Beach Lane

At the sound of the door opening, Susie glanced up from the contract she’d been reading for the past hour without one single word registering. An automatic smile had her lips curving up until she recognized Mack.

“Oh, it’s you,” she said, her tone flat. To her chagrin, her pulse skipped several beats despite her mood. Apparently chemistry was slow to catch on to reality. Thankfully, Mack couldn’t possibly know all the conficting emotions churning inside her.

Mack winced. “I gather you’ve heard the news.”

“From my family,” she confirmed accusingly. “Why would you let me find out something that monumental from my family, Mack? How could you do that to me? You had to know how humiliating it would be.”

“Sorry,” he said, looking genuinely contrite. “Really. The honest-to-goodness truth is that I just couldn’t work up the nerve to tell you. I’ve dealt with my share of humiliation since this happened.”

On some level she understood his reluctance, the blow to his pride, but she couldn’t let it pass. Communication was the one thing they’d always had going for them. If they lost that now, she was afraid they were doomed.

“Mack, we keep saying we’re friends, but it doesn’t seem like it to me right now. If you can’t even tell me that you lost your job, then what kind of friendship do we really have? Is it some superficial thing that’s good for a few laughs? Am I just some woman you hang out with to keep from being bored?”

His expression pleaded for understanding. “Susie, this isn’t about you and me, what we are or aren’t to each other. I’m the one who lost a job that meant everything to me. Don’t try to make it about something else. I can’t fight that battle right now.”

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I have to. This is like some huge turning point for us on so many levels. Can’t you see that?”

He sat down on the chair beside her desk. Though he obviously still didn’t want to have this conversation, he settled in, apparently ready to have the talk they should have had days ago.

“Okay, hear me out,” he said, a coaxing note in his voice. “This just happened a little over a week ago. I was trying to absorb the news, work through what it meant for the future.”

“Thus the funk,” she said.

“Exactly.” He regarded her earnestly. “I wanted to have a plan before you found out. I needed to feel as if I was in control of the situation.”

“Mack, I adore you, but you don’t think that fast.” When he was about to protest the insulting comment, she added, “What I’m saying is that you ponder things, think them through from every angle. It’s a good trait in many ways, but it’s not a fast track to decision-making. You had to know the gossip mill in this town would beat you to the punch.” She couldn’t keep the hurt out of her voice when she repeated, “I should have heard this from you, not from my family, who heard it on the street.”

“Okay, you’re right,” he said apologetically. “I knew I was taking a huge risk, but I didn’t want to see that look in your eyes, the one you have right now.”

She couldn’t imagine what he meant. “What look is that?”

“You feel sorry for me. No man wants a woman’s pity.”

Susie rolled her eyes. It was such a guy comment. “I do feel sorry for you, but certainly not because I think you’re some kind of failure, if that’s what you mean.”

He shrugged. “More or less.”

“Well, here’s a news flash. I feel bad for you because I know how much that job meant to you. You live and breathe sports. That column was all tied up in who you are. It gave you a very public professional identity. Losing it has to be killing you.”

He looked vaguely relieved by her words. “That’s exactly it,” he said.

“You don’t have to sound so surprised that I get it,” she said wryly. “I’ve had a lot of years to figure out what makes you tick.”

He met her gaze. “I really am sorry about how you found out about this.”

She gave him an amused look. “Do you actually know how I found out? Not just that it came from my family, but the circumstances?”

“Your father filled you in?” he guessed.

“And my mother and my brothers,” she said. “They staged an intervention to warn me against getting involved with you right now.”

For the first time, he looked truly guilt stricken. “Geez, Susie, I am so sorry.”

“They forced me to consider for the first time that I must not mean much to you if you’d keep such a huge secret from me.”

“You know that’s not true,” he said emphatically, then studied her closely. “You do know it, don’t you?”

“Actually, no, I don’t. And to make this little intervention of theirs even more fun, Matthew also mentioned that he and Luke had warned you to stay away from me. Why on earth didn’t you tell me about that? I was horrified.”

He waved it off. “Trust me, it was no big deal. They were just being protective brothers.”

“Then what they said had nothing to do with why you and I, well…” She couldn’t quite bring herself to put it into words. “Why we haven’t, you know, done anything?”

He blinked in apparent confusion, then caught on. “No,” he said quickly. “Hell, no. We’ve just had these boundaries between us. I guess I always knew the rules. Heaven knows, you were clear enough about them, made sure I understood that we had this totally platonic thing going on.”

Susie sighed. “Forget the stupid rules, Mack,” she snapped impatiently. “I’m sick to death of them.”

Looking a little stunned by her vehemence, he stood up and started to pace, then paused to meet her gaze. “We talked about this on Thanksgiving, Susie. Now’s not the time—”

“Who says?” she challenged.

“I do,” he told her. “And your whole family, for that matter. Didn’t you listen to what they said?”

“They don’t get a say.”

“I just think it’s for the best,” he insisted stubbornly.

Susie knew better than to push too hard right now, no matter how badly she wanted to. As she’d told him earlier, she sensed they were at a turning point, but with Mack’s career in turmoil, he wasn’t ready to make another life-altering decision. She had to respect that.

“Okay, then, let’s figure out what comes next for you,” she said briskly, letting the rest go for now. They’d get back to it. She made a promise to herself to be sure of that.

He paused in his agitated pacing and stared at her. “You sound as if we can do that between now and your next appointment,” Mack said, sounding vaguely disgruntled. “It’s not going to be that easy. Right now I’m thinking I might have to put out feelers, see what else is out there and then move to wherever I can find a job opening.”

Susie didn’t even attempt to hide her stunned reaction. “You’d leave Chesapeake Shores?” she asked in dismay.

He nodded, though he looked almost as miserable as she was feeling. “I might not have a choice.”

“No,” she said flatly, determined not to have things end between them before they’d even gotten started. And if Mack left now, they would surely end. Distance, especially with their undefined relationship, would kill whatever chance they had.

“That’s not going to happen,” she added even more emphatically. “You love it here as much as I do. Granted your experiences growing up in Chesapeake Shores were far different from mine, but this is your home, Mack.”

“Susie, it’s not that simple,” he argued. “Good jobs in journalism don’t grow on trees, especially not these days. Haven’t you been warning me about that for months now? I was the one who was an idiot. I thought my column was so successful, I’d be immune from cutbacks. Instead, it made me the perfect target. Even if I could find another newspaper job, the salary probably won’t be what I was getting in Baltimore.”

“Then create your own,” she blurted. “Your own job, I mean.”

Mack blinked at the suggestion. “Excuse me?”

“You heard me. Create a job for yourself.”