Читать книгу Twins Included - Grace Green - Страница 8

LIZ slept badly.

Her father had been a difficult man to love but still her pillow had been drenched with the tears she had shed for him before she finally drifted off. Then her dreams had been racked by images of him in one of his rages, so that when she woke up in the morning, it was with a feeling of guilty relief that she would never have to face him again.

Later, as she stood under the hot spray of the shower, her thoughts slid inexorably to Matt.

She’d been stunned to find him in the kitchen—although of course she hadn’t at first recognized him. At some time during the thirteen years she’d been away, someone had—to put it politely!—rearranged his face.

The Matt she remembered had been attractive in a clean-cut way, his lean features symmetrically sculpted and his face unscarred despite his many bouts as an amateur boxer.

“Pretty Boy.” That’s what his university buddies had called him, and he’d accepted the nickname with good humor. But he’d confided to Liz that keeping his face unmarked was a point of honor with him. As a fifteen-year-old, he’d promised his concerned mother that if she gave him permission to join the school boxing club, he’d never hurt her by coming home with his face battered. He’d kept that promise.

At least while Liz knew him. But now…no one would ever call him Pretty Boy again. His hair was the same—black with copper highlights; his eyes still dark-lashed and the incredibly rich green of a glacial lake. But his nose had been broken and was markedly ridged; one cheekbone had been flattened; and his lower lip sported a thin, long scar.

He looked tough now, and he looked rugged.

And he still—heaven help her!—made her heart beat faster.

But he must never know it.

And he must never know that she’d lied when she said she never thought about the past. Now that she was pregnant again, she thought about it all the time. Thought about him, and the sweet love they had shared, and the child they had so passionately, yet so tenderly, created together.

Stepping out of the shower, she reached for a towel and swiped it over the mirror. She stared at herself, her reflection shimmering in the wet glass. It was no wonder, she mused ironically, that he hadn’t recognized her. She barely recognized herself, she looked so colorless. The girl he knew had been vibrant and pretty, with bouncy blond curls and a healthy pink glow in her cheeks.

She sighed as she blow-dried her hair. She and Matt had both changed. And they would never again be the same. They were different people now, with different lives.

And though Tradition was a small town, it was big enough for both of them. It would have to be, she decided resolutely, because she had no intention of leaving.

And once she’d ousted him from Laurel House, she would burrow in and make it her home. A warm and comfortable home, for herself and her new baby…the baby that was now the only important thing in her life.

“You, Ms. Rossiter, are one very careless driver!”

Seated alone at the kitchen table, Liz was startled by the sound of Matt’s voice as he came in through the back door. She jumped, and almost spilled her coffee.

Putting down the mug, she dropped her hands to her lap, and hoped she looked calmer than she felt. She wasn’t used to this new Matt—wasn’t used to the hard, craggy face, wasn’t used to the maturity of his bearing.

In the moments before he shut the door, a draft of morning air swept into the room, making her shiver. Or had she shivered because his powerful tanned body was so blatantly revealed in jogging shorts and a black tank top?

“Careless? Really?” She kept her tone casual. And not unfriendly. “Why would you think that?”

A wary expression flickered in his eyes, causing her nervousness to dissipate in a surge of satisfaction. Her amicable attitude had thrown him off balance…and she liked the feeling of control!

He scowled at her. “The Porsche parked out back is yours?”

She nodded, and quirked a quizzical eyebrow.

“Then you owe me.”

“For what?”

“For splashing mud over my suit,” he growled. “Last night, on Main Street—”

“Oh, that was you!”

“You knew you’d soaked me?” Indignation resonated in his husky voice. “But you didn’t stop to apologize?”

“Sorry. I knew I’d splashed somebody…and if I’d known it was a lawyer…” She chuckled. “So…sue me!”

