Read Online Moonlight Cove by Sherryl Woods - Free Book Online Page B

on his case notes, that he needed to catch up on the business of running Lunch by the Bay. Deep in denial, he even made a case for telling himself that he wasn’t hiding out, not from his own emotions and certainly not from Jess.
    Still, after several days of not following his usual routine or answering phone calls from his friends, he wasn’t all that surprised to answer his door one night and find Mack on his doorstep.
    “You’ve skipped lunch for three days running,” Mack said, looking him up and down. “You haven’t called me or Jake back.”
    “You can’t have been too worried, given how long it took you to come and check on me,” Will noted.
    Mack merely frowned at the comment. “You don’t look sick, so what’s going on?”
    “I got behind on my paperwork,” Will told him.
    Mack didn’t look as if he believed him, but he was already wandering around the apartment with a distracted expression that told Will something else entirely had brought him over here tonight.
    “Is something on your mind?” Will asked him.
    “Not really,” Mack said. “You have any beer in this place?”
    “Always,” Will responded, barely concealing his amusement. Since they’d been of legal age and he’d had his own place, he’d always kept beer on hand for Jake and Mack. “Help yourself.”
    “You want one?”
    Will shook his head. “I’m good.”
    Mack returned with his beer, but he still didn’t sit. He continued to pace, pausing only to stare out the window at the sliver of a view Will had of the bay. When he sighed heavily, Will couldn’t stand it any longer.
    “How’s Susie?” Will asked, feeling his way.
    Mack shrugged. “Okay, I guess.”
    “What do you mean, you guess? Haven’t you seen her?”
    “Yesterday,” Mack said. “She was fine, then. I haven’t spoken to her today.”
    Will knew all about being patient when one of his clients was dancing around a tough issue, but in his personal life he tended to be more direct. He hated watching Mack working so hard not to say whatever was on his mind.
    “You know,” he began, “we could play twenty questions for a while and eventually I’d hit on whatever’s bugging you, but it would be easier if you’d just tell me.”
    Mack stood across the room, his back to Will, still staring out the window. “Susie asked me something yesterday that I haven’t been able to get out of my head.”
    “Something about your relationship?”
    “No, we were talking about newspapers, you know, the way they’re struggling, that kind of thing.”
    “Okay,” Will said slowly, still not following. “And?”
    “She asked me what I’d do if I ever lost my job as a columnist for the paper in Baltimore.”
    Will stared at him. “You think your job’s on the line?” he asked, startled. No wonder Mack looked shaken.
    Mack’s column was one of the most popular in the paper, as far as Will knew. The guy’s picture was plastered all over bus benches in Baltimore, for heaven’s sake.
    Mack had gone from being a celebrated local athlete to writing about sports in a town that loved its teams. He was as much of a celebrity now as he had been on the gridiron during his all-too-brief professional career. It was one of the reasons he was such an eligible bachelor and why Will and Jake both thought it was so astounding that he’d given up all those fawning women in exchange for a relationship with Susie that he refused to define.
    “My job’s secure,” Mack said, though he still looked troubled. “At least for now. But I can’t deny that the business is changing.” He turned and faced Will. “What the hell would I do if I lost it?”
    “You’d find something else,” Will said confidently. “Remember when you blew out your knee and ended your football career? You were convinced your life was over. Then you wrote a couple of pieces on speculation for the paper, and the next thing you knew, they’d hired you. That’s the way life is. When one door closes,