Chances Are Read online

  Another ten steps, and she might have been arrested for shoplifting a box of condoms. Wouldn’t that have put a nice spin on a romantic weekend?

  “You don’t have to hang around,” she said to Kelly, who was far too polite to even think about leaving Maddy. “You have a full day ahead of you.”

  “You sure?”

  “Positive.” She placed a hand on the girl’s shoulder and gave her a gentle push toward the door. “Go!”

  Kelly gave her a grateful smile and was gone before Maddy drew her next breath.

  “Close call,” the pharmacist said with a laugh as he rang up her purchase. “Those alarms were ready to start ringing.”

  “Closer than you know,” Maddy said.

  SETH WAS WAITING for Kelly at the far end of the lake where they always went when they wanted to be alone. He had been sitting on the fender of his brother’s car and jumped off the second she wheeled into the parking lot.

  “Did you get it?” he asked as she ran into his arms.

  “Better than that,” she said as he enveloped her in a hug. She took a deep, steadying breath. “I ran the test. I’m not pregnant.”

  He seemed to freeze at the words. His entire body went still, and for a second she thought he had stopped breathing.

  “Seth, did you hear me? I’m not pregnant.”

  Her heart turned over at the mix of relief mingled with a touch of disappointment on his face.

  “It’s okay to be a little sad,” she said, touching his mouth gently with hers. “I am, too.”

  “I thought I’d be happy,” he said, “and I am, but—”

  “We’re young and healthy. We’ll have other chances.”

  He met her eyes. “We would have made it work, Kel. I wouldn’t have walked out on you. I would have taken care of you and the baby.”

  “I know that,” she said, “but I’m glad you won’t have to.”

  And, if she was being completely truthful, she was glad for herself as well.

  Seth had to get back to work by one o’clock. She waved good-bye to him, smiling broadly as she did, and managed to hold it together until his brother’s Honda rounded the south side of the lake and disappeared.

  She had never lied to Seth before. Not ever. They prided themselves on always telling each other the truth, no matter how difficult the truth might be, but this time she couldn’t bring herself to do it.

  The difference between thinking she might be pregnant and actually knowing it was true turned out to be much greater than she had imagined it would be. She had been reasonably certain that the results of the pregnancy test would be positive, but she hadn’t come close to understanding how she would feel when she actually saw the black plus sign looking up at her.

  “Okay,” she whispered as she slid behind the wheel of her car. “You did it.”

  She had set the wheels in motion, and now she had to follow through.

  The decisions she made in the next few days would have consequences that followed her for the rest of her life, but what other choice was there? She closed her eyes and saw her family as a line of dominoes falling one by one by one if she gave them the slightest push. They had all been through so much for so long and were only now—finally!—beginning to push sorrow aside and learn how to be happy. Her father had found Maddy, and in a few months they would marry and probably start a family of their own. Her cousins were all doing okay, including Kathleen, whose troubles had seemed insurmountable just a few short years ago. Kathleen was pulling As at Rutgers. And what about Aunt Claire? Not only was she going to leave O’Malley’s to manage Cuppa, she was actually going out on a date with Jason Fenelli’s dad.

  It wouldn’t take much at all to bring it all crashing down around their shoulders. They all expected so much from her, and it had been so easy to make them happy. She liked doing the right thing. She liked being the one you could depend on. She liked knowing that the things she did, the goals she achieved, made them proud of her and, in a way, of themselves as well.

  And, oh God, there was Seth. She loved him more than she loved life itself. He was her past, her present, and her future. They shared the same memories. They wanted the same things from life. They even dreamed the same dreams at night. He was kind and smart and funny and blessed with the most generous heart she had ever encountered. He was going to do great things with his life, wonderful things that would make a difference in the lives of children who needed a helping hand. He knew where he was going—he always had—and he needed an education to help him get there.

  She rested her forehead against the steering wheel and wondered what would happen if she stayed there in her car forever. She was tired right into her bones, tired in a way she’d never known before. One mistake over the course of a lifetime, and suddenly the futures of the ones she loved most were thrown into doubt.

