by Helen Conrad
No, that wasn’t really it. He sat back and reached for the can of wax again. Why didn’t he just admit it to himself? He knew why he’d let her stay. He even knew why he wanted her with a deep, throbbing ache of need that was keeping him awake at night. What he didn’t get was why he didn’t just go ahead and let nature take its course. Get it over with. Do what came naturally.
There was no guarantee that she wanted what he wanted, of course. She felt the pull between them. That much was obvious. But she was supposedly in love with the schmuck back home. So she could be receptive or not. That was her right. But at least he would have put it to her and got it out in the open. Yes or no, he would be able to sleep at night, because he would know where they stood.
Oh hell, he was still fooling himself. He threw down the cloth in disgust and reached for the buffing pad. She felt the attraction, sure. But she didn’t want to do anything about it. Why couldn’t he be honest with himself and admit that that was what was bugging him the most? He wanted her, and she didn’t want him.
He heard the back door slam and he recognized her footsteps on the porch but he didn’t turn around. He was going to turn over a new leaf and he was going to do it right now. She was going to mean nothing to him. She was hired help and that was all. When he looked at her he was going to think of Greta, the large Nordic female breathing fire and brimstone who had been the kids’ last caretaker. Conditioning—that was all it took. They did it for smokers. They did it for drinkers. He would do it for himself. Think Greta, be reminded himself as he heard her approach. Just think Greta and stay calm.
“Joe?”
She’d stopped just behind him. He kept right on rubbing.
“Yes?” he answered, thinking of the heavy blond mustache Greta had sported with pride.
“Beth brought a little friend home from school. Sunny Bayles. Is it all right if she stays overnight?”
“Uh... sure. Why not?”
“Okay. I’ll tell her.”
He waited, but she didn’t leave. Unshaven legs, he told himself grimly. A large mole with two long, black hairs right in the center of her chin.
“The car is going to look great,” she said.
“Uh-huh.”
He could smell her scent. Even above the waxy aroma of the polish he was using, her fragrance seemed to slip in and blot everything else out. Or maybe it was all in his mind.
Mind. That’s right. Mind control. He was conducting an experiment here. He was going to think of Greta, not Carly. Greta.
Good old Greta smelled like sweat and laundry soap. And her voice—it snarled and bellowed like a foghorn. She used to call to him across the yard. “Hey, you, mister! I gotta problem here. You gonna come help me or am I gonna walk?”
The kids hid bugs in her bed. One time, Jeremy found a garter snake and put it in her bathtub. She’d screamed for Joe, and he’d come to the rescue. The sight of that semi-naked body had lived on in his nightmares for months. He shuddered now, thinking of it. Yeah, that was the spirit. Keep thinking of it....
“Joe?”
He closed his eyes for a fraction of a second. There was something about the way she said his name.
“I went into town today to look for someone who knew my father.”
The experiment went up in smoke. So much for Greta. She was fading fast. There were deeper emotional issues here than smooth skin and a pretty face. He was a goner, and he knew it.
He put down the buffing pad and turned to look at Carly. “Did you find anyone?” he asked, watching her face for the information as much as anything else.
She hesitated. “Not exactly. But I did find someone who said your mother could help me.”
Bad news. He’d hoped she wouldn’t get that far. So now what? How long could she keep looking at him with those bright, honest eyes before she realized the truth?
“I went to your mother,” she continued.
Damn. That must have been some confrontation. He shook his head slowly. He could see in her face how it had gone.
“She refused to tell me anything. And now she’s playing possum, pretending to be too sick to talk.”
And she can pretend with the best of them. He sighed, feeling guilty at how relieved he was that his mother hadn’t told her anything.
“Joe, will you say something? I need your help. I want you to get your mother to tell me what she knows about my father.”
It made his heart skip to see her like this. She wanted to know the truth so badly.
But so what? Everyone wanted something they couldn’t have. He’d wanted Ellen. He would have given anything to keep her here with him, with the kids. But he hadn’t been granted his heart’s desire either. And they’d survived, him and the kids. They were doing okay. Carly would survive not knowing.
He hesitated, taking a long, deep look into her crystal blue eyes. She was going to hate him if she found everything out and found how he’d kept it from her. But there was no alternative.
“Let it lie, Carly. You’re only asking for trouble.” He turned back to the car and began polishing with long, controlled strokes.
“How can finding out the truth make trouble?”
Her voice had a small break in it that tore at his heart.
“I’m not planning to do anything. I just want to know the truth.”
He couldn’t look her in the eye anymore. There ought to be some way he could tell her. But how could he? It wasn’t really any of his business. He hadn’t even known much of it himself until she’d come on the scene.
And if she did find out, what would she do? There was no telling how many people would end up getting hurt—including Carly herself. It would probably be better if she stayed in the dark and just went on back to wherever it was that she came from. And married the wonderful and extremely patient guy who was waiting in the wings.
He glanced sideways at her, noting the silver glint the sunlight made on her hair. Geez, if it were him, he’d be ripping the countryside apart looking for this woman by now. Either the man had the patience of Job, or he was a complete idiot. He leaned harder into the work and kept on rubbing.
