Kitabı oku: «A Daddy for Her Sons», sayfa 2

CHAPTER TWO

AND THEN, KARL’S jaunty gaze fell on Connor and he stopped dead, visibly paling. Shaking his head, he raised his hands and he seemed to be muttering, “no, no,” over and over again, as though to tell Connor he really didn’t mean it. Turning on his heel, he left so quickly, Jill could almost believe she’d been imagining things.

“Wow.” She turned back slowly and looked at Connor accusingly. “I guess he believed your cockeyed story.” She put a hand to her forehead as though tragedy had struck. “Once he spreads the word, my dating days are done.”

“Good,” Connor said, beginning to attack his huge piece of cherry pie à la mode. “No point wasting your time on losers like that.”

She made a face and leaned toward him sadly. “Are they all like that? Is it really hopeless?”

“Yes.” He smiled at her. “Erase all thoughts of other men. I’m here. You don’t need anybody else.”

“Right.” She rolled her eyes, knowing he was teasing. “You’d think I would have learned my lesson with Brad, wouldn’t you?”

There was a catch in her voice as she said it. He looked up quickly and she knew he was afraid she might cry. But she didn’t cry about that anymore. She was all cried out long ago on that subject.

Did he remember what a fool she’d been? How even with all the evidence piling up in her daily life, she’d never seen it coming. At the time she was almost eight months pregnant with the twins and having a hard time even walking, much less with thinking straight. And Connor had come to tell her that Brad was leaving her.

Brad had sent him, of course. The jerk couldn’t even manage to face her and tell her himself.

That made her think twice. Here was Connor, back again. What was Brad afraid to tell her now?

She watched him, frowning, studying his blue eyes. Did she really want to know? All those months, all the heartbreak. Still, if it was something she needed to deal with, better get it over with. She took a deep breath and tried to sound strong and cool.

“So what does he want this time?”

Connor’s head jerked back as though what she was asking was out of line. He waved his fork at her. “Do you think we could first go through some of the niceties our society has set up for situations like this?” he asked her.

She searched his face to see if he was mocking her, but he really wasn’t. He was just uncomfortable.

“How about, ‘How have you been?’ or ‘What have you been up to lately?’ Why not give me some of the details of your life these days. Do we have to jump right into contentious things so quickly?”

So it wasn’t good. She should have known. “You’re the messenger, not me.”

His handsome face winced. It almost seemed as though this pained him more than it was going to pain her. Fat chance.

“We’re friends, aren’t we?” he asked her.

Were they? She used to think so. “Sure. We always have been.”

“So …”

He looked relieved, as though that made it all okay. But it wasn’t okay. Whatever it was, it was going to hurt. She knew that instinctively. She leaned forward and glared at him.

“But you’re on his side. Don’t deny it.”

He shook his head, denying it anyway. “What makes you say that?”

She shrugged. “That day, the one that ended life as I knew it, you came over to deliver the fatal blow. You set me straight as to how things really were.” Her voice hardened. “You were the one who explained Brad to me at the time. You broke my heart and then you left me lying there in the dirt and you never came back.”

“You were not lying in the dirt.” He seemed outraged at the concept.

She closed her eyes and then opened them again. “It’s a metaphor, silly.”

“I don’t care what it is. I did not leave you lying in the dirt or even in the sand, or on the couch, or anything. You were standing straight and tall and making jokes, just like always.”

Taking a deep breath, he forced himself to relax a bit. “You seemed calm and collected and fine with it. Like you’d known it was coming. Like you were prepared. Sad, but okay.” He shook his head, willing her to believe what he was saying. “Or else I never would have left you alone.”

She shrugged carelessly. How could he have gotten it all so wrong? “And you think you know me.”

He pushed away the pie, searching her eyes, looking truly distressed. “Sara was with you. Your sister. I thought …”

He looked away, frowning fiercely. He remembered what he’d thought. He’d seen the pain in her face and it had taken everything in him not to reach out and gather her in his arms and kiss her until she realized … until she knew … No, he’d had to get out of there before he did something stupid. And that was why he left her. He had his own private hell to tend to.

“You thought I was okay? Wow.” She struck a pose and put on an accent. “The corpse was bleeding profusely, but I assumed it would stop on its own. She seemed to be coping quite well with her murder.”

