Читать книгу Beach Lane - Sherryl Woods, Sherryl Woods - Страница 9

Jeff O’Brien felt as if he’d always lived in the shadow of his older brother. Mick was like a force of nature, the kind of man who was confident in his own skin, a talented architect with amazing vision. Though Jeff had worked with him on the development of Chesapeake Shores, he’d merely overseen the construction details and ultimately the sales. The town had been built according to Mick’s specifications and modified to fit with Thomas’s ideas on doing the least harm to the bay. They were the visionaries behind it.

The three O’Brien brothers had butted heads repeatedly. Mick won most arguments through an absolute sense of self-confidence that couldn’t be shaken by law or reason. The only time he’d been trumped was when Thomas had used legal means to ensure that Mick adhered to the strictest interpretation of environmental regulations. Mick had never entirely forgiven him, or Jeff for siding with him. He’d labeled Thomas a traitor and told Jeff he had no backbone. Jeff hadn’t bothered trying to contradict him, which had only further infuriated Mick.

Things were easier among the three of them now that they’d wisely decided against working together. Ma insisted that some level of family obligation bring them together on Sundays and holidays and, over time, they’d managed to handle the occasions with a certain amount of grace and goodwill.

Still, Jeff couldn’t deny that it grated when he’d heard about Mick threatening to interfere in Susie’s relationship with Mack Franklin. Now that Mick’s own children were all happily married, apparently he’d decided to take on Jeff’s.

Personally Jeff had never understood the need to meddle in someone else’s life. He and Jo had raised Susie with good values and good sense. Whatever was going on between her and Mack, he trusted her to get what she wanted out of it. Susie had never been some shy little wallflower. She was every bit as stubborn and determined as anyone else in the family.

At least, he’d felt that way until he’d seen her with Mack on Thanksgiving, recognized the sparks flying during that traditional family football game, and then seen his daughter come back from a walk with Mack with tears on her cheeks. For the first time, he’d wanted to throttle a man for making his little girl cry. He’d told Jo about it that night.

“She has a good head on her shoulders,” Jo insisted. “And she’s loved Mack as far back as I can remember. All we can do is be there for her if things don’t work out the way she wants them to.”

“I suppose,” he’d said. “Are you sure I can’t sit him down and knock some sense into him?”

She laughed. “You could, but then you’d be just like Mick. Is that what you want?”

The suggestion had been enough to keep him away from Mack. For now.

He glanced at the list Susie had given him of things he needed to do on Saturday morning. Bringing her into the real estate management company had been the smartest thing he’d ever done. She could organize an army battalion without batting an eye. He could easily see her with a houseful of kids underfoot, handling the chaos with total competence and ease. A part of him longed for the time when she’d do just that. Watching his older brother with his grandkids had made Jeff just a little envious.

“Are you heading over to Shanna’s now, Dad?” Susie called out to him. “I told her you’d be there first thing to check on that plumbing. Dwight’s good, but we don’t want to take any chances that he missed something.”

“On my way,” he assured her, then paused after taking a closer look at her pale complexion. “You okay?”

She looked startled by the question. “Of course. Why wouldn’t I be?”

“You don’t look so hot, and you took off pretty suddenly on Thanksgiving.”

“I…I didn’t feel well,” she said, then hurriedly added, “Then. I didn’t feel well then. I’m perfectly fine now.”

“Something you ate? I haven’t heard about anyone else feeling ill.”

“Maybe nobody else got thrown on the ground as many times as I did right after dinner,” she retorted with a faint grin.

Jeff recognized the perfect opening. “About that,” he began.

“Dad, leave it alone,” she said tersely, her expression forbidding.

“You sure? If you ever want to talk, your mother and I, we’re always on your side. You do know that, don’t you?”

She managed to pull off a reassuring smile that Jeff didn’t entirely buy. “Of course I know that,” she promised. “Now, get started. It’s going to take you all day to get through that list I gave you, and Mitzi Gaylord is coming in at five to sign the contract for the Brighton house.”

“On my way,” he said, still oddly reluctant to leave his daughter.

A few minutes later, though, he was in the bookstore when he overheard someone make a comment about Mack’s column not being in the paper. He realized he’d noticed the same thing this morning at breakfast, but hadn’t seen any reason to be alarmed by it.

“Well, I heard he was fired,” one of the women said. “That’s why he’s been hiding out the past few days. Who can blame him? His whole identity was wrapped up in that job. I think he was convinced it was his ticket to respectability—not that he needed one as far as I’m concerned. Still, after all he went through as a boy, this had to be a blow.”

“Fired? Are you sure?” a second woman asked. “The paper’s been making a big fuss about him for a long time now. Have you been up to Baltimore? Everywhere you look, his picture’s right there. It’s even on the sides of buses. He’s like some kind of sports columnist superstar.”

