A Bride After All (8 page)

“Derek said I should, but I just couldn’t do it. That was my mistake, and one I really have learned to live with. After that, when Steven started…”

Facts, things he already knew, started numbering themselves in his brain. She’d left Chicago and come to Allentown, to her brother. Who hadn’t liked Steven, obviously. She’d taken back her maiden name. She’d shown an intense, clearly informed interest in his articles on domestic violence. She damn near
defended the men who physically or mentally abused their wives, telling him that there were always reasons, always problems on both sides of the relationship. She’d said much the same just now.

He totaled up the numbers, and came up with an answer that gave him a cold, unsettling feeling in his belly.

“When Steven started what, Claire? Did…did he hit you?”

She shook her head, her hair falling forward, obscuring most of her face. “No, it never got that far. After the wedding, when we got back from the honeymoon, the teasing about my job went away, and the complaints started. He worked hard, he expected to come home to a hot meal and a wife who was happy to see him. He earned enough for the two of us. More than enough, and he did. Steven’s a lawyer,” she told Nick, pushing back her hair and turning to look at him. “I’ll say this for the man, he knew how to construct an argument and verbally take apart his opponent. Top of his class.”

“Did he drink?”

Finally, she smiled. And her eyes were dry. “You’re doing it again, Nick. Trying to lump them all together. No, Steven didn’t get drunk and abusive. He’s highly educated, a good friend and very well liked. He doesn’t fit the mold because there is no mold. We can never presume to know what goes on behind the closed doors in any marriage.”

“No, I suppose not. But you argued.”

“
Steven
argued.
I
apologized. I’m sorry I got stuck
at the office when an emergency backed up appointments. I’m sorry I have to go to bed so early tonight, but I’ve got a chance to observe in the OR tomorrow. I’m sorry dinner was late. I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry. Until I wasn’t sorry anymore.”

“Something happened,” Nick said, nodding his head. “What?”

“Steven went into cross-examination mode, I guess you’d call it. Where was I? What was I doing? When would I leave, and where would I be going next? Would there be men there? Phone calls, all day long, checking up on me. If I was going to stop at the grocery store on the way home, how long would that take, because it shouldn’t take more than twenty minutes longer than my usual commute. God forbid there was a line at the express checkout, because then I’d be late, and the questions would start all over again—did I see anyone, talk to anyone? Who? It got so that I was a nervous wreck, silently cursing people who didn’t unload their carts fast enough or who’d brought sixteen items into the ten-item limit line. A nightly Inquisition he stopped even pretending was just a natural interest in my day. It became obsessive. I couldn’t breathe.”

Nick began rubbing his thumb over the back of her hand. “His problem, Claire, not yours. His insecurities. It wasn’t your career. It was him.”

“I know that now,” she told him. “I suggested counseling, but Steven wouldn’t agree. And then I looked in the rearview mirror one day, and saw his
car. He was following me. Tailing me, as if I were some criminal.”

“Cripes. You can’t blame yourself for that, Claire.”

“I know. It took me a while, but I know. I called Derek, he said leave everything, get on a plane, come to him. Steven may never have raised a hand to me, or even his voice, but I understand women—people—like the woman you helped get to a shelter. When it’s time to go, it’s time to go. Things don’t matter. Clothes, furniture, the house in you live in. Nothing matters but getting out, saving yourself.”

“Did he contest the divorce?”

Finally, she smiled. “You haven’t met Derek, have you? My big brother is so gentle with a newborn, so funny and reassuring with all of his young patients. But you mentioned your cousin’s fiancé. Skip? I have a feeling Derek could give him an argument on which of them looks more like a stuffed penguin in a tux. Derek went to school in London and was captain of the rugby team, if that gives you more of an idea. He flew to Chicago the day after I arrived in Allentown, to settle things, he said. I don’t know what happened, and I don’t want to know, but Steven agreed to the divorce. Oh, and he’s getting married again. He called me to tell me. I can only hope he also learned from his mistakes.”

She rested her cheek against Nick’s bare chest. “And that’s my story, chapter and verse. I…I just thought you should know.”

“Thank you for telling me. And I think I’m glad I
don’t have to fly to Chicago and beat up your ex. I guess it wouldn’t be good to send your brother flowers, huh?”

She lifted her head, smiled up into his face. “Men. You all want to punch something, as if that’s the answer to every problem. Why is that?”

“It’s our base male animal instincts, I suppose. I’ve other base male animal instincts, you know. Can you guess which one I’m having now? Or are you just going to keep moving around on my lap like that until my eyes roll up in my head?”

