The Next Always

  “I’m probably heading up there myself. Is Clare around?”

  “Down in the annex, putting things back together. Don’t step on the toddlers.”

  In the annex, Clare packed art supplies into a chest. She wore black pants today, snug through the butt with a white, lacy blouse that cuffed at her elbows.

  He thought he’d like to kiss her there, in that tender crease at her elbow. He thought he’d like to kiss her anywhere. Everywhere.

  A couple of women chatted as they considered a display of candles, one rocking a stroller back and forth with the kid inside it sucking its thumb with fierce intensity. The other woman carried an infant sleeping in one of those slings across her chest.

  The stroller kid gave Beckett a hard, suspicious stare, as if he might steal the precious thumb. Probably not the optimum time for kissing the inside of Clare’s elbow, Beckett decided.

  “Hiya.”

  She looked over, colorful strips of felt in her hand. “Hiya back.”

  “I heard you had a successful return to Story Time.”

  “We did, a sure sign summer’s over. It’s the first one I’ve done without one of my own kids here, and that’s another transition. How are things going?”

  “Moving along. You should come over later, see the changes.”

  “I’d like to if I can manage it. I’m going to email you the file on the copy once I finish up here. I think we can do better, once we see everything in place. But I tried to make it fun and appealing.”

  “Great. I’ll take a look. Here, I’ll get that.” He picked up the case before she could.

  “It’s not heavy. I’m just going to put it in the back.” Since he didn’t give it back, she glanced at the customers. “I’ll show you where it goes. Are you finding everything all right?” she asked the women.

  “Yeah, thanks. I’m crazy about these handbags.”

  “Made from recycled video tape, plastic bags. Clever, pretty, and green. Just let me know if you need any help.”

  She led Beckett around to the little alcove outside the back room. “I keep it on the top shelf there since I only use it once a month. I always thought I’d be crafty, like one of those mothers who can make a toy car out of a cereal box and rubber bands.”

  “MacGyver Mom.”

  “Exactly. But that didn’t work out.”

  “I always thought I’d pitch a no-hitter for the O’s. That didn’t work out either.”

  “Life’s a series of disappointments.” She smiled when he gave the dangle of her earring a flick. “And surprises.”

  “Kids okay?”

  “Back to normal and in school. Praise Jesus.”

  “Why don’t we have a dry run of Friday night? I’ll buy you lunch.”

  She thought of Sam Freemont and his damn country club, and how much she’d have preferred to grab a hot dog at Crawford’s or a slice at Vesta with Beckett.

  “That’s a nice offer, and I wish I could. The girls and I are getting delivery and finalizing our holiday orders. Christmas,” she explained.

  “Christmas? We just had Labor Day five minutes ago.”

  “Which shows you’ve never worked in retail. We need to get the card order in this afternoon.”

  “There’s that series of disappointments again, so I’ll have to settle for this.”

  He leaned down, found her mouth with his. With the women on the other side of the wall laughing, the phone ringing, the infant squalling awake, he sank in.

  Too long, he thought. Too long until Friday when he could, for a few hours at least, have her to himself. Everything about her called to him, her taste, her scent, the shape of her body as he drew her closer.

  “Hey, Clare, there’s a—Oops, sorry.”

  Laurie cast her eyes, very deliberately, at the ceiling when Clare and Beckett broke apart.

  “Is there a problem?” Clare thought she pulled off casual. Or nearly.

  “There’s a man on the phone who insists on speaking to the owner. I could tell him you . . . stepped out, take his number.”

  “That’s all right. I’ll take it in the back room.”

  “All right. Get you anything, Beckett?” Laurie batted her eyelashes. “A cold drink?”

  “No, I’m good. I’d better get going.”

  “See you soon.” Laurie walked off humming.

  “Sorry,” Clare told him. “I’d better take care of this.”

  “I’ll head out the back. Come on over if you get a chance.”

  “I’ll try.” She watched him go, wished, as he had, for Friday. She laid one hand on her fluttering stomach, the other on the phone. Maybe he was good, but she could use that cold drink.

  “Sorry to keep you waiting,” she said into the phone. “This is Clare Brewster.”

