Kitabı oku: «Twins Included», sayfa 2

CHAPTER THREE

MATT pushed the door open.

And saw Liz scrambling up from her chair.

She stood facing him, leaning back against the edge of the desk. She seemed actually to be trying to press into it, as if desperate to get away from him.

“You can’t come bursting in here anytime you want,” she said. “Please respect my right to some privacy.”

“Liz.” He moved forward but stopped a few feet from her when he met the wall of hostility she’d erected between them. With a pleading gesture, he said, “I’m not your enemy. You seem to think of me as some kind of a threat—”

“You’re wrong, Matt. I don’t think of you at all.”

He sighed. This conversation was going nowhere. Or at least, it wasn’t going in the direction he wanted it to.

He started again. “All I wanted to ask was…did you find the cemetery?”

“Yes.”

“And your father’s grave?”

“Yes.”

“I know,” he said, “that you and your dad never got along…but still, it must have been tough.”

To his dismay, he saw a mist of tears in her eyes. Tears which she quickly blinked away.

“What was tough,” she said levelly, “was finding out from the caretaker that in the weeks before he died, my father was…incarcerated—for want of a better word!—in Blackwells Nursing Home.”

“Incarcerated…that’s kind of harsh, Liz.”

“Harsh? I don’t think so! That place, as I recall, was like something out of a Dickens’ novel. The only people who ended up at Blackwells were people who couldn’t afford anything better. So tell me, has it changed?” she demanded.

“No, it hasn’t.”

“I don’t understand how my father ended up there then. He had pots of money.”

“Most of it was apparently invested in the stock market and a few years after you left, he lost it. It was the news of that loss that brought on his stroke.”

She swallowed hard, and her voice shook a little as she asked, “How did he cope…after the stroke?”

He knew she was finding this conversation difficult, but there was no way he could make it any easier for her. The facts were the facts, and he wouldn’t be doing her any favors by sugarcoating them. If she didn’t hear them from him, she would hear them from someone else. “He had to have a round-the-clock attendant.”

“Where did he get the money for that?”

“It was a costly business and as I mentioned before, that’s why he eventually had to mortgage the house. In the end, just before he went into Blackwells, he had to put the place up for sale to pay his debts. The day before I put in my offer, he had another stroke. And then a few weeks later, he had his fatal heart attack…”

“How sad to end up like that. With no family around, and in a place like Blackwells. I should have come home years ago.” Liz hid her face in her hands and started to sob, muffled little sounds seeping out between her fingers.

He couldn’t bear to see her so distressed.

With a groan, he closed the space between them and drew her tenderly into his arms. “I knew this would be tough for you,” he murmured. “That’s why I wanted to drive you to the cemetery. But you didn’t want me around. You wanted no part of me.”

She felt so fragile he was afraid she might snap in his embrace. Like the most delicate of crystal. Anguish twisted his heart. She had once been his, and through a moment of stupidity and immaturity, he had lost her.

He looked down at her as she leaned against him, weeping gently.

And he felt a ray of hope.

She’d wasted no time last night in telling him she was independent, but…was she really so independent? She wasn’t fighting him now, was she? Maybe this was the time to press his case again. He so desperately wanted the opportunity to make amends.

“Liz, please let me help you,” he begged. “I’d do anything to—”

She jerked away from him, and with a little hiccuping sob, glared at him through eyes that shone with tears.

“I don’t need help.” She dashed a hand over her eyes. “And if I did, you’d be the last person in the world I’d turn to. I can handle this on my own!”

She was a fighter. Once again, the word came into his mind. Liz Rossiter was no longer the easily intimidated girl she’d been at seventeen; she was strong and she was determined.

And she didn’t need him in her life. He was going to have to accept that; but it wasn’t going to be easy.

“Just tell me one more thing,” she said. “About this house.”

“Anything.”

“My father was under great pressure to sell.”

“Yeah, he was—”

“So you got yourself a good deal? I mean, if he was under pressure—”

“I’m not sure what you’re implying, Liz.” But he knew damned well what she implying. She was implying that he had taken advantage of an old man’s desperate financial plight; whereas, in actual fact, he’d had to stretch himself to the limit to come up with the asking price.

“So tell me,” she said, with a careless shrug of one shoulder, “were you happy with the deal you made?”

He somehow managed to hide the anger he felt at her insinuating tone. “Happy?” He lifted one shoulder, mimicking her careless shrug. “I wouldn’t have used the word ‘happy.’ But I was certainly more than satisfied.”

“I’ll bet!” Her scorn was blatant. And it didn’t sit prettily on her face.

He wanted to wipe that contemptuous expression away, he burned to tell her exactly why he had bought Laurel House, but his pride wouldn’t let him.

And what did it matter anyway? He could never redeem himself, in her eyes, for the wrong he’d done her thirteen years ago. He could live with her believing he had screwed her father. He’d lived with worse.

