Especially Cindy.
“Maybe you should try to talk to him before you go jumping to conclusions,” Abi told them. “Things are not always what they seem.”
“I think he’s sad,” Leanne said softly. “He just doesn’t want anyone to know.”
Cindy shook her head and rolled her eyes. “God, you are so naive.”
She was definitely angry and appeared to take a lot of her frustration out on her sister. Leanne in turn only crawled deeper inside herself.
Abi glanced over at Will and saw that he was trying not to smile. In the eyes of a childless bachelor, the feminine banter must have been fairly amusing.
Abi finished her chicken, set her napkin alongside her plate and rose to her feet. “I’ll see you ladies tomorrow, bright and early.”
“I’ll walk with you,” Will said, rising to join her.
“Oh, th-that’s not necessary,” she said, suddenly flustered. “I’m just going to my cabin.”
Will shrugged. “I don’t mind. I’m in the mood for a little fresh air.”
It was another sticky situation. If she said no, she could hurt his feelings. Besides, what would be the harm? It was just a casual stroll, right? Maybe he was just looking for a friendly face among strangers, and hers appealed to him somehow.
But as she nodded and they headed out of the dining room together, she had to fight back an eerie feeling of apprehension. Because she knew from experience things were not always what they seemed.
Hands tucked in his pockets, Will followed Abi out of the dining room and fell in step beside her as they walked in the direction of the employee cabins. Already the sun had begun to set and there was a nip in the air that made her shiver under her T-shirt. It would be a chilly night. A good night for sleeping.
Having been the foreman’s quarters when the retreat was still a ranch, her cabin was the largest and set off by itself, tucked back several hundred feet into the woods, where enormous pines towered like sentries. It made her feel safe, and she treasured her privacy. It was the perfect home for her and Adam. She would be forever indebted to Maureen for giving them a place to stay when she’d had no place else to go, for helping her turn her life around when she’d run out of options.
“That boy they were talking about,” Will said. “Eric, was it? He’s had it pretty rough, huh?”
At the mere mention of his name she felt a jab to her heart. “I can’t go into specifics, but yes. His life hasn’t been a picnic.”
“You’re good with them—the kids, I mean.”
“That’s my job.”
“No, you really care about them. That makes it more than a job.”
For some reason his words made her feel all warm and soft. She did care. Sometimes too much. To the degree that it was hard to let go when their stay there ended. But it was worth it if those children walked away a little less angry or a little less hurt and confused than when they’d arrived. And there were always new kids to focus on, new activities to plan. Her son to take care of.
“What do you do for a living, Will?”
“I’m an analyst for the federal government. Homeland Security.” It was about as close to the truth as Will could get without coming right out and saying he was FBI. He’d worked undercover long enough to know you stuck with the truth as often as possible. The fewer lies he had to remember, the less likely he was to make a mistake.
“Sounds exciting,” she said.
“It’s not. The truth is, it’s a lot of paperwork and red tape.”
“Where are you from?”
Small talk, he thought with a grin. He could do that. It was the first step to friendship, which was exactly what he needed from her. “I’ve lived in New York for the past fifteen years, but I was raised all over. I’m an Army brat.” He plucked a leaf from a cluster of scrubby-looking shrubs as they walked past and slowly picked it apart. “How about you? Where do you call home?”
“I was born in New Mexico, but my mom moved us around a lot, too. This is the only real home I’ve had.”
He wanted to ask about Maureen, but he knew it was too soon. If he pushed now, she might get suspicious. He had to gain her trust first and he was getting the feeling that might not be so simple. She walked alongside him, head lowered as if she were afraid to look him in the eye, and she kept a good two feet of mossy ground between them. Everything about her body language screamed Back off, so he kept his distance.
“It was hard on you?” he asked. “Moving around like that?”
“I guess. Sometimes we weren’t even in one place long enough for me to make friends. Other times she’d meet someone and we’d stay a while. She married a couple of them, but it never lasted.”
“My parents were married for thirty-five years when my father died—not that it was a good marriage.” The words father and husband had merely been titles to Will’s dad. What he’d been right up until the day he died was a glorified bully. Will had never understood why his mother had put up with it for so long. But she had, spending year after year taking orders and doing whatever she could to keep her husband happy, and he’d not been a man easily pleased.
“So many marriages aren’t,” she said, sounding inexplicably sad. She probably saw some pretty nasty stuff working at a place like this.
After two hellish divorces, you wouldn’t catch him taking that walk down the aisle again. Wife number two had been clingy before the explosion, but in the months afterward she’d been downright unbearable. She’d cried the entire first week after the bandages had come off. She’d be fine; then she’d look at him and the tears would start to pour. He couldn’t run to the store for a six-pack without her giving him the third degree, and if he wasn’t back at the exact second he said he would be, she would go into hysterics.
A week before his medical leave was scheduled to end, she’d said she couldn’t take it anymore and had given him an ultimatum—quit his job or pack his bags. Ironically in the span of a year it was the only time she’d ever asserted herself.
So he’d packed.
His marriage to wife number one—who he fondly referred to as “the whiner”—had ended similarly. She had always been complaining about something. He was too bossy or too unemotional or he just didn’t love her enough. Then she’d gotten on her baby kick and he’d thought he’d never hear the end of it. What it boiled down to was she’d wanted babies and he hadn’t been ready, and all the crying and whining and carrying on she’d done had only driven him further away. Then had come the ultimatum. Give me a baby or pack your bags.
So he’d packed.
His philosophy was that some people just weren’t meant to be married. They weren’t built that way. There was no perfect mate a person was meant to be with. It was all a crapshoot. It was luck, and he’d never been particularly lucky when it came to his personal life.
They passed a group of children coming back from the direction of the lake, and when
