Sleeping Alone (19 page)

She leaned up on one elbow and looked at him. “You need your sleep, too, John. You’re taking out the
Kestrel
in a few hours.” He was piloting a group of businessmen on an overnight deep-sea fishing trip out past Montauk Point.

He pulled her into the crook of his arm, where she nestled against his side. “I could pilot the
Kestrel
in my sleep.”

She feigned a shiver. “That’s not what I want to hear. I want you to be careful.”

“I’ll be careful.”

“Promise me?”

“I promise.” For the first time in years he had a reason to be careful.

“Thank you for what you did tonight,” she said.

“What I did?” He was genuinely puzzled.

“At Dr. Schulman’s office,” she went on. “Paying for the hospital and everything in advance. I’ll pay you back.”

“We’re not keeping score here. I don’t expect to be paid back.”

“I know that,” she said, pulling away from him. “It’s important to me.”

“You’re carrying my baby, Alex. It’s as much my responsibility as it is yours.” The old rules between them no longer applied. The baby had changed everything.

“You don’t understand.” Her voice was a whisper.

“Then tell me,” he said. “Make me understand.”

“I think your imagination’s running away with you, John. I value my independence.”

“It’s more than that,” he persisted. “I don’t know one damn thing about you, Alex. We’ve been sleeping together for months, you’re carrying my baby, and the only thing I know about you is that you were born in New York.”

“That’s ridiculous. You know a lot about me.”

“Half of what I know I learned today in the doctor’s office. Twenty-eight years old, O-negative, no family history of diabetes.” He pinned her with a look. “Care to elaborate?”

“Is this a job interview?” she shot back. “Will you fingerprint me, too?”

“I’m not blind, Alex. I know you don’t belong in a place like Sea Gate.”

“I love Sea Gate,” she said. “I always have.”

He caught her face gently between his hands and forced her to meet his eyes. “What did you say?”

She wanted to look away, but the force of his gaze wouldn’t allow it. “I said, I’ve always loved Sea Gate.”

“You’ve been here before?”

She nodded as ridiculous tears welled up in her eyes. “The summer before my parents died.” She told him about the boat trip, about needing repairs, about a magical few days spent in a town she thought she’d never see again. It seemed as if her parents had been on the move her entire life, searching for the magic key that would push her father higher up the ladder of success. Those few days together in a small Jersey Shore town were her happiest memories of being a family.

“You were probably already married and living in New York by then. I used to watch the kids going in and out of the pizzeria and I’d try to imagine how it would feel to really belong somewhere, to be part of something.”

“All of that moving around must have been rough on you,” John said.

“Oh, it didn’t bother me at all,” she said with a brittle laugh. “They parked me at boarding school for ten months out of the year. It was the other two months that were the problem.”

He looked at her as if he were seeing her for the first time. Maybe he was, she thought. She’d never revealed this much of her past to anyone—not even to Griffin. He had known the details of her parents’ death but not of the life she’d led before that point. He’d known nothing of the loneliness, the isolation, the sense that when push came to shove, she was in this life alone.

“How did your parents die?” John asked.

“A plane crash,” she said in a voice devoid of emotion. “They were heading off to Aspen or Vail or someplace, and their jet went into the side of a mountain.”

“Jesus,” John whispered. “I’m sorry.”

“They weren’t part of my day-to-day life,” she said, trying to explain the situation to a man who’d had two parents who loved him. “When the headmistress broke the news, I remember just nodding, then going right back to French class. It wasn’t until spring break and everyone else went home that I finally realized I was all alone.” A fact that was hammered home with brute force when Alex discovered there wasn’t any money left for her to return to school—or to do anything else, for that matter.

“You must have had somebody, Alex. An aunt, an uncle—maybe a cousin somewhere.”

She shook her head. “Nobody but bill collectors beating down my door, trying to get me to pay my parents’ debts.” She was barely seventeen years old and terrified beyond description. “One of my parents’ friends recommended that I talk to a man they knew. They said he might be able to make sense of everything for me and maybe help me find a way out of the mess.” Again that hollow laugh she couldn’t quite turn into the real thing. “He did better than that: He married me.”

“You married your financial advisor?”

“Guilty,” she said, closing her eyes against the memories. “Is there anything more clichéd than that? He was twenty-five years older than I was, way more sophisticated, and he said he’d take care of everything. I thought I’d never have to worry about anything ever again.” Griffin had been husband, father, and safe harbor, and she’d been more than willing to spend the rest of her life as his grateful wife and the mother of his children. Her laugh was bitter. “Apparently I failed at both.”