  When she finished the call, she walked back to the main store. After the bustle and noise of the morning, she found the quiet lull welcome.

  Until she saw the gleam in Cassie’s eye.

  “I called in our lunch order,” Laurie told her.

  “Great. Let’s get the catalog and order sheet so we—Stop,” she demanded as both women grinned at her.

  “I can’t help it.” Laurie bounced in her chair. “You can’t expect me to walk into you and Beckett Montgomery in a major lip-lock and not react.”

  “I wished I’d answered the phone, then I’d have come looking for you,” Cassie complained. “Damn customers. I knew there was sparkage, and everybody knows you were going out last week before the kids got sick.”

  “Booted right on his shoes.”

  Clare winced. “And everybody knows that, too?”

  “I ran into Mrs. Ridenour in the park on Sunday and asked how the date went. She told me. Sucks for everybody. Anyway, we can’t miss how he comes in here pretty much every day—nothing new there—but lately the two of you have been flirty.”

  “Flirty?”

  “Discreetly flirty. Or so I thought until I find you sneaking off to the back room to fool around.”

  “We weren’t fooling around. It was . . . It was just a kiss.”

  “Smoking-hot kiss.” Laurie waved her hand in front of her face. “So, is it serious or just a little thing?”

  “Laurie, we haven’t even officially gone out yet.”

  “If a guy kissed me like that, I wouldn’t go out either. We’d stay home. But then, you’ve got the kids so—And I’m being really nosy. I’ll zip it.” She mimed zipping her lips. “I just liked seeing the two of you together. Plus, smoking.”

  “And on that note, I’m getting a soda.”

  She didn’t snicker until she was out of range. She imagined her rep had just taken a huge leap.

  And Laurie was right. It had been a smoking-hot kiss.

  She’d like more of the same. Soon.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  TAKE TWO, BECKETT THOUGHT AS HE BANGED THE knocker on Clare’s door. This time he carried a cheerful bouquet of white daisies. No point in jinxing things by bringing her the same flowers as last week.

  It struck him as a little weird, not just the deja vu, but especially the intense anticipation for the evening because of the postponement.

  Just dinner, he reminded himself. He had to stop making such a big deal out of it in his head, or he’d screw up. He’d played it all over in his mind so often you’d think they were winging off to Paris to dine at . . . wherever people dined in Paris.

  He’d have to ask her if she’d been there. She’d done so much more traveling than he had. Maybe she spoke French. Hadn’t she taken French in high school? He seemed to remember—

  Good God, cut it out, he ordered himself.

  He didn’t know whether to cheer or run when she opened the door.

  She hadn’t wanted to jinx it either, he decided. She wore a different dress, this one with pink and white swirls topped with a thin pink sweater that stopped at her elbows. And made him think about kissing that spot again.

  Should he have brought the pink roses? Was this a signal?
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  “I’m going to get spoiled.” She reached for the flowers. “I’ll start expecting flowers every Friday night.”

  “Thought I’d mix it up.”

  “Good plan, and thanks. Come on in. I’ll put them in water before we go.” As he did, she eyed the little shopping bag in his hand. “More?”

  “Not for you.” As if to keep it out of reach, he shifted it to his other hand. “You’ve had enough. It’s a bribe so nobody pukes on me. A game for the PlayStation. I got a pretty good look at what they’ve got when I hung out with them, and I didn’t see this one. Where are they? Did you lock them in a closet?”

  “No, but my parents may have by now. They’re having a sleepover at Marmie’s and Granddad’s.”

  “Oh.” His mind instantly landed on all the things they could do to each other, alone in the house.

  Slow down, buddy, that’s not what this is about. Slow and steady, a step at a time. He followed her into the kitchen, watched as she dealt with the flowers.

  “Quiet in here,” he commented.

  “I know. I can never decide if it’s spooky or bliss when they have a sleepover. I guess it’s spooky bliss.”

  “You’re not afraid to stay in the house alone, are you?” He could offer to stay over, sleep in the kids’ room.

  Or somewhere.

