A glance at the wall clock told him he barely had time to call Reba. He dialed and, while he waited for someone to answer, stood and slipped into his suit jacket.
“Reba, please,” he said when her assistant answered.
“Seth?” She was on the line a moment later.
“I’m afraid I won’t be able to see you tonight.” As he said the words he realized he was more disappointed than he’d thought. Perhaps a bit of a break was for the best with them. It wouldn’t take much to become accustomed to spending time with Reba each and every day. She was fast becoming addictive. A good kind of addictive. She made him feel again, dream again, hope again.
“Is something wrong?”
He explained the situation with Sharon, hoping Reba might have some insights to give him. “Mrs. Merkle is driving the kids to practice. I hope all Sharon needs is some time away.”
“I’m sure you’re right. And don’t worry, I can give you the price quotes any time.”
He wasn’t worried, but he’d been looking forward to seeing her all day. Every now and again he found himself staring at the time, mentally tabulating how long it’d be before he’d be with her. He wanted to suggest she stop off at the house after church, but he couldn’t. Not knowing what was happening between his in-laws was one thing, but Reba was sure to be physically and emotionally exhausted after her time with the kids. From what he understood she’d already received her share of bad news.
The baby Jesus had come down with a bad cold, and one of the shepherds had broken his leg. This was terrific news as far as Judd was concerned, since he preferred that role over being an angel.
“I’ve got to scoot,” Seth told her with regret, and then, because this brief conversation wouldn’t be enough to see him through until he could be with her again, he added, “Can I call you later?”
“Yes, please do. I hope everything’s all right with your mother-in-law.”
“I hope so, too.”
The words echoed in his mind some forty minutes later as he was at Sea-Tac, waiting for Sharon to step out of the jetway. He knew the instant he saw her that something was drastically wrong. She looked straight past him, as pale as death, stricken and shell-shocked.
“Sharon.” He stepped forward and took the carry-on bag out of her hand.
She looked at him as if seeing a stranger. “Seth. Thank you for coming. I can’t tell you how much I appreciate it.” She hugged him briefly, and he could tell she was struggling not to weep.
“It’s good to see you.” He studied her, wondering what had happened and how much he should urge her to tell him. “How much luggage do you have with you?” he asked, leading the way to the baggage claim area.
“Luggage…Oh, my, I don’t think I brought any. I have my carry-on, but I don’t seem to remember packing…. I suppose I should have. No, I did have a suitcase, but I left it at the house. Oh, dear.”
“Don’t worry, you can buy whatever you need.”
Seth carried the conversation as they walked toward the parking garage. She answered him, but only when he asked a direct question, only when absolutely necessary.
Seth helped her into the car and stuck her carry-on bag on the backseat. As he set it on the cushion, the bag fell open, exposing one slipper and a novel. She’d come for the holidays, arriving ten days before Christmas, with one shoe? He closed his eyes, wishing he were better at handling this sort of situation. He wanted to help but feared he was grossly inadequate.
Once they were home, he placed Sharon’s bag in the spare bedroom and took the two heaping dinner plates out of the oven. He set them on the table and sat across from her. He might as well have served Sharon mowed lawn for all the interest she showed in it.
“How’s Jerry?” he ventured.
Her gaze narrowed, and tears moistened her eyes. “Fine, I suspect, just fine.”
“He’s in California?” No telling where Jerry was, with Sharon here.
“Yes.” She looked away.
“Is there a problem with you two?” he asked next, gently exploring with questions the way a physician carefully examines a painful wound.
Sharon was saved from answering when the phone rang loudly and unexpectedly. Seth answered it with a certain reluctance.
“Hello.”
“Is Sharon there?” his father-in-law asked without any preliminaries.
“Jerry?”
Sharon’s eyes rounded. “Don’t tell him I’m here.”
“I want to talk to my wife,” Jerry demanded, loudly enough to be heard on the other side of the room.
Seth’s mother-in-law squared her shoulders and glared across the room, her pain-filled eyes as sharp as the polished edge of a sword. “You can tell Jerry Palmer that as of twelve-thirty this afternoon, I ceased being his wife.”
Seth didn’t want to be trapped as a go-between in this situation. “Perhaps it would be better if you talked to him yourself.”
“No,” she said with conviction. “I don’t ever plan to talk to that man again. Maggie’s welcome to him.”
“Maggie!” Jerry exploded on the other end of the line. “What the hell is she talking about?”
Chapter 17
People don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.
—Mrs. Miracle
Reba lay on the carpet next to the fireplace, her head propped against a decorator pillow, her legs bent and crossed and the phone cradled against her ear. Christmas music played softly in the background.
“I wish I’d been able to see you tonight,” Seth said, his voice low and seductive.
“I wish you could have, too.” She knew he was worried about his mother-in-law. “How’s Sharon?”
“Not good.” The unexpected arrival appeared to mystify him. “Jerry phoned, and the two got into a shouting match with me holding the phone. As best I can make out, Sharon saw him with another woman.”
