Marry Me Again (The Second Chance Love Series, Book 1) (4 page)

BOOK: Marry Me Again (The Second Chance Love Series, Book 1)
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"I can't do it, Brian. Tell them if they need money, and I'm sure they will, I'll get it for them. But I can't head up the whole project."

"I'll tell them you're thinking about it, okay?"

"Okay." Rebecca couldn't argue with him any more now. She didn't have the strength for it. "About everything else, I'm—"

He held up his hands to silence her, then leaned over and kissed her lightly on the lips. "Get over him, Rebecca. Call me when you do, and I'll be there. God help me, I'll probably always be there for you."

Then he turned and left.

* * *

Rebecca looked at the clock on the wall and shook her head. The paper mill project and Tucker, all in the same day. No more than an hour had passed since her ex-husband had called, yet it felt as if she'd lived through years, years she didn't care to recall.

And now came the truly hard part. She had to face her son and try to explain this to him.

Sammy wasn't in the house. He wasn't on the back deck. She didn't see him in the backyard.

Then she heard an ominous
ping,
the noise a rock makes when it's thrown into a pool of water.

She raced for the hedge that separated her yard from Mr. Bennett's. The hedge near the back corner of the yard had a little gap. As she reached it, she could see Sammy solemnly pitching pebbles into Mr. Bennett's goldfish pond.

Surprise held her motionless for a long moment. Sammy had never, ever gone through the hedge or near that damned pond before.

A lot of neighborhood children found the thought of throwing a rock into a pool of water too much temptation to deny. It was even more irresistible because Mr. Bennett had a hissy fit whenever he caught any child in his yard, much less near that silly pond.

The old man had decorated the bottom of the little artificial pond with special lights and pretty colored stones. The plain old pebbles the children threw in there destroyed the ambience of the pool, he said. It was certainly his right to have his pretty pool the way he wanted it, with pretty colored stones in a pretty pattern.

Sammy knew how obsessed the old man was with the pond. He knew never to go near the place. And although he may have been tempted before, he had simply been too timid about getting into trouble to take the risk.

Her little boy was like that—a little too shy, too easily hurt. He was a lot like Rebecca had been as a child.

But the little boy standing in plain sight of the Bennett house and calmly throwing pebbles into the pond wasn't timid. He was mad.

Her little boy was so full of anger these days. And seeing her child in pain like this hurt Rebecca more than anything that had happened tonight.

She could stand anything, except seeing her son hurt.

"Sammy!" she said urgently but softly from her place in the hole in the hedge.

He didn't acknowledge the call.

"Sammy, please?"

Again, no response.

Rebecca glanced up at the lighted windows of the Bennett house and was relieved to see no one through the glass. She sprinted across the yard to Sammy's side, grabbed his hand and turned to run back the other way. But Sammy didn't budge.

"Sammy, come on." She got down on her knees in front of him and turned him to face her so they were eye to eye. Eye to tear-filled brown eye.

"No!" He tried to pull out of her hold, but she wouldn't let him.

Rebecca wondered how anyone so small could be filled with so much sadness, covered up by so much anger. "What is it, baby?"

"I'm not a baby!" he said fiercely.

Rebecca closed her eyes and breathed. She had to remember not to call him that, especially when he was upset. "I know, Sammy. Can we go home now?"

He just stood there, small and miserable in the fading light. Rebecca took his hand and loosened his fierce hold on the pebbles. They both stared down at the smooth stones.

Sammy sniffled once, then again, before hesitantly lifting his eyes to hers. "Why didn't he wanna talk to me?"

"You mean, your dad?"

With a trembling lower lip and a runny nose, he nodded.

"Oh, Sammy? Is that what this is all about?"

He swiped the back of his hand past his nose, then nodded.

"It was him. I know it was," Sammy rushed on breathlessly. "He said his name was Tucker, but I know it was my dad 'cause you told me that was his name. So I asked him if he was my dad, and he said he was. And then he didn't even wanna talk to me. He just wanted you."

Rebecca closed her eyes and made her decision in that moment, praying she was doing the right thing. The hardest part of being a parent, she'd found, wasn't doing the right thing. It was not knowing the right thing to do and having to make a decision anyway, despite all her doubts.

She really didn't know if this was right. The risks seemed so high, but at the same time, Sammy was so sad and nothing she'd done so far had made that better.

"Sammy, your dad doesn't just want to talk to you on the phone. He wants to come see you."

Her son's shimmering brown eyes widened with wonder and surprise. Rebecca saw the tears caught in his long, thick eyelashes.

She remembered those eyes. Sometimes he was so like Tucker that the sight of Sammy stole the breath from her lungs. It was so hard to get over her ex-husband when the most precious thing in her world was a miniature version of him.

She brushed Sammy's tears away for him.

"He's coming here?" Sammy looked stunned.

"Yes." She smiled, despite her misgivings.

"Really?"

"Yes."

"Wow!" He gave her a trembling smile. "And I can show him my room and my train set, and take him to soccer practice and to meet Jimmy Horton and his dad?"

"Yes." If she had to drag the man by the hair on his head, Tucker would go. And he'd be suitably impressed with it all.

