Carly's Gift
Authors: Georgia Bockoven
Contents
A special thank you goes to Vince Kiley, M.D., who was invaluable in his assistance with the medical portions of this book. If any errors did slip through, they are mine.
I'd also like to thank Margaret Ormondroyd and Susan Thwaitis, companions on a slow boat to Hampton Court who became impromptu and enthusiastic sources of information about English life.
Finally, there's my tireless research assistant who tenaciously digs for the obscure and enlightening information that gives authenticity to my books. Thanks, John!
Sixteen years was
a long time to hate someone.
David Montgomery leaned against a dogwood tree and gazed at the large antebellum-style house across from him. He drew himself deeper into his cashmere overcoat in an attempt to ward off the late October cold. The soft fabric caressed the back of his neck, a gentle reminder of how far he'd come in the almost two decades since he'd called this inconsequential corner of the world home. Back then he'd faced the winters in coarse wool, faded blue jeans and long underwear from the JCPenney catalog. Now he thought nothing of paying what his father had earned in a month as a tractor mechanic for one shirt from his tailor on Savile Row.
Jesus, what idiot urge had brought him here? What could he have been thinking? What had he hoped to gain? He straightened and took a step to leave.
Peace of mind, an insistent inner voice answered, stopping him, rooting him with its teasing promiseâto be rid of her once and for all, to bury her in his past, someone no more important than anything or anyone who'd come into his life during the eighteen years he'd lived in Baxter, Ohio.
Conflicting emotions had assailed him since he'd received word of his father's accident. The woman on the other end of the line had insisted his father couldn't last the night. David caught the first plane for Florida. Arriving twelve hours after the call, he'd expected to find his father gone already, with nothing left for him to do but make the funeral arrangements, but he hadn't taken into consideration what a tough old bird his father was. It took Jim Montgomery two weeks before he finally let go of the difficult life he'd lived. Fourteen days of sitting at his father's bedside had given David far too much time to think, to remember.
It wasn't as if Carly still haunted him every hour of every day. After he'd settled in England and his career had taken off, there had been weeks, even months, when he hadn't thought about her at all. Then, invariably, something would come along that triggered a memoryâa song, a picture in a magazineâand thoughts of her would consume him.
The sound of a car drew his attention. He glanced down the narrow, tree-lined road and saw a maroon SUV approaching. There was a woman behind the wheel; on the passenger side a small dog had its nose pressed to the front window. David saw a flash of dark auburn hair before the car turned into the driveway of the house he'd been watchingâher house. His eyes lighted in quick triumph. How wonderfully fittingâthe woman who as a young girl had vowed she was going to set the New York art world on its ear not only still lived in the same small town where she'd always lived, but she also drove the ultimate, flagrant symbol of suburbia. But then, he reasoned with a stab of bitterness, she undoubtedly needed a car like that to ferry around the three kids she'd had with good old Ethan.
David shuddered at his thoughts. What made him still care? She was nothing to him. He'd done everything he'd ever dreamed. More. And she'd done nothing, gone nowhere.
So why was he the one standing out in the cold?
Carly Hargrove shifted the cocker spaniel she was carrying to her left hip and unlocked the kitchen door. When she was inside, she gently put the old dog on the floor by his food. “I'll get your blanket out of the dryer, Muffin,” she said, running her hand over his head, then pausing to scratch his ear.
As soon as she'd arranged the dog's bed, she went to the hall closet to hang up her coat. The long car ride she'd taken after dropping the kids off at school had managed to eat up a few hours, but it had done nothing to ease her restlessness.
She set her purse on the closet shelf, yanked off her knit hat and ran her fingers through her hair, fluffing it back to its normal unruly volume. She really ought to do something to calm some of the frizz, if for no other reason than to please Ethan. He hadn't actually said anything about her appearance, but he was quick to point out how attractive other women looked in sleek hairstyles.
At times her heart ached for the man she'd married, her pain wrapped in a ribbon of guilt. Mostly she just went on, letting one day merge into the next without conscious thought, reveling in the joy her children brought her, careful not to think about what her life would be like when they were grown and she and Ethan were alone.
And it had worked.
At least it had until three days ago when she'd run into Horace Manly at the PTA meeting and had been blindsided by the news that David was accompanying his father's casket back to Baxter to arrange for a memorial service.
Carly drew in a deep breath and purposefully closed the closet door. Fear of the unknown had begun to insinuate itself into everything she did and thought and she was being dragged down by it. She started up the stairs to make the beds, seeking comfort in the familiar and mindless action.
Sixteen years was a long time, especially in the life of someone like David Montgomery. When he thought about her, it was undoubtedly with a sigh of relief that she hadn't weighed him down when he'd reached for his star.
If he even remembered her.
She tossed king-sized pillows onto the chair beside the bed and smoothed the comforter. Did she really hope that he'd forgotten her?
The lives of everyone she loved depended on that very thing.
With mechanical movements, Carly finished tidying the master bedroom and moved on to her daughter's room. Bending to pick up Andrea's nightgown, she heard the front doorbell.
She jerked upright. It was probably only the mailman, she told herself, angry at how easily she could be shaken.
She started toward the stairs.
The instant her foot hit the landing and she saw the shadowed form of a man through the beveled glass of the front door, she knew. She considered slipping back upstairs but then thought how much more dangerous it would be to have David come back when Ethan or one of the kids were home. If she had to see him at all, it was better that she do it alone.
For days she had tried to imagine what it would be like to see him again. In her mind they'd already had a dozen conversations. He'd been the focus of her thinking when she drove the kids to school, when she stopped for groceries, and when she was lying beside Ethan at night listening to his breathing.
She opened the door wide, refusing to use it as a shield. She wasn't prepared for the man who stood in front of her. There was no semblance of the boy Carly had knownâthe mouth that had once been so quick to smile was now hard and tight; the wonder and mischief that had shone from his eyes were gone, replaced with a chilling blue anger.
“Hello, David,” she said. “It's been a long time,” she added, an overwhelming sorrow settling through her.
“Yes, it has,” he answered slowly, openly studying her.
“I'm sorry about your father. When he moved away, I missed seeing him.” More than anything she'd missed the tie, however tenuous, he'd given her to David. “I heard you were coming and I . . .”
A corner of his mouth raised in a mocking smile. “And you were wondering if I'd stop by to catch up on old times,” he finished for her.
“I admit it crossed my mind once or twice.”
“Did you think I could come back to my old home town and not look in on you and Ethan? Come on, Carly. Ethan was my best friend. You were . . .” He shrugged. “I seem to have forgotten just what you were to me, Carly.”
She folded her arms across her chest. “Time will do that.”
“You seem to be doing all right for yourself.”
A too-bright smile preceeded her cheerful, “I've been lucky.”
“I doubt luck had anything to do with it.”
An awkward silence followed. “What do you want, David?”
“I don't know,” he admitted.
“You must have some idea or you wouldn't have come.”
“Is that how you see things now? Every question has a simple answer?”
“I'm sorry,” she offered helplessly, knowing it wasn't what he wanted or needed but unable to stop herself. “I never meant to hurtâ”
“Jesus Christ, Carly, after all the time we were together don't you think I deserve a little more than that? Both then and now?”
She held her hands out in a pleading gesture. “That was sixteen years ago. If you came here hoping to find me wallowing in self-pity because I married Ethan and missed out on the opportunity to be the wife of a famous writer, you wasted your time, David. I may not cross oceans to spend my winters on a Greek island, but I'm happy. Can you say as much?”
David smiled wryly and rubbed his hand across his chin. “How is it you know so much about me?”