Chapter 15
Chapter Fifteen
Zoey was tucked up in clean cream sheets, under plaid blankets. “I’ve had the best day,” she said.
Brodie was walking past the doorway and paused when he heard her say it. Now that she was going to bed—and he wasn’t having to perform, could sit down and finally have a drink—he saw it all as much sweeter.
He listened as Maeve said, “Good, I’m glad. Now go to sleep because you’re really tired.”
He peered in without them seeing and saw Maeve kiss her on the forehead and, stroking her hair back, say, “Call me if you need anything.” Then she turned the sidelight off and started toward the door.
Brodie backed away so she wouldn’t catch him listening.
Zoey said, “Mom?”
“Yeah.”
“He could be your boyfriend.”
Brodie bit down on a smile. It was cute. The kid was persistent.
He heard Maeve laugh. “No, Zo, he couldn’t.”
Brodie cocked his head and frowned at how easily she dismissed the idea. He caught his reflection in an old gilt mirror on the wall. Why not? What was wrong with him? He knew he was a better-than-average-looking guy, women flocked to him.
Zoey voiced his question for him. “Why not?”
Maeve paused.
He thought suddenly that she was going to tell her that he was her dad and he felt his heart almost stop, terror chase up his spine.
How flippant he’d been when he’d told Maeve to tell her.
Now he realized he was in no way ready for that revelation.
Maeve of course didn’t say anything other than, “Because he’s just a friend. ”
And Brodie felt his heart start up again.
He went and sat outside on the Adirondack chair, ankle crossed over his knee, looking out at the last embers of the sun rippling over the water.
Thought of Maeve referring to him as a friend.
It made him chuckle that she’d been forced to say it because he knew he was someone who wouldn’t normally register on her friendship radar.
He imagined her friends sat around discussing literature and analyzing complex medical dilemmas.
He knew she thought he was flighty. But she wasn’t someone he would usually align himself with.
His bunch of friends were carefree and fun-loving, ring one of them up and suggest an impromptu trip to the Alps or Long Island and they were there.
When any of them peeled off into the married-with-kids bracket he tended to wave them off with a wry look of pity.
He imagined them watching, dumbfounded, as he played happy families at the cabin.
Maeve came out onto the deck, her hair tied haphazardly on top of her head, wearing gray tracksuit bottoms and the yellow T-shirt. “That’s a crazy view,” she said.
He noticed she made no effort to dress up.
Not that he would have expected her to, it just wasn’t what he was used to.
Usually, there would be skin-tight leggings or a flash of bare midriff.
But it wasn’t just that she didn’t dress to impress, it was that she wore things he had an active dislike for, like Birkenstocks—with their round toes like ugly mushrooms—worn with white sports socks.
She didn’t seem to care what he thought of how she looked, which, he had to admit, was an anomaly in the women he met.
Part of him wondered if she was doing it deliberately to put him off, but that felt too contrived for someone like Maeve.
There was a possibility she actually didn’t care what he thought.
He gestured for her to sit in the other Adirondack. “Do you want a drink?” He’d brought out the champagne and a couple of glasses. She laughed when she saw them, and he knew she was mocking his choice of beverage. Most women Brodie knew loved a glass of champagne in a mountain cabin.
“That would be lovely, thank you.” She sat down in the seat next to him, sitting back but definitely not relaxed.
The bubbles fizzed over the edge of the glass and ran down the side over his hand. He shook the liquid off as he handed her the glass. “Sorry, I can usually pour better than that.”
“It’s fine. I don’t usually drink champagne and watch the sunset.”
He wondered then if she hadn’t been mocking him, rather had been momentarily taken aback by the decadence.
She sipped her drink. Brodie sipped his. “You like it?” he asked, knowing that it was a loaded question.
Maeve shrugged. “Yeah, it’s really nice.”
Brodie said, “It’s from my vineyard in Napa. It’s not actually champagne—we’re not allowed to call it that because it’s not from Champagne—but it’s up there with the best.” He was showing off, he couldn’t help it, he did it on autopilot around women.
