Free Sweets to the Sweet by Jennifer Greene Page A

quiet, genial man with a gentle sense of humor. He hid his nervousness well, neither forced conversation nor avoided it, and met Owen’s eyes head-on. All traits Owen normally respected in another man.
    Not in Peter. Owen never trusted a man he couldn’t fathom. Peter showed no trace of jealousy or surprise at finding a strange man with Laura. In his shoes, Owen would have been off the wall. And every time Laura opened her mouth, Peter looked up with a genuinely warm smile.
    Owen was not happy.
    “You’ve done a beautiful job here,” Peter said softly to Laura, his eyes flickering around the room. “There’s the lighthouse clock.” He grinned. “I remember that Sunday afternoon when you were trying to get the tarnish off that thing. The whole apartment reeked of polish.”
    Laura twirled the stem of the wineglass. “Your work is going well?”
    “Sure. Travis and Judy are always asking about you.”
    “I miss them,” she admitted. “And Mike, he’s doing okay?”
    “You know Mike. He’s forever thinking up some great wild scheme, but it’s always talk. Steve’s wife is pregnant.”
    “Is she?” Laura took a sip, then put the wineglass down. Old friends from the music world…she missed them all. She knew Peter was bringing them up to remind her of people she’d—from his viewpoint—casually tossed out of her life. Peter had the gift of gently, gently poking at sores that were almost healed, until suddenly they were raw wounds again.
    And Owen was vibrating with all the tension of a caged tiger. She could barely look at him. She wanted to believe she was handling the conversation rather well; she wanted to believe she looked composed and calm, but every time she felt Owen’s eyes rest on her, she knew she wasn’t succeeding. Owen was too damned perceptive.
    “And my parents said they tried to contact you several times, Laura. I can’t imagine that you couldn’t find the time to at least drop them a letter…”
    “Yes.” Another raw wound. Peter’s parents had been dear to her, as had so many of their friends. She must have looked callous to all of them when she severed contact without a word. And she must look the same way to Owen.
    For some foolish reason, she’d set down the wineglass, leaving her nothing to do with her hands. She quickly picked it up again. “I should have discussed Mari with you before, Peter. Of course, you have the right to see the baby, but it’s awkward while I’m nursing her. You can only take her for an hour or two at a time, and you’re not even living near here…”
    That fast, the atmosphere changed. Peter never came out fighting, of course; he just put more velvet in his voice. “Naturally, it would have been easier for me to see her if you hadn’t moved.”
    She took a breath, feeling sick inside as she hadn’t felt sick in a long time. Sick and sad and somehow defensive. She hadn’t deserted friends or ignored his parents or even moved by choice. If she’d stayed, people would have asked questions, questions she couldn’t answer. Not because of her own pride but because of Peter’s…and because of the baby in his arms, with her father’s intense blue eyes. “I realize that my moving made it more difficult for you.”
    “Which was very clever of you, if you didn’t want me to have much contact with her.”
    She was beginning to feel hounded, yet Peter was wearing a hurt look in his eyes, and glancing at Owen as if to ask for his sympathy. “Peter, you must know I didn’t move to keep you from seeing her.”
    “No? Well, I’ll manage somehow, regardless,” he said quietly. “I still don’t understand about the hospital. You called me when the baby was born, but wouldn’t let me see you. All I wanted to do was congratulate you, Laura. Was that so hard to understand?”
    She touched her fingers to her temples. His velvet tone, his soulful eyes—somehow, Peter always made her feel as if she had done something wrong. “No, of course not.”