All That Remains

by Janice Kay Johnson

  She itched to rearrange the furniture in there, too. Maybe move the TV out of the kitchen. The fireplace in the living room was nice. It could be a comfortable room with a little work.

  But she’d kept her mouth shut and would keep on doing so. She was a very temporary guest here, and how Alec lived was none of her business.

  Even if she wished that wasn’t true.

  “I’ve got a pot roast in,” she told him brightly.

  “Damn it, Wren,” he snapped. A moment of silence followed, and when he continued she could tell he’d made an effort to soften his voice. “Take a day off if you feel like it. I’m not used to being taken care of.”

  As if he’d punched her, she couldn’t breathe. He didn’t want her cooking for him?

  She strove for dignity. “If you’d rather not come home for dinner, you don’t have to. I have to cook for myself anyway.”

  “I didn’t mean it that way.” He sounded gruff. Impatient, or something else? She couldn’t tell. “I don’t like you feeling you have to try so hard.”

  She hurt. Really hurt. She’d been so glad she could do something to make him happy. It wasn’t hard to see that emotion came as a surprise to him, just as smiles had seemed to the first days they spent together. Now to find that she hadn’t been making him happy at all…

  “I was trying to contribute. Maybe I need you, Alec, but I’m not useless.” Wren didn’t wait for a response. She hung up the phone, shaking all over at her temerity.

  Was something wrong with her, that she tried so hard to please the men in her life? Was she reenacting the whole James thing?

  Okay, yes, she’d had dinner ready when he walked in the door from work, too, but she liked cooking. And, yes, of course she’d been trying to please him in those days. She’d convinced herself she was in love with him.

  That was where she’d gone wrong. Hugely wrong. She’d missed a million clues that should have warned her how controlling he was.

  This was different, what she felt for Alec. It was normal and human to like to do nice things for someone. Especially if you happened to be falling in love with that someone else.

  Even if that someone was doing his level best to help her so that she could depart from his life as speedily as possible.

  Her shoulders sagged. That was what she had to accept: Alec had insisted she come home with him out of a feeling of obligation. And what had she done but insist on playing wifey? The last thing he wanted from her. Look at her, leaping out of bed in the morning to cook him breakfast. Dumb, dumb, dumb.

  The phone rang, and she ignored it. Who else would it be but Alec, and she didn’t want to talk to him again. Not right now.

  Shame burned through her, but anger rose in its wake. Okay, she was falling in love with him, but even if she hadn’t been, she would have tried to be helpful. To make his life easier while she was here. Because he was helping her, and it was only fair that she did what she could in return.

  Bristling, she decided that if he didn’t like it, that was his problem, not hers. He didn’t have to eat the meals she put on the table.

  The phone quit ringing, but before she could quite get a grip on her turbulent emotions, the doorbell rang. Wren jumped six inches and looked for the rolling pin, spotting it on the counter. But she didn’t feel the same panic she had the other day. It was mildly astonishing to find she wasn’t scared of James in quite the same way. Maybe a person could only feel so much at one time. Leaving Abby sleeping in the bassinet, she went to the living room window and twitched the lace curtain to one side to see who stood on the doorstep.

  It was Alec’s sister, only this time she had three kids with her, the smallest anchored on her hip.

  Somehow Wren summoned a smile by the time she opened the door. “Sally. Oh, my. This must be… Let’s see. Maribeth, Amanda and Evan.”

  The tallest, a solemn-faced girl with her mother’s and uncle’s blue eyes and dark hair, stared at her. “How’d you know who we are?”

  “Because your uncle Alec talks about you. Your mom did, too.” She stepped back. “Come in.”

  The middle child, chubbier and with brown hair tinted with red, veered immediately toward the living room.

  “No, no, no.” Her mother snatched for her hand. “You know you’re not allowed in there.”

  “It’s definitely not childproofed,” Wren agreed.

  “It isn’t even grown-up-proofed,” Sally muttered.

  Wren giggled, glad to discover she felt better. Her indignation at Alec still burned bright, but the shame he’d made her feel had subsided.

  “That’s what Alec said. He remembers sitting in there with his elbows pressed to his sides, terrified he’d break something.”

  Sally laughed, too. “Great-Aunt Pearl would glower at us. She was sure we’d break something. Of course, it never occurred to her to put the fragile stuff away while we were staying with her. I’m pretty sure she flat-out didn’t like kids.”

  “If you don’t have any yourself, they probably start seeming like an alien species.”

