Читать книгу A Man for All Seasons - HEATHER MACALLISTER, Heather Macallister - Страница 9

“ONE MINUTE, I WAS WAITING for Eric in the reception area at the title company so we could close on the townhouse and the next, he got off the elevator and told me he can’t do this.”

Eric would be the ex, Ty surmised.

“I thought he meant he didn’t have time right then because something…”

This was going to take more than a few minutes.

“…could have called me on my cell…”

Ty jiggled his beer bottle. Empty.

“…and he said ‘any of this.’ The house. The job. The wedding. It was too much. He felt pressured. How could he feel pressured?” She poked at her chest. “I was the one who ran around taking care of all the details. I met with the builder, I planned the wedding, I arranged for the movers. I even packed. All he had to do was show up!”

“Maybe that was the problem.” Ty made the mistake of saying.

Marlie’s eyes went huge.

He tried to explain, also a mistake. “Maybe he felt left out. Maybe he wanted to be more involved.” Even as he spoke, Ty knew he was saying the wrong thing. Besides, what guy wanted to be more involved in wedding plans?

Marlie’s response was to run up the stairs.

“Marlie!”

Hell. But only the first level. It was going to get worse. If she hadn’t told her own mother the details of Eric bailing out on her, that meant she probably hadn’t told anybody. She’d kept everything bottled inside for what? A couple of years? Tonight would be her first venting. It was going to be epic. He was looking at the fourth or even fifth level of hell for sure.

Ty set his empty bottle on the kitchen bar and followed Marlie upstairs all the way into her bedroom. He was going to drag the story out of her if it took all night. Then he’d have the fun of convincing her that It Was Over and time to move on with her life. If all went well, Marlie’d find another guy and hang around with him, and then Ty could finally, finally spend quality time with Axelle.

“Marlie—” And he broke off.

He’d never been in her bedroom. His room was down the hall to the left and there was no reason for him to go to her end. There was an unspoken understanding that they stayed out of each others’ bedrooms, and the most he’d seen of hers was a chair by the window if she’d left her door open.

So that was why he was hit with the full force of the bed. At first, he didn’t even realize it was her bed. The mattress was entirely enclosed in a ceiling-high, open-sided white box with a charcoal-gray interior and rounded corners. He moved closer and saw task lights, speakers and a control panel in the padded headboard. It extended upward to form a solid canopy housing a projector, and continued in one piece all the way down past the foot of the bed to the floor. The interior of the footboard was a screen that stretched the width of the bed.

He’d gone slack-jawed. “That’s…is that…?”

“The European media bed that was in all the magazines? Not exactly.” Marlie came to stand beside him. “I couldn’t afford the real thing, so I had this one made.”

Ty glanced at her. She sounded better. Calmer. His interest in the bed seemed a good distraction for the moment, so he checked out the upholstered interior and the headboard controls. “You designed this?”

“Not by myself. I talked to the carpenters who built the house and showed them pictures. I ended up bartering a website for the bed frame. And then the electrician got involved and he knew a man who installed sound systems and so on. It was a collaborative effort.”

“Wow.” Every guy’s fantasy bed. Ty had lived here a year and a half and had no idea something like this existed down the hall. Even more intriguing, he’d lived a year and a half with a woman who not only allowed the thing in her bedroom, she figured out a way to make it happen. He would never have picked Marlie for the type to have a techno bed. As far as he knew, she spent most of her time in her office, anyway. “Just wow,” he said, thinking Marlie had become a lot more interesting and that her ex was an idiot.

“The bed adjusts for when you want to watch the screen.” Marlie pressed a button on the control pad in the headboard and elevated the side nearest him.

“Each side has its own controls?” Did his voice actually crack?

She nodded. “Go ahead. Try it.”

Ty ignored the fact that he was climbing into Marlie’s bed and stretched out. His feet weren’t anywhere near the end of the mattress, which meant it was a custom size. “It’s comfortable,” he said, thinking of all the things he’d like to do in this bed.

