“You know what I’m going to do, and you know why I’m going to do it, too. You’re a smart girl, Beth. And you’re going to stay in school. Because even if you can’t see it right now – short-sighted imp that you are – it’s the right thing to do, for your parents as well as yourself. And, once we’re done here, Heaven forbid even the slightest hint of the idea that you might not graduate reaches my ears, I can assure you that you’re going to look back at this as a series of love-pats.”
She couldn’t imagine how something that simple – a palm hitting a bottom – could possibly have hurt so much, but it did. Vidar had spanked her well past the point of tears, until her entire backside was a disturbing shade of maroon. Then he stopped and she tried to rise – snot-nosed, swollen-eyed, seared backside and all, but he wouldn’t let her. That hand was right where it had been since he’d begun.
“Are you going to persist in this folly of thinking you’re going to be allowed to leave school before you graduate, Elizabeth? Do I need to continue?” He gave her one last, very hard swat, as if to drive his point home.
“No! No, I won’t quit. I promise. I promise!” she cried, sobbing in a heartbreaking manner that had him nearly tearing up, too.
The last thing he did for her before he left as suddenly as he’d arrived was to carry her into her bedroom and tuck her into bed. She wouldn’t be sitting comfortably for quite a while, but she wouldn’t be missing any classes, either, and she damn sure would be graduating – on time.
Then she recalled her parting words to him. They’d been uttered out of embarrassment and anger, but mostly embarrassment. She had been in love with him for so long, and she was crushed that he still thought of her as a child, as someone in need of a spanking. So she had glared at him through her tears and said in a clear, hard voice. “I hate you, Vidar. And I never want to see you again.”
If she would have known how deeply her words had cut him, she never would have said them. He had honored her wishes though, and he had not let her see him at her parents’ funerals, even though by that time she had long since forgotten all about those hurtful words. How she had longed for his familiar face! How she had needed him then! Her tears continued to fall, washed away immediately with the cooling water of her shower.
Chapter Four
Liz stood in her closet for the longest time, staring at her youthful wardrobe. Bewildered, she had no idea what to wear. The clothes still fit her, but the style did not. In college she had worn tight-fitting blue jeans, skimpy little tee shirts emblazoned with a variety of slogans or rock groups that were very dated, and heeled cowgirl boots. She had worn tooled leather belts, printed bandanas, and even occasionally a cowboy hat. She’d portrayed the image of the self-assured tomboy with the perfection of an accomplished actor. The accident had changed all that.
Tight jeans were difficult to wear, given the condition of her spine. She preferred loose-fitting skirts, soft fabrics, and bulky sweaters. The few things she’d crammed into her backpack, though, were in dire need of washing. She had to put something on! And with the object of all her favorite fantasies still no doubt lurking around the cabin, she’d better make up her mind quick! Another short skirt and a few more pairs of skinny jeans joined the heap on the floor of rejects. Finally, tucked near the back of the closet, she spotted a knee-length plaid skirt, something Uncle Vidar had bought for her back in high school. With a white tailored blouse and a navy cardigan, she probably looked about sixteen again, except for the lines of fatigue and pain that marred her features.
“Beth!”
His deep voice resonated through the hallway. Liz chuckled. She had wondered how long he would wait for her. About five minutes longer than she’d expected. “Coming!” she shouted. Kicking the pile of clothes out of the way so she could shut the closet, she grabbed a pair of shoes and dashed from her room.
“How about I make us some breakfast,” he offered, his eyes bulging when he caught site of her.
She brushed at her skirt self-consciously. She didn’t want him to see the state of the cupboards. No doubt he’d yell at her for not having any food in the house, and that was a battle she just wasn’t ready to face. “No,” she said quickly. “I’m not really hungry yet. I’ll grab something later.”
“Still skipping meals? I thought you knew better by now. You’re thin enough as it is.”
“Vidar, why are you here?” The best defense was usually an offense. Seems she’d heard that a time or two, maybe in history class.
“Don’t change the subject!”
Liz put her arms around his neck and hugged him, like she used to do when she’d been a little girl. “Oh, Uncle Vidar, don’t scold! I’ve missed you!”
“I’ve missed you, too, brat. But I’m hungry, and you need to eat. Let’s go out – my treat. Maybe if we sit down at a decent restaurant with napkins and manners, we can manage to carry on a conversation without tantrums.”
Eating out was good. She could fill her belly and hide the truth a while longer. At least until she figured out what she was going to do next. “Why, Vidar, have you given them up?”
“What? You scamp. You know I was referring to you,” he grumbled.
Liz grinned, chucking him playfully on the shoulder. “Gotcha. Let’s go! My friend Tracy is coming over later, so I have to be back in time.”
“Ah yes, the illustrious Tracy Gates. What mischief is she getting you in to now?”
Liz shrugged, following Vidar out to his car. The bright sun filtering through the budding leaves made her squint and she felt the beginnings of a headache stir. She didn’t want to get into it with him about the development of Scrimshaw Lake. No doubt he’d tell her to leave it alone, not to stand in the way of progress, not to worry herself over someone else’s problems, and she wasn’t ready yet to defend her position. Not until she did more research. “Just catching up on old times,” she answered vaguely.