“Life doesn’t always work out the way we think it should.” John reached for her hand, and this time she didn’t pull away. “I thought I’d grow old with Libby and the boys.”

“And I thought—” She stopped abruptly. “It doesn’t matter what I thought. That was another lifetime. I was another person. I won’t make those mistakes again.” She’d shared more of herself with him than she ever had with any other person on earth, but it was what she hadn’t shared that had the power to destroy them.

He placed her hand on her belly, then covered it with his own. “This isn’t a mistake, Alex.”

“I know,” she whispered. “It’s a miracle.”

They lay together for a long time, hands pressed to her belly, letting the past drift away from them... keeping the future at bay. She loved the way his hands felt against her skin, so warm and strong. So tender. She’d never imagined a man could be tender, but John managed to be passionate and exciting and tender all at once, and he stole her breath away.

He gentled her with his hands, his lips, his body. He grasped her by the waist and positioned her above him so that she straddled his hips. All or nothing or anything in between—it was her choice. Her decision. Her desires that ruled what happened in that bed tonight.

* * *

She was warm and wild, nurturing and demanding. She took him places he hadn’t even dreamed about, places he didn’t know existed. She gave him her body, but what he really wanted was her heart, and he had the feeling that was the one thing that wasn’t hers to give.

“You look beat,” Eddie said when Alex came home from the diner one afternoon later that week. “Take a load off your feet. I’ll fix you some tea.”

Alex stifled a yawn as she bent down to scratch Bailey behind the ear. “That sounds wonderful,” she said gratefully. “But only if you join me.”

“Okay if I have a bottle of Bud instead of Lipton?”

She laughed and straightened up. “Of course it’s okay.” She sat down at the kitchen table and sighed deeply. “I think my feet grew two sizes today.”

Eddie popped a cup of hot water into the microwave, then pressed a few buttons. “My Rosie used to say she carried Brian and Johnny in her feet.”

“I think Rosie was right. Even my hands are bigger.”

“It becomes you,” Eddie said with that strange blend of courtly bluntness she found so endearing in him. “You were too damn skinny when you came to town.”

She tried to remember the woman she’d been, but it was like crawling into someone else’s dreams. She felt so connected, so much a part of life here in Sea Gate, that everything that had come before faded into insignificance. “You’re right,” she said, reaching for a donut. “I was too damn skinny.” And too scared. And too lonely.

Eddie grinned, then turned to answer the call of the microwave. He’d had another one of his “episodes” three nights ago, but apparently it had left no lasting effects behind. She and John had found him on board the
Kestrel,
trying to pilot the boat out of the marina while it was still tied to the moorings. He’d caused a good bit of damage, but fortunately both the
Kestrel
and the marina would survive.

As usual John had blamed it on sleepwalking, but this time Alex refused to play along.

“Eddie isn’t sleepwalking,” she’d said, forcing him to listen to her. “I think he needs help, John.”

“We took him to Dr. Benino,” John said. She knew he was deliberately choosing to misunderstand her meaning. “That’s who came up with the sleepwalking theory in the first place.”

“I think you should take him to a specialist,” she went on. She knew she was wading into dangerous waters, but somebody had to force him to face the truth. “Somebody who understands Alz—” She never had the chance to finish the word. John had stormed out of the bedroom they shared, and when she saw him again the next day, neither one mentioned what had happened.

“Here’s your tea.” Eddie deposited the mug in front of her. “Milk and sugar, just the way you like it.”

She thanked him. “You spoil me, Eddie,” she murmured, taking a sip. “I’m going to hate to go home after the roof is finished.”

“So don’t go home,” Eddie said, sitting down opposite her. He popped the cap off a bottle of beer. “There’s plenty of room for you here.”

“I know,” she said, “and I thank you for the invitation, but I belong in my own place.”

“You belong where you’re happy.”

“I’m very happy at my place.”

He arched a graying brow. “Are you saying you’re not happy here?” Occasionally his syntax took on a distinctly Irish lilt for emphasis.

“That’s not what I’m saying.”

“So if you’re happy here, stay put.”

“It’s not that simple.”

“Neither am I,” he said with a smile. “So why don’t you explain it to me?”

