The Wanderer by Robyn Carr Page A

the beer. “What were you going to do?” she asked.
    “Sit on the hill and spy on the beach,” he said.
    She laughed at him. “I guess you think no one notices you there.” She sat on the top step and twisted the cap off the beer. “Just what do you think is going to happen out there?”
    He sat beside her. He twisted off his own cap. “I’ll know it when I see it,” he said, taking a pull on the beer. “My relationship with Lou...it’s getting to me. We’re like an old married couple.”
    “Well, at least you recruited her,” Gina said. “And why wouldn’t you be like that? You’ve been together longer than most people our age have been married. Don’t be stupid. Don’t complain. You’d be lost without her.”
    “I’d be lost without her,” he agreed. “Maybe that’s what annoys me. It’s unnatural.”
    “Don’t cry to me. I live with my mother.”
    “Here’s something I’ve been wanting to ask you,” he said. “Are you going to work at the diner for the rest of your life?”
    “Probably. Why?”
    “Aren’t you almost done with your degree?”
    “Almost. I even have some credits toward a master’s. I’m a real speed demon. A short seventeen years to my high school diploma and almost a degree.”
    “Shouldn’t you be looking for something better? Where you don’t have to wipe up after people?”
    “Seriously?” she asked. “Are you seriously asking me that?”
    “Hey, I have no degree at all. No almost about it.”
    “Okay, first of all, Stu takes very good care of me. I make more money at the diner than I’d make a lot of other places. I’ve become indispensable to him, so he has to keep me happy. And I can do everything I need to do—go to school part-time, take care of Ashley and keep up with all her activities, help my mom in the deli, get the days off I need as long as everything else is covered. Second, my degree will be in social work. I’d have to work for the county. The pay is miserable.”
    “But there’s benefits,” he said.
    “I have benefits. Maybe not the best benefits, but...”
    “Retirement?” he asked.
    “A little,” she said. “Not that I expect to retire. What are you getting at?”
    “I don’t know,” he said, slumping a little bit. “None of my business, really, but sometimes I think you work too hard.”
    “You’re right about that,” she said. “But I have a good gig going, Mac. One kid with a granny backup, a decent if not extraordinary education, some benefits, a boss who lets me take any time I need.” She took a drink of her beer. “This was a good idea, a beer. Thanks. I could use better advice, though,” she added.
    He chuckled. “I’ll remember that.”
    “See that you do. It’s really beautiful tonight. You don’t notice things like that when you’re in the middle of a wild and crazy football game.”
    “Have you met the new doctor yet?”
    She shook her head. “Have you?”
    “Briefly. He stopped in to say hello before he started ripping the boards off the windows next door. His wife is dead, he’s got a couple of little kids and he brought a babysitter with him. Very pretty.”
    She sighed. “That’s an au pair, Mac. She’s from Mexico. In exchange for room and board, an education and, with luck, citizenship, she’s a full-time nanny. And she’s about twelve.”
    “No...”
    “Okay, she’s nineteen. And I hear the doctor is a hottie.”
    “Where’d you hear that?” he asked.
    She peered at him in the dark and lifted one brow. “Where do you think?”
    “Ray Anne?” he asked.
    “She’s keeping pretty close tabs on him.”
    Mac grinned. “I think you stay at the diner because you have access to all the gossip there.”
    She grinned back. “Just like at the cop shop.”
    “True,” he said. He was quiet for a long moment. “Another year and our girls will graduate. Go to college.”
    “Are you mourning that already?” she asked him.
    “Ha! I’m counting the days! Think they’ll go to the