“I’m not sure what’s troubling her. She hasn’t talked a lot about it.”
“Any guesses?”
“A painful first experience, and a fear that she may fall prey to your line of blarney again? There was a boy, way back when. I won’t go into details, but he did her really dirty. She believed him, she believed you. Maybe she doesn’t trust her judgment anymore.” Bess sighed wearily. “Hurt pride may be part of it as well. I’m reaching. I honestly don’t know. Maybe it’s a combination of several things. We women are complicated creatures.”
“The very least I’d like to do is help her out financially.”
“Maybe you should stop taking no for an answer.”
Hank arched an eyebrow. “What, exactly, does that mean?”
“My friend is pregnant and, whether she’ll admit it or not, about to go blind again. She’s had morning sickness practically every day. The headaches from the sudden stimulation to the visual cortex have been persistent as well. That isn’t to mention the complications any woman may have during a pregnancy. Come September I’ll be going to school to get my MBA, plus working full time. Who’s going to take care of her if she gets sick or has unexpected problems with her eyes? And how on earth is she going to make ends meet when the additional bills start rolling in?”
Hank had no answers.
“She’ll be strapped, Hank. Her college savings will be gone by spring, pissed away on living expenses and medical bills, leaving her without the money she’ll need for a second eye surgery. What’ll she do, stay blind until she can save enough to get another SK?”
Hank started to say something, but Bess barely took a breath before she continued. “As a rookie teacher, she pulled in twenty-nine thousand annually the last two years. After taxes, that isn’t much. By living together, we both managed to save for college, but it was tough. Even if she returns to Portland and gets her old job back, she’ll be lucky just to keep a roof over her head. In short, Hank, she’s going to need help, and lots of it. If you’re willing to step in, I think you should, and soon.”
“How can I help if she refuses to even talk to me?”
“The question brings me full circle. Stop taking no for an answer. Sometimes—” She broke off and huffed into the receiver. “God, I can’t believe I’m about to say this, but sometimes a woman lets her emotions cloud her judgment, and Carly tends to be worse about it than most. A lot of disabled people accept their limitations and settle for less. Carly isn’t made that way. If our friend Cricket and I could do it, she was bound and determined to do it, too, with as little help as possible. Riding a bike, jumping on a skateboard. Cricket and I yelled directions, and away she went until she hit a parked car or sailed off a curb. As a kid, she always had scraped knees and elbows, but she never gave up. Doing things by herself has always been extremely important to her.”
Hank couldn’t see how that pertained.
“Now she’s pregnant,” Bess said unnecessarily. “You’re offering to play the big, strong man and come to her rescue. Carly didn’t get where she is today by letting other people do everything for her. Does that make any sense?”
“Not really.” Hank couldn’t imagine a blind girl on a bicycle. What in God’s name had her parents been thinking? “We all need help sometimes.”
“Carly has needed help all her life. It wasn’t the exception for her, but the rule. She had a choice, giving in and letting the blindness control her life—or fighting with everything she had to be normal. She developed an attitude, sink or swim, do or die. Even when she was little, she refused special treatment. She found her own way to our first-grade classroom. She carried her own lunch tray. She climbed the rope in gym. In high school, she walked the track to count off the steps between hurdles, and the next afternoon, she jumped them. If she fell, she righted the hurdle and tried again.”
“Good God,” Hank whispered.
“When she realized people could tell she was blind because she hung her head, she started standing ramrod straight. She refused to let blindness make her different.”
“In other words, she’s stubborn as hell.”
“Stubborn. Difficult sometimes. But just look at her. Would you ever guess that she was totally blind a little over a month ago?”
Hank definitely hadn’t guessed it the night he met her. “No,” he admitted gruffly. “Where are you going with this, Bess?”
“Carly may not want anyone’s help, but she needs it, regardless.”
“You’re a fabulous friend, Bess.”
“Right now, I’m being a Judas,” she said shakily. “You have no idea how rotten that makes me feel.”
