Читать книгу A New Life - Dana Corbit - Страница 9

“Strike. Yes!”

Max shot both hands into the air and did a happy dance on the lane, though two pins—the four and the nine—still stood firmly.

“Oh, brother,” six-year-old Rusty, Jr. said, shaking his head. “They call that a ‘split,’ not a ‘strike.’”

Max shrugged, showing off his million-dollar grin. “Split. Yes,” he called out, repeating the dance with the gusto of a four-year-old.

Tricia Williams laughed out loud, and her three children fell into a cackling heap on top of their spring jackets that were piled on the floor. Their squeals only added to the noisy Saturday night atmosphere at Milford Bowling Lanes, combining with the crash of pins and the loud music from a nearby private event room.

It felt great to laugh again, to really laugh and not to feel as if she had to push air from her diaphragm to bolster the sound. In the two years since her husband Rusty’s death, she’d sensed a compassionate—but relentless—scrutiny from her friends at Hickory Ridge Community Church who wanted to make sure she was all right. And she was. Her children were, too. Maybe her little family wasn’t back to normal, but they’d found a new normal. If only she could convince her friends that she was fine.

“Hey, sweet pea, why don’t you roll your ball again and see if you can hit one of those pins?” she told Max as she extracted him from the pile.

With another between-the-legs, agonizingly slow roll, the boy picked up the four pin, assisted by a good bounce from the gutter guards.

While the young mother marked down the score, her daughter Lani leaned close to whisper in her ear. “Do you think we should tell the man on the next lane that they can put the gutter things up for him, too?”

The struggle not to laugh again made Tricia’s chest ache. She’d been trying not to notice the dark-haired man on lane fourteen for the last twenty minutes, since he’d settled in and started throwing a record-setting number of gutter balls. He was either terribly distracted or the worst bowler she’d ever seen.

“No, we’d better not,” Tricia whispered back, giving her daughter a side glance. Lani’s sly smile showed she was joking and, as always, she seemed older than her seven years. Tricia reached up to ruffle the deep-brown tresses of her child’s bob haircut.

“Mom, watch me bowl.” Rusty, Jr. stood poised with an eight-pound ball, wiggling his backside into his best pro bowling form.

“Okay, let’s see you roll a strike. You’re doing it just right.”

It felt right, too, just being here on a rare night out with her three favorite people, even if it strained the tightrope budget she tried so hard to balance every month. Watching her children enjoy themselves almost relieved her guilt over telling the white lie that freed up her calendar for a bowling night. Almost, but not quite.

They continued through the frames of their game, but none of their performances compared to the show going on in the next lane. While before, the man couldn’t hit a pin with a two-by-four, now his black ball seemed unable to miss one. Tricia half expected someone to recognize him at any moment as an escapee from the pro-bowlers’ tour.

“Look, Mommy, the man isn’t throwing gutter balls anymore,” Max pointed out two octaves louder than his regular speaking voice.

Tricia pressed an index finger to her lips to hush her son, her cheeks burning. At least the guy had the decency not to look at them, though he must have heard. His chest moved slightly a few times as he seemed to be trying not to laugh. His profile transformed as a dimple, incongruous with the earlier determined flex of his jaw, appeared on his cheek. On his next frame, he even missed a pin.

“Kids, what are we here to do? Bowl or talk?” Tricia said finally.

“Bowl!” the three chorused as they turned back from their interesting neighbor.

So they returned to the game, with Tricia’s applause and encouragement accompanying her children’s giggles. But no matter how hard she tried to focus on the game, she couldn’t help sneaking curious glances at the next lane.

Why was such a handsome man bowling alone on a Saturday night? Why had he seemed so preoccupied when he’d arrived? And an even bigger question: why did it matter to her? He was probably just like the four of them, trying to get one last visit in before the bowling alley closed so it could be renovated into a minimall. Besides, she hadn’t been so much as curious about a member of the male gender in the last two years.

No one would know it from the number of blind dates she’d gone on recently. It seemed that everyone with a Christian friend-of-a-friend had introduced them, hoping to create a perfect match. Her friend Charity probably had the same hopes for the blind date Tricia was supposed to have been on tonight. If she hadn’t cancelled.

