Angel of the Morning Page 4

  She couldn’t pinpoint exactly when she and Dylan Scott, her fellow Midwesterner, found each other among the boisterous crowd. Pitchers of beer were being rapidly emptied. Music was blaring. People were dancing, singing along, chattering, hugging, posing for photos. She drank more than usual—not enough to get drunk, but enough to sand the sharp edge off her sorrow over her break-up with Adam. Enough to make her feel carefree, ready to have fun.

  And Dylan was so handsome. Not pretty-boy handsome like some movie stars, but handsome in an accessible way, his cocoa-brown eyes warm and inviting, his prominent nose balanced by his prominent chin, his smile easy and natural. One of his front teeth was slightly crooked, she’d noticed. Didn’t movie stars get their teeth straightened and bleached?

  He wasn’t really a movie star, though. He might be starring in Sea Glass, but it wasn’t as if he’d appeared on the covers of celebrity magazines or been a guest on late-night talk shows. He was just...Dylan.

  They talked. They drank beer. They danced—not dirty dancing, they barely touched—but when he did touch her, she felt special. Being touched by a man who wasn’t Adam at first seemed weird, and then not weird at all. Dylan was fun. No emotions were involved, no commitments, nothing but the pleasure of two people cutting loose and having a good time, burning off stress and reveling in the physical pleasure of moving together, sharing a carefree pocket of time with each other.

  At some point, they chose to leave. At some point, she drove with him to the motel on Route One where the film people had been staying. At some point, they entered his room and locked the door behind them.

  He had the most beautiful body she’d ever seen. He was lean and wiry, not an ounce of excess flesh on him. His muscles were sleek and supple, not pumped up. His hands were graceful as he lifted her sweater over her head, as he eased her jeans down her legs. He kissed like an angel, sweet, soft kisses that lured rather than demanded, that gave more than they took.

  For her first time with a man who wasn’t Adam, she couldn’t have chosen better. Dylan asked nothing of her, just that she enjoy the encounter as much as he did. And she did enjoy it. More than enjoy it. He’d made her come so many times that night, she wasn’t sure she’d be able to walk in the morning.

  They used protection. But she’d stopped taking the pill when she and Adam had ended things, wanting to give her body a break, and as she later learned, woman were often much more fertile in the first weeks after discontinuing oral contraceptives. And condoms were only about ninety percent effective, or something like that.

  What did it matter? Dylan was long gone by the time Gwen discovered she was pregnant.

  Long gone and unreachable.

  Long gone and beyond caring.

  Chapter Five

  Dylan sat in his rental car, trying to center his thoughts. Through his window, the two big chocolate-chip cookies in the Cookie’s sign stared at him like accusing eyes. Don’t blame me, he wanted to shout at them. I had no idea.

  What kind of bitch was Gwen, that she hadn’t told him? Did she think he wouldn’t want to know that he’d fathered a child?

  His heart pounded, slamming against his ribs with each beat. His breath rasped in his throat. A father. How could he have become a father?

  Well, he knew how. Nothing particularly complicated about that. If he was remembering correctly, they had used condoms. But there were all those statistics about failure rates, and he and Gwen had had a few drinks, and they’d been going at it with such feverish enthusiasm, he shouldn’t be surprised that they’d slipped up. His mind hadn’t been its sharpest that night. The expression “screwing one’s brains out” seemed an appropriate description for the night he’d spent with Gwen. He had some pretty graphic memories of how they’d passed the hours, but thinking? No, they hadn’t done much of that.

  He pulled his cell phone out of his pocket and tapped in Andrea Simonetti’s number. Real estate salespeople worked Saturdays, and she answered on the second ring. “Hi, Dylan. Nothing to report,” she told him. “I relayed your offer to the seller’s broker, but she hasn’t gotten back to me yet.”

  “Okay,” Dylan said, pretending that seeking an update on his bid was his reason for calling. “If they really want to sell, they’ll come back with a counter-offer.”

  “I’m sure. These things take time, of course.”