  Why tell any of them, if one week from today there would be nothing left but a memory? She knew what she needed to do, and she would do it. She didn’t need their anger or their tears, and she definitely didn’t need their disappointment. She was disappointed enough in herself for the entire population of Paradise Point. But there was a way out of this mess, a way that wouldn’t take the ones she loved down with it. All she had to do was stay strong a little bit longer, and it would be like none of this had ever happened.

  Chapter Nineteen

  MAYBE IT WAS his mood, but the silence in the car as they rolled up the shore toward Spring Lake was making Aidan uncomfortable. Maddy seemed distant, remote almost, deep in thoughts that he had the feeling didn’t include him.

  “You’re quiet today,” he said as they slowed to pay a toll.

  “So are you,” she said, leaning over and quickly kissing his right shoulder. “I thought we were enjoying the scenery.”

  “There’s something you don’t hear every day in New Jersey.”

  She laughed, that warm, real laugh he loved. “Good,” she said. “That means we’ll keep it a secret from the rest of the country.”

  He knew her face the way he knew his own, which was amazing if you stopped to think about it. He had spent almost forty years learning his own and less than six months loving hers, and yet the curves and planes of jaw and cheekbone on her beautiful face were burned into his consciousness. The vertical pleat between her brows that meant she was worried. The slight twitch beneath her lower lid when she was under stress. The half smile that meant she was amused against her better judgment. The flash of fire in her eyes when she was gearing up for battle—usually with her family. They were all a part of his emotional vocabulary now.

  Right now it was the vertical pleat that commanded his attention.

  “Everything okay?”

  “Why wouldn’t it be?”

  “That’s not an answer.”

  She swiveled around in her seat and looked at him. “You’re serious.”

  Now he felt paranoid as well as uncomfortable. “I sprang this on you without warning. Maybe I should have—”

  “I love you,” she said. “I love that you thought of this, that you made all the arrangements yourself, and all I had to do was shop for sexy lingerie and jump into the car.”

  What more do you want from her, O’Malley? A declaration written in blood? She bought sexy underwear. Be happy already.

  She said she loved him, and he had no reason not to believe her. During the worst of it earlier this year, she hadn’t faltered. Not even once. When he asked her to marry him, to make a family with him, she had said yes without hesitation, without stopping even for a second to wonder what she might be getting into. She was willing to make a life with him, spend the next forty or fifty years with him, and it still wasn’t enough to erase the feeling that something was wrong.

  There was a restlessness about her, a quality of movement that made him uneasy. She was quicksilver, ready to slip just out of reach. Funny how the qualities that drew you to a person were often the same qualities that scared you the most. He had no idea what she was thinking about. F
or all he knew, she could have been planning their wedding or a way to overthrow the government. It was anyone’s guess. Still, it seemed to him that things between them had changed in the few weeks since their engagement. She was more preoccupied, more distant, more likely to wake up tomorrow morning and realize the whole thing had been a mistake and—sorry, O’Malley—maybe it was better to call it off now before it was too late.

  She was still looking at him, waiting for him to say something. I don’t want to disappoint you, Maddy. I don’t want you to wake up tomorrow looking for a way out of your promise.

  He wished she had known him the way he had been before the warehouse accident. He wished he had had the chance to love her when he still had a body he could trust. Too bad that man was a long time gone. His body wasn’t the same powerful instrument it used to be. His faith in it had been shattered, same as his bones. Things that had come naturally to him a few years ago were now accomplished through an act of will and a hell of a lot of luck. She didn’t know that, but he did, and that made all the difference.

  MADDY HAD PROMISED herself that she would leave work and family worries back in Paradise Point for the next twenty-four hours, but that was proving to be more difficult than she had anticipated. To her surprise, it wasn’t Hannah or Rose or the uneasy situation developing with Claire that clamored for her attention.

  It was Kelly.

