Susan Andersen - That Thing Called Love

An unamused laugh escaped him. “Like that ever lasts,” he said dismissively. “She went almost overnight from the fun head cheerleader I knew to a cranky, complaining shrew who was convinced I’d ruined her life. Not that I was any better. I was miserable working the front desk at The Brothers, and it made me damn moody.”

“Then she died.”

“Yeah.” Digging his fingertips into a headache that now thumped full force, he turned his back on the water, feeling vestiges of the horror he’d experienced at the sight of the blood-soaked sheets when she’d started hemorrhaging. “They send people home from the hospitals too damn fast these days. If she’d still been there they probably could’ve stopped the bleeding. But they discharged her, and within the space of a few short hours, she was just...gone. And I found myself with sole responsibility for this wrinkly, leaky little creature I had no idea how to parent. When Emmett and Kathy offered to care for him while I got my degree, I jumped at the chance.”

And, eaten up with guilt, he’d hated himself for it. He had turned into the very thing he’d sworn he never would: a chip off the old block. Here his wife had died tragically young—yet had he been crushed? Had he stuck around? No, sir. He’d never wished her dead, but his dirty little secret was he’d been beyond relieved not to be stuck in a nowhere position in a nowhere town with a wife he’d fallen out of love with.

At least Charlie had loved him for a while. Jake hadn’t felt anything but panic when he’d looked at his son.

Max looked as uncomfortable hearing all this shit as Jake was at telling it. No doubt his brother was on TMI overload, and his gaze slid past Jake’s shoulder. Then he stood straighter. “Hey, what do you know?” he said with a casualness that was a little overplayed. “There’s a couple of cutters. The Trident’s likely not far away.”

Grateful beyond measure for the change of subject—for anything that would rescue them from this dangerous talking-about-feelings territory—Jake turned to look.

There was nothing to see except a couple of midsize navy boats cruising a half mile or so from the far shore, but he went over to his car all the same to retrieve his camera from the passenger seat. Back on the beach, he watched with Max as the boats navigated an obviously circumscribed area.

Nothing happened, and perhaps to fill the long silence between them, Max suddenly said, “I’m sorry about your mom. I heard about it when I was in Camp Lejeune.”

Jake nodded, his eyes still on the glassy water. “Thanks. Her having a heart attack wasn’t something anyone expected. She was only forty-six.” He turned to look at Max. “I’m surprised anyone here even knew about it—she moved to California the same time I started college.”

Max made a wry face. “Small-town connections, little Bradshaw. She kept in touch with Maureen Gilmore, who was friends with my mother.”

“Is your mom still in town?”

“No. She’s living in England, of all places.”

“Why of all places?”

“My mom is filled with a small-town prejudice against any town bigger than Razor Bay—never mind big cities in a foreign country. But she met a guy from London in the dining room of the inn one night, and that was all she wrote.”

The Ohio-class black nuclear submarine suddenly surfaced from the depths and they turned their attention to it. Nearly as long as two football fields, sleek as a shark and quieter than death, it was an impressive, ominous sight. “That doesn’t make me want to break into a chorus of ‘Yellow Submarine,’” Jake said, raising the Nikon D3 to his eye.

Max laughed. “No shit. But I never get tired of watching it. It’s like the Darth Vader of submarines. Strategic deterrence at its best.”

He lowered the camera long enough to shoot the other man a sardonic glance. “Spoken like a true soldier boy.”

“Wasn’t a soldier, sonny. I told you before, I’m a Marine.”

“Ex.”

Max snorted. “No such thing as an ex-Marine. Former, maybe, if you wanna be picky about it.”

“Whatever.” Jake shot a couple frames of Max, who immediately scowled at him. “So, tell me. I know there’s more than one of these subs stationed at Bangor—so why are they all called the Trident?”

A bark of laughter exploded out of Max. “For a guy with a bachelor of business from a fancy u—”

“I never actually got that degree,” he interrupted. “I interned with National Explorer my junior year, got a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to show my photography skills when their usual photographer was laid low with dysentery, and never went back to school.”

Max nodded. “Explains why you’re not the brightest bulb, I guess. None of the subs are named that. There’s eight of them out of Bangor, and except for the USS Henry M. Jackson, in honor of our late, great Senator Scoop Jackson, they’re all named after states. Alaska, Alabama, Nebraska—and who cares what all. Tridents are the missiles they’re packing.”

“Huh. Who knew?”

“Not you, obviously.”

A short while later the submarine submerged as quietly as it had come up, and Max abruptly morphed from fairly friendly for a guy who “wasn’t ever going to be your bud” to blank-faced deputy. He stepped back. “I’ve got work to do,” he said and pointed to where Jake’s SUV was blocking half an access that nobody was using. “Get that off the ramp,” he growled. Then without another word, he turned and strode up the slope in question to his rig.

Leaving Jake with an inexplicable smile on his face.

* * *

WORRY OVER HIS NONPROGRESS with Austin had replaced the unexpected moment of good humor by the time he got back to the inn. He headed straight for Jenny’s office.

He heard her voice before he reached it. “...forecasting staff needs for next week, and I need to set up a meeting with you before you leave for the day to discuss doing one of those Groupon or LivingSocial discounts. Reservations will get the immediate brunt of extra work,” she said, then laughed. “Well, if it does what I’m hoping, at any rate. What’s a good time for you?”

He stopped in the open doorway. Jenny sat facing the door, but twisted slightly to the left as she glanced back and forth between a weekly planner and a spreadsheet laid across the desk, the phone receiver wedged between her ear and a hunched shoulder. Light from the overhead fixtures and the lamp on her desk detailed the creamy curve of high cheekbones and picked out the sheen of her dark hair on either side of her center part. She’d tucked the long layers behind her ears, and they tumbled over the girly, not-quite-but-damn-near sheer fabric of her little black blouse, their blunt ends curving slightly in alternating lengths against the petite thrust of her breasts. He could almost distinguish the outline of a black bra beneath the top.

If he didn’t mind giving himself eyestrain.

“Five o’clock is perfect,” she said. “I’ll see you then.” Hanging up the phone, she leaned forward, made a notation in the planner, then turned her attention to the worksheet.

He could have sworn he didn’t make a sound, but her head suddenly jerked up and she looked straight at him, eyes startled and slender fingers spread like starfish on the oversize spreadsheet. And for just an instant their gazes melded with a spark that wasn’t solely on his side.

His whole body perked up.

He didn’t get it. He’d come away from his relationship with Kari with a carved-in-stone belief that there was no such thing as true commitment and a determination to never again put himself in the position of testing that belief. From the age of eighteen, he’d chosen women who knew the score. They understood they’d have a good time but that any relationship with him had a finite shelf date.