“Sorry, darlin’, but the truth doesn’t always set you free.”
He didn’t turn to look at her, but he did strain for signs that she was leaving. Unfortunately, she showed no evidence of being bowled over by his witty repartee. Neither did she head for the house. Instead, she came up close beside where he was working and asked a question he would just as soon have avoided.
“Joe. What exactly is wrong with your mother anyway?”
He gritted his teeth and answered truthfully. “I don’t know.”
“You don’t know?” Her face mirrored her disbelief.
“That’s right.” He went on working, not wanting to get caught up in the meeting of eyes again. “She’s in control of her own illness, whatever it is. She’s got the best medical care I can get her. She’s got anything she wants anytime she wants it. She’s living the way she wants to live right now.”
His cloth stopped for a moment and he finally looked at her.
“She’s my mother, Carly. I take care of her, and I will as long as she wants me to. I’m not going to contest her life-style.”
“But she sits up there for days... It’s—it’s not right.’’
Her face was so open, so uncomprehending. She thought she was experienced and sophisticated with all her city background, but she really didn’t know much about people and what made them tick, did she? He sighed and looked into her eyes again, braving the reaction he knew would follow.
“Listen, Carly. My mother’s had plenty of disappointment in her life. If this makes her happy right now, that’s okay with me. As long as she doesn’t do anything to hurt my kids, she can do what she wants.”
Carly shook her head, ready to protest, but he went on, cutting her off.
“She’s been hurt, she’s been disappointed, she’s worked for years for others. And now she should have some time to do what she wants to do.�
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Carly still shook her head, unconvinced. “But she’s wasting her life away up there,” she said. “You should be encouraging her to live her life more fully, to come down and—“
“Carly.” He resisted the urge to touch her, to convince her with his hands. Steeling himself, he turned back to the polished car, rubbing for a higher shine in places where he’d already just about rubbed the finish right off.
“Let me tell you about my mother, Carly,” he said softly, determined not to look at her again. “When she was young she had a beautiful voice. When she was just sixteen she used to hire a hall in town and people would come from miles around to hear her sing show-tunes and light-opera stuff. She was so good, she got a scholarship to a big music college in the East.”
He hesitated, then went on, supplying the details. “Her father was against her going. He was a farmer and he didn’t see what good all this singing did. Who would want to listen to her singing songs nobody could understand the words to, anyway? He wanted her to marry my father and settle down. So she made a pact with him. If Geoffrey Carrington still wanted her in four years when she was through with her training, she would come back and marry him and be a country wife.” His buffing cloth paused as he remembered things. “You see, Geoffrey was older than she was, about twenty years’ worth. He was the last man on earth she wanted to marry. But she figured he was so old, he didn’t have much time left, and he would surely find another girl in those four years. So she went east and studied opera. That was what she loved. And she did real well. So well that a European opera company offered her a job. It was a dream come true.”
He paused and stared out at the mountains. It had been years since he’d thought about his mother in these terms. His life had been so caught up in his own problems lately that he’d forgotten other people had their dreams smashed, too.
“Well,” Carly asked impatiently. “Did she go? How did she do abroad? Did she get to sing in Vienna?”
He looked at her. She was really interested. Despite everything, he had to smile.
“No. She never sang in Vienna. She called home to tell her parents the exciting news and her father reminded her of her bargain. There was to be no tour of Europe. She was to come home and take care of her responsibilities.”
“She came home and married that older man?”
He nodded, amused at her horror. “I told you he was my father, didn’t I?”
“Yes, but...” She made a face.
“She came home. She hated every minute of it, hated the man she married, hated life on the farm. But she came home and did what she was supposed to do. And the only time she ever sang again was in a church choir.”
“That’s crazy!”
He shrugged. “Times were different then. She was raised to do what was expected of her.”
“Did she... did she ever love your father?”
He hesitated, wondering that himself. “I don’t think she ever loved him in any sort of wildly romantic way. But she eventually came to have a great affection for him. And they did okay toward the end.”
Carly shook her head, marveling at another age, another way of doing things.
“Why doesn’t she go on with her singing now? She probably couldn’t do full opera, but surely she could sing in shows, maybe in dinner theater...”
“I guess the way she looks at it is—too little, too late. She missed her only chance.”
A look of quick anger passed over Carly’s face. It was all very well to understand backgrounds and feel sorry for this woman, but when you came right down to it Phyllis wasn’t your completely sympathetic character.
“So instead of being happy herself she’s going to make the rest of the world miserable?” she asked evenly.
Joe looked at her. “She doesn’t make me miserable.”
“Doesn’t she?”
“No.”
Carly was sorry, but she couldn’t be quite that generous to the woman. She looked up at the window of Phyllis’s room and knew Phyllis was watching them every minute. Watching them and wondering what Joe was revealing to her.
Which brought up another subject. How much of anything did Joe know himself? She turned back to look at him. She’d never known a car could need so much polishing. He was avoiding her as much as he could and she knew it. But there were questions he might be able to answer—questions she hadn’t had the nerve to put to him as yet. Maybe it was time.