His scowl deepened. Before he could say anything, she added contritely, “Look, I really am sorry. But truly I couldn’t help it. A cat darted in front of the car and I had to swerve to avoid it. If I’d had time to think,” she added, dead-pan, “I would of course have chosen to kill the cat rather than splatter your suit. I mean, let’s get our priorities straight here. What is it, by the way…just as a matter of interest? An Armani? A Canali?”

He glared at her for a further moment…and then his laughter rolled out, free and easy as an eagle on the wing.

“Sears,” he said. “Off-the-rack.”

She leaned back in her chair, her expression mocking. “Whatever happened,” she asked, “to the teenager who swore that when he graduated from law school, he’d never buy off-the-rack clothes again?”

“What happened,” he retorted, “was that he found much better ways to spend his money. Besides—” he threw her a lazy smile that curled her toes “—most of my clients are from the local farming community. They come into my office in their working clothes—oftimes reeking of manure, if not trailing it in on their boots!—and we all feel more comfortable if I’m not dressed up like some city slicker.”

“But yesterday—”

“Yesterday I had to go to court with a client, but normally I wear jeans to the office.” He wiped a forearm over his brow, leaving a glaze of sweat. “So…did you sleep well?”

“Yes,” she fibbed. “I did. I’d been on the road for over a week and I was bushed. Besides, there’s nothing to beat sleeping in one’s own bed.”

A green-and-white striped hand towel dangled from a hook on the wall by the door. Reaching for it, he said in a teasing voice, “You think?”

She felt her cheeks grow warm. The last thing she wanted was to get in a conversation with this man about sleeping in any bed other than her own. “Yes.”

“Ah, well,” he drawled, “to each his…or her…own.” He rubbed the towel over his damp hair and then ran it over his neck and arms. Slinging it back on the hook, he glanced at the carafe of coffee she’d made earlier. “Can I have some of that?” Without waiting for an answer, he poured himself a mug, and pulling out the chair across from her, he sat down.

“So,” he said, “you’d been on the road for over a week. Where’d you come from?”

“New York.”

“Ah, a city gal. So, city gal, how about filling me in on what you’ve been doing the past thirteen years. That’s one expensive vehicle you’re running. You must either have a good job…or you married into money.”

“Neither,” she said. “I don’t have a job and I don’t have a husband.”

Silence swelled between them, broken only by the hum of the refrigerator. He was the first to speak.

“You’re on your own?”

She hesitated. Eventually he—and everybody else in Tradition—would learn that she was pregnant. But for the time being, she wanted to keep that secret to herself.

“Yes,” she said. Then, to divert him, she said, “I want to go and visit my father’s grave. Is he at Fairlawn?”

“No, they built a new cemetery ten years ago—it’s out past Miller’s Farm, take the second road on your left…or is it the third?” He scratched a hand through his tousled hair. “I know how to get there but—tell you what, I’ll drive you—”

“Thanks, I’d like to drive myself. I’ll buy a map.”

“You didn’t use to be so independent!”

He’d said it without thinking, but when he saw a shadow darken her eyes, he could have kicked himself. If she was independent now, it was because she’d had to be. When she’d most needed support, when she had most desperately needed support, she’d been let down by those she should have been able to depend on the most.

She pushed back her chair and got to her feet. “I am independent, Matt.” She spoke quietly. “And I cherish my independence. I’ve learned the hard way that the only person I can count on is myself.”

He stood, too, and fisting his hands by his sides, faced her steadily across the table. “You’re wrong, Beth. If there’s ever anything I can do for you, just say the word.”

She looked at him, for the longest time. And then she said, with a twisted little half smile. “There is one thing you can do for me, Matt.”

“Sure.” His heart leaped in anticipation. “What?”

“Please,” she said, “don’t call me ‘Beth.’”

And without another word, she flicked back her long flaxen hair and stalked regally out of the kitchen.

Liz bought a recently published map of the area, in the London Drugs on Jefferson Street.

She asked the obliging clerk to mark the position of the new cemetery, and fifteen minutes after leaving the store, she was pulling the Porsche up in the carpark of the Greenvale Burial Grounds.

