thought if a boy looked at me like that? I’d absolutely die of happiness. Die, I tell you.”
“And how many romance novels did you read that summer?”
April belted out a laugh, the sound unexpected from her delicate frame. “Best. Summer. Ever,” she said, and even Mel had to smile, at how they’d discovered their grandmother’s stash of old, yellowing Harlequins in a trunk on the porch, clandestinely stashing them in their beach towels to read aloud to each other as they sunbathed. Damn books were probably still in the house somewhere. If they hadn’t completely disintegrated by now—
“However,” her cousin went on, “I also caught the way you looked at him. And don’t you dare try to deny it. These eyes know what they saw, yes, they do.”
Overhead, Mel heard the floorboards creak. “Fine,” she said with a quick glance toward the ceiling. Either Quinn had changed rooms upstairs or there was a raccoon the size of Cincinnati up there. “So I might have had a little crush on him. I mean, I suppose it was inevitable, considering how kind he’d always been to me.”
April laughed again. And flicked water at her.
“He was my friend, April,” Mel said, zapping her cousin with the damp towel. “And that was the only thing that mattered.”
Wringing out the sponge and laying it on the edge of the sink, April turned to her with a frown. “Then why’d you two stop talking to each other?”
“Because we just did!” Mel slammed the last plate a little too hard on the pile, then shut her eyes, thinking, Yeah, hand her the gun to shoot you with, why not?
She heard April dump the sudsy water into the sink, yank another dishtowel off the old “finger” rack under the counter.
“That’s probably not dry yet,” Mel muttered. “I just washed it this afternoon.”
“It’s fine.” April wiped her hands and hung the towel back up, then leaned closer to the sink to look out the window at the plum-colored sky. “I didn’t mean to upset you, honey. But being back here … guess it’s made me a little melancholy. Like I want to recapture a little of that magic, you know?”
“I do, actually. But it’s not possible.”
“I know. Still, it’s sad. You and Ryder losing touch.” She turned to Mel. “Don’t you think?”
“I don’t. Think about it, I mean.” Or at least she hadn’t until a five-minute phone call once more snatched the rug right out from under her.
“You think you’ll see him while you’re here?”
“Not planning on it. And can we please change the subject—?”
The doorbell rang. After a fashion. “Oh! I bet that’s Blythe,” April said, heading out of the kitchen. “Last time we talked she said she didn’t know if she’d get in tonight or tomorrow …”
Not at all sure if she was ready to deal with her older, bossier cousin, Mel turned on the old radio that had been in that same spot on the counter forever, fiddling with the dial until she picked up some oldies rock station from Dover … the same music her mother had listened to while cooking in the Caldwells’ kitchen when she’d been growing up. Over Simon and Garfunkel’s “The Sound of Silence”—heh—she heard April’s cheery, non-stop prattle coming closer. Steeling herself, Mel turned, a forced smile stretching her cheeks.
And nearly passed out.
“That last thing you were saying? You might want to revise that,” April said, clearly enjoying the heck out of the moment before she vanished, leaving Mel to face Ryder all by her little self.
Ridiculously handsome, all-grown-up, obviously angry-as-hell Ryder.
Yippee-skippy.
“How’d you know I was here?”
Mel had left Quinn with her cousin—since no way was she going to have this little reunion in her daughter’s presence—but it’d taken her a good ten minutes to work up to the question. This being the awkward moment from hell and all. Now she sensed Ryder—who hadn’t exactly been chatty, either—glance over as they strolled, bundled up against the frigid night air, along the marina at the edge of town. A trek they’d made innumerable times as kids, at all times of the day and night, in every imaginable kind of weather. Mostly just for something to do away from the adults, sometimes on their bikes or inline skates when there weren’t too many people around….
And cocooning herself in the used-to-bes wasn’t going to do a blessed thing to stop the vague nausea brought on by having to face the right-nows.
“Phil Paxton told my dad,” Ryder said, that comfortingly familiar voice conjuring up so much of what she’d made herself forget, and there it was, the past colliding with her present, boom. Even his obvious irritation provoked memories, of when he’d get ticked off over some dumb prank or other she’d pulled as a kid. Man, this was doing even stranger things to her head than walking back into her grandmother’s house. “Said Amelia’d left you three her place, that you were coming down to get everything in order.”