“Oh, you poor baby,” she said. “You mean when I move like this? Or…like this? Oh, gosh, Nick, now my shirt is riding up, and I’m not wearing any—”

He growled low in his throat as he swooped down at her, plundered her mouth with an assurance that she would welcome his intensity, his passion.

They’d played the game when they’d first come together, the game of do you like when I do this, what happens when I do that? They’d been slow, exploratory, learning each other.

And they’d learned that they were good together. Very, very good together.

When she touched him now, her touch was sure, certain and marvelously blatant. She unzipped his slacks and reached inside, taking him in her hand, moaning low in her throat as she gauged his arousal, obviously approved.

She pushed his slacks down lower on his hips, and then did something he hadn’t expected. Fantasized about, he supposed, but never before experienced.
She stood, looked down at his arousal, and then knelt in front of him. She reached into the pocket of his shirt…and pulled out a foil wrapped package.

“You—”

“I’m a terrible person, yes. And I could have been horribly wrong about what might happen between us tonight, or at least soon. But I’m also an optimist, I guess. Do you mind?”

Nick shook his head. “I’m a base male animal, Claire. I never said I was an idiot. Here, let me have that.”

“No,” she said, kneeling in front of him once more. “It can’t be much different than putting on latex exam gloves.”

“Now, that’s romantic,” he teased, and then he did his best to withhold a gasp as he watched her. “Come here,” he all but begged. “Please.”

She straddled him, slowly lowered herself over him. Taking him in. All the way in.

After that, Nick didn’t remember much of anything, although the experience had definitely blown all of his fantasies out of the water…

N
ick took Claire home before noon Sunday, closing the door on what had been their short, too short, weekend together. They’d talked about picking Sean up from his sleepover together, and they’d both decided it wasn’t a good idea.

Neither of them said exactly why it wasn’t a good idea.

Nick said he had to go grocery shopping, and then maybe visit Barb so that she could convince Sean that he wasn’t too old to be a ring bearer, and then break the news that this honor brought with it the necessity of being measured for a tuxedo.

Claire told him that she had some medical reading to catch up on, as she had to take continuing classes
to stay current, and that Sunday was her only day to clean the condo and do laundry.

Neither of them said that it was too soon to bring Sean into their relationship. If that’s what they had now. A relationship.

Nick thought they might. He hoped they might.

But then there was Steven, the ex. He’d held on too tightly, tried to take over Claire’s world. Nick didn’t think it would be a good move on his part for him to crowd her too much, make any assumptions.

They were already moving pretty fast. Granted, they were adults, and they’d each made a choice. But a choice for a weekend and a choice for more than that were two different things. Involving Sean in something that might not last would be too confusing for a nine-year-old. Especially since he’d taken such an instant liking to Claire.

And there was that other thing. The thing he’d have to deal with if it became necessary. But he hadn’t heard any more on the subject for two weeks, so he was pretty much ready to write it off as just another of Sandy’s “moments.” She’d probably forgotten she’d even written to him.

Please God.

Nick reached for his phone about ten times on Monday before he finally decided that to call Claire had to be better than to not call her. Their weekend had been too intense to not call her, to just wait for class on Tuesday night.

The intimacies they’d shared, both physical and
in how they’d talked of their lives? There needed to be some sort of bridge between that and seeing her in the hallway, saying a casual
hi, how are you
before heading for their own classrooms.

His call went to voicemail, something that, for all his careful planning, he hadn’t anticipated.

“Claire, hi,” he said, knowing modern technology would still leave his electronic footprint on her cell phone, even if he just hung up. “It’s, uh, me. Nick. I hope you had a good day yesterday. I thought I’d tell you Barb worked her magic with Sean, and he’s agreed to wear the tux. I only owe him three superhero figures and a trip to see that new 3-D movie on Saturday. Well, okay, I can see Fred waving to me from across the newsroom, so I’ve got to go. Maybe we can have some pizza together in the cafeteria after class tomorrow? My treat. Bye.”

He pressed the End button and mastered the urge to beat his own cell phone against his forehead. He’d handled that about as smoothly as he had Sean’s question of a few months ago: “Dad? Where do babies come from?”

He picked up his laptop and went out to the patio to write his next article for the blog. That was the one beauty of cell phones. People could lie about where they were. Say they were in church, or on their way someplace important, or in the newsroom, when they were really sitting behind a hot fudge sundae at the mall, or in front of a slot machine…or pacing the
floor at home, wasting time that moved much too slowly, thinking about a girl with caramel hair and soft Madonna eyes.

When the phone rang about an hour later, he nearly knocked the laptop to the flagstone as he grabbed at it. He flipped it open, looked at the number, and felt his blood freeze in his veins.