Maeve smiled politely, didn’t seem massively impressed with the quality of his sparkling vintage. Instead, she said, “I didn’t know you had a vineyard. That must be a lot of work.”
“For the people who run it, yeah!” Brodie joked.
“You’re not involved?” She seemed surprised.
Brodie shrugged. “I’m not really there enough. When I am, it’s great. But it’s more of an investment.”
Her silent nod propelled him to say more, not liking the impression she was forming of him swaggering into his vineyard a couple of times a year to taste the Pinot Noir.
“I actually have learned quite a lot,” he admitted because her values seemed to be different to those of the people he hung around with—who were more concerned with when the next bottle would be opened.
“I didn’t think I’d be that interested in vines but—” He glanced to see if she was listening.
“Well, they’re complicated little fellas. ”
“Yeah,” she agreed. “John-Luke has some at the orchard. I watch him out there talking to them.”
“I’ll admit I’ve never said a word to my vines,” he replied, and she laughed, mouth closed, eyes creasing as she looked down at the glass in her lap. It felt as if some of the awkwardness between them was lessening.
But then they lapsed into silence again.
Brodie hated any kind of social discomfort or unease.
He knew it probably had something to do with his dad—the protracted silences that came with Emmett’s stern disapproval of the boys when they’d done something wrong, silences that Brodie itched to fill, to crack a joke, to make it good again and eventually run as far away as he could.
But it was Maeve who said, “How did you find today?” and he imagined her using the same tone as she stood at the side of a patient’s bed, calmly assessing.
“Good,” he said. Then, “Exhausting!” Maybe to try and make her laugh and it worked. She laughed out loud, seemingly surprising herself.
“I take it that’s what most days are like?” He gestured back to where Zoey was asleep, thinking he could happily shut his eyes and take a little nap.
“Yes,” Maeve replied, still with the hint of a smile. “It’s hardcore.”
“You’re telling me.” He blew out a breath. The most brutal bits had been when he was just having a sit down and Zoey ran over, grabbed his hand and dragged him to look at some poor frog quivering under a rock or beg him to climb the pine tree to get a fir cone.
“It’s better now she’s older.”
Brodie felt his eyes widen. “Better?”
He watched her brows draw together as she looked at him like he was joking. “Yeah, way better.”
He shook his head. He couldn’t have spent eight years doing that. He’d be a wreck. Again, the image of himself prostrate on his yacht flashed into his head. “Wow.” He wondered if he was missing a trick somewhere. “And you’re a doctor, too.” He was genuinely perplexed.
She laughed and he thought he saw her relax a little.
She leaned back in her chair and, rolling her head his way, said, “I guess—” She paused, rolled her lips together as she thought about what to say.
“It’s hard but you just get on with it.” She sipped her drink, the condensation fogging the glass.
“I got through it, that’s the best I did. ”
“Please!” From what Brodie had seen of her so far, he imagined she’d aced it. “I’m picturing you sitting in classes with a baby strapped to your front, blazing a trail with all those crusty Stanford professors.”
He couldn’t even imagine getting into somewhere like Stanford, let alone with the goal of medical school.
Brodie had dropped out of school at fifteen when they’d signed with the record label.
They’d had tutors, but he didn’t pay a huge amount of attention.
Who wanted to do lessons when there were mobs of screaming girls outside and interviewers begging for an audience, and cities to explore after dark?
He was living his best life, and algebra didn’t register highly on that agenda.
Maeve put her wine glass down on the deck and, taking a deep breath as if bracing for something, said, “I wasn’t at Stanford, Brodie.”
He was intuitive enough to know that the statement meant something. He found himself wanting to rewind five minutes and go back to talking about the vineyard. He said, “My mistake, sorry, I thought you were.”
She considered for a moment, then said, “I mean, I was at Stanford,” she corrected herself. “But not when I had Zoey.”
Brodie shifted a fraction in his seat. He thought about saying that his vineyard had a fourteenth-century, Tuscan-inspired castle on the grounds. Instead, he said what he was meant to say, which was, “What happened?”
She bit her bottom lip for a second, then she tucked her leg underneath her and turned his way, as if she knew she had to go through this at some point.