“Big mouth,” she muttered.
“Was it supposed to be a secret?”
At the word “secret,” Mel flinched, then dug a tissue out of the down vest she’d thrown over her hoodie to wipe her drippy nose. “I don’t suppose.”
“Anything else you’d like to share?”
No need to ask what he meant, since the disbelief icing his words said it all. Even so, she had no idea what she was and wasn’t allowed to say, to admit to, even now. “Depends. What’ve you heard?”
“That you and Jeremy had a kid together.”
She stuffed the tissue back in her pocket. “Jeremy may be Quinn’s biological father, but to say we had her together is a stretch.”
Silence crackled between them, far more biting than the damp air, until Ryder finally broke it with, “God, Mel—why?”
“Because I was a mess and he was there.” And you weren’t, she thought, startled at the residual anger after all this time. “Sad, but true.” More silence, punctuated by the soft clattering of the docked boats, Ryder’s steady footsteps against the wood. “When did you find out?”
“Late this afternoon.”
“I don’t mean that I was coming down—”
“Not talking about that.”
“You really had no idea?”
“Nope.”
“Wow,” she said on a strangled half laugh, her breath misting around her face. “I can’t believe they actually took it that far. I assumed you knew.”
Ryder raised his arms to flip the collar of his jacket up around his neck. “Because I never contacted you again?”
“Yeah.”
He shook his head, then thrust his hands into his pockets. “That wasn’t the reason.”
When no further explanation seemed to be forthcoming, Mel wandered out underneath the gazebo-like structure at the end of the marina to fold her arms across the top railing, deeply inhaling the tangy, bone-chilling breeze. Moonlight flicked at the black, rippling water below. Pretty. When Ryder mimicked her pose, the wind ruffling his short, dark hair, she said, “I can’t even imagine how ticked you must be right now.”
“No. You can’t.” He glanced at her. “My folks said Jeremy knows.”
“He always has.”
“And he’s never—?”
“Nope. Far as he’s concerned Quinn never happened.” He leaned harder on the railing to press his head into his palms, then dropped them again. “Does she ask? About her father?”
“Until recently? Not as much as you might think. Although …” Mel forced air into her lungs, annoyed that she still felt like she was breathing through broken glass. “I was seriously involved with someone for two years. Thought … this was it. He was it. Quinn became very attached. Enough that she didn’t ask about her daddy because she’d assumed she’d found one.”
“This isn’t going to end well, is it?”
And there it was, despite everything, that same kindness and understanding that had seen her through her entire childhood, that made her eyes sting even now. “His ex popped back into his life. And right into the bastard’s bed, apparently. Turns out he’d never really gotten over her. Our virtually living in each other’s pockets notwithstanding. Although …” She twisted to lean one elbow on the railing, looking at Ryder. “He did offer to make me a partner. In his restaurant,” she added at Ryder’s quick frown.
“After …?”
“Oh, as in, right on the heels of. Consolation prize, yay,” she said, then hmmphed. “Guess he figured that was the least he could do. Considering it was my mad cooking skills that’d made the place as successful as it was.”
A hint of a smile played across Ryder’s mouth. “And you walked.”
“As fast as these cute little feet could carry me.”
“Good for you.”
“In theory, sure. In practical terms, not so much. Oh, I’ve managed, working for caterers off and on, but nothing’s come along that even begins to compare. I really, really loved that job. Made me stretch as a chef, try new things. And the partnership would’ve been an incredible opportunity. If I’d had a heart made of stone.”
“How long ago was this?”
“A few months,” she said, even though the date was indelibly, and regrettably, forever etched in her brain. “Dammit, Ry—I never saw it coming. Neither did Quinn. And it was especially hard on her since my mother died last year. She and Quinn were extremely close, as you can imagine.”
“Damn, honey. I’m sorry.”
Mel nodded, then said, “Quinn’s just now getting over it, I think. Hope. The breakup, I mean. She doesn’t mention it, in any case.”
“And you?” he said gently.
