Driftwood Cottage

Now it was his turn to frown. “Are you seeing someone else?”

“Oh, for heaven’s sake,” she said impatiently. “It’s not some sort of contest to see which of us will start dating first, Connor. I’ve barely had time to take a deep breath, much less think about meeting men. Do you have any idea how much work is involved in starting a business and keeping up with a one-year-old?”

He looked relieved by her response, but his tone was apologetic. “I guess it would be none of my business if you were dating,” he conceded, then regarded her miserably. “How did we get here, Heather? From the day we met, I never looked at another woman. You never looked at another man. Those feelings haven’t changed, and yet here we are, making small talk and asking about each other’s social life as if we’re barely casual acquaintances. We’re trying to act as if the answers don’t matter, when we both know they do.”

She heard the sorrow in his voice and found herself reaching over to touch his hand on the steering wheel. “We’ll always be more than casual acquaintances, Connor. We share a son, for one thing. But it’s going to take time to find our way with this new relationship. Sometimes it’s going to be awkward and messy and frustrating, but we have to find a way to make it work. I don’t want either of us to end up bitter and unable to be in the same room together.”

He sighed. “I don’t want that, either.”

She forced a smile. “You do know that the two of us turning up together today is going to set tongues wagging with your family, don’t you? Are you ready for that?”

“Hey, you’re the one living here now. You’ll have to deal with the nonstop pressure and meddling more than I will. Are you up to it?”

“I guess I’ll have to be.” Sobering, she met his gaze. “We made the right decision, Connor.”

“You’re the one who made the decision,” he corrected, his tone suddenly edged with annoyance. “Don’t lay this on me. I was happy with the way things were.”

“Sure, hiding me and your son from your family was working just fine for you,” she retorted sarcastically. “It meant no one except me could tell you what you were doing was wrong. And of course I couldn’t say a thing, either, because essentially I made a pact to play by your rules the day I agreed to move in with you.”

He frowned at the accusation. “Did I force you to move in?”

“Of course not. You just counted on me loving you so much, I wouldn’t be able to turn you down.”

“You never once said a word about being unhappy with our situation,” he complained. “Not even once.”

“And that’s all on me,” she agreed. “I weighed the options of living with you on your terms or without you, and I chose you. I don’t regret that, Connor. I really don’t. The years we spent together were amazing.”

“What changed?” he asked.

“When little Mick came along, I began to see things differently,” she conceded. “I wanted more for all of us.”

“You should have told me that,” he said.

“Oh, please. Every single time I tried to tell you what I was feeling, you’d get this look on your face as if I were betraying your trust, so I shut up,” she said. “And when I saw your attitude toward marriage getting darker and darker every day with every divorce case you handled, I had to accept that you were never going to change. That meant it was up to me to make a choice, and the only one that made sense for me was to move out and move on.”

She regarded him with real sorrow. “And just so you know, it wasn’t easy, and there are times when I regret it, but I still know in my heart it was the right thing to do.”

“Maybe for you,” he said grudgingly. “But what about our son? Was it best for him?”

“In the long run, it will be,” she insisted. “If you and I cooperate, he’ll grow up knowing we both love him.”

“The way all of us wound up knowing how Mom felt about us?” he scoffed. “We grew up thinking she’d abandoned us. Neither she nor Dad tried all that hard to show us otherwise.”

“Which is exactly why you and I will do everything we possibly can to make sure little Mick doesn’t feel abandoned by anyone,” Heather countered. “We have to try, Connor. We’re the grown-ups, and we can do this, because we both understand how important it is, right?”

He glanced over at her, then sighed. “Right,” he said with obvious reluctance.

He pulled up in front of the house. “I’ll let you out here with the baby, then park.”

Trying to inject a hint of humor into the suddenly somber mood, she teased, “You just don’t want to get caught walking in the door with us. You know I’m right about the hornet’s nest that will stir up.”

He gave her a rueful smile. “Yeah, that’s it.”

Again, she placed her hand over his. “We’re going to make this work,” she reassured him. “I don’t know how, but we will, because we have to.”

“Sure,” he said, though he sounded doubtful.