Didn’t these matchmakers realize she was already in love—with Rusty. And she always would be. He’d just gone to be with God a little ahead of her, that was all. She couldn’t blame her well-meaning church friends; they just didn’t understand. God only gave people one love like that in a lifetime, and she’d already had hers. Even though she was a widow and only twenty-six, she didn’t think it was fair of her to ask Him for more.

Trying to focus, Tricia rolled her ball. She smiled at her children over her dismal effort but suddenly felt too guilty to laugh with them. It wasn’t her blind date’s fault that her heart was permanently off the market. She’d been rude to cancel at the last minute. Tomorrow, right after church, she would phone him and try to reschedule.

Obviously, she needed to stop being nosy about the man in the next lane and focus on her own behavior. Still, out of her peripheral vision, she watched the man as he stepped off the lane and sipped his soda. He swiped his hand through his dark-brown hair, but since it was clipped so close, it did little more than flutter. Funny how the haircut made his strong jaw appear so pronounced.

“My turn now,” Max called out, grabbing his ball and rushing up to throw it.

It might have been his best effort yet if he’d bowled in the right lane, instead of the one being used by their distracted neighbor.

“Wait, Max,” Lani called out too late.

Max’s eyes were wide as he turned to look back at the man. Tricia choked back a laugh. Maybe it was time to turn in those glamorous bowling shoes. But she’d paid good money for this game, and she wasn’t about to leave until they’d bowled their last frame.

Prepared to apologize for her child, she turned toward the guy she’d been trying to ignore all night. A pair of startling light-brown eyes looked down at her before the guy threw back his head and laughed.

Brett Lancaster couldn’t believe he was laughing. Especially at the woman staring back at him. Or about any female after the day he’d had—the last few years he’d had. But then she laughed along with him, her children joining her like a merry pack of hyenas.

Before, he’d noticed how striking the woman was. Only a blind man would have missed that. But when a smile spread across her heart-shaped face, she transformed into movie-star dazzling. With the contrast of that shiny, dark hair and fair, flawless skin, she resembled a porcelain doll, one that had just been removed from the box for a trip to…the bowling alley.

The crash of pins from that slow-moving ball stirred him from his reverie in time to remember his manners and stop staring. He turned to see the pins, in real-time slow motion, fall one by one.

“Wow, sport, you got a strike.” Brett stepped forward and extended his hand for a high-five. The boy looked to his mother for approval before giving a slap that smarted.

“Sorry.” Twin pink spots stained the woman’s cheeks. “Max accidentally bowled on the wrong lane.”

“Why are you apologizing? Young Max here just improved my score. Thanks, kiddo. You know, I wasn’t doing so well earlier.”

“Yeah, you needed some of these gutter things like we have,” the older boy chimed. “If you ask at the desk—”

“Thanks, but I don’t need them now. My score’s getting pretty good.”

“Because I got a strike,” Max announced importantly.

“I’m doing really good, too.” The older boy pulled the sheet off the scoring table and flashed it at him.

“Why aren’t you keeping score?” asked the girl who looked like a junior version of her mother.

“I didn’t figure I’d win any trophies.”

He couldn’t help smiling at the endearing way the children angled for his attention, perhaps as they would when their dad came home from work. Did he come home? Discreetly, he glanced at the mother’s left hand. She wore no wedding ring, or any other rings for that matter.

An unsettling sensation moved inside his chest, something he attributed to indignation on this family’s behalf. These sweet kids were probably victims of another deadbeat dad, like so many of the troubled youths he dealt with in his work. The guy had probably walked out on this young mother after promising her the world.

The woman caught him staring and blushed even more prettily, fidgeting with her delicate hands. “Come on, guys, we’ve bugged the gentleman for long enough.” She glanced at her watch. “We need to finish this game and get home. It’s getting late, and we have church in the morning.”

“Aw, Mom,” came the trio in chorus.

“Please, just one more game?” the girl said.

Brett was glad the child hadn’t turned that cajoling tone on him, or he might have given her his car and thrown in a twenty-CD changer for good measure. A bad idea since he was driving a loaner from his dad’s dealership tonight.

Not taking time to wonder why he wanted to spend even more of his Saturday night in a bowling alley with a mom and her passel of children, he approached the taller of the two petite brunettes.

“Come on, Mom,” he said, using the same tone the girl had used. “Just one more game. You won’t get the chance after this place closes.”

