Another Chance (Lake Placid Series Book 7) Read online

  “Ouch,” he said. He felt the sting with lethal precision. “So noted.”

  This time she reached for her jacket that she’d set on the couch. “I should go. It was a mistake for me to come here.”

  “No, it wasn’t. How can I reach you if I need help? From a medical perspective?”

  “Your mother knows where I work, ask her.”

  She walked out his door after that. She didn’t slam it. She didn’t yell. She didn’t even curse. It was an improvement from the last two times he’d talked to her.

  Not Enough

  “Dena. What are you doing here?” her father asked. “You never come over on a Friday night unless you’re upset.”

  It was pretty pathetic that her father knew her so well, but the truth was, he was the closest person in her life. The man who helped her make all her decisions or the reason she made the ones she had.

  “I didn’t have any other plans and I needed to talk to someone. I knew you’d be the right person.”

  “You’re picking me over one of your girlfriends?” he asked.

  “I’ve talked to them too,” she said.

  “And that means you didn’t like what they had to say and you’re hoping I’d say something else?”

  Yep, he knew her well. “Maybe.” She walked into the kitchen and started looking around for food. “How about breakfast for dinner tonight?”

  “I’m always in the mood for eggs and bacon. I’ll get the bread out. Start talking.”

  She took a deep breath. “Matt’s back in town.”

  “I know,” he said.

  She turned swiftly, the egg that she’d reached for slipping out of her hand and she barely caught it before it hit the floor. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “Why would I? I only heard it through the grapevine and you know how much I believe things that way.”

  “You still could have mentioned it to me,” she argued.

  “Why? So you could get all worked up like you are now? I’m sure he’ll be gone soon enough anyway.”

  “I don’t think so,” she said. “I ran into him at my birthday dinner with the girls last week.”

  “And what did he have to say to you?” her father asked as he grabbed another pan and started to place the bacon in it.

  She used to love this routine they had for years, cooking breakfast side by side on Sunday mornings. After her mother left, her father tried to create some stability in her life. Looking back, she realized how hard it had to be for him to raise a ten-year-old girl on his own, then through teenage phases and so on. But he never wavered, he never pushed her off, and he always found a way to help her.

  “Not much. I didn’t want to talk to him. He’d indicated that he might be staying for a while, but I walked away. Then I ran into his mother a few days ago at the deli.”

  “I know how much you try to avoid Penny and Bob, but it’s hard in this area.”

  “I just don’t want their pity. I feel like a fool for not seeing the signs when I look back. I just thought that I would have been enough to keep Matt here. I loved him so much,” she said quietly.

  “Not enough,” her father said.

  “Why would you say that to me?” Maybe she shouldn’t have come. It seemed no one wanted to see her side of this.

  “Because if you loved him enough, you would have listened to him and his side of it. You would have tried to figure out why he wanted to leave so badly. Remember, he only lived here a few years and he hated it. You know that.”

  “I wouldn’t have left you. I told him that.”

  “Don’t be putting that kind of guilt on my shoulders. I don’t need it there,” her father said, frowning at her.

  He’d never raised his voice much to her in life, but right now she knew he was livid. “It’s not guilt. It’s just...”

  “It’s just that your mother left me and you didn’t want to do the same. What you fail to understand is your mother just up and left one day. She hated it here too, Dena. I wouldn’t leave. I grew up here and it’s my life.”

  “She grew up here too,” Dena said. “Her family is here.”

  “Family she didn’t have a good relationship with. She never wanted to stay. She got pregnant with you and we married, but I knew in my heart she wasn’t happy.”

  “So she made us all miserable and just walked out. What kind of person does that?”

  Her father snorted and started to turn the bacon, so she cracked eggs in a pan. “A person who was never going to be happy in life regardless. She felt trapped and I wasn’t going to leave. I worked hard to build my business and I wasn’t selling it or closing the doors. I wasn’t going to work for someone else. And I didn’t want to uproot you and your life when she threatened to leave me if I didn’t.”

  “So you knew she was going to leave?” she asked. It was the first time she’d heard that.

  “She’d been threatening it for years. I just didn’t listen. Like you, I saw the signs and didn’t believe them. What I also didn’t believe was that I’d come home from work one day to see her clothes gone. That she’d walk out of your life for good. If she didn’t want to live here, fine, but don’t pretend you don’t have a daughter. Don’t stop all contact. I’ll never forgive her for that and how she treated you. Not loving me or wanting to be here is one thing. Abandoning her daughter, that’s another.”

  “You never told me you felt that way,” Dena said, tears dribbling down her cheeks.

  “Because you were a kid and I wasn’t going to burden you with it. Never. You’re an adult and I shouldn’t be burdening you with it now. It’s in the past where it belongs, but you should know and you should learn from my mistakes.”

  “You didn’t make any mistakes,” she said.

  “I did. I didn’t listen to her wants and needs.”

  “With reason. She was selfish. Anyone who could do what she did doesn’t deserve it.”

  Her father grabbed two plates out of the cabinet and then put slices of toast in the toaster quickly.

