Chapter 7
D elilah tried to get the boys some kind of physical exercise every day—the more strenuous, the better. She’d found through hard-won experience that whenever they started to act up—talking back to her or just acting squirrelly, unable to sit still—it helped to wear them out.
She’d tried taking them walking on the bluff trails at Fiscalini Ranch, with its stunning views just steps from the rocky shoreline. But the narrow bluff trail was popular with the locals, some of whom didn’t seem to appreciate the boys’ roughhousing and general shenanigans.
So today, she took them to upper Fiscalini with its wider and less traveled network of trails. Up there, on the grassy hillside overlooking the ocean in the distance, the boys could get up to whatever they wanted without bothering anyone—and without the risk that one of them might tumble into the ocean.
The morning was foggy and cool, and Delilah pulled her sweater around her as she walked, the boys looking for squirrels up ahead.
These walks weren’t just for the sake of the boys’ fitness and behavior. When they went well—when the boys became absorbed in looking for rocks or chasing lizards or playing whatever game they’d concocted for themselves—it gave Delilah a chance to turn off her mind and just be.
And these days, she really needed time to just be.
Once the holidays were over and they vacated Otter Bluff, Delilah would have to do no less than invent a new life for herself and her children. Sometimes, the prospect of that threatened to drown her in anxiety and doubt. A stretch of time in which she didn’t think of anything except the sounds of the birds and the feel of the wind was precious to her. She closed her eyes and tipped up her head to breathe in the ocean air.
“Looks like this walk is going a lot smoother than the last one.” The deep voice interrupted her reverie, and her eyes flew open to see Quinn Monroe grinning at her.
When Quinn had seen the woman and her two kids ahead of him on the trail, something about her silhouette had told him it was Delilah and her boys. He’d dismissed the thought at first. He was too far back to see her, really, and it had seemed like wishful thinking.
As he got closer, he saw that he was right—it was her. And those were her boys gamboling around on the trail, letting out the occasional hoot of joy.
He wondered for a moment whether he should turn around before she saw him. After all, he was undeniably attracted to her, and getting involved with a single mother was worse than opening a can of worms—it was more like diving into a swimming pool of worms. Carnivorous ones. With fangs.
But he couldn’t seem to help himself, especially when she tipped her head back and closed her eyes, making him feel like he was privy to a secret, intimate moment that the two of them were sharing. Even if she wasn’t aware they were sharing it.
So he spoke to her, and now she was looking at him as though she was returning to reality from wherever it was she’d been.
“Oh. Quinn.” She blinked a few times, like she was just waking up after a restful sleep.
“I love the fog,” he said, apropos of nothing. “The sun is too easy. Everybody loves sunshine. It’s a cliché. Fog is so much more mysterious. So much more complex.” And why was he doing a soliloquy on fog? No wonder she was looking at him like he was crazy. He’d have looked at himself the same way.
“Me too,” she said after a while. “The fog. It’s soft. It’s gentle. Like all of the hard edges have been smoothed off of everything.” Now she was doing a soliloquy on fog, too, so he guessed his own didn’t seem so awkward.
Now what? Should he wish her a good day and walk on ahead? Go back where he’d come from and leave her to it?
He didn’t want to do either of those things. What he wanted was to walk with her, to talk about her day and his, to get to know her a little.
The thing with Quinn and women was that he rarely denied himself what he wanted—no matter how many problems that had caused over the course of his lifetime.
He was probably too set in his ways to change, though, so he put it out there.
“Mind if I walk with you?”
“Oh.” She looked surprised at first, then a slow grin spread across her face. “I suppose that’ll be handy if Jesse hurls himself into a ravine.”
“See?” he said. “It’s just a matter of safety.”
They might have exchanged more flirtatious repartee, but the boys chose that moment to look back toward their mother and notice that Quinn was there.
At first, the tilt of Jesse’s head, the hesitation in his movements, suggested that he hadn’t recognized the man talking to his mother. Then, he jerked to attention and yelled, “Quinn!”
Jesse, with Gavin at his heels, ran to where Quinn was standing, and the two of them began peppering him with questions.
“What are you doing here?”
“Did you come to see my mom?”
“Are you walking here, too?”
“Do you ever bring people here? Like, for your job?”
“Have you ever seen a snake?”
Quinn laughed and patted the air in front of him with his hands, willing them to slow down.
“Lemme take those one at a time. I just ran into your mom on accident, because yes, I’m taking a walk, just like you are. No, I don’t bring clients here because it’s an easy trail and people don’t get lost or in trouble here. Not usually, although you might be able to manage it, Jesse. And yes, I’ve seen tons of snakes. Billions.”
“Billions?” Gavin’s eyes widened.
“Well, not really billions. But a lot. Most of them are harmless, and they’ll leave you alone if you don’t bother them.”
“Boys, that’s enough with the questions,” Delilah told them.
“We just started our walk,” Jesse said. “Mom says we have to get our ya-yas out, but I told her a ya-ya isn’t even a thing.”
“I know it’s not a thing,” Delilah said gently. “It’s just an expression.”
“So are they out yet?” Quinn asked.
“I don’t think so,” Gavin said solemnly.
“Well, then I guess we’d better keep walking,” he said.
The look on Jesse’s face—the joy and excitement at the thought that Quinn would be proceeding on the trail with them—embarrassed Quinn because he knew he couldn’t possibly be worthy of that kind of admiration.
