The Sweetheart Rules (16 page)

“A friend of yours. Living here. In this neighborhood.”

“What? I got turned around and lost.” Jackson shrugged. “I was looking for his street. He gave me shitty directions. That’s not my fault.”

“Bullshit.”

Jackson’s eyes widened at the curse. “What? I’m not lying.”

“And I’m the Easter Bunny. Come on, come with me. You know your mother wouldn’t want you hanging out here.”

Jackson hesitated. “What do you care what I do anyway?”

Mike let out a long breath. His gaze went down the street, and in his mind, he saw another house, another long row of bad choices. Thankfully the military had found him before he’d taken a turn down the wrong path, one that would have led to a different regimented life—behind bars. “Because you’re a lot like me, kid, and I’m trying to save you from yourself.”

“No one needs to save me from anything.” He scowled again. “I can take care of myself.”

“So you keep saying.”

Jackson cursed and worked on staring Mike down. Mike had a good foot height advantage over Jackson, not to mention a lot of years of experience with attitudes and defiance. Eventually, Jackson realized he wasn’t going to win this battle, and he dropped his gaze. He cursed under his breath, then shrugged like it was no big deal. “Whatever. I don’t want to go to the mall now anyway.”

Mike draped an arm around Jackson’s shoulder and walked back to the car with him. “Good. Because now I really need a burger. Come on, Jackson, let’s go chow down on some red meat and French fries. The two food groups a real man needs.”

Jackson grinned. “Arr-arr-arr.”

“You know it, buddy. You know it.” Mike gave the kid a quick, tight hug, then unlocked the car and got them both far the hell away from trouble.

Frank hadn’t been this nervous in a long time. Years, at least. The nerves bubbled in his gut, tightened his throat. He tugged at the tie, loosening it, then tightening it again. Questioned the tie to begin with. Too much? Too overdone?

The too-big suit hung off his shoulders, and in the Florida heat, suffocated him as if he’d been wrapped in aluminum foil and shoved under the broiler. But he kept it on, sitting on a hard plastic bench under a shaded plastic table outside a coffee shop, his hands laced together to keep them from fidgeting. He waited, one of the few things a man like him had learned to do well, while he listened to the gulls calling to each other and watched customers come and go and tried to think cool thoughts.

Maybe he should lose the suit. Change into the worn, dirty T-shirt and ragged-edged jeans with the hole in the knee that he’d stuffed in the bottom of a paper bag and stowed behind the seat. Wearing the suit, the glossy laced shoes, the tie, all made him feel like he was masquerading.

And he was. As a successful man, instead of the bum he was.

That wasn’t the truth he wanted to give his daughter. Not now. Not ever. He’d talk to her, spin his tale about a life of successes, then disappear again from her life. It would be enough.

It would have to.

“Frank… uh, Dad?”

He turned and tried to get up, but the strange suit hampered his movements, and he fumbled the action. He thrust out a hand, then pulled it back. Who shook hands with their kid?

God, she had grown into a beautiful woman. Tall and willowy, with shoulder-length blond hair and a wide, welcoming smile. He could see both himself and Bridget in Diana’s features, and it warmed a place deep inside him that hadn’t been warm in a long, long time. “I’m—I’m glad you could make it.”

“I almost didn’t come.” She worried her bottom lip, and Frank smiled.

“Your mother used to do that. Whenever she was upset or nervous. You look”—he reached up a hand, but didn’t touch his daughter’s face, even though a part of him wanted so badly to connect with this amazing product of his DNA, wanted to marvel at the green of her eyes, the swoop of her nose, the contours of her face, a beautiful muddled mix of himself and a woman he had loved a long, long time ago—“so much like her.”

“Thank you.” A smile flitted across Diana’s lips. “She was… complicated.”

He thought of the woman he had known. Bridget Tuttle had been a hard woman to get to know, but an even harder woman to forget. “I agree. Your mother was complicated, but also mysterious and… compelling. Yes, that’s the right word for it. From the first second I met her, I couldn’t help but love her.”

Diana worried her lip again, but this time it seemed less like nerves and more like she was keeping herself from saying something. Or asking something.

Like
If you loved her so much, why didn’t you stick around?

That was the question he hoped he never had to answer. He pulled at the tie and tried to fill out the suit as if it were his own.

Diana shifted from foot to foot, then gestured toward the table. “Do you want to sit down? Or we could go inside, where there’s air conditioning.”