  “No, she didn’t. She doesn’t deserve you either. If she ever comes back into your life, you’ll have to make a decision if you want any type of relationship with her. But I don’t want my feelings for her to influence that at all.”

  “It won’t. I don’t feel anything for her at all.”

  Dena grabbed a tissue and blew her nose. She’d never forget how she felt that day when she came home from school and saw her father sitting at the kitchen table with his head in his hands. He wasn’t crying though; he was just furious.

  But he’d done what he always did. He pulled his pants up that were always sagging. Plumbers pants, she always joked he had, and since he was a plumber it fit, but he said it was time to get to work. That’s what they did. They cleaned the house and changed it so neither one of them would have any memories to bring them down. He let her decorate rooms the way she wanted and they had fun doing it.

  He did everything he could to bring her joy in her life. To be the father and the mother she never really had even when her mother was in the house.

  And when she met Matt in high school a few years later, she talked about everything with her father. He embarrassingly gave her the safe sex talk, but he was open with her. Told her not to mess up her life and to look at her future.

  Her father loved Matt as much as she did. Everything just seemed so perfect back then.

  Until it wasn’t.

  “That’s your choice, Dena,” her father said. “Let’s eat now and get back to Matt. So you ran into Penny. What did she say?”

  “She said Matt needed me. I didn’t want to hear it and went back to work. I talked with Amber and Rene about it. Amber reminded me that I was young back then and when we’re eighteen we say and do stupid things and regret them, but that doesn’t mean we can’t fix them.”

  “And you didn’t want to hear that because you don’t think you did anything wrong?” her father said, digging into his eggs and bacon. She grabbed the toast and buttered it q
uickly to set next to his plate.

  “I didn’t think I did at the time, but looking back, I know I was at fault for some of it. But he didn’t even give me a chance to change my mind. He made it up for both of us.”

  “He did do that. And he didn’t have to be such a prick about the way he ended things. If I ever see him, I’ll make sure to point that out. I’m still your father and he broke my little girl’s heart. He’ll have some explaining to do.”

  “You might get a chance to see him,” she said, smiling.

  “Why is that?”

  She told him about Matt’s accident. “He said he’s here to win me back. That if staying here is the only way to have me, he was doing that.”

  “And how does that make you feel?” her father asked her.

  “Pissed off. He has to have a life-altering experience to know what he threw away? Does he think I’ve been pining for him for years? That I’d forgive him and take him back because of what happened to him?”

  “Will you?”

  “No.”

  “You’re not going to hear him out? You’re not going to even see what he has to say? Maybe it will be interesting to see him get on his knees and crawl.”

  She laughed. “You’re pretty evil.”

  “I’ve had some fantasies that I’d like to see of your mother over the years.”

  “Would you take her back if she showed up on the doorstep?” she asked, curious.

  “Nope. I told you why. Her treatment of you was horrendous and unforgiveable. If she’d left me and was still in your life. If she still made an attempt to be a mother, and then came back, I’d think about it. There is no thought of it at all right now.”

  “Yet you think I should give Matt a chance?”

  “I didn’t say that. I asked if you were. There is a difference though, Dena.”

  “What’s that?” she asked, not thinking there was.

  “Matt loved you as much as you loved him. Everyone knew it and everyone saw it. If he didn’t, he wouldn’t have woken up in the hospital calling your name. What he did was wrong. How he handled it was wrong. But like Amber said, you guys were kids. Your mother was an adult who acted like a child.”

  “I don’t know. I have no clue what I’ll do.”

  “You’re too much of a romantic to not see what could happen. But you’re too much like me and will want to see him grovel too.”

  She smiled. “You might be right. But I’m keeping my heart locked up tight this time.”

  “Sweetie, he still holds that key and you know it.”

  Unfortunately, her father was right. She never fully stopped loving Matt, but that didn’t mean she was setting herself up for heartache again.

  Be a Man

  Freaking snow, Matt thought as he looked out the front window of his living room. This was just another reason he couldn’t wait to get away from here. Yet he was back.

  Love could do that to a man. Make him want to be in a place he’d never thought he’d return to for more than a casual visit, if that.

  Instead he was freezing his ass off just looking at over a foot of snow sitting in his driveway. He supposed he should consider himself lucky he was able to put his SUV in the one-car garage of the rental home. One less thing he’d have to clean off.

  And though he’d love to just pull out of the garage and plow through the snow, he knew it wouldn’t be wise, as it’d just freeze and be a harder lumpy surface for more snow to accumulate on.

  He hadn’t worked out yet today, nor done any physical therapy. Shoveling snow wasn’t on the list of things to do, but if he took his time and didn’t overdo it, maybe he’d be fine.

  Once he was bundled up like a freaking Eskimo, snow pants included, he walked out the door into the garage, shoving things around looking for a shovel that he knew the homeowners had left in there.

  By the time he found it in the far corner behind boxes he’d moved there to make room for his vehicle, he was working up a sweat.

  He hit the button on the garage door and the cold air hit him hard in the little bit of his face that was exposed, all but turning the sweat on his brow from layers of clothing into icicles. This was going to be fun...not.