“That’s the idea.”

“You’d think. But I’ve run across a lot of great-looking, uncomfortable furniture.” Ty ran his hands along the side of the mattress. “Good thing you didn’t skimp on the quality. This mattress has probably had quite a workout.” That didn’t sound right. “From watching movies and…stuff.”

Marlie’s eyes met his in one of her bland looks before she picked up a remote control. Curtains whirred across the sides, blocking the light, leaving Ty cocooned in total darkness. A moment later an ocean scene appeared on the screen.

The camera had filmed from a vantage point on the bow of a sailing ship. He heard the waves, the sails flapping in the wind, ropes creaking. Surround sound. Unbelievable. Ty half expected mist to shoot from the canopy ceiling to complete the experience.

What an escape. Imagine coming home to this bed after work. It would be like going on vacation every night.

Relaxing, he stared at the screen as the view bobbed up and down. Up and down. Up and—“Marlie?”

He heard laughter and the image disappeared.

“Getting seasick?” The curtains drew back and Marlie grinned down at him, taking him back in time.

Today we get to go on a hike! Mom packed our lunches—peanut butter, the smooth kind. Come on! Get out of bed, Ty! If we’re late, they’ll leave without us.

And he’d said, I don’t want to go on a stupid hike, even though he did, and I hate peanut butter, even though he didn’t.

Marlie had stopped grinning then, which was what he’d wanted. Why should she be happy if he wasn’t?

He didn’t want that now. A smiling Marlie was better than a crying Marlie. Smiling looked good on her, gave her a friendly, comfortable vibe. If she smiled more often, it wouldn’t take long for her to find another guy. “This is a seriously awesome bed,” he complimented her. “I don’t know why you’d ever leave.”

“Food?”

“Have it delivered.”

“Uh, the thing that happens after you eat food?”

Ty leaned over the side and checked the height of platform. “There’s room for a bedpan under here.”

“You’re talking about a chamber pot, but still ewww.”

He noticed something else while he was leaning over. “No way.” Pressing on a panel, he released the latch and opened the door of a small refrigerator. At the moment, it held a single bottle of no-name water and a lot of potential. He looked up at Marlie. “You are a goddess. Men everywhere should fall to their knees and worship you.”

Ty expected her grin to widen, not fade. “What?”

“This bed was my wedding gift to Eric,” she said, her voice flat.

Eric seriously annoyed him. “What was he, nuts? This is the greatest bed in the history of beds. How could he leave this bed?” Too late, Tyler realized how that sounded. “You. I meant how could he leave you.”

Her expression didn’t change. She wasn’t buying it. He wouldn’t have, either. “Because…any woman who’d give a guy a bed like this…shouldn’t be left.” Seriously? That the best he could do?

“He never saw it.”

“Well, there you go. If he’d—” A beat passed. “What I meant—”

“Are you trying to make me feel better, Ty?”

“Yes. But I am doing a crappy job of it.”

“You are doing a spectacularly bad job of it, and yet you keep hanging in there.”

“I should stop.”

“No.” She sat at the foot of the bed by the screen. “I find it oddly endearing.”

She might as well have patted him on the head. “As long as it keeps you from going over the edge.”

“I’m not near an edge,” she said, sounding edgy.

“Are you kidding? You’re sitting on it with your feet dangling over the side.”

“You think I’m still hung up on Eric?” She rolled her eyes. “Oh, please.”

“Then ditch the drama and finish telling me what happened.”

“Why?”

“Because I want to know.”

“No, you don’t.”

Did he truly want to know what caused Marlie’s broken engagement? Marlie was a what-you-see-is-what-you-get kind of person. Not glamorous, but solid and reliable. A team player, not a diva. She had “wife” written all over her. A man didn’t mess around with a woman like Marlie.

He studied her familiar, bare face and those eyes that met his with disconcerting directness. He could never lie to those eyes. No matter what he said or how he acted, those eyes saw the truth. Except, apparently, where her ex was concerned.