Vidar opened the door of his rental car for her, and waited until she buckled her seat belt before he closed it. He walked around to the driver side, unable to keep from grinning. Here he was with his precious Beth in his car, and she agreed to go out with him! It was a dream come true… and drat that girl! If not for those hurtful words she’d uttered all those years ago, they might have been together all this time! Maybe he would have even convinced her to marry him! If he could summon up the courage to ask. His hand froze on the door latch. What was he doing!
All in good time. He was going to take her out for breakfast. He was going to court her, woo her, and perhaps, when she knew him better, she would be ready to hear the truth about him. Determined, he got into the car and fastened the belt, adjusting the seat until he felt he had his emotions under control.
“Vidar? Is everything all right?”
“Sure, brat. Just fine,” he said with a crooked smile.
She punched his shoulder. “Stop calling me that!”
He laughed. How quickly they fell back into the old routines.
He drove right through the little village of Scrimshaw and on to White Hall, a larger city nearly forty minutes away, surreptitiously studying his young passenger. She had lost weight – something she could ill afford to do. Dark circles marred the delicate skin beneath her eyes. She wasn’t sleeping well, either. He had wondered how she was doing in the wake of her parents’ untimely passing, but he had honored her wishes to stay away. Perhaps that had been a mistake? She might not even realize it yet, but she needed him and he vowed he would do everything in his power to convince her of that. Now that he had accidentally bumped in to her, he didn’t think he would be able to step out of the way again.
He pulled into the parking lot of The Hilton, the nicest restaurant the area had to offer. Offering Liz his elbow, he escorted her inside. Even that small touch had him nearly crazy with need. It was going to be a long day, he decided, as he struggled to conceal just how much she meant to him. If she had an inkling of how strong his emotions ran, she might run screaming in the opposite direction.
Liz gazed at the man across the table from her. He still made her heart beat a little too fast, still made her hands feel sweaty and her panties damp. It was barely morning, and all she could think about was taking him to bed!
He was much too old for her… wasn’t he? He had worked for her father before she’d even been born. Even if he’d gotten the job fresh out of high school, he had to be nearly twenty years her senior. Odd how he didn’t look it! He didn't look any different from the last time they’d met, eight years ago when she’d thought she would drop out of college. How did he do that? If she didn’t know better, she’d guess him to be no more than mid-thirties. Maybe he’d had a facelift or something, although he really didn’t seem the type. He had not one ounce of vanity. Surely he was clueless of just how gorgeous he was, or he would have known how much she had idolized him.
“So what brings you back here,” Vidar asked, pushing his omelet around his plate with a fork.
Liz gulped. If he didn’t already know about her accident, it wasn’t something she wanted to bring up. He’d warned her before that riding horses was dangerous and she’d ignored him. She absolutely did not want to hear any I-told-you-so’s right now. Probably never. At the least, she had to figure out what she was going to do next before she had that conversation with him. “Just felt like taking a vacation,” she fibbed.
“Odd time of year for that. Not quite spring, too late for winter.”
She shrugged, trying to work him away to a different topic. “What about you? What have you been up to lately?”
Suddenly, he seemed wary as well. Was he hiding something? Hard to tell. He was the master manipulator, after all. He’d had her daddy in the palm of his hand, even though he had been only the employee and her daddy the boss. Daddy had promoted him through the ranks until he was second only to him. And then, something changed. He left the summer she turned fifteen. He still returned for holidays, was still part of her family, but he wasn’t always there. He moved on, started his own company and became very rich at the same time that her father’s business ventures started to fail. One after another.
“Why did you leave?” she asked, interrupting him.
“We went over that, Beth. You told me to.”
“No, not then. Why did you leave Daddy’s company? In retrospect, I realize that you were the brains behind his business. He lost everything after you left.”
“I’m sorry,” Vidar said, avoiding eye contact. “I didn’t realize.”
“And you cared so little about him that you didn’t make it your business to find out? He was your employer! He taught you everything he knew! At times I was so jealous – he loved you like the son he never had.”
“Beth, don’t say that. Your father adored you. You have to know that.”
She shrugged, blinking rapidly as she tried to gain control over her emotions. Yes, she had been Daddy’s little darling, but Vidar had had a real relationship with the man. They actually talked together. Daddy’s idea of parenting had been to shower her with gifts, clothes, and trinkets. She missed him so much! If only he hadn’t died, perhaps they would have grown closer.
“You were the little blessing they didn’t think they would ever have,” Vidar said, his voice thick. “They were older, more like grandparents than parents, I’m afraid. And you are the one to suffer, as they did not live long enough to see you married, settled, secure in the beautiful woman you have grown to be.”
“Enough of this,” she snapped. She took her napkin and dabbed at her eyes. “So did you hear the one about a boss who turned up one day with a bunch of new jokes. He told them one after another, and all his employees but one laughed uproariously. He glowered at the one girl and asked, ‘don’t you have a sense of humor?’ and she replied, ‘I don’t have to laugh. I’m leaving on Friday.’”