  Blah-blah-blah. Small talk, shop talk. Impatient, his heart still thumping against his rib cage like a prisoner attempting a jail break, Dylan steered the conversation in a different direction. “So, I was wondering—you know that store, the Attic?”

  “Oh, I love that store,” Andrea gushed. “Whenever I go in there, I find something new. The inventory constantly changes. It’s like an adventure every time.”

  “Yeah.” Dylan did his best to sound as if he shared Andrea’s enthusiasm for the place. “Do you know the name of that pretty sales clerk?”

  “Gwen Parker, you mean? She’s the owner. She’s worked like a dog to turn that place around. The previous owner—what was her name? Janice Something. Total flake. Good at conceptualizing, but the place always looked kind of drab and sad—like a real attic, I guess. But she retired and sold the business to Gwen. And Gwen lit a fire under the place. Not literally, of course.” Andrea chuckled at her own joke. “I’ve gotten to know her through the Brogan’s Point Business Association. She always has great ideas at our meetings. Ways to spruce up downtown at the holidays, ways to make parking easier. She’s a real spitfire.”

  She’d been a spitfire that night six years ago, Dylan thought. But his brain locked onto Gwen Parker. Bless Andrea for having supplied him with Gwen’s last name, and the news that she now owned the business.

  He let the broker yammer for a minute more, then extricated himself from the call. As soon as it ended, he tapped his phone screen to open a browser, navigated to the White Pages, and typed “Gwen Parker Brogan’s Point MA.”

  An address for Gwendolyn Parker appeared. Gwendolyn.

  She went from being Gwen to being Gwendolyn Parker in his mind. She went from being a fantastic sex partner to a successful shop owner. And a mother.

  And a spitfire.

  And a selfish bitch who’d neglected to let him know he was a father.

  He clicked over to GPS and tapped in her address. In less than ten minutes, he was pulling his car up to the curb in front of a compact Cape Cod style house in a quiet residential neighborhood. The small front lawn was littered with dead leaves from the maple, oak, and sycamore trees that flanked the walk. A small bicycle, metallic purple, with streamers dangling from the handlebars and training wheels attached to the frame, leaned against the side of the house. A willow wreath hung on the front door.

  It wasn’t a sprawling twelve-room Victorian overlooking the ocean. But then, Gwen wasn’t a movie star who was paid obscene amounts of money to lead the Galaxy Force in combat against evil aliens.

  Still, if Dylan had known he had a daughter—if that spitfire bitch had done him the courtesy of informing him of this fact—he would have bought them a bigger house with a more spacious yard.

  His daughter. His daughter. Just thinking about it caused his emotions to spin like a tornado, a violent storm tearing apart everything in his world that had once been solid.

  All right, so Gwen had kept this profound truth from him. That was the choice she’d made, and it allowed him to make his own choice. He could pretend he’d never seen that little girl who looked so much like his niece—who looked so freaking much like him. He could pretend he had no idea she existed. He could go on with his life, dating, hooking up, remaining open to the possibility that some woman would someday enter his life and steal his heart, and they could make a commitment and create children both of them knew about.

  He couldn’t live in Brogan’s Point, though. That was for sure.

  But he wanted to live in Brogan’s Point. Not just because of the ocean view of the house he’d bid on, not just because the town was peaceful and tranquil and the
sea breezes soothed his spirit more effectively than any drug known to humankind, but because...

  Because he had a daughter. And that daughter was in this town. And damn it, he couldn’t pretend he hadn’t seen her. She existed. She lived. She colored pictures of someone or something named Mr. Snuffy. A piece of Dylan was walking the earth. A piece of his heart, a piece of his soul, was here in this town, in this world.

  Christ. It was a tornado, all right, like the storms that swept across the plains of his Nebraska childhood, blowing everything in their path to smithereens. His life felt splintered, shattered. Unrecognizable.

  And it was all Gwendolyn Parker’s fault.

  ***

  At eleven a.m., the Faulk Street Tavern was pretty empty, which Dylan supposed was a good thing. He knew the joke about it being five o’clock somewhere, but he didn’t really want anything alcoholic.

