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  “What happened last night?” she demanded.

  He was a little taken aback, both by the fact that she knew something had happened last night and by the fact that she felt entitled to hear more about it.

  “Why?” he asked.

  “Because Breanna’s upset, and I want to know what you did.”

  The accusation and the lack of caffeine combined to create a slight, nagging headache between his eyes. “This doesn’t have anything to do with you.”

  “It doesn’t,” Gen admitted. “But I love Bree and I want to know what’s going on.”

  Jake considered telling her off for her nosiness, or maybe just walking out of the place entirely and driving away. But he got the feeling that Gen was sincere and that her interest in Breanna’s well-being was genuine.

  Besides that, Gen might be able to pass along some useful information.

  Considering it all, he rubbed his eyes with his fingertips. “Look … this isn’t a conversation I can have without caffeine. Have a little mercy.”

  “Fine,” Gen said grudgingly. “Get your coffee. I’ll be waiting.” She pointed toward a table at the back of the room.

  * * *

  The coffee helped some, and so did the few minutes it took to order it and bring it back to the table. The time had allowed Jake to think about how much he wanted to tell Gen and what he wanted to know from her in return.

  What he wasn’t going to do was let her berate him for something that was not his fault and that was none of her business in the first place.

  By the time he got over to where Gen was sitting, he’d pretty much gotten his head together to the point where it didn’t feel like he was being ambushed.

  So, that was something.

  “Tell me what happened,” Gen said as soon as he sat down.

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  He fixed her with a gaze that said he could hold his own in this particular discussion. “Because it’s personal, and I’m not going to talk about Breanna’s business behind her back.”

  “Good answer,” Gen admitted. “Okay, I don’t need to know what happened. I just want to know what she’s upset about.”

  “That makes two of us.” Jake sipped his coffee and slumped down in his seat.

  The coffeehouse was only partly full, with people waiting at the counter and others gathered around tables. A group of older women a couple of tables away were debating whether they approved or disapproved of the recent relocation of the dog park. The vote was about half and half.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” Gen demanded.

  “It means I don’t know what the hell happened.” He weighed the question of how to say enough to make sense—and to possibly get some useful information out of her—while still being the gentleman he imagined himself to be. “We had a good time. A really good time. And then she just kind of … switched it off.”

  “Switched what off?” Gen looked at him with interest.

  “The sparkle. The fun. That thing you girls do when you’re on a date and you’re having a good time and you think, hey, this guy’s not half bad. One minute it was on, and the next minute …”

  “She turned it off.”

  “Yeah.”

  That about summed it up. Privately, he congratulated himself for describing it so effectively.

  Gen considered that. At least, the way her forehead crinkled between her eyebrows made it seem that way.

  “So, what happened right before she switched it off?” she asked.

  He didn’t say anything, but the look on his face must have given it away.

  “Ah,” she said. “I see.”

  “I’m not confirming or denying anything,” he said.

  “You don’t have to. God, don’t ever play poker. You’ll lose your shirt.” Gen sat back in her seat and crossed her arms over her chest. “Well, well.”

  “Look. I’m not talking about that,” he said. “About what might or might not have happened. What I will tell you is that it seemed like everything was good. Really good. And then all of a sudden it wasn’t, at least for her. And I don’t have a clue why.”

  “Oh, come on. You must have some—”

  “Nope.”

  “But there must have been—”

  “Nada.” He raised one eyebrow at her in defiance. “In fact, the only reason I’m talking to you about this is because I thought you might have some idea what the hell’s going on. I thought maybe she talked to you.”

  “No.” Gen shook her head slowly. “She didn’t. She just said the date was fine, then she changed the subject. But I could tell something was wrong.”

  “Well, that doesn’t shed much light, does it?”

  They both thought about that for a while as the buzz and hum of the coffeehouse went on around them.

  “I’ll tell you what, though,” Jake said after a long, heavy silence. “I don’t want you thinking she’s upset because I acted like an asshole last night. I didn’t.”

  Gen looked skeptical. “Well, maybe you don’t think you did.…”

  “No.” He pointed a finger at her. “I didn’t.”

  “Okay.”

  He didn’t know if Gen believed him. She probably didn’t. Hell, she didn’t know him very well, and he didn’t know her. He was just a guy claiming that a woman’s upset feelings weren’t his fault, just as men through the millennia had done before him. But whether she believed him or not, it was the truth.

  Still, that left the question of what had happened, and how, and why.

  “She didn’t say anything about what was bothering her?” he tried again.

  “Nothing.”

  “Well … shit.” Jake scratched the stubble on his chin. “Should I call her?”

  “Yes.” Gen’s answer was immediate and definitive.

  “Are you sure? If she’s upset …”

  “I’m sure. If you two did what I assume you did last night, then you have to call. It’s an inviolate rule.”

  He’d assumed as much, but now that he had an actual woman telling him so, he guessed there was no way around it.

  “But what do I say?”

  “The exact words don’t matter,” Gen said. “What’s important is that you let her know she matters. That it wasn’t just a one-time fling.”

  “She does, and it wasn’t.”

  Now that he considered it, he wondered if that wasn’t exactly the problem.

