Free Cavanaugh Rules by Marie Ferrarella Page B

you.”
    “No, I’m not,” she protested with a sad smile. “I just expect you to get fed up with holding my hand whenever I wind up having this happen to me,” she told him honestly. Her eyes smiled as she looked at him. “I’d never confuse you with anyone else.” Sabrina looked down at the one glass of wine she allowed herself to have whenever she came here. There were no answers in the light pink liquid. “Why do they keep running out on me, Matthew? What’s wrong with me?” she asked in a very small, defeated voice.
    Matt didn’t bother with the menu. He knew what the restaurant had to offer by heart. The people who ran Haven knew when not to mess with a good thing and had left it unchanged for the past few years.
    When the waiter approached their table, Matt ordered the lemon chicken. His mother echoed, “Make that two.” Once the waiter retreated, only then did Matt answer his mother’s question.
    He hated seeing her like this. And hated what he had to tell her, even though they both already knew this. “You have lousy taste in men,” he told her honestly. “And a good heart,” he added to temper the harsher remark. “No matter how many times this happens to you, no matter how many men take everything you have to give and then disappear, you just can’t seem to make yourself believe that not everyone is like you, that someone could actually be cruel on purpose.”
    His mother laughed shortly. “I guess that makes me a sucker.”
    “No,” he told her carefully, “just a good-hearted person who really needs to be a little more cautious about opening up.”
    She began to speak, then waited until the waiter who’d returned with the basket of lemon chicken pieces that was to be their dinner left again.
    “It’s just that I get so lonely sometimes,” she confessed quietly. Bright blue eyes looked up at him. “I miss your father.”
    “I don’t think he’d be too happy about what you’re going through, either, Mom,” Matt pointed out patiently. “Listen, I have an idea. Why don’t you do some volunteer work at the local hospital?” he suggested. “They could use the help and it’ll make you feel as if you’re doing something useful for people. That’s a plus. You also might run into a better class of people than you do at your present job. Definitely another plus.”
    But Sabrina shook her head. “I can’t do that and work,” she protested. “My job takes up a great deal of my time.”
    The place where she worked—a bar named Sparky’s—was not the place where he wanted his mother. It was the last in a long line of less than A-list places where she’d worked.
    “Waiting tables at that...club—” he finally settled on the word rather than calling it a bar “—also puts you right out there with a whole unsavory class of people. Men just looking for women to take advantage of.”
    She pressed her lips together. “Meaning me.”
    “Listen.” He leaned in closer. “You can quit that job. I have some money put away—”
    “No, no, no, that’s out of the question.” She was his mother, Matthew wasn’t supposed to have to take care of her. “I won’t have you spending your hard-earned money on me—”
    “My money, Mom,” he told her. “I get to spend it the way I want to.” He smiled at her, remembering the good times—and there had been good times. She’d tried very hard to give him a decent upbringing and he’d never doubted that she loved him. The rest of it was hard to take. “Can’t think of a better way than helping you out.”
    “I can,” Sabrina told him firmly. She placed her hand over his and patted it. “Your taking time out of your busy day to see me is all I want from you. That’s already more than a lot of sons would do,” she insisted. And then she forced a smile to her lips, putting up a brave front for him and trying at the same time to convince herself that from now on, it was going to be different. “I’ll try to do better,” she