“My parents—Let’s just say they weren’t too happy about the fact I was pregnant.
Or, you know—” she swallowed awkwardly “—the circumstances around it.”
The more time Brodie spent with Maeve, the more he could recall glimpses of the night they spent together.
His main memory had been of a very pretty girl with a really sexy pair of silver boots.
But he was starting to recall other stuff, too.
Like a lot of laughing. And ripping open a packet of hotel hot chocolate when normally he’d ordered up expensive room service.
He had an inkling they’d played Super Mario, which didn’t usually happen on his nights with women.
Either way, in his view of it there were no life?changing ramifications. No sad eyes or heads bowed in shame.
“My parents were paying for Stanford, and, well, when they knew there was going to be a baby, they decided that it was no longer the best use of their money.” She glanced up, eyes narrowing in humorless amusement, like that was the polite way of saying what her parents had said.
“They felt that I had not made the best use of my potential.” She smiled wryly as she said it like she’d lived with those words, that disappointment, for a long time.
Her parents obviously had the same playbook as his dad.
“So, where did you study then?” he asked, reluctant to let go of the halcyon picture he’d painted of Maeve with a baby sling and a Stanford sweater frolicking around campus with her cooing college friends.
“Jackson University.”
That made Brodie pause. “I didn’t even know Jackson had a university.”
She laughed and said diplomatically, “It’s very small, but it’s okay.”
“It’s not Stanford, though.”
“No—” she shook her head “—it’s not Stanford.
But it worked. My grandma, she lived in the house in Autumn Falls, she let me come live with her.
She went against my parents, which I know was really tough for her.
” Maeve stopped talking and reached down for the champagne glass that she’d put on the deck.
In that pause, Brodie tried to think what he’d been doing at that time. A world tour. Having, he hated to admit it, an absolutely fantastic time.
Maeve clearly needed a subject change and, looking out toward the lake as she took a sip of the sparkling wine, said, “I’ve never seen the river this still, it’s perfect.”
The sun had disappeared behind the pines, the last shafts of light dancing between the branches and glinting off the river like silver fish.
Brodie said, “Go for a swim.” He felt weirdly guilty thinking about how he’d been jetting across the globe, soaring over the crowds at various international stadiums on high wires while Maeve was living with a screaming baby—his screaming baby—a grandma, and at the same time commuting to nowheresville, Jackson to study for a medical degree.
“No way!” She looked at him like he was crazy for suggesting a swim. “I couldn’t.”
“Why not?”
“Because.”
“That’s not a proper answer.” Then gesturing toward the view, he said, “Go, honestly, you won’t regret it. I’ve got it covered here.”
He had an ulterior motive for suggesting it, he craved a bit of time to sit back and relax, to think of nothing.
He tried his hardest in life to avoid any kind of heavy conversation, it was a good tactic until it thwacked into him like a freight train.
It seemed to be happening more and more recently.
First when his older brother Jack died a few years back, and now this news about Zoey.
He tried not to think too much about things he didn’t want to, but these big moments would sideswipe him when he least expected it.
It still shocked him about Jack. He had seen him so rarely in the years leading up to his death that it was easy to imagine him still alive, living in LA, shooting his new movie.
Jack and Brodie hadn’t been the closest as adults, but as kids, Brodie had spent a lot of time hiding out with Jack avoiding ranch work.
Jack knew all the best places to lie low.
They’d spent many hours together sniggering in the gap between the wall and the chicken coop as one of his brothers called their names, trying to find them to help.
They’d eat cookies snuck out from the house and talk trash.
It was only when his dad’s booming voice would cut across the yard with the threat of some hideous punishment that Jack would push Brodie out and make him take the first round of the verbal lashing.
Jack would saunter over later when the worst of Emmett’s annoyance was over.
It happened time and again, Brodie never learned.
When Jack died, it was like all those memories of their childhood antics flared back to life, popping up when he’d least expect it, filling him with equal amounts of disdain and nostalgia for life in Autumn Falls, a place he had previously thought very little about.
Those memories had kept burning bright ever since, however much he tried to tamp them down again.