“You’re only trying to help her.”
“And, in the process, I’m revealing things to you that she may never forgive me for.” She hesitated, and then she plunged onward. “I think this pregnancy has become another string of hurdles for Carly to jump. In addition to her wariness of you, getting through it by herself is all tied up with her sense of self-worth. Other women get pregnant and have their babies out of wedlock. Other women manage to make ends meet while raising a child. They don’t usually marry a man they don’t love to get a free ride.”
Hank rubbed the back of his neck. “She needs to think about the welfare of our baby.”
“I know. But for her, maybe that’s easier said than done. She’ll want her son or daughter to be proud of her one day. To Carly’s way of thinking, she’ll be admirable only if she stands on her own two feet.”
“So what’s the answer?” Hank glanced over his shoulder to make sure he was still alone in the kitchen. Then he told Bess about the discussion he’d had with his brother Zeke. “If I could convince her to marry me, I’d do it in a heartbeat. It’s the only workable solution I can come up with. We could go into it as a temporary arrangement, a stopgap measure until she has her next surgery and gets her master’s. If, at that time, she still wants out, I’ll cut her a check for start-up capital and give her a divorce.”
“If she still wants out? Can I take that to mean you’ll remain in the marriage if she doesn’t?”
Hank turned to rest his hips against the counter and watch the door. “I’d be open to the possibility. What’s to say we won’t hit it off and be happy as clams? It’d be a hell of a lot better for our child if we stayed together.”
Long silence. Then Bess said, “Go for it.”
Hank frowned. “Go for what?”
“Marry her. You and your brother are right. It’s the best solution. With all the other expenses that’ll be hitting you, trying to support two households would bankrupt you. If Carly believes it’ll be a temporary situation, she’ll eventually accept it. Trust me on that. Give the girl lemons, and she makes lemonade.”
“Problem. How the hell can I marry her when she won’t even talk to me?”
“You don’t strike me as being a stupid man, Hank. Get creative.”
“How? I can’t force her to marry me. There are laws against that kind of thing.”
“There are also laws that give fathers certain inalienable rights. Carly is in no position to provide for a child right now.”
A tingle crept up Hank’s spine. “What are you suggesting?”
“You’ve tried being Mr. Nice Guy. Has that worked?”
“No.”
“Well, then? Maybe it’s time to play dirty. She won’t risk losing that baby. I know her.”
Hank didn’t like the turn this conversation had taken. “Doesn’t she have some family to help her out?”
“Only her dad in Arizona. Carly was a midlife baby, so he’s an older man. She could stay with him, but it’s a seasonal retirement community that rolls up the carpet in April. No schools, and as far as I know, no public transportation, either, making it next to impossible for her to commute to a nearby town to hold down a teaching position. She’ll be blind, remember. The blind can’t drive. Her dad would do his best, but he hasn’t been well. He definitely isn’t up to caring for a child while she works—and she may not be able to count
on him for daily transportation.”
“She’ll have to be able to work, both for the income and the health insurance benefits.”
“Exactly.”
“And there’s no one else?” Coming from such a large, close-knit family, Hank could barely conceive that. “No brothers or sisters?”
“She’s an only child. Her dad’s seventy-three. Her mom died of ovarian cancer two years ago. I’ll be there for her, of course, but I’m going to be stretched pretty thin, working and going to class. I can drop out of school, I guess, but I’d still have to work eight to ten hours a day. Our friend, Cricket, is in Colombia right now, working on a dig. She can’t come home to help out, not without jeopardizing her career.”
“I understand,” Hank said, and he honestly did. This was his problem. He couldn’t expect other people to drop everything and rush to Carly’s aid. He’d gotten her into this mess, and it was up to him to get her out of it.
Carly awakened the next morning to discover, much to her dismay, that all the sauerkraut and Brussels sprouts were gone. Bess had already left for an interview at a vet’s office, so a chauffeur wasn’t at Carly’s disposal. Because the sauerkraut and Brussels sprouts seemed to settle her queasy stomach, she quickly threw on her clothes, brushed her hair, and set out walking to the supermarket, four blocks away.
