Читать книгу Breaking The Silence - Diane Chamberlain - Страница 17

DYLAN WAS TURNING THE SALMON STEAKS IN THE MARINADE when he heard the front door open. He peered from his kitchen into the living room.

“Hey!” He smiled at Bethany. “Good to see you, Beth.”

“Good to see you, too.” Bethany walked into the galley kitchen, her arms wrapped around a paper grocery bag, and gave him a kiss.

“Can’t hug you,” Dylan said. “Got marinade on my hands.”

“Well, I brought dessert.” She pulled the cartons of Ben & Jerry’s from the grocery bag, and Dylan smiled. Bethany knew his weakness.

“I also picked up your mail for you, since you obviously haven’t made it to the end of your driveway today.” She put the stack of envelopes and junk mail on his counter.

“Thanks.” He washed his hands at the sink, then gave her a proper kiss.

“So, what’s this?” Bethany picked up the photograph lying on the pile of mail.

Dylan looked at the picture just long enough to feel the return of his anger from that morning.

“Where was that?” he asked. “In the mailbox?”

“Uh-huh. Just lying loose. Who is she?”

“I don’t have a clue.” He tossed the picture upside down on the stack of mail, noticing that Laura Brandon had written a phone number on the back.

Bethany looked as though she didn’t believe him, but she didn’t press him. He could count on her for that.

Of the women he’d gone out with over the past few years, Bethany was his favorite. She was beautiful. Besides running her own photography business, she modeled part-time, and he loved finding her face and body in the pages of Washingtonian magazine. Her shiny, short hair was as black as a raven’s wing and she wore a perpetual tan. More important than her looks, though, was the fact that she understood him better than anyone else he’d dated. She understood that he didn’t want to be tied down; he was always honest with her about that. She understood that he needed to see other women, and she dated other men. Still, Dylan feared that Bethany’s carefree facade masked her real yearnings. She was only thirty-one. He knew she wanted marriage and a family, while he wanted neither. She wanted to be loved, while he knew his feelings for her would never move beyond affection. He was brutal in his honesty about that, and while she accepted his words on the surface, he worried that she expected him to change. He’d told her many times that if marriage and commitment were what she was after, she had the wrong guy.

One concession he’d made to her was that she be his only lover. She could not have a physical relationship with more than one man at a time, she’d said, and she needed to know the same was true for him. It was true, not because of the emotional complications more than one lover could engender, but because of the physical risk. He was enigmatic that way. He wanted to live from day to day, without a care for the future, but damned if he was going to get AIDS or something else in the process. He and Bethany had been tested. They were monogamous—sexually, anyway—and he took comfort in that.

Bethany made the salad and microwaved the potatoes while he grilled the fish on the deck. They ate at his picnic table under the thick canopy of trees, burning citronella candles to keep the bugs away.

It had been two weeks since Dylan had seen Bethany, and she looked great. He could barely take his eyes off her while they ate, and when dinner was over, he left the dishes in the sink and ushered her into his bedroom. They made love, but he sensed something was wrong. She’d been quiet at dinner, quieter still now that they’d made love. And although he was sorely tempted to simply fall asleep, he thought he’d better ask.

He propped his head up with his pillow so he could see the aquarium on the wall opposite his bed. He’d built the huge tank into the wall between the bedroom and the living room so he could see the fish from either room. Right now, the tank diffused the light from the living room, sending shimmering blue waves across the ceiling of the bedroom.

He put his arm around Bethany. “Is something bothering you?” he asked.

She nestled closer to him. “No. Not really.”

“Don’t believe you.”

She drew in a long breath, and he braced himself for whatever was coming.

“Well,” she said, “I feel a little spooked by that picture in your mailbox.”

“Spooked? Why?”

“I just don’t understand why it was there. Who put it there?” He sighed. One of the angelfish darted toward the surface of the tank, then down to the bottom, where it swam in and out of the ceramic castle. “This woman made an appointment to go up in the balloon today,” he said. “Alone. When she got me up there with no place to hide, she told me I’m her daughter’s father. I didn’t even recognize her—the woman. Not her face or her name. And I was royally pissed off. Took her back down after only ten minutes in the air. She must have stuck the picture in my mailbox on her way out.”

“So…” Bethany said.

“So?”

“Could it be true?”

“I don’t know what her scheme is. Her daughter’s five, so it would have been six years ago. You’d think I’d at least remember something about her, wouldn’t you? And you know how obsessive I am about birth control.”

Bethany was quiet for a minute. “That was your bad time, though.”

He hadn’t wanted to think about it, but she was right. It was possible he might have fathered a child back then. He might have fathered any number of children. And although he liked to think of himself as cautious, he’d been drinking a lot in those days. Anything was possible.

“Yes,” he admitted. “That was my bad time.”

“So, maybe she’s yours.”

“And what am I supposed to do about it even if she is? The woman says she’s not after money, which is good since I have none to give her. But I have even less to offer on the fatherhood level.”

Bethany stroked his chest. “You think you have nothing to offer, but that’s not true. Sometimes I wish…” Her voice trailed off.

“Wish what?”

“You’d make a good father, Dylan. You’re fun. You’re a kind and caring and honest person.”

He remembered Laura Brandon’s use of the word caring. Her daughter needed a caring male figure in her life.

“I’m not terrific at commitment,” he said, “in case you haven’t noticed.”

“Maybe someday you will be.”

“Bethany…I worry you’ve got plans for me that will never materialize.”

“Yeah. I worry I do, too.”

He touched her cheek. “I’ve been as honest as I can be with you.”

“I know.” Her voice was thick.

He wrapped both arms around her and held her close, knowing the gesture would have to suffice. There was nothing more he could offer her.