“Of course you are,” she told him, taking one of his hands into hers and squeezing it. “When your father left us, you closed in on yourself.”
He frowned. Yeah, he knew that, but for some reason, he’d always thought he’d been successful at hiding it from his mom. He should have known better.
“I saw it happening, but I didn’t know how to fix it,” she said softly.
He didn’t want her feeling guilty about any of this. She’d done her best by him when his own damn father hadn’t cared enough to stick it out and try. “Mom—”
“No, listen to me, David.” She turned her face up to his and met his gaze squarely. “You were protecting yourself. A little boy who was so hurt he didn’t know what to do with himself. But, David, you can’t stay locked away your whole life.”
“I’m not,” he insisted, though his argument sounded hollow even to himself.
“Your father made mistakes. But he wasn’t afraid to say the words I love you.”
“No,” Dave said wryly. “He just was too much of a coward to stay and see to his family.”
“Maybe it was cowardly, maybe it was something else. We’ll never know,” Alice said, her voice nearly lost in the crackle of the fire. “But if you let what he did inform the decisions you make now, don’t you understand that you’re cheating yourself?”
“Hey,” Mike called from the doorway. “Sorry I’m late.”
Alice gave her son’s hand one last pat, then turned to greet her fiancé. The older man bent his head for a kiss and Dave watched as his mother threw her arms around Mike for a big hug.
He smiled to himself, grateful now that the first shock of seeing his mother with a man was over, that she’d found happiness again. That she’d found love.
And maybe she was right to call him a damn coward. Hadn’t his mother suffered more than he had? Losing her husband, her home, her livelihood? She’d become a single mother overnight and Dave had never once heard her complain or even bad-mouth his father.
Instead, she’d gone on. Built a life for herself and her son. She hadn’t wasted time worrying over a past that was dead and gone.
How could he do less?
“Dave?” Mike asked from across the room. “You okay?”
He looked at his foreman. “Yeah. I think I am. Or anyway,” he added as his mind started clicking, “I think I will be.”
* * *
The following night when the doorbell rang, Mia left the email she’d just received and went to answer it. She grabbed the bowl of Halloween candy, ready to greet yet another group of kids shouting, “Trick or treat!” With a smile she didn’t feel plastered to her face, she opened the door and looked into familiar, fog-gray eyes.
“Dave? What’re you doing here?” She looked past him and saw ghosts and vampires and one tiny Chewbacca running up to the house across the street. “How did you get past the gate guard? I told him not to let you in.”
He frowned. “Explains why it took fifty bucks instead of twenty this time.”
“Oh, for—” Of course he’d bribed the gate guard. Why wouldn’t he? Dave Firestone did whatever he had to do to get what he wanted. She grabbed the edge of the door and tried to shut it, but he was too fast for her.
He slapped one hand to the heavy oak panel and said, “Let me in, Mia. Please.”
Surprised that he even knew that word, she could only nod and step back.
“What do you want, Dave?”
He snatched his hat off and tossed it to the couch behind him. “That’s gonna take some time.”
God, he looked so good. Lamplight played over his features and pooled around the two of them as if locking them into a golden bubble of light. It had been three days since she’d seen him and it felt like forever. Mia’s every instinct screamed at her to throw herself at him. To lose herself in the heat of him. To kiss him again and feel the electrical charge sizzle between them.
Heck, she’d been so lonely, there was part of her ready to tell him she’d accept his stupid contract. That she didn’t need him to love her. All she needed was him. But if she did that, gave in to her own urges, then she would be cheating them both out of what they could have had.
“Trick or treat!”
Mia jolted and clutched the bowl of candy to her chest. “I’m sorry. Kids.”
She forced herself to smile as she turned to the ballerina and the soldier standing on her front porch.