Forty-five minutes later, she turned back onto her street. Her mouth was watering for the foods she carried in plastic bags, one in each hand. The heaviness of the groceries made the handles dig into her flesh, and her fingers had long since gone numb.
She was almost to the apartment complex when she noticed a blue pickup parked at the curb. As she turned to walk up the center pathway that bisected the grassy apartment common, a man swung out of the vehicle and slammed the door. Though he was little more than a blur of blue denim, Carly knew it was Hank by his loose-jointed stride and the sharp click of his boots on the pavement.
Her heart tumbled wildly in her chest. She’d told him in plain English that she didn’t want to see him again. Why wouldn’t he leave her alone?
Each decisive tap of his boot heels told her how quickly he was gaining on her. She almost broke into a run to escape him, but pride held her back. She wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of seeing her bolt like a frightened rabbit.
Before she could reach her porch, he came abreast of her on the walkway. “Here, let me carry those for you.”
Carly kept walking. “No thanks. Just go away.”
“No can do.”
He wrested the grocery bags from her fists, somehow managing to do it in one fluid swipe despite the tight clench of her fingers. She considered making a wild grab to reclaim possession, but one glance at his well-muscled shoulders told her a physical contest would be an exercise in futility.
As if he guessed her thoughts, he flashed a slow grin. “Hello to you, too.”
She wasn’t about to exchange pleasantries with him. He added insult to injury by gaining the porch just before she did. “We’re going to talk this out, Carly.” The teasing warmth had left his voice, replaced by steely determination. “If you’d feel safer chatting with me at a restaurant, that offer’s still open, but talk we will, one way or another.”
“Safer?” Carly managed to scale the steps without tripping, which was no easy feat. Advancing on the door, she said, “I’m not afraid of you.”
“Wary, then.”
“I’m not wary of you, either.”
Hands trembling, she dug in her pocket for the house key. Refusing to look at him, she stabbed at the brass deadbolt, hoping she might get lucky and hit the hole. Not. Frustrated beyond measure, she stabbed several times and still didn’t hit her mark.
He shifted the sacks to one hand and snatched the key from her. On the first try, he inserted it in the hole.
Carly stepped over the threshold and turned to slam the door in his face. He thrust a boot through the opening, held up the key and groceries, and flashed another grin. “Forget something?”
He was a cocky, pushy, conceited, overbearing jerk, and she wished she’d never met him. She flicked a look at the grocery sacks, which held her morning sickness cure. After walking eight blocks round-trip to get the groceries, she wasn’t about to let him make off with them.
She shoved her arm through the crack. “Give me my bags.”
He smiled. “And have you slam the door in my face? If possible, I prefer to avoid yelling what I want to say through the keyhole. Let’s negotiate a deal. You invite me in, and then I’ll give you the bags.”
Through clenched teeth, she fairly snarled, “Give me those groceries, or else.”
“Or else what?”
Carly knew it would be childish to make threats she couldn’t deliver on, so instead she cried, “Or else I’ll call the police!”
He lowered the bags to look inside. “Frozen Brussels sprouts and”—he tipped his head to read a label—“sauerkraut? I don’t think that qualifies as grand theft. I’ll take my chances.”
Between one breath and the next, Carly went from merely angry to absolutely seething. “You are impossible.”
Still blocking the doorway with one boot, he lowered the bags to his side and relaxed his shoulders, apparently prepared to stand there all day if necessary. “Would you do me the honor of going out with me for breakfast? There’s an IHOP a couple of blocks over, fabulous pancakes, great coffee, and always packed with people. We could talk there without drawing attention.”
Just the thought of trying to eat a pancake made her gorge rise. “No, I will not. I just want you to hand over my groceries and go away.”
“I was afraid you were going to say that.”
