Читать книгу The Man Behind The Mask - Barbara Hannay - Страница 17

NORA PLACED HER fingers on her temples, squinched her eyes shut tightly and hummed. “Uzzy, wuzzy, fuzzy bunny, let this poem call you home.”

She opened one eye when she heard Brendan snicker. “Is it working?”

“That is the worst spell I’ve ever heard.”

“Oh,” she said, widening her eyes innocently. “Have you heard many?”

“Thankfully, no.”

“Why don’t you try?”

He seemed to debate for a moment. Why did her heart begin to beat faster when he gave in to it, too? To the invitation of life not being so serious. A smile tugged at the corners of that sinful mouth.

“How about a carrot instead of an incantation?” he suggested.

“If he was starving, we might have a hope. As you know, since you’ve been doing it, he’s quite well fed. Still…” she went to the fridge at the end of the aisle, removed a bag and handed Brendan a carrot “…we can try. If it doesn’t work today, it might work by midweek.”

They went back down the aisle, her on one side, him on the other, peering under cages.

“Now that Deedee’s feeling better, is she going to make a decision? Is she going to take Charlie home? Or to the vet?” Nora asked.

“She has her own ideas, as always, none of which involve relieving you of Charlie. She seems to have come for a visit. Luke and she were in deep conversation when I left.”

“Luke and Deedee? Seriously?”

“Seriously. Hey! Here he is! Here bunny, bunny, bunny.” Brendan was down on his knees again, peering under a sink. As she watched, reluctantly enchanted by a man willing to wreck a thousand-dollar suit for a rabbit, he held out the carrot in the palm of his hand. Valentine edged toward him, he made a move to grab him and the bunny leaped sideways and hopped away.

“He’s waving his tail at me. Like a middle finger. Wow. Even I can read his energy.”

Nora giggled. Brendan turned and glared at her, but a smile lurked in his eyes. “Let’s see if he’ll fall for the bait again.”

Really, she knew if they left the rabbit alone, he’d eventually get hungry and come out. But it was too fun trying to catch him with Brendan.

Together they chased that bunny all over the barn, acting silly, making faces, doing voices, crawling under cages, and in and out and over obstacles. They called suggestions to each other, and whispered plans, as if he could overhear them, and they laughed at Valentine’s impudence.

Finally, they had him.

“Companies pay money for this,” Brendan said. “It’s called team building.”

It occurred to her they had been a team. And it had felt good. Why was it every time She was with him something happened that made her feel the delicious if guilty pleasure of not being alone?

Now she focused on him and the bunny. She could tell a lot about a person from how he handled an animal.

For a moment Brendan looked as if he intended to hand Valentine to her.

But then his expression softened, and he held the bunny firmly in the palm of his hand, his fingers tapered over the rib cage. He pulled him in close to his chest, stroking Valentine’s snubby little nose with one gentle fingertip.

There was something about watching a strong man with a fuzzy bunny that could melt a person’s heart. Nora felt some terrible weakness unfurl in her at his tenderness with Valentine, in his decision to come into the light. She was annoyed with herself for feeling as if she had unintentionally given Brendan a test, and she was just as annoyed that he had passed.

“Okay, I think I remember where the little monster lives.” He put Valentine back in the cage, closed the door and turned to her.

“Deedee’s not going to take him home. I figured it out. She can’t bear the thought of being with Charlie when he dies. Though I guess we’re all wondering if he’s going to die at all. He keeps improving.”

“It’s temporary.”

“You sound certain of that.”

“I am. I wish Luke wouldn’t have taken it on. He’s setting himself up for heartbreak.”

“And he’s had enough,” Brendan guessed softly. “And so have you.”

The look in his eyes was the one she had seen that rainy night when she had come to in the horse pen, when she had reached up and touched his cheek in welcome.

A person could drown in a look like that, throw herself willingly into those deep pools of understanding.

Instead, she congratulated herself for trying to back off.

