Chapter 7 #2
Andie turned toward him, laughing. Macey had dragged her into the middle of the action and begged her to write down all the gifts and who they were from.
Her reasoning had been that Andie was one of the sober few, but she suspected Macey was just trying to fit a square peg into a round hole.
It hadn’t been bad, she had to admit—everybody did their best to put her at ease—but she was more than ready to go home. Being sociable took a toll on her.
Andie said her good-byes and followed Clay out.
He’d parked a block away and didn’t utter a single word to her as they walked.
She would’ve been fine with the silence except it was so unlike Mr. Friendly.
Once they were driving away, she snuck a look at him.
His jaw was tight, mouth downcast in a frown.
His gaze pointed forward, on the road, but he was somewhere else.
“What’s wrong with you?” she asked as he turned onto a busy street toward the bridge to the island. “Someone piss you off?”
He shook his head minutely. “Did you need to get home right away or did you just want out of the party?”
“What do you think?”
Instead of answering, he flicked his turn signal and pulled unexpectedly into a dark, bayside park.
A few feet from the water’s edge, he killed the engine and got out.
Andie sat there weighing her options, sensing the storm beneath Clay’s quiet facade, wondering if she’d somehow upset him.
No, scratch that. Old habits died hard. She wasn’t responsible for Clay’s mood—she hadn’t even been near him since the moronic party games.
She got out and followed him to a bench by the shore.
“What happened, Clay?”
She saw his eyes narrow in the near-darkness and waited. Another minute.
She shrugged and had decided she wasn’t going to drag it out of him when he finally said something.
“Watching Evan and Selena tonight,” he said, then hesitated. “Seeing them open their gifts, looking forward to adding everything to the nursery, talking about who the baby might look like… That got to me.”
She leaned against the concrete back, sensing there was more.
“I missed all that.”
“With Payton,” she said unnecessarily.
“I missed the entire pregnancy, her birth, the first three months of her life.”
Andie had stayed with her cousin Jonas and his wife shortly after their daughter was born.
The first few weeks had been stressful but also vital for bonding.
She remembered getting up one night very late and seeing Jonas, mostly asleep in the recliner, feeding the baby, the baby’s wide eyes trained on her daddy.
She couldn’t imagine a father missing that. “Was it by choice?”
He laughed, a bitter, humorless sound. “Choice. Women talk about having a choice all the time but I had none. I had no idea I was a father until Robin decided it’d be worthwhile to get money out of me.”
“Did it work?”
“Did she get money out of me? Hell yes, it worked. I’d just found out I had a kid.” He started to say more but cut himself off.
Andie watched him, at a loss. She could feel how upset he was—it was as if there was a third person sitting there between them on the bench.
And yet she had no idea what to say or do.
For the first time, she saw past the image of the perfect guy.
Realized maybe his life wasn’t as easy and happy as she liked to blame him for.
“I’m sorry,” she said quietly. “That sucks. All of it.”
He shook his head slightly, closed his eyes for a beat. “No, I’m sorry. This isn’t your problem.”
“It’s good to think about someone else’s problems for a change,” she said, affected more than she wanted to be, more than she should be. “A judge actually granted this woman custody?”
“There are apparently plenty of them out there who tend to think just like my father—a baby’s better off with its mom.”
“Your father?”
“He’s a different long story that I don’t intend to tell tonight, but yes, he said to me, after I first found out about Payton, that she might be better off with her mother.”
“I take it you don’t get along well with him.” Maybe they had something in common after all.
“I’m his greatest disappointment.” He said it matter-of-factly, as if he’d accepted it years ago.
Andie frowned as she looked Clay over. What the hell about this man could be disappointing? “You have a police record or something?” she asked, grinning.
“Only as a juvie.”
Andie tilted her head in surprise.
“Minor stuff. But in the small town where I grew up, everyone found out. My dad was convinced I was out to ruin his career as a Texas senator.”
“Were you?”
“I didn’t care one way or the other about it. I was a selfish kid, just out to entertain myself.”
“That sounds halfway normal to me.”
Clay leaned forward, running his hands through his short hair. “I said I wasn’t going to talk about my dad,” he said tersely. “Subject closed.”
“Will Payton be asleep yet?”
“I wish. She’s a night owl, no matter what I try. Why?”
Andie stood. “You shouldn’t go home while you’re upset. Let’s go on a junk food run.”
“What do you have in mind?” he asked.
“We can do lots of damage at a convenience store. They have all the vital food groups.”
“Let me guess. Chocolate, donuts, pizza, and beer.” He leaned his elbows on his knees.
“Something like that. You in?” She knew firsthand how it felt to have anger unfairly taken out on you.
Especially when you were a kid and didn’t understand that adults could be mad about one thing and yell at someone else who had nothing to do with it.
Of course, chances were decent that Clay handled his emotions better than her dad ever had.
He stared at her as he also stood, a flicker of interest in his eyes. Heat? “You might be able to tempt me with a little sugar.” He moved closer, and the air between them changed. Became charged with a nearly tangible tension.
He stopped mere inches from her and Andie’s breath hitched.
“We probably shouldn’t kiss,” he said in a slow, husky near-whisper.
“Probably not. If we want to stick to our agreement…” She wasn’t sure how she made her voice work.
His mouth was so close she could feel his breath on her skin. He closed his eyes and took a step back. Finally he gestured for her to precede him back to the truck, and Andie tried to ignore the humming of her blood through her veins.
“Okay,” Andie said as they made their way up and down the aisles at the brightly lit convenience store. “Chocolate, check. Donuts, check. Pizza, check. Lemonade, check.”
“Got all the groups except beer,” Clay said, amused by her enthusiasm over such a simple thing. He hadn’t seen this lighthearted, easygoing side of her before. Maybe she was trying to distract him. If so, it was starting to work.