“Way to go, kid!”

“Thanks, Uncle Matt!”

“Well done, Stuart.” Molly Martin gave her breathless eight-year-old son a warm hug. “That was a great game and you were a star!”

“Where’s Iain?” Stuart whipped off his baseball cap and sent a searching look around for his younger brother.

“He’s gone to book us one of the picnic tables.” Matt popped open the can of lemonade he was holding, and gave it to the flushed youngster. “You ready for lunch?”

“Am I ever!”

“Then let’s get this show on the road.”

As the threesome made their way from the baseball field to the adjoining park, Stuart ran on ahead while Molly tucked her arm through Matt’s.

“Too bad you couldn’t have come to that movie with us last night,” she said. “You’d really have enjoyed it.”

“Yeah. But I didn’t get out of the office till after seven. I don’t remember when I was ever quite so busy.”

They stopped by Matt’s dusty black Taurus, which he’d left in the carpark adjacent to the street, and he hefted his picnic cooler from the trunk. Molly slammed the lid.

“I hope,” she said as they headed into the park, “that you took time to eat dinner.”

“I took home a pizza.”

“There’s lots of nourishment in a good pizza.”

“I guess.”

What he didn’t tell her was that he hadn’t eaten one crumb of the takeout pizza. By the time he and Beth—he and Liz!—had finished talking—had finished arguing!—the last thing on his mind had been food.

Frowning, he mulled over his present situation.

He knew he had to tell Molly that Max Rossiter’s daughter had turned up and had moved back into her old home.

His home, now.

Although she was, apparently, determined to battle him for it.

He hadn’t found quite the right moment to tell Molly of this new development; and he wasn’t sure he knew why he was so reluctant to bring it up.

“Hey, Mom, over here!” Iain waved to them from a picnic table. “Let’s get that cooler open, I’m starving!”

“Hold your horses, young man!” Matt placed the cooler on the table, and the two boys immediately set themselves to unlatching the lid.

Matt helped Molly to her seat, but as he sat down beside her, his eyes were on the two brown-haired boys kneeling on the bench at the other side of the table as they eagerly unpacked the food and set it out.

He’d made a point of spending as much time as he could with them after they lost their dad. And with Molly, too. Unknown to Molly, before Dave died he’d asked Matt to take care of her after he’d gone. And that promise, made to his longtime best friend, was sacred to Matt.

“You seem a bit distracted,” Molly said. “Is something wrong?”

“Sorry. My mind just wandered for a bit. Everything’s fine.” He made an effort to concentrate, and kept up his part in the conversation during their lunch.

After they were finished, they packed up, and the boys ran over to a set of swings by the nearby tennis courts.

He and Molly walked back to the car, and as he put the cooler in the trunk, she said,

“I’m going to pop over to the washrooms. Be right back.”

Matt strolled over to the swings. Leaning against one of the uprights, he smiled as he watched the boys fly high.

After a couple of minutes, they jumped off, and they all three walked back to the Taurus.

As the boys got in, Matt saw Molly come running toward him, the sun dancing in her brown hair.

She’d had it cut last week.

“Very short,” she’d told him that evening, over the phone. “For the summer!” And short it was. But it suited her dainty features, and emphasized her large hazel eyes.

She’d lost a lot of weight in the months following Dave’s death, but now he noticed how nicely she was filling out her T-shirt again, and how attractively her denim skirt lay over her trim hips.

When she came to a breathless stop beside him, he smiled. “You’ve put on a bit of weight. It suits you.”

“If I keep eating the way I’ve been doing lately, I’ll soon be ‘deliciously plump’ again!”

Matt laughed with her as they recalled the teasing words Dave had always used to describe his wife’s curves.

“Yeah,” he said. “Dave would be pleased.”

“You know, Matt, if someone had told me, just after Dave was killed, that one day I’d be laughing again, I wouldn’t have believed them. But now…”

“Yeah. Time heals. I guess it’s really true.”