So, yeah. He wanted to know what happened. “Given our past, I can see why you’d think I wouldn’t care. I didn’t figure it was any of my business. But now, I’m making it my business.”

She didn’t say anything, but some of the hurt left her expression.

“I want to find out what he did to turn you into a hermit who never goes anywhere and doesn’t have any friends.”

“I have friends,” she protested.

“Your online buddies don’t count. I’m talking about living, breathing friends you see in person.”

“They’re back in Seattle where I left them when I quit my job and followed Eric here to Houston!”

A little temper there. “Make new friends.” Anger was encouraging. Wasn’t it one of the stages of grief? He was fuzzy on the order.

She glared at him. “This is about you getting the place to yourself so you can sleep with Axelle, isn’t it?”

Busted. “That’s blunt.”

“But I’m right.”

“If helping you get out of your rut benefits me, I’m not going to complain.”

She smirked. “That’s the Ty I know.”

“Following a guy around—that’s the Marlie I know.” He sucked air between his teeth. “Ignore what I just said.”

She didn’t. “We were engaged.”

“I was out of line. I apologize.”

“Our parents made me stick with you!”

“I know. I’m sorry for the crack. Can we get past it?”

She gave him a sulky look. “You’re not endearing anymore.”

“Endearing’s not my style. Fixing things is my style. C’mon, let’s get this over with. Spill.”

“You are really bad at sympathy.”

“Do you want me to make a lot of ‘oh, I’m so sorry’ and ‘poor little Marlie’ noises, or do you want a guy’s perspective on what was going through your ex’s head?” Ty already had a solid theory. Two theories, but he hoped he was wrong about the second.

“I don’t care what he was thinking,” Marlie said. “I want to know what happened between kissing me goodbye that morning and walking out of my life at noon.”

Ty had theories about that, too. “Did you ask him?”

“I was so shocked, I don’t remember saying anything.” Marlie drew her feet onto the bed. “The bed was a surprise.” She gazed around the interior. “I’d arranged for the carpenters to install it while we were at the closing. Then afterwards, we were supposed to come here and christen it.”

An image of Marlie and the unknown Eric flashed in Ty’s head and his mind rebelled. “Too much information.”

She tilted her chin. “And your love life with Axelle isn’t?”

“Point taken.” He gestured. “Go on.”

“I only told you so you’d understand that I was completely blindsided. He’d never complained or expressed any doubts. About anything. When Eric left for work that morning, everything was fine. Then he got off the elevator at lunchtime and gave his ‘I can’t do this’ speech. He told me he felt tied down. He didn’t like his job and he didn’t like Houston, and apparently he didn’t like me, either.”

“He said that?”

Marlie gave him a look. “He called off the wedding. It’s implied.”

“Did he ask for the ring back?”

Marlie shook her head.

“So he didn’t leave you for another woman,” Ty said, glad that theory was toast.

“How do you know?”

“He would have wanted the ring so he could reset the stone or trade it in.” At least Ty hoped Marlie had the sense not to hook up with a guy who was the type to give the same ring to another woman.

“Oh.” She thought for a moment. “Is that supposed to make me feel better about being dumped?”

“It makes me feel better,” Ty said. “Now I know we’re only dealing with rejection and not betrayal.” Betrayal was messier. Lots of crying and runny noses with betrayal. “If there had been another woman, you would have found a way to make the breakup all your fault. You would have blamed yourself for not being pretty enough or thin enough or whatever enough. Then you would have tried to fix yourself and punished the next guy you dated for being attracted to the ‘new you’ because he’s supposed to be able to see past the ‘new you’ to the ‘real you’ hidden inside. But he doesn’t know that. So you accuse him of being shallow. And then you break up with him—but not until he’s wined you and dined you and paid for a couple of pricey bed-and-breakfast weekends.”

“NOT THAT YOU’RE BITTER.”

Ty so clearly spoke from experience that Marlie wanted to laugh. She actually felt like laughing. Maybe she would. “I hope she was good in bed, at least.”

