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What the hell was he thinking? That he could go to Maine for a few days and the whispers in his mind would stop? That he could sit on a dock and fish for bass like a normal man? As if he was on vacation, not a life departure? That some cabin in the woods would be enough to make him forget such a colossal mistake?
And did he really think he could walk out of this house right now, leaving that sound hanging in Victoria Blackstone’s dining room?
His feet carried him across the room, until he was close enough to see the shimmer in her eyes. “Are you okay?”
“Fine. Really.” Her smile trembled on her lips.
As easily as putting on a pair of jeans, Noah slipped into his familiar work persona. “Is there anything I can do for you?”
What was that about? Did he think he’d hook her up with some social services? Direct her to a food bank? Help her find a job with a great health plan?
“No. I’m sorry.” She ran a hand over the gleaming surface of the sideboard, whisking away nonexistent dust. “You…well, you reminded me of someone and it sort of hit me hard.”
“Oh.” For once, he had no rejoinder to that, no dispensation of advice. “Do you want me to go?”
She reached out and put a hand on his arm. “No. Not at all.”
Her touch on him was sweet, soft. Every instinct in his body told him to back away, head out the door and go on his way, hitchhiking if need be. But there was something about her touch that reminded Noah, too, of someone.
Himself. A long time ago.
“Listen, why don’t you stay for dinner? That way, you’ll have a meal in you before you hit the road again. It’s after Labor Day, so a lot of the beach restaurants here are closed down. You’d have to go into Quincy proper to find anything.”
He knew he should say no. Unfortunately his mouth didn’t take good direction from his brain. “Dinner sounds like a good idea.”
He’d stay for dinner, but only because the feel of her hand on his arm had awakened nerves he’d thought had been severed by his years on the job. Because it felt nice to be a man for a minute, a man who didn’t have the weight of other people’s lives sitting on his conscience.
“Great! I’ll set another place at the table.” That smile spread across her face again, socking him in the gut—
And warning him that he’d just done the very thing he didn’t want to do. Laid the first brick of a foundation with another person.
CHAPTER TWO
WHAT on earth had gotten into her? Victoria had always thought of herself as a woman who maintained control, never let her feelings show and never, ever betrayed vulnerability. At least, until Noah McCarty came along and proved within ten minutes that she was a liar.
And now she’d gone and cried in front of him. Cried, for Pete’s sake, like some helpless female who couldn’t find her way out of a cardboard box.
Okay, given her directionally challenged mind, that part might be true, but still…crying? That was really pitiful.
“I’m sorry. I don’t normally burst into tears in front of strangers,” Victoria said as they walked back into the kitchen.
“I understand,” Noah said, but Victoria suspected he was merely being polite. He had that look about him, with his sandy-brown hair and deep green eyes, that said he’d let you down easily and wouldn’t intentionally hurt your feelings. And yet, she saw something else, some other side of him that flickered briefly in those depths of green. Something that told her she could trust him.
The compulsion to tell him, to talk to someone, to share with a human, instead of these empty, silent walls, propelled the words forward. “My dad,” she said, “used to lean against the half-wall like that whenever he talked on the phone. Uncle Joe called him every Saturday morning and the two of them would go on for hours, debating taxes, the governor’s choices, whether I-93 or 128 had more traffic.” She let out a little laugh, the memory still sharp with grief but also tinged with a slice of happiness. “He died six months ago and there are funny things that will hit me sometimes, just out of the blue. I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay,” Noah said, taking her hand, making her feel for the first time in a long time that it was, indeed, all okay. His eyes weren’t filled with that awkwardness she’d seen so many times already, the kind where people felt compelled to say something, do something, if only to cover up their own discomfort about being so close to someone who had experienced a death. Instead Noah had reached out, his touch light yet sincere. “I’m sorry about your father.”
The words were enough to send the tears rushing back to her eyes. She blinked them back. “Thank you.”
“Hey, Charlie,” she said, changing the subject and bending down to the dog, whose pointy little ears perked up at the mention of his name, “you’re welcome to stay for dinner, too.”
The dog wagged his skinny tail, then jumped up on her legs, miniature nails scraping lightly at her bare skin. She lowered herself to her knees, scratched him under his chin.
“Watch him,” Noah said. “He’s…temperamental.”
“Him? He’s a sweetie-pie.” As if living up to what she’d said, Charlie dropped to his back and offered up his belly for the personal treatment. His tail beat ferociously against the linoleum floor, keeping up a steady tempo of “you-like-me.”
She let her fingers trail along his nape, then his ears, toying with the velvet tips. Charlie let out a groan and wriggled even closer.
“Now you’ve gone and done it,” Noah said, laughing.
She jerked up to look at him. “Done what?”
“Spoiled him. Now he’s going to make me get out the silk bed again.”
She arched a brow. “Silk bed?”
“Charlie is the king of my mom’s castle. He has his every whim indulged, sleeps on better sheets than Elvis did and even has his own teddy bear. She’s only been gone twenty-four hours and already called me three times to make sure I’m treating him right.”
“And are you?”
“Well, I drew the line at the silk bed and the Burberry trench coat.”
Victoria chuckled. “He’s a nice dog, though. I can see why she spoils him.”
Noah wasn’t so bad himself. Though “nice” might not be the first word that Victoria would use when asked to describe him. Gorgeous, with a haunting quality that told her a lot of him was kept behind a locked door.
Silence hummed between them and once again, Victoria wanted to kick herself. She was a complete and total social moron. She’d spent too much time here in this house, away from the real world. Away from other people.
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