Jeff stepped out of the back room and looked around to identify the speakers. One of them was Ethel, whose nearby shop specialized in souvenirs and local gossip. He glanced around and caught Shanna’s eye, then beckoned her to the back.

“Did you hear them?” he asked.

She nodded. “But I have no idea if what they’re saying is true. I only know Mack’s been really upset. He wouldn’t tell Susie why. That’s why they fought on Thanksgiving.”

Jeff nodded, absorbing that news. “I see.”

“Please don’t tell her I told you about the fight,” Shanna pleaded. “She’d hate having you worry about her.”

“Yeah, Susie never wants anyone to worry,” he said. “Thanks, though, Shanna.”

After he’d finished checking to make sure the plumbing had been fixed, he was about to leave when he saw Will browsing through the nonfiction section. Jeff confronted him. If anyone would know what was going on, Will would.

“Have you got a minute?” he asked Will.

“Sure. What’s up?”

“Outside,” Jeff commanded, not wanting Ethel to overhear anything she could pass along to her customers.

When he and Will had walked to one of the benches along the bay and sat down, Jeff asked, “Has Mack been fired from his job? That’s the talk going around town this morning.”

Will’s uncomfortable expression was answer enough. Jeff sighed. “Then it’s true?”

Will nodded. “It happened the week before Thanksgiving. It’s really rocked him.”

“I can imagine,” Jeff said, feeling a certain amount of pity for him. Like everyone else in town, he know how much the job had meant to Mack. It had been his dream, and as Ethel had noted, it had given him the respect he’d always craved. Of anyone Jeff knew, no one had been more deserving of finding a little happiness.

“Has he told Susie?” he asked. “She hasn’t mentioned it to us.”

Will frowned. “I don’t think she knows. Can you leave it alone, Jeff? She should hear it from Mack.”

“I don’t know. Seems to me it’s something she deserves to know before everyone else in town starts blabbing about it. From what I overheard back at the bookstore, it won’t take long for the word to get back to her. Ethel has a pipeline that those TV tabloids would envy.”

“I agree with you. I’ll see if I can get Mack to talk to her today, but frankly, he hasn’t wanted to discuss it with anyone. Jake and I found out only after going over to his apartment and confronting him.”

“Tell him to do it today,” Jeff said. “Or I’ll see to it she finds out tomorrow.”

Will nodded. “Fair enough. I’ll do my best, but Mack’s not exactly listening to reason right now.”

“While Mack has my sympathy, he’s not the one I’m worried about,” Jeff said grimly.

And whatever it took, he was going to try to make sure Susie wasn’t the one who wound up getting hurt because Mack didn’t have the guts to own up to what was going on in his life. There was no shame in losing a job. But there was something wrong with not sharing that news with someone who supposedly mattered.

Susie had been living on her own in a small apartment above the shops on Main Street ever since she’d graduated from college and gone to work for her father. It was convenient to her job, which was just downstairs, and in the heart of downtown Chesapeake Shores, which was lively in the summer and quiet this time of year.

Though the apartment wasn’t spacious—just an open kitchen, living room and dining room area, plus a single bedroom and bath—it suited her, or at least it had until it filled up with her parents and her brothers, as it did on the Sunday after Thanksgiving.

It wasn’t as if she’d been expecting them. They’d all turned up uninvited, armed with coffee and croissants from Sally’s, apparently staging some sort of intervention. She was still trying to get a fix on what had them in such an uproar.

“Okay, slow down,” she finally shouted, hoping to be heard over the commotion. “I can’t even think, much less understand a word any of you are saying.”

Thankfully, they all shut up and looked to her mother. Josephine O’Brien had been a high school and college athlete who, as a physical education teacher, had encouraged Susie’s love of sports and who’d coached her on the high school track team. She’d been the perfect mother for two energetic, athletic boys, and an even better one for a tomboy daughter. When she had something to say, they all listened.

“We’re worried about this ongoing infatuation you seem to have with Mack Franklin,” her mother began. “Especially right now.”

Susie frowned. “Why especially now?”

Rather than giving her a direct answer, Matthew said, “We all like the guy, but he has a lousy history with women, Suze. You know that.”

“Yeah, we thought that’s why you’d refused to date him,” Luke chimed in. “We all thought you’d made a smart decision.”

“Okay,” Susie said slowly. “All this is old news. Mack and I have been friends for a long time now. You’ve never objected to that. And I still don’t know what Mom meant when she said something about it being a bad time for our relationship to change.” She gave them a defiant look. “Not that I’m admitting it has.”

Her brothers exchanged a look as if deciding who should respond to that point.

It was Matthew who stepped in. “You let him tackle you on Thanksgiving,” he said as if it were a crime. “More than once.”

Susie frowned. “I didn’t exactly do it by choice.”