He met her eyes before giving her a rueful look. “She was okay. Tried too hard.”

“Poor you.” She snickered. It felt good. For the first time, Marlie experienced something other than bewildered hurt and anger when she thought about the horrible day Eric left. And who would have thought she’d be confiding in Ty, of all people?

Astoundingly, he seemed to care. Sure, it was self-serving, but it was genuine caring. And the clunky way he tromped all over her feelings might be just what she needed. She wasn’t ready to admit it, though. He was smug enough already.

“Go ahead and laugh,” he said. “But be glad you’re not That Woman. At least you know Eric’s issues had nothing to do with you.”

Did she know that?

Ty settled back into the bed. Marlie wondered what he’d say if she told him he was the first man to be in it. But she didn’t wonder enough to tell him.

“So he calls off the wedding and then what?” he prompted while he fiddled with the control panel, figuring out which buttons controlled the head elevation and the lights.

“He told me to keep his half of the down payment on the townhouse to cover the deposits I’d lose by canceling the wedding.” Marlie thought of what she went through and got mad all over again. “Like that even began to make up for it. We were within sixty days of the date. The invitations hadn’t been mailed, but they’d been printed. My dress had already been altered. The bridesmaids’ dresses couldn’t be returned and I couldn’t make my friends pay for those, so I reimbursed them. Everybody had bought their plane tickets—”

“Focus,” Ty cut her off. “What else did he say?”

“He just said ‘sorry’ and got back on the elevator.”

“I mean, later. After that.”

“There was no later,” Marlie told him. “I haven’t seen or talked to him since. No text, no email. Nothing.”

“That was it?” Ty stopped playing with the buttons and stared at her. “You’re kidding.”

“No,” she whispered, her throat tight. That was probably the most difficult aspect for her to accept—that Eric could walk away as though their life together had never existed.

“Jerk.” Ty looked outraged. “What about his stuff?”

She swallowed past the tightness. “The movers told me he packed his car. He knew I had a couple of appointments that morning before I was to meet him at the title company and he must have come back after I left.”

“So the coward planned it all in advance.” Ty was gratifyingly incensed on her behalf. It helped.

“I thought it was stress. I thought he was having a meltdown and he’d get over it in a few hours. I mean, it happens. Even I— Anyway, they called me in for the appointment and what was I supposed to do? We had to vacate the apartment. The movers were already loading the truck. I had nowhere else to go. This was supposed to be our home. So I bought it. I went in and signed the papers and I bought it. Not that moment, because the papers had to be redone, but I moved in and paid the bank rent for a few days.” Marlie breathed deeply, just as she had after walking into the room and indenturing herself to a mortgage.

“I would have done the same thing.” Ty leaned over the side of the bed. “I’m going to drink your water.” He opened the fridge, took the bottle she’d forgotten was in there, and twisted the cap.

Marlie smiled as he drank while the door clicked shut. He looked good in the bed. Very much at home. Nice broad shoulders, the kind she could rest her head on after he’d thrown an arm around her while they watched a movie.

Marlie thought all kinds of warm, fuzzy thoughts until the rational part of her pointed out that she was fantasizing about Tyler Burton.

It’s only because he’s here and he’s male, she told herself. You do not want Tyler Burton in particular; you want a man in general.

Ty lowered the bottle. “How long did it take you to figure out he wasn’t coming back?”

“A couple of days. He wouldn’t answer his cell phone and I had visions of him lying in the hospital in a coma. I went by his work and they told me that he’d quit to take a job overseas.” Yeah. His coworkers had to tell her. An echo of the humiliation she’d felt reverberated through her. “Overseas? Like any country would do as long as it was on a different continent than the one I was on?”

“Marlie.” Ty leveled a look at her. “Drama free.”

No coddling from Ty, which was probably the only reason she was able to get through her story without crying. “I just couldn’t believe it. He’d never said anything about wanting to live in another country. Why didn’t he ask me? I would have been up for it.”