“I alternate between numb and mad-as-hell. Although I’m at least through the eating anything that isn’t nailed down stage.” She sighed. “But now that we’re once again in daddyless mode, yeah, Quinn’s started asking about her father. Not a subject I’m wild about discussing when I’m not wishing bad things on half the human population. Best I could come up with was telling her he vanished before she was born, he didn’t know she was coming, that I have no idea where he is. How to find him.”
“You lied?”
She snorted a humorless laugh. “How do you tell a child her father really didn’t want her? That his parents paid me off to never contact him, or show my face in St. Mary’s, ever again? And how in God’s name …” She swallowed. “How do I explain that her mother was every bit as complicit in this little scheme as the people who’ve been paying her hush money since before she was born?”
“Mel, for God’s sake—you were sixteen.”
“Seventeen, by the time she arrived. But yeah. Even so, I can’t pretend I didn’t know what I was doing. That I’d more or less sold my soul—or at least, my integrity—in order to provide for my child. And it’s eating me up, living this lie.”
Expelling a harsh sigh, Ryder grasped the railing, not looking at her. “Not any more than it’s eating me up, that when you get right down to it, this is all my fault.”
“And how on earth do you figure that?”
“So you didn’t hook up with Jeremy to get back at me?”
It was funny, really, if you thought about it: years of experience had taught Mel that few human males seemed ready, or able, to accept responsibility for anything. At least, the human males in her experience. To the point where she’d forgotten that Ryder had probably been the most responsible human being she’d ever met. Except, because Ryder had been stalwart and noble and honorable as all hell, in a convoluted way he had a point.
“Didn’t say that,” she said at last. “But it’s ridiculous to blame you for my actions. No matter what I might have told myself at the time.” She paused, then breathed out, “Please don’t hate me, Ryder. Since I still hate myself plenty enough for both of us.”
Ryder’s chest constricted at the self-deprecation trying so damn hard to undermine Mel’s tough bunny persona. He looked away, giving her the space she clearly wanted. And he needed. Because he had no idea how to bind up her wounds when his own were still so fresh.
Even as the old compulsion reared its head, refusing to be ignored.
“How could I possibly hate you when I’m the one who botched things so badly—”
“What you did was save me from making an idiot of myself.” Her mouth twisted. “At least, that night.”
Acid flared in his gut. “Still. I could’ve handled the situation with a bit more … grace. And afterwards … I should have called. Emailed, something. To check on you, make sure you were okay. I mean, I owed you that much.”
“Owed me?” Mel gave him a puzzled look. “You didn’t—don’t—owe me anything—”
“You were grieving, Mel. Whatever else might have been going on, you came to me for comfort, and instead of figuring out how to give you what you really needed I pushed you away. Harshly, if memory serves. So you can’t possibly be beating yourself up more than I am. On that score, I figure we’re probably about even—”
Her sharp laugh caught him up short. “Did you really think my actions that night were solely motivated by grief? Yeah, that might’ve short-circuited my inhibitors, but I wanted you because I wanted you.” She looked away. “Because I was sick to death of being treated like a little sister. Stupid, huh?”
Ryder looked up into the navy sky before saying, very quietly, “Then you have no idea how much of a struggle it was to turn you down.”
He felt her eyes on the side of his face for several beats before a soft, startled laugh fell out of her mouth. “Holy crap. Are you serious?”
“Yep. And you can stop laughing,” he said, even as chagrin pushed at the corners of his own mouth. Then he sighed. “All our lives, I thought of myself as your protector. A role I took very seriously—”
“Tell me about it.”
“—and you were a kid. Legally, anyway. And what I’d begun to feel for you … inappropriate doesn’t even begin to cover it. No way on God’s earth was I going to act on what I was feeling, but damn, it scared me. That everything our relationship was predicated on …” He scrubbed the heel of his hand across his jaw, then banged it against the railing. “What you wanted that night—hell, what I wanted—redefined wrong. You’d always trusted me. And I refused to violate that trust. Even though it nearly killed me.”
She took a deep breath. “So you freaked.”
“To put it mildly. No matter what I did, I was going to hurt you. Worse than you already were. And afterward, when I went back to school …” His gaze touched hers. “I had no idea how to fix it.”