“Here is fine.” Even if the suit roasted him alive, he wanted this time outdoors, away from the walls of the world. Walls that closed him in and cut off his air supply. Walls he had escaped years ago and couldn’t imagine returning to. Here, outside with the sun and the clouds and the birds, he felt like he was as close as he could get to his own soul.

She sat across from him and crossed her hands on the table, the same as he had a few minutes before. “I don’t know what to say. Or where to start. I’ve never done this before.”

“Me either.” He tried on a smile, but it fell flat. “Let’s just start with today.”

She nodded, relief flooding her eyes. “That sounds good.”

Silence extended between them. Cars went by, the bell over the shop’s door rang as people went in and out, and the water
whoosh
ed in and out from the Gulf a few hundred yards away. He resisted the urge to tug at the tie again. “Bridget, uh, your mother, must have been proud that you became a vet.”

Diana shrugged. “I think so. We never really talked about it. She had her animals, and… well, that was where her focus went most of the time.”

Disappointment and hurt echoed in Diana’s words, and sent a river of guilt through Frank. He should have been here. Should have stepped up. Been the father that his daughter deserved. How did he begin to explain to Diana that after Bridget left him, he fell into a deep, dark abyss, one that was still just a hazy memory, one that had landed him on the streets?

Streets he’d never left, because at a certain point, they became home. Still were.

“I’m sorry,” he said, and it wasn’t enough, not nearly enough, but he had literally nothing else to offer.

“Me too.” She fiddled with a forgotten spork on the table. He couldn’t tell if she believed the apology was sincere, or if she had expected more. Silence reached between them—about the only thing they shared right now.

Diana cleared her throat. “So, you still live in New York?”

He nodded. “Never left. This is my first trip out of the state in a long, long time. New York is home for me. What about you?”

“Mom moved to Rescue Bay before I was born.” She paused to take in the view of the Gulf, the busy boardwalk. “It’s always been my home, too, and now that my sister is here—”

“Sister?” He didn’t remember Bridget ever mentioning another child. Was there more he didn’t know? Another secret she had kept? Bridget had never been one to share much about herself or her past. In the early blush of their relationship, that mystery had been intriguing, exciting. But as the months ticked by and she remained as elusive as a fish in deep water, he’d tired of her secrecy. He’d given Bridget his heart, and she… she’d kept everything to herself. Even their child.

“Olivia is a couple years older than me,” Diana said. “Mom put her up for adoption when she was born, so probably before you two even met.”

Relief flickered through him. Not his child, not a twin that Bridget had forgotten to mention. “I’m glad you have family here.”

And glad Bridget had raised their daughter herself, rather than giving her away to strangers. Not everyone won in the adoption lottery. That he knew firsthand.

“Me too.” Diana kept her gaze on her hands, so he wasn’t sure if she was glad he was here or not. She fidgeted for a bit, then raised her green eyes, Bridget’s eyes, to his. “What was she like back then? How’d you two meet?”

His mind reached back, deep in the past, to the days before everything went south and he was a man with goals, dreams. A future. A smile curved across his face, and for a moment, he was there, on a sunny day in June, a slight breeze rippling through the trees. “She was working one of those shelter events in Central Park. I don’t even think she was on the shelter staff. She just showed up and started helping, and they were so busy, they welcomed her with open arms. I was running, and she called me over, and before I knew it, I was helping her. Your mother had a way about her that drew you in and got you as excited about her projects as she was. Before I knew it, I was volunteering at the shelter with her.”

“She loved that shelter in New York. She talked a lot about how heartbroken she was when it shut down.”

But she hadn’t talked about him, or being heartbroken when their relationship shut down. That still stung, even all these years later. Frank supposed he’d never stopped loving Bridget, nor had he stopped hoping that someday Bridget would come back. But she never had, and after a while, she became a bittersweet memory. Then the pictures of their daughter had started arriving in his mailbox and he’d debated tracking Bridget down. By then, though, it was too late for Frank. The successful broker had ended up on the streets, battling drug demons. So he’d stayed where he was and lived from envelope to envelope. “She went to Florida after that shelter shut down,” he said. “She read an article about all these animals that were stranded during a hurricane, and she wanted to do something.”

“To rescue them.” Diana smiled.

“That was your mom. Always rescuing one creature or another. There was a time when we had three dogs and four cats living in our fifth-floor walk-up.” He chuckled. “It was sheer chaos, and there were days when I spent more time cleaning the dog hair off my suit jacket than actually wearing the jacket, but I didn’t mind.”