Reba bit into her lower lip, remembering the time she’d walked in and discovered her fiancé and her sister together. The shock, the horror, and the pain of betrayal by two people she loved had overwhelmed her until it was all she could do to remember to breathe.
“Jerry would never cheat on Sharon,” Seth said confidently. “I’d bet my life on it. He’s just not the type.”
“Is Sharon the kind of woman who’d jump to conclusions?”
“No,” Seth admitted, and she heard the reluctance in his voice. “There’s got to be an explanation, but all she does is blast out at Jerry. The poor guy can barely get a word in edgewise.”
“She has a right to be angry.” Reba was all too familiar with the anger that followed the shock of such a discovery. She’d carried hers around with her for four long years. It burned as brightly now as it had the day she’d stumbled upon John and Vicki in bed together.
At first, when she’d been numb with shock, John had tried to reason with her, explain it all away with the sweetest of lies. Vicki’s eyes had said it all. They’d been filled with horror and regret, but it was too late. Much too late for apologies or forgiveness.
“Of course she has a right to be angry, but she isn’t even giving Jerry a chance to explain himself. It’s like she wants to believe he’d purposely hurt her.”
“Perhaps he already has.” Reba’s hand tightened around the telephone receiver. Eventually she’d need to tell Seth about her strained relationship with her family. In the years since her broken engagement she hadn’t related the story often, but she felt Seth had a right to know this painful part of her past. She cared about him, wanted with all of her heart for this relationship to work. Wanted it enough to bare her soul. The irony of it was that she could tell him only over the phone. She needed the separation, the protection of distance, in order to relate the details of what had shaped the last few years of her life.
“Do you remember what I said about me avoiding my family?”
He hesitated, as if he instinctively knew the importance of what she was about to tell him. “I remember,�
�� he said.
She drew in a deep breath, anticipating the pain the story was sure to bring. “Four years ago…the same year Pamela died, I was engaged to an architectural student by the name of John Goddard. We’d met in college and fallen deeply in love. We planned our wedding; every detail was of the utmost importance. My older sister, Vicki, was to be my maid of honor. I’ve never spent a more wonderful summer. I’d graduated from college with a business degree, and was in love and about to be married. Then…” The sudden knot that tightened her throat made it impossible to continue.
“Reba?”
The gentle concern in his voice nearly undid her, and she struggled to hold back the emotion. “Vicki was jealous…I knew it, saw it. We’d always been competitive, but for the first time in our lives I had something she wanted. You see, she was always the one who blazed new territory. Grades, sports, and just about everything else. It was important to her to outdo me, to be first. Yet I was the one who was engaged, I was to be the first one married.
“She didn’t love John, but she flirted with him, teased him, and asked him if he was sure he was marrying the right sister. I laughed it off. What else could I do but laugh?”
“What happened?” Seth asked with tender concern.
She braced herself and between gritted teeth said the words. Each one fell from her lips as hard as concrete. As hard and as unbending. “A week before the wedding I found my sister in bed with my fiancé. I’m convinced she planned it that way, that she wanted me to find them. She wanted to show me that she could have anything that was mine. Anything, including my soon-to-be husband.” There couldn’t be any other explanation. But Vicki’s victory had turned out to be a shallow one. Reba recognized that the moment she saw her sister and the sick regret in her eyes. The remorse and honest grief.
“You broke off the engagement?” Seth asked, again with cautious tenderness, recognizing what it had cost her to peel back the wounds of the past.
“I canceled the wedding that very day, and I haven’t spoken to my sister since.” She tensed, waiting for him to tell her how foolish she was being, that by refusing to forgive her sister, she was only hurting herself. Well-meaning friends had said it before, and it was a theme her mother sang at every opportunity. No one understood that what Vicki had done was unforgivable.
“The ironic part of it is that my sister’s married now to another man and has a child. The adored, lone grandchild.” Hiding her bitterness was an impossible task. That her sister should find happiness while she lived alone rankled every time she allowed her mind to dwell on it.
“In other words, your sister came away from all this smelling like a rose.”
Her eyes flew open. Seth knew. Seth understood. “Yes,” she whispered, grateful that he appreciated the irony of her situation.
“Meanwhile you broke off the wedding at the last minute and everyone was left to speculate what had happened. That speculation made it seem that the fault was with you. You were fickle, didn’t know what you wanted, were afraid of commitment, that sort of thing. You were the one who bore the shame.”
“Yes.” She had to restrain herself to keep from shouting. The days and weeks following the canceled wedding were a nightmarish blur in her mind. In order to save himself from embarrassment, John had told their friends a story that didn’t vaguely resemble the truth.
In an effort to escape the probing questions and the curious stares, Reba had escaped to the beach, telling no one where she was. When she’d returned she’d invested her time and energy in establishing her travel agency. Some claimed that her success in the highly competitive travel industry was phenomenal. She wouldn’t discount her efforts or the long hours she’d invested, but the drive, the urge to succeed, could be credited to John and Vicki’s treachery and her need to escape the memory of their betrayal.
