The urge to apologize for standing him up almost moved her tongue. But she couldn’t say anything. Not without telling him things that would mortally embarrass her. “It was nice to see you.”
He flashed that lethal grin. “It was nice to see you, too.”
He let go of the hedge he’d been holding back. It sprang into place and he disappeared.
With the threat of the newcomer gone, the trips scrambled to the kitchen door and raced inside. She followed them, except she didn’t stop in the kitchen. She strode through the house to the living room, where she fell to the sofa.
Realizing she was shaking, she picked up a pillow, put it on her knees and pressed her face to it. She should have known seeing someone she hadn’t seen since graduation would take her back to the worst day in her life.
Her special day, graduation…her dad had stopped at the bar on the way home from the ceremony. Drunk, he’d beaten her mom, ruined the graduation dress Missy had bought with her own money by tossing bleach on it, and slapped Althea, knocking her into a wall, breaking her arm.
Her baby sister, the little girl her mom had called a miracle baby and her dad had called a mistake, had been hit so hard that Missy had taken her to the hospital. Once they’d fixed up her arm, a social worker had peered into their emergency room cubicle.
“Where’s your mom?”
“She’s out for the night. I’m eighteen. I’m babysitting.”
The social worker had given Missy a look of disbelief,so she’d produced her driver’s license.
When the social worker was gone, Althea had glared at her. She wanted to tell the truth.
Missy had turned on her sister. “Do you want to end up in foster care? Or worse, have him beat Mom until she dies? Well, I don’t.”
And the secret had continued… .
Her breath stuttered out. Her mom was dead now. Althea had left home. She’d enrolled in a university thousands of miles away, in California. She’d driven out of town and never looked back.
And their dad?
Well, he was “gone,” too. Just not forgotten. He still ran the diner, but he spent every spare cent he had on alcohol and gambling. If he wasn’t drunk, he was in Atlantic City. The only time Missy saw him was when he needed money.
A little hand fell to her shoulder. “What’s wong, Mommy?”
Owen. With his little lisp and his big heart.
She pulled her face out of the pillow. “Nothing’s wrong.” She smiled, ruffled his short brown hair. “Mommy is fine.”
She was fine, because after her divorce she’d figured out that she wasn’t going to find a knight on a white horse who would rescue her. She had to save herself. Save her kids. Raise her kids in a home where they were never afraid or hungry.
After her ex drained their savings account and left her with three babies and no money, well, she’d learned that the men in her life didn’t really care if kids were frightened and/or hungry. And the only person with the power to fix that was her.
So she had.
But she would never, ever trust a man again.
Not even sweet Wyatt.
Wyatt walked through the back door of his gram’s house, totally confused.
Somehow in his memory he’d kept Missy an eighteen-year-old beauty queen. She might still look like an eighteen-year-old beauty queen, but she’d grown up. Moved on. Become a wife and mom.
He couldn’t figure out why that confused him so much. He’d moved on. Gotten married. Gotten divorced. Just as she had. Why did it feel so odd that she’d done the same things he had?
His cell phone rang. He grabbed it from the pocket of his jeans. Seeing the caller ID of his assistant, he said, “Yeah, Arnie, What’s up?”
“Nothing except that the Wizard Awards were announced this morning and three of your stories are in!”
“Oh.” He expected a thrill to shoot through him, but didn’t get one. His mind was stuck on Missy. Something about her nagged at him.
“I thought you’d be happier.”
Realizing he was standing there like a goof, not even talking to the assistant who’d called him, he said, “I am happy with the nominations. They’re great.”
“Well, that’s because your books are great.”
He grinned. His work was great. Not that he was vain, but a person had to have some confidence—
He stopped himself. Now he knew what was bothering him about Missy. She’d stood him up. They’d had a date graduation night and she’d never showed. In fact, she hadn’t even come to his grandmother’s house that whole summer. He hadn’t seen her on the street. He’d spent June, July and August wondering, then left for college never knowing why she’d agreed to meet him at a party, but never showed.
He said, “Arnie, thanks for calling,” then hung up the phone.
She owed him an explanation. Fifteen years ago, even if he’d seen her that summer, he would have been too embarrassed to confront her, ask her why she’d blown him off.
At thirty-three, rich, talented and successful, he found nothing was too difficult for him to confront. He might have lost one-third of his company to his ex-wife, but in the end he’d come to realize that their divorce had been nothing but business.
This was personal.
And he wanted to know.
CHAPTER TWO
THE NEXT MORNING Wyatt woke with a hangover. After he’d hung up on Arnie, he’d gone to the 7-Eleven for milk, bread, cheese and a case of beer. Deciding he wanted something to celebrate his award nominations, he’d added a bottle of cheap champagne. Apparently cheap champagne and beer weren’t a good mix because his head felt like a rock. This was what he got for breaking his own hard-and-fast rule of moderation in all things.
Shrugging into a clean T-shirt and his jeans from the day before, he made a pot of coffee, filled a cup and walked out to the back porch for some fresh air.
From his vantage point, he could see above the hedge. Missy stood in her backyard, hanging clothes on a line strung between two poles beside a swing set. The night before he’d decided he didn’t need to ask her why she’d stood him up. It was pointless. Stupid. What did he care about something that happened fifteen years ago?
Still, he remained on his porch, watching her. She didn’t notice him. Busy fluffing out little T-shirts and pinning them to the line, she hadn’t even heard him come outside.
In the silence of a small town at ten o’clock on a Tuesday morning in late April, when kids were in school and adults at work, he studied her pretty legs. The way her bottom rounded when she bent. The swing of her pony tail. It was hard to believe she was thirty-three, let alone the mother of triplets.
“Hey, Mithter.”
His gaze tumbled down to the sidewalk at the bottom of the five porch steps. There stood Owen.
“Hey, kid.”
“Wanna watch TV?”
“I don’t have TV. My mom canceled the cable.” He laughed and ambled down the steps. “Besides, don’t you think your mom will be worried if you’re gone?”
He nodded.
“So you should go home.”
He shook his head.
Wyatt