“Okay.” He rubbed a hand wearily over his jaw. “I’ll let you get back to whatever you were doing.”

He left her standing there, and he didn’t look back.

Next day was sunny and very warm, and Liz decided to attend the eleven o’clock service at the Presbyterian Church.

But when she tried to start the car she found she had carelessly let it run out of gas.

Even if she’d wanted to—which she didn’t!—she couldn’t have asked Matt for a drive as she’d heard him leave the house an hour before. So she took off at a brisk pace and walked the couple of miles into town.

By the time she got to the church, it was five after eleven. As she ran up the steps and across the deserted narthex, she could hear the congregation singing.

The music faded to an end as she pushed open the swing doors, and in the bustle of movement as everyone sat down, she slipped unnoticed into one of the back pews.

“Matt, will you pop down to the basement and pick up the boys from Sunday School?” Molly adjusted the brim of her straw hat as she looked up at Matt. They were standing in the narthex, jostled together by the jovial crowd making its way out to the street on this lovely sunny Sunday.

“You’re not coming down?”

“No, I need to dash home…the service was longer than usual and I want to check on the roast. Will you pick up the boys and take them to my place?”

“Sure, no problem. But Molly—”

“Mmm?” She was impatient as a horse at the starting gate. “What is it, Matt? I really must dash.”

“Okay, honey. Go ahead. But—” he rested his hand lightly on her shoulder “—I need to have a talk with you. Today.”

Her hazel eyes took on a luminous glow. “The boys have been invited over to Jamie’s after lunch. We’ll be on our own and we can talk privately.” She ran a hand down his striped silk tie. And let her fingertips linger for a moment. “Hurry home, Matt. I’ll be waiting.”

Liz walked along Fourth Avenue, the echo of her steps a rather lonely sound on the Sunday-quiet street.

She’d slipped away as the congregation sang the last hymn. She knew she’d have to face everyone eventually, but she’d decided to put it off till another day. She still felt drained after her visit to the cemetery; and her confrontation with Matt last night hadn’t helped.

Nor had it helped when he’d pulled her into his arms.

For a moment—only a moment though it had seemed like an eternity—she’d allowed herself the luxury of leaning on him. But when he’d offered, in that husky sexy voice, to help her, to do anything—

His words had jerked her back to reality as surely as if he’d slapped her face.

She could not depend on this man. And she must never forget it.

Picking up her step, she was almost at the corner of the block, when a sudden squeal of tires grabbed her attention. A white Honda Civic had braked in the road just ahead…and was backing up toward her.

When it stopped, she saw that the driver was a woman—a stranger wearing a floral dress, a wide-brimmed straw hat and sunglasses that hid her eyes.

“Beth?” The car window was open, the woman’s tone high with astonishment. “Beth Rossiter? Is it really you?”

Liz frowned. “I’m sorry,” she murmured, walking over to the car. “I don’t—”

The stranger’s laugh gurgled out. “Oh, Beth. It’s me!” She whisked off her hat and her sunglasses and tossed them onto the passenger seat. “There, is that better?” She ruffled a hand through her short brown hair and poked her head out the window. “Recognize me now?”

It was Molly White. Liz felt a surge of delight. She and Molly had been buddies all the way up through school until they were fourteen, at which time Molly’s father—a policeman—had been transferred to Vancouver and the family had moved away. She and Molly had lost touch after that.

“Molly!” Leaning over, she brushed a kiss over her friend’s warm cheek, and smelled her light floral fragrance. “It’s wonderful to see you again. When did you come back to Tradition? And how have you been, what are you doing now?”

“It’s a long story and I’d love for us to get together and catch up on each other’s news but I don’t have time right now. I’m on my way home to rescue a roast from the oven. I’m making a special lunch for my crew.”

“Your crew?”

“I’m a widow, with two little boys. And—” Molly’s cheeks colored prettily “—there’s a man in my life—you wouldn’t know him, he was three years ahead of us in high school.” She didn’t wait for Liz to respond, but just barreled on. “Anyway, he and I have been seeing each other for a while now and we have an…understanding. And before very long, I expect—” She broke off with a vexed “Tsk!” And gushed on, “Oh, I shouldn’t have said that! Matt—Matt Garvock, that’s his name—prob’ly wouldn’t want me to be talking about it. Not yet. You won’t say anything to a soul, will you?”

Liz hoped she didn’t look as numb as she felt. “No,” she somehow managed to say, “I won’t say a word.” Molly and Matt. Molly was the woman he’d been with in the park, though Liz hadn’t recognized her at the time.

“Thanks, I really appreciate it!” Molly set the Honda in motion again, and as she pulled away she called back merrily, “Give me a call, Beth, my number’s in the book. It’s under my married name…Martin. Molly Martin. We’ll have coffee together soon…and by then I should have some lovely news to share with you!”

