The Mother of His Child

by Sandra Field

  Maybe Cal was asleep, too.

  Maybe she’d come here for nothing.

  Part of her, she knew, would be relieved to find him unavailable. But it was the other side of Marnie, the side that had made her sign up for a class on rock climbing, that now impelled her out of the shelter of the pines to cross the uneven ground below the house. She skirted several yews and some rhododendrons loaded with fat buds, then froze to stillness.

  There was a basement level to the house. From a bank of low windows, light fell across a rock pathway edged with heather that was already in bloom. Through the windows, Marnie could see Cal.

  The room was a miniature gymnasium complete with weight machines. Wearing a pair of sweatpants and a T-shirt, Cal was working a horizontal lever that lifted a pile of metal slabs; his back was to her. Even from that distance, she could see that his hair was soaked with sweat.

  He let go of the lever, stretching his arms around the back of his neck one by one. As he turned to face her, staring out into the darkness, she shrank back into the shadows. He stripped off his T-shirt, wiping his face with it before tossing it to the floor, then moved to a set of barbells. Crouching, he lifted them to rest on his thighs, then, with an elegance she had to admire, smoothly lifted them to shoulder height. The muscles were corded in his belly.

  Dry-mouthed, she watched as he repeated the lifts again and again. He looked like a man driven. As though he couldn’t stop even if he wanted to.

  Very much like herself the past three days.

  Cal increased the weights, his face contorted with effort. Then he dropped the bar to the floor; even from that distance she could see he was panting. He walked over to a window, leaning against the wooden frame and gazing into the mist. Suddenly, he dropped his forehead to the glass and closed his eyes, his shoulders slumped in utter defeat.

  Cut to the heart, Marnie didn’t even stop to think. A shower of water dripped down her neck as she pushed her way past a rhododendron bush and into the open. She stepped over the heather to the path, her eyes glued to him, willing him to look up.

  He didn’t. So she walked boldly toward the glass and tapped on it with her knuckles.

  Cal’s head jerked up. He was looking straight at her, staring at her as though she were a ghost, an apparition called up by the mist from the sea. Or else an enemy, she thought. Her heart thumping uncomfortably hard under her mohair sweater, Marnie held her ground.

  Slowly, Cal straightened. He walked past her, and for the first time, she saw a door set in the wall to the right of the windows. He pulled it open, yellow light spilling over the rock path. “You’d better come in,” he said.

  Definitely an enemy, Marnie decided, and walked past him, her chin held high. She felt as frightened as that day when she’d first taken the leader’s position on a climb on Eagles’s Nest. Frightened and determined not to show it, and equally determined to do the very best she could to get to the top without any false moves.

  She turned to face him. “Is Kit asleep?” As he nodded, she said unevenly, “You don’t look very pleased to see me.”

  “Don’t I?” Cal said unpleasantly.

  “No, you don’t! Do you still want to go on a date with me tomorrow?”

  “It depends.”

  He’d recovered his poise. His gaze was watchful, his stance loose, his sweatpants slung low on his hips. Dark hair curled between his nipples and funneled to his navel, and he was still breathing hard from his exertions. She’d never realized just how impressively his torso was muscled. Or how totally distracting those muscles could be.

  When you were climbing as leader for the very first time, you couldn’t afford the slightest distraction.

  “Cal,” Marnie said, “it’s my turn to eat crow and you’re not making it one bit easy and I do wish you’d put your T-shirt on.”

  He raised one brow. “It stinks.”

  “By the looks of you, I’m not going to get close enough for that to be an issue.”

  “Oh, you never want to count on that, Marnie,” Cal said with menacing softness.

  Her tongue tripping over the words, she asked, “Have you missed me since Saturday?”

  “Why don’t I ask you the same question? After all, you’re the one who said no date.”

  “Since Saturday afternoon, I’ve canoed, hiked, run, climbed and bouldered, and drunk too much wine. Oh, and painted a picture. Yes, I’ve missed you.”

  A gleam of devilment shot through his slate blue irises. “Vertical stripes?”