“Aren’t you going to tell me how foolish I am to leave this matter between my sister and me unresolved?” Reba challenged. Eventually Seth would comment on it, and she’d rather have it out in the open. “People say leaving the matter this way is like not treating an open, festering wound.”
“Have you ever had a boil?” he asked, baffling her by changing the subject.
“No.”
“I did as a kid, twice. They’re ugly things, painful and full of pus. Eventually they come to a head. My mother put hot compresses on the one on my arm, but the other…well, it was in an area I didn’t want my mother looking at.” He chuckled softly. “I imagine this matter with your sister is something like an emotional boil. Eventually it’ll come to a head, and it’ll hurt like hell, but once the poison’s out of your system, you’ll heal, but not until you’re ready.”
“I don’t ever plan on speaking to her again.”
“I didn’t want to deal with the boil, either. You can delay it, ignore it as long as you want, but it isn’t going to go away. If you want to live with it, well, that’s your decision. When the time’s right to set matters straight with your sister, you’ll know it.”
How wise Seth was, and understanding.
“I wish I was with you right now,” he murmured.
She did, too, although she’d opted to explain the situation over the phone. She needed him, and for a woman who’d insulated her life against needing anyone, this was a moment of truth. She did need Seth. Needed him in ways she was only beginning to understand.
“You’ve been badly hurt. Betrayed by your own flesh and blood, and by the man you were ready to commit your life to. You have a right to your anger, a right to your pain.”
“No one understood that.” She had to whisper the words because she feared if she spoke normally, her voice wouldn’t hold. “My family seemed to think I was better off without John.”
“But you loved him.”
“Yes. I knew what they said was true, but that didn’t make me hurt any less.” Her voice shook, but she managed to keep the tears at bay.
“Of course it didn’t.”
“What happened afterward is beyond comprehension,” she said. “That’s what I find so crazy. No one faulted Vicki. My parents completely absolved her from any wrongdoing. Because she was sorry, I was supposed to look the other way and pretend this was nothing out of the ordinary. She kept telling me she never meant for it to happen. She sobbed and cried and pleaded with me to forgive her, and I couldn’t. The irony is I felt nothing. Not hate, not right away. That came later. I just looked at her, unable to believe that she was capable of anything that ugly, that deceitful.”
“I wish I could put my arms around you and take away the hurt,” Seth said with such tenderness that she had to fight back the emotion.
“I wish you could, too.”
“Close your eyes and pretend I am. Pretend your head’s on my shoulder and my arms are wrapped around you.”
She shut her eyes and did as he instructed. Caught in the fantasy, she could almost feel his fragrant breath close to her ear. Feel the comfort of his hands as he ran them up and down her spine. Feel the sweet pressure of his lips molding against hers, the taste of his tongue as he claimed her mouth and drove away the demons of the past.
“I think I could love you, Seth Webster.” Reba didn’t realize what she’d said until she heard the husky words leave her lips. She cringed at revealing her own vulnerability and tilted her head toward the ceiling.
“I’m beginning to think the same thing about you, Reba Maxwell. It’s as if we’re two of a kind, a matched set.”
The line hummed with awareness. Reba would have given anything to actually be in his arms just then. “Thank you for not lecturing me about my relationship with my sister.”
“You understood why I gave up playing the piano,” Seth reminded her. “Plenty of people have given me grief over that.”
“We’ve both been hurt,” she said, realizing that it was this knowledge of pain that had drawn them to each other. They had come together like magnets, two of the world’s walking wounded.
They talked for an hour longer,
the barriers down, freely and without reserve, laughing and crying together. They shared secrets and dreams, and when she hung up, Reba had rarely felt closer to anyone, male or female.
A half hour later she crawled into bed. The sheets felt cool and crisp against her heated skin. She stretched out her arm and ran it along the wide-open space beside her. She’d found him. The man who would return to her everything that she’d lost. Her sanity, her pride, her dreams. Utterly content for the first time since her canceled wedding, she closed her eyes.
Beyond a doubt she realized that one day she would sleep with Seth, would share her bed and her life with this man who understood her pain.
Jerry Palmer paced the house like a caged gorilla, walking from one empty room to the next. He wasn’t sure what he sought, but whatever it was repeatedly escaped him.
Movement seemed only to agitate him further, but sitting and doing nothing was intolerable.
He’d been married to Sharon for forty years and overnight she had become a stranger to him. Without rhyme or reason his loving wife had turned into a hotheaded feminist. It was enough to drive a man to drink.
At first he’d assumed the brusque personality changes in his wife were due to a hormonal imbalance. A few years back she’d had every window in the house open and was fanning herself like crazy because of one of her hot flashes. He’d been forced to don his coat in the middle of his own house while she sweated until her clothes were damp enough to wring out.
She’d visited her doctor soon afterward, and there hadn’t been any more repeats of that. Unfortunately whatever the doctor had given her hadn’t done anything to improve her waspish nature. Jerry had gotten into the habit of checking her prescription. She appeared to be taking the tablets regularly, not that it’d done much good.
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