  “Maybe.” Sally smiled at her. “I hope you don’t mind us dropping in. I thought you might like company, and with it so chilly I suspected you wouldn’t want to take Abby out.”

  “No.” Obviously Alec hadn’t told her the real story.

  With all the hubbub, Abby woke up. The other kids were briefly fascinated by her, and she stared at them, her gaze already sharper than it had been a few days ago. She seemed to find Evan, a redhead, especially entrancing.

  Sally produced a video—The Little Mermaid, to which Maribeth was currently addicted. With rolled eyes, Sally said, “She watches it every day. I wake up in the middle of the night thinking I hear the music, and realize I was dreaming. Randy’s taken to singing it to me just to be mean.”

  It felt so good to have something to laugh about. Feeling cheerful, Wren produced the cookies she’d baked that morning—of course she had, little Miss Susie Homemaker—and poured all three children glasses of milk. Sally had brought Evan’s spill-proof plastic glass.

  I’ll hide the cookies, she decided. To heck with Alec. He doesn’t even have to know I baked them.

  Then she and Sally retired to the living room, where Wren nursed Abby while they talked.

  “Alec wanted Randy and me to take this house after Mom died.” Sally was looking around her incredulously. “Can you imagine?”

  “Don’t you already own a house?”

  “Yes, but it’s smaller than this. One story, though— I hated the idea of the stairs. Besides…” She hesitated. “It was a macho thing. Alec doesn’t think Randy takes good enough care of us.”

  “He hasn’t said anything. Not that he would to me.” Wren hesitated. “I don’t get the feeling he actually likes this house, though. Maybe he really didn’t want it.”

  “Well, then why doesn’t he sell it?” Sally asked in exasperation.

  “I don’t know.” Wren couldn’t exactly ask about the provisions of their mother’s will. Surely the woman hadn’t left her entire estate to Alec and cut Sally out. No—if his mother had done that, Wren knew Alec would have sold the house in a heartbeat so he could split the money with Sally.

  “He’s really mixed up about Mom.” Frowning, Sally seemed to be focused on the parade of framed photographs on the mantel. “He blames himself that she died, you know.”

  “Himself?” Wren shifted Abby to her other breast. “How can he possibly? He said it was cancer.”

  “Yes, but he seems to think that if he’d moved here from St. Louis sooner, he would have made sure Mom got more regular checkups.” Sally snorted. “She’d have blown her top if he’d tried organizing her that way.”

  “Then why—”

  “I don’t totally know.” She sighed. “You probably don’t care about our family problems. I shouldn’t have gotten started, except… I worry about Alec. And there’s something in the way he talks about you.”

  “I think you’re imagining that.” Wren lifted Abby
to her shoulder and patted her back. “He really is only being nice.” He wants me gone.

  “He’s different since you came.”

  “What he is, is sleep-deprived. Abby wouldn’t stay asleep last night no matter what I did.”

  Sally accepted the diversion and they chatted about babies. Wren was grateful for the advice on diaper rash, teething and more. It was the kind of information that, in another family, a mother would pass on to her daughter.

  Mom, Wren thought with an inward sigh, will be full of advice on how I can make sure Abby gets the best teachers once she starts school. Her mother had taken pride in selecting Wren’s teachers. No random assignments for her daughter.

  Parental love of a sort, Wren supposed.

  Sally eventually gathered her children and departed. Maribeth was still complaining as they walked down the driveway. “But Mom, we weren’t done with the movie.”

  The last thing Wren heard was Sally saying, “It’s not like you don’t know how it ends.”

  Laughing, Wren locked the door.

  CHAPTER TEN

  ALEC FELT CAUTIOUS when he let himself in the door and walked into the kitchen. Wren was there, but didn’t even turn at the sound of his footstep.

  “That smells good,” he said.

  He’d been a jackass earlier. He knew he had. The truth was, he loved coming home to dinner cooking. To Wren. He loved starting the day and ending it with her. And that scared the crap out of him.

  Today he’d been glad to have an excuse to call her. So glad, he’d felt unsettled. Then when she said the pot roast was already cooking… He didn’t know what had happened.

  He was lucky she hadn’t dumped it in the garbage and left him to prepare a frozen dinner.

  Any other woman would at least have given him an icy look. Wren only sounded a little stiff as she said, “If you’d rather eat out with a friend or make yourself something else, my feelings won’t be hurt.”

  “No.” He laid the newspaper on the counter, aware that she hadn’t met his eyes. “I was a jerk today. What I was trying to say was that I don’t want you feeling obligated to wait on me hand and foot.”

