He eyed her warily, then nodded. “You’re welcome.”
She chuckled. “I mean it. Maybe if I’d grown up with a father in the picture, I would’ve expected this sort of behavior from a man, but for me it’s a new experience. One that I’m enjoying.”
“Okay. I’ll relax.” He took a drink of beer, then glanced at her. “At the risk of starting trouble again, what happened to your dad?”
“He left when I was born. Stayed with my mother until I popped into the world, then he walked out. She never heard from him again.”
Jim frowned. “Ouch. That had to be tough for both of you.”
Heather shrugged. “She always told me she knew it was bound to happen. He wasn’t the kind of man who could deal well with the responsibility of a family. She said that having a wife had been enough trauma for him.” She paused. “I don’t know what to think. I never knew the man, so I try not to make any judgments. My mom was disappointed, but she never hated him. I suppose the hardest thing for me to deal with was the rejection.”
“What are you talking about?” he asked.
“My father walked out the second I was born,” Heather explained. “It’s difficult not to take that personally.”
“But it wasn’t about you—it was about the responsibility of a family. He would have left any child.”
“I know you’re trying to make me feel better. And you’re not saying anything I haven’t already told myself. But it feels like it was about me. I was the only child involved.”
Jim’s blue eyes darkened with empathy. “I’m sorry.”
It was a polite phrase, yet coming from him it made her feel a little better. Probably because she knew he meant it.
“Thanks. It was a long time ago. I’ve gone through stages when I hated him, when I prayed for him to come home. I’ve thought about trying to find him. My mom always said that she would give me what little information she has if I want to hire a detective or something.”
“Did you?”
“No. I never saw the point. The entire time I was growing up he wasn’t interested in me, so why should I be interested in him now? If he came looking, I don’t think I would be that hard to find, but it has to come from him. I’ve made peace with my past.”
Jim took a long swallow of beer, then set the bottle on the coffee table. He faced front, resting his elbows on his knees and lacing his fingers together. “I wish I could do that,” he said grimly.
“What do you mean?”
He gave a quick jerk of his head. “Nothing.” Then he glanced at her and smiled faintly. “I don’t suppose you’re going to believe that, are you?”
“No, but if you really don’t want me to push, I won’t.”
“It’s no big deal,” he said. “My dad walked out on me, too. I was a little older and I don’t think it was about me, but he left all the same.”
Heather pressed her lips together to hold back all her questions. There was so much she wanted to know. Yet something inside of her whispered that Jim had to tell the story at his own pace. So she remained quietly in place on the sofa and waited.
“I guess my parents were happy,” he said at last. “They fought some and then they made up. I remember things being pretty good between them. When I was about eight, my mom was diagnosed with MS. After that, everything changed.”
Heather’s breath seemed to freeze in her throat. “Multiple sclerosis?” she asked in a whisper.
He nodded.
Heather didn’t know what to say. What could she say? An illness like that put a lot of pressure on a family. Jim had been only eight years old. “You must have been scared.”
“I didn’t understand what was happening,” he admitted. “She wasn’t sick like with the flu, but she was having trouble moving around and doing certain things. Hers was the kind that progressed fairly quickly without many remissions. My dad stayed for two years, then, when I was ten, he walked out on us.”
“He left you?” she blurted without thinking. “Just like that? While your mom was sick?”
He nodded.
“Were the two of you alone?”
“Yeah. Neither of my folks had much in the way of family. That’s when I got so scared. That’s what I remember most about that time. My mom had just started using a wheelchair. It was tough for her to get around the house because some of the doorways weren’t wide enough. I couldn’t carry her or anything. We had decent medical insurance and sometimes there were nurses, but it wasn’t enough. My dad sent money, but that wasn’t enough, either.”
Heather’s stomach tightened as she tried to imagine a grown man leaving his ten-year-old son in charge of a disabled woman.
“When he left, he said it was up to me. That I would have to be in charge and take care of things. I didn’t understand what he was saying. When I started to cry, he slapped me across the face and told me to quit acting like a girl.”
Heather pressed her hand to her mouth to hold in a soft cry of pain. Pain for him and the child he had been. She slid toward him on the sofa but didn’t touch him. She wasn’t sure if she should encourage him to keep going on with his story or tell him to stop. She wanted to do whatever would make him feel better. But before she could decide what to do, he started talking again.
“My mom got progressively worse. I would come home from school every day and take care of her.” He closed his eyes against memories she couldn’t begin to imagine. “She suffered a lot.”
“So did you,” she said gently, and touched his arm. “You were too young to be dealing with that kind of pressure. I’m surprised the court didn’t put you in a foster home.”
“I don’t think anyone knew. The nurses came during the day and they all thought my dad was at work. My mom didn’t tell them anything different. I think she was afraid of going to a nursing home.”
He clutched his hands tighter, until she could see white on the knuckles and the ridges of his tendons.
“I tried,” he said. “I tried so damn hard, but it was never enough. The more incapacitated she became, the more I had to do for her. Finally, the nurses told us she was going to have to go on a respirator.”