She withheld a sigh. “I wish I could, Eddie. I’m not even sure I can explain it to myself.” Part of being a family was caring for each other—and being cared for when that was what you needed. There was a generosity of spirit about John and Eddie that she’d never encountered before, and that generosity extended to her and her baby.
To John’s baby,
she corrected herself. She wondered if John would be so willing to open his heart and his home to her if he knew she might be carrying another man’s child. She wondered if she’d even have the right to ask him to be.

She took a sip of tea as she tried to push the thought of Griffin from her mind. She’d dreamed about him last night. The details had vanished the second she opened her eyes, but a sense of uneasiness remained. Abandonment didn’t suit Griffin’s image of himself. She wondered what kind of story he’d concocted to cover up her absence from the London social scene. She had no doubt that his image of himself mattered much more to him than her presence in his life.

Lately she felt as if she was living her days in a kind of suspended animation. Living there in that big Victorian house with John and Eddie and Bailey was as close to heaven as she’d ever expected to come. Knowing she was safe, knowing that her baby would be welcomed into such a place, gave her a sense of contentment so deep it almost frightened her. She’d expected there would be a period of adjustment, a week or two where the three of them—and Bailey—circled around each other as they learned to live together. To her amazement she’d felt at home from the moment she walked in the door. The house felt familiar in the best possible way, and she realized that it wasn’t just a question of her needing their help; they needed her as well.

She’d never been needed before, and it was a wonderful feeling. It would be so easy to give herself over to being happy, but Griffin cast a shadow over everything.

She wished she had it to do over again. She’d believed she could leave her wedding ring on the end table and walk out the door, and her old life would be a thing of the past. She hadn’t wanted anything from Griffin except her freedom, and she didn’t need a lawyer to get it. All she’d had to do was walk out the door.

Well, she’d walked out the door, all right, but fate had the last laugh. Instead of the solitary life of independence she’d expected, she found herself both pregnant and in love—and still tied to the man who’d been both husband and stranger for ten years of her life. Where was the Wizard of Oz when you needed him? As long as she was still married to Griffin, her future remained in shadows.

“Alex.” Eddie sounded concerned. “Why so sad?”

She roused herself from her thoughts. “I was wondering why it is we always think of the right thing to do when it’s too late to matter.”

“If I had the answer to that one, somebody would build a religion around me.”

She laughed despite herself. “So what did you do with yourself today, Eddie?”

He took another swallow of beer, then put the half-empty bottle down on the table. “I went to the library.”

“The library?” She looked at him in surprise. “I thought you said you weren’t much of a reader.”

“I’m not.” He met her eyes. “I wanted to do some research.”

A knot of fear formed in her gut. “Don’t tell me,” she said, keeping her tone light. “You’re going to turn the
Kestrel
into a racing sloop and enter her in the America’s Cup.”

He didn’t return her smile, and the knot of fear grew larger. “I was reading about Alzheimer’s.”

Tears filled her eyes. “Oh, Eddie....”

“Makes sense, doesn’t it?” He held her gaze as if it were a lifeline. “All these crazy things I’m doing...” He cleared his throat. “Last week I forgot the Dodgers had left Brooklyn, and that was forty years ago. A man like me doesn’t forget something like that unless he—”

“It might not be Alzheimer’s,” she said. “There could be another reason.”

“Maybe,” he said, “but the signs are there.”

She reached across the table and took his hand. “Have you talked to John about it?”

“He doesn’t want to hear it, Alex. Scares him, I’m thinking.”

“I know what you mean,” she said. “He has this need to protect everyone he cares about.”

“Let him,” Eddie said. “It’s what both of you need, isn’t it?”

She sighed. “If I had the answer to that one....”

Eddie laughed, but the look in his eyes came close to breaking her heart. “I want to see him happy,” he said. “I want to see the two of you with the baby before—before things get any worse.”

“I want that, too, Eddie.” She didn’t tell him there was nothing wrong. He knew something was, and she loved him too much to lie to him. All she could do was let him know she understood and that she’d be there for him. She took his hands in hers and held it tight against whatever might lie ahead.

* * *

By St. Patrick’s day, the secret was out. Alex had been in a losing battle with her rapidly expanding waistline, and she finally had to give in and buy clothes in a size that actually fit her. She wasn’t quite ready for maternity clothes, but the loose, shapeless garments she chose might as well have carried the logo “Baby on Board.”