  “Swirls,” she said. “Black-and-white swirls, all mixed up. The way I feel when I’m anywhere near you.”

  “So which color won out—black or white?”

  “I’m here, aren’t I?” Her smile was defiant. “The last thing I did was put a big blob of yellow smack-dab in the middle.”

  “Come here.”

  With a more convincing smile, she asked, “You wouldn’t be telling me what to do, would you?”

  “Please, Marnie, darling Marnie, come here.”

  Shaken to the tips of her sandals by his endearment, feeling as though she were stepping off the edge of a cliff into thin air, Marnie walked closer. When she was within six inches of him, she stopped, her eyes wide.

  He said gravely, “You’re very wet,” and tweaked one of her curls.

  The mist had dewed her hair and her sweater. “My sandals are probably ruined.”

  He glanced down and gave a sudden laugh. “Purple toenails. I’m flattered.”

  “I rather thought they might be the finishing touch.”

  “Oh, I was finished the moment I saw you,” he said. “What about your fingernails—purple, too?”

  He took her hands in his, spreading them flat. Her nails were innocent of polish, her supple fingers bare of rings, her knuckles grazed. “What happened there?” he asked.

  “I was jamming a crack in the granite on Sunday. That’s always hard on the hands.”

  “Don’t explain it to me. I don’t want to know,” Cal said grimly. “I don’t think I could bear watching you climb.”

  “No more than I could bear watching you face a truck-load of rebels armed with machine guns.”

  “That’s different.”

  “Sure it is—a higher danger quotient.” She added abruptly, “Cal, am I way out of line to have come here this evening and risked Kit seeing me? Do you still want to go on a date with me tomorrow night?”

  He raised her hand to his mouth, gently brushing her scraped flesh with his lips, a gesture that touched her to the heart. Then he said formally, “Marnie Carstairs…is Marnie your real name, by the way?”

  “Maureen.” She grimaced. “That’s what my mother always called me. I’ve been Marnie to everyone else for years.”

  “Marnie suits you much better. I can’t imagine a Maureen hanging by her fingernails from a cliff.”

  “The only time in my life I’ve ever done that is right now,” she said tersely, glancing down at his naked chest.

  His lashes flickered. “Yes, I want to spend tomorrow evening with you, of course I do. And I won’t even kiss you, if that’s what it takes.”

  Nor would he. She knew it in her bones. Knew she could trust him. He was like the anchors and ropes that gave protection to a climb even though you didn’t use them. The anchors that allowed you to climb free.

  And all of a sudden, there was no danger. Marnie rested her hands on his shoulders, reached up and kissed him with a mixture of shyness and certainty that revealed more, perhaps, than she realized. With a smothered groan, Cal strained her to him, deepening the kiss, his tongue searching out the sweetness of her mouth, his hands roaming the soft, damp folds of her sweater, then moving lower to press her hips to his.

  The heat of his bare flesh beneath her palms intoxicated Marnie. She let her fingers wander the smooth, sweat-sleek plane of his breastbone, then cup the hard curves of his rib cage, an exploration whose intimacy shifted her to a place she’d never been before. As Cal’s lips slid to her throat, she
whispered, “Do you know what?”

  He looked up, the expression on his face making her tremble. “No,” he said, “I don’t. Unpredictable’s your middle name.”

  Very deliberately, she pressed her palms to his belly, feeling the muscles contract involuntarily as she did so, teasing his body hair with her fingertips. “I’ve just discovered something I never understood. What the word ‘erotic’ really means,” she said. Her nails trailed to his navel, her heart thudding as she saw his face constrict at her touch. “I didn’t know before. I’ve never experienced it, you see.”

  He said very quietly, “You take my breath away.”

  Tears flooded her eyes. “Do I, Cal? Do I really?”

  “Yeah…this is new to me, too, the way I am with you. I’ve never felt this way before. Not in my whole life.” He paused, briefly glancing outward into the darkness and the fog. “I’m only going to say this once, Marnie. But I need to say it. I loved Jennifer, you know that. She was sweet and gentle, and I wanted her to be happy. But every now and then, I had to get out. Go overseas, throw myself into the unpredictable, the risky, the dangerous. Even though I took those risks elsewhere—away from her—she hated it when I traveled. She wanted to keep me safe. To know where I was, what I was doing. She couldn’t understand that even though I loved her, too much routine and predictability just plain stifled me.”

