Dockside (18 page)

He leaned back in the Naugahyde booth and clasped his hands behind his head. “Fantastic, Nina. The contest was a great idea,” he said, placing a fat manila envelope on the table. “We were flooded with entries.”

She didn’t tell him that she’d long had a grand opening planned out in her mind. In order to build a mailing list, they had offered a free stay at the inn to the winner of a random drawing. All the entries went straight to a database to use in their marketing.

He grinned at her. “You’re as good at this as I knew you’d be.”

Nina felt a flush rising in her cheeks. Something—she didn’t want to name it—pulsed between them. “Yeah?”

He cleared his throat, pulled his gaze away.

“So. I appreciate the vote of confidence.” Nina was embarrassed by herself. It was as if she was thirteen again, starry-eyed and clueless. She busied herself with the clipboard, now cluttered with even more notes.

“Listen, I know this isn’t the arrangement you were expecting,” Greg said. “You’re being a good sport about this.”

She got the feeling he’d been working up to telling her this. “Of course I am.”

“Seriously. I realize you wanted to go it alone, and now you’ve got me and my kids in the mix.”

Nina didn’t respond to that. By now, life should have taught her not to plan anything, because there always seemed to be a detour down the road. She found herself in a very strange position. Greg had what she wanted—the inn. She ought to resent him, but perversely, she felt an insane attraction to him.

She sorted through the rest of the mail they’d picked up at the post office earlier. “I’m glad the contest was a hit, but Daisy gets the credit for so many bookings,” Nina stated. “Her photographs made the brochure and Web site irresistible.”

“You think?”

“Absolutely.”

“I’m glad to hear you say that about her. She gives me plenty to worry about. Nice to be reminded that sometimes, she’s an amazing kid.”

His comment touched a soft spot in Nina. How well she remembered Sonnet’s ups and downs. And how she missed them. “Every kid comes with her own unique set of worries.”

He nodded. “I find new ones every day.”

The cocksure Greg Bellamy was taking a break, she observed. There was something vulnerable about him now, and he didn’t seem like a business partner or a rival or anything but a worried parent.

“Max is having problems that I never anticipated. Sometimes I’m amazed at all the anger he has bottled up. I asked myself, did I sacrifice my kid’s happiness? Should I have stuck it out with Sophie, worked harder—”

“News flash, Greg. Kids have anger and issues and problems no matter what. You can blame the divorce if you want, but you might need to rethink that. Living in a house where people are unhappy is toxic. It’s a slow poison. You can’t hide things from your kids. They see everything. And even if they’re not old enough to understand, they know unhappiness when they see it, no matter how hard you try to hide it. So I’m just saying, don’t beat yourself up over the divorce. Give him a stable, loving home and hope for the best. And if he wants to quit baseball, for god’s sake let him quit baseball. There’s no shame in letting him see that sometimes the right thing to do is cut your losses and move on.”

“Are you speaking from experience?”

“With eight siblings, I’ve had a front row seat at every possible family quarrel. I’m the only one in my family who never married. I didn’t even date while Sonnet was growing up. It just seemed too complicated.”

“So now that she’s away…”

“I’ve got options,” she said. She didn’t want him to think she was trying to get him to ask her out, so she changed the subject. “And that’s pretty much all I have to say about that. How’s Daisy doing?”

“She asked me to be her birth coach,” he said. Then he looked amazed, as though someone else had spoken the obviously unplanned words.

Hold on, Nina thought. This was supposed to be a business arrangement yet here they were, talking about his kids. She needed to figure out how to avoid these topics, how not to care about the heartbreaking expression on his face—a combination of love, terror, commitment and uncertainty.

Yet it was not the sort of conversational leap you could avoid. She moved aside her glass and studied his face, wondering what to say, how to react.
What about your ex?
She nearly asked the question aloud, although it was none of her business. Still, Nina found herself wondering about Daisy’s mother. If this had been Sonnet, wild horses couldn’t keep Nina from her side. But every family was unique, she reminded herself. Each had its own distinctive emotional landscape, its own geography.

“So, um, how do you feel about that?” she asked Greg, suspecting he hadn’t broached the topic because he wanted her opinion, but because he simply needed to talk.

“It just feels crazy. I mean, how can I not go crazy when my own daughter’s asking me to be her birth coach? I have no idea what I’m doing. My worst problem used to be making a deadline at work, getting Max to do his vocabulary homework or convincing Daisy not to dye her hair blue. That all seems trivial now that I have to go to class to learn about prolapsed cords and demand feeding.” He flashed a look that had a curious effect on Nina. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to go on.”

She cleared her throat. “What did you do when Max was born? You must have been there for his birth.”

“I was, but this is different. This is my daughter. I feel guilty as hell, you know? I’m the one who let her go away to Long Island that weekend with her friends—”

“Oh, no,” she said, “you are not going there. It’s no one’s fault. You can blame whatever you want, but everybody knows there are few things quite so powerful as a teenager’s sex drive. No high school girl asks to get pregnant. So just move on from all the blame and the guilt.”

“I thought I had. I don’t know what to tell her besides the fact that I love her and want only the best for her.”

“Have you told her that?” Nina asked.

“Yeah, of course.”

“I mean, have you really told her like you mean it, or was it just something you said?”

“Of course I meant it.”

“But you definitely have a preference about how you wish she’d handle this.” She couldn’t help remembering the way her family had been—hurt and scared and angry and so deeply disappointed in her. And she remembered her reaction, the utter determination to prove herself. She had no doubt Greg’s daughter was going through the same things. “I know you don’t want to hear it, but Daisy will handle things herself, in her own way. She’ll probably go off on her own and—”

“She’s not going anywhere.”