  What he wanted was to confront Gwen, to grab her by the shoulders and shake her until her eyes dissolved in tears and she begged his forgiveness—or until she whipped out evidence that proved her daughter had nothing to do with him.

  Sure. Just a coincidence that she’d have a daughter with Dylan’s curly brown hair and dark brown eyes and pointy chin, whose age implied that she was born exactly nine months after Gwen and Dylan had spent a night jumping each other’s bones.

  He’d wanted to sit in the car by the curb, watching Gwen’s house until she showed up. But stores stayed open late on Saturdays. Hours might pass before she left work. In those hours, some neighbor might grow suspicious of the nondescript rental car parked on the street, its occupant focused on Gwen’s house like a crazed stalker.

  He couldn’t stomach the thought of returning to the Ocean Bluff Inn, or driving back to the Victorian he hoped to buy. He’d considered phoning his manager, but what would he say to Brian? Congratulate me—I’m a daddy. Brian would shit a brick.

  So he’d gone to the Faulk Street Tavern instead. The place was nearly empty. A middle-aged guy in a ratty parka and baggy jeans sat alone on a stool at the far left end of the bar, hunched over a drink. Another middle-aged man, better groomed and in better shape, also sat at the bar, his hands curved around a coffee mug as he chatted with the tall bartender with the reddish hair and the wry smile.

  A mug of hot coffee sounded like a good idea. Straight up, no Irish or Jamaican. Just the real thing. The caffeine might supercharge his heart, but it would also clear his head. And his head definitely needed clearing.

  He approached the bar. The well-groomed man twisted in his seat to acknowledge Dylan. “Hey, it’s the actor!”

  Dylan shrugged. He wasn’t in the mood to make nice with a fan, but rudeness didn’t suit him. “I guess the sunglasses and beard aren’t much of a disguise.”

  “I’ve seen through much more elaborate disguises,” the man said, extending his right hand. “Ed Nolan. I’m a detective with the Brogan’s Point police department.”

  Dylan shook hands with Nolan. The guy’s grip was strong, his palm warm from the mug he’d been holding. “I’ve never been able to grow a really thick beard,” Dylan confessed. “I guess I’d better stay on the right side of the law.”

  “That would be a good policy,” Nolan said. “Gus—” he tipped his head toward the bartender “—told me you were in town. I remember when you were here a few years back, making that movie about the boat.”

  “The local police were great while we were doing that shoot,” Dylan recalled. They’d blocked off roads when necessary, and arranged with ship owners to allow for filming on one of the wharves. They’d helped with permits, directed traffic, and facilitated a night shoot on the high school’s football field. “We couldn’t have made that movie without you.”

  Nolan chuckled. “I guess if I ever get tired of police work, I can head out to Hollywood and make movies there.”

  “Yeah,” the bartender said. “Or if they fire you for visiting a bar in the middle of the morning.”

  Nolan glanced at his watch and stood. “I’m entitled to my coffee break.” He turned to Dylan. “Riley’s is already too crowded with the early lunch crowd. And if I go to Dunkin or Starbucks, I’ll wind up buying some pastry to go with the coffee.” He patted his flat stomach. “Gotta watch my weight.”

  “Sure,” the bartender teased. “Admit it, Ed—you just can’t stay away from me.”

  “Got that right.” Nolan drained his cup and passed it across the bar to her. “See you later, babe.” He leaned across the bar and brushed her cheek with a kiss, and Dylan realized the bartender had been serious. They were a couple.

  He wondered if they were married. If they had kids. If one of them would ever lie to the other the way Gwen had lied to Dylan.

  The bartender watched Detective Nolan stroll across the room and out the door, then set his mug in a sink behind the bar. “Can I get you something?”

  “Coffee, please.” Dylan watched the door swing shut behind Nolan. From there, his gaze strayed to the jukebox standing against the wall. He studied its polished surface, the sleek arch of its dome, the vivid hues of the peacocks adorning its front panel.

  The thunk of porcelain meeting wood prompted him to turn back to the bar, where a thick mug of steaming coffee sat before him. “Cream or sugar?” the bartender asked.

