He leaned toward her. “Well, what do you want from someone who’s talking into ether, not knowing what kind of mood you’re in? Or wondering who else might listen to your messages? Like maybe a brand-new boyfriend or husband! I wanted to talk to you, not make life tough for you! You were pretty specific when you laid down the guidelines—it was marriage or you were out. For all I knew—” He stopped. He took a breath. “For all I knew you found someone who liked that idea. And settled down.”
It was very tempting to just blurt everything out right then, right there, but Franci held her tongue. She did have to lower her eyes over her coffee cup to keep him from seeing the tears there. It all rushed back—how bad the breakup had felt, and remembering that he couldn’t bear the idea of being stuck with her for life. Then came the fear that he’d like another chance, but they would probably only go back to the way they were. Or, he was ready for more now and would never forgive her for what she’d done. Franci’s mind was churning.
“I’d given you a lot of opportunities, Sean. A lot of time. You didn’t budge—you’d gotten as serious as you were going to get. I didn’t want to find myself in a relationship as tenuous as that for a long time, for as long as it took you to say you’d had enough and didn’t want me around anymore.” She swallowed. “I didn’t want to give my best years to a man who couldn’t make a decision.”
He leaned toward her and his look was earnest, though battered. “What did I ever do or say to make you think I was just playing around? Weren’t we a couple? A serious couple? Didn’t we practically live together? You thought I’d just do that for a few years and then dump you? You didn’t trust me any more than that?” he asked.
She shrugged. “Why would I? We spent nights together, Sean—we kept our own places and you never suggested living together! You liked things loose and uncomplicated. You thought your buddies who got married ‘bit the dust.’ You thought the ones who had kids were trapped. I wanted something solid, and back then I wanted it to be you, but if it wasn’t going to be you, I had to have the courage to move on. Right? Isn’t that reasonable?”
Rather than answering the question, he said, “Maybe I’m not that guy anymore.”
“Oh?” she asked with a cynical tone. “And what guy are you?”
“Things changed, Franci. Starting with not having you in my life. I thought I’d just keep having fun, but fun wasn’t fun without you. I thought the Riordan men didn’t settle down, until I watched the last one I ever expected bite the dust…”
“There it is again—he bit the dust.”
“If you’d seen him fight it, you’d have been impressed. Bottom line, I was trying like hell to make it work without you because I thought I had no choice. And when I saw you at that restaurant in Arcata, I knew I wasn’t going another day without trying to see if…I just want to see if we can work this out. If we can’t, if you’re in a different place, I’m not a fool—I don’t want a woman who doesn’t want me. But…”
“Just like I didn’t want a man who didn’t want me,” she reminded him, lifting her chin proudly. Then, as an afterthought, she added, “Enough. Didn’t want me enough.”
“Touché. You can have that one. I made a mistake. But so did you. I was an idiot. You were in a big goddamn hurry.”
Well, he was right about that, she thought. She had been on the nest. She leaned toward him and shook her head. “I had no possible way of knowing if you would ever change. I couldn’t wait around for that. My biological clock was ticking.” Boy, had it been ticking!
Again, rather than responding, he asked, “Are you with someone now?”
She froze. In fact, she was. It had been a long time coming, too. But Sean’s reappearance had caused her to barely give the guy a thought. It occurred to her to tell Sean she had a guy, just to back him off a bit. The temptation was equally strong to tell him there was no one, which might encourage him all the more. In the end, she said, “I’ve been dating…trying to be social rather than a recluse. You? Are you with someone now?”
He shook his head. “Let’s try again,” he said in a soft, pleading voice. As if it had all been a minor misunderstanding.
“Not so fast,” Franci said. “I don’t know if I want to try again. We have issues. Unless you’ve changed a lot, we don’t want the same things out of a relationship, out of life. It’s too late for couples’ counseling. I’m willing to think about us being friends, but we have to take even something like that very slowly. The world didn’t just stand still after we parted ways, Sean. I went on living.”
“Of course you did, Franci,” he said, reaching for her hand. He held it on the tabletop. “We both tried to get on with things, and both ended up back here.”
“I’m sure we’re not talking about the same things,” she said. “I’m sure your dating was a lot different than mine,” she said, meaning he’d slept with a lot of women. He’d been a real playboy when she met him and she had been a little surprised when he became exclusively hers. Sean going back to his old ways of making the rounds was more what she had expected of him.
“I dated,” he admitted. “Not anything very…Nothing worked out.”
She lifted her chin. “And I became very independent. I hadn’t heard from you in years. I didn’t see this coming.”
“It’s coming,” he said, in a low voice laced with meaning. “Let me take you out to dinner tonight.”
“No,” she said. “I’m busy.”
“Tomorrow night, then.”