The way “no” was written in her stiff posture made him glad he hadn’t offered to spring for the game. She probably thought he was an ax murderer who bowled while his ax was being sharpened. He’d already turned to retrieve his badge from the bi-fold wallet in his jacket pocket when she finally spoke.

“That’s probably not a good idea—”

“I’m not a criminal, really.” Maybe not a criminal, but desperate—he sure sounded that. To cover the awkward silence, he extended his hand and said, “I’m Brett Lancaster.”

He would have continued by saying “Michigan State Police,” the way he usually did, but this lady blanched at his name alone. Now that was a reaction he’d never received from a woman.

Unable to resist a call to protect, he reached beneath her elbow to steady her. Her skin was so smooth where she’d pushed up her shirt sleeve, he could have sworn he’d grasped fine silk. He almost worried he’d snag it with his own calloused palm.

“Is there something I can get for you, ma’am? Water?”

She shook her head, but she still appeared dazed. The children weren’t any help, crowding their mother and making worried sounds instead of giving her room to breathe.

Finally, when he couldn’t decide whether to shake her alert or call for a paramedic, she offered a strange, apologetic smile and extended her free hand. “Hi, I’m Tricia Williams. And these are my children Lani, Rusty, Jr. and Max. Kids, this is Mr. Lancaster.”

Tricia Williams? His frustration from earlier began to fester again but the feeling subsided. This was too funny to make him mad. Who ever heard of getting stood up and then ending up meeting face-to-face out on the town, anyway?

Coincidence? Not really. The village of Milford, Michigan, was too small for any chance meeting to be called a coincidence. There just weren’t that many places to go. And since he hadn’t called in to pick up his messages—and her cancellation—until he was already on Milford Road just outside the village limits, he’d figured the bowling alley was as good a place as any to blow off some steam. He deserved at least that after being idiot enough to let his sister badger him into a blind date in the first place. Had he learned nothing from his last relationship fiasco? Like never to get involved again?

“Tricia. So we finally meet.” Brett chuckled as he reached to shake her hand, but his laughter died as soon as they touched. Her hand felt so small, while his was huge and clumsy. As their gazes connected, he glimpsed sadness beneath her smile, but Tricia glanced at the ground and pulled her hand away. When she looked up at him again, whatever he’d seen before had disappeared.

“Yes, finally. Charity has been trying to arrange this thing forever.”

“Oh, yeah, Charity, my sister Jenny’s friend from the hospital. So that’s how this whole thing got set up.”

Now that he knew her identity, he also remembered the vague details his matchmaker sister had provided: attractive, Christian, age twenty-six, widowed mother of three. That last detail had nearly made him call the whole thing off, but his sister’s persuasive skills were legendary. Before, he’d suspected that this woman had been deserted, but now that he knew who she was, he also understood Tricia had been forsaken in a more painful and permanent way.

“Mommy, look at this,” Lani called out.

They turned to see the children taking turns leaning over the ball return, the fan blowing their hair.

“Okay, guys, we’ll finish this game and play another quick one. Then it’s home to baths and bed.”

Squeals of delight caused others at nearby lanes to shoot curious glances their way.

But Max drew his eyebrows together. “No bath.”

His mother whisked him up in her arms and started spinning. “Yes, bath. With lots and lots of soap.”

The child made a face only a mother could love and scrambled out of her arms. Rusty, Jr. was already winding up for his frame, while his sister sat at the desk, attempting to keep score. Happiness lit Tricia’s eyes as she turned back to Brett.

“So this is what you cancelled on me for?” he couldn’t help asking. Tricia’s shoulders shifted. “Your exact words on my machine were ‘I’m sorry, but something important came up.’”

She nodded. “And something important did. Actually, three important things.”

“I can see that.” He could. So why did he feel strangely jealous over the children she had chosen to spend time with rather than him? He should have been used to having women toss him away by now.

“I tried to reach you before you left home. Charity told me you rent a house in Brighton.”

“I do, but I had some errands to run and came into town early.”

She didn’t ask him to elaborate, which was just as well because he would like to forget about his visit to his parents’ house in Bloomfield Hills and the disappointment he still sensed every time his dad looked at him. When would his family finally accept that he was doing something for himself this time and they weren’t going to change his mind? On the next lane over, he watched several pins fall, except for a lonely six pin. He, too, was standing alone these days. It wasn’t the life he’d expected, but at least he’d regained his pride by following his heart.