“Do I really have to answer that?” Ty asked. “Do I really have to tell you it was because he didn’t want you to go with him?”

“That’s cold.”

“Marlie!” He looked pained. “This cannot be news to you. Forget about it. You went to his office—he wasn’t there, then what?”

Marlie skipped the part about crying for hours after discovering he’d put her name on the “block personal information” list at his new company. As if she was a stalker. “I called his mom, who, by the way, was under the impression that Eric had bought me this house as a lovely parting gift. I set her straight on that, as well as what it was going to cost to cancel the wedding.”

“Details I don’t need.”

Marlie exhaled in frustration before continuing, “She expressed her opinion. I expressed mine.”

Ty gave her a thumbs up.

“And she refused to tell me where he was. Not even what country he was in.”

“You’re not looking too good here,” Ty said.

Marlie’s jaw dropped. “I’m not?”

“You’re the one who fell in love with that turkey.”

“I didn’t know he was a turkey.”

“We’ll work on your turkey-detecting skills after I fix this problem,” he said.

“Other than a really large mortgage and a really small income, I don’t have a problem.”

“Yes, you do.” Ty sipped more water. “You’re not over him yet.”

“Oh, I’m over him. But I don’t know how I missed the signs that something was wrong.”

“Hey. Listen to me.” Ty leaned forward, holding her gaze intently. “There weren’t any signs. He made sure of it because he wanted out. Confronting you in public, breaking your heart, and taking away your dream home was calculated to make you hate him.”

Marlie believed him. She didn’t want to, but she knew Ty was giving her the unvarnished truth. “But why?” It was the question she’d asked herself way too many times. If Ty could answer it, he was a genius.

“Because then you wouldn’t want him back. No hoping you could ‘work things out.’ It would be a clean break and you both could move on. Like ripping off a bandage. It stings, but it doesn’t hurt for as long.”

“It was a lot more than a sting.”

“For you, yes. But he’d been planning his move for a while. He’d already checked out of the relationship. You don’t do what he did to somebody you love.”

Unvarnished truth hurt. “You’re saying he’d fallen out of love with me?”

Ty nodded.

“But he, but we still—”

“That would be him hiding the signs.”

“Did he have to hide them twice just the night before?”

“He was being thorough,” Ty said implacably.

Details from their last night together flooded her memory. “We talked about our future that night. We talked about having children.” Marlie swallowed. “I feel sick.”

“Now, if you had a bed pan in here, we’d be all set.”

She stared at Ty. “You are unbelievable. How can you say such a thing? He broke my heart and you act like it was nothing more than a broken date. Don’t you have any empathy at all?”

Ty offered her the water bottle.

“I don’t want any water!”

“Still feel sick?” He tilted the bottle to his mouth.

“I’m too mad at you to feel sick. Oh.” She watched him, or rather she watched his neck as he drained the water. “You made me angry on purpose. I suppose you think that was clever.”

“Yeah. I’m getting better at this.”

“You’re getting lucky.”

“That is not what I’m getting.”

“Aaaand we’re back to that.”

“I never left.”

As much as Marlie wanted to be mad at him, she wasn’t. Ty was blunt and sometimes annoyed with her, but he was here and he’d never lied to her.

Marlie suddenly looked back on all those summers in a different light. He’d hated having to be responsible for her and yet, not once had he failed to show up when he was supposed to. He hadn’t taken it out on her, either. Sure, he obviously resented babysitting her, but other than that, they were friends. Just not friends who liked each other. Ty was the kind of friend who told her the truth because she needed to hear it and he didn’t care how it made him look.

He screwed the top back on the empty bottle. “Okay, here’s what happened with Eric.”

Good, Marlie thought. Finally I’ll know.

“He took one of those overseas jobs for single guys.”

“Why do they have to be single?” Because women were involved? Marlie tried to imagine Eric as a sort of exotic male escort. No. Now Ty…

“It’s common in the oil business. Some countries don’t allow foreign women and children to live there, so companies recruit unmarried men. That way, they’re not separating families. It’s less complicated all around. The deal is you sign a contract for a year or two years, work twelve hour days and live in on-site corporate housing.”