"Wow!" Sammy yelled as he jumped for joy, then headed for the hole in the hedge. "Come on, Mom. We gotta get outta here before Mr. Bennett catches us."

And that settled that, Rebecca decided as she stood up and dusted off her pants. Tucker was going to get a chance to see his son.

 

 

 

Chapter 3

 

It had been only twenty-four hours since Tucker called, and Rebecca was tired. Drained, actually. She expected little, if any, rest tonight. Tomorrow would be even worse.

Because tomorrow, Tucker was coming to see his son.

Sammy was too excited to sleep.

Rebecca was too terrified.

She'd just turned out the light and closed the door to her little boy's room, for the final time tonight, she hoped.

On her way to the couch, where she planned to collapse and brood about what lay ahead of her, her cell phone rang.

Brian,
she saw as she picked up the phone. They'd already had one fight via telephone earlier this evening. She wasn't up to another. She had mere hours left in which to prepare herself to face her ex-husband. She didn't need to listen to Brian tell her what a mistake she was making by allowing the meeting to take place.

She was thinking of taking the coward's way out and letting it go to voicemail when the doorbell rang, saving her, at least for a moment, from the phone.

Probably her mother, she thought, who had been sending her ex-husband photos of their son twice a year for the past four and a half years, Rebecca had found out last night.

It felt like such a betrayal, and Rebecca was still as hurt as she was furious. Her mother had always liked Tucker. Her father, too. Tucker was so self-assured, so powerful, so charming, much more likely to have been the kind of child her parents would produce than she was.

She'd have thought his girlfriend and his walking away from her and their son would be enough to make her parents hate him, too, but instead, it had just made them sad and worried. They had wanted to help take care of Rebecca even more than they had before. Their kindness and support for her and Sammy knew no bounds, but she was still going to be mad at her mother for a little while for sending the photos.

You couldn't make a man want to have a relationship with his son, she'd argued, and yet, the man had called, finally, after all these years, her mother had said last night on the phone.

Rebecca pulled the door open, and a blast of humid night air came with it. The heat, relentless in its assault on the city in June, ran over her like a steamroller, but it was nothing compared to the impact of the man standing before her.

Tucker Malloy, twelve hours ahead of schedule.

And she wasn't ready.

Oh, God, she wasn't.

She might never have been ready to face him again, but she wished she'd at least had some time to prepare herself. She closed her eyes for a moment, opened them again and found him still standing there in front of her.

He waited, still and silent, as she stared at him and wondered why the very sight of him had the power to take her world and tilt it alarmingly on its axis, to leave her literally unsteady on her own two feet.

Rebecca had meant to be so cool to him, so unaffected. She'd planned on being dignified and coldly polite. Instead, she was clutching the door, the only solid thing within reach that didn't seem to be swaying.

She'd made a grave error in thinking that the sight of him after all these years would mean nothing to her. Old wounds came thundering to the surface, anger that had been suppressed too long, hurts that had never been tended.

Cold politeness was more than she could manage at the moment.

Her eyes locked on Tucker's. His locked on hers. Neither of them moved. Neither of them breathed.

In the background, her home phone rang. In some corner of her mind, Rebecca acknowledged the sound momentarily, then went back to trying to figure out the man standing before her.

It was so like him to do this to her, she thought absently. He'd thrown her off balance from the first moment she laid eyes on him, and here he was doing it still.

And it wasn't fair, not fair at all, she protested as she stood there, clinging to the heavy oak door, and let her eyes slowly roam over him. He was every bit as gorgeous as always.

"Rebecca?"

She blinked, twice, and damned if he wasn't still there. A little older, a little colder, perhaps, but essentially the same man she'd loved and lost all those years ago.

"Yes?" There, she'd done it. She'd managed to speak.

"Your phone's ringing."

So it was.

In a curious daze, she took it all in, his trim but powerful body, his impeccably cut, tailor-made suit. Tucker would still be wearing a killer suit at this hour. The sun bleached his sandy-colored hair nearly blond in the summer, and it was still thick and casually perfect. His eyes were deep brown, with dark, curling lashes, such a contrast to his hair. He had dimples. How many grown men had dimples? And his smile. He had one that could light up a city block, but he hadn't turned it on tonight. She should probably be grateful for small favors, but she couldn't quite summon up that particular emotion right now.

He just stood there in the doorway. Was he locked in the same spell that held her?

So she had a little time, time to wonder about the worry lines that marred the corners of his beautiful eyes and the laugh lines that were missing from the corners of his mouth.

Tucker had always known how to laugh, how to make her laugh, too. Those were the first things she'd loved about him.

And then all the laughter had disappeared. She wondered sometimes, when the joyous days seemed so far away, if they had ever existed at all.

The pain in her chest slowly receded. The vise that had gripped her lungs finally relinquished its hold, and she had to fight not to panic and gasp for air.

She still hung on to the door for support.

"Rebecca?" He broke the silence again. "Your phone's ringing."

She turned and went to pick it up, meaning to disconnect the call, but somehow hit the wrong button. She heard Brian's voice, then attempted to hang up again, and somehow hit the speaker button instead.

BOOK: Marry Me Again (The Second Chance Love Series, Book 1)
7.02Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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