Surprised he’d been daydreaming again, Brett glanced back at Tricia and caught her studying him. Though she looked away, a sensation of warmth settled in his chest.

“Well, I’m up pretty soon, so…”

He should have appreciated her attempt to make it easy for him to bow out, but he found he wasn’t ready to leave. Instead of answering her, he crossed the hardwood surface to where her little girl was preparing to bowl.

“You know, Lani, I bet you’d hit more pins if you tried this.” He pointed to the arrows on the floor. “Try aiming your ball at the very center arrow.”

Soon, he had all three children vying for his bowling tips and the grown-up attention from “Mr. Brett” that went with them. No way would he admit it to his fellow troopers at the Brighton Post, but this had to count as his best Saturday night in months. No, he wouldn’t allow his thoughts to go there and spoil the happy moment.

In the middle of an arms-looped celebration dance with Rusty, Jr. over the boy’s first strike, Brett caught sight of Tricia watching him again, her expression stark without the contented mask she’d worn all night.

How he could have missed her lovely eyes before, he couldn’t imagine. Framed by spiky lashes, they were dark, shiny brown and huge, strangely both too large for her face and perfect in their porcelain backdrop. Their hollow quality, though, captured him, reeling him in, making him ache in the vicinity of his heart. She looked like a waif, and he felt this need to protect her. For an unguarded second, her expression hinted she just might let him.

Brett wasn’t sure what had passed between him and the mother of the Williams children—only that whatever it was, Rusty, Jr. had seen it, too. With an abrupt jerk, the boy ripped away his hand and marched to the bench, where he dumped off his bowling shoes.

“Mom, it’s time to go. We have to get up for church.” Already, the boy had his sneakers on and was holding up Max’s for him.

It didn’t take a psychology degree for Brett to recognize the boy’s jealousy over his mother. He couldn’t blame him for feeling threatened. What had he been thinking, looking at Tricia with the hope that he could heal her heart, that maybe she could even heal his?

“He’s right. We’d better get home.” Tricia’s gaze was apologetic, if guarded. Had she felt it, too?

Max stomped his foot. “I don’t want to go.”

“But we’re having fun,” Lani whined. “Do we have to?”

“It’s getting late. I’ll have to drag you guys out of bed in the morning.”

Tricia bent to change her shoes, but Max wouldn’t budge. He sat down cross-legged on the floor and folded his arms.

“Max, do I need to count to three?” Tricia asked in a low warning, but the boy didn’t even look up. “One…two—”

Before she could reach three, Brett scooped him up and tickled his belly. “Hey, bud, you’d better listen to your mom. You don’t want her to say we can’t play together anymore, do you?” Upside down, Max shook his head.

Tricia’s surprised expression showed she’d gotten the message about another play date. As he carried the child to her, she met him halfway, probably to remain out of her older son’s earshot.

“I want to see you again,” Brett whispered.

She accepted Max into her arms. “I don’t think—”

“I never got a real date. It wasn’t very nice to cancel that way. Not quite a lie, but almost.”

She shook her head. “I’m sorry, but—”

“Good, then I’ll accept your apology Friday when we go out.” As he waited for her to look at him, he sensed victory. “Think you can get a sitter?”

When she hesitated, he pressed his advantage. “Because if you can’t, I can probably call your friend, Charity. But then I’d have to explain how you cancelled out on the first date and—”

“I can get one.”

With that she stalked away and helped Max tie his shoes. Rusty, Jr. refused to look in Brett’s direction, but Lani kept peeking back. Both she and Max waved at him as their mother hurried them out the door.

The bowling alley felt empty as soon as the troop left. If he had any sense at all, Brett would simply forget to call about Friday and chalk the whole situation up to bad judgment in his letting Jenny set him up. He was in way over his head by considering even one real date with a widow, let alone a widow with children. If Tricia Williams’s baggage was weighed at an airport, it would be stamped “heavy” and slapped with a surcharge. But here he was tempted to offer to carry it for her, anyway.

He should have been counting his blessings that her son had tried to stop all this craziness before any real damage was done. But he could only feel relieved and grateful he’d get the chance to see Tricia again.