Читать книгу When Love Walks In - Suzanne Carey - Страница 9

Life and unloving parents had conspired to arrange a different outcome.

It was approaching the dinner hour on a Friday evening in October as thirty-four-year-old Cate Anderson, now an English teacher at Beckwith Consolidated High School, ran off a stack of fliers on the school’s balky, outdated copy machine. A widow since the death of her husband, Larry, from complications of leukemia three years earlier, she wore a charcoal-gray sweater set, a Pendleton plain wool shirt she’d bought in a Minneapolis thrift shop when her teenage son, Brian, was still a toddler, and recently resoled penny loafers. The second pair she’d managed to ruin that week, her panty hose had a run in them.

Designed and produced with the principal’s blessing on behalf of a recently organized Save Our Jobs, Save Our Town committee, the fliers represented an effort to boost attendance at a rally that would take place in the town library on Monday evening. According to recent news stories, Mercator, the new corporate parent of Beckwith’s only industry, Beckwith Tool and Die, was in the process of deciding whether to expand the plant or close it.

Without it, this town will dry up and blow away, Cate thought. She was trying to imagine what her father, her mother-in-law, Beverly Anderson, and her best friend, Brenda Lawler, all of whom worked at Beckwith Tool and Die, would do for a living if the plant closed when Brenda abruptly knocked on the media room’s glass door.

Cate motioned for her to enter. “What are you doing here?” she asked. “Come to think of it, how’d you get into the building? By now the outside doors are usually locked.”

Brenda’s expertly made-up hazel eyes glittered with excitement. “Hank Whittaker was mopping up in the front hall,” she answered. “I pounded on the glass…told him I had to talk to you right away.”

“From the look on your face, maybe I ought to sit down,” Cate suggested, trying to suppress the sudden apprehension she felt.

For once Brenda didn’t laugh or tell her she was exaggerating. “Actually,” she agreed, “that might be a good idea.”

Incredibly, her friend was serious. What on earth could she possibly say that might cause me to lose my balance? Cate wondered apprehensively, pulling up a stool.

“Is this about you and Dean?” she asked. “Please don’t tell me the two of you are getting back together! When I think of the black eye he gave you last month…”

Dean was Brenda’s soon-to-be ex-husband. Brenda shook her head. “It’s like I told you…I’m not going to take any more of his bullying. When he stopped by day before yesterday to pick up some of his things and suggested we fool around, I ordered him out of the house.”

“Then what’s this about?”

Brenda bit her lip. “Danny Finn’s back in town. I thought you’d rather hear it from me instead of some busybody gossip.”

Astonishment pierced Cate to the quick as a thousand images competed in her head—Danny pelting her with snowballs. Handing her a bouquet of wild flowers he’d picked in the woods. Kissing her senseless. Unaware of the gesture, she hugged herself as she thought about the way he’d held her during the homecoming dance her senior year while her classmates had whispered about them. The way they’d made love, in his car and at the mound, settling all the questions of the universe.…

It isn’t possible he’s back after so many years, she told herself. I must be dreaming this.

As always, whenever she imagined coming face-to-face with Danny again, she remembered the look he’d given her on the night they’d tried to elope, as her parents had ushered her out of the Clermont County Jail, past the interrogation room where one of the deputies was still questioning him. The prospect of seeing him again and cringing afresh at his unwarranted judgment of her was almost more than she could take.

No matter how many times he told me he loved me, he hated me that night, she thought, flinching as if from the misery of a scab being picked from a wound. Does he still? Or has what happened ceased to matter to him? What will he say or do if we run into each other?

Daunting as the prospect was, it was even more demoralizing to imagine how their lives might change if Danny met Brian and guessed the boy was his. The resemblance was striking if you looked for it. Maybe he wouldn’t. She could only hope. She groaned inwardly at the prospect of Danny making demands. Brian’s confusion and hostility. Her son’s custody becoming a war zone. The battle that could result would spread through Beckwith like a forest fire if one of the town gossips made the connection.

“It’s been seventeen years. What’s Danny doing here now?” she croaked.

“He’s the Mercator executive assigned to evaluate Beckwith Tool and Die,” Brenda answered, a world of sympathy in her voice. “Carl Fosse announced it at the plant this afternoon. There was a storm of talk over it, I can tell you. I’m sure I don’t need to remind you that most of Beckwith looked down on the Finns. Now here’s Danny, returning as a corporate executive with the power to put everyone out on the street.” She paused. “When we heard the news, your dad looked like he was going to have a stroke.”