  Marnie kept silent, knowing she was learning something key about Cal, deeply grateful that he was telling her so much.

  His voice raw, he went on, “Which isn’t to say that I wouldn’t have died for her if I could. Seeing her suffer at the end…it was terrible. I know that’s part of the reason for Kit’s behavior. How do you explain suffering to a ten-year-old?”

  Again Marnie felt tears swim under her lids. “Thank you for telling me,” she said. “Cal, did you hate me for being here in Jennifer’s house on Saturday? Because somehow, and maybe this sounds right out to lunch, it seemed as though she was welcoming me.”

  “No, of course I didn’t hate it, and one of the very last things she told me was not to stay a widower for too long. But you’ve turned my world upside down, Marnie. I can’t even begin to tell you what I felt when you stood in the kitchen, walked past my bedroom door…. Dammit, I’m doing a lousy job explaining all this.”

  In a flash of intuition, Marnie said, “During your marriage, did you hide emotions that might be considered unsafe?”

  He ran his fingers through his hair, avoiding her eyes. “I never told Jennifer what it was like not to father my own child. For her, it was all tied up with her identity as a woman. I’m not sure it occurred to her that I’d have feelings around it, too.”

  “Then I’ve discovered two things since Saturday,” Marnie announced, knowing her words for the truth. “I don’t want to play it safe. And you can tell me anything you like.”

  Cal looked at her sharply. “I can, can’t I? Good, bad and indifferent.”

  She gave a rich chuckle. “‘Indifferent’ I have a hard time imagining.”

  His grin was so full of energy that this time she laughed out loud. “Marnie,” he said, “will you go on a date with me tomorrow?”

  “Cal, I would love to.”

  “Well,” he said ironically, “that was easy.”

  “Wasn’t it just? What time will you pick me up?”

  “Five-thirty. And I promise to feed you something other than dill chips and cherry ice cream—so don’t wear your jeans.”

  “Or my shorts?”

  “We’d never get away from your place if you did that,” Cal said.

  Then he kissed her again, a very comprehensive kiss that filled Marnie with a wild hunger for more. She pressed her body to his, through her jeans feeling his erection with a passionate excitement and no fear whatsoever. Opening to him, she kissed him back, her breasts crushed to his chest.

  It was Cal who pulled away, his breathing harsh. “We can’t make love—not here, not now. You deserve better of me than that. When we go to bed, I don’t want to rush, I don’t want to be worrying about Kit hearing us.”

  For the past few minutes, Marnie had forgotten all about Kit. Plummeted from desire to despair, she faltered, “But if we make love and Kit still hates me, what’ll we do?”

  “I don’t know,” Cal said.

  In a low voice, Marnie said, “This tears me apart, this seesawing between Kit and you. I just wish I knew what’s the right thing to do. For all three of us.”

  Cal said roughly, “I think we should cool it for now. Even though in some ways I feel like I’ve known you forever, we met less than a month ago. No heavy-duty kisses tomorrow evening, and I’ll keep my hands off you even if it kills me. Which it might.”

  She couldn’t bear the look on his face. She’d learned tonight that an important part of Cal had been refused expression during his marriage: he could only feed his appetite for risk overseas. And what of his appetite for passion? Had Jennifer, with the best intentions in the world, tamed that, too? Safety and the marriage bed, in Marnie’s opinion, wouldn’t make the best of companions; she was almost willing to bet that Cal had smothered some of his physical needs for the sake of his wife, as well.

  So did she, Marnie, free Cal in some way so he could be truly himself? “Were you ever unfaithful to Jennifer?” she asked impulsively, then grimaced. “Not that it’s any of my business. Sorry, I shouldn’t have asked.”

  “No, of course I wasn’t. In lots of ways, I’m an old-fashioned kind of guy, Marnie. Certainly I took my marriage vows very seriously.”