  “Not as long as I don’t cave and read a horror novel. It’s a weakness, and then I sleep with the light on. I’ve never figured out how leaving the light on saves you from the vampires or ghosts or demons. There.” She stepped back to examine the flowers. “They’re so pretty. Should we go?”

  “Yeah, I guess we’d better.” So he’d stop thinking of her bed upstairs, no kids in the house.

  “That’s not your truck,” she said when they walked outside.

  “No. Mom refused to let me take you out, at least this time, in a pickup, so she handed me the keys. Felt like high school.”

  “When’s your curfew?”

  “I know all the ways to sneak into the house.”

  She pondered that while he slid behind the wheel. “Did you really? Sneak into the house as a kid?”

  “Sure. I didn’t always get away with it, none of us did, but you had to try.” He glanced at her as he drove. “No?”

  “No, I didn’t, and now I feel deprived.”

  “If you want, when we get back, I’ll help you climb in through a window.”

  “Tempting, but just not the same when I have the key. What did you do that you had to sneak in?”

  He took a long pause. “Stuff.”

  “Hmmm. Now I have to worry if one day the boys will decide to do stuff, then sneak into the house. But not tonight. My biggest problem with them at the moment is Murphy’s decided his life is unfulfilled unless he has a puppy, and they’ve joined forces against me.”

  “You don’t like dogs?”

  “I like dogs, and they should have a dog. Eventually.”

  “Is that like Mom for we’ll see?

  “It’s in the neighborhood,” she admitted. “I think about it because they ought to have a dog. They adore my parents’ pug, Lucy, and Fido the cat.”

  “Your parents have a cat named Fido? Why didn’t I know that?”

  “He thinks he’s a dog, so we don’t spread it around. Anyway, I think they should have one, feel guilty they don’t. Then I think, oh God, who’s going to housebreak it, train it, haul it to the vet, feed it and walk it and all the rest? I tried to talk them into a kitten, but they’re not having it. Kittens, Liam informed me, with no little disgust, are for girls. I don’t know where they get that.”

  She arched her eyebrows at his profile. “You agree with him?”

  “Kittens are for girls. Cats now, they can go either way.”

  “You know that’s ridiculous.”

  “I don’t make the rules. What kind of dog do they want?”

  “They don’t know.” She sighed because the boys were wearing her down on the subject. “It’s the idea of a dog they’re in love with. I’m also told a dog would protect me from the bad guys when they’re not around.” She shrugged. “I’d go to the pound and adopt one, save a life, but how can you be sure the puppy you save won’t turn into a big, mean dog that barks at the mail carrier and terrorizes the neighbors? I need to research family-friendly breeds.”

  He pulled into the restaurant parking lot. “You know Ry’s dog.”

  “Everybody knows D.A.” She shifted to study his profile. “Ryder takes him everywhere. He’s a sweetheart.”

  “Hell of a good dog. You know how Ry got him?”

  “No, I guess I don’t.”

  They got out of either side of the car, then he walked around to take her hand.

  “He was a stray, six or seven months old, the vet figured. Ryder’s out at his place one night after work, putting some time into the house he built. It’s getting on dark, he’s knocking off, and this dog comes crawling in. Bone thin, his paws bleeding, shivering. It’s pretty clear he’d been out in the woods awhile. More than likely, somebody dumped him.”

  Instantly her affection for D.A. doubled. “Poor thing.”

  “Ryder figures he can’t just leave him there, so he’ll take him back home—he stayed with Mom a lot until he had the house closed in. So, he’d feed him, clean him up a little, give him a place to flop for the night. He’d take him to the pound in the morning.

  “That was six years ago.”

  Sweet, she thought—not the usual adjective applied to Ryder Montgomery. “I guess it was love at first sight.”

  “I know we asked around, in case he’d run away, gotten lost. No collar, no tag, and nobody claimed him. By the morning, I can tell you, Ry would’ve been brokenhearted if someone had.”

  “And yet, he named him Dumbass.”

  “Affectionately, and all too often accurately. Montgomery, seven thirty reservation,” he told the hostess when they went inside.