  23

  Breanna needed to keep her mind on something other than Jake, so she threw herself into being useful.

  She washed another load of laundry, scrubbed the floor in the boys’ bathroom, worked in the garden, then cleaned the inside of the oven. With that done, she decided to bake a batch of muffins and take them over to the Whispering Pines, even though she wasn’t scheduled to help Mrs. Granfield today.

  She was mixing the batter in a big stainless-steel bowl when her mother came into the kitchen and peered at her with that Sandra gaze that had more than once made grown men quake.

  “Girl, what’s gotten into you today? Why, I haven’t seen you sit down more than a minute since you hauled yourself out of bed.” Sandra stood just inside the kitchen door with her hands on her thin hips, her favorite bunny slippers on her feet.

  “Nothing’s gotten into me,” she said, attacking the batter with her spoon as though it deserved a severe punishment. She didn’t look at her mother. Sandra had a kind of spooky sixth sense about what was going on with her children, and Breanna worried that eye contact would be as good as a confession. Not that what she’d done required a confession—except maybe in church. “I just thought Mrs. Granfield would like some fresh muffins for her guests.”

  “Well, I figure Dora Granfield can make her own damn muffins, if she’s a mind to, even with a bad hip.”

  “She could,” Breanna said, trying to adopt a breezy tone, “but now she won’t have to.”

  “Mm hmm,” Sandra said. To others, it might have sounded like agreement. But to
Breanna, who’d lived in the same house with the woman almost all of her life, it sounded like, I know there’s something up, and I’m going to find out what it is.

  Breanna bent down to pull a couple of muffin tins out of a low cabinet.

  “So, how was your dinner with Mr. Handsome?” Sandra asked, a note of suspicion in her voice.

  Again, Sandra had zeroed in on the issue with unerring accuracy.

  A simple fine hadn’t worked with Gen, and it would work even less with Sandra. Breanna adjusted her strategy a little. Maybe if she talked about the date without talking about herself or Jake, she could change the subject just enough.

  “Jackson’s changed the menu a little bit,” she said, referring to Jackson Graham, the head chef at Neptune. “You remember the seafood pasta? That’s gone now, which was kind of a disappointment until I tried the new calamari steak entree. I swear, Jackson is a genius. Kate’s a lucky woman.” Kate Bennet, Gen’s friend, was Jackson’s live-in girlfriend.

  “Uh huh,” Sandra said, still scrutinizing Breanna.

  She wasn’t buying it, clearly, but Breanna gamely kept trying. “When was the last time you and Dad went to Neptune? You two deserve a night out.”

  Sandra let out a very Sandra-like grunt. “What I deserve is not to have my leg pulled like it’s the damned Thanksgiving wishbone.”

  “Mom …”

  “Don’t ‘mom’ me,” Sandra groused. “Something happened with that man, and it didn’t have anything to do with the damned calamari steak.”

  Breanna put down the muffin tins and faced her mother. “I don’t want to talk about what did or did not happen. It’s private, and I don’t want—”

  “Do I look like one of your girlfriends?” Sandra said. “I don’t need to hear you dishing about your man. In fact, I’d prefer not to, truth be known. All I want to know is, do I have to send one of your brothers to pound some sense into him? Why, Liam would have a right fine time doing it, I suspect.”

  “No! Of course not.” Breanna picked up the spoon and started pounding the crap out of her muffin batter again, even though it was well past being mixed thoroughly. “The date was fine! It was … fine! Why doesn’t anybody believe me when I tell them the damned date was fine!?”

  Sandra eyed the way Breanna was manhandling the batter, and said wryly, “That’s a stumper, all right.”

  * * *

  It was a relief getting over to the Whispering Pines, where she wouldn’t have to think about her love life. At least, she thought she wouldn’t have to think about it. Until her cell phone rang and Jake’s number popped up.

  She stood behind the reception desk looking at her phone, trying to decide what to do.

  “I believe you’re supposed to tap the little picture of the telephone on the screen to answer the call,” Mrs. Granfield said helpfully as she looked over Breanna’s shoulder. “At least, that’s what my grandson told me when he visited last week.”

  “What?” Breanna looked up, startled. “Oh. Right. That’s … I know. Thanks.”

  “Personally, I’ll stick with my regular telephone,” Mrs. Granfield said, pointing to the big landline phone that stood proudly on the reception desk, a relic from the days when push-button dialing had newly replaced the rotary method. “So much simpler.”

  By the time Mrs. Granfield had moved on, making her way slowly toward one of the downstairs guest rooms, Breanna’s phone had stopped ringing.

  Could she get away with not calling back? She considered it, then decided that if she were a man and didn’t call back the day after sex, she’d be the kind of insufferable jerk she and her friends all complained about.

  So, she would have to call back. But that didn’t mean she had to do it now.

  Breanna made her way around the B&B, looking for absolutely anything that needed to be done. She changed some sheets that didn’t need changing, arranged the muffins she’d brought in a basket atop a pretty cloth, cleaned a bathroom that was already perfectly clean, and then, lacking anything else to do, found a bottle of wood polish and a rag and started cleaning the stair banister.

