She wanted him to yell at her or curse or lose his cool.
Instead, it was as if the man she knew disappeared. In his place was a robot.
Hartley pulled out his wallet, extracted a hundred-dollar bill and tucked it under the sugar container. Then he slid out of the booth, turned his back on her and walked away.
Seventeen
Hartley went to the cookout at the beach. It was the last thing he wanted to do, but he had caused his family too much pain to let them down in such a simple thing.
So he made excuses for Fiona’s absence, roasted his hot dog and his marshmallow, and gave a damned fine performance of a man who hadn’t a care in the world.
As soon as he could reasonably leave without being rude, he drove back to the city.
He didn’t pass Fiona’s house. He couldn’t bear to go near her street. Instead, he stopped at a sporting-goods store, bought a thick sleeping bag and drove to his newly acquired residence.
Not a residence so much as a dream. A dream of what his life could be with Fiona by his side and all the secrets finally out in the open. He knew now that he was in love with her. Truly, madly, deeply. Probably had been for some time. But last night had been a revelation. Being with her again had been like one of those crazy cartoons where the character gets knocked on the head with a coconut.
His whole outlook had changed.
Even with the lawyer appointment hanging over his head, he’d suddenly known that he could deal with a dead man’s letter as long as Fiona was there, too.
What a naive fool he had been. Life was always waiting in the wings to knock a guy on his ass.
His pain and terror were so deep, they consumed him. He’d seen images in Switzerland. Coroner’s photographs. Things he would never be able to erase from his brain. Dreadful documentation of a suicide that took so much from so many. He would never ever reveal those pictures to Jonathan or Mazie, never so much as mention them. Even now, he couldn’t forget, couldn’t get them out of his head. The blood. So much blood. And his mother’s face, pale and perfect in death.
Almost innocent.
He’d seen other photographs, too. That same woman as a child. Laughing. Playing. Carefree. Totally oblivious to the suffering that lay ahead for her.
The transition was horrifying.
Jonathan climbed to the second level, despite the rotting stairs and the broken glass here and there. He flung his pallet on the floor and fell down on his back, his entire body trembling as if he had malaria or some other jungle fever. One moment he was drenched in sweat. The next he wrapped the edges of the sleeping bag around him.
His maternal grandparents had lost two daughters to mental illness. How had they borne the pain? One child was still alive in an institution in Vermont, but she was a shell of herself. After her breakdown, she rarely recognized any of them. She had only fleeting lucid memories of the family she had reared.
Hartley had tried to make his peace with the past by vowing not to perpetuate it. But what now? He had fathered a child. Sweet Jesus. And no use asking if the baby was his. Fiona was as guileless and true as any woman who ever lived. He was the one who had pursued her, bedded her again and again, because he couldn’t stay away.
He literally had no idea where to go from here.
Eventually, exhaustion claimed him. He slept in snatches, jerked awake again and again by nightmares. The stuffy house and stark, comfortless bed were no more than he deserved.
He had walked out on Fiona. Hadn’t said a word.
How much of an ass could a man be and still consider himself a man?
Toward morning, he splashed water on his face and stared into the mottled mirror in despair. The figure looking back at him was a phantom, a ghost. He had searched his heart for hours on end, even in the midst of sleep.
What should he do? What could he say?
If asking forgiveness was all there was, he might figure that out. But he couldn’t go back to Fiona unless he was prepared to talk about the baby. Every time he thought about a child that was his, his blood ran cold in his veins. His brain froze. He was no good to Fiona or her child. Couldn’t she understand that?
Hunger made him faint. He stumbled going back down the stairs. When he grabbed for the railing, a piece of it splintered, slicing his hand. He stared at the blood dripping from his fingertips.
He was dizzy and weak. For a moment, his dread and pain were so overwhelming, he couldn’t see a way forward. Was he like his mother after all?
* * *
Fiona had experienced grief many times in her life. Up until now, the worst was a moment long ago when she realized she was too old to be adopted, that she had missed her window, that she would never have the family she dreamed about.
She had been luckier than most. Her life had intersected with people who were kind for the most part. There was no memory of abuse to struggle with. No history of alcoholism or drugs. She’d simply been a good kid in an overcrowded governmental system.
Once she was grown, she’d become proud of who she was. She’d created a nest for herself, a niche. Except for brief friendships with a few guys whose faces she barely remembered, she had been content to paint and to draw and to make a living by herself.
She had learned not to dream big dreams, but instead to be satisfied with what she had...who she had become.
Until Hartley Tarleton had burst into her life like a supernova, she believed she knew what it was to be content. To be happy.
Like the scene in the Wizard of Oz when Dorothy’s world morphed from black-and-white into full glorious color, meeting Hartley had shown Fiona feelings and emotions and a whole damned rainbow she never knew existed.
