“Briefly. He stopped in to say hello before he started ripping the boards off the windows next door. His wife is dead, he’s got a couple of little kids and he brought a babysitter with him. Very pretty.”
She sighed. “That’s an au pair, Mac. She’s from Mexico. In exchange for room and board, an education and, with luck, citizenship, she’s a full-time nanny. And she’s about twelve.”
“No...”
“Okay, she’s nineteen. And I hear the doctor is a hottie.”
“Where’d you hear that?” he asked.
She peered at him in the dark and lifted one brow. “Where do you think?”
“Ray Anne?” he asked.
“She’s keeping pretty close tabs on him.”
Mac grinned. “I think you stay at the diner because you have access to all the gossip there.”
She grinned back. “Just like at the cop shop.”
“True,” he said. He was quiet for a long moment. “Another year and our girls will graduate. Go to college.”
“Are you mourning that already?” she asked him.
“Ha! I’m counting the days! Think they’ll go to the same school?”
“No telling,” she said. “That depends on whether Eve wants to follow Ashley, who will definitely follow Downy.”
As Mac knew, Ashley had been dating her boyfriend, Downy, since he was a senior at Thunder Point High. Downy was now in his first year at State. In fact, Mac had been in his first year at State when he got his high school girlfriend knocked up. He shuddered. “Doesn’t that worry you?” he asked.
“No,” Gina said. “Downy is a good boy, and Ash is an ambitious girl. So far they seem to make a good team. They don’t want to get tripped up now.”
“I hope you’re right,” he said. He took a breath. “And I hope Eve doesn’t have a serious boyfriend until she’s thirty.”
“Why?” Gina asked. “Because that’s the way she’ll be most happy?”
Mac just looked at her. Gina was so pretty, so smart. If it weren’t for all the complications in their lives, all the responsibilities, now would be a logical time to pull her closer, kiss her in a way that left her trembling. But he wouldn’t. “That’s the thing,” he said. “You and I both know that the thing that makes us most happy at sixteen doesn’t work out to be so smart at thirty.”
“Or thirty-five?” she asked.
“Or thirty-five,” he confirmed.
After a long silence she said, very softly, “One of these days, Mac, you’re going to discover you have no regrets.”
“Huh?” he questioned.
“Nothing. I have to get to bed. I work early and I’m freezing. Done with that beer? Want me to pitch it for you?”
“Uh, yeah.” He handed it over. “Thanks. And thanks for keeping me company for a while.”
“Anytime. Buddy.”
* * *
Cooper called another one right—the town was packed with vehicles and people spilling out onto the sidewalks around fast-food restaurants and the diner, but Cliffhanger’s wasn’t busy. In fact, though it was barely after nine, Cooper wondered if they were thinking of closing. He went straight to the bar, “Looks kind of quiet,” he said to Cliff. “There’s time for a couple of burgers, right?”
Landon, wearing his letter jacket, walked in behind him. Now that they were in a well-lit restaurant, Cooper noticed the bruise on Landon’s cheek and wondered where that had come from.
“Come on, man,” Cliff said good-naturedly. “I want to find out about the game. Word is those Badgers finally got what was coming to ’em.”
“I can help with that,” Cooper said. He dropped an arm casually around Landon’s shoulders. “I promised the quarterback a burger.”
Cliff broke into a grin. “You got it.”
“And give me a draft—I’ve had a hard night.”
Landon shot him a look. “You’ve had a hard night?”
“My pleasure. Dupre? For you?”
“Draft,” he said.
Cliff smiled. “Nice try. Second choice?”
“All right. Coke.”
“Grab a table, boys. I’ll put in your order and get your drinks.”
Cooper pointed to a table, knowing a minor couldn’t sit up at the bar. When they were seated, Landon said, “That could’ve been a mistake. We might draw a crowd.”
“That’s okay. We just have to get a couple of things straight. It won’t take long. That kid, Jag, asked you to throw a game to get him back to first string, right? And when you said no, he threatened you. If I hadn’t come along, he was going to beat you up. You can’t let it go, Landon. Trust me.”
“I’ll handle it....”
“Maybe you would—eventually. Listen, this kind of bullying isn’t a first. It also isn’t rare, which ought to disgust the whole human race. In every junior high and high school, and sometimes even elementary school, there’s some idiot who anoints himself king. He gathers up some plebes who are either as mean as he is or stupid enough to think if they stick with the self-proclaimed leader, they won’t get hurt. Then they search out their victims and make a lifestyle out of working ’em over. Terrible things come out of it. At least you were important enough to be threatened, because you’re actually a threat, but that doesn’t make it easier. I have one question. Did you ever think about it? Just doing what he wanted you to do?”
Landon looked shocked. He shook his head. “You say you get it, but you don’t. I wasn’t the only one they wanted to cheat, I was just the only one they promised to beat up. That fumble? Right before the end of the first half? You think that guy lost control of the ball? He’d be one of the plebes. He dropped that ball for Morrison.”