Maybe he will, Cate thought, hunching over on her stool. He’s never stopped hating Danny or condemning me for loving him. If he has to be polite, take orders from the man he believes led his daughter astray, it might actually kill him. The explosion that would occur if Danny fired him was almost beyond imagining.

She knew that, whatever form her father’s outrage took, he’d make her pay. So would her mother. They always did. Meanwhile Brian and her in-laws stood to get hurt.

Her forehead lined with sympathy, Brenda put her arms around Cate. “Sorry I had to be the one to tell you,” she apologized. “But you were bound to hear about it from somebody. You need to prepare yourself for the possibility of meeting him. At least with me you don’t have to pretend…put on an act about your feelings.”

Cate nodded in agreement. “Where’s he staying?” she asked. “In one of the motels out on Route 32?”

Brenda shook her head. “According to his old boss, Zeb Miller, who pumped gas for him this evening, he plans to stay at his grandmother’s place. One of the part-time checkers at Clingers’ Market said she saw his fancy car in the driveway out there on her way in to work. Apparently, he phoned ahead and had the electricity turned on, because there were lights in some of the windows. Funny, isn’t it, considering he’s been gone so long and the way he always felt about that wreck of a place, that he’d go straight home to roost?”

Cate had to admit it was. Meanwhile, it seemed that the news about Danny’s return was getting around. Imagining him at his grandmother’s farmhouse, thinking about the past and listening to the crickets, made her want to weep. He was so achingly close. Part of her wanted to run to him, let him absorb the pain his absence in her life had produced.

She wouldn’t do it, of course. They were strangers now, as foreign to each other as if they’d grown up on opposite sides of the planet. Her knowledge of him was seventeen years out of date.

“Do you think he’s come back to punish Beckwith for the way it treated him and his family?” she asked. “That he’ll close the plant without listening to a word anyone might say in its defense?”

Brenda shrugged. “I don’t know. I overheard people asking each other that question. And you have to admit Danny’s got plenty of reason to be less than charitable to the folks around here. Yet somehow I can’t picture…”

Cate knew what she meant. The Danny she’d known and loved would have based his decision on concern for the ordinary people whose lives would be affected, not just his employer’s bottom line, though naturally that would be an important factor. He wouldn’t have been inclined to seek retribution for retribution’s sake. Still, a lot of water had passed under Brush Creek Bridge since they’d been close. She couldn’t be sure how he’d react.

He might be very changed, hardened by the circumstances of his departure and the rigors of climbing the corporate ladder. It struck her that maybe she hadn’t really known him. She would have bet her life, the night they’d run away to Clermont County to get married, that he would never have walked out on her. Yet, in the days following her forced return home with her parents, no letter had come. He hadn’t phoned. The man she’d loved and trusted so deeply had vanished without a trace.

A painful question surfaced. “Have you heard…whether or not Danny’s married?” she asked in a small voice, forcing herself to face the likelihood that he had a wife and children. “I realize his personal life is none of my affair. I’d, um, just like to know the lay of the land before we run into each other.”

Brenda’s sympathy was clear. “If he is no one’s said anything to me about it,” she avowed.

A widowed, working mom who supported herself and her son on a modest teacher’s salary, Cate realized she couldn’t hold a candle to Danny’s achievements, at least insofar as the world would value them. If he was happily married, the father of several children who just happened to be Brian’s half-sisters and brothers in addition to his corporate success, the disparity between their lives would break her heart.

She felt as if it had been broken already. Aching to see Danny, yet dreading it, she struggled to pull herself together. And succeeded to a point. It was only then that she noticed the bruise on Brenda’s cheek, shadowy beneath her makeup.

“Dean did that…didn’t he?” she exclaimed, demanding a closer look.

Brenda’s take-charge expression crumpled. “He didn’t just go, the other night,” she confessed. “He hit me first.”

By now, dusk was falling, causing the exterior windows at the far end of the office to blacken and reflect the room. Putting aside her own tangle of emotions, Cate focused on her friend’s safety and well-being.

“If he threatens you again, I want you to call me,” she insisted. “I’ll come over, even if it’s two o’clock in the morning. If necessary, call the police. I’m not afraid of Dean and his threats. And I’m not intimidated by the fact that he’s a sheriff’s deputy. In my opinion, he’s the kind of coward who’ll back off if there’s a witness present.”