  She couldn’t shake the memory of their awkward meeting at the mall or her overwhelming certainty that Aidan’s daughter was pregnant. The defenseless look in Kelly’s eyes had said it all, and she wondered why she was the only one who seemed able to see it so clearly. Maybe it was because she had been where Kelly was not that long ago. Okay, she had been older and in what she had believed to be a stable relationship, but that sense of being on a runaway train was as fresh to her today as it had been when she first found out about Hannah.

  It hurt to remember how much she had longed for her mother during her pregnancy, how deep the loneliness went as the months passed and Rose never once made the trip across country to see the miracle that was happening to her only child. Of course now she knew the truth—her mother had been undergoing chemotherapy in her battle against breast cancer—but at the time all Maddy had understood was that Rose simply didn’t care.

  Kelly had never even had the luxury of anger. Her mother died when Kelly was a baby, leaving her with nothing but photos and other people’s memories to hold on to. How she must wish she had a woman she could talk to, somebody who loved her unconditionally.

  There was Aidan, of course, but Maddy was beginning to understand what he meant when he said in many ways Kelly had raised herself. Good kids rarely got the time and effort their more rebellious peers demanded. They seemed to be guided by some kind of inner gyroscope that kept them balanced, no matter what life threw at them. Who could blame a parent for letting down his guard after sixteen or seventeen years of perfect behavior?

  This wasn’t something Kelly could share with her father, no matter how strong the bond. Aidan liked Seth, but he was still Kelly’s father, and the intensity of their relationship got under his skin, which, in turn, made Kelly defensive and guarded.

  She knew Kelly and Seth had been together since childhood and that everyone in town expected they would spend the rest of their lives together as well, but things didn’t always go the way you planned. Babies changed everything, as Maddy had learned firsthand. The girl needed support. She needed somebody to talk to, somebody who understood. And, God knew, she needed guidance. If Maddy’s guess was right and there was a baby on the way, Kelly would have to make some hard choices beginning now, choices that would affect the glittering future she had been working toward for so long.

  Her head ached with wondering what she should do next. She knew what her mother would say: “Tell Aidan. Don’t keep secrets from the man you’re going to marry.” And there was a lot to recommend Rose’s perspective. Aidan was Kelly’s father. Kelly was still a minor. Legally, if not ethically, Maddy wasn’t even part of the equation. She should turn to him right now and lay out the information as she knew it, detail her fears and suspicions, and let him decide what to do next.

  That was what her mother would do. It was what Claire would do. It was what any sane woman who was about to be married in a little more than four months would do. But was it the right thing for Kelly?

  Oh God, she wished she knew the answer.

  THEY REACHED SPRING Lake a little after five o’clock. The town was every bit as charming as she had remembered, and Maddy winced as they drove past the spot where Aidan had taken his tumble that fateful winter night.

  The inn Aidan had chosen was named the Sea Breeze, a requisite Victorian-era structure as wide and deep as the sandy beach that beckoned on the other side of the boardwalk. Where Paradise Point had a smaller, more intimate feel, Spring Lake was more expansive. B and Bs in her hometown were renovated Victorian-era houses, not renovated hotels the way they were here. You could fit the entire first floor of The Candlelight into the center hall of the Sea Breeze.

  “Your room is ready,” the owner of the inn said as she handed over two keys and rang for someone to carry their bags. “Dinner will be served at eight P.M., just as you requested.”

  Neither Maddy nor Aidan said a word as they followed a young man up the twisting staircase to their third-floor suite. He fiddled with his master key for a second, then pushed open the door and motioned them inside. He deposited their bags near the foot of the bed, showed them how to operate the Jacuzzi and the fireplace, then quickly disappeared.

  “So now I know how Dorothy felt when she woke up in Oz,” Maddy breathed.