“What happened? I mean, why didn’t you go with her to Florida?”

He shifted on the seat. Cursed the heat above, the tie on his neck. “I had just started a great job on Wall Street. Our relationship had been falling apart for a while, and when she left…” He shook his head. How could he explain how he had started to fall apart, and that he couldn’t blame Bridget for going? “She just left.”

“You didn’t go after her?”

He gave the simple explanation, instead of the cold, hard truth that he could barely find himself those days, never mind another human. “I didn’t even know where she went. In those days, there was no Internet to help you track people down. I kept thinking she’d come back, but she never did. I didn’t hear from her again for five years.”

“So you knew I’d been born?”

He shifted again, laced his fingers together, and met his daughter’s hurt head-on. “Yes. And not being a part of your life is one of my biggest regrets.”

She scoffed. Tears welled in her eyes, and she cut her gaze to her hands. When she spoke again, her voice was soft but sharp, edged with pain. “It took you thirty years to figure that out?”

“It took me thirty years to figure a lot of things out, Diana. I wasn’t ready to see you until now. I needed… time.”

She digested that with a slow nod. “Well, what I used to need was a father. But I don’t anymore. Thanks for meeting with me, Frank.”

Then she got to her feet and left him under the hot sun. The borrowed suit weighed him down like a sack of potatoes, but the disappointment in his chest weighed more.

 • • • 

Doc Harper hadn’t made a sound in ten minutes. He’d done his usual routine of checking Greta’s heart, blood pressure, ears, and throat, then jotting things on the flat screen in his hands. But there’d been no condemnations coming from his lips, no reminders to put away the bourbon and eat her vegetables.

That was not like the meddling medicine man. Not at all. Normally, he spent half his time reciting the Ten Commandments of Healthy Living to Greta, as if at her age she didn’t know any better. She knew better—she just chose what made her happy instead.

The dark-haired doctor’s brow was furrowed, and shadows dusted under his eyes. His receptionist had mentioned that he was thinking of taking a vacation next week, so one would think he’d be excited to go, not stressed. Scuttlebutt around Golden Years said Doc Harper’d had his heart broken by some woman he’d been dating and he was getting away from town for a few days to lick his wounds. If it was Greta’s broken heart, she’d head straight for Vegas. Nothing like a little gambling and sinning to make you forget a lost love. She gave the stuffy, pinstriped doctor a once-over and decided there was no way her buttoned-up doctor would head off on a leave-it-in-Vegas kind of wild adventure. He was probably planning to go to some doctor convention and stay up too late discussing ways to torture patients with rules and recommendations.

“Thanks, Greta,” he said, his gaze still on the tablet thing. “You’re good to go.”

She hopped down off the table and eyed the young physician. “That’s it? No words of medical wisdom?”

“Nope. Thanks for coming in today.” He tucked the tablet under his arm and headed for the door.

“Doc?”

He turned back. “Yes? Did you have a question?”

“I do, indeed.” She marched over to him and eyed him again. Something was amiss, something she couldn’t put a finger on. “You’re looking a bit peaked yourself, Doc. You feeling okay?”

“Yes, yes, of course. Just a little… low on sleep.”

“From your recent breakup with that girl. What was her name?”

“Mrs. Winslow, I prefer not to discuss my personal life with my patients.”

She harrumphed. “Didn’t your mother ever tell you that keeping your feelings bottled up will make you sick?”

He chuckled. “I assure you, I’m fine. A little tired, that’s all.” He leaned in and studied her. “Are you saying you miss me lecturing you about eating right and getting exercise?”

“Of course I do. Next to Harold Twohig, it’s the highlight of my day.”

That made Doc Harper laugh, and laugh hard. That was better, Greta decided. No one liked a sourpuss. Then he sobered, planted his feet wide and gave her his lecture face, staring past his glasses and down his nose at her. “Eat your vegetables. Get more exercise. And for Pete’s sake, quit worrying about other people’s health. Take care of your own first.”

She reached up and patted his cheek. “That’s better. More like the crabby doc I know. And here’s my prescription for you: have a good time once in a while. Let loose. Go to Vegas, drink too much, and hook up with a showgirl. Remember, it’s not just ties that can strangle you.” She reached for her sweater and turned back just before leaving the room. “Oh, and adding a little bourbon to your coffee wouldn’t hurt one bit, either.”