“When you work with animals that are unwell, you expect a certain amount of grief. I’ve developed strategies for not getting attached. I don’t name any of the animals.”

“You named Lafayette.”

She could say he had come named, but he hadn’t. “Who would get attached to him?” she said, a bit defensively.

“How about Valentine?”

“Okay, so the odd one slips by my guard. But now that I have this beautiful facility, I don’t ever let animals in the house. To prevent attachment, and also, where would you draw the line?”

“But Luke has Charlie in the house. And Ranger.” She bit her lip. “I know I should be stricter.”

“But you took it as a good sign that he cared about something,” Brendan guessed, and then reached forward and brushed her hair away from the bump on her head. “He cares about you. He told me he woke you up every hour on the hour.”

“He did.”

“And how are you feeling?”

“Exhausted.”

“Funny, you didn’t look exhausted when I came in.”

She blushed, remembering that he had caught her dancing.

“In fact,” he said, cocking his head, listening to the music blaring, “don’t we have some unfinished business? Didn’t you ask me to dance?”

Her mouth fell open. Of course she had not asked him to dance! He knew she had been talking to the bunny! What was he doing?

What was she doing? Because she found herself playing along, again. Boldly, almost daring him, she held out her hand.

Come, then, into the light.

And felt as if the bottom was falling out of her world when he took it. Because it was only then that she recognized what darkness she had been in.

Grieving her sister. And Vance’s abandonment when she’d needed him most. Weighed down by extra responsibility. Wanting desperately to be everything Luke needed, and knowing in her heart she had been falling short.

She took Brendan’s hand and smiled at him, and it felt as if for the first time in a long, long time that smile was coming straight from her heart.

What was he doing? Brendan asked himself.

Ever since that first smile had tickled her lips, a desire had been growing in him, and it felt as if his fate was sealed when she’d giggled today. When she’d laughed, chasing that bunny through the barn.

Brendan was not sure he could ever find his way to the light, or if the light could ever penetrate the darkness around him. He was not even certain he wanted it to, because it could mean the loss of the grip he had on the pool of pain inside of him.

Still, watching the cat change, watching Charlie playing, seemed nothing short of a miracle. What had he started to believe?

However nebulous he was about what he wanted for himself, Brendan was aware of what he wanted for Nora. He wanted to make that light go on in her. He wanted something in her life to be fun and carefree.

It hit him like a ton of bricks what she needed, and why he felt so compelled by her need.

She was in the same situation his mother had once been in, a single parent struggling to be both parents, struggling to do everything right.

His mother’s struggles had shaped Brendan, made him driven, made him want things for his own family that he and his mother had not had, and could not have even dared to hope for.

Now, looking at Nora, he could see the strain in her face, the stress in the droop of her shoulders.

It looked as if it had been a long, long time since she had laughed, or had anything approaching fun in her life.

The weight of the whole world seemed to be on those slender shoulders

It was not his job to lift it, Brendan Grant told himself. He’d managed to not get tangled in the web of life for a long time. Yet the last few days…

But that begged the question about the kind of man he had become. Hadn’t he said to the boy last night that a mistake could be turned into an opportunity? To become something better?

Brendan had made a terrible mistake that night two and a half years ago.

He’d let Becky drive alone on a bad night. He should have been with her. She had begged him to go. She’d been so excited.

A pressing project at work. No, no, I’ll meet you there. I’ll come up later tonight. You’ll wake up to my handsome mug in the morning. I promise.

He hated these thoughts. He hated that he was questioning himself. That he could see light, and was being drawn toward it. He hated it that he was coming back to life.

There was no reason he had to be here anymore. Nora didn’t need him.

Except that she did.

Life was asking more of him. And there was that ironic twist again. It was asking him to show someone else how to lighten up, how to have fun. But in doing so, he was coming closer to finding his own light. What if this time it broke down the walls all around him and pierced his heart like a lightning bolt?