Yanking her sweatshirt hood up over her head, Mel faced the moonlight-stippled currents for some time before finally saying, “It took a while, but eventually I got over the rejection. Once the hormone fog cleared. Because, like you said, what else could you have done? Your silence, though … That devastated me, Ry. Not gonna lie.”
His gut twisted. “So you got even.”
“Not on purpose,” she said after a moment. “I mean, I didn’t set my sights on your brother. Small consolation though that might be.”
Ryder frowned. “He came on to you?”
“Not blatantly, no. Not at first, anyway. He just suddenly seemed, I don’t know. Interested. Like he cared. And I was hurt, Ryder. Hurt, and confused, and adrift …” One side of her mouth ticked up. “And, okay, mad. At you, for basically walking out of my life. At myself, for being an idiot. For ruining the one good thing in it.”
She paused. “I made a terrible mistake, Ryder. Not that I don’t love Quinn with every fiber of my being, but the rest of it?” Her head wagged. “I disappointed everyone, especially my mother. Who adored Quinn, don’t get me wrong, but I know she never quite got over how badly everything ended. Then there was Nana, who never spoke to me again—”
“This being the same woman who cut herself off from her own daughter, right? For reasons known only to herself? You’re not responsible for other people’s grudges, Mel. And as far as that agreement goes—legally it’s worth bupkiss.”
“Yeah, well, it’s amazing, how strong a motivator fear is. You want to talk freaked?” She pointed to herself. “Poster child. And if I’m being completely honest, at least it got me out of St. Mary’s. Me, and my mother, even if she never quite saw it that way. Got both of us away from … everything.”
“Meaning my family.”
Several beats passed before she said, “In all fairness it’s not as if they treated my parents badly—and I always did have a soft spot for your father. At heart he’s a good man. In fact, I gathered he was behind the generous financial considerations. And as far as Jeremy and I went—we used each other,” she said flatly. “And we both knew it. So there was never any ohmigod, you can’t separate us we’re in loooove thing going on. If the dude couldn’t be bothered to acknowledge his own kid, I could live with that. I hated him for it, but I could live with it. For your parents, though, to turn their backs on their first grandchild …” She gave her head a sharp shake. “For your mother to go so far as to demand that I take care of the ‘problem’—that was a lot harder to handle.”
Of course it was. Because while he may have detected a glimmer of regret in his mother’s eyes, he doubted it was any match for the stubborn pride that motivated every action and decision Lorraine Caldwell had ever made. And hearing Mel echo his mother’s earlier admission …
Ryder shut his eyes, wrestling to control his breathing before saying, “I want to make things up to you.”
“Forget it, Ry. What’s done is done.”
“Even if I say I’d like to get to know Quinn? Why not?” he said when her gaze slammed into his. “Just because my brother had his head up his ass—”
Mel pushed herself away from the railing and started back down the boardwalk. “Not gonna happen.”
“She’s still my niece.”
“Which I can’t tell her, brainiac.”
“They can’t legally—”
“Legal has nothing to do with it!” she said, stopping short, the wind whipping strands of hair that had escaped the hood across her face. “I know what my rights are, okay? I know what I could do. I also know what I can’t do. And won’t do. And that’s anything that could potentially hurt my kid—”
“So you’re tarring me with the same brush? When I knew nothing about it?”
“You weren’t there, Ryder!” she said, tears shining in her eyes. “Weren’t there when your mother called me a little tramp in front of my humilated mother, who’d been loyal as hell to yours for more than twenty years! Weren’t there when she accused me of trying to worm my way into the family, saying that since clearly my plan to snag you hadn’t worked, I’d gone after Jeremy, or when she made me do a DNA test before Quinn was born to verify that Jeremy was really the father!”
Ryder’s stomach plummeted. “Dammit—I had no idea—”
“No, you didn’t. Don’t. So believe me, I want less to do with your parents than they want to do with me. And if you get involved with Quinn …” She jerked away. “It won’t work, Ryder. Because the past … it doesn’t go poof simply because you want it to. But here’s the weird thing …”
Suddenly calmer, as though the storm had blown over, she started walking again. “Now that I’m a mother, too? In a way I get where your mother was coming from. About how you do anything to protect your kid. I didn’t—don’t—agree with her methods, but I understand her motivation.”