He grimaced, shaking his head.

“I hated you for a while,” she admitted. “It was easier than hating Brad. What Brad had done to me was just too confusing. What you did was common, everyday cowardice.”

He stared at her, aghast. “Oh, thanks.”

“And to make it worse, you never did come back. Did you?”

He shook his head as though he really couldn’t understand why she was angry. He hadn’t done anything to make her that way. He’d just lived his life like he always did, following the latest impulse that moved him. Didn’t she know that?

“I was gone. I left the country. I … I had a friend starting up a business in Singapore, so I went to help him out.”

She looked skeptical and deep, deep down, she looked hurt. “All this time?”

“Yeah.” He nodded, feeling a bit defensive. “I’ve been out of the country all this time.”

Funny, but that made her feel a lot better. At least he hadn’t been coming up here to Seattle and never contacting her.

“So you haven’t been to see Brad?”

He hesitated. He couldn’t lie to her. “I stopped in to see Brad in Portland last week,” he admitted.

She threw up her hands. “See? You’re on his side.”

He wanted to growl at her. “I’m not on anybody’s side. I’ve been friends with both of you since that first week of college, when we all three camped out in Brad’s car together.”

The corners of Jill’s mouth quirked into a reluctant smile as she remembered. “What a night that was,” she said lightly. “They’d lost my housing forms and you hadn’t been admitted yet. We had no place to sleep.”

“So Brad offered his car.”

“And stayed out with us.”

“We talked and laughed the whole night.”

She nodded, remembering. “And that cemented it. We were best buds from that night on.”

Connor smiled, but looked away. He remembered meeting Jill in the administration office while they both tried to fight the bureaucracy. He’d thought she was the cutest coed on campus, right from the start. And then Brad showed up and swept her off her feet.

“We fought the law and the law won,” he noted cynically.

“Right.” She laughed softly, still remembering. “You with that crazy book of rules you were always studying on how to make professors fall in love with you so they’d give you good grades.”

He sighed. “That never worked. And it should have, darn it all.”

Her eyes narrowed as she looked back into the past a little deeper. “And all those insane jobs you took, trying to pay off your fees. I never understood when you had time to study.”

“I slept with a tape recorder going,” he said with a casual shrug. “Subliminal learning. Without it, I would have flunked out early on.”

She stared at him, willing him to smile and admit he’d made that up, but he stuck to his guns.

“No, really. I learned French that way.”

She gave him an incredulous look. “Parlez-vous francais?”

“Uh … whatever.” He looked uncomfortable. “I didn’t say I retained any of it beyond test day.”

“Right.” She laughed at him and he grinned back.

But she knew they were ignoring the elephant in the room. Brad. Brad who had been with them both all through college. Brad who had decided she was his from the start. And what Brad wanted, Brad usually got. She’d been flattered by his attention, then thrilled with it. And soon, she’d fallen hard. She was so in love with him, she knew he was her destiny. She let him take over her life. She didn’t realize he would toss it aside when he got tired of it.

“So what are you doing here?” she asked again. “Surely you didn’t come to see me.”

“Jill, I always want to see you.”

“No kidding. That’s why you’ve been gone for a year and a half. You’ve never even met the twins.”

He looked at her with a half smile. Funny. She’d been pregnant the last time he’d seen her, but that wasn’t the way he’d thought of her all these months. And to tell the truth, Brad had never mentioned those babies. “That’s right. I forgot. You’ve got a couple of cookie crunchers now, don’t you?”

“I do. The little lights of my life, so to speak.”

“Boys.”

“Boys.” She nodded.

He wanted to ask how they got along with Brad, but he wasn’t brave enough to do it. Besides, it was getting late. She had a pair of baby boys at home. She looked at her watch, then looked at him.

“I’ve got to get home. If you can just drop me at the dock, the last ferry goes at midnight and …”

He waved away her suggestion. “You will not walk home from the ferry landing. It’s too late and too far.”

She made a face. “I’ll be fine. I’ve done it a thousand times.”

“I’ll drive you.”

She gave him a mock glare. “Well, then we’d better get going or you won’t make the last ferry back.”

“You let me worry about that.”

Let him worry—let him manage—leave it to him. Something inside her yearned to be able to do that. It had been so long since she’d had anyone else to rely on. But life had taught her a hard lesson. If you relied on others, they could really hurt you. Best to rely on nobody but yourself.