  “No, this is fine.” He took a sip, scalding his tongue. Not that he minded the beverage’s heat. He needed to jolt his brain into functionality. Like those paddles doctors used to shock a heart back to life, the coffee shocked his mind. He took another sip.

  The bartender sidled down the bar a few feet and got busy slicing lemons into thin yellow circles. Dylan watched her for a minute, waiting for the caffeine to kick in.

  When he closed his eyes, he pictured that bubbly little girl scampering through the Attic, her curly hair frothing around her face and her giggle filling the air. So he kept his eyes open. He watched the silver blade of the bartender’s knife slide through the lemon, again and again. He watched the guy down at the end of the bar droop over his drink, his chin nearly resting on his glass. Behind Dylan stood the jukebox, and he peered over his shoulder at it before taking another drink of coffee.

  “When I was here yesterday evening,” he called to the bartender, “the jukebox played a song.”

  Nodding, she reached for another lemon.

  “It was...I mean...” His brain still didn’t seem to be operating properly, because he heard himself say, “It was almost like it cast a spell on me or something.”

  Rather than laugh at him, or even look startled, the bartender nodded again.

  What did that mean? Did she agree that the song had bewitched him? “It was weird. The song almost seemed familiar to me, even though I never heard it before.”

  “It was probably a hit when your mother was in grade school,” the bartender said. “That jukebox plays only old songs. It plays records, not CD’s or MP3’s. Anything it plays had to have been popular when people listened to 45’s.”

  He wasn’t sure what she meant by a 45. He knew about 45’s in the context of firearms—45-caliber handguns—but not in the context of music. Those single-song vinyl records, maybe?

  He reflected on what had happened when the jukebox had played that 45 yesterday. He’d already spotted Gwen, but she hadn’t seen him until the song began, that wistful ballad about a man leaving a woman. If the song hadn’t played, would Gwen have continued chatting with her male companion, never noticing Dylan? If she hadn’t noticed Dylan, would he have gone to her store this morning? If he hadn’t gone into her store, would he have happily continued his life, never knowing about the little girl who looked like him?

  Bewitched wasn’t the right word. Manipulated, perhaps. It was because of the song that Gwen had locked eyes with him. Because of the song that he’d gone to the Attic. Because of the song that he’d seen the girl.

  “Some folks think it’s magic,” the bartender said.

  Her voice short-circuited his thoughts. “What’s magic?”

&
nbsp; “The jukebox. They claim it sometimes plays a song someone in the room has to hear.”

  “What do you mean?”

  She scooped up the yellow wheels of sliced lemon and dropped them into a bowl, then tossed the knife into the sink and rinsed her hands. “They say the jukebox will play a song that changes the course of your life. Not always, but sometimes. Not for everyone, just for some people.” She shot him a look, and that wry, enigmatic smile returned to her lips. “I saw you yesterday. You and Gwen Parker. That song was telling you something.”

  That she could articulate what he’d been thinking, what he’d been feeling, made it seem possible to him. “What was the song telling me?”

  She shrugged. “That’s for you to figure out. You and Gwen.”

  Dylan knew about magic. He knew that he could act out an entire scene with himself in front of a green screen, and CGI would add monsters and spaceships and constellations of stars—and magically, movie audiences would see Captain Steele battling aliens in deep space.

  But a song? An old rock song about a man touching a woman’s cheek and walking away?

  Angel of the morning.

  If that song was magic, he wished it had worked its magic so that Gwen hadn’t seen him, so that he could have walked away from her and never had to think about her as anything more than someone with whom he’d shared a fun, meaningless night a long time ago. He wished the song could magically restore his life to the way it was before he’d seen his daughter.

  Because, damn it, he couldn’t walk away now.

  Chapter Six

  The afternoon flew by.

  After lunch, Gwen took Annie to the supermarket to buy groceries. Annie loved going to the supermarket, pretending she was steering the automobile-shaped cart designed for children and making purchasing suggestions. “Cara says round waffles taste better than the square ones,” she shouted up to Gwen from her position behind the steering wheel. “We should get round ones. Can we buy bread sticks? We need carrots! The little baby ones!”