“But you didn’t even try to get away from him,” Luke countered. “No one has ever tackled you before. So, what? Did you want to roll around on the ground with him? That’s how it looked.”

Susie’s temper stirred. “Are you mad because I didn’t fight Mack off or because I didn’t score a touchdown? Since when is it all up to me to win a stupid family football game?”

“Well, we do count on you,” Matthew admitted. “None of us like losing.”

Luke scowled at him. “So not the point. Susie, you looked like you wanted to kiss him, right there in front of everybody.”

“If I hadn’t come over to help you up, I think you would have,” Matthew added. “Are you crazy? This has gone too far, Susie. Or it’s about to. That’s why we’re here, to stop you from doing something you’ll regret.”

“And you think I’d regret kissing Mack?” she inquired, her voice like ice. “Or is it sleeping with him that really worries you? Maybe falling in love with him? Well, I have news for you—it’s too late.” She avoided looking at either of her parents when she said it. She didn’t want to see any sign of shock on either of their faces, but she had to put a stop to this nonsense.

Matthew regarded her with alarm. “You’ve already slept with him? I’ll kill him. I swear I will. He should not be taking advantage of you. We’ve all told him that.”

Susie froze. “Excuse me? Who’s warned Mack to stay away from me?”

“We all have,” Matthew said. “Well, me and Luke, anyway. I think maybe Kevin and Connor have said something, too.”

Susie couldn’t believe what she was hearing. “How dare you interfere in my life like that! If and when Mack and I decide we want to sleep together, believe me, it will be none of your business.”

“Then you haven’t slept with him already?” Matthew asked, sounding relieved.

She groaned at his persistence. “No, I have not slept with him, though I would have if I’d had the opportunity.”

“Then what?” Luke asked suspiciously. “You said it was too late. So, have you kissed him? I guess that’s not so bad. People kiss all the time and it doesn’t mean anything.”

“This is so not about kissing,” Susie declared. “It’s about all of you meddling in my business. Who I kiss or sleep with is none of your business. Haven’t any of you noticed that I’m in my late twenties? In most worlds that’s considered old enough to make my own decisions.” She turned toward her mother, who gave her a commiserating look.

“We’re just concerned, dear. None of us want to see you get hurt,” Jo O’Brien said gently.

Susie didn’t buy the sudden onset of parental or sibling concern. “Oh, come on, this thing between Mack and me, if there is anything, has been coming on for a long time. If you all were so dead set against it, why didn’t you speak up sooner?” she demanded, then waved off the question. “That’s irrelevant. I’m a grown woman. I get to choose my own dates.”

She looked to her father for support. Unlike her uncle Mick, her dad wasn’t known for meddling in his children’s business. They’d grown especially close since they’d been working together. He trusted her judgment. She knew he did. “Dad, you’ve been awfully quiet. Do you have an opinion about this? If you do, I’d like to hear it.”

He regarded her with an uncomfortable expression. “You have a good head on your shoulders,” he began. At a nudge from his wife, he faltered. “That said, this might not be the best time to consider getting closer to Mack. Circumstances have changed.”

Her gaze narrowed at his careful choice of words. The comment suggested he knew more than she did, perhaps even the very thing that Mack had so determinedly been keeping from her.

“Why not now?” she asked, keeping her gaze steady on her father. “What circumstances have changed? Has he run off and married someone else?”

Though she asked her father, it was her mother who responded. “He’s unemployed,” she said bluntly, startling Susie.

“He is?” she said before she could stop herself.

“There you go,” Matthew said triumphantly. “He didn’t tell you, did he? What kind of man keeps that kind of thing a secret from someone he cares about? It’s pretty significant news, don’t you think? It’s the kind of news friends share with each other.”

Susie couldn’t deny that. It explained a lot, in fact, especially the dark funk of a few days ago, the repeated comments about the timing for starting up a real relationship being all wrong.

She wasn’t sure exactly what she was feeling—anger at Mack keeping such a huge secret or pity over him losing something that mattered so much to him—but she did know this wasn’t where she needed to be. She stood up, grabbed her coat and her purse, then turned to her family.

“Sorry. I need to go.”

“You’re leaving?” Luke asked incredulously. “Nothing’s decided.”

“Believe me, I’ve heard everything I need to hear. Lock up when you leave.” She brushed a kiss across her mother’s cheek, then another on her dad’s. “Love you.”

Though they both looked worried, they didn’t try to stop her.

All the way across town to Mack’s, she stewed about being blindsided by news this monumental. She was torn between wanting to kill him for keeping her in the dark and wanting to hug him to take away the pain he must be feeling. No matter what, though, he should have told her. Her family was right about that.

Of course, she could guess exactly why he hadn’t: pride. Mack had a boatload of it. But friendship should have trumped pride. She would have helped or just listened, whatever he wanted.