The ferry ride across the bay to the island was always fun. He pulled the car into the proper space on the ferry and they both got out to enjoy the trip. Standing side by side as the ferry started off, they watched the inky-black water part to let them through.

Jill pulled her arms in close, fending off the ocean coolness, and he reached out and put an arm around her, keeping her warm. She rested her head on his shoulder. He had to resist the urge to draw her closer.

“Hey, I’m looking forward to meeting those two little boys of yours,” he said.

“Hopefully you won’t meet them tonight,” she said, laughing. “I’ve got a nice older lady looking after them. They should be sound asleep right now.”

“It’s amazing to think of you with children,” he said.

She nodded. “I know. You’re not the only one stunned by the transformation.” She smiled, thinking of how they really had changed her life. If only Brad … No, she wasn’t going to start going back over those old saws again. That way lay madness.

“It’s also amazing to think of how long we’ve known each other,” she added brightly instead.

“We all three got close in our freshman year,” he agreed, “and that lasted all through college.”

She nodded. “It seemed, those first couple of years, we did everything together.”

“I remember it well.” He sighed and glanced down at her. All he could see was that mop of crazy, curly blond hair. It always made him smile. “You were sighing over Brad,” he added to the memory trail. “And I was wishing you would look my way instead.”

She looked up and made a face at him. “Be serious. You had no time for stodgy, conventional girls like I was. You were always after the high flyers.”

He stared at her, offended despite the fact that there was some truth in what she said. “I was not,” he protested anyway.

“Sure you were.” She was teasing him now. “You liked bad girls. Edgy girls. The ones who ran off with the band.”

His faint smile admitted the truth. “Only when I was in the band.”

“And that was most of the time.” She pulled back and looked at him. “Did you ever actually get a degree?”

“Of course I got a degree.”

She giggled. “In what? Multicultural dating?”

He bit back the sharp retort that surfaced in his throat. She really didn’t know. But why should she? He had to admit he’d spent years working hard at seeming to be a slacker.

“Something like that,” he muttered, thinking with a touch of annoyance about his engineering degree with a magna cum laude attached. No one had been closer friends to him than Brad and Jill. And they didn’t even realize he was smarter than he seemed.

It was his own fault of course. He’d worked on that easygoing image. Still, it stung a bit.

And it made him do a bit of “what if?” thinking. What if he’d been more aggressive making his own case? What if he’d challenged Brad’s place in Jill’s heart at the time? What if he’d competed instead of accepting their romance as an established fact? Would things have been different?

The spray from the water splashed across his face, jerking him awake from his dream. Turning toward the island, he could see her house up the drive a block from the landing. He’d been there a hundred times before, but not for quite a while. Not since the twins were born and Brad decided he wasn’t fatherhood material. Connor had listened to what Brad had to say and it had caused a major conflict for him. He thought Brad’s reasons were hateful and he deplored them, but at the same time, he’d seen them together for too long to have any illusions. They didn’t belong together. Getting a divorce was probably the best thing Brad could do for Jill. So he’d gone with his message, he’d done his part and hated it and then he’d headed for Singapore.

He turned to look at her, to watch the way the wind blew her hair over her eyes, and that old familiar pull began somewhere in the middle of his chest. It started slow and then began to build, as though it was slowly finding its way through his bloodstream. He wanted her, wanted to hold her and kiss her and tell her.… He gritted his teeth and turned away. He had to fight that feeling. Funny. He never got it with any other girl. It only happened with her. Damn.

A flash of panic shivered through him. What the hell was he doing here, anyway? He’d thought he was prepared for this. Hardened. Toughened and ready to avoid the tender trap that was always Jill. But his defenses were fading fast. He had to get out of here.

He needed a plan. Obviously playing this by ear wasn’t going to work. The first thing he had to do was to get her home, safe and sound. That should be easy. Then he had to avoid getting out of the car. Under no circumstances should he go into the house, especially not to take a peek at the babies. That would tie him up in a web of sentiment and leave him raw and vulnerable to his feelings. He couldn’t afford to do that. At all costs, he had to stay strong and leave right away.

He could come back and talk to her in the morning. If he hung around, disaster was inevitable. He couldn’t let that happen.