As they began walking together, Quinn wanted to reach out and take Delilah’s hand.
That would have felt so natural, so right. But that was crazy, since they hardly knew each other. Since they’d barely talked.
His hand needed to get its damned impulses under control.
Delilah hadn’t realized how starved she was for adult conversation until Quinn showed up and suddenly she was having one.
Talking to Jesse and Gavin was fine—it was better than fine, in fact; it was one of her favorite things to do—but she always had to filter with them. She always had to act calm and in control so they wouldn’t be scared about whatever their future held.
Sometimes, Delilah longed to admit to someone that her life had been run through a wood chipper and she now had to make something decent out of the resulting chips.
Why the hell shouldn’t she admit all of that to Quinn? It wasn’t like she was going to see him again after today.
“So, does their dad ever take them hiking or camping?” Quinn asked.
Delilah saw that for what it was—a fishing expedition regarding her marital status. She knew she should keep her private business to herself, but she was so tired of filtering, so tired of struggling to stay strong, that she couldn’t do it for even one more minute.
The boys had run up ahead on the trail again, so they were out of earshot. Why not just come clean with it?
“No, he doesn’t. Their father moved to Paris with his mistress, and we haven’t seen him in months. Except when I took him to court for spousal and child support.”
“Holy shit.” His voice was tinged with awe. “How did the settlement work out?”
“Well enough. I can take care of the boys without having to work three jobs. Or any, for now. But no amount of money would be worth what we’ve gone through.”
“I guess not. What does he do?”
Delilah glanced at Quinn as they walked. “He’s an attorney. Corporate. Formerly of Wall Street, now of the firm’s Paris office.”
“He’s an attorney and he didn’t know he had to pay alimony and child support?”
“Oh, he knew. That’s just it. He knew everything. He knew exactly how long he could put it off without having to pay, and he knew exactly how to do it. Meanwhile, I got a job bagging groceries for minimum wage so I could buy food for his children. It wasn’t enough. I had to borrow money from my parents to pay the utility bills.” She shook her head, the bitterness still fresh. “And he had zero remorse about it, even though he was the one who left me. He was the one who cheated.” She could hear the anger and spite in her voice, and she willed herself to tone it down. Quinn didn’t need to hear all of this. He didn’t need to be saddled with the job of soothing her emotional wounds.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
“Yeah. Thanks.” They crested a hill and stood to look at the ocean spreading out far below them.”You know what the worst part of it is?” she asked, continuing to talk about it even as she told herself to stop it.
“What?”
“Not bad-mouthing him to the boys. Keeping positive in front of them. Reassuring them that their father loves them and wants the best for them, contrary to all appearances.”
“God. I can’t imagine.”
She glanced at him. “Are you married?”
“No.”
“Ever been?”
He shook his head. “No.”
“Well, don’t.” She couldn’t seem to keep the venom out of her voice. “Because those vows? They didn’t mean anything. He promised in front of God to devote his life to me, and that didn’t stop him from walking away the minute things stopped being fun. The minute our marriage stopped meeting his own selfish needs …”
Damn it. Now she was crying. Not loud boo-hooing, thank God, but a tear slipped down her cheek entirely against her will. She wiped it away and folded her arms across her chest. She let out a bitter laugh. “Clearly, I’m a ray of sunshine.”
Quinn wondered what, exactly, he’d stumbled onto.
He’d been interested in talking to Delilah, in walking with her a little, because she was attractive and appealing. But he hadn’t anticipated the emotional landmines that had been set for him to step on.
He had conflicting emotions: Part of him wanted to excuse himself, make up some errand he’d forgotten to do or some appointment he was late for, and get the hell out of there. But another part of him wanted to fly to Paris, track down Delilah’s ex, and kick the crap out of him.
What kind of man abandoned his wife and children? And what kind of man would want to leave Delilah in the first place?
Oh, there were two sides to every story—he knew that. But right now, damned if he could think of what her ex’s side of it might be.
“So you’re here, what? Taking a break from your problems?” he asked.
“Something like that. Our house was sold in the settlement, so we’re between places.” She smiled, just a little. “We came here so I could think. So I could take some time to contemplate what comes next. And, I might be running away from my family until the holidays are over. I’d have to admit that’s a factor.”
“Don’t tell me they’re taking his side.”
“Not exactly. But they do think the split is just temporary—something we’ll both get over. And they treat me like I’m damaged. As if I’m going to break into a thousand pieces like some delicate crystal figurine.”
“Or like a bomb that’s set to go off,” he suggested.
“Yes, also that.”
They walked a little more while the boys chased a rabbit that had found its way onto the trail.
“So, that’s my story,” she said. “What’s yours?”
“I don’t have a story.”
She guffawed. “That’s not true. Everybody has a story.”
Okay, she was right. He had a story. But damned if he was going to tell it to her.
What was this, a competition for whose life was more fucked up? She’d probably win, all things considered, but not by much.
“Come on,” she said. “I’m a stranger. You’re probably never going to see me again. Why not tell me?”
He shrugged, then lied to her. “There’s nothing to tell.”
He could see on her face that she didn’t believe him—not for a second. He gave her a half grin—tacit admission that she was right and he was holding out on her—then ran ahead to look at the lizard the boys had found.