She wasn’t denying anything. She just wasn’t like them, needing to cling to each other…
“We’re worried about you here all alone, with no one to see you through this difficult time.”
Sue jumped up. “Ma, Dad…” She stopped. Took a breath. Lessened the intensity of her tone. “Really, I’m going to be all right.”
They shared “the glance” again.
“Look, I promise I’ll stay in touch. And Belle’s here…”
“Just don’t underestimate the effect this is having on you.” The seriousness of Luke’s glance got her attention more than his earlier worry had. “You’re too much like me,” he said. “You take on more than you should. You think you can handle anything.”
What other option was there?
But she knew what her dad was saying. He’d retired early from his banking career because of stress-related high blood pressure. A condition that no longer existed, thank God.
“I’ll be careful, Dad. I promise.”
One thing she’d learned about herself several years ago, she wasn’t Wonder Woman.
DRESSED IN GYM SHORTS and a muscle shirt, the same clothes he’d worn lifting weights in the spare bedroom an hour before, Rick sat in the dark on the settee in his bedroom, looking out over the city from the wall of windows. The house wasn’t big. Wasn’t opulent. But it had these windows.
And a fenced-in grassy yard that had been perfect for a little girl to play in.
Ten forty-five.
Rick sat, looking for a plan.
It had something to do with the natural, sexy woman he couldn’t get out of his mind. But so far, the details wouldn’t come to him.
So he sat. He stared.
He hung on.
A move he’d perfected over the past few months.
When his cell rang, it took him a couple of rings to find the damn thing. In the master bath. On the counter. Where he’d left it when he’d stripped out of the jeans he’d worn that day.
He tripped over them as he grabbed the phone.
He recognized the number. Sue Bookman.
“Hello?”
“People change,” she said simply.
Back in his bedroom, Rick returned to study the city he loved. Fog and all. “Sue?”
“Yeah. Is it too late? I meant to call earlier, but by the time my folks left, William was up again and a little fussy with his ten o’clock feeding. But I can call back another time—”
“No!” He sat on the edge of the love seat, his arms on his knees. She was calling him at ten o’clock at night when she could have waited until morning if the call were purely professional. Had she been thinking about him as much as he’d been thinking about her? “Now’s fine.”
“I won’t keep you. I was out of line this afternoon and I apologize.”
“Out of line how?”
“When I didn’t like what you had to say, I was rude. I’m sorry.”
“You sound tired.”
“It’s been a long day.” And then, before he could respond, she added, “A long couple of weeks.”
Definely not a professional call.
“Anything you want to talk about?”
He barely knew the woman. But asking the question seemed natural.
“Not really.” Her chuckle lacked humor. “It’s just that sometimes life doesn’t make a lot of sense, you know?”
More like most times. “Yeah.”
“I found out earlier this week, at the reading of my grandmother’s will, that the man I thought was my maternal grandfather by adoption, was actually my biological grandfather.”
Rick’s heart rate sped up. The conversation had just become personal. Between him and her.
“You lost your grandmother?”
Her pause was telling. “Yes.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Yeah. Me, too.”
The darkness surrounding him was more companion than demon at the moment.
“Were you close to her?”
“Very. You see, the thing is, I don’t get close to people. I tend to get cramped. To suffocate if anyone gets too close. Except for my grandmother. I never got that feeling with her. Not once.”
“What about your parents?”
“Oh, yeah. It happens with them most of all. I don’t know why I’m telling you this.”
“Maybe because you need to talk about it and I’m risk free.”
“But still…”
“Maybe because I want to hear it.”
“You sure about that?”
“Yes.” More sure than he’d been about anything in a long time. Except for getting Carrie.
“Why?”
“You really want me to answer that?”
“I asked, didn’t I?”
It was like they were dancing. Only they were using words to circle each other. To feel each other out.
Because there was more here than a foster mother and a potential adoptive parent.
You ’re losing it, Kraynick. You ’ve met her twice.
But he answered her anyway. “My niece aside, you intrigue me. It’s been a long time since I met a woman I didn’t immediately forget two minutes after I left her…That didn’t come out as I meant it to sound.”
Rick moaned inwardly. He really had been out of the singles scene a long time.
“Maybe not, but it might be the nicest thing anyone’s said to me in quite a while.” Her voice dropped. “This isn’t going to sway my opinion regarding Carrie.”
“I understand.”
“I mean that.”
“I’m enjoying a conversation with a woman I’ve met,” he said, bemused as he looked out over a city that, recently, had seemed