It would be so easy to walk away from a challenge like that! But if he let the legacy of his love for his wife be bitterness, somehow he had failed.

If he could ignore the need of these two people, in a situation so like the one his mother and he had once been in, it wouldn’t matter how many beautiful houses he designed and built.

What if the child Becky had carried had already been born? What if he’d had to figure out how to make a life for both of them and deal with his grief?

That’s the situation Nora was in. She was grieving her sister and trying to make a life for her nephew.

If he didn’t do a single thing to lighten that burden when her need was so obvious to him, Brendan was not sure he would ever get the bitterness of failure off his tongue.

“So,” he said, making a decision, cocking his head to the music. “Do you know how to jive?”

Ridiculous to feel as if it was the bravest and most risky thing he had ever done.

“No!” she stated, then asked skeptically, “Do you?”

“Of course not. Well, maybe a little. From high school dance class.”

“Interesting school you went to! Word games and dance class,” Nora said.

“Let’s teach each other,” he said. And then he pulled her in close to him. She put her hands up, pushing away from him, keeping a small barrier between her and his chest. She was tense and unsure.

Well, she should be. Maybe she was asking the question he needed to ask.

So he lightened her burden. And made her smile. Then what? What happened next?

But this moment stole his questions about the future. Her huge green eyes locked on his face, her pulse beating harder than that rabbit’s in the delicate hollow of her throat.

“Relax,” he heard himself say softly. He was still holding her hand, and rested his other hand on the soft curve between her rib cage and her hip.

She did relax, looking at him with fearful expectation.

“Okay,” he said, “just like dance class. One, two, three, one, two, three.”

They shuffled along the aisle between the cages. She looked down at her feet, her tongue caught between her teeth.

“I’m surprised you asked me to dance,” he said. “You aren’t very good at it.”

“I thought I was pretty good when it was Valentine I was dancing with!”

“Uh-huh.”

“I was. Not so inhibited.”

“There’s no cause to be inhibited,” he said.

“Yes, there is! I’m going to step on your toes—”

“I can handle it. Steel toes.” The truth was he’d had to force himself to go to work today. He had wanted to be here instead. He had missed it here as he had not missed getting to Village on the Lake every day.

She glared down at his feet. “They are not!”

“Specifically made for construction sites. They are.”

“I’m going to look foolish.”

“There’s no one here to worry about.”

“What about you?”

“I’d love to see this—” he pressed a finger into the little worry line in her forehead “—disappear. Just give yourself to it. Just for a minute.”

She hesitated, then he felt the exact moment she surrendered shiver up the length of her entire body.

“Now,” he said softly, “you should try moving your hips.”

“You first!”

“Just us and the bunnies. And a few cats.”

“And a parrot who swears.”

“Ah, Lafayette, the finger eater. Hard to find a home for him, I assume?” The distraction of talking about the parrot worked. Brendan was moving and she was going with him.

“Hard to find a home for him? Impossible. Except for young men of a certain age who would take him to use as a novelty item at their frat parties. I couldn’t allow that.”

“That sounds just a bit like, um, attachment.”

“Well, it isn’t. That horrible parrot is probably going to teach Luke new words.”

“There are no words that are new to a fifteen-year-old boy.”

While she contemplated that, Brendan decided to up the difficulty level.

“I’m going to pull away from you, but keep holding your hand. Up in the air like this. Walk beside me.”

“This isn’t a jive,” she said. “I think it’s a minuet.”

“Nope. No hips in minuets.”

“Did you learn that in dance class?”

She was becoming quite breathless. He pulled her back to him, put his hand on her waist, leaned his forehead to hers. “Get ready to spin under my arm.”

She did.

“Now spin back. We’re good,” he declared.

“We’re not. We’re terrible.”

“Ask Valentine if you don’t believe me. Get ready for the dip.”

“Dip? No! Brendan! We’ll fall.”