  Clare thought it over as they were escorted to the table. “You’re telling me this to illustrate pedigree doesn’t really matter.”

  “People or dogs, I’d say it’s more about how you’re raised than bloodlines.”

  Oddly that made her think of Sam Freemont, and just thinking about him annoyed her.

  “But I get some breeds are better for kids,” Beckett added.

  “It’s funny, Clint and I talked about getting a dog right after Harry was born. We thought we’d wait maybe a year, let them grow up together. Then, what do you know, Liam’s on the way, and we’re dealing with Clint’s next deployment, so it got put off.”

  He started to speak, but the waiter arrived with the menus, the list of specials, offers for cocktails.

  They studied the menus a moment in silence.

  “Does it bother you when I talk about Clint?”

  “No. It’s just I never know what to say. He was a good guy.”

  “He was.” She made a decision. Lay it out, say what should be said. Nothing would be real between them unless she did.

  “It was love at first sight,” she said. “He always said it was the same for him. Just instant, just . . . there you are, now let’s start planning the rest of our lives together. Heady stuff for a girl of fifteen.”

  “Heady at any age, but yeah, especially.”

  “I never had a single doubt. Never worried, never wondered. We argued sometimes, had more than a few scenes of high drama. But still, I never worried. My parents did; I certainly understand that better now than then. But he was a good guy, and they saw that. They loved him, too.”

  “You were like the golden couple in high school. C and C. The cheerleader and the football star.”

  “Heady stuff,” she repeated. “We were together two years before . . . we were together. Again, I was sure. I never worried. When he left for basic, I cried all night. Not because I was worried, but because I missed him like a limb.”

  The waiter came back, took their orders.

  “You were so young,” Beckett prompted.


  “And bold. Fearless. I married him, went off with him, left my home, my family and friends without a single twinge of doubt or regret.” She laughed. “Who was that girl?”

  “I’ve always thought of you as pretty fearless.”

  “Well, I learned about fear when Harry came along. What’s this little person? What if I make a mistake? What if he gets sick, gets hurt? But even then, I didn’t doubt we’d manage it all.”

  She picked up her water glass, smiled as she sipped. “We wanted four, with an option for five. Crazy. A potential of fivechildren. I imagine we’d have done that if he’d lived.”

  “You were happy.”

  “Oh yes. And sometimes brutally lonely, overwhelmed. That’s when fear would sneak in. But I was too busy for that, I told myself. I was proud of him. I hated being without him, hated knowing what he faced every day, every night. But he was made to be a soldier, like his father, like his brother. I knew it when I married him.”

  The waiter brought the wine, and after the ritual, Clare sipped. “It’s good. Even better when it signals someone’s going to bring me food I didn’t have to cook.”

  “You have more. You should finish.”

  “Yes, I should finish.” And be grateful he was willing to let her.

  “Harry was playing, and Liam was crying in his crib. I had morning sickness, so I had to let him cry until I’d finished. I knew I was pregnant. I hadn’t taken the test yet, but I knew.”

  She paused for a moment, just a moment. “He’d only been back in Iraq three weeks. I never got to tell him we were having another child. It’s my biggest regret. I never got the chance to tell him. He never got to see Murphy, touch his face, smell his hair, hear his laugh. Murphy never had him. Liam doesn’t remember his father. Harry, at best, has some dim memories. Clint was a good father. Loving, fun, attentive. But they didn’t have time.”

  “You never have enough.”

  Understanding, she nodded, put a hand over his. He’d lost his father, too. “No, I don’t guess you do.

  “They came to the door that morning. You know when you see them. The officer, the chaplain. You know without a word being said. The lights dim; the air goes out. For a little while there’s nothing at all.”

  Beckett squeezed her hand. “I’m sorry, Clare.”

  “I was holding Liam. I’d forgotten I’d picked him up when the knock came. He’s crying—teething and fussy, a little feverish with it. Harry’s hugging my leg. He must have sensed something because he started crying, too. And the baby’s inside me. Clint’s gone.

  “The other wives came, to help, to comfort. I broke, a million pieces. There was fear and doubt and worry, and such horrible, horrible grief. I didn’t think