As if that wasn’t enough, Dee had had to take her off kitchen duty and move her out to the cash register. Morning sickness had finally kicked in with a vengeance, and when Alex suggested they bypass the annual corned beef and cabbage special in favor of fasting, both she and her friend knew the handwriting was on the wall.

She dressed carefully that first day at the cash register, taking extra pains with her hair and makeup in order to attract attention away from her belly to her face, but nobody at the Starlight was fooled. In fact, they seemed downright delighted.

“It’s about time you started wearing maternity clothes,” Sally Whitton said. “We were afraid you didn’t know you were expecting.”

“Yeah,” said Vince Troisi. “Thought we’d have to take Johnny aside and tell him he’s gonna be a daddy.”

Alex shot Dee a pointed look. “Did you tell them?” she demanded.

Dee was the picture of aggrieved innocence. “Honey, I didn’t have to tell anyone anything. All they have to do is look at you.”

The diner erupted with laughter. Alex ducked her head to hide her grin. “Okay,” she said, cheeks burning, “so maybe I have gained a little bit of weight.”

“Not so much the weight,” Nick Di Mentri said. “When you refused to make hashed browns with our eggs last week, we all knew something was up. My wife wouldn’t cook onions the whole time she was pregnant.”

“Tell me about it,” Dee chimed in. “It was either get this girl up front or close down until the third trimester. She told me she wouldn’t cook anything with root vegetables.”

“You’re incorrigible,” Alex said, pouring herself a glass of milk at the counter. “I don’t know why I put up with the lot of you. It’s so much quieter in the kitchen.”

“We missed you out here, Alex,” Vince Troisi said. “They didn’t let you come up for air too often back there, did they?”

“Dee is a slave driver,” Alex said with a wink for her friend. “She had me shackled to the grill.”

Sally Whitton said she was glad to see Alex out there with the crowd again, but she made no bones about her disappointment that Alex wasn’t behind the stove. “Best food I’ve had in a dog’s age,” Sally said. “Your pot roast put Will’s to shame.”

“You should try catering,” Dave said. “We’re having a first communion party for our granddaughter the second weekend in May. Wish you’d think about handling the food for us.”

Alex’s cheeks reddened with pleasure. “Are you serious, Dave?”

“The missus asked me to ask you last week, but I didn’t think you’d be up to it what with—” He stopped and grinned. “You know.”

“I’ll give Eileen a call,” Alex said. “Thanks, Dave.”

“We’re all real happy for you and Johnny,” Sally said. “The moment I saw you I said you looked like one of us.”

“Get off it, Sal,” Eddie chimed in. “The first time you saw our Alex, you said she looked like Princess Di.”

“Princess Di?” Alex’s eyes widened. “Why Princess Di?”

“Because we never saw anybody like you at the Starlight,” Vince broke in.

“And because we sure never thought we’d see you serving coffee,” Dave added.

“Life is filled with surprises, ladies and gentlemen.” Alex patted her stomach. “Believe me, I know.”

* * *

Conversation ebbed while the counter regulars devoured breakfast. Alex sipped her glass of milk and continued working on her list of things she’d need before the baby was born.

Not bad,
she thought, totaling up the estimates. If she won the lottery, she might have a chance to break even. John was more than willing to take care of all her bills, but she wasn’t going to give in without a fight.

She wondered if Dave had been serious about wanting her to cater his granddaughter’s first holy communion. That would be one way to add to her coffers. The simple roofing job on her house had mushroomed into new wiring and new insulation. “This place is a firetrap,” her insurance agent had said bluntly. “Either get the repairs done, or we cancel your policy.” At the rate things were going, she’d be in debt for the rest of her life.

“So are we on for tonight?” Nick piped up to the group at large. “I got Sarah at the library to let us use their community room.”

“We’re on,” Vince said. “Don’t know how many are going to show up but Dee’s Sam posted a notice at town hall and got the cable company to run an ad.” He turned to Alex. “John will be back up from Cape May, won’t he?”

Alex nodded. “John said he’d be home by seven.”

“We can’t have the meeting without him,” Vince said. “He’s the only one who can stop this Eagle Management from destroying the town.”

Sally Whitton was unimpressed. “You can’t stop progress.”

“Progress?” Eddie sounded outraged. “They want to turn Sea Gate into a damn parking lot. That’s not progress.”

‘You can’t blame people for selling, Eddie.” Sally sounded apologetic. “Most of us are getting on in years. We don’t get a whole lot of chances to make money.”