“Well, guess what, Greg? It’s not up to you. Every single member of my family wanted to help me. I had a chance to work at my brother’s car lot, or as a teacher’s aide for my dad, or at my sister’s salon…I was so grateful that they cared but ultimately, I had to go my own way. Daisy might, too.”

“She loves the inn.”

“She loves you,” Nina corrected him. “But don’t be surprised if she tells you she needs to find her own life.”

“What do you mean, find her own life? She’s staying right here.”

“Is that what she wants?”

“Of course that’s what she wants.”

“Have you asked her?”

“I don’t need to ask her. I know what’s best for Daisy.”

“If you say so.” Nina definitely wanted to drop the subject. In the first place, this was not her business and she was definitely not comfortable in the role of Greg’s adviser when it came to his daughter. In the second place, she knew something he was refusing to see. Daisy didn’t want to spend her life, and not even the next year or two, working at the Inn at Willow Lake. Nina wasn’t about to say that to Greg, though. It wasn’t her place. She didn’t want it to be her place.

“I still think of Daisy as a little kid,” he confessed. “I can still picture her with her hair in pigtails, skipping rope or showing me a loose tooth. Her whole childhood went by at the speed of light, and suddenly she’s about to have a kid of her own. And I’m not ready for her to stop being
my
kid.”

Though her heart ached for him, Nina knew that wouldn’t help. “She won’t ever stop,” she said, thinking about her own father. “When I told Pop I was pregnant, he blazed through the whole spectrum of emotional reactions—shock, rage, grief, disappointment…” Even now, Nina could feel the sadness echo through her. “Disappointment was the worst for me. I remember thinking that I’d ruined everything, that Pop and I would never be the same.”

“Great,” he said.

Nina took a deep breath. “No, hear me out,” she said. “You know, I suppose I could tell you everything will be fine, but honestly, there’ll be plenty of occasions when everything is
not
fine. There will be times when Daisy will fall apart and the baby won’t stop crying and things are going to seem so far from fine that you’ll probably feel like putting your fist through a wall.”

He started to say something, but she held up a hand to stop him. “I’m trying to explain to you that you’re going to be all right, you and Daisy both. Trust me on this. When Sonnet was born, Pop fell in love with her the second he held her in his arms. All of a sudden, he wasn’t thinking about what people would say, or how I was going to deal with everything or what sort of life I’d give my child. He just loved her, and knew somehow that would be enough. And to this day, they have a special bond, my pop and Sonnet. She brings him…I don’t know. Some kind of quiet joy he doesn’t get from any of his kids. So what I hope you’ll remember is that even after things fall apart, they fit back together eventually, and you somehow get to the other side of whatever crisis you’re facing, and you’re smiling again. It’s a baby, Greg, not a ball and chain. Sonnet and I were there. Me, having a baby alone, my folks crazy with worry about whether or not we’d be all right. I’m not saying it was easy. But I don’t regret one single second of it.”

He was a listener, she’d give him that. He had this way of listening with every cell of his body—eyes, face, posture—that blew her away. He nodded, seemingly clear on just what he was agreeing to. “Every once in a while, I feel excited at the prospect of having another little kid around the house. One that calls me Gramps before I’ve even turned forty.” He shuddered. “Okay, now I’m scaring myself.”

She knew exactly what he was saying. The irony of the situation struck her. He was living a life Nina had just left behind; he was entering a world of parenting that would consume him with worry, with mirth and frustration, with a spectrum of emotions she clearly remembered. Just hearing him talk about his kids took her back there.

She was supposed to be moving in the other direction. Her active parenting years were done. She was glad to have that phase behind her. At least, that was what she told herself.

Watching him, thinking of what lay ahead for him and his family, she didn’t feel pity. What she felt instead surprised her—envy.

No. That couldn’t be right. No sane person would envy his situation. Here he was, about to become a grandfather before he was done being a father. There was nothing enviable in that. And yet…and yet…

“I guess the thing that freaks me out is the thought of seeing Daisy dealing with a kind of pain I can’t do anything about,” he said.

“Just being there and holding her hand is probably all the help she’ll need.”

“She’s had to go to the emergency room three times in her life, and I wasn’t there for any of them. I have no idea how I’ll be in an emergency.”

“Chances are, there won’t be an emergency. And if there is—does anyone know? We might think we do, but until the situation arises, you can never really predict. Maybe you’re too focused on the delivery room stuff. That’s just a small part of it. Doesn’t the whole process involve classes spread out over weeks?”

He nodded. “I’m going to be okay with this. I have to be. Also, uh, sorry about bringing this up. I shouldn’t have dumped it on you.”

“Don’t worry about it.”

“I didn’t expect you to tell me these things. I know some of them are…pretty personal.”

She felt her cheeks heat. The way he was staring at her now was a little scary. He looked as though he was about to explode. She’d probably offended him.
Here’s how I screwed up; maybe Daisy can screw up better.
She swallowed, not sure how to respond. He made her feel unsettled and…exposed. He made it impossible not to care about him. “I just wanted to let you know, good things will come of this.”

“I’m counting on it.” His smile was as sexy and slow as a caress.

Nina grabbed the plastic-coated menu. “Are you having dessert?”

“That’s the best part.” They perused the selections, and Greg spoke up again. “You know what else has been bugging me?”

“I have no idea,” she said faintly.

“The kid who fathered Daisy’s baby isn’t someone she wants in her life. He needs to be told, though, he and his family.”

“Yes,” she agreed, and a faraway memory nudged its way into her mind. “Yes, he does.”

“You understand, I have zero compassion for the little rat bastard. I don’t give a shit—or even half a shit—about him. But then I think…I remember…What if Sophie had never told me about Daisy? What if I’d never had a chance to be a father to her? What if, some day, this baby needs a dad the way Daisy needs me? I can’t even get my mind around that.”