“I’ll leave that up to you. I don’t drink it,” she said as she went toward the line of freezers against the back wall. “Popsicles, on the other hand...”
“You don’t drink beer, or you don’t drink?”
“Yes.” She pulled out a box of double popsicles and added them to the week’s worth of junk they were already lugging around.
“Huh,” he said to himself and picked up a pint of vanilla ice cream with chocolate bunnies in it that he thought Payton would like.
“What’s ‘huh’?” she asked, pausing in the aisle for him to catch up.
“You told me you throw parties, have a police record, and yet…no alcohol?”
“Stereotyping much?” She set the items on the front counter. “Oh, and I lied about the parties. In case you couldn’t tell tonight, I’m allergic to them.”
He laughed and shook his head, seeing her a little differently. Not so…stereotypically.
“Try living with my father for a day and you’ll decide you can do without alcohol too.”
“Does he have a drinking problem?” Clay asked.
“Among many others. Do we have everything we need?”
“You could use some laundry detergent,” he said, glancing down at her jeans. She had a grass stain on her knee from their fall during the relay game.
Andie inspected her jeans, grinned, and shrugged. “Are you sure you want to be seen with such a disreputable biker chick?”
He thought she was joking but he wasn’t entirely sure.
“I think my reputation is strong enough to handle a little tarnishing.”
They split the cost of everything, Andie lifted the bag, and they turned to leave.
“I’ll take that,” Clay said, reaching over to grab the bag from her.
His arm brushed against her breast, and in an instant he was hyper-alert to everything about her—the way she didn’t move away from him, the berry scent of her hair, the surprise in her eyes.
His pulse kicked up as if she were standing there naked in front of him.
“What a small world.”
Clay abruptly turned toward the speaker at the door.
“Got to be kidding me,” Clay mumbled so only Andie could hear.
Morris Lipp, his ex-girlfriend’s uncle and, more significantly, her shark attorney, breezed into the store.
“Nice to see you enjoying the night life, Clay.” The asshole looked every last inch of Andie over as if he were selecting a steak for his dinner.
“What are you doing on the island, Lipp?” Clay asked, striving to keep his tone indifferent.
“Enjoying a relaxing weekend.” The man’s chin went up an inch, and he grinned as he looked at Andie again. “It’s pretty late…where’s Payton?”
“That’s none of your business,” Clay said automatically.
Morris held out his hand to Andie. “I don’t believe we’ve met. I’m Morris Lipp.”
“Pleasure,” Andie said. When she didn’t reciprocate with her name, Clay wanted to hug the hell out of her.
“Catch you later, Lipp,” he said as he ushered Andie outside.
“What was that?" Andie asked as soon as they got in the truck and closed the doors.
He wanted to collapse against the headrest, but Lipp was still in there, and he refused to show any sign of weakness. “That was Payton’s mother’s lawyer.”
Andie’s eyes widened and she looked down at her grungy clothes. “Shit. That’s not good.”
“Nothing about that bastard is good.”
“He won’t use this against you, will he? Or me? That we were shopping for food together?”
Clay had no doubt Lipp would dig until he found out who Andie was and then dig some more, into her past, her business, anything that would show what an irresponsible father Clay was. “You were smart not giving him your name.” It would slow him down a little, at least. Make him work.
Andie closed her eyes. “Shit. I’m sorry, Clay. This is why we’re not supposed to be together.” They’d been in public for less than ten minutes. Morris Lipp didn’t even live on the island, though Clay had run into him once before, a couple of years ago. What were the damn odds?
“Nothing we can do now but eat the crap food we bought and hope for a sugar coma.” He tried to keep his tone light.
If Lipp used her past against him in the custody case, Clay had no one but himself to blame.
Some things never changed.
Andie sat alone on the futon in her living room, shoving powdered donuts into her mouth. She’d ended up dividing the food between her and Clay and sending him on his way. She’d done enough damage for one night.
The thought that she might have harmed Clay’s custody case unnerved her.
She didn’t know a lot about the situation, and what she did know was from Clay’s perspective, but she felt certain Payton’s mom was bad news and the wrong option for Payton.
Such a sweet girl deserved the best…not a mom who was coked up or drunk all the time.
Regardless of whatever trouble Clay had had as a teenager, he seemed like a dedicated, honorable dad now.
How many lives would be changed if all parents were like him? How different would Andie be today if she’d had someone as decent as Clay for a father?
And because of her, because of her past, really, since she hadn’t broken any laws for some time, a child’s future could be messed up.
Andie wasn’t proud of her teen years, when she’d have done—did do—just about anything to stay away from her father.
And then there was her gargantuan mistake, Trevor.
She’d made bad decisions and gotten into a terrible position, one she’d felt like she couldn’t get out of.
And she was still paying for it today in so many ways.
But dammit, who was that lawyer to use her mistakes as a way to ruin a kid’s life?
Andie tossed the donut box on the cushion beside her and propelled herself off the couch. She wasn’t the same person she used to be and the new post-Trevor Andie was a woman who refused to let others make her feel bad about herself. She’d had enough of that for a lifetime.
She hadn’t done a damn thing wrong tonight. She’d been trying to do something right.
She pulled the door to the tiny balcony back harder than necessary, and it slammed into the wall. Ignoring it, she went out into the steamy, quiet night. Breathed in the humid air. Closed her eyes and focused on the insect noises, the hum of the air conditioner when it came on.
That asshole lawyer had somehow made her feel like dirt in the two minutes they’d been in contact with him. Clay had too, to an extent, even though he’d tried to act like everything would be okay.
Andie could keep her distance from Clay and Payton; that was no problem. But she would not keep beating herself up for a past she couldn’t change. She wouldn’t give anyone that kind of power over her again.