At the same time as Cate was locking up the school office and walking Brenda to her car, Danny was seated on the front porch of his grandmother’s house, stirring its dilapidated wooden swing with one desultory foot. He hadn’t been “home,” if he could call it that, for almost seventeen years. Ignoring the emblem of his most recent promotion, a shiny black Infiniti he’d parked in the weed-choked drive, he sipped at a beer, turned his gaze inward and tried to deal with his ghosts.

The only one who still mattered to him was Cate. In truth, he’d volunteered for the Beckwith Tool and Die assignment out of a gnawing wish to see her again. As he’d driven down from Chicago via Interstates 65 and 74, exiting onto Ohio Route 32 at Mount Carmel, just east of Cincinnati, he’d let memories he’d tried to bury for years resurface and catch him by the throat.

Accepting the pain they’d brought, he’d allowed himself to remember the sound of her laughter. Her inherent kindness. The delicious warmth of her as she’d nestled close. She’d been the best thing in his life. In point of fact, the only thing. Losing her as they’d stood poised on the brink of having a life together had scooped the heart right out of him.

Why’d she leave the Clermont County Jail that night without even glancing in my direction, he asked himself for perhaps the thousandth time as the swing creaked softly with his movements. Sure…her parents had her by the scruff of the neck. She was their prisoner, in effect. And we were in a very humiliating situation. Yet she could have looked at me. Let me know without saying a word that the setback to our plans was only temporary.

The way things had turned out, it hadn’t been, of course. They hadn’t set eyes on each other again.

As the moon rose, gilding the saplings and weeds that choked the overgrown property he’d inherited, he found himself asking the same old questions. First and foremost, he wanted to know why Cate hadn’t answered his letters. Clearly, she’d gotten them. Signed in her familiar handwriting, the annulment papers had reached him at his new address.

Painful as her silence had been, neither it nor the arrival of the annulment notice had overthrown his hopes. She was underage and her parents were calling the shots. He would simply wait them out—return to Beckwith for her on her eighteenth birthday.

A phone conversation with his grandmother two months after his departure had changed his plans. When he’d asked about Cate, the old woman had responded that she’d married Larry Anderson, a Beckwith High School graduate several years Danny’s senior, who’d worked full-time in her father’s store. Following the ceremony, she’d added, Cate and her new husband had left for Minneapolis.

“You mean they’re—” he’d choked off the words “on their honeymoon.”

“Supposedly the Anderson boy got himself a job up there,” Geraldine Finn had answered sourly.

For Danny the news had been like a kick in the stomach. Initially his mind had refused to register it. Cate…married…to Larry? he’d thought in disbelief. It’s only been a few months since we spoke our marriage vows!

True, the towheaded former basketball player for Beckwith High had always had a thing for Cate. Secure in her love, Danny hadn’t minded. He doubted if she’d even realized it. For one thing she’d hardly ever talked to him—just murmured the kind of pleasantries people do when their only connection is the fact that one of them works for the other’s parents.

She can’t possibly love him, he’d told himself. Not so soon after me. There has to be some mistake. The thought of another man touching her had made him want to go ballistic.

A mean-spirited comment from his grandmother had only made matters worse. “Good riddance if you ask me,” she’d observed when he didn’t speak. “You’ll find somebody else. The girl’s like her parents…thinks she’s too fine for the likes of us.”

If so, he’d never seen any sign of it.

Cutting the call short, he’d punched a fist through one of the flimsy walls in his shabby Chicago apartment as he’d sought an explanation. And failed to come up with one. Cate was still underage, still a senior in high school. He couldn’t imagine her parents letting her drop out to marry anyone, not even Larry with his sterling reputation. They’d wanted her to attend college, be somebody.

Unless…unless…

What if she’s pregnant, he’d thought suddenly, and doesn’t know how to find me? That she accepted Larry’s proposal out of desperation?

They’d been so careful…only slipped up once. Somehow he’d forced himself to calm down and phone Terry Pobanz, one of his high school buddies.

The affable Terry had sounded as puzzled as he felt. “Nobody around here gets it,” he’d admitted. “They never dated. Then suddenly they’re married and headed for Minneapolis. I always thought you guys…”

“Yeah,” Danny had replied gruffly. “So did I. They didn’t…have to, did they? Get married, I mean.”