Matt took off his suit jacket and slung it over one of the Adirondack chairs arranged on Molly’s front veranda. Then tugging open the top button of his dress shirt, he loosened the knot of his tie as he followed the boys into the house.

Iain and Stuart ran upstairs to change out of their best clothes, and Matt went looking for Molly.

He followed the aroma of roasting beef and found her in the kitchen, pouring gravy into a gravy boat.

“Hi,” he said. “We’re back.”

She turned, and he saw that her face was flushed from the heat of the oven. She set the gravy boat on the table, and said, “You’ll never guess what happened on my way home!”

“You got a ticket for speeding?” he teased.

“If I did, it would be a first! No, Matt. I was driving along Fourth when I spotted a friend I hadn’t seen in…oh, must be close to sixteen years! She’d changed a bit…but I knew her by the way she walked…that hadn’t changed. And her legs, of course! Beth Rossiter always did have the most fabulous legs. In high school, we were all pea-green with envy! Anyway,” she said, beaming at him, “you’ll meet her soon because—”

“I’ve met her, Molly.”

Molly did a double take. “You have? But…where?”

He should have told her yesterday and he could kick himself now that he hadn’t. It wasn’t as if there hadn’t been plenty opportunity. They’d been together all day—first at the baseball game, then after Iain’s chess lesson he’d driven them all the fifty miles to Crestville for the Farmers’ Fair, and they hadn’t got back till late evening.

“Matt? Do you know Beth Rossiter?”

“Honey, that’s what I wanted to talk to you about.”

Her brow wrinkled, and she looked at him as if she didn’t quite understand what he’d said.

“At the church,” he reminded her. “When I told you I needed to talk to you? It was about—”

“About Beth?”

He couldn’t understand why she suddenly looked so disappointed. What had she thought he wanted to discuss with her?

“Liz,” he said. “She goes by the name of Liz now. She turned up at Laurel House on Friday night. She didn’t know her father had died…didn’t know he’d sold the family home.”

“Oh, my! What a dreadful shock she must have had when you told her—although, as I recall, she and her father didn’t get along at all well. He was a frightful man, prone to the most awful rages. So…is she here on holiday? And where is she staying? Did she book in at Sandford’s Inn?”

“I believe the move’s permanent. And no, she’s not booked in at Sandford’s. She’s staying at the house.”

“You surely don’t mean Laurel House?”

“Yeah,” he said. “She’s there. With me. For the present, at any rate, till we sort things out.”

“But…what things?”

“She says she has papers that prove her father had no right to sell the property—”

“But everything was legal, wasn’t it? I mean, you’re a lawyer, for heaven’s sake! You’d have checked everything out—”

“Oh, it’s legal all right. No question about that.”

“Then…she’ll have to leave. Find another place to stay. Won’t she?”

“It’s not all that simple, Molly—”

Matt broke off as he heard the boys clattering downstairs.

He put a hand on Molly’s shoulder.

“Let’s leave it for now,” he said quietly. “We’ll talk some more, after lunch.”

Liz had always loved Laurel House.

She knew it was partly because the rambling old place had such character, but it was also because of the memories it held of her mother, and the love they had shared until her mother’s death when Liz was twelve.

Now on this Sunday afternoon, knowing Matt wouldn’t be back for a while, Liz was free to roam around the place at will—not that she wanted to poke around among his things; she just wanted to reacquaint herself with her old home.

On the night of her arrival, she’d noticed the new appliances in the kitchen; and in the morning, she’d seen that the cupboards were new, too. But apart from that, everything seemed much as she remembered. And on her tour of the main floor, she found little had changed there, either. Even the furniture was the same. Matt’s deal with her father must have included the contents of the house.

A deal which, she had already decided cynically, had probably been very sweet indeed. For Matt.

Upstairs, she found the first of the two guest rooms had obviously been taken over by the new owner, and it had been refurbished with a king-size oak bedroom suite, cobalt-blue drapes and a blue-and-cream striped duvet.

From there she moved on to the other guest room, where she found that the twin beds were draped with sheets, and the floorboards were bare, the bay window uncurtained. Three pristine cans of paint were stacked by the closet, along with paintbrushes, a roller and a paint tray.

Matt, it seemed, was planning to redecorate.

It hurt, to have an outsider brashly take possession of her home. And added to the hurt, was a spurt of anger. By rights, this house didn’t even belong to Matt.

She marched into her own bedroom and irritably gathered up a pile of clothing that needed to be washed, items she’d accumulated during her cross-country car trip.

The laundry room was in the basement, and she found it just as tidy as the rest of the house. The white-tiled floor was spotless, the washer and dryer gleamed and a pile of folded but unironed clothing sat on the ironing board.