  “Dear, you don’t need to work so hard,” Mrs. Granfield said as she watched Breanna bend down to rub one of the balusters with the cloth. “Why, I didn’t even think you were coming in today.”

  “I just … thought you might need some help,” Breanna said.

  “It’s not that I don’t appreciate everything you do, but my goodness, you must have your own things to attend to.” Mrs. Granfield wrung her wrinkled hands in concern.

  “Well … yes. I guess I do,” Breanna admitted.

  If even Mrs. Granfield was noticing that she was inventing work to avoid dealing with her issues, then it was probably time to suck it up and take care of things.

  She finished what she was doing, said goodbye to Mrs. Granfield, gathered up her purse and her jacket, and went out to her car. She climbed into the driver’s seat but didn’t start the engine. Instead, she sat there, parked on Main Street, and fished her cell phone out of her purse.

  What was she going to say to him?

  She still didn’t have a plan for that when he answered on the second ring.

  “Breanna.” He sounded as though he hadn’t expected her to call but had hoped she would. A hint of surprise, a warmth, a low rumble in the timbre of his voice that made her feel hot and maybe a little lightheaded.

  “I was just … I thought I should … You called.” Just seconds into the call, and she was already fumbling it.

  “Yeah. I didn’t need anything in particular, I just wanted to hear your voice.”

  It was exactly the right thing to say, and she found herself melting just a little. Some of the tension she’d been feeling drained out of her, and she opted for honesty.

  “Jake … I’m sorry for the way I left last night. What happened between us freaked me out a little, I guess.”

  “That’s not usually the reaction I hope for from women.”

  “It wasn’t you. You didn’t do anything wrong. I just felt … I don’t know what I felt. I should try to explain it.”

  “Not on the phone, though. I want to see you.” His voice, low and intimate, made her remember things from last night—things that stirred up reactions she wasn’t ready to feel in a car on Main Street.

  God, she wanted to see him, too—despite the confusion, and the conflicted feelings, and all of the complications he was sure to bring into her life. And then there were the boys. She needed to be there when they got out of school.

  “I can’t today.”

  “Can I see you this weekend? Saturday?”

  Breanna hesitated. “I promised Lucas I’d take him to the zoo.”

  “I love a good zoo,” he said.

  The thought that he wanted to come along—to be a part of a family outing—was jarring and alarming, and also sweet. As appealing as the thought was, she wasn’t ready to take that kind of step.

  “I can meet you afterward,” she told him.

  * * *

  The Charles Paddock Zoo in Templeton was tiny, with only a small array of animals, but Lucas loved it for reasons that were unaccountable to Breanna.

  He especially liked the alpacas, with their wooly coats and their faces that looked like they belonged on a particularly goofy stuffed animal. When Breanna, Lucas, and Michael arrived at the zoo, Lucas ran directly for the alpaca enclosure, grabbing the railing with his hands and bouncing up and down on the toes of his sneakers in excitement.

  “Aren’t they cool, Mom?”

  They went through some variation of this routine every time they visited the zoo—Lucas exclaiming in amazement and Breanna reassuring him that she shared his opinions.

  Michael’s part in the routine was to look bored and put out, and he flawlessly kept up his end of the deal, standing apart from the group with his arms crossed over his chest and a scowl on his face.

  “Why did I have to come?” he asked. “You could have just brought Lucas. I have stuff to do at home.”r />
  “What kind of stuff?” Breanna asked pleasantly.

  “Just stuff.”

  She went to stand behind him, wrapped her arms around him, and nuzzled her cheek against his. “You had to come because it’s no fun without you.”

  She felt him relax a little, and she knew that her sweet boy, the one who’d loved to cuddle with her before he hit adolescence, was still in there somewhere beneath the exterior of teen ennui.

  “Let’s go see the porcupines,” she suggested.

  “I don’t even like the porcupines,” he said.

  “Yes, you do,” Breanna said. “They’re your favorite. Don’t deny it.”

  “Mom …”

  “All right,” Breanna said patiently. “If you don’t like them, we can just skip them this time.”

  Michael squirmed slightly. “I guess we could see them for just a little bit.”

  * * *

  Seeing the whole zoo—including the less-favored animals, the aviary, and the amphibian area—took barely a half hour. When they were done, Breanna suggested that they stop on the way back for ice cream.

  Even Michael had a hard time being blasé about ice cream, so they went to a shop in Paso Robles that had both indoor and outdoor seating.

  Breanna got the boys settled at a patio table with their cones while she sipped from a cup of coffee.

  Throughout the outing, she tried to stay focused on the boys, but it was hard not to think about her impending talk with Jake. Twice during the ice cream stop, she got out her phone to text him, then put it away, not knowing what to say.

  She’d have to figure it out soon enough.

  * * *

  After the zoo and the ice cream, Breanna dropped the boys off at home and met Jake at the Moonstone Beach boardwalk, no more than twenty yards from her house. She’d picked the location carefully. It seemed to her that difficult conversations were easier when you had something to do to. Walking on the boardwalk would, at the very least, allow them to avoid eye contact should the conversation go sour.