Читать книгу For a Baby - C.J. Carmichael - Страница 10

AT FIVE MINUTES TO SIX, Heather left her small bungalow and walked the short distance to the Handy Hardware on Main Street. Since Julie Matthew had come to town, the central drag of Chatsworth had undergone a quiet, but impressive, transformation. Beginning with the café owned by Donna and Jim Werner, and more recently a community project to create a mural on the side of the post office, the local business fronts had been refurbished. New signs, fresh paint, a green and white awning for Lucky’s grocery store and pretty wrought-iron benches on the sidewalks flanked with concrete urns spilling geraniums and alyssum were among the many changes.

The fresh look was attracting visitors, and also entrepreneurs. In the past six months alone, two new businesses had started. An energetic young woman from Yorkton, Leigh Eastbrook, had opened a small ice-cream and sweet shop next to the bank. And a middle-aged couple from Manitoba had converted an abandoned home on the other side of the hardware into Nook and Cranny, a store specializing in farm-home antiques.

Both new enterprises had employed Julie Matthew to help with the design of their stores. And Heather had to admit Julie had done a beautiful job for each of them, creating an ambiance that suited the nature of the individual businesses.

Heather bypassed the main door of the hardware—which had been “distressed” to appear old and full of character—and headed for the unobtrusive side door that led to the two-bedroom apartment on the top floor of the building.

T.J. had lived here ever since he’d moved back to town to look after the store for his dad. His folks had finally retired—his mother had been anxious to do some traveling in the motor home she’d convinced her husband to buy. Right now the couple were somewhere in eastern Canada. T.J. tacked their postcards on the counter next to the cash register so that the couple’s many friends and customers—including Heather’s own parents—could keep track of their progress.

Heather ran up the narrow stairs. She could hear strains of a Spanish guitar recording and smell something grilling. At the landing she found the door ajar. When she tapped on the wooden frame with her knuckles, it inched open.

The living room was empty. She passed through to the kitchen and spied chopped vegetables on the counter, an open bottle of wine, two plates, but no T.J. The sliding door to the balcony at the back of the building was open.

“T.J.?”

He stood at the barbecue, grilling chicken, red peppers and onions. He wore a pair of shorts and a white T-shirt. His feet were bare and as tanned as the rest of him.

Even though she’d known him all her life, sometimes his startling good looks caught her off guard. Now they made her wonder why she’d ever thought he might be willing to marry her. If a man like T.J. wanted to get married, he’d have his choice of women.

“I brought wine.” She held out the bottle. “But I see you have some open on the counter.”

“I do. Would you mind pouring? I don’t want these veggies to burn. The glasses are in the cupboard over the sink.”

He had real crystal, she was surprised to note. She poured the rich red wine into the large glass goblets, then went back out to the balcony. Space was tight, especially with the barbecue and a small wrought-iron table and two chairs. She decided to sit in one of them.

“How do you like being back in Chatsworth?” Though she loved the place, she knew small towns weren’t for everyone. And T.J. had been a partner in one of the big law firms in Calgary before his divorce. It wasn’t like the guy didn’t have options to running a small hardware store in a town of five hundred people, max.

“It’s fine.”

“Do you miss the city?”

“I wouldn’t know. I didn’t see much of Calgary when I lived there. I traveled from home to the office and that was pretty much it.”

He had to be exaggerating. “Didn’t you go to the mountains—to Banff?”

“Only for conferences.”

“So you don’t have plans of moving back there?”

“No. Dad’s already handed over the controlling shares of the business.” He frowned. “Won’t even let me pay for them.”

“How do you feel about working in a hardware store when you have all that legal training?”

“I like the business more than I thought possible,” T.J. admitted. “The strange thing is, when I was a kid I had such bitter fights with my father about this place.”

Heather remembered. Many times T.J. had come to school absolutely furious with his father. On a couple of occasions he’d gotten into serious trouble when he’d tried to run away.

“What did you two fight about?”

“If you asked me fifteen years ago, I would have said everything. Now I think Dad was just so desperate for me to take over the family business that he pushed too hard. As a result, I became determined to move away and get into anything but the hardware business.”

“How did you ever agree to come back here?”

“It was Mom’s suggestion, after my divorce. Initially I was only supposed to stay long enough for them to go on one trip.”

T.J. scraped the chicken and veggies off the grill onto a chopping board, then proceeded to dice. “I don’t know which of us is more surprised about the way it’s ended up. Me, that I like my father’s business, or my dad that he’s actually enjoying driving that motor home all over the country.”

“Well, he’s worked hard. He deserves a break.” T.J.’s parents were both in their early seventies, a little older than her own mom and dad who still ran their own farm about five miles out of town.

Finished with the chopping, T.J. carried the wooden carving board to the kitchen. Heather followed and watched as he tossed all the food into a large ceramic bowl.