Halfway to Mack’s, it sank in that maybe he simply hadn’t trusted her with the news, that he didn’t even think she had a right to know. It was also possible that he’d been embarrassed to tell her, especially after all the conversations they’d had about newspapers being a dying breed. He might have worried she’d gloat, instead of offering a shoulder to lean on.

Or maybe Matthew had been right for once in his mostly insensitive life. Maybe she didn’t really count as a true friend with Mack after all, not enough to be his sounding board in a crisis this big.

She pulled to the side of the road as she considered that possibility, then pounded a fist on the steering wheel in frustration.

A friend wouldn’t care about his reasons. A friend would charge right in and offer support. The woman who didn’t quite know her own place, however, hesitated.

And then, filled with too many questions and no answers, she turned around and drove back home, relieved to find that her family had gone. She’d have all the privacy in the world to wrestle with what she should be doing next…or with accepting the fact that she wasn’t the one who could do anything at all.

“You know the word is out about the newspaper letting you go,” Will said to Mack at lunch on the Monday after Thanksgiving. “Have you said anything to Susie?”

Mack grimaced. “No. How’d the word get around this fast, anyway? It’s not as if it was worthy of a big announcement on Entertainment Tonight.”

Will simply stared at him. “You really don’t get it, do you? We’ve always thought you had this rock-solid ego, but you have no idea how people talked about your columns, especially in this town. Everyone here has always been so proud of you, especially those of us who know what you overcame to get there.”

“You’re exaggerating,” Mack said.

Will shook his head. “I’m not, am I, Jake?”

“Absolutely not,” Jake agreed. “Which is why people noticed that you didn’t have a column about the Ravens in Saturday’s paper. Somebody else did. And somebody else also wrote about yesterday’s game. People have drawn their own conclusions. Speculation was running wild by the time I stopped by here for coffee this morning.”

“I hate to tell you, but the news gets worse,” Will told him, his tone dire. “On Saturday I stopped by the bookstore to pick up a book and ran into Susie’s dad. Jeff was there checking on some plumbing repair, I guess. Anyway, he cornered me and asked point-blank if I knew what was going on. Said he’d heard some talk about you losing your job. What was I supposed to do, lie?”

Mack sighed. “No, but you could have warned me on Saturday.”

“Don’t you think I tried? I called your apartment and your cell phone. Not only didn’t you answer, but I couldn’t leave a message because both voice mailboxes were full.”

“You should have come looking for me,” Mack said, knowing that the real fault wasn’t Will’s, but needing to blame someone. “Maybe there would have been time for me to get to Susie. I’m sure by now her dad’s filled her in.”

“No question about it,” Will said. “He told me he intended to do it if you didn’t. He was pretty insistent about that.”

“Call her now,” Jake said. “Better yet, stop by the management office. She’s probably there. You should tell her something like this face-to-face.”

“I’m not sure I’d be able to take it if she starts pitying me or saying I told you so,” Mack said, though he wasn’t sure that was his real concern. He was more worried that she’d lose faith in him, walk away before they ever got the chance he wanted for the two of them.

“Why would she say I told you so?” Will asked. “The woman’s crazy about you.”

“I told you a while back that she’s been warning me that I ought to be planning ahead,” Mack said. “I guess she’s read all the stories about newspaper cutbacks.”

“Well, I seriously doubt she’s going to throw that in your face,” Will said. “Susie’s not that kind of woman.”

Mack thought about the way their discussion had veered off on a tangent about sex the week before, about the way she’d looked into his eyes when he’d tackled her on Thanksgiving, holding his gaze until it had required every last ounce of willpower he possessed to keep from kissing her.

Then he thought about the fight they’d had on the beach when she realized he was keeping something from her. Now that she knew what it was, she was likely to be even more furious. He could even understand her point of view. He’d be livid—and hurt—if she kept a secret this huge from him.

“I’m not sure I know what kind of woman she is lately,” he said despondently. “She seems to be changing.”

“Well, she’s not mean,” Jake said. “We all know that. Talk to her, Mack, before this becomes some huge issue between you. If it gets blown all out of proportion, you’ll both wind up being miserable. Fix it now. That’s my advice.” He turned a sheepish look on Will. “Not that I’m the expert.”

“Couldn’t have said it better myself,” Will said. “Go. Fix.”

Mack sighed when they left him on the street, just a few paces away from the Chesapeake Shores Real Estate Management Company. He had a hunch both of his friends were sitting in their respective vehicles watching to see if he took their advice or chickened out.

Since he’d been humiliated enough lately, he sucked in a bracing breath and walked into the office, wishing he had even the first clue about what to expect or what to say to her. Susie might have a cheery, live-and-let-live demeanor most of the time, but facing her right now was no less intimidating than walking into a lion’s den. Something told him that whatever happened in the next few minutes would decide his future…and whether or not Susie was likely to be a part of it.