  Where The Candlelight was all soft, romantic elegance, this room was full-on sensuality. The bed seemed to float in the center of the room, angled slightly so you could watch the waves crashing against the shore while you lay cradled in each other’s arms. The Jacuzzi was nestled in a curve of wall between the sitting room and the bedroom, with a perfect view of either the fireplace or the moon over the ocean, depending upon your preference. Candles, chunky ones and long skinny ones and tiny votives in burgundy crystal holders, were situated on every available surface. They lined the edge of the tub, surrounded the bed, and shimmered from mirrored shelves built into the wall.

  Even the air seemed to have been fine-tuned to mount the ultimate assault on their unwary senses. The clean springtime smell of freesia mingled with the unmistakable bite of the sea and blended with the faintest overtone of spice.

  The effect was intoxicating and extremely seductive, exactly as it was intended to be.

  In Maddy’s fantasies, they had been naked and in each other’s arms before the door closed behind the bell man. In reality they were painfully awkward with each other, making polite conversation about the room temperature, the view, and whether or not tips were inclusive. She made a prolonged show of unpacking, something that should have taken forty-five seconds on any other day. And Aidan spent an unconscionable amount of time fiddling with the thermostat and checking the drain on the Jacuzzi.

  For two people who would be married in a little more than four months, they were as uncomfortable as strangers. Back home in Paradise Point where they had no time to be alone and even less privacy, they couldn’t keep their hands off each other. Heat snaked through her body as she thought about the things they had done and the things they had talked about doing when the moment was finally right.

  This was supposed to be that moment, and yet there they were on opposite sides of a room created for lovers who knew how to make the most of it.

  She wanted to say something, anything, but the words wouldn’t come. Her throat was locked tight against them. He stood near the door that opened onto the balcony, arms crossed over his chest, looking out toward the ocean. His cane rested against the lamp table in the corner. She thought she had never seen a more beautiful man—or a lonelier one—in her life. He was so strong in so many ways, so confident in situations that would make another man c
rumble, and yet, there in that room with her, he suddenly looked vulnerable.

  Love did that to you. It stripped you bare in ways that had nothing to do with the flesh. It left you exposed to wind and rain and storms that would send a sane person running for cover. You had to be crazy or crazy in love to stand there naked in a hurricane and ask for more.

  He must have sensed her watching him because he turned away from the window. Their gazes caught and held, suspended in that midway point between them.

  “It’s a beautiful day,” she said, finding her voice at last. “Why don’t we take a walk on the beach before dinner.”

  “Come here,” he said, and her heart almost stopped beating.

  “Why don’t I go change into that beautiful lingerie I bought,” she suggested. She couldn’t possibly feel more exposed in her lacy undergarments than she felt right now, fully dressed. “It’s way too expensive to just sit in my suitcase.”

  “Come here,” he said again, more softly this time.

  She sighed as she moved into his embrace. His chest was broad and hard-muscled, warm against her cheek. His arms were bands of steel holding her close. Everything about him was big and powerful, the textbook definition of all things masculine. But his hands—oh God, his hands. Big gentle hands that knew how to touch a woman the way she needed to be touched. All she had to do was touch him, breathe in the smell of his skin, and the jumbled pieces of her world fell into place.

  Everything she thought she knew about making love, about what defined physical pleasure—none of it came close to what she felt when he began to unbutton her sweater. A simple action, the stuff of backseats and high school Saturday nights, and yet she began to tremble when he slid the first pearl button out. Heat pooled low in her belly as he released the second button with sure fingers. Three buttons, four, five. Don’t stop . . . please don’t stop.

  He didn’t. She should have known better. He seemed to read her body as if she had drawn him an erotic map, some wonderful dark magic guiding his hands and mouth to all the right places at precisely the right moment. His hands skimmed the curve of her breasts, her rib cage, her belly. She sucked in her breath as he slid one hand under the waistband of her jeans as all the ways in which she was less than perfect threatened to extinguish that lovely flame. She wasn’t a girl any longer, she wasn’t twenty-one and perfect. She was a woman. She had given birth. This body of hers with all of its perfect and imperfect parts was made to give and to receive pleasure, and oh God, it did that so well. . . .