Terry’s surprise at the question had echoed in his voice. “Not that I know of,” he’d answered. “I haven’t heard anything like that.”

Bidding Terry goodbye before his friend could ask too many painful questions, Danny had buried his face in his hands. The following day he’d grimly set about making a separate life for himself.

To his surprise he’d succeeded beyond his wildest dreams, at least in a business sense. He had a penthouse apartment on Lake Shore Drive now, though no one permanent to share it with him. Stocks, bonds and an amazing sum of money in the bank. A top-notch salary complete with profit sharing. Already the promotion that had occasioned his purchase of the Infiniti was ancient history. Shortly before he’d left for Beckwith, Mercator’s CEO had invited him into the company’s inner sanctum and offered him an even juicier plum. When he returned to Chicago, he would put his penthouse up for sale and head for Northern California, to plan, build and take control of a stunning new Mercator complex. It was slated to become the company’s headquarters west of the Mississippi. And he’d be in charge of it. Henceforth, he’d be a Mercator vice president.

There’d been women in his life, of course. But no one he’d wanted to marry. The truth was, he’d never met anyone who could take Cate’s place in his heart. Maybe seeing her again will set me free, he thought, bending his empty beer can double. Maybe she’ll seem ordinary to me now. I’ll be able to get on with things. Marry and father a couple of fresh-faced kids. Have the kind of happy, close-knit family you see in TV commercials.

He couldn’t make himself believe it, though. For one thing, he’d learned from a former classmate he’d run into last month in the men’s department at Marshall Field’s that Cate had been a widow for several years. She and her fifteen-year-old son were living in Beckwith. The most elementary of calculations had told him the boy wasn’t his.

The practical man in him knew that attempting to take up where he’d left off with her could mean setting himself up for a fall. For one thing, she might have a new man in her life. For another, her son might object to him. It was anybody’s guess what, if anything, he’d been told about his mother’s past. It went without saying that her parents would be against it.

He hadn’t volunteered for the assignment in Beckwith just to worry about what the McDonoughs might prefer. He wanted to see her, dammit. Find out if there were any embers. Ask why she hadn’t written to him. If he didn’t avail himself of the chance, the kind of personal life he wanted would continue to elude him. He would just keep asking the same old questions. Once and for all, something had to be resolved with Cate.

I wonder if I should call her, he thought. Or let fate decide whether or not we bump into each other. Phoning didn’t seem like a viable option. For one thing, he might get the boy.

And if she said hello? What would he say then? It would kill him if she hung up on him.

Bidding Brenda goodbye in the school parking lot, Cate dropped off the fliers at the home of the Save Our Town Committee chairman and ran by her in-laws’ place with some secondhand paperback novels she’d collected for Larry’s father. A once-robust man who was now a shadow of his former self, Russ Anderson spent most of his time these days in a wheelchair in front of the television set. The family breadwinner, his wife, Beverly, wasn’t home yet. According to Russ, she’d gone to the bank to cash her paycheck and on to Clingers’ for the week’s groceries.

His welcoming hug and usual question, “How’s that grandson of ours?” swam guiltily in Cate’s thoughts alongside fevered imaginings of what it would be like to see Danny again as she drove home.

Dressed in his newest baggy jeans and favorite leather jacket, Brian was waiting for her when she walked in the door.

“Hi, Mom,” he greeted her with his most appealing grin. “I was wondering if, um, you could let me have a couple of bucks. Shawn and Bill want me to go with them to Ryersville for pizza.”

Even before she’d learned he was back in town, Cate had begun to see Danny in Brian every time she looked at her son. They had the same blue eyes, identical heart-tugging grins. The baggy, in-style clothes, the modest earring Brian had started sporting in one ear and the longish, bleached-blond thatch that sat atop his neatly cropped, naturally dark hair like an overturned bowl did little to hide his resemblance to the man who—without knowing it—had cooperated in giving life to him.

Neither Brian nor his natural father knew of the other’s existence. For her son, Cate realized, the word Dad conjured up the memory of quiet, sweet-natured Larry Anderson, who’d worked full-time in her father’s store at the time of his conception. Friendly but diffident whenever she’d come in, Larry hadn’t given any sign he might be interested in her. At least, none that she’d noticed. Of course, he’d told her later that she hadn’t been paying attention. Whatever the case, she’d been amazed when he’d stepped forward, offering himself as a substitute husband and father after overhearing her parents discuss the “fix” she was in.