She put a hand on his arm and looked up at him. “I don’t know if I’d have survived, if it hadn’t been for you.”

“It works both ways, sweetie. I’ve missed Dave, too.” He put an arm around her, and as he embraced her, he inhaled her floral scent, which was as familiar to him now as the feel of her soft body in his arms. He had comforted her—as she had comforted him—so many times…but never in any sexual way. Nor was there anything sexual in their embrace now.

“Come on, you guys!” Stuart said. “Iain’s gonna be late for his chess lesson!”

Once Matt had settled Molly in the car, he walked around to his own side, but before he opened his door, he heard a car idling in the street and got the feeling that someone was watching him.

He glanced across and saw that the vehicle with the idling engine was hovering at the far side of the road.

It was a midnight-blue Porsche. The driver was Liz.

Their eyes met. Her expression was startled.

And that was all he had time to see before she rammed her foot down on the accelerator and raced away.

Liz’s thoughts were in turmoil as she drove home.

She could have kicked herself for pausing at the park. She’d been passing by it and when she’d chanced to see Matt stroll from his car, alone, she had—on an impulse—slowed her own car down.

It had occurred to her that she might join him. She had some questions she wanted to ask him, about her father. Then he’d started chatting with a couple of boys who’d been playing on the swings.

She decided to wait till he was alone again, but all three walked over to his car. Then a woman ran up. It was immediately obvious that she was with Matt. And when Matt took her in his arms and held her close, it was just as obvious that they were in a relationship.

Knowing she should move on but unable to drag her gaze away, Liz had felt a heavy ache in her heart. She had assumed that Matt lived alone. Well, perhaps he lived alone…but he wasn’t unattached.

She herself wanted nothing to do with him…yet why did seeing him with someone else upset her so?

She’d been about to drive on when he’d spotted her.

Their eyes had locked, and even from the distance she had seen the surprise in his. What had he seen in hers? she wondered. She only hoped he hadn’t seen her distress.

It was going to be intolerable living at Laurel House with him. Even if he and the stranger weren’t actually cohabiting, she would surely be a frequent visitor.

And Liz knew she couldn’t bear to see them together. Just the sight of him with another woman in his arms had torn every old scar off her heart. And she knew, with a sinking feeling of despair, that even after all these years, Matt Garvock still had the power to hurt her.

He didn’t come home that night till well after nine.

Liz was upstairs in the small room which had been her study as a teenager. She’d spent the evening sorting old correspondence and school papers, tossing out most of it, saving only items that had special meaning for her. The task had kept her busy; had kept her from thinking about Matt, and she’d succeeded…till she tugged the faded liner from the bottom drawer and found a scrap of paper that had been tucked underneath.

On the scrap she saw the words she’d printed there the day she’d realized she was pregnant with Matt’s baby:

Beth Garvock

Mrs. Matthew Garvock

Mr. and Mrs. Matt Garvock

As she looked at the words now, a torrent of memories brought tears to her eyes. She’d been so naively trusting, so sure Matt would ask her to marry him…

Instead he’d let her down badly.

But his failure to stand by her hadn’t dimmed the joy and wonder she’d felt at the prospect of being a mother.

And this time around, her wonder and her joy were just as intense.

Sometimes, though, she worried in case anything went wrong with her pregnancy. And sometimes she felt totally overwhelmed by the responsibility of being a single mom.

But over and above her anxieties was an unwavering determination to be the best parent she could possibly be…in a way that her own father had never been for her. More than anything, a baby needed love. And she already loved this child more than words could express—

A light double tap on the door made her jump. Automatically she crushed the scrap of paper into a ball and threw it into the garbage pail where it got lost in a jumble of scribblers and Teen magazines and exam papers.

“Liz?” Matt’s voice was tired. “May I come in?”

She sat frozen, not answering, her heart thudding wildly.

“Liz?” This time his voice had a hard edge. “I need to talk to you. I’m coming in now.”