Mel’s mouth pulled flat, exactly the way she used to as a child, when she’d made up her mind, by golly, and nothing and no one was going to change it. “Quinn’s already hurting, from her grandmother’s death, from my breakup. At least one of those things I had some control over, and I blew it. Forgot, when I went and hitched my wagon to a rainbow, there was someone else involved. So you better believe I learned my lesson. Meaning I’d hack off a limb before I’d let Quinn anywhere near the people who wrote her off.”
Even in the dark, the pain in her eyes, her voice …
“And you thought I’d written you off, too.” When she shrugged, he said, over the guilt dammed up at the back of his throat, “I swear, things would’ve been different if I’d known.”
“Right. What on earth would you have done?”
“I don’t know. Something. Married you, if nothing else—”
“Oh, yeah,” Mel said on a high-pitched laugh, “your parents would’ve been totally on board with that idea. Do you really think they would have let you jeopardize your education, your career, when they wouldn’t let Jeremy jeopardize his? And Quinn wasn’t even yours! Not to mention, what makes you think I would have let you do that?”
“You can honestly say you wouldn’t have even considered it? Especially given—”
“That I had the mother of all crushes on you?”
“A crush I had a damn hard time not reciprocating!”
She blinked, then released another laugh, this one softer. Sadder. “And marriage would’ve made it all okay? Au contraire, my friend. It would’ve ruined everything.”
“Except I did that anyway, didn’t I?”
On a cross between a groan and a growl, Mel clamped her hands to her head, tromping down off the boardwalk to the parking lot. “God, why are we even talking about this? Like we can somehow change what happened? It’s done, it’s over, and the second this business with Nana’s house is straightened out, I’m outta here. So you tell your mother she has absolutely nothing to worry about, the last thing I want to do is make waves.”
Nearly to the car, Ryder grabbed Mel’s hand. If she was shocked, she didn’t let on. Instead she calmly met his gaze, her brows slightly raised.
“I know I can’t even begin to fix what my family broke. Or even what I broke. But to at least honor what we had—”
“What we had doesn’t exist anymore,” Mel said softly, reclaiming her hand. “And it hasn’t for a long, long time. We’re not those two kids anymore, Ry.” She smirked. “Can’t go back, no way to go forward. So. Think this is what they call a non-starter—”
At the sound of some ridiculous ringtone, she dug her phone out of her pocket. “Huh. It’s April …” She put the phone to her ear. “Yeah?” Ryder saw her brows crash, then she yanked open the car door. “We’ll be right there.”
“Everything okay?” he asked after getting in beside her, barely getting his seat belt fastened before she zoomed out of the sandy, unpaved lot and back onto the street.
“I didn’t quite get it all, April wasn’t making total sense, but apparently Quinn sliced her hand open on a nail or something.” At Ryder’s silence, she let out a sigh. “I suppose logically I should let you take a look, huh?”
“Up to you. But the nearest E.R.’s a good half hour away. And I have my bag in my car.”
“Of course you do,” she muttered as they flew into the weed-cracked driveway and she cut the engine. But before he could get out, she snagged his wrist. “Not one word—”
“Can I at least tell her we were friends? She’s going to wonder why we were together,” he said when she opened her mouth to protest. “She knows you lived here before, right? So we happened to run into each other—”
“Fine, fine, whatever.” She shooed him toward the door. “Just get in there before my kid bleeds to death.”
Ryder slammed shut the car door and trudged up the porch steps behind Mel, thinking he’d never been so angry, at so many people, for so many reasons, in his life.
With his own sorry hide easily taking first place.
Chapter Three
Mel was grateful to see that her cousin—who as a teenager would scream like a banshee if she nicked herself shaving—had either overcome her heebie-jeebies at the sight of blood or was doing a damn good job of hiding it from Quinn, seated on the counter and looking a little woozy herself. April had hidden the boo-boo, as well, wrapping it tightly in a paper towel and holding Quinn’s arm up over her head.
