High Noon

he’d parked, Phoebe assumed they were going to one of the restaurants along River Street. Something with a view, she supposed, even alfresco dining, which made her glad for the jacket.
    Instead he led her to the pier, past a few boats, and to a graceful, gleaming white sailboat. There was a table on deck under a white cloth. Tea lights under a little dome in the center.
    “This would be yours.”
    “If you hated boats, we were going for pizza, and this relationship would probably have ended with the last pepperoni.”
    “Fortunately for me I like boats. I had pizza last night.”
    She let him help her on board, adjusted to the sway. As first dates went, though she supposed technically this was their second, it had a lot of potential.
    “Do you do a lot of sailing?”
    “I live over on Whitfield Island.”
    “Ah.” That answered that. She walked to the rail, looked across the river. “Did you always live on Whitfield?”
    “No. Didn’t plan to.” He took a bottle of champagne from the ice bucket, began to work out the cork. “It just sort of happened and I got to like it.”
    “Like winning the lottery.”
    “More or less.”
    She turned at the sound of the cork popping.
    “So this part?” he began. “It’s the showing-off part. The boat, champagne, fancy food—which is under the table in a warming bin. But it’s also because I thought it would be nice to eat out on the water, just you and me.”
    “The showing-off part’s a bull’s-eye. The just-you-and-me part is problematic. Not for dinner, but as a concept.”
    He poured the wine. “Because?”
    She leaned back against the rail, wallowing in the breeze and the sway. “I have layers of complications.”
    “Single parent, complex career.”
    “Yes.” She took the wine. “And more.”
    “Such as?”
    “Long stories.”
    “So you said before. I’m not in any hurry.”
    “All right, let’s just start this way. I loved my ex-husband when I married him.”
    He leaned back with her. “Always a good plan.”
    “I thought so. I loved him very much, even though I knew, I understood going in, we weren’t on equal terms.”
    “I don’t get it.”
    “He didn’t love me very much. He couldn’t. He just isn’t built for it.”
    “Sounds like excuses.”
    “No. No. Easier if they were. He was never abusive, never—to my knowledge—unfaithful. But he couldn’t put his whole self into the marriage. I was sure I could fix that, I could work with that. Then I got pregnant. He wasn’t upset or angry. After Carly was born…There was just nothing,” she said after a moment. “No connection, no bond, no curiosity. He coasted, we coasted for nearly a year that way. Then he told me he wanted out. He was sorry, but it just wasn’t what he was looking for. He decided he wanted to travel. Roy’s like that. Impulsive. He married me on impulse, agreed to start a family on one. Neither really satisfied him, so, on to the next.”
    He tucked her hair behind her ear again, just that casual swirl of finger around the curve. “Does Carly ever see him?”
    “No. Really no. And actually handles the situation better than I do. That’s only one complication.”
    “Okay, give me another.”
    “My mother’s agoraphobic. She hasn’t been out of that house in ten years. She can’t.”
    “She didn’t seem—”
    “Crazy?” Phoebe interrupted. “She’s not.”
    “I wasn’t going to say crazy, hair-trigger. I was going to say nervous around strangers. Such as me.”
    “It’s not the same thing. In the house, she’s fine. She understands and feels safe inside the house.”
    “It must be rough on her.” He ran the back of his hand down Phoebe’s arm. “And you.”
    “We deal with it. She fought it a long time, about as long as she hasn’t been able to fight it. She fought it for me and my brother. So now Carter and I—and Ava and Carly—deal with it.”
    “You’ve got some rough stuff.” He turned, shifted so he was facing her, so his free hand rested on the rail by her elbow.
    So she could feel him, the pull of him as their eyes met and held. “But I don’t understand what it has to do with you and me as a concept.”
    Right that minute, she was trying to understand it herself. “My family and my work take nearly all my time, all my energy.”
    “You may be laboring under the mistaken impression I’m high-maintenance.” He took her glass, moved back to the bottle. He topped hers off, then his own. When he went back to