On a shelf above the ironing board was a box of Tide. Liz moved over to get it, but when she glanced absently at the pile of folded clothing, she came to an abrupt halt.

And with lips compressed she glared at the wispy lace bra so brazenly snuggled up to a pair of navy cotton boxer shorts.

It didn’t take an Einstein to figure out what this meant. It couldn’t have been more obvious, Liz reflected scornfully, if Matt had put a sign above his bed that read:

Molly Martin Has Slept Here!

Matt leaned against the veranda railing and looked down at Molly, who was lounging back in one of her Adirondack chairs. “You never mentioned,” he said, “that you and Max Rossiter’s daughter had been school friends.”

“It just never came up.” Molly put a hand over her eyes to block out the sun as she squinted up at him. “After Dad was transferred and our family moved to Vancouver, she and I did keep in touch a while but our letters eventually dribbled off. It wasn’t till after my Dave was posted here four years ago that I really thought about her again. I did mean to get in touch once we were settled, but then I heard that after high school her dad had sent her off to some fancy college back east and she’d never come home again. Nobody seemed to know where she was…so…I let it slide.”

Beth’s father hadn’t sent Beth off to college—at least if he had, it hadn’t been straight away; but he’d come up with that story because he hadn’t wanted his family name besmirched. The truth was, he’d sent her somewhere else, and though he’d refused to tell Matt where, he’d taken a vicious delight in telling him why.

“Did you think,” Max Rossiter had shouted at him on that black, never-to-be-forgotten autumn night, “that I would allow my daughter to let her pregnancy run its course so she could give birth to a child by the likes of you? You think I’d have let you ruin her life, her future? She’s a Rossiter, boy, and you’re nothing. You’re nobody!”

Matt would never forget the hatred in the man’s eyes. It had reminded him of the bloodshot frenzy of a raging bull.

Molly had been right, though; none of the townsfolk knew where “the rich Rossiter girl” had gone. And as far as he was aware, only four local people had ever known of her pregnancy—Beth, himself, his mother…and Beth’s father.

“Matt?” Molly prodded his ankle with the toe of her sandal. “What is it? What are you thinking?”

He dragged his thoughts to the present. “I knew her, too, Molly. I knew Max Rossiter’s daughter years ago…when she was seventeen.”

“But…how? You would have been away at law school!”

“I came home to work in Judd Anstruther’s law offices in the summer break and I met her a few weeks before she graduated from high school. In early June. And we hung around together, till I went back to UBC in the Fall.”

“You and Beth Rossiter…you dated?”

“Yeah.”

“But…nobody has ever mentioned it—you’d think that in all this time somebody would have mentioned it to me.”

“Nobody knew. We had to keep it quiet, meet in secret. Because of her father. He didn’t think any of us locals were good enough for his daughter. He had bigger—and better—plans for her.”

For a minute or two, neither of them spoke. From down the street, Matt could hear Iain and Stuart shouting as they played with their friend Jamie.

Finally Molly said, “If you let her stay on at Laurel House, I’m afraid you’re going to have your hands full.”

“I’m not sure I…know what you mean…”

“I’m a nurse, Matt—or at least I was, and I know all the signs. I know that…look.”

He stared at her, and felt a growing sense of dread that chilled him. “She…Liz…she isn’t ill, is she?”

Molly closed her eyes and leaned her head back against the slats of the chair. “No, she isn’t ill, Matt…She’s pregnant.”

Pregnant!

The word was still rolling around in Matt’s head when he left Molly’s an hour later.

But maybe Molly was mistaken. He latched onto the possibility…then reluctantly dismissed it when he recalled the confident tone she’d used when she’d added that she was very rarely wrong in such matters.

So Liz was—very likely—pregnant.

What should he do? Should he ask her outright if she was expecting a baby? Or should he give her an opening and wait for her to volunteer the information?

By the time he got back to Laurel House, he still hadn’t made up his mind what to do, so in the end he decided to play it by ear.

He parked the car and went inside. He was shutting the front door behind him when he heard her footsteps on the stairs. And by the time he’d walked into the foyer, she was almost at the bottom.

She stopped on the last step and looked at him warily.

“Hi,” he said, assessing her with new eyes in light of what Molly had told him. “How’s it going?”

She was all skin and bone and long arms and longer legs, but if her waist had thickened at all he had no way of telling because the pink silk blouson top she was wearing over her cream miniskirt gave nothing away.

He scrutinized her face, searching for whatever tell-tale signs Molly had seen. Was it the heaviness of her eyes? The tightly drawn skin over her nose? The tiny break-out of a rash on one smooth temple?

Dammit, he didn’t know what the first signs of pregnancy were!

Liz put a hand on the newel post and frowned across at him.

“What’s the matter?” Her voice rang with challenge. “Why on earth are you staring at me like that?”