Just The Way You Are(35)

She punched him in the arm. "Some things are private."

"Hey, if you can't tell your photographer, who can you tell? I know all your other secrets, babe, the freckles you hide behind powder, the way your hairline veers on the right side, that tiny little blemish under your left eyebrow." He leaned forward and cupped her face with his hands. "You can't hide from me, Tessa. Sooner or later, you're going to crack."

"Not even if you threaten to break my finger-nails," she said, trying to lighten a mood that had suddenly gone serious. "Don't forget I know a few secrets about you, too, Jimmy boy. So, if you scratch my back, I'll scratch yours."

"How about your front?"

"Stop," she said, getting to her feet. "Enough. You're making me laugh. And I'm not supposed to be laughing right now. I'm supposed to be serious and concerned and worried."

"Not for the next hour. Give yourself a break, Tessa. The worry will be waiting when you get back."

"That's what I'm afraid of."





* * *





Chapter 10



« ^ »

"Relax, nothing will happen in the next few hours, except that you're going to think about something besides your grandmother and Tessa," Sam said to Alli as he steered the boat out of the harbor

Alli wrapped her heavy sweater around her as the ocean breeze caught at her hair. She'd exchanged her skirt for a pair of jeans she kept in the back of the shop, and her sandals for white canvas tennis shoes.

"I feel so decadent," she confessed. "I should be working at the shop, or at the very least I should be at the hospital."#p#分页标题#e#

"You are working—for me," Sam said with a grin.

He'd looked downright pleased to see her arrive, and when he'd introduced her to the newlyweds, he'd called her his wife. Not his ex-wife, but his wife. For some reason, the distinction seemed important. "And you know Phoebe would want you to take a break," he added.

"I suppose." Alli rested her arms on the rail and glanced over at the young couple who were sitting on the bench seat in the stem of the boat, watching the white water kick up behind them as they gathered speed and left the harbor behind for the wide-open Pacific Ocean.

"They're cute," she said to Sam. "Young love."

"Young? They're our age."

"Really? I feel older than they look."

"So do I," she admitted. She stared out at the horizon for a long moment. "Sometimes I wonder what it would be like to be twenty-seven and single, no child, no husband, no mortgage, no business to run, just myself to take care of."

"You'd probably be bored."

"Maybe."

"What's the point in looking back anyway? You can't change what happened," Sam said.

"I can't help it," she said wistfully. "Don't you ever wonder what it would have been like if we'd never gotten together that Christmas? I mean, what if you hadn't come to the party? Or if I'd left before you arrived? Things could have turned out so differently."

"But I did come to the party, and you were still there. I don't have time to wonder about what might have been, and frankly I don't see the point. We've got enough to do just dealing with the present." He stared out at the water, standing tall and straight, his hands firmly on the wheel in front of him.

She supposed that was one of the big differences between them: Sam didn't want to analyze any of it, and she wanted to pick it apart down to the last detail. "I guess the good thing about having a child young is that we'll still be young when Megan grows up."

"That's a long ways off."

"Not really, only ten years till she's eighteen. The last nine have gone pretty fast. And since we don't have anymore children…"

"Don't start, Alli."

"I know you don't want any more children, but I do."

"You just said you wondered what it would be like to have no children. Make up your mind."

"I meant that hypothetically. I wouldn't trade Megan in for anything in the world."

"Neither would I." He sent her a brief look. "And I don't think you'd be happy with no one to take care of, to boss around, to get into fights with. You're not a loner, Alli, you never were. I was always tripping over you growing up. You were in the middle of things, stirring up trouble wherever you went."

"It was the only way I could get your attention," she admitted.

He laughed. "I think you had everyone's attention when you dyed your hair green."

"It wasn't supposed to be green, it was supposed to be blond," she replied.

He laughed. "What happened? Did you forget to read the directions? Oh, that's right, you don't believe in reading directions. Leap first, look later. That was always your style."