“You know what?” he said, trying to sound light and casual. “I think you really had the right idea about this. I need to get back to the hotel. I think I’ll take the ferry right on back and let you walk up the hill on your own. It’s super safe here, isn’t it? I mean …”

He felt bad about it, but it had to be done. He couldn’t go home with her. Wouldn’t be prudent, as someone once had famously said.

But he realized she wasn’t listening to him. She was staring, mouth open, over his shoulder at the island they were fast approaching.

“What in the world is going on? My house is lit up like a Christmas tree.”

He turned. She was right. Every window was ablaze with light. It was almost midnight. Somehow, this didn’t seem right.

And then a strange thing happened. As they watched, something came flying out of the upstairs window, sailed through the air and landed on the roof next door.

Jill gasped, rigid with shock. “Was that the cat?” she cried. “Oh, my God!”

She tried to pull away from him as though she was about to jump into the water and swim for shore, but he yanked her back. “Come on,” he said urgently, pulling her toward the Camaro. “We’ll get there faster in the car.”

CHAPTER THREE

JILL’S HEART WAS racing. She couldn’t think. She could hardly breathe. Adrenaline surged and she almost blacked out with it.

“Oh, please,” she muttered over and over as they raced toward the house. “Oh, please, oh, please!”

He swung the car into the driveway and she jumped out before he even came to a stop, running for the door.

“Timmy?” she called out. “Tanner?”

Connor was right behind her as she threw open the front door and raced inside.

“Mrs. Mulberry?” she called out as she ran. “Mrs. Mulberry!”

A slight, gray-haired woman appeared on the stairway from the second floor with a look close to terror on her face. “Oh, thank God you’re finally here! I tried to call you but my hands were shaking so hard, I couldn’t use the cell phone.”

“What is it?” Jill grabbed her by the shoulders, staring down into her face. “What’s happened? Where are the boys?”

“I tried, I really tried, but … but …”

“Mrs. Mulberry! What?”

Her face crumpled and she wailed, “They locked me out. I couldn’t get to them. I didn’t know what to do.…”

“What do you mean they’ve locked you out? Where? When?”

“They got out of their cribs and locked the door. I couldn’t …”

Jill started up the stairs, but Connor took them two at a time and beat her to the landing and then the door. He yanked at the handle but it didn’t budge.

“Timmy? Tanner? Are you okay?” Jill’s voice quavered as she pressed her ear to the door. There was no response.

“There’s a key,” she said, turning wildly, trying to remember where she’d put it. “I know there’s a key.”

Connor pushed her aside. “No time,” he said, giving the door a wicked kick right next to where the lever sat. There was a crunch of wood breaking and the door flew open.

A scene of chaos and destruction was revealed. A lamp was upside down on the floor, along with pillows and books and a tumbled table and chair set. Toys were everywhere, most of them covered with baby powder that someone had been squirting out of the container. And on the other side of the room were two little blond boys, crowding into a window they could barely reach. They saw the adults coming for them, looked at each other and shrieked—and then they very quickly shoved one fat fluffy pillow and then one large plastic game of Hungry Hungry Hippos over the sill. The hippos could be heard hitting the bricks of the patio below.

“What are you doing?” Jill cried, dashing in as one child reached for a small music toy. She grabbed him, swung him up in her arms and held him close.

“You are such a bad boy!” she said, but she was laughing with relief at the same time. They seemed to be okay. No broken bones. No blood. No dead cat.

Connor pulled up the other boy with one arm while he slammed the window shut with the other. He looked at Jill and shook his head. “Wow,” was all he could say. Then he thought of something else. “Oh. Sorry about the door. I thought …”

“You thought right,” she said, flashing him a look of pure relief and happiness. Her babies were safe and right now that was all that mattered to her. “I would have had a heart attack if I’d had to wait any longer.”

Mrs. Mulberry was blubbering behind them and they both turned, each carrying a child, to stare at her.

“I’m so sorry,” she was saying tearfully. “But when they locked me out …”

“Okay, start at the beginning,” Jill told her, trying to keep her temper in check and hush her baby, who was saying, “Mamamama” over and over in her ear. “What exactly happened?”

The older woman sniffled and put a handkerchief to her nose. “I … I don’t really know. It all began so well. They were perfect angels.”

