Forever After (20 page)

Seth swatted her derriere and allowed a few inches between them.  "If you keep firing my imagination, we'll never get any food."

When Seth and Darcy rejoined the others, they all joked, talked, laughed and ate until Jenna whispered in Marsha's ear.  Marsha answered her, "I will," then took a deep breath.  She fitted her hand into Chuck's.  "Chuck and I are getting married.  Next month if we can arrange it."

Darcy's mouth dropped open.  When she recovered, she gasped, "That's terrific.  When did this all happen?"

"Last night," Chuck answered.  "I plied her with champagne and promised her the sun, the moon and the stars.  By the time she got to her fifth glass, she agreed."

Marsha poked him in the ribs.  "After one glass I accepted and told him I'd settle for the moon.  I'm not a demanding woman."

Everyone laughed and Seth offered his hand to Chuck.  "Congratulations."  Vic and Peg echoed Seth's sentiments.  Darcy flung Marsha a happy smile and went to the kitchen, Jenna following close behind.

Seth hoped Chuck and Marsha's marriage would make them happy.  Brad had seemed to accept his place in Jenna's life.  But Seth wondered what this engagement would do, if Brad would feel more threatened.  He also wondered if Marsha and Chuck would have children.  Chuck was Seth's age.  It certainly wasn't too late.

Seth remembered a dream he'd had last week.  In it, he held a baby with his black hair but Darcy's beautiful green eyes.  The picture was so clear.  He banished it, just as he had after the dream.  Fifty percent of marriages failed, he reminded himself.  The children suffered.  Even Jenna would have scars that would never heal.  He wished it wasn't so, but it was.

Darcy and Jenna broke into Seth's reverie as they carried in a birthday cake covered with flaming candles.  As Seth watched Darcy come toward him, his eyes grew unnaturally moist.  She'd gone to more trouble than necessary.  For him.  Part of him wished she hadn't.  The other part sang because she had.

Darcy and Jenna set the cake on the coffee table in front of him.  He took a deep breath and blew out all the candles.  When he glanced up, Darcy was clapping her hand with the same childlike exuberance as Jenna.

Darcy cut the cake and dished out scoops of ice cream.  Looking around the room, she saw Chuck and Marsha holding hands, beaming at each other.  Vic and Peg stood by the dining room table consulting over something.  Vic looked worried. Peg patted his chest and smiled.

Darcy glanced at Seth sitting beside her.  He was watching Vic and Peg.  Then his eyes shifted to Chuck and Marsha's clasped hands, then on to Jenna as she batted a balloon above her head.  Darcy wished she could read his mind.  Did he believe Chuck and Marsha could be happy?  Couldn't he see Vic and Peg were a unit expanding with joy?

Did she want too much from Seth?  They'd been resorting to banter recently, like their exchange in the kitchen after he kissed her.  Maybe they were both avoiding the consequences of a serious conversation.  She'd bought Seth a special present, and she planned to give it to him tonight after everyone left.  She had to know how Seth felt, if they had a future or at least the hopes of one.

Darcy licked icing from her index finger.  Seth's gaze collided with hers.  Peg broke the steamy contact when she approached Darcy and said casually, "Vic and I are going to leave.  The baby's decided to put in an appearance tonight.  We're going to stop home for my suitcase then go to the hospital."

Darcy put down the knife.  "You're in labor?  Are you okay?  Can I get you anything?"

"This is my third time, Darcy.  I know what's happening.  I'm fine.  I'm just sorry I won't have time to eat the cake."  She laughed.  "Vic's always more nervous than I am.  And from the way his lips are twisted, if we're not out the door in two minutes, he'll try to pick me up and carry me.  It would be very bad for his back and disastrous for my safety."

Seth stood to give Peg an encouraging hug and a thumbs-up sign to his old roommate.  Everyone wished them well.  After Peg and Vic left, promising to call as soon as they had news, Seth opened his presents.  Vic and Peg's gift was a pewter tankard with his initials monogrammed in Old English script.  Marsha and Chuck gave him a dress shirt.  Jenna proudly handed him her package, a silk tie to accompany it.