Vidar pushed his plate aside. “Okay, I get the message. You don’t want to talk now. But don’t push me away. Never again.”
“Why? You want to renew old ties, before you disappear again?”
“I left your father’s business, Beth, because he asked me to.”
“I don’t believe you. He loved you!”
Vidar took her hand and held it in his, waiting until she looked him in the eyes. “And he loved you. Maybe he thought you had a crush on me, and he feared you would never accept a date with a boy your own age as long as I was around. He wanted you to hang out with kids your age, go to the movies, to Prom, to do all that normal high school stuff. I’m sorry that my leaving affected your father’s company. I didn’t know. He hid it well.”
Liz’s mouth dropped. Was that true? It had to be… Vidar looked so sincere, and she had never known him to lie. So it was all her fault? Everything! And for what? She had been too interested in horses to spare a moment thinking about some awkward, pimple-faced boy in high school. “I need to go,” she said. “Tracy will be over soon.”
She made a gesture as though to grab the check, full knowing that Vidar would not let her pay for it. It was silly, but she hoped to conceal her dire financial strait from him for now, at least until she had a job.
Beth was quiet on the ride home. She had always been mercurial, her moods rising and falling with more frequency and regularity than an outdoor thermometer in the sun in winter. Something was bothering her. He replayed their conversation in his mind, trying to pinpoint just when the tide had turned, but all that managed to accomplish was to confuse him further. While she had been pleasant and animated through much of the meal, he realized that she hadn’t really been open or forthcoming about a thing. She was different. Something had happened to her in the past eight years, something more than just losing her parents. She seemed guarded, distrustful… and she was definitely hiding something. He would like to give her time to win her over, before laying down the law, but he wasn’t sure how long he could rein in his zealous protective nature.
She stopped in the doorway and turned as though to say good-bye, which was amusing to say the least, considering that the cabin belonged to him. “It was nice to see you again,” she said, giving the lame brush-off. “And thanks for breakfast.”
“I’m not going anywhere,” he said firmly. “You forget, I own Camp Birches.”
She took a step back, her fingers fluttering to her lips. “But – but you can’t stay here,” she stammered. “You and Tracy never really got along. And I don’t know how long she’ll be here.”
“You are welcome to stay here indefinitely,” Vidar said smoothly. Yeah, just let her try to leave! Now that he’d found her again, he wasn’t letting her out of his sight.
“But – but!”
“I will let you two have your privacy. I have some business I can attend to in the office. You won’t even know I’m here.”
“I’ll know,” she muttered, her delicate eyebrows drawing together. He leaned forward, tempted to kiss away the crease, but she scooted around him, her breath coming in fast little gasps betraying her desire for him.
Vidar went into the home office and closed the door. It about killed him to do so. He was a tad afraid she might pair up with that girl Tracy and disappear again! He clenched his teeth, wondering how long he would have to pussyfoot around before she realized that they belonged together. Closing his eyes, he reached out with his mind, gathering the four corners of the cabin around him. He felt the pull of the hematite, felt the protection charm he had cast and renewed it, adding a bit more. If Beth left, he would know it. Then he slid into the padded office chair before dialing the first of many phone calls he needed to make regarding the investors he had lined up for the casino project.
Liz dusted and swept while she waited for Tracy, more for something to do rather than because she had the sudden urge to develop her domestic skills. She threw open a few windows to freshen the place, although it was still a bit too nippy to leave them open for long. She did manage to find a bit of coffee and brewed a fresh pot to have something to offer her friend when she arrived.
Tracy announce
d her arrival with a quick tap of her car horn. Liz dash outside in time to see Tracy struggle with several boxes full of stuff. “What on earth!” she cried as she grabbed one box before Tracy dropped it. “What is all of this?”
“I’ve been busy,” Tracy said, her voice loud with excitement. “I found some back newspapers from when the town fought a major water bottling company that wanted to come in and bottle our groundwater. I’d forgotten about that, as it happened when we were in high school and I wasn’t really in to causes back then. But apparently enough people thought it was a bad idea that they forced the company to look elsewhere. They started with petitions, so I went to Kinko’s and got some printed off.”
Liz placed her box on the kitchen table, then began to unload its contents. “Wow, Tracy. You have been busy.”
“Thanks to you! All I’d done before was just fret about it, but you got me motivated to do something!”
“But I haven’t done anything yet,” Liz said.
“Silly goose, of course you have – and is that coffee I smell? Wonderful – I was so busy I up half the night. Pour me some, will you? Now, about these petitions, we need to get as many signatures as we can. I called the town board and got us put on the docket for their next meeting, which is Thursday. That’s our time frame.”
For the next several hours, Liz and Tracy poured over the newspapers, scanned the library books and pamphlets Tracy had checked out, scribbled down ideas and brainstormed some more. Liz felt something waking up inside, something like hope. It didn’t matter that she had lost Camp Birches… if she could save the lake, she would feel like she had managed to do something good with her life. But sitting for hours was hard on her back. She had to get up to pop some aspirin, washing it down with the last of the cold coffee.
Forever Wife Page 4