“I’m going out—I have plans. I’ll have coffee with you on Sunday afternoon, if you’re free. I’ll talk with you, Sean. Maybe we can put some of our conflict to rest and work out friendlier terms.”
“I want to spend time with you—”
“You better let me think about that. There have been too many changes in my life to step back into a relationship like I had with you.”
“Are you thinner?” he asked, changing the subject. “You seem thinner.”
“I took up running after…Once I moved up here, I started running. I finished two marathons.”
“No kidding?” he said, impressed. He grinned, then winced and touched his cheek. “Well, you look fantastic. I guess running is your thing. It works for you. And the hair—if you’d have said you wanted it cut to the scalp, I would have had a fit, but it’s…it’s hot, that’s what it is.”
She hated that she felt warm all over when he said that. “I’m completely different in a lot more ways than looks,” she said as a warning. “I have baggage that I’ve accumulated in the past few years. I have commitments. For example, my mother and I moved up here together. She was widowed, I was single—it made sense.”
“Sure. How is Viv?” he asked.
“Great. Working in a family practice as a physician’s assistant. She’s glad she made the change—she likes the area and has friends here. And I have two jobs, Sean. I pull a couple of twenty-four-hour shifts with the airlift unit in Redding every week and I teach a couple of courses at Humboldt University—nursing courses. It’s a great schedule for me—gives me the time off I need so I can balance work life and home life. It works for me. I’m committed to both.”
“You’re teaching nursing?” he asked, surprised.
She nodded. “I’ve been doing that for the past year or so. Turns out I like it.”
“My new sister-in-law, Shelby—she’s a student there, in nursing. Cutest thing you’ll ever see. Best thing that ever happened to Luke. Any chance you know her?”
“What year is she in?” Franci asked.
“First year. She got married in her first semester because Paddy and Colin were done with their deployments—she waited for all the Riordans to be available. She’s way younger than Luke and is just starting college.”
Franci tilted her head and smiled, thinking how sweet it was that cranky, womanizing old Luke ended up with a sweet young girl who was determined to get an education. “I’m pretty sure I haven’t met Luke’s wife. Most of the freshmen are stuck in liberal-arts courses the first year. I teach one medical-surgical course and one that boils down to charting ER patients. I’m just one of many instructors. Mostly, I teach juniors and seniors. I share an office on campus with another nursing instructor and I only teach a couple of days a week. Except for meetings, of which there are too many.”
“You never did go for the meetings,” he said with a smile. “I’ll have to tell Shelby to introduce herself. You’ll love her. You’ll—”
“One thing at a time, all right?” Franci asked patiently. “How’s your mom?”
“She’s great. Greater since Luke got married and they’re on the baby trail. She might finally get a grandchild out of one of us, after all.”
Franci flushed. Oh, God, so many people were going to be pissed when they found out about Rosie. She had no idea how she’d have done it differently, however. Well, there was that one way—she could have told Sean about the baby. Good Catholic boy that he was, he’d have married her right off or his mother would have killed him. As she recalled, Maureen Riordan had powerful influence over her sons. “Good for her,” was all she could say. “Sean, this is going to take time. Things have probably changed too much.”
“Not as much as they’ve stayed the same,” he said.
“There’s only one way I can even think about this, and that’s if we get to know each other all over again,” she said. “We can’t go back four years and try to untangle that mess—we have to accept ourselves as the people we are today, and go from here. You said you’re not that guy anymore. And you know what, Sean? I’m not that woman anymore—the one who cried every day after we split up. I’m a lot stronger. We’re both different.”
“Maybe so,” he agreed. “Maybe better,” he suggested. “But, Franci, like it or not, we have history.”
She felt her heart take a fearful jump. “Yeah. You have no idea.”
As it happened, there had been a man in Franci’s life for the past few months. Meeting Dr. T. J. Brookner had been one of the great perks to that little part-time teaching job she’d taken at the college. He was a terrific guy—a marine biologist and professor of oceanography. The forty-year-old was a divorced father of two preteen girls. Franci was one of the few certified divers in the nursing department and was the instructor with the most “open time” in her schedule, so she had been recruited to teach a short first-aid course to freshman dive students. Since she loved diving she jumped at the chance, which is how she met T.J. They ended up going on a couple of dive dates, which led to a few phone calls, which led to a few getting-to-know-you dinners, and what she found was an entertaining man who enjoyed many of the same things she did.
She liked the fact that he was ten years older than she; he seemed settled and he was definitely sure of himself. He had a stable career and was happy with where he was in life. She respected his parameters for a relationship: if they were intimate, they had to be exclusive, and while he was open to the idea of a long-term relationship, it had to be understood up front—he wasn’t having more children. After his second daughter was born, he’d had a vasectomy and he steered clear of women with ticking clocks and the expectations that went along with it. As far as what he was looking for, Franci knew he wanted to meet a fun, attractive, intelligent and mature woman to spend time with.