Читать книгу Plain Jane Macallister - Joan Elliott Pickart - Страница 10

“Grandma,” Emily MacAllister called as she crossed the sunshine-filled kitchen. “I’m here with the flowers as promised, and they’re gorgeous. You’re going to love them. You can sit on the patio and supervise while I stick them in the ground. Grandma?”

“I’m in the living room, dear,” Margaret MacAllister answered.

Emily went through the formal dining room and on to enter the living room, a smile of greeting for her beloved grandmother firmly in place.

Then she stopped dead in her tracks, feeling the color drain from her face and her breath catch as her heart thundered.

In that second, that tiny tick of time, as she stared wide-eyed at the tall man who had risen to his feet when she appeared, her life as she knew it ceased to exist.

She wasn’t thirty-one-years old, she was eighteen.

She wasn’t a pudgy woman with fat cheeks and a hint of a double chin, she was a slender teenager with a figure to be envied.

She wasn’t wearing clothes that looked as though she’d borrowed them from a bag lady, she was dressed in the latest designer jeans with a well-known brand name stitched across the pocket on her trim, tight bottom.

A wave of dizziness swept through Emily, and she gripped the top of an easy chair with one hand as the room spun around her.

This, she thought frantically, was not happening. It was a nightmare, and she was about to wake up and start her day in a normal manner.

Mark Maxwell was not, not, not, standing on the other side of that room, looking at her with no readable expression on his face. No.

“Isn’t this a lovely surprise, Emily?” Margaret said pleasantly. “Mark is here to visit us after all these years.”

No…he…isn’t, Emily thought. Oh, why didn’t the alarm go off and wake her up? No, no, no, Mark Maxwell is not here.

“Hello, Emily,” Mark said quietly.

Yes, he is, she thought, pressing one hand to her forehead. But this wasn’t skinny, gangly, endearingly geeky, Mark Maxwell. Nope, not this one. This Mark was at least six feet tall, had drop-dead-gorgeous rough-hewn features, broad shoulders and was wearing perfectly tailored dark slacks.

Where was the adorable plastic pocket protector jammed full of pens he always wore in his shirt pocket? Where was the cowlick in his light-brown hair that formed a cute little curlicue on the crown of his head? Where were the arms and legs and enormous feet, all of which were much too big for his still-developing body?

“Emily?” Margaret said. “Aren’t you going to say hello to Mark? I realize that you two parted on, shall we say, terms that were at best confusing to the rest of us but, my stars, that was years ago. Old news. History, as the young people say. And you’re not being very polite.”

“Oh.” Emily drew a much-needed breath, only then realizing she’d totally forgotten to breathe. “Sorry. Yes. Polite. Hello…Mark.” She narrowed her eyes. “Why on earth are you here?”

“Emily, for heaven’s sake,” Margaret said. “That was extremely rude.”

“That’s all right, Margaret. I’m sure that my arriving unannounced like this is a bit of a shock to Emily.”

Emily, Mark’s mind hummed. There she was. He could hardly believe he was here with only a matter of feet separating them.

There was that silky blond hair he used to sift his fingers through, now worn in gentle waves to just above her shoulders.

There were those classic MacAllister brown eyes that could sparkle with merriment, turn smoky with desire, shimmer with glistening tears when she was very happy or terribly sad.

She was dressed like a walking rummage sale, weighed a lot more than when she was a teenager, didn’t appear to have on a speck of makeup and one toe was actually poking through a hole in her about-to-fall-apart tennis shoes.

Oh, yes, there she was.

Emily.

And she was absolutely beautiful.

He wanted to cross the room, pull her into his arms, kiss her senseless, then…

Hold it, Maxwell, Mark thought. This was Emily MacAllister, who had somehow managed to keep a stranglehold on his heart and he was there in Ventura, by damn, to get it back.

“Mark just returned from a year in Paris, Emily,” Margaret said, “where he was part of a carefully selected team of medical researchers. His position in Boston was filled when he went to Paris but before he decides where to work next, perhaps even leaving Boston, he’s taking a much-deserved vacation, which included stopping in Ventura to say hello. Isn’t that nice?”

“Just too nice for words,” Emily mumbled, then inched around the chair and sank onto it as her trembling legs refused to hold her for another moment.

Mark sat back down on the sofa and propped one ankle on his other knee. Emily’s gaze was riveted on the taut muscles visible beneath his slacks as he completed the masculine motion. She blinked and redirected her attention to the fingernails of one of her hands as though they were the most fascinating thing she’d ever seen.

“There are a couple of reasons that I stopped over in Ventura,” Mark said. “One of them is to extend an apology to you and Robert, Margaret, for not keeping in better contact with you. Sending a Christmas card once a year just doesn’t cut it.

“If you hadn’t taken me in, welcomed me into your home when my father was killed in that accident when I was a senior in high school, there’s no telling what grief I would have come to in the foster-care system. I owe you a great deal, and I feel as though I’ve been remiss in expressing my gratitude.”

“We were delighted to have you here as a part of our family, Mark,” Margaret said. “Even if we had had a crystal ball to tell us what would eventually transpire between you and…”

“Grandma,” Emily interrupted, “let’s not go traipsing down memory lane, shall we?” She looked at Mark. “You said you had a couple of reasons for being in Ventura?”