“You’re saying he’d rather do that than marry me?”

“It’s the cash,” Ty said. “You make a pot full. I’ve seen these guys when they come back stateside after finishing a contract. They party hard and throw a lot of money around. They get the flashy cars and the flashy women and it looks pretty sweet, especially when you’re stuck in a cubicle earning a lot less and about to take on a wife and mortgage.”

“Eric proposed to me,” Marlie clarified. “He is the one who asked me to quit my job and move halfway across the country with him.”

Ty nodded to himself. “Now what he did really makes sense.”

“Not to me.”

“Say I’m Eric.” Ty paused. “Do I look like him?”

“You look exactly like him,” Marlie said, and then watched the emotions flicker across Ty’s face. She added a gooey look and saw the beginnings of panic. Good. He was entirely too smug. “Except that Eric’s hair is dark and curly. And his eyes are brown.” She touched her chin. “He had a beard thing here and he wore glasses. He might have been a little chunkier than you, not that he was out of shape, but he was buying the relaxed-fit Dockers, if you know what I mean. But you two could be twins. From different families.”

“You could have said no.”

“Where’s the fun in that?”

A slow smile slid across his face. “You’ll be okay.”

Marlie had not been the direct recipient of such a smile from Tyler. It warmed her middle and caused her heart to give a few syrupy thuds. Remember that he reconnected your buttons. Just don’t connect with him. She poked his foot with hers. “Keep channeling Eric.”

“Right. Eric.” Ty gazed up at the canopy. “So I’m Eric and these guys head out for drinks and whatever, but I can’t go because I have to taste wedding cake samples with Marlie and her mom and her girlfriends.”

“It was just me, you were late, and you’d been drinking beer, so none of the cakes tasted good to you.”

Ty looked at her. “For real?”

“Yes.”

“You were mad.”

“Well, yeah.” Eric had embarrassed her in front of the other couples who’d been there.

“When I told the guys, they gave me a hard time about being on a leash.”

“A leash?”

“Words to that effect.” Ty waved his hand. “There were more instances like that and I started thinking the ‘if onlys.’ If only I weren’t getting married. If only I could take a year or two and make some big bucks and buy the kind of car I really want, go where I want and do what I want. If only I didn’t have to follow Marlie around to caterers and florists and invitation makers—”

“I didn’t bother you with any of that. And I thought it would be fun to taste a bunch of cakes. You like cake.”

“Marlie, work with me.” Ty gave her an impatient look. “It’s not the details. I’m showing you his frame of mind and how he got there. While you were all involved with the wedding and the house, he was seeing a really great life pass him by. These guys had money and freedom and no responsibilities. What would he have? Kids and a giant mortgage.”

“He’d have me,” she said in a small voice.

“But you wouldn’t be you—you’d be a mother.”

“Of his children!”

Ty spread his hands. “I’m telling you the way a guy thinks.”

Truly, it was like watching a special feature on a DVD, the one where the director explained different scenes. “That’s the way all guys think?”

“Nah. Some guys are into it.”

“Is that the way you think?” It would explain why he never dated the PTA mom type.

Ty considered her question. “I’m in the middle—buying a house, but definitely not ready for a wife and kids.” He regarded her with a touch of sympathy. “He wasn’t ready, either, Marlie. You need to find a guy who’s ready.”

She’d thought she had. “Why didn’t he just tell me?”

“He felt guilty after dragging you halfway across the country.”

“I would have waited for him.”

“And he knew that.” Ty shook his head. “I hate to say it, but the guy actually did the decent thing. He just didn’t expect you to mope about it for so long.”

Men always stuck together in the end. “I’m not moping. I’m working.”

“Then you’re moping while you work.” He eyed her before swinging his legs over the side of the bed. “This is a great bed.” He leaned on his hands as he scanned the interior. “Too bad you have to get rid of it.”