“Don’t you have any homework?” she asked, her thoughts split between Brian’s request and the dark-haired man from her past who, at that very moment, was somewhere in Beckwith.

Brian rolled his eyes. “It’s Friday night, Mom. Get real. I’ve got all weekend to do that stuff.”

She decided not to call him on a response that felt a tad disrespectful to her. “Well, what happened to your allowance?” she asked instead. “I gave it to you early…on Wednesday. Remember?”

He had the grace to squirm a little. “I guess you could say I spent it.”

“On what?”

“CDs, if you must know.”

“No more heavy metal, I hope.”

If so, he didn’t own up to it. “I’ve been using my earphones the way you asked me to,” he pointed out. “Can I have the money?”

Danny’s proximity kept whispering in her ear. “How much do you need?” she asked.

“Eight dollars ought to be enough.”

Cate supposed it wouldn’t break the family bank. At age sixteen—fifteen according to what he believed and what the doctored copy of the birth certificate in his official school records proclaimed—Brian was three-quarters grown and getting restless with maternal constraints. Still, he was basically a good kid. To date, unlike some of his classmates, he’d managed to keep out of trouble.

“Who’s driving?” she asked.

“Billy. Shawn’s mother needed the car this evening. The guys are gonna leave without me if I don’t get a move on. Say yes.”

Billy Burnett and Shawn Randazzo were both seniors, whereas Brian was a lowly sophomore. They’d begun to include him in their extra-curricular activities when he was picked for the varsity football team. Of the two boys, Billy was the most conscientious, not to mention the better driver.

About to lecture him about the need to do a few odd jobs if he wanted spending money over and above his allowance, Cate held her tongue. Won over by his patience and her strong love for him, she dug in her purse. The five and three crumpled ones she handed him would have to be deducted from the grocery money. “Behave yourself, okay?” she said. “You’re a varsity athlete now. A model for younger kids, with a reputation to uphold.”

The admonition was a compliment in disguise and Brian seemed to sense it. “Thanks, Mom,” he said, shoving the money into his pocket. His buddies hadn’t arrived yet and, abruptly, awkwardly, he planted a kiss on her cheek.

Thoughts of Danny, his calloused but exquisitely sensuous fingertips caressing her skin, his heated kisses, swarmed like bees around Cate’s head as she made her way into the kitchen and heated a can of tomato soup. Part of me can’t help but hope against hope that he’s carrying a torch for me, she thought as she ate it, even if it might set off a chain reaction that could spiral out of control. Yet she guessed the likelihood of that happening was practically nonexistent. He’d have phoned after Larry died if he still had feelings for me, she thought. I’ll bet any given time he has dozens of women swooning over him. Meanwhile, she’d been like Rapunzel in the old-fashioned fairy tale, waiting to let down her hair for the only man she’d ever wanted.

She was upstairs an hour or so later, putting on her nightgown with the idea of getting into bed and trying to focus on a novel until Brian came home when she was electrified by the rattle of pebbles against her bedroom window. Goose bumps of disbelief washed over her. During their courtship, it had been Danny’s way of letting her know he’d come to call without using the doorbell. Could it be that he’d come over without phoning his first night back in town—and used the same calling card for old times’ sake? Or was she the victim of pranksters, a disgruntled student? Her hands shook slightly as she fastened her robe firmly about her waist and drew back the curtains.

He was standing in shadow, well beyond the trapezoid of light that spilled from her window. Yet she recognized him immediately. His power and maturity drew her like a magnet. Thank God I gave Brian the money to go to Ryersville, she thought. I wouldn’t want him to watch me go through this.

Below, Danny motioned for her to open the window. She obliged with mixed emotions, Pandora lifting the lid on a box of troubles, a banished angel hungry for a glimpse of paradise.

“I’m back, Cate,” he announced in the rough-edged, faintly mocking voice she still heard sometimes in her dreams. “Come down and say hello.”

She couldn’t deny how much she longed to see him again. Needed to, if only to get him out of her system. Both her heart and her mind were begging for it. Instead of inhabiting a featureless plain, a gouache rendered in shades of gray, she might learn to live again, with the enthusiasm of authentic emotions.

Ill-considered words flew from her mouth. “I will…if you promise to keep your hands to yourself.” Seconds later, her cheeks were burning at the assumption that he planned to do otherwise.

