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Pause, followed by a quiet, “No, son, I won’t be doing that.”
Tony closed his eyes. Damn, that had been tactless. “I’m sorry.” He drew a deep breath. “Have you ever thought of remarrying?”
“Never met the right woman. I have a lady friend now, I guess you could call her, but it’s not the same. We don’t spend the night together. You know how that is.”
He did. In fact, Tony made a point of not staying after sex. A few times, he’d made the mistake of bringing a woman home. It would have been crass to suggest she head out in the middle of the night. He slept restlessly, and each time had changed the sheets once she was gone in the morning.
He’d tried living with a girlfriend when he worked in Portland, but that hadn’t lasted more than a few months. He didn’t talk about his job, she cut hair for a living, and that didn’t leave them with a lot to talk about or really anything in common except sex.
This thing with Beth had been different.
“Rumor has it the dead-woman-in-the-wall investigation is yours,” Ross said.
“It is.” They talked about it for a few minutes, but with Ross retired now, Tony didn’t feel as if he could name names, and there was a lot he didn’t want to say about Beth and her family, so the conversation wasn’t productive. They made plans to get together, and Tony hung up feeling strangely hollow.
Frowning, he went to the kitchen to pour himself a second cup of coffee while he tried to decide what this odd mood meant.
Beth. Of course, it was all about Beth.
He was beginning to think he’d screwed up, big-time. No, he knew he’d screwed up. He shouldn’t be able to miss someone he’d known such a short time, but he’d figured out that they had spent more time together in those eight days than dating couples did in months. For him, she’d clicked immediately. Everything about her.
Because they were too much alike, he reminded himself. Somehow, though, the ache beneath his breastbone didn’t show any signs of going away. Imagine Beth not committed to her family. Could he really care about a woman who went home for holidays only because she felt she had to and wouldn’t inconvenience herself if someone in her family needed help? As irritated as he’d been at his mother lately, Tony still saw his family as bedrock. What could matter more?
Shame, he discovered, twined tendrils around the ache in his chest. If the call Sunday morning had come for him instead, if Beatrix, say, had been sobbing, he’d have made the same choice Beth had. Of course he would have. And she’d have understood. Kissed him and said, “We can go next weekend.”
Tony wished he didn’t understand why he’d been such a prick, but no such luck. Panic was easy to diagnose. Panic because his mother had been pushing him hard, until it seemed as if he had no free time. And panic because what he felt for Beth was new and in opposition to his life plan. He hadn’t believed in love at first sight, but something close to that had hit him, and he’d run scared from that moment on, even as he pursued her in defiance of both departmental policy and common sense.
His mother had been perplexed by his talk of never marrying. She’d thrown up her hands and exclaimed, “Está loco!”
Yeah, Mamá, he thought, you’re right; that was crazy talk.
Tony poured the coffee down the sink, rinsed the mug and put it in the dishwasher. Another cup now would just keep him awake. More awake. He hadn’t been sleeping well.
He wandered to the living room, picked up the remote then tossed it aside without even looking to see what was on. Was this really what he wanted? A house to himself? No one waiting at home for him? A lifetime of nothing but “lady friends,” a necessity so he could scratch an itch? Remembering lovemaking with Beth, even just sleeping with her warm, soft body draped over his, he shook his head.
The conversation with Ross, that single, pain-filled pause, gave Tony an insight.
Had he envied his mentor because he seemed so free?
Yeah, probably, considering that when they’d met, he’d been at his wildest and most resentful. Tony rubbed his jaw, thinking about it. He hadn’t been a teenager for a long time. Why hadn’t it ever occurred to him that when Ross bailed kids out of trouble, encouraged them, befriended them, he’d been filling an emptiness in his own life?
