The Newcomer (Thunder Point #2)(30)

When there was a soft knock at the door at 9:00 p.m. she jerked it open. There he stood, holding two bottles of beer by their necks. “What a day,” he said.

She let out such a sigh of relief she almost collapsed. “You might’ve called.”

“Honey, there was no time. Well, I could have sent you a text, but I really wanted to see you, to tell you about it. I couldn’t figure out a text or voice mail short enough to send that would also explain everything. Grab a sweater or shawl—come out on the porch with me.”

She grabbed Carrie’s wrap off the hook by the front door. Her house was quiet. Carrie had gone to bed, exhausted from the hard day of running a deli and Ashley had retreated to the solitude of her room. She sat down with Mac on the porch step.

“Expecting a call?” he asked with a slight smile, glancing at her cell phone.

“I think it’s attached itself to the palm of my hand....”

He chuckled and opened a beer for her. She finally let go of the cell, laying it on the porch, wiping her sweating palm on her pant leg.

“My kids are doing better than I dared hope. Well, Eve’s acting out—completely expected. She wants to see her mother, but I suspect it’s not to welcome her home. She’s outraged, which she’s entitled to be. But Lou? She’s over-the-top—I left her with a bottle of wine that was slowly disappearing.”

Gina laughed. “Taking it hard, is she?”

“She’s afraid Cee Jay is back to wrestle the kids away from her. That’s not going to happen, but Lou’s what I would call overwrought.”

“Has Lou seen her yet? Cee Jay?”

He shook his head. “I believe you alone have had the honor.”

“You might’ve mentioned that this illusive ex of yours is drop-dead gorgeous.”

“Hell, she’s always been pretty. Now she appears to be pretty and rich. I’m going to have to do some digging, see what she’s been up to. See if I can figure out what she wants. I find it hard to believe that after ten years she wants her family back.”

“Mac, she’s not pretty. She’s probably the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen. She literally took my breath away. Before I knew who she was, I thought a famous actress whose name I couldn’t remember had stopped into the diner.”

“Come on,” he said doubtfully.

“Seriously. I’ve been having really awful wide-awake nightmares all day. There’s this one very bad scenario I’ve been playing over and over where you take one look at her and start peeling her clothes off and begging her to come back to you.”

He lifted a brow, then took a slug of his beer. “Well, you were there when I took my first look at her. Is that what you saw?”

“Actually, you looked very pissed.”

“To put it mildly. What nerve. She’s been gone since Dee Dee was nine months old—ten years ago now. She hasn’t called or sent a birthday card or Christmas present in ten years and then, without any warning, she sashays into town in a sixty-thousand-dollar car, looking as if she just stepped out of a fashion magazine. And she wants to know her kids? Maybe she’d like to start by getting to know their orthodontist bills.”

“What did she say, Mac?”

He took a deep breath and told her parts of their conversation. “I told her to just leave town. I threatened her with a restraining order—a completely empty threat—and she said she was going to legally challenge the custody agreement. I told her to have her lawyer call my lawyer. I haven’t talked to my lawyer since he gave me a very nice discount to file the divorce and custody papers for me five years ago. Papers she signed without a question, a call or a visit, by the way.”

“Did you tell the kids this?” Gina asked.

“I’m real careful about what I tell them. I try to tell them the truth without telling them that their mother, half of their gene pool, is a selfish unfaithful bitch who left them as babies without looking back. It’s not easy. But she’s done enough to them. I don’t need their self-esteems attached to her irresponsible and cruel choices. They’re innocent, after all.” He put an arm around her, pulling her closer. “Besides, who’s the genius that knocked up a sixteen-year-old? I have to own my part in all this.”

“I know. I do know how you feel,” she said.

“I suppose you have similar issues with Ashley’s father,” he said.

“Not so much, no. He was the new kid in town for a year or so, dropped out of high school but we hung around the football games and beach parties, and when I told him I was pregnant, he ran for his life. I don’t know if he was running from the responsibility or the fact that I was fifteen and he was eighteen—it could’ve been that. But I was thinking of my own father. He left us when I was five. They never got divorced, but five years later he died and guess what? He had a new family—and a will. He didn’t leave us any of his insurance money or pension—signed it all over to his new family even though my mom was the official widow. Now, how do you get past that? Maybe that had something to do with my own teenage issues, huh? Maybe I had abandonment issues?”

“See, that’s what scares me more than anything—Eve being like her mother. Ryan being as stupid as his father....”

“It was a hard day for you today,” she said. “Revisiting the past is always so scary.”