Because the climb up the mountain had been so glorious, the fall was brutal. Indescribably agonizing.
She was like two separate women. One exhilarated by the amazing new life she carried. The other crushed by a grief so all encompassing she wanted to hide under the covers.
One day passed. Then two. Then three.
She had believed Hartley would relent. But she had underestimated his pain.
One day bled into the next. She forced herself to eat and exercise and work. Yearning for Hartley was the worst misery she had ever known.
When the one-week mark passed, she knew he wasn’t coming. Ever. It became harder to wake up each morning. The only thing that kept her from collapse was knowing she had a responsibility to her child.
It was ten days after the emotional scene in the lawyer’s office before she saw Hartley again. By then, she had stopped hoping. She was at work in her studio. When she turned around to get another brush, there he was.
Gaunt and motionless. With a world of agony in his eyes. “I’m sorry,” he said gruffly.
She gripped the paintbrush until her knuckles were white. “I didn’t need an apology, Hartley. I knew what was going to happen when I told you. I knew it would be bad. I used to imagine scenarios like running away to join the circus. Or taking a different name and starting a new life on the other side of the country. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t find a way around the obvious. A woman has to tell a man when he has a baby on the way. It’s a moral obligation.”
Hartley stared at her bleakly. His eyes were almost black in this light. “I’m sorry I made things terrible for you,” he said. “You must have been so scared.” He stood with his hands in his pockets. His jeans were ancient and torn, not at all the look of a wealthy man, one of Charleston’s elite. The navy T-shirt was equally old and stained. Clearly, he had been working on the house he had bought.
“I was scared,” she said quietly. “But you can’t help your feelings. I knew the baby thing wasn’t a whim. You were frightened. And rightly so.”
He dropped his chin to his chest for a moment and sighed deeply. When he finally lifted his head and tried to smile, it was almost too painful to witness.
“I couldn’t deal with the news at first,” he said. “I knew an apology was worthless until I was willing to talk about the baby.”
“And now?”
He swallowed. “I didn’t tell you everything. I didn’t tell Mazie or Jonathan either.”
Her stomach clenched. What more could there be? “Tell me what?” she asked softly.
“My uncle showed me the coroner’s photographs. A crime scene. Bloody. Horrifying. Our mother, the woman none of us remember, looked so peaceful and beautiful. But she was dead. By her own hand. And then he showed me pictures from her childhood. A tiny little girl laughing...playing with puppies. A six-year-old wearing a tutu and beaming. The juxtaposition of those pictures was almost incomprehensible. That’s when I knew I couldn’t bear to father a child. How could I watch him or her grow up, never knowing if the illness that stole my mother lingered beneath the surface?”
Fiona trembled. “All life is a risk, Hartley. None of us can see the future. Some lives are cut short at eighteen. Others stretch out to ninety or a hundred years.” Hot tears sprang to her eyes and rolled down her cheeks. She cried the tears he couldn’t shed, grieving, lost.
At last, he approached her, perhaps moved by her distress. “Let’s go to the living room,” he said. “You look exhausted.”
Hand in hand they walked down the hall. Simply being with him again was more than she had hoped for, but they were a long way from any kind of resolution.
Hartley released her and sat on one end of the sofa. Did he think she would maintain some kind of distance between them? Not a chance in hell. He was here. With her. She would fight for their happiness.
She curled up beside him and leaned her head on his shoulder. He took her hand in his. The silence was not quite peaceful, but it held gratitude, at least on her part.
She sifted through the words she wanted to say, but ultimately, the decision would have to be Hartley’s. “Here’s the thing,” she said, praying for some kind of divine guidance. “When I was a child, six or seven years old, I lived in an orphanage. It was a nice place. Clean. Safe. But the one thing they couldn’t take away was my loneliness. It lived in my bones. I painted a life in my imagination, a life I wanted so very badly. The reality was different.”
He grimaced. “It hurts me to think of you like that.”
“There came a time when I had to let go of my fantasies and accept that my life couldn’t be the imaginary one I craved. But it could be good.”
“How did you get there? How did you give up the wanting and the needing and the disappointment?”
She straightened and faced him, her legs crisscrossed. “You’ll laugh. It had to do with ice cream.”
He blinked. “Ice cream?”
“Yes. For whatever reason, one of the dairies in the area decided to donate ice cream to the orphanage. Every Friday at 3 p.m., a truck would roll up in the driveway, and a big carton packed in dry ice was off-loaded, filled with orange sherbet push-pops.”
“I loved those,” he said, his smile more genuine this time.
“I still do. In fact, if I see a kid in my neighborhood eating one on the sidewalk, it takes me back to those warm, perfect afternoons.”
“I don’t understand how ice cream healed your existential crisis.”
