скачать книгу бесплатно
“—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?”