“I’ll let that cool a bit. It’s too hot for a warm meal, don’t you think?”

“Absolutely.” He had an air-conditioning unit running somewhere in his apartment—probably in his bedroom. She could hear the distant hum of the motor. Still, the temperature inside was probably in the high eighties. She pressed her wineglass against the bare skin at the top of her chest, enjoying the cooling sensation.

From across the counter, T.J. watched. She felt a different kind of heat knowing he was familiar with every curve on her body. She wondered if that’s what he was thinking about now, too. When their gazes met—and held—she knew he was.

“You look nice in that dress.”

The words were bland. The expression in his eyes wasn’t.

“Thanks.” She swallowed a sip of her wine and backed up a step. He’d looked at her this way before, and she could remember only too well how those situations had ended. She hadn’t come here to wind up in his bed. This time she wanted his ring on her finger.

WITH SOME EFFORT, T.J. turned from Heather and concentrated on the meal again. In the years he’d gone to university and worked in Calgary, he’d never met a woman with the particular combination of sweetness and sensuality that made her so irresistible to him.

He added slices of avocado and chunks of lettuce to the meat and veggies in the bowl, then drizzled olive oil and balsamic vinegar on top. Finally he crumbled goat cheese into the bowl and tossed everything together. “That’s it.”

“It looks delicious.”

They went out on the balcony to eat. T.J. tried not to notice Heather’s generous cleavage in her strappy pink sundress, or to remember how erotic he’d found the bra she’d been wearing the last time he’d been with her.

Unlike many redheads, Heather had a thing for pink. Even her underwear…

Oh, God. He couldn’t focus when he was around her. He’d never been able to. What was it about Heather? Not just her looks, but everything about her from her soft voice to her kind, generous nature had always appealed to him.

Maybe because she was just so different from him. She always found it so easy to laugh, to praise, to offer help. Whereas he tended to be critical and caustic and reserved. No wonder Lynn had left him…

T.J. pushed aside his half-eaten meal and strode into the house. He found what he was looking for in the filing cabinet in his spare bedroom. When he returned, Heather put down her fork and looked at him anxiously.

“Finished?” he asked.

Her plate wasn’t empty, but she nodded. “I guess so.”

“Good.” With one hand, he pushed aside her plate to make room for the file folder. “I want you to look through these photographs. Tell me what you see.”

He cleared their dishes to the kitchen and took his time cleaning up from the meal. After fifteen minutes, maybe twenty, he carried the bottle of wine out to the balcony and topped up both their glasses.

“Well?” he asked, once he was back in his chair.

“These are lovely, T.J., I’m not sure what you expect me to say.” She picked up one photo, of a man in his early thirties, pushing a preschool girl on a swing. “This is your daughter?”

“Sally. Yes. With her stepdad. Do you see the way she’s looking at him?” Without glancing at the photograph, he could. Sally was smiling with delight, her gaze on the man who had replaced T.J. in her life.

“I see,” Heather said quietly.

“About a year ago I hired a private investigator. I wanted to make sure my daughter was doing okay. Turned out she was fine. Better than fine. They make a nice family, don’t you think?” He saw Heather pick up a picture of the three of them walking along the boardwalk on the edge of Lake Ontario. Sally was in the middle, gleefully skipping, while his ex-wife and her new husband smiled with delight and pride at each other.

“I suppose so, T.J., but—”

“No buts,” he said, interrupting her and not caring. “Lynn and Sally were never that happy when they were living with me.”

He took the file from her hands and closed it firmly. He couldn’t stand to look at the photographs. Sometimes he wondered why he hadn’t burned the entire portfolio the minute after he’d received it.

“When I was married to Lynn, I barely saw her. I worked twelve-hour days at the office and weekends, too. I told myself I was doing it for my family, but I really wasn’t.” With hindsight, he knew he’d been addicted to his job, to the rush he got whenever he closed a deal or made a client happy.

“You were trying to make a name for yourself.”

Trust Heather to make excuses for him. “I was a workaholic. Whenever I was at home, I secretly wished I could be at the office. I hardly saw my daughter. I can count on one hand the number of times I changed her diaper.”

Finally he saw doubt shadow Heather’s eyes. “But you loved her…”

“Frankly, I’m not sure I did. I sure didn’t act like it. As for my wife, I figured a diamond bracelet would do when I didn’t have time to take her out for dinner to celebrate her birthday.”

“T.J.!”

At last, she was hearing what he was trying to say. “I really was a lousy husband, Heather. And even worse as a father. The reason I showed you these pictures is to make you understand. You want what you see in those photos, don’t you?”

Heather glanced down at the happy trio by the lake—mom, dad, child—and nodded.

“But if you marry me, you’ll never get it.”