Darcy's gifts were last: a hand-tooled belt, a jazz CD he'd said he wanted, an elegant sterling pen.  He thanked her with a long but restrained kiss and looked pleased.  She hoped he'd be as pleased with the final gift.

After a last round of soda and second pieces of cake for Seth and Chuck, Marsha helped Darcy refrigerate and wrap the leftovers while Chuck and Seth talked sports scores and Jenna fell asleep on the recliner.

Finally, Seth and Darcy sat alone on her couch.  She reached up and traced the long narrow groove from Seth's high cheekbone to his chin that deepened when he frowned and widened when he smiled.  He had an expressive face with character and dimension.  She loved him so.  He leaned forward to kiss her.

If he did that, they'd never talk.  Dropping her hand, she leaned back.  "Wait a minute."  She stood and crossed to the dry sink.  Opening the cupboard, she removed a rectangular, flat package wrapped in plain blue paper.

Sitting down again next to Seth, she offered it to him with an uncertain smile.  "I wanted to give this to you when we were alone."

He gave her a puzzled look, tore off the white bow and stripped off the wrapping.  His eyes became shuttered and his dark brows pulled together in a frown.  Immediately Darcy knew her impulsive gesture had been a monumental mistake.

Seth leafed through the pages of The Velveteen Rabbit then looked up, his gaze probing hers.  "Is there a special meaning behind this?"

She met his eyes without wavering.  "You seemed interested in it.  I thought you might like to have it in your library.  It could be as thought-provoking as your law books."

He set the book on the coffee table, stood, and prowled across the room.  "Of course, you had no ulterior motive," he said, his voice low, bordering on anger.

Darcy dampened her lower lip with the tip of her tongue and took the plunge.  "Maybe I did.  I thought if you read it, you'd find love isn't something to fear but a feeling to welcome."

His jawline hardened.  "Playing amateur psychologist?"

"No, Seth.  I just want you to share with me.  Tell me all the things about you I don't know.  Is it so hard to understand that I want to know everything that's made you the man you are?  You hold so much back."

With an impatient grunt, he peered out the window and shoved his hands deep in the pockets of his forest-green shorts.  "Okay, Darcy.  Let me give you a little case history.  Then you can analyze me to your heart's content.  My mother was a selfish woman.  She said she loved me, but she didn't do much to show it.  Her life consisted of bridge games, tennis and golf tournaments, cocktails...ounce after ounce of cocktails.  She and my father fought constantly.  He'd try to reason with her, convince her to find something worthwhile in her life, to curb the drinking she insisted was entirely social.  She would yell and scream at Dad that he didn't understand, that he was a workaholic who only came home to change clothes.  The arguments became louder and more hateful."

Darcy ached for the little boy who'd had to listen to shouting matches between his parents.  No wonder Seth held such a jaded view of marriage.

His voice didn't change as he continued, and he didn't move a muscle.  "My parents divorced when I was seven.  I wanted to live with Dad and he wanted custody.  But mother came from a well-to-do family with high standing in the community.  Although she didn't want me, she wouldn't let my father have me.  It wouldn't look right, she said.  She'd feel disgraced.  What would the neighbors think?"

Seth shook his head as if he didn't want to remember, but had no choice.  "The case went to court.  The trial took three months.  No one asked me what I wanted.  Her family hired the best custody lawyer they could buy.  Dad's wasn't as good.  She won."

He rubbed his fingers over his chin.  "You came from a family who cared about each other.  You can't possibly understand how lonely it was for me after Dad left...to come home to a housekeeper...to live in a house where I was ashamed to bring friends because there was no warmth, no love, and a mother whose words slurred together by seven in the evening."

Darcy's heart went out to him.  She couldn't imagine living without a support system.  She wanted to cross to him and comfort the boy in him who still suffered.  But his rigid shoulders and ramrod stance warned her he didn't want her close.