Cooper couldn’t help it, he grinned. Jag Morrison had himself a gang that worked hard for him, even at their own expense. But instead of letting the fumble go—maybe letting the game go—Landon stepped up, recovered the ball and ran it. He brought his A-game.
“This isn’t just about me,” Landon continued. “You spend ten minutes in the halls at school and you get how much it means to them, beating those Badgers.”
“Even though you could get hurt,” Cooper said. It was not a question.
“You think the only way I might get hurt is being jumped in the parking lot or dragged under the bleachers? I have to play against my own team and the other team—they are not about protecting their quarterback.”
“Are you saying all of them are in it?”
“Nah, just a few. But sometimes the right few. At least I know which ones they are.”
Cooper nodded at Landon’s face. “And the bruise?”
Landon ducked briefly. “I walked into a door.”
Cooper was quiet for a moment. Then he said, “Right.”
The drinks came and Cooper was thinking, damn kid has no idea what kind of athletic skill that takes—trying to score with a good defense and with your own team working against you. Where the hell was the coach?
Cliff put down the drinks and pulled up a chair. “Your burgers are coming, so while we wait, why don’t you tell me about the game?”
Cooper watched as Landon gave Cliff a play-by-play. His own nieces and nephews were not yet teenagers, though they were certainly getting there too quickly. Besides his friends’ kids, whom he knew very casually, this might be his first experience with a young man of sixteen. And it was most definitely his first experience with a kid like Landon.
Landon played it straight, excusing the fumbles, lack of defense and missed passes and dismissing his own plays, which were nothing short of heroic. He was fast as lightning and could jump over fallen opponents. He said things like, “That was a lucky break,” and “I bet that doesn’t happen twice.” He never suggested members of his own team worked against him or even that what he’d managed had taken talent.
Their food arrived and Cliff stuck around. They lingered over burgers and football talk for more than an hour and Cooper was glad to see Landon getting the attention he deserved, praise he didn’t get much of from his team.
When they were in the parking lot, Landon said, “You had tips?”
Cooper just laughed. “Not on playing football, that’s for sure. You’ve got that down. It’s getting late...”
“Late? How old are you?” Landon asked with a hint of humor.
“Right now I feel real old. You’ll probably have that dog out for a walk this weekend. And I’ll probably be around that old shack on the beach.”
* * *
Gina and Mac had been good friends since the time their daughters had hooked up as best friends when they were twelve. The first time he showed up at Gina’s house to check out her surroundings before letting Eve spend the night with her new best friend, Gina had fallen for him. She never let on, of course. They had a couple of teenage girls to watch over. But they always ended up sitting together at town events, school functions, that sort of thing. There was the occasional beer on her front porch or even at Cliff’s, but the best was morning coffee at the diner when it wasn’t busy. She could set her watch by him. At around ten o’clock, barring pressing police work, he’d come into the diner. Six days a week. Fishermen were out at dawn or before; the lunch crowd didn’t show until eleven-thirty. Between breakfast and lunch was when they’d catch up on gossip, scheduling and kids’ activities. Mac and Gina, Aunt Lou and Carrie backed each other up when it came to carpooling and chaperoning. Between all of them, plus teachers and coaches, they ran herd on these girls and Mac’s other two younger kids. They were not going to let Eve and Ashley fall victim to the kind of mistakes their mothers had made.
Their rapport was good. Gina could feel the sexual tension building in the light touch of hands, the smile or laugh, the conversation about things in their lives that had nothing to do with their daughters.
After about a year of relying on each other, trading news and confidences, there had been a kiss; a breathless embrace. They pushed apart desperately but reluctantly. And yet there was a second time, lasting a bit longer, that felt even more passionate to Gina. She had been in the ecstasy of expectation. She had felt for some time that they were more than buddies.
But at their morning coffee after that second embrace and kiss, Mac had confronted it. He seemed remorseful. “We can’t let this happen,” he had told her. “We have daughters who are best friends, a lot of responsibilities, people depending on us. Carrie and Lou...and I have a whole town, not to mention two more children...”
She remembered clearly—and with embarrassment—that her mouth had hung open. After a year of sharing details of their lives, some of which she considered deeply personal, and after two hot and meaningful kisses, he was running for his life?
“Relationships are fragile,” he said. “We’ve both been through it. We can’t experiment with this...this getting closer. If it didn’t work, look how many people would be affected. Mostly, there’s you and I. We’ve already had our guts ripped out, right?”
She was stunned silent for a moment. She was so offended. Hurt. “Right,” she finally said. “Dr. Phil.”
“Gina, you’re special. Damn, I just want to do the right thing.”
He didn’t seem to realize he’d just drawn blood with his gentlemanly comment. She sensed that her instinctive response—Then throw me down and have your amazing way with me—might scare him even more.
So, apparently the one thing they did not have in common was readiness. After becoming an unmarried teenage mother, Gina hadn’t actually dated again until Ashley was in school. In the ten years since then there hadn’t been very many dates and only one guy had been semiserious. Emphasis on the semi.