Love on the Rocks Read Free

something she could relate with. It drew her to him like metal to a magnet. All summer long, she’d fought the urge to be one of the women who tried to gain his attention to get him to notice her. He probably had enough of his own problems. He didn’t need a woman with the kind of baggage she carried. Still, he was the only man for whom she’d even remotely consider letting down her guard.
    Roxi shrugged and went back to work cleaning the bar and restocking the coolers for the next day. The regular crowd had thinned until the last customers left promising to see her next summer.
    “I’ve got this. Otis will be ready for his walk.” Frank Hamner, her grill cook took the bag of trash she’d gathered. “You look like you could use the walk yourself.”
    She chuckled. “That bad?” Roxi touched a hand to her hair.
    “You’ll always be as pretty as the day your mom and dad brought you home from the hospital. But tonight, you have that far away look you get when you sink back into bad places.”
    “I’m not sinking into bad places.” She patted the cook’s face, her heart filled with love for the man who’d become the father she’d lost.
    Frank covered her hand with his. “I wish I had been there for you. If I’d known you and your mom were in trouble…”
    Roxi shook her head. “Mom was too proud to ask for help. And no one could have guessed something like that could happen.”
    “I wish she had asked for help. For your sake.” The old retired drill sergeant, with the stern face and flat top hair cut might scare other people, but Roxi knew him for the kind and gentle soul who’d come along when she and her mother hit rock bottom. He’d brought them out to Cape Cod where he’d retired, and given Roxi a second chance at a life she never would have had in the dirty, dangerous streets of the Bronx where some mothers sold their children to feed their drug habit.
    “What we can’t change, we learn from,” Roxi whispered her mother’s mantra.
    Frank snorted. “What I’m afraid is that you didn’t learn the right things.”
    Roxi pushed her shoulders back. “I’ve learned how to take care of myself.”
    “Physically, but what about what’s here?” He tapped his hand to his chest.
    She smiled at Frank. “I would have thought you of all people would think emotion makes a person too weak to fight.”
    Frank shook his head. “Love gives a person a reason to fight—love for your family, your brothers in arms, hell, even your dog—without it, you have nothing.”
    “You’re right. I love my family.” She kissed the old man’s grizzly face. “You. And I love Otis. I don’t need anyone else.”
    “You’re wrong.”
    “Says a man who lives alone.” Roxi set a chair upside down on a table and reached for another. “Have you ever been in love?”
    “Yes,” Frank’s voice said quietly.
    Roxi turned and stared at the man who’d been her father’s closest friend in the army. “Frank, were you married?”
    He shook his head. “No, but I was in love.”
    Roxi had a hard time picturing the gruff, army sergeant in love. But then he loved her and even had affection for Otis. “With whom?”
    He hiked the bag of trash up off the floor. “It doesn’t matter now. She didn’t feel the same way about me.”
    “Unrequited love.” Roxi snorted. “All the more reason to steer clear of that kind of love.”
    “It’s hard to do when your heart won’t let go.”
    “But she didn’t love you.” Roxi set another chair upside down on the table.
    A shadow passed over Frank’s face. “I didn’t love her any less because of it.”
    “So you wasted your life mooning over her and what did it buy you?”
    He stared at her for a long moment. “You.”
    When the one word sank in, Roxi’s heart squeezed so tightly, her eyes stung. “You loved my mother?”
    He nodded. “But she loved your father—my friend.”
    Roxi shook her head, the tears welling. “Oh, Frank…”
    “Now don’t go getting