Seth didn't look at the concern pouring from Darcy as he paced over to one of the balloons on the wall, plucked it off, and looked at the wording.  His dark lashes concealed the memories in his eyes, but his voice held a cold brittle edge.  "After the custody battle, I saw Dad once a week.  But when he came to pick me up, they'd argue like when they were married.  He was afraid she'd be in an accident some afternoon on her way home from the country club after she had one too many Bloody Marys.  She'd yell at him that she needed more child support, help with rising expenses.  When I was eleven, Dad accepted a promotion as vice president of a bank in Erie.  I saw him once a month and two months over the summer.  I wanted to live with him in the worst way.  But he didn't have the money to appeal the decision and his lawyer advised against it."

Seth rubbed his thumb so hard across the balloon's surface, Darcy was afraid it would burst in his hands.  She wanted to say something, but knew he had to finish.

Seth threw the balloon in the air, socked it with his fist as hard as he could, and watched it sail across the room.  "When I was fifteen, Mother began dating the candidate who was running for mayor.  I didn't like him, and he didn't like me.  One day I mouthed off to him and he hit me so hard, my nose bled.  That did it.  I knew I couldn't stay.  My grades in school had been going downhill steadily.  I was involved with the wrong gang of kids--troublemakers.  I knew it.  I didn't even feel comfortable with them but they were better than being home alone."

"What happened?" Darcy asked softly, imagining a hundred scenarios from a run-in with the police to a sad teenager locked in his room, isolating himself.

"I confronted her that night.  I told her if she didn't let me go live with Dad, I'd ruin her reputation.  I'd spread rumors.  I'd take out an ad in the paper if I had to and tell the world she was an alcoholic.  She couldn't take the chance I'd do it.  She wouldn't risk her position in the community or her future with a potential mayor.  She finally let me go."

Seth's gaze darted to the book on the table.  "Don't tell me about the glories of love.  I don't believe in fairy tales or forever after."

Could Seth's mother have been that heartless, that cruel, that lacking in motherly instinct?  What about Seth's good years with his father?  Apparently they couldn't erase the earlier hurt.  Darcy hurt for Seth, but she couldn't be soft with him, not if she wanted to see inside his heart.

"What do you want me to feel, Seth?  Pity?  You had more than lots of kids.  Both your parents wanted you."

He scooped his hand angrily through the air.  "My mother only wanted me so she could wring more money out of my father.  She didn't care about me.  She certainly didn't love me."

"How can you know that for sure?  It sounds as if she was the victim of a disease and didn't know where to get help.  Maybe she wanted you there because she was lonely, too."

"She didn't love my father.  She only married him because of his job future and his background."

"Even if that's true, don't you feel sorry for her?  Can't you appreciate the loving years you spent with your dad instead of harboring bitterness toward her?  Seth, that bitterness is just poisoning you.  It's not hurting her.  Don't you want to be free of it?"

"And how do you suggest I get free?"

Darcy pitched straight into the strike zone.  "By forgiving her."

"How can I forgive her for keeping me from the one person who loved me?  If it weren't for her, I'd have had eight more years of love instead of loneliness and abuse."

He was shackled to his past.  It motivated his career, shaded his view of women, interfered with his ability to love.  "We're all dealt a basic hand.  Over and over I've thought I should have spent more time with Mom instead of following Pops around.  We could have been closer and talked more.  When she died, I hated her for deserting me, for making me feel guilty that I might have loved my dad more.  But as time passed, I realized I didn't love Pops more, I loved him differently.  I began remembering what Mom and I did share--conversations about her years growing up, making pancakes for brunch on Sundays, having her on the bleachers when I played softball.  Seth, we can't live our lives on what might have been."

"That's easy for you to say.  You haven't walked in my shoes."

Now was the time to tell him, to see if her feelings made a difference.  "That's true.  I haven't.  But I do love you, Seth.  Doesn't that count for anything?  Are you just going to turn it away?  Pretend it doesn't exist?"

He looked shell-shocked at her declaration, and it took him a moment to recover.  "We've got chemistry, Darcy.  Pure and simple chemistry."

Heat stained her cheeks as her heart seemed to sink to her toes.  "Open your eyes.  There's more between us than pleasure, more than your stroke, my caress.  We touch each other's hearts."