Mark nodded. Emily waited for him to continue speaking. One second, two, three…

“Is this a guessing game?” Emily finally said, frowning. “Do you intend to share this other…mission, with us?”

“All in good time,” Mark said, then paused. “Margaret told me that you have a very challenging career, Emily, and that you’ve recently moved your business out of your home and into an office downtown.

“You research the history of old homes and buildings, as I understand it. Fascinating. Margaret also said you do quite a bit of work for the restoration division of MacAllister Architects so they can restore old structures in such a manner they will be eligible for registration with the historical society. Not only that but your reputation for excellence is spreading up and down the coast.”

Emily glared at her grandmother. “Did you remember to tell him that I brush my teeth in the morning when I get up and again before I go to bed, Grandma?”

Margaret laughed. “Don’t be silly. Mark asked how you were, what you were doing, and I told him. A proud grandmother has the right to boast. It’s in our job description. We’d already moved on to the subject of the exciting events of Maggie and Alice’s weddings and their new lives on the Island of Wilshire.”

“Good topic,” Emily said, pointing one finger in the air. “There’s nothing like a couple of royal weddings to put a little zing in the daily grind.

“Jessica is married now, too, Mark. She’s a successful attorney, crazy in love with a police detective named Daniel, and became an instant mother to a darling baby girl named Tessa. We MacAllisters have spent a lot of time going to family weddings in…”

“But you’ve never married?” Mark interrupted quietly, looking directly at Emily.

“Me?” she said, splaying one hand on her chest. “Oh, heavens, no. When I was young and immature and such a starry-eyed child I thought I wanted that type of lifestyle but it suddenly dawned on me that it just wasn’t my cup of tea and…”

She flipped one hand in the air. “Well, you know all that because you and I were inseparable from the time you moved to Ventura until you zoomed off to fame and fortune in Boston and… Well, silly us, we were so sure we were deeply in… We were so young and dumb, weren’t we? Oh, my, yes. Well, that’s enough of that subject.”

It was enough of that subject, Mark thought, to slice and dice him, to hear spoken in Emily’s own words an echo of what she’d written in that letter she’d sent him in Boston so many years ago.

His first instinct then had been to get on a plane and fly back to Ventura, confront Emily, make her look him right in the eye and repeat what was in that letter. But he hadn’t had two nickels to rub together, let alone money for airfare. And besides, she’d made it perfectly clear in that damnable, hateful letter that it was over between them, so what was the point?

And now here he sat in the same room with her over a dozen years later hearing her say it all right to his face. And it still hurt. God, it hurt.

Well, wasn’t this an efficient use of time? During the very first meeting with Emily since arriving this morning in Ventura, he’d gotten the cold, hard facts he needed to begin to retrieve his heart from her uncaring stranglehold.

But…

There was something just off the mark about what she had just said. She made it sound as though they’d mutually agreed that their feelings for each other weren’t what they’d believed them to be, and that wasn’t even remotely close to the truth.

He had left for Boston with the heartfelt promise to send for her just as soon as he could figure out a way to provide a home for her while he attended college on the scholarship he’d received.

Emily had vowed to wait for him no matter how long it took, but about a month later the shattering letter had come and…

“Yo in the house,” a voice called in the distance, jerking Mark back to the present. “I’m here as ordered to dig in the dirt.”

Emily’s eyes widened and she jumped to her feet. “Can’t. No digging in dirt today. Sorry, Grandma, I’ve got a killer headache so we’ll do this tomorrow. I’ll just go tell… Bye, Mark, enjoy your vacation and…”

The front door of the house opened and an adolescent boy came into the living room.

“Oh, dear heaven,” Emily whispered, “no.”

“Hi,” the boy said. “Didn’t you hear me holler? I came right over on my bike when I got home from swimming and saw your note, Mom. Hi, Great-Grandma. We’re going to dig the dirt, plant the plants, do it to it.” His attention was caught by a tall man across the room getting slowly to his feet. “Oh, hi. Sorry. Didn’t know there was company.” He looked questioningly at his mother.

“Yes, well,” Emily said, having difficulty breathing. “I…Mark Maxwell, I’d like you to meet…” She drew a shaky breath. “…my…my…son. Trevor. Trevor MacAllister. Trevor, say hello to Dr. Mark Maxwell. He’s an old school…chum of mine.”

“Cool,” Trevor said, nodding. “Hi.”

“You’re Emily’s…son?” Mark said, his voice sounding strange to his own ears as he stared at Trevor.

“Yep, that’s me. Her genius-level offspring. Do note that I’m taller than she is already. Cool, huh?”

“Very cool,” Mark said. “How…how old are you, Trevor?”

No! Don’t answer that, Emily thought, taking a step toward Trevor.

“Yes, the time has come for this,” Margaret whispered to no one.

“I’m twelve, almost thirteen,” Trevor said. “Closer to thirteen, so just go with that. I’m about to become a bona fide teenager.”

Who looked exactly as he had at that age, Mark thought, his mind racing. Tall, lanky, feet like gunboats, arms and legs seeming too big for his yet-to-fully-develop body, brown eyes, light-brown hair and a cowlick creating a curl on the crown of his head.

This was Emily’s son? Mark’s mind screamed. Oh, he didn’t doubt for a second that she had given birth to him but, by damn, this boy standing a room away from him was more than just Emily’s son.

There was no doubt in his mind. None.

He, Mark Maxwell, was Trevor’s father!