  She believed him instantly and said, “I agree with you that we should take one step at a time, Cal. A date. That’s what we’re talking about and that’s all. So which movie will we see?”

  “I’ll pick up a paper tomorrow and bring it with me.”

  She gave him her best smile. “I’d better go. Now that I’ve got what I wanted.”

  His hand reached out to caress her, then he snatched it back. “Have you, Marnie?”

  “Maybe not quite all,” she said ruefully. “It might kill me, too. I want you to know that. And now will you walk me to my car? It’s parked up the road.”

  He said abruptly, “I don’t think it’s just sex. Not anymore.”

  She blinked. “And you call me unpredictable?”

  “Is that all you think it is?”

  He was being as honest as he knew how, Marnie thought with a painful constriction of her heart, and he deserved her honesty back. “No,” she said. “If sex was all that’s between us, I wouldn’t be half so scared.”

  “I like you, Marnie Carstairs,” Cal said gruffly. Then he looked around for his T-shirt and pulled it on with the air of a man not quite sure he knew what he was doing. “Why don’t we go out this way?” He took her hand as they walked along the path; pine needles had never smelled so pungent to Marnie, or fog so salt laden and mysterious. All too soon they came to her car. “I hope that wreck will get you home,” Cal said, kissed her on the cheek and watched as she climbed in.

  “It will. Good night, Cal,” she said, and drove away, in her rearview mirror seeing a tall, dark-haired man with one hand raised in salute.

  As she went around a corner in the road, he disappeared. From nowhere, a question coursed through Marnie’s brain: Was this what love felt like? This unsettling mixture of excitement and discovery, strongly laced with a desire beyond comprehension?

  How would she know? She’d never been in love.

  She knew one thing. Well, two, actually. Right now, she didn’t need to go rock climbing. And she didn’t feel alone.

  She felt as though Cal was in the car with her, his presence so strong she could almost touch it. Passionate Cal, with his slate blue eyes and his beautiful body and his awkward bursts of honesty.

  Cal, who desired her, and who, once more, was smothering his very real needs. This time, for his daughter’s sake.

  On the way home, Marnie made a detour into the shopping mall at Rockcliffe, between Faulkner Beach and Hali
fax. She was almost sure she knew what she was going to do.

  It had everything and nothing to do with safety.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  MARNIE woke up on Wednesday morning knowing exactly what she was going to do. She got up right away and spent an hour in the kitchen before going off to work. She took her car instead of walking and at noon shopped for groceries. Promptly at three-thirty, she left school and drove straight back home, spending another hour in the kitchen before going to her bedroom, where she laid a single garment from her closet on the bed. Lastly, Marnie had a shower.

  When the doorbell rang, she’d just finished putting the finishing touches to her makeup. She gave herself a quick look in the mirror and hurried to the door.

  Cal looked extremely handsome in a lightweight gray suit with a pale blue shirt and a silk tie, his hair brushed into some sort of order. He was clutching a bouquet of tawny orange roses. He said with a crooked smile, “We said no sex. But we didn’t say no roses. They reminded me of your red hair, Marnie.”

  “Auburn,” she quipped. “But they’re lovely, thank you.”

  He glanced down at her. “I’m too early…you haven’t finished dressing.”

  Talking a little too fast, because now that Cal was here in the flesh, her plan seemed utterly outrageous, she said, “I took sewing lessons a couple of years ago, just long enough to learn that I’m more at home with pitons than a Singer sewing machine. This is the sole result—pretty hard to foul up something that only has two seams and doesn’t have to fit.”

  She was wearing a long, loose gown patterned in a jungle print of rich oranges, browns and yellows. The sleeves were loose, the neckline—a little crooked because she’d had difficulty with the bias—baring the graceful curve where her neck met her shoulders. Her gold hoops caught the light; her hair was a soft mass of curls.

  Cal cleared his throat, carefully keeping his distance from her. “It clashes with your purple toenails,” he said. “We’ve got lots of time. Most of the late movies don’t start until after nine. I’ve got a newspaper in the car. I thought you could look at it while we’re driving.”