Beach Lane. Sherryl Woods
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meant to you. You live and breathe sports. That column was all tied up in who you are. It gave you a very public professional identity. Losing it has to be killing you.”
He looked vaguely relieved by her words. “That’s exactly it,” he said.
“You don’t have to sound so surprised that I get it,” she said wryly. “I’ve had a lot of years to figure out what makes you tick.”
He met her gaze. “I really am sorry about how you found out about this.”
She gave him an amused look. “Do you actually know how I found out? Not just that it came from my family, but the circumstances?”
“Your father filled you in?” he guessed.
“And my mother and my brothers,” she said. “They staged an intervention to warn me against getting involved with you right now.”
For the first time, he looked truly guilt stricken. “Geez, Susie, I am so sorry.”
“They forced me to consider for the first time that I must not mean much to you if you’d keep such a huge secret from me.”
“You know that’s not true,” he said emphatically, then studied her closely. “You do know it, don’t you?”
“Actually, no, I don’t. And to make this little intervention of theirs even more fun, Matthew also mentioned that he and Luke had warned you to stay away from me. Why on earth didn’t you tell me about that? I was horrified.”
He waved it off. “Trust me, it was no big deal. They were just being protective brothers.”
“Then what they said had nothing to do with why you and I, well…” She couldn’t quite bring herself to put it into words. “Why we haven’t, you know, done anything?”
He blinked in apparent confusion, then caught on. “No,” he said quickly. “Hell, no. We’ve just had these boundaries between us. I guess I always knew the rules. Heaven knows, you were clear enough about them, made sure I understood that we had this totally platonic thing going on.”
Susie sighed. “Forget the stupid rules, Mack,” she snapped impatiently. “I’m sick to death of them.”
Looking a little stunned by her vehemence, he stood up and started to pace, then paused to meet her gaze. “We talked about this on Thanksgiving, Susie. Now’s not the time—”
“Who says?” she challenged.
“I do,” he told her. “And your whole family, for that matter. Didn’t you listen to what they said?”
“They don’t get a say.”
“I just think it’s for the best,” he insisted stubbornly.
Susie knew better than to push too hard right now, no matter how badly she wanted to. As she’d told him earlier, she sensed they were at a turning point, but with Mack’s career in turmoil, he wasn’t ready to make another life-altering decision. She had to respect that.
“Okay, then, let’s figure out what comes next for you,” she said briskly, letting the rest go for now. They’d get back to it. She made a promise to herself to be sure of that.
He paused in his agitated pacing and stared at her. “You sound as if we can do that between now and your next appointment,” Mack said, sounding vaguely disgruntled. “It’s not going to be that easy. Right now I’m thinking I might have to put out feelers, see what else is out there and then move to wherever I can find a job opening.”
Susie didn’t even attempt to hide her stunned reaction. “You’d leave Chesapeake Shores?” she asked in dismay.
He nodded, though he looked almost as miserable as she was feeling. “I might not have a choice.”
“No,” she said flatly, determined not to have things end between them before they’d even gotten started. And if Mack left now, they would surely end. Distance, especially with their undefined relationship, would kill whatever chance they had.
“That’s not going to happen,” she added even more emphatically. “You love it here as much as I do. Granted your experiences growing up in Chesapeake Shores were far different from mine, but this is your home, Mack.”
“Susie, it’s not that simple,” he argued. “Good jobs in journalism don’t grow on trees, especially not these days. Haven’t you been warning me about that for months now? I was the one who was an idiot. I thought my column was so successful, I’d be immune from cutbacks. Instead, it made me the perfect target. Even if I could find another newspaper job, the salary probably won’t be what I was getting in Baltimore.”
“Then create your own,” she blurted. “Your own job, I mean.”
Mack blinked at the suggestion. “Excuse me?”
“You heard me. Create a job for yourself.”
“Did you have something specific in mind?” he asked, sitting back down, his expression curious.
This was exactly why he should have talked to her the minute he was fired, she thought. Mack plodded through lists of pros and cons. She was quicker and much more creative, especially, it seemed, when it came to holding on to someone she didn’t want leaving her world.
Thinking on her feet, she said, “You could blog about sports on a national scale. That’s the big trend these days, isn’t it? Everything’s going on the internet. You have the experience and reputation. You’d have a built-in following.”
Though he looked intrigued, he shook his head. “I don’t see how it could bring in much money.”
“Build up a subscriber base, paid or unpaid,” she said, thinking off the top of her head. This might not be her usual area of expertise, but since Mack was in journalism, she’d been paying attention to the field recently. “The point would be to get hits. You get enough hits, you can find advertisers. Who knows, maybe you’d even be picked up by newspapers in syndication or something. I don’t know. It just seems like it could work. The internet is the future, isn’t it?”
“So my boss told me as he was kicking me out the door,” Mack said wryly. “Any other ideas?”
Her expression turned thoughtful. “Well, speaking as someone who wants to get real estate listings in front of a targeted local audience, what about starting a weekly newspaper right here? I know that seems counterintuitive, since newspapers are dying, but I think the local ones will continue to be in demand, if only as a vehicle for advertising.”
“I’m a sports columnist, not a publisher,” Mack argued. “Or even an editor. I haven’t had to worry about getting a paper out on time since college.”
“Have you forgotten everything you knew back then?” she asked.
“No, but…”
She frowned at his negative attitude. “These are just ideas, Mack. Don’t dismiss them out of hand or make excuses for why they won’t work. Think about the independence you’d have with your own blog. Or imagine how exciting it could be to start something brand-new, something that’s needed in this community. You could shape it into the kind of newspaper you always dreamed of working for.”
Mack continued to look skeptical. “I don’t know,” he murmured.
“Just think about it,” Susie ordered. “That’s my contribution for now,” she said. “I have an appointment. Go home and do what you do best, ponder. I’m not saying these two ideas are the only possibilities, but even you have to admit they’re interesting options. And either one is better than packing up and leaving your home.”
“True,” he conceded. “I knew there was a reason I came by here today.”
She gave him a chiding look. “You came by here to apologize for leaving me out of the loop,” she corrected. “Now that you’ve seen what a help I can