“Tell me this, Joe,” she said softly, standing as close to him as she could get and still give him room to do his work. “Do you know who Trevor’s father was?”
He didn’t turn around, but his hand stopped rubbing. “That is none of your business, Carly,” he answered as softly as she’d spoken.
“Then you do know.”
He turned to stare at her with his dark, deep eyes. “Carly, go away.”
“What about my father? What do you know that you haven’t told me?”
He dropped the pad and turned to grab her by the shoulders, holding her fiercely where she would have to meet his dark gaze.
“Carly,” he said earnestly, “there are a lot of things going on here that you don’t understand. You’ve got to stop digging into the past. It’s only going to hurt people. It’s only going to hurt you.”
She stared up at him, her blue eyes beseeching him to understand. She wanted him in her corner. But maybe that was impossible. “Don’t you see, can’t you understand, that I can’t stop? It’s too late.”
He shook his head. “You were happy, weren’t you? You told me yourself that you never cared that much about finding your father before. It wasn’t until you got here that things changed.”
His dark eyes looked tortured. “I don’t know, maybe if you just would go back where you came from...”
She shook her head. “You know it’s too late for that. Now that I’ve begun, I have to know the truth. I’ll never have another chance to do this. I’ve got to find out, and I’ve got to find out now.”
“What about this guy who’s waiting for you? How long do you think he’s going to wait?”
“Mark?”
He nodded.
Avoiding his eyes, she looked away distractedly. “I don’t know. I can’t think about Mark right now. That almost seems like another life. A life I’m going to get back to one of these days. But right now, I have to find out about my father.”
“Carly.” He touched her hair, her cheek. His eyes were clouded, so troubled she could hardly stand to look into them. “Carly, don’t do it. It’s only going to hurt you.”
“I can be hurt, Joe. I’m strong. I can take it.”
He let her go, stepping back. She stood where she was for a long moment, looking at him. And then she turned slowly and started walking back toward the house.
Joe felt tired as he watched her go. They were in for some rough times. And she was going to be hurt. Only time would tell if she were as strong as she thought she was.
CHAPTER TEN
PILLOW FIGHT!
It all started innocently enough, later that afternoon. Beth and her friend Sunny wanted to make cookies. Carly stuck around to supervise, though she was actually trying to pick up a few pointers on the fine art of cookie baking herself.
Chocolate-chip cookies. Was there anything that smelled better in the oven? Was there anything that tasted better freshly baked?
They put in the first batch, set the timer and retired to the den where Beth wanted to show Sunny pictures of the horse she kept at Millie’s. When the buzzer went off, they trooped back into the kitchen, pulled the delicious cookies from the oven, and turned to the bowl to prepare the second batch.
“Wait a minute!” Beth cried.
“Uh-oh,” agreed Sunny.
“Wasn’t there more batter left?” Carly chimed in.
They all stared at the bowl. There seemed to be about half as much batter left as there had been when they’d left the room.
“Who could possibly be eating the batter?” Carly aske
d slowly. She and Beth looked at each other and Carly gave the little girl a big wink. Beth grinned.
“Let’s put in the second batch,” Carly said. “Then we’ll see what we can do about this mystery.”
They dropped the teaspoons of lumpy batter onto the cookie sheet and put it into the oven and went to the den, but this time they didn’t stay there. Instead, they hid behind the hallway door and listened intently, trying hard not to giggle. When they heard the soft pad of footsteps going into the kitchen, they came out from behind the door and began to sneak toward the kitchen as quietly as they could manage. When they reached the kitchen door, they sprang out and surprised Jeremy with a fingerful of batter halfway to his mouth.
“Aha!” cried Beth and Sunny and Carly, all at the same time.
A look of pure demonic delight spread across his naughty face. He dashed for the door, breaking through the line they made and heading down the hall with an evil cackle.
“He got away!” the girls both yelled in chagrin, and off they went after him. Carly laughed and watched from the doorway, enjoying Jeremy’s grin as he ran from one room to another, just ahead of the girls. This was a side of the boy she hadn’t seen enough of.
When the pillows started flying, her first impulse was to stop things. But they were having so much fun, and Jeremy needed this kind of release so badly. And what harm could a pillow do?
The crash of something solid hitting the floor answered that question soon enough, but when she reached the living room she found it was only a tray that wasn’t damaged at all. She closed the door to the dining room with its china cabinet and glassware.
By now there were pillows littering the floor from every room in the house. To make matters worse, the fight was looking one-sided, with Jeremy trying to fend off the two of them. Carly bit her lip, then made up her mind. She had to throw her lot in with the underdog.
“Hold on, Jeremy! I’m coming to the rescue!” she cried, picking up an armful of pillows as she ran toward where he was cornered by the girls in the den.
The girls squealed with indignation at her betrayal, but they all laughed and threw more pillows—pillows from the couch in the den, pillows from the chairs in the living room, pillows from the seats in the kitchen, pillows from the spare bedroom. It was raining pillows and laughter.
