been telling her about his early days on the poker circuit, when he was scrimping and saving every dollar he could make at odd jobs to pay his way into tournaments. It didn’t sound as glamorous as she’d first imagined, and she wondered how she would have fared if he’d taken her with him. Probably not very well. She wasn’t much of a risk-taker and never had been.
“I thought about you a lot in those days,” Brody said. “Correction—I still think about you a lot. I’ve missed you.”
“Not enough to pick up a phone and give me a call?” It was hard for her to reconcile all the times he’d told her he missed her and thought about her with the fact he’d never reached out to her.
“Sandy’s never forgiven me for the way I left, so she never mentions you on the phone and I was too proud to ask, but whenever I thought about you, I wanted to imagine you married, with some cute kids. A dog and a picket fence and a minivan.” There was a hint of sadness and maybe regret in his voice.
“Haven’t gotten there yet. Seems a little odd, though, if you missed me so much, that you’d imagine me living happily ever after with somebody else.”
“I needed you to be happy in my head, Delaney. If you were happy and had a good life, it made missing you worth it.”
She leaned her head against the wall and drew her knees up, wrapping her arms around them. “You felt less guilty, you mean.”
“That, too. But mostly I’d picture you living a life I couldn’t give you and know I made the right decision.”
“It wasn’t.”
“I think you’re right.”
“Tell me about your life now,” she said, because she was tired of rehashing the past. Maybe it was a little like rubbing salt in old wounds, but she wanted to picture him in his world.
“I work a lot. Actually, that’s pretty much all I do. If I’m not on a site dealing with a remodel, I’m meeting with real estate agents or financial backers. When I’m home, I’m usually on the computer, researching foreclosure lists and property values and a whole lot of boring stuff.”
“So what you do now is as risky as poker. You’re just gambling with properties instead of on cards.”
He chuckled, then bounced his arm gently up and down when Noah squirmed. “Maybe, but luck gets less of a say. I have good instincts, but I also do my research. Flipping real estate might be a gamble, but I stack the deck in my favor.”
“Where do you live?” It felt ridiculous, having to ask that question, but at least it was a reminder he’d made a life for himself somewhere else, and it didn’t include her.
“I have a condo in Connecticut, but I travel a lot. I don’t have an office to speak of, even though Marjorie picked the title office manager for herself. She runs things for me, but out of her house.”
He lived in Connecticut. Only a couple of states away. She couldn’t quite wrap her mind around that. She wanted to ask him what his condo looked like, maybe so she could picture him in it, but she didn’t want to sound weird.
“Sandy doesn’t tell me much about your life,” she said. “I think she’s afraid to say something that might hurt me, so I know almost nothing about the last five years of your life.”
“Just work, like I said.”
What about women? Of course he’d dated. He was young and attractive and he’d never wanted for female attention, even when she’d been on his arm. But had he been in love since Delaney? She didn’t think a marriage and divorce would have stayed quiet with his family still in Tucker’s Point, but what about other serious relationships?
He squeezed her hand. “If you’re thinking what I think you’re thinking, the answer is no.”
“What do you think I’m thinking?”
“I haven’t loved anybody else since I left you.”
Delaney had to blink back the tears that suddenly blurred her vision. “I tried to replace you. It didn’t work.”
“Good. That would make us sitting here together a lot more awkward.”
She laughed softly and turned her head to see Noah looking at her with his solemn baby eyes. “He looks like you.”
“He definitely has a lot of Rollins in him. Mike and Sandy should probably start bracing themselves for his teen years.”
At the sound of his uncle’s voice, Noah shifted his intense gaze to him. He seemed fascinated by Brody’s face, not that Delaney could blame him. Brody was looking a little scruffy, like the other men at the school, but it only added a little edge to his good looks.
Watching man and infant gaze into each other’s eyes was too much for Delaney, and she looked away. She couldn’t push back the resentment. Brody had taken her dreams for a family with him when he ran, and that was a hard thing to forgive.
“He’s such a cute little bugger,” Brody said in a painfully soft voice.
“How long do you think it’ll be before he starts wailing?” she asked, looking around to see if Sandy was in sight.
Of course she was. And she must have been feeling the need to nurse because all Delaney had to do was look at her and the new mom was moving toward them. Once she’d taken Noah and gone back toward their cots, Brody slipped his arm around Delaney’s shoulders and pulled her close.
When he kissed the top of her head, she sighed and tried to relax in his arms. There was no sense in holding on to past hurts. Life hadn’t turned out the way she’d thought it would, but she could embrace this moment for the short time it would last.
* * *
BRODY HELPED PREPARE the evening meal and serve it, so Delaney refused to let him help clean up after.
“I like spending time with you,” he argued. “Even if it’s dish duty.”
She laughed. “That’s really sweet, but there’s a rotation and some people have been getting lazy because you’re doing their share.”
He caught her pointed look toward Alice. “Fine. I’ll go hang with Pop for a while. The more entertained we keep him, the fewer times he goes out in the cold for a smoke.”
He found his old man stretched out on a cot, reading a hunting magazine. As far as Brody knew, his dad had never hunted a day in his life, so he assumed the magazine was borrowed from one of the other guys.
“Learning anything?”
“Yeah.” His dad closed the magazine and sat up on the cot. “Learning you can buy pretty much anything in camo.”
Brody sat on the cot next to his dad’s, breathing a sigh of relief. He’d been on his feet a long time, and he couldn’t imagine how Delaney felt. “I think I saw a camo teddy bear at Sandy’s before the power went out.”
His dad nodded, then fell silent for a few minutes. Brody got the impression he had something on his mind, but talking emotions didn’t come naturally