She smiled at them tearfully and they grinned back at her. Jill shook her head. It was as though they knew exactly what they’d done and were ready to do it again if they got the chance.

“They were so good,” Mrs. Mulberry was saying, “I’m afraid I let them stay up longer than I should have. Finally I put them to bed and went downstairs.” She shook her head as though she still couldn’t believe what happened next. “I was reading a magazine on the couch when something just went plummeting by the bay window. I thought it was my imagination at first. Then something else went shooting past and I got up and went outside to look at what was going on. And there were toys and bits of bedding just lying there in the grass. I looked up but I couldn’t see anything. It was very eerie. Almost scary. I couldn’t figure out what on earth was happening.”

“Oh, sweetie boys,” Jill muttered, holding one closely to her. “You must be good for the babysitter. Remember?”

“When I started to go back in the house,” the older lady went on, “one of these very same adorable children was at the front door. As I started to come closer, he grinned at me and he …” She had to stop to take a shaky breath. “He just smiled. I realized what might happen and I called out. I said, ‘No! Wait!’ But just as I reached the door, he slammed it shut. It was locked. He locked me out of the house!”

Jill was frowning. “What are you talking about? Who locked you out of the house?”

She pointed at Timmy who was cuddled close in Jill’s arms. “He did.”

Jill shook her head as though to clear it. He’s only eighteen months old. “That’s impossible. He doesn’t know how to lock doors.”

Mrs. Mulberry drew herself up. “Oh, yes he does,” she insisted.

Jill looked into Timmy’s innocent face. Could her baby have done that? He smiled and said, “Mamamama.” No way.

“I couldn’t get in,” Mrs Mulberry went on. “I was panicking. I didn’t know what I was going to do.” Tears filled her eyes again.

Jill stared at her in disbelief and Connor stepped forward, putting a comforting hand on her shoulder. “We believe you, Mrs. Mulberry,” he said calmly. “Just finish your story. We want to know it all.”

She tried to give him a grateful smile and went on. “I was racing around, trying all the doors, getting more and more insane with fear. Finally I got the idea to look for a key. I must have turned over twenty flower pots before I found it. Once I got back into the house, I realized they were up here in the bedroom, but when I called to them, they locked the bedroom door.”

She sighed heavily, her head falling forward on her chest. “I thought I would go out of my mind. I tried to call you but I couldn’t do it. I thought I ought to call the police, but I was shaking so badly …” She shuddered, remembering. “And then you finally came home.”

Jill met Connor’s gaze and bit her lip, turning to lay Timmy down in his crib. He was giving her a warning glance, as if to say, “No major damage here. Give her a break.”

For some reason, instead of letting it annoy her, she felt a surge of relief. Yes, give her a break. Dear soul, she didn’t mean any harm, and since nothing had really happened, there was no reason to make things worse. In fact, both boys were already drifting off to sleep. And why not? They’d had a busy night so far.

Turning, she smiled at the older woman. “Thank goodness I got back when I did,” she said as lightly as she could manage. “Well, everything’s alright now. If you’ll wait downstairs, I’ll just put these two down and …”

Connor gave her a grin and a wink and put down the already sleeping Tanner into his crib as though he knew what he was doing, which surprised her. But her mind was on her babies, and she looked down lovingly at them as they slept. For just a moment, she’d been so scared.…

What would she do if anything happened to either one of them? She couldn’t let herself think about that. That was a place she didn’t want to go.

Connor watched her. He was pretty sure he knew what she was thinking about. Anything happening to her kids would just about destroy her. He’d seen her face when she first realized she was losing Brad. He remembered that pain almost as if it had been his own. And losing these little ones would be ten times worse.

He drove Mrs. Mulberry home and when he got back, all was quiet. The lights that had blazed out across the landscape were doused and a more muted atmosphere prevailed. The house seemed to be at peace.

Except for one thing—the sound of sniffles coming from the kitchen where Jill was sitting at the table with her hands wrapped around a cup of coffee.

“Hey,” he said, sliding in beside her on the bench seat. “You okay?”

She turned her huge, dark, tragic eyes toward him.

“I leave the house for just a few hours—leave the boys for more than ten minutes—the first time in a year. And chaos takes over.” She searched his gaze for answers. “Is that really not allowed? Am I chained to this place, this life, forever? Do I not dare leave … ever?”