“Nick Barrington here,” he said with as much coolness and detachment as he could manage.

“You didn’t write me back. Or call me, and I put the number in my letter. Did you think I’d forget?”

“Oh,” he said, holding the phone in a death grip as he rubbed at his temples. “Hi, Sandy.”

His ex-wife gave a short laugh, heavy with sarcasm. “Right. Like you didn’t check your caller ID and know it was me.”

“I’m sorry. I was working, and my mind wasn’t really on—”

“Never mind, Nick. I don’t blame you. As blasts from the past go, this one must be a real bummer for you. But you did get my letter, didn’t you?”

He hit Save and closed the laptop, placing it on the wrought iron table beside the chaise. “Yes, I got it. Look, Sandy—”

“Cassandra.”

“Excuse me?” he said, his eyebrows lifting, even though she couldn’t see his expression. A good thing, too, and the day everyone routinely could see everyone else at the other end of the phone was the day he’d long for two tin cans and a string.

“I’m using my more formal name now.”

“Your
formal name
is Sandra,” he pointed out, and then mentally kicked himself. With Sandy, it was smarter to just go along, not argue.

“Cassandra is a form of Sandra.”

Maybe. Who knew. He did retain enough Greek mythology from college, though, to remember that Cassandra was the daughter of some king of Troy or somewhere, and that she prophesied disasters. Sandy, Cassandra, disaster. They could be synonyms. Maybe he’d better stop stalling and just listen.

“All right, Cassandra. Why are you calling?”

“Is Sean there? Can I talk to him?”

“It’s September, Sand—Cassandra. He’s in school.”

“Oh. Right.” She laughed, rather nervously. “I should know that, shouldn’t I? I mean, I
am
his mother.”

“You gave birth to him, yes,” Nick couldn’t resist saying. “Look, Sandy, what do you want?”

“What do you think I want? I thought my letter was very clear. I want to see my son.”

“Why?”
And why now? Of all the times you had to choose from in the last six years, why now, damn it!

“Since when do I need a reason to see my own child, Nick?”

Calm. He had to stay calm. Think rationally.

The hell he did!

“Let’s think this through, all right? You haven’t been a part of his life in a long time. I need to
know what you’re thinking, Sandy—Cassandra. Is this going to be a one-time thing? Is your band going to be performing in Philly or something, and you thought it might be fun to drop by, see the kid? And then what? Then you disappear again for another six years? Because I can’t let you do that, I really can’t.”

“The band broke up.”

She’d spoken quietly, and then he heard her shaky intake of breath.

Cripes, was she crying?

“The band broke up? Is that what you said?”

“Sort of. Richie brought in another female singer. Without so much as asking me. And he gave her half my songs. I think…I think he’s banging her. He says he’s not, but I don’t believe him.”

Just what Nick needed, tales of Sandy’s love life. “So then the band broke up? Sort of?”

“Not…not really. I left. I told him, lose the skank or I’m gone.”

“Lovely language, Sandy. I remember when you were an English major.”

“Sorry. I’m just so upset. Am I too old, Nick? Is thirty too old? Is that why he brought her in? I’ve still got my looks. And my voice is just getting better and better. I’m just coming into my prime. I thought…I thought Richie loved me. I thought we
had
something, you know? Even a cosmic connection.”

Nick let her ramble on a while longer, until she’d gotten her tears under control, and then tried again.

“I don’t know what to say to you, Sandy, except that I’m sorry things ended up not working between you and Richie. I’m sure you’re feeling alone, lonely. But you can’t drag Sean into this, you just can’t. He’s not a consolation prize.”

He heard a beep on his end of the phone, wondered if it was Claire, calling him back. But there was nothing he could do about it at the moment. He had to convince Sandy to stay where the hell she was.

“Where are you, Sandy?” he asked her.

“Vegas. Well, almost Vegas. Laughlin. We’re almost there, Nick. After all these years, we’re almost there. Richie says that why he brought Crystal in. That we needed two female singers to get a gig in one of the casinos in Vegas. Not the Strip, not yet. But one of the smaller ones, just to start, you know. But I’m not buying that one. He wants me gone. I gave up everything for him, and this is what he does to me. I gave up my
son.
”

That hadn’t been apparent at first, Sandy’s romantic involvement with Richie. She hadn’t flaunted it, hadn’t thrown Richie Coughlin’s name in his face as she walked away from their marriage. It had been all about her, about how she needed to have some space, devote all her time to her career, take her shot while she was still young enough to do so, or else she’d regret it forever.