A shudder rippled through him. His voice dropped to a whisper. “That night, my mother told me she didn’t want to try anymore. She was in pain and she was dying. She refused to live her last days breathing with the help of a machine. So she wanted to kill herself.”
Heather sucked in a breath. She sensed what was coming next and didn’t want to hear it. She didn’t want to know what Jim had been through. But she couldn’t stop him from speaking. She could only listen and pray that she was wrong.
“I was feeding her soup,” he said. “She looked at me and told me she couldn’t do it herself, so she wanted me to kill her.”
The scent of the heating coals drifted into the room. Two houses away, children played outside—a noisy game that had them shrieking with laughter. But here in Heather’s house, time stood still. The words repeated themselves in her brain, bending and weaving together until the vowels and consonants made no sense. And yet a very clear image remained. A dying mother had asked her young son to kill her.
“How old were you?”
“Thirteen.” He sagged back against the sofa and rubbed his face. “I couldn’t do it. I cried and yelled at her and told her it was wrong, but she was relentless. Day after day that was all she talked about. She’d figured out how and she even wanted me to help her write a letter so everyone would understand it wasn’t my fault. She said if I didn’t do this one thing, she would never forgive me. She would stop loving me.”
The last sentence had been a mere whisper. Heather had sensed it more than heard it. She stared at Jim, numb with shock, but he wasn’t looking at her anymore. She doubted that he even remembered she was in the room.
“The day they came and put the breathing tube into her, she screamed at me, swearing she would never forgive me. Then she stopped screaming. After that, she wouldn’t look at me except with hatred.”
/> Heather’s stomach lurched uneasily while cold sweat dotted her brow. It wasn’t supposed to be like this for anyone, she thought in horror. How had he survived the ordeal? How had he turned out so incredibly wonderful when this was his past?
“After that, she deteriorated fairly quickly,” he went on.
His voice had changed, now sounding almost normal, as if he was telling someone else’s story. Maybe that was how he kept his sanity.
“They moved her to a nursing home. By that time, I was in foster care. I visited her every day, but when I came into the room, she closed her eyes. No matter how I begged her to forgive me, she pretended I wasn’t there. Even at the end, she wouldn’t forgive me. I remember standing by the side of her bed, sobbing. I told her that I’d done the best I could, but I couldn’t fix her. She was my mother, so I couldn’t kill her. I could only love her and want her to love me back. I begged her to give me just one look to let me know it was okay between us.”
He was silent for several minutes, then he continued. “Finally, I bent over to kiss her goodbye. The doctor told me she probably wouldn’t make it through the night and I begged her one last time to forgive me. Instead, she kept her eyes closed, and with what I guess was her last bit of strength and ability to move, she turned her head away.”
He gave a half-strangled laugh that was one of pain rather than humor. “She could only move about a half inch or so, but I knew what she was doing. Rejecting me with that final act. She shut me out forever.”
“I’m so sorry,” Heather said, wishing she had something helpful to say. She couldn’t remember ever feeling so incredibly inadequate.
“Me, too,” Jim said lightly. “I didn’t mean to make you cry.”
She reached up and was surprised to find her cheeks damp. She sniffed and wiped away the tears. “What a horrible experience,” she said. “It’s so sad. I don’t pretend to understand what your mother was suffering, but it must have been awful. Even so, I can’t forgive her for what she did to you. You were so young.” More tears rolled down her cheeks. She brushed them away impatiently. “Sorry, Jim. I don’t think I can help it.”
His jaw tightened. “I wish I’d been able to fix the situation, to fix her, but I couldn’t. That’s what I regret the most.”
He was lying. Heather knew that with the same certainty that she knew the sun would rise the next morning. Jim was in pain, not because he hadn’t been able to “fix” his mother, but because she’d made an impossible request and then rejected him for failing her. What he remembered most was the withdrawal of her love because that was her real death to him.
Then everything made sense. In one of those blinding flashes of truth, she knew why she hadn’t been able to figure him out. Why he appeared so perfect all the time. Jim had decided to spend his life making up for what he saw as the failures of a thirteen-year-old boy. He couldn’t fix his mother, but he was determined to fix everything else in his world. He was making up for the past. Unfortunately, until he understood he had done nothing wrong, he was destined to search for a forgiveness that could only come from within himself.
There weren’t any dark secrets save the one he’d just shared. He was exactly who he appeared to be—a real, live, genuine hero. He really was one of the good guys, and Lord help her, now there was nothing to keep her from falling helplessly in love with him.
Chapter Nine
“You didn’t eat much dinner,” Jim said as he collected the plates and carried them into the kitchen.
“It wasn’t the cooking, I swear. The steaks were delicious.”
Heather wasn’t lying. The meat had been perfectly prepared. She’d microwaved potatoes and fixed a salad while Jim had barbecued the steaks. But her lack of appetite wasn’t because of a problem with the food and they both knew that.
“I’m sorry,” he said when he returned to the table and took the seat across from hers. “I shouldn’t have told you.”
“No.” She shook her head. “I’m glad you did. We’re friends and you’re very important to me. I’m just having a little trouble absorbing everything you said.”