Agreeing to her terms, he waited for her to follow through. It seemed she’d committed herself. If she didn’t go down to meet with him, he might create a ruckus, bang on her front door. Or insist in a loud voice that she keep her word. Her neighbors would get an earful.

Meanwhile, what would he think of her? Would he decide their years apart had been kind to her? Or taken their toll? She didn’t have time to speculate. Or put on fresh makeup. Turning away from the window, she raced downstairs in her robe and slippers, frantically finger-combing her hair as she went.

A moment later she emerged from the side door of her house, which led, via half flights of stairs, up to the kitchen and down to the basement. Danny hadn’t moved from the spot where he’d been standing. Advancing toward him, she paused a few feet beyond his reach. Fortunately, they were partly hidden from the street by some overgrown lilac bushes that were in the process of losing their leaves, now that the autumn nights had brought cooler temperatures.

At close range, he was as good-looking as she remembered—lean, powerful, unimpressed by his own allure. His beautiful eyes blazed into hers, overflowing with questions. To her surprise, he didn’t pose any of them immediately. Instead, he seemed to be waiting for her to speak.

“Brenda told me you were back,” she murmured, desperate to break the silence that unnerved her so. “That you were staying at your grandmother’s house…”

He nodded. “Somehow it felt like the right thing to do. Brenda probably told you…I work for Mercator now. I’m here to decide the future of the tool-and-die plant.”

He was giving her the space she’d asked for—keeping his promise to the letter. And perversely, she didn’t want him to. If he didn’t touch her, she believed, her heart would break. Can we actually stand here and talk this way, like strangers after everything we once meant to each other? she asked herself. If so, I don’t think I can bear it. It would be as if we never loved each other desperately and ran away to get married, that all our hopes and dreams weren’t invested in each other.

“Is that your only reason for coming?” she blurted, only to realize the seemingly innocent question bore a heavy freight of meaning, as well. For some reason her tongue seemed bent on exposing all the vulnerabilities she hoped to keep from him.

If he considered the question a leading one, he didn’t say so. Instead, he took a tentative step in her direction. “It’s hard to see you in this light,” he explained. “You’re standing almost completely in shadow. As for your question, no, it isn’t. For quite some time I’ve wanted to return to Beckwith…get reacquainted with the place where I grew up.”

So it was the town, not the thought of seeing her again, that had drawn him there. Well, she’d wanted the truth, hadn’t she? When another silence lengthened between them she felt compelled to shatter it, if only to ease her heartbreak.

“How long do you plan to stay?” she asked, realizing too late that even such a simple query could unmask feelings better kept to herself.

Danny lifted one brow. “The answer depends on a number of things. What would you say to releasing me from my promise?”

In an instant he’d turned the tables. Her eyes huge, Cate shook her head.

“No hands, then,” he whispered.

When she didn’t protest, he took several steps in her direction. Her thoughts in turmoil, she retreated, until her back rested against the side of the house. Goose bumps of anticipation raced over her skin when he stopped just short of enfolding her and leaned forward with widespread arms to brace his palms against the wooden siding. The hard, sweet warmth of his body matched hers lightly from chest to thighs.

“Danny…please…we shouldn’t,” she protested, arguing against what the jilted seventeen-year-old in her was begging for.

His eyes gleamed at her in the chiaroscuro of shadow and moonlight. “Why not?” he asked. “Are you afraid your son will catch us?”

So he knows about Brian, Cate thought. But not the whole story. With Larry gone, only three people—my parents and myself—know who Brian’s natural father is. She shook her head. “He’s gone…to Ryersville with some friends for the evening. But the neighbors might see us. You know what Beckwith’s like. People talk.”

“Since when did you give a damn about gossip?” The deceptive calm in his low-pitched voice pierced her to the quick. “From what I’ve heard, you’re not involved in a long-term commitment,” he added. “Neither am I. Except for us, nobody stands to get hurt. We’re free to do whatever we wish.”

Danny wasn’t married! Or seriously involved with anyone! Cate’s heart soared even as she shrank from the perils of letting herself care for him again. It wasn’t true what he’d said, of course. Getting involved meant risking injury to Brian and the Andersons, not just to herself. If he walked out on her again, after stealing her heart a second time, the resulting pain might be unbearable. Even so, she ceased all struggle as—keeping the letter of his promise while thoroughly violating its spirit—he positioned himself more intimately against her body, effectively pinning her in place.