Heather hesitated, thinking she should say something more, something to put a real smile back on his face, but nothing came to mind. Because the one thing he wanted, for her to cave in and move back to Baltimore on his terms, was the one thing she could never agree to do. At least, not if she were to live with her conscience.

4

Thomas O’Brien wasn’t sure what had drawn him home to Chesapeake Shores, especially on such a dreary Sunday morning. Usually he confined his trips to the holidays and the occasional visit to his mother. Now that Nell was in her eighties, he tried to make those visits more frequently, but usually at a time when he wouldn’t have to deal with his brother Mick and the rest of the family. He and Mick could pick a fight in ten seconds flat on their best days. On their worst, they barely managed to exchange a civil word. Lately things were better, but he didn’t like pressing his luck.

Despite that concern, when he’d awakened this morning in his cramped apartment in Annapolis, Thomas had wanted to go home. Lately, he’d been feeling especially restless. His work with the foundation that studied the bay’s environment was frustrating and time-consuming, but his passion for it hadn’t waned. Most of the time, it was rewarding enough to keep him going through any rough patches. Usually it even filled the tremendous gaps in his social life since his last divorce.

Recently, though, he couldn’t help recognizing that something was missing from his life. In fact, every time he spent a few hours around Mick, now that Mick and Megan were back together, he could easily pin a label on it. He wanted a family of his own. Hanging around his older brothers—Mick and even Jeff and his family—reminded him of all that he’d missed out on while focusing on work. Both of his marriages had been so brief that he’d never considered children, and he was feeling that lack now more than ever before.

In truth, though he was only in his early fifties, he’d blown both marriages due to his obsession with environmental issues and protecting the bay that he loved. Lately, other than having an occasional drink with a coworker or one of the volunteers working on the foundation’s fundraising efforts, his personal life was deader than the bay’s waters had been a few years back. Now the ecosystem was slowly coming back into balance, but his life wasn’t.

When he knocked on Mick’s door, it was Megan who answered. She beamed at him and immediately dragged him inside.

“Get in here out of that nasty weather,” she said at once, her expression welcoming.

“You have room for one more at the table today?” he asked, lifting his sister-in-law off the floor in a bear hug.

“We always have room for you,” she assured him. “Why didn’t you call and let us know you were coming?” She grinned. “Or do I need to ask? Were you afraid Mick would tell you to stay away?”

Thomas laughed. “He can’t scare me away anymore. With our mother and you around, and Kevin working for me, I have allies here.”

“You certainly do,” Megan said. “Now come in. We’re just about to sit down, so your timing’s perfect.”

“Maybe I’d better find Mick first, so he doesn’t keel over in Ma’s pot roast at the sight of me.” He regarded her hopefully. “That is what we’re having, right? I thought I sniffed it in the air when you opened the door.”

“It is, indeed. Mick’s in the den. Go on in, while I start rounding up everyone else. That can take awhile when the kids are absorbed in one of those video games they seem to love.”

Thomas wandered down the hall to his brother’s den. He found Mick behind a closed door, puffing on a pipe.

“If Ma catches you in here with that thing, she’ll have a fit,” he taunted as he walked in. “She only put up with Pop smoking a pipe because she never could deny him anything. He always claimed it reminded him of being back in Ireland.”

“It does the same for me. It reminds me of the trips they took us on,” Mick said, while regarding him with surprise. “What brings you down here? You usually don’t show your face except on holidays.”

“Only time I know for a fact I’m welcome,” Thomas admitted. “Is it okay? Do you think you and I can be civil today?”

Mick shrugged. “That’s always an iffy proposition, but I think we’ve done a pretty good job of mending fences recently. You were there when I needed you when I was trying to get Megan to marry me again. I won’t forget that.”

“Of course you haven’t forgotten all of my sins from the past, either, have you?” Thomas said, referring to the fact that he’d taken the drastic step of turning Mick in to the authorities when he’d wanted to take some shortcuts in protecting the environment back when all three of them—he, Mick and Jeff—had been developing Chesapeake Shores.

“You’re right. I’m not likely to forget that,” Mick said. “But the truth is, now that I’ve had time to think things through, I admire the way you stood up for what you believed in, even if it was a darned nuisance at the time.”