“Oh, sweetie …” Mel rushed to her blood-smeared daughter—yeah, that top was history—forking her fingers through Quinn’s curls as April, bless her heart, beat a hasty retreat. “What happened?”
“There’s a dumb nail sticking out of the back door, I didn’t see it,” Quinn mumbled, then squinted at Ryder, who’d plunked his coat and bag on the kitchen table and was now rooting around inside it. “Who’re you?”
“An old friend of your mother’s,” Ryder said with a kind—and yet, still killer, go figure—smile for the kid as he carted a bottle of antiseptic and assorted packets over to lay beside Quinn on the counter. One hand propped on the edge of the worn laminate, he hooked the other on his hip. “I’m also a doctor. Convenient, huh?”
Quinn shrugged. “I guess.”
On a soft chuckle, Ryder washed his hands and dried them on a paper towel, then ripped open a package of latex gloves, snapped them on. “Mind if I take a peek?”
“April said to keep my hand up ‘cause of the bleeding.”
“Lots of blood, huh?”
“Like you would not believe.”
“Then April did good. But I think it’s okay to lower it now.” When she did, he carefully removed the blood-soaked towel. Aiyiyi. Mel told herself it would be very uncool to throw up, even if the sink was right there. “It seems to have pretty much stopped now, so that’s good. You’ll be back to playing the violin in no time.”
Quinn giggled. “I don’t play the violin, I play the piano.”
“You don’t say?” Another smile. “You any good?”
Not nearly as good as you are, Mel thought ruefully as her daughter’s shoulders bumped. “Not really. But I’ve only been taking lessons for a year.”
“Yeah. I took ‘em for ten. Loved every minute of it.”
“Really?”
“No,” he said, and Quinn laughed again, and Ryder’s smile melted Mel’s heart, dammit to hell. Especially when he turned it on her and all—well, most—of her man-hating crazies scurried away, whimpering. “I assume her tetanus is up to date?”
“Not sure. She might be due for a booster?”
“We can take care of that, too. Okay, honey, I want you to hold your hand over the sink, I’m going to pour a bunch of this antiseptic over the wound to clean it. It’s probably going to sting, but it won’t last long. You ready?”
Quinn sucked in a deep breath, then nodded and gingerly stuck out her hand, wincing as Ryder cleaned it. “Almost done, you’re doing great … there. Now I can see what’s going on.”
As he carefully inspected the gash, Quinn actually leaned closer to get a better look. As opposed to Mel, who was perfectly happy to let someone else tend to this side of things, thank you. Especially if that person was the same one who’d always been the one to patch up her various scrapes and cuts and owies when they were kids. That inline skating thing? Hadn’t exactly been a natural talent—
“I’m gonna need stitches, huh?” Quinn asked, sounding more curious than worried.
“Oh, I’d say at least a hundred,” Ryder said, deadpan, and Quinn giggled, and Ryder lifted his eyes—all sweetly crinkled at the corners, of course—to the little girl, and Mel saw in those eyes … too much. That while she didn’t doubt that Ryder was every bit as kind and funny with all his younger patients, it was patently obvious Quinn had already grabbed his heart.
And, judging from the grin on her daughter’s face, the feeling was mutual.
Ah, doom. You again, is it?
Then Ryder turned his gaze to Mel, all business, except not, and now that the urge to barf had passed she noticed a dullness in those dark eyes she hadn’t noticed before, and it occurred to her how one-sided their catch-me-up conversation had been. That she had no idea what was, or had been, going on in his life. Was he married? Divorced? No ring, but that didn’t mean anything—
“Actually,” he said, “if the cut hadn’t been where she’s likely to pull it apart in normal use, I’d say we’d be good with a butterfly bandage. But to be on the safe side I think a couple of stitches are in order. Piece of cake,” he said with a wink for Quinn, and Mel thought, If only, buddy boy.
If only.
If only, Ryder thought, removing his gloves a few minutes later after stitching up his niece’s wound, one could stitch back together the ragged edges of one’s life, and heart, so easily. If all it took to repair the damage was training and skill and patience. A strong stomach wouldn’t hurt, either.