He stared down at her. He wanted to make a joke, make her smile, get her out of this mood, but he saw real desperation in her eyes and he couldn’t make light of that.

“Hey.” He brushed her cheek with the backs of his fingers. “It’s not forever. Things change quickly for kids. Don’t let it get you down. In a month, it will be different.”

She stared up at him. How could he possibly know that? And yet, somehow, she saw the wisdom in what he’d said. She shook her head and smiled. “Connor, why didn’t you come back sooner? I love your smile.”

He gave her another one, but deep down, he groaned. This was exactly why he had to get out of here as soon as he could. He slumped down lower in the seat and tried to think of something else reassuring to say, but his mind wouldn’t let go of what she’d just said to him.

I love your smile.

Pretty pathetic to grasp at such a slender reed, but that was just about all he had, wasn’t it?

Jill was back on the subject at hand, thinking about the babysitter. “Here I hired her because I thought an older woman would be calmer with a steadier hand.” She rolled her eyes. “A teenage girl would have been better.”

“Come on, that’s not really fair. She got a lot thrown at her at once and she wasn’t prepared for it. It could have happened to anyone.”

She shook her head as though she just couldn’t accept that. “I’m lucky I’ve got my sister close by for emergencies. But she’s getting more and more caught up in her career, and it’s a pretty demanding one. I really can’t count on her for too much longer.” She sighed. “She had to be at a business dinner in Seattle tonight, or she would have been here to take care of the boys.”

“Family can be convenient.” He frowned. “Don’t you have a younger sister? I thought I met her once.”

Instead of answering, she moaned softly and closed her eyes. “Kelly. Yes. She was our half sister.” She looked at him, new tragedy clouding her gaze. “Funny you should remember her tonight. She was killed in a car crash last week.”

“Oh, my God. Oh, Jill, I’m so sorry.”

She nodded. “It’s sad and tragic and brings on a lot of guilty feelings for Sara and me.”

He shook his head, not understanding. “What did you have to do with it?”

“The accident? Oh, nothing. It happened in Virginia where I guess she was living lately. The guilt comes from not even knowing exactly where she was and frankly, not thinking about her much. We should have paid more attention and worked a little harder on being real sisters to her.”

There was more. He could tell. But he waited, letting her take her time to unravel the story.

“She was a lot younger, of course. Our mother died when we were pretty young, and our father remarried soon after. Too soon for us, of course. After losing our mother, we couldn’t bear to share our beloved father with anyone. We resented the new woman, and when she had a baby, we pretty much resented her, too.” She shook her head. “It was so unfair. Poor little girl.”

“Didn’t you get closer as she got older?”

“Not really. You see, the marriage was a disaster from the start and it ended by the time Kelly was about five years old. We only saw her occasionally after that, for a few hours at a time. And then our father died by the time she was fifteen and we didn’t see either one of them much at all after that.”

“That’s too bad.”

She nodded. “Yes. I’m really sorry about it now.” She sighed. “She was something of a wild child, at least according to my father’s tales of woe. Getting into trouble even in high school. The sort of girl who wants to test the boundaries and explore the edge.”

“I know your father died a few years ago. What about your stepmother?”

“She died when I was about twenty-three. She had cancer.”

“Poor lady.”

“Yes. Just tragic, isn’t it? Lives snuffed out so casually.” She shook her head. “I just feel so bad about Kelly. It’s so sad that we never got to know her better.”

“Just goes to show. Carpe diem. Seize the day. Don’t let your opportunities slip by.”

“Yes.” She gave him a look. “When did you become such a philosopher?”

“I’ve always been considered wise among my peers,” he told her in a snooty voice that made her laugh.

A foghorn sounded its mournful call and she looked up at a clock. “And now here you are, stuck. The last ferry’s gone. You’re going to have to stay here.”

He smiled at her. “Unless I hijack a boat.”

“You can sleep on the couch.” She shrugged. “Or sleep in the master bedroom if you want. Nobody else does.”

The bitter tone was loud and clear, and it surprised him.

“Where do you sleep?” he asked her.

“In the guest room.” Her smile was bittersweet. “That’s why you can’t use it.”

He remembered glancing in at the master bedroom when he was upstairs. It looked like it had always looked. She and Brad had shared that bed. He looked back at her and didn’t say a word.