After so many years of struggling to feel something more than gratitude and friendship for Larry and later, sleepwalking through the suspended animation of widowhood, Cate came fully alive in an instant, so keenly that the sensation pierced her to the quick. She gloried in his touch, drank in the remembered aroma of his skin scent. She was profoundly amazed that he was actually there with her, in the little Ohio town where they’d met and fell in love. And she wanted to drown in the wonder of him, to open herself to the hard shaft of his desire that had made its seeking known against her body.

Tell me I’m not dreaming this, she begged the Fates that held sway in such moments. That I won’t wake up with empty arms and tears streaming down my face.

Her capitulation was like a goad to him. Incredibly, a door had opened, where for years there’d been a wall. The only woman he’d ever loved was pressed tightly against him and gave every indication that the arrangement suited her. With a little groan, he claimed her mouth. Imagined so many times—as he’d changed planes or flopped on his living-room couch to stare at the lights on Lake Shore Drive—the incredible sweetness of kissing her again blew him away. It was as if an integral part of himself, long missing, was suddenly back in place.

Don’t overwhelm her with too much, too soon, he warned himself, even as the urge to share the ultimate mysteries with her arose like an ache in his gut. Some questions have to be answered first.

From Cate’s perspective, his kiss was as deep as the earth. And so hungry! Its insatiability poured comfort into her empty places, even as it drove her to a peak of wanting him. Her recklessness soared as her nipples tightened. Mother, daughter-in-law, teacher, neighbor, she’d forced herself to focus on self-sacrifice, ignoring her innermost yearnings. Yet, incredibly, the rule-breaking teenager she’d been, the sensuous young woman who’d dared to accept his love despite her parents’ wishes, had lived on inside her, waiting to reemerge.

Danny, Danny, she confessed silently as she parted her lips to admit his tongue. If only you knew how much I’ve ached for this moment. I’ve been sleepwalking through my life without you. Even the joy of Brian’s birth, the pleasure of raising him, have been full of empty places. Just to taste Danny again, to feel his strong, lean body pressed against her, was like knocking on the gates of paradise.

Danny was thinking similar thoughts, though to his knowledge no child had sprung from their lovemaking. Hungering for a family, a woman to love, he’d wanted only her, their babies. She’d been completely out of reach. Yet, with every breath he’d taken, he’d wanted to reconnect. Now Larry wasn’t a factor. Though he still had questions about Cate’s reasons for marrying so soon after her parents had forced them apart, he was willing to ask them in good time, without any preconceived notions about the answers.

Meanwhile, he couldn’t get enough of her.

I’m going to drown in him, Cate thought. Lose sight of what’s best for all the people I love. With a little shiver of apprehension, she realized Danny still fit into that category.

Just then a car went by, slowing as it passed her house. About to release her grip on every hand hold and plunge into whatever Danny suggested, she caught the shape of lights mounted on its roof. Oh, no! she thought. Dean Lawler. If he saw us, he’ll be back to check out the situation. He’s just that kind of person!

“You have to leave…now,” she told Danny, struggling to free herself. “I’m a schoolteacher. And this is still a small town. My reputation…”

“Not until you kiss me again.”

So lovingly that she wanted to weep, his mouth covered hers.

For several seconds she melted into him. Just to touch him again was like food and rest to a starving, weary person. Yet she was terrified of the gossip Dean could start. If Brenda’s soon-to-be ex turned around, came back and tried to hassle them, he and Danny might get into a fight. Dean would radio for backup and they’d end up at the police station. It would be like her worst memory all over again.

Wrenching free for both their sakes, she turned and ran into the house. By the time she’d caught her breath and begun to have second thoughts, Danny was nowhere to be seen. What have I done? she agonized. Chased him away for good? I don’t want that!

Everything in her ached to call him and try to explain. But she didn’t know what to say. Or if he’d had the phone turned on at his grandmother’s place. Like most executives, he probably carried a cell phone. Besides, even if he’d had the regular phone reconnected, its number wouldn’t be the one she remembered.

Somehow she managed to make her way upstairs, take off her robe and slip between the bedcovers. Once there, she couldn’t seem to stop thinking of him. God help me, but I’m still crazy about him, she thought. His kiss still imprinted on her mouth and their son still out with his friends, she shut her eyes and let her memories take her.…