Before she could guess what he meant to do, he planted a shoulder against the wood and pushed his way inside. Staggering back, Carly stared stupidly up at him as he closed and locked the door.
“Get out!” she cried. “You can’t barge in here like this.”
He panned the room, as if looking for reinforcements. “You and what army is going to stop me?” He tucked the key back into her pocket and thrust the grocery bags into her arms. “I tried doing this the nice way, Carly. Now we’ll do it the hard way. End result, we’re going to talk.”
“I’ll say this only one more time. Get out.”
“Sorry, darlin’, it just ain’t happenin’. You haven’t seen stubborn until you’ve gone a few rounds with me.”
Carly had an unholy urge to bean him with the bag of jarred sauerkraut. “What can you possibly hope to gain by forcing your way into my apartment? Do you honestly believe such behavior is going to make me feel more inclined to talk to you? What do you hope to prove, that you’re bigger than I am?”
“If I have to prove I’m bigger than you are, we’re both in trouble.”
Carly could only wonder what that meant. He wasn’t forthcoming with an explanation. He folded his muscular arms. “As for your inclinations, I don’t much care at this point whether you talk or not. I have plenty to say.”
She didn’t like the sound of that.
“Go ahead and put away the food,” he offered congenially. “Don’t let me stop you. I can talk while you work.”
Carly took a mental inventory of her alternatives and quickly determined there weren’t any. A very large, determined male stood in her living room, blocking the only exit. There was no way she’d ever get around him. To make matters worse, she recalled with bitter clarity how easily he’d swept her up in his arms and deposited her on the back seat of his truck that night. Did she really, really want to initiate a physical struggle?
The answer was no, not if she could avoid it.
She spun around and marched into the kitchen, acutely aware of him following at her heels. The groceries went plunk on the counter when she set them down.
“So, start talking. You’ve got five minutes. If you’re not out of here then, I’ll call the police.” She shot a burning look at the telephone. “Don’t make the mistake of thinking I won’t do it. My pat
ience with you is wearing perilously thin.”
Resting a shoulder against the end of the wall that divided the kitchen from the living room, he flicked a lazy glance at the wall phone, then removed his Stetson and tossed it the length of the living room onto the sofa. The absence of the hat shaved a few inches off his height, but that failed to make her feel better.
He raked his fingers through his hair to remove the hatband ring. “Is there any way we can back up a few paces and start over fresh?”
“No. Why bother? There’s no improving on abysmally awful.”
She pulled a box of frozen Brussels sprouts from the sack, emptied the square chunk of frozen vegetables into a bowl, partially thawed it under hot water, and stuck it in the microwave. Then she turned her attention to putting away the other food. She left a jar of sauerkraut and a carton of chocolate milk sitting on the counter.
“Is that your breakfast?”
“If you don’t care for my eating habits, you can leave the same way you came in.”
He sighed and shifted his weight against the wall to cross his ankles. Never more than in that moment had the apartment seemed so tiny. Carly had had little practice at guessing people’s heights, but she guessed him to stand well over six feet. His well-packed but lean frame dwarfed her and everything else, even the old tank of a refrigerator.
After uncapping the sauerkraut, she grabbed a fork and started eating. She had no choice. If she didn’t get something on her stomach soon, she’d be on her knees in the bathroom, worshiping the porcelain god all morning.
Between mouthfuls, she said, “So? Start talking. Seconds are wasting. Five minutes. That’s it. Then you’re out of here, one way or another.”
He flicked another glance at the phone hanging inches from his arm. “We’re in this together, you and I,” he said softly. “It’d be so much nicer if we could work things out in a way that satisfies both of us.”
Carly forked more sauerkraut into her mouth, glaring at him as she chewed. “I want no part of togetherness with you. I might catch something.”
He had the audacity to smile. “No danger. I’ve always used protection.” He winced when her glare made him realize what he’d said. “You were my one and only slip.”
Blue Skies Page 10