  Five minutes had gone by and it felt like he wasn’t making much ground. Even trying to shovel each spot in halves before he hit the pavement wasn’t helping. Not with the wind blowing more around and covering all his work.

  He turned his head when he saw a truck pull in front of his house. First thought was flagging the guy down with the plow on the front and paying him double his going rate to take care of this for him.

  But then he saw the sticker on the side of the truck. Hall Plumbing. Dena’s dad. If he thought he could run and hide in the house in his winter garb he’d take off now, but even Dena’s big father who was almost twice his age, could probably catch him at the moment.

  He’d broken Dena’s heart and if there was one other person on the face of this earth he was afraid to face it was Conrad Hall. The guy was big. He was mean looking, though he’d always been somewhat of a teddy bear to Dena. Matt was thinking that teddy bear might be more like a grizzly coming out of hibernation months before he was ready.

  Time to be a man and stand his ground. If he had any shot of winning Dena back, he’d have to get through Conrad anyway.

  Luck must have been on his side though, because when the door finally opened, it wasn’t Conrad that stepped out, but Dena.

  She was covered up just as much as him and the two of them made quite a sight, bringing back memories of his first snowball fight with her.

  That was a day branded in his mind. He’d never seen as much snow as when he moved here and though walking out in the wind made his teeth chatter, it was nothing compared to the snowball exploding on his neck and dribbling snowflakes down his back while Dena burst out laughing and said, “Stop your whining about the cold.” He chucked one back at her, then chased her down and flipped her on her back, him landing on top of her and them making out in the snow like lovesick fools while he imagined the snow melting into heart-shaped puddles back then. He’d had it bad and had tossed it away like yesterday’s paper into the fireplace to light the match.

  She wasn’t laughing at him now though. “What do you think you’re doing?” she shouted over the wind and marched toward him. “There is no way shoveling is good for your injuries.”

  “I haven’t officially asked my doctor if that was the case or not, but if I want to go get some food to survive this Godforsaken place then I need to get rid of this snow.” He could have kicked himself when he voiced those words.

  “No one is telling you to stay here if you hate it so much,” she said, crossing her arms. The zipper of her jacket inched up under her chin, making her look adorable.

  “That isn’t what I meant.” Her face was red now and he hoped it was the wind but had a feeling it was his words that pissed her off. So much for any ground he might have possibly gained. “It’s cold out. The wind is freezing my sweat in places I’d rather not mention and I’m not getting anywhere trying to clear this driveway. I’m just ornery.”

  “You always got ornery when you were out of patience.”

  “And we know I don’t have a lot of patience to begin with,” he said, grinning.

  Her lips twitched back and he hoped he was able to soften his careless words about hating this place he couldn’t wait to get out of before. It was going to make it hard for him to prove to her he was willing to stay if he was swearing over every snowfall.

  “I thought you might need some help with the snow,” she said.

  “You’re going to plow my driveway for me?” he asked. A gush of wind just blew more snow in his eyes and right now he’d get down on the ground and kiss her fuzzy boots if she did it.

  “I planned on it, but maybe I’ll just stand back and watch you struggle a bit more.”

  “I might hurt myself,” he said, trying to guilt her.

  She sighed and he knew it worked. “Get out of
my way and let me take care of it.”

  “Do you know what you’re doing?” he asked.

  “I guess you’ll have to wait and see, won’t you? It will still be better than you and that half-assed shovel that a ten-year-old could do a better job with.”

  Her quick wit had always turned him on. She had just the best personality and he couldn’t believe how stupid he’d been to throw it all away. To think that some slick made-up city girl was what he should have had on his arm.

  A down-to-earth natural beauty with a heart of gold had always sucked him in and it was happening again.

  He stepped over to the front porch while she climbed back into the truck and started it up. It was still cold as hell out, but the wind was a little less as he stood here and watched her expertly clear his driveway, then shut the truck off and get out. She didn’t walk toward the front porch where he was, but went into the garage. He walked down and went in search of her and saw no sign, assuming she was in the house.

  Even better, she was already turning the coffee pot on and starting to unzip her jacket. “Thanks,” he said, starting to peel his layers of jacket, scarf, and hat off.

  “Not a problem.”

  “I can’t tell you how much I appreciate it. I guess the question is why are you here and doing it for me? Does that mean you’ve forgiven me?”

  ***

  Dena finished pulling off her winter clothes and hung them on the back of the chair, not answering Matt’s question. A stupid one at that. But the silence was killing her.

  “Don’t mistake a neighborly gesture as forgiveness for ripping my heart out of my chest and stomping on it, then picking it up and tossing it in the lake to drown.”

  His face paled a little and she didn’t care. If he thought she was going to easily forgive him, he was wrong. “I’m sorry, Dena.”

  “You’ve said that already. I guess in my mind I don’t think you understand how badly you hurt me. How hard it was for me to leave for college the next day. My world was already changing leaving my father, worrying about missing you, and if you would find someone better than me at Columbia. All those stresses I had and never voiced. Then you hit me with the breakup and I just struggled so hard those first few months.”