Driftwood Cottage. Sherryl Woods

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      “Do I detect a hint of reservation in there?” he pressed.

      She forced herself to meet his gaze. “I don’t have a right to criticize anything you choose to do, Connor. We’re not together anymore.”

      “But would it bother you if I started dating someone else right here in Chesapeake Shores?” he persisted.

      She frowned at him. “Why are you pushing this? Does your ego need me to admit I’d hate it? Okay, I’d hate it, but we’re both going to move on eventually. That’s just the way it is.”

      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.

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