She chuckled. “Well, first of all, I hadn’t a clue that I was having a crisis, existential or otherwise. All I knew was that I was sad. Yet somehow, when I tasted that treat, my sadness went away for a little while. I began to understand that if something as good as orange sherbet push-pops existed in life, then somehow, someday, I was going to be okay.”
“That’s pretty deep for a kid so young.”
Fiona shrugged. “What can I say? I was a wise old soul.”
He kissed her temple. “Some of us are more hardheaded than others. I didn’t want to see you again, Fee, until I dealt with my mother. I couldn’t let her story define mine.”
“And now?” She wanted to hold him and kiss him, but this moment was too important. Hope and fear duked it out in her chest. Right now, hope was winning. Barely.
“I adore you, Fiona James. And I won’t live in fear,” he said firmly. “What happened in the past was a tragedy. My child, our child, may struggle with any number of serious problems. Or maybe he or she will float through life as one of the lucky ones. Either way, I’m going to love you and this baby for the rest of my life.”
“Truly?” Her chin wobbled.
He kissed her nose. “Truly. Marry me, Fee. Big wedding. Small one. I don’t care. But I don’t want to wait.”
“Me either.” She took his hand and placed it on her slightly rounded tummy. “I’ve already picked out your wedding gift. It’s the only thing I could think of for the man who has everything.”
He flattened his hand against her belly, pressing gently, his expression transfixed. “The pregnancy is good? And you? The baby?”
“We’re fine. Better than fine.” She cupped his face in her hands. “I want you to make love to me, Hartley. I’ve missed you so much. It’s been an eternity since I felt you next to me, skin to skin, heart to heart.”
He tugged her to her feet. “I’ve never had sex with a pregnant woman.” The look in his eyes told her he liked the idea.
“Sure you have,” she said, laughing. “You just didn’t know it.”
In her bedroom, they stood on either side of the bed and stared at each other. When they met in the center of the mattress, kneeling, he brushed the hair from her face, his gaze searching. “No more looking back, my sweet Fee. I swear it. From now on, I’ll be under your feet at every turn. You’ll never be lonely as long as I have breath in my body.”
“I love you, Hartley.”
“Not as much as I love you.”
He kissed her then, a kiss that started out with relief and thanksgiving for having weathered the storm, but ended up in the same fiery passion that bound them at every turn.
Clothes flew in four directions. Bare skin met bare skin. He entered her carefully, as though she were a fragile china doll.
She clutched his warm muscled shoulders, her breath coming faster, her body arching into his. “I won’t break, silly man.”
“No, you won’t,” he said, burying his face in the curve of her neck. “Because if you ever fall, I’ll be there to catch you.”
“You’re mine,” she whispered.
“Orange sherbet push-pops, darlin’. For both of us. From now on. I found you, Fee. Against all odds. I’ll never let you go.”
Then he gave up on words, and showed her that some happiness was even better than ice cream...
Five days later...
“Be careful. Don’t tear the paper.” Fiona fretted as she and Hartley climbed the steps of J.B. and Mazie’s classic home. J.B. had invited half of Charleston for Mazie’s kick-ass party.
But first the family was gathering to give her their gifts.
Over punch and cookies and with much laughter and teasing, paper and ribbon fluttered through the air. Lisette and Jonathan had ordered a handmade French baby doll for the woman who had grown up far too soon.
Mazie traced the doll’s lifelike lashes and smiled through her tears. “I love it.”
Everyone smiled. Then Hartley handed over the next gift. “This is from Fiona and me. Open with care.”
Mazie’s astonishment when she saw the wedding-day photograph immortalized in oils warmed Fiona’s heart. “Hartley commissioned the gift,” she said. “It was his idea.”
Mazie screeched and hugged them both. “It’s incredible,” she cried.
Lisette and Mazie looked at each other and smiled. Lisette took Mazie’s hand, and they stepped in front of the birthday girl. Lisette took a deep breath. “There’s one more present, Mazie. But you’ll have to wait a bit for this one.”
Fiona nodded. “We didn’t want your little one to gro
w up alone, so Lizzy and I are giving you two cousins, maybe even a birthing room for three if the timing is right.”
Mazie’s eyes rounded. “Are you serious?”
* * *
Hartley studied the pandemonium that followed with a full heart and a happy grin.
Jonathan and J.B. moved to flank him. “We’re toast, aren’t we?” Jonathan said. “Three pregnant wives? Whew...”
J.B. nodded. “We’ll be wrapped around their little fingers. At their beck and call.”
Hartley blew a kiss to his precious bride-to-be. “Any complaints, gentlemen?”
The other two shook their heads ruefully. “Not a one,” they said in unison.
Hartley felt the world click into sharp focus as joy bubbled in his veins like fine champagne. Today was a new life, a new start. He was a damned lucky man...
* * *
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Bombshell For The Black Sheep (Southern Secrets Book 3) Page 16