The booster shot administered and the wound dressed, Quinn skipped off to watch the monster, old-school TV in the gathering room—after giving Ryder a hug that scraped his still-tender heart. His eyes fixed on the kitchen doorway, he asked, “Is she always that affectionate?”
“It depends.” She paused. “On whether she feels she can trust someone or not. Guess you passed.”
He lowered his gaze to hers, just long enough to make her blush, then walked over to the offending nail. “Then I’m honored. She’s a fun kid.” He opened the door, the chilly damp barely registering in the drafty old house. Now why the heck would somebody hammer through the panel from the outside? “You got something I can pound this sucker out with?”
“Probably.” Watching Mel as she began yanking open, then ramming shut, assorted swollen drawers, guilt shuddered through Ryder that he was even noticing how the soft jersey of her hoodie, the even softer fabric of her worn jeans, hugged curves that had very nicely matured—
“Sorry about the house,” she said, still rummaging.
“Why? Since I assume—” he scanned the mountains of detritus “—you didn’t make the mess.”
“True. Still. Oh, looky …” Amidst much clattering, she hauled a decrepit-looking hammer from one of the drawers, her brows drawn as she inspected it. “Although Noah probably used this to build the ark.”
Ryder extended his hand. “If it worked for Noah, I’m good.” Two whacks and the nasty thing was history, safely disposed of in the trash where it no longer posed a danger. “Next question—why isn’t the heat on?”
“The thermostat’s not working—”
“Where is it?”
“In the dining room, but—”
“Be right back.”
A few minutes later he returned triumphant, loving Mel’s dumbfounded expression when the radiators started to clank. “How’d you do that?”’
“Thermostat’s fine,” he said, opening cupboard doors until he found a half dozen flowery, albeit dusty, tin containers which still held an assortment of teas. “Boiler pilot light had gone out. All fixed now.” He hadn’t been in the house much when they were kids, and then only after Amelia had deemed her granddaughters old enough to be left on their own, but he remembered these. And, in the first one he opened, he hit pay dirt—a stash of Earl Grey. He dug out two bags and held them up. “Kettle?”
Mel frowned. “And I’m guessing those would be Mrs. Noah’s tea bags.”
“Eh, the boiling water will kill whatever needs killing.” He waggled them, and Mel sighed. But she dragged the kettle off the stove, rinsed it out five times, then filled it and set it on the burner. “You actually went down into the basement?”
“I did. It’s even scarier than it was when we were kids.”
Mel sighed, then angled her head at him. “Why are you still here?”
Because the thought of going back to that empty house makes me crazy. Crazier.
“Because I’m cold as hell. And you’d hardly begrudge the man who just saved your daughter’s life a cup of tea, would you?”
“Hey,” April said from the doorway, wrapping a scarf around her neck. “Since the heat’s on—” Mel pointed to Ryder, who waved “—the kid and I are gonna make an ice cream run. Any requests?”
“Chocolate chip,” Ryder said smoothly, earning him a “Got it,” from April and a glare from Mel.
“Thought you were freezing?” she said after they heard the front door close.
“I won’t be by the time they get back. Especially since—” he leaned back in the chair, his arms folded high on his chest “—the heat’s back on. You might want to close off the radiators in the unused rooms, though. To save fuel.”
“Gah. Were you always this much of a pain in the butt?”
“No more than you were.”
“Touché.”
Okay, so it felt good, sitting here, giving her grief, letting her give him grief right back. Simply enjoying the company, he mused as he surveyed the woebegone—to the point of creepy—room. “Place needs a lot of work, doesn’t it?”
“That would be our take on it, yep,” Mel muttered, apparently fascinated with the flames licking at the kettle’s bottom.
“Might be hard to find many buyers interested in it in this condition.”
“Only need one,” she said. Still watching that kettle. “And what’s it to you?”
“Nothing. Nothing at all. Just making conversation.”
Which sputtered and gasped for several seconds until she said, “Thank you.” Her eyes touched his before veering back to the kettle. “For saving Quinn’s life and all.”
“Oh, that. Anytime. Although I do want to see her in a day or so, make sure everything’s healing up okay.”