Looking back on those days, Nick still couldn’t believe how naïve he’d been. Or maybe he just hadn’t
cared enough anymore to think much about why Sandy had gone. She hadn’t tried to take Sean with her, hadn’t pushed for custody. That had been enough for him.

He got to his feet, as if standing up would somehow put him more in control. “I can’t let you do this, Sandy.”

She was crying again. “Do what?”

“Use Sean as an excuse. Come here because you and your lover broke up and you’re looking for a place to land. I won’t allow it.”

“You won’t
allow
it?” The tears were gone now, and her voice was hard, cold. “You sit there in that stuffy old house with your piles of family money and your do-gooder attitude—I’ve read the stuff you write online, Nick—and you think
you
can tell
me
what I can and can’t do? He’s my son, too, Nick Barrington, and don’t you forget it! You know what? Let’s see what a
lawyer
says, okay?”

She cut the connection, and Nick was left standing in the warm September sun, holding a dead phone to his ear until he finally closed it, just to have it ring again.

He opened it without looking at the number printout. “Sandy, I’m glad you called me back. Look, can’t we discuss this as rational a—”

“Nick? It’s me, Claire.”

He squeezed his eyes shut as he grimaced, trying to change gears.

“Claire, I’m sorry. I was just on the phone with—well, you know who was on the phone. My ex.”

“Let me take a wild stab at this—it wasn’t a pleasant conversation. If you want to call her, I can get off the line.”

“No,” he said, subsiding onto the end of the chaise. “I don’t want to call her back. Truthfully, I’d like to pretend the conversation never happened. I tried to call you earlier. I thought maybe you were on your lunch break.”

“Lunch break? I don’t think I understand the term,” she said, laugher in her voice. “I mean, officially, we close the office for an hour each noon, but that mostly means we grab sandwiches at our desks as we catch up on morning calls to parents, other physicians’ offices, the hospitals. If it weren’t for pharmaceutical reps bringing in lunches for us fairly often, we might all starve to death. And I really could hang up, I’m sure your mind isn’t on my lunch habits.”

“I’d rather see you, but I know that’s impossible.” God, she couldn’t know how badly he wanted to see her, talk to her in person.

There was a slight pause at the other end of the line. “There’s something wrong, isn’t there? I mean,
really
wrong.”

“Maybe. I don’t know. Okay, yes. Yes, if I can believe her, this is going to be a bad one. She really came out of left field on me with this one.”

“Can you get a sitter for tonight? I mean, you don’t have to tell me anything if you don’t want to. I certainly understand. And we barely know each other—”

“I can be at your place by seven,” he said before she could talk either one of them out of the idea. “I’ll bring dinner. Do you like Mexican?”

“I like food, Nick. Whatever you want to eat is fine with me. I have to get back to work. I’ll see you later?”

“Around seven, yes. And Claire? Thank you.”

He cut the connection and dropped back onto the chaise, looking up through the canopy of old trees, not really seeing them, or the blue sky above them.

He had full custody of Sean. Sandy had signed away all of her rights to her son six long years ago. She never saw him, rarely remembered his birthday or Christmas. Hell, he kept a stash of extra presents in his bedroom closet, and if a present didn’t show up from Sandy, he gave one of them to Sean, telling him it was from his mother. Not because he didn’t want Sandy to look bad. Because he didn’t want to see that sad look in his son’s eyes.

No. Sandy didn’t have a legal leg to stand on; she’d never get custody.

But she could conceivably get visitation rights. The young mother, depressed, confused, trapped in a loveless marriage, desperate for the generous financial settlement, not realizing what she was signing. All of that. It wasn’t impossible.

Then what? She’d stick around just long enough to confuse Sean, screw with the kid’s head and heart, and then take off again?

And then there was Claire. She’d come into his life at the worst possible moment. Except he couldn’t
think of Claire and not be glad she was in his life. What would Sandy’s return do to them, to their chances for more than they already had together? The future he’d already foolishly begun to contemplate?

Nick sat up, stared into the middle distance. “What am I going to do?” he asked the air. “What in
hell
am I going to do?”

Claire looked at the table in her small dining area, and decided the flowers she’d picked up on the way home looked a little too…contrived. And they’d have to talk over the top of the arrangement, which was stupid.

She moved them to the bar that separated the dining space from the kitchen. Now the table looked fine. Simple dishes, simple glasses, a bottle of uncomplicated wine for those glasses cooling in the fridge. Or should it be open and breathing on the counter?

Maybe she needed to drink wine more often. Then she’d know.

“Stop it,” she scolded herself, flicking a fork into line with its knife partner.

Leaving the table, she checked her reflection in the mirror hung above the long end of her L-shaped couches, to see that she didn’t look any different than she had ten minutes earlier.