Images and questions swirled in her head. The horror of Jim’s past made her want to hold him close and somehow make it better. Which wasn’t all that different from his own need to fix. As a new mother who deeply loved her child, Heather couldn’t understand how either of Jim’s parents could have treated him that way. First his father deserting his son and his stricken wife, then his mother with her impossible request. No one should have to deal with that kind of situation, let alone a young boy.
She could feel tears forming again. She’d have to stop thinking about it so much or she would spend the evening sobbing hysterically. Hardly the relaxing good time they’d both planned.
“Let’s change the subject,” she said. “It’s summer, right? So how are the Dodgers doing?”
Jim gave her a lazy grin. “You really want to talk about baseball?”
“Sure.”
“Prove it. Name one Dodger player.”
She opened her mouth, then closed it. “I know their uniforms are blue and white. That should count for something.”
“It should, but it doesn’t. I have a different topic suggestion.”
“At this point I’m willing to accept anything.”
“How about coming with me to Rick and Lupe’s wedding?” He held up his hand. “Not as a date, but as friends. I think it would be fun.”
“I’d like that,” she said without hesitating.
She would enjoy spending time with Jim away from the office. She always had. His clarification that it wasn’t a date meant she could relax and not worry about subtle or not-so-subtle tension flaring between them.
“Do you dance?” she asked teasingly.
“I think I can shuffle my way around the floor well enough to keep you happy.”
“Yes, but will I be embarrassed?”
He laughed. “Probably.”
At the sound of his laughter, tears formed in her eyes. Before she could control them, one slipped down her cheek. Jim swore under his breath, reached across the small table and brushed her skin.
“I’m sorry,” she said softly. “I’m really fine.”
“Yeah, I can tell.”
“No, I mean it. Some of it’s because I’m still a little emotional these days, and some of it’s because of what you told me. Regardless, I refuse to regret knowing the truth about your past. You’ve had a lifetime to get used to it, but I’ve only had an hour. Give me a little time and I’ll be fine.” His hand lay close to hers. She touched it. “I’m very proud to know you.”
He stiffened in his chair, straightening and pulling back. “Don’t start anything like that. Don’t be proud because I survived a difficult childhood. I can name a dozen people who overcame a lot worse.”
“It’s not that you survived,” she said. “It’s that you thrived. Look at what you’ve done with your life. All the people you help every day.”
His expression shifted from uncomfortable to embarrassed. He set his jaw. “I’m not some damned hero. I’m just…” He shook his head and stood up. “It’s getting late. I should head out of here.”
Heather rose to her feet, as well. “You’re just a good man,” she said, completing his sentence. “There aren’t enough of those around, which still means you get to be a hero whether you like it or not. Sorry, Jim, you’re stuck with a cape and superpowers.”
“As long as I don’t have to wear red plastic boots.”
“You don’t.” She led the way to the front door, then paused before opening it. “I meant what I said,” she told him. “I am very proud to know you. I appreciate your willingness to share a difficult piece of your past with me and I’ll respect your confidence.”
He shoved his hands into his front pockets. “I trust you, Heather. I never expected otherwise.”
His words made her glow with pleasure. Which was silly because they were just friends, and friends looked out for and trusted each ot
her. None of this should have been news to either of them. But his expression of trust made her feel good about both of them.
Impulsively, she raised herself up on tiptoe to kiss his cheek. But he was six-three to her five-seven and she couldn’t quite reach. “I’m only going to give you a friendly peck on the cheek,” she said laughingly. “It’s a combination thank-you and I’m-happy-to-be-your-friend gesture. The least you could do is cooperate.”
But instead of bending down or making a joke, Jim hesitated. In that second, doubts crashed in on Heather. They were just friends and she’d somehow crossed the line. He wasn’t comfortable with that kind of affection. The thought of her kissing his cheek was repellent to him and—
“A kiss would be nice,” he said, interrupting her emotional self-flagellation.
But she’d already taken an involuntary step away and now they were too far apart. They stared at each other. He shook his head.
“Did we just have a momentary lapse of communication or are we both incredibly inept?” he asked.
“I don’t know. Maybe both.”
He smiled, and her world righted itself. “Okay, let’s start over,” he told her. “I’m going to say goodbye, but first you’re going to give me a kiss. How’s that?”
“Fine.” But too much time had passed and she was suddenly nervous. Kiss Jim? What had she been thinking? They didn’t kiss. They teased and laughed and occasionally hugged, but never, ever kissed.
“Great.”
He reached out and took hold of her upper arms and drew her closer to him. As he lowered his head, she went up on tiptoe. Her plan had been to kiss his cheek, only he didn’t turn his head and she had to make a decision really soon because his mouth was right there and did she pull away and reach for his cheek or—
Their mouths touched in a soft contact that spoke volumes more than her friendly peck had been meant to do. Heather froze. The very sensible part of her brain said that they’d kissed, it was over, and she needed to get this man out of her house. But the sensible part of her brain was small and incredibly overrated. Especially as the contact between their mouths continued and various parts of her body woke up and began to notice.
Surprise Delivery Page 11