“We can do that.” The kettle whistled; seconds later she handed him a mug of steaming water. “Not sure there’s any sugar—”
“This is fine,” he said, dunking his tea bag. “For God’s sake, Mel … sit. Talk.”
She stood, her arms crossed, her mouth set. “About what?”
“The Orioles’ chances at taking the Series this year, I don’t know. No, wait, I’ve got an idea—how about you tell me all about Quinn?”
He saw her eyes fill. “Ryder—”
“Why did you decide to keep her?” he asked as gently as he knew how. “We get our share of teen moms at the clinic, I know how hard it is—”
“Do you?”
“Enough,” he said, refusing to cow. “So, why?” He paused. “Especially considering the circumstances.”
That got a tight little smile. “Hardest decision I ever had to make. Or probably ever will. But in the end I guess I just wanted her to know at least one of us thought she was worth keeping. Which I suppose sounds silly and romantic and totally impractical, and to be honest I don’t know how I would have managed without my mother to help out, but there it is. She’s mine and I’m hers and that’s that.”
Ryder smiled. “She’s nothing like Jeremy, is she?”
After a long moment, she shook her head. “She’s an awful lot like her mother, though.”
“As in, silly and romantic and totally impractical?”
“Or we could go with headstrong, ruthlessly honest and never knows when to shut up.” At Ryder’s laugh, Mel seemed to weigh her options for a moment before slowly lowering herself into the chair across from him, her eyes alight. “She is so smart, Ryder. Taught herself to read at four, she goes through library books like candy. I home-school her, so she can go at her own pace. She’s reading at high school level, just finished eighth grade math. And she adores science—far more than I ever did, that’s for sure.”
“Wow.”
“You said it. Except I don’t know how much longer I can keep up with her. And now that she’s so far ahead of other kids her age, putting her in public school seems pointless.”
“What about a private school with a program that would challenge her?” When she got up to face the sink and the blackness outside, he took a scalding swallow of the tea, then carefully set down the mug. “There are scholarships—”
“I know. And I actually checked out a couple of schools in Baltimore, but …”
“But, what?”
She blew a short laugh through her nose, then turned back to him. “Despite our friendship, Ry, I was always extremely aware growing up that you were breaking ‘the rules.’ That I was the hired help’s kid. And I pretty quickly figured out that people … well, we pigeonhole each other, don’t we?”
“I don’t,” Ryder said evenly, his fingers strangling the mug’s handle.
“Of course you do,” she said on a sigh. “It’s what human beings do. Even when we were kids, you knew you were breaking the rules, too, and don’t tell me you didn’t.” When he glowered at the mug, she let out another little laugh. “It wasn’t possible to be in the position I was in at that house and not feel ‘less than.’ A point more than driven home to me at the end. And I don’t want Quinn to ever feel like that, as though someone was doing her a favor by ‘letting’ her go to a school with the rich kids.”
His forehead pinched, Ryder lifted his eyes to hers. “It’s not the same thing. True, my mother can be a snob, but—”
“You don’t think I didn’t hear your private school buddies give you grief about me? That I didn’t know the real reason behind why you pushed me away when they came over? As long as our friendship stayed in the closet we were fine—”
“For heaven’s sake—you were five years younger than I was! No bunch of twelve-year-old boys on earth is going to be okay with a seven-year-old hanging around with them!”
“And that’s all it was?”
“Yes! Mel … where is this coming from?”
She bunched her mouth for a moment, then said, “One of your friends, I don’t remember his name, brought his little sister with him a couple of times. I caught a glimpse of her from the hall when they arrived, she looked to be about my age—”
“That would’ve been Robbie Banes’s sister. Sylvia or Sarah or something.”
Mel nodded. “She saw me, too, even asked her mother if she could play with ‘the little girl.’ Your mother glanced in my direction, then mumbled something that sounded like ‘That wouldn’t be a good idea,’ before steering them away.”
“Oh, God …” Ryder scrubbed a hand through his hair. “Again, no idea. Although, if I’m remembering correctly we all would have been thrilled if the kid had been able to play with you. Man, what a little pill.” He lifted the mug toward her. “Count yourself lucky you were spared.”
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