  She cast him a look of near dislike. “What am I supposed to do all day, Alec? Take Abby in the stroller for long walks and wave at the neighbors while I’m out? Lounge on Pearl’s rock-hard sofa and eat bonbons?” Sotto voce, she added, “Whatever bonbons are.”

  That was his Wren, finding humor even when she had good reason to be grouchy.

  “No,” he said meekly. “I know you have to fill your day somehow. You must be feeling trapped.”

  She sighed. “No, mostly I’m fine. But—” her gaze slid sidelong to him “—I guess I’m making you feel trapped, and I didn’t mean to. Having us here has probably totally changed your life. I’m sorry.”

  “No,” Alec said again, then grimaced. Why not be honest? “Or maybe I should say yes. For the better. I came home every day and made myself dinner, usually in the microwave. I watched the news, I read, I went to bed. You haven’t gotten in the way of anything.” Except sleep, he thought, and belatedly cast a suspicious eye on Abby, contentedly asleep in her bassinet. “Please tell me you didn’t let her sleep all day.”

  He was embarrassingly grateful for Wren’s sudden grin. “No, I tortured her into staying awake as much as I could. But I thought it would be nice if we had a peaceful meal.”

  “Yeah.” He sighed. “Anything I can do?”

  “Nope.”

  She sounded natural enough now that he guessed he’d been forgiven. Another thing about Wren was that she didn’t hold grudges. She seemed to have a gift for shaking off all the crappy things that had happened to her and moving on with an optimism that might be unrealistic, but which he couldn’t help admiring.

  Alec hid his amusement at her getup—a pair of pants that must have been Great-Aunt Pearl’s and a baggy sweatshirt with a cute kitten cavorting in some daisies on the front. He doubted Wren had worn anything like that since she was about five years old. Her feet were bare.

  After a second, he quit noticing the clothes and began picturing Wren without them. He was doing that entirely too often, but couldn’t seem to stop himself. She was so fine-boned, and he loved the way she moved, like the dancer she’d once dreamed of becoming. She was long-legged for her height. He knew how shapely those legs were, although he hadn’t been consciously noticing at the time. Funny how accurate his memory was anyway. He remembered the slender line of her back, too, and the feel of it under his hands, her moans of pleasure when he found vulnerable spots and kneaded them.

  He suppressed a groan and, when she turned toward the table carrying a serving dish, he sat quickly to hide his all-too obvious reaction to thoughts he should have shut down sooner.

  Once she had the food on the table, she sat, too, and they began to eat. “Your sister brought her kids by today,” she said.

  Glad to be distracted from his increasingly erotic thoughts, he raised his eyebrows. “Did she?” Now why hadn’t Sally mentioned that to him?

  Wren apparently caught something in his tone, because she looked wary. “Would you rather she didn’t?”

  “I don’t trust her,” he muttered.

  “Um…in a scary way, or a she’s-going-to-reveal-all-your-deepest-darkest-secrets way?”

  “Deepest, darkest secrets,” he admitted. “So why’d she come?”

  “To be friendly.” Wren appeared to think about it. “I think.”

  “Was she nosy?”

  “No.” Her forehead crinkled and she poked her lower lip out. “Mostly we talked about babies.”

  “Babies?”

  “Yeah. Diaper rash, sleep patterns, teething. That kind of stuff.”

  “Sounds riveting.”

  “Sleep patterns are a subject of enormous interest to me right now, I have to tell you,” she said, with dignity.

  He gave a short laugh. “Okay, you’ve got a point.”

  “She said you offered this house to her and Randy after your mom died.”

  Now, why in hell would Sally talk about something like that to a woman she’d barely met? He didn’t like knowing he’d been the topic of their conversation.

  He sounded short to his own ears when he said, “I did.”

  But Wren apparently didn’t notice. “Weren’t you already living here? I mean, with your mother?”

  “Yeah.”

  “When I was packing up her clothes, I was wondering why you were in her bedroom and not one of the others.”

  That, thank God, was an innocuous enough question. “By the time I came, Mom was sleeping down here, in what used to be Aunt Pearl’s sewing room.” Wren nodded; presumably she’d noticed the small, currently unused room. “We had to rent a hospital bed. I slept in Mom’s room because—” He hesitated. “I don’t know. Sleeping in Aunt Pearl’s bed felt too weird.”

  He loved Wren’s smile. She always seemed to understand whatever he tried to explain, however clumsily he did it. Maybe that’s why he kept telling her things he hadn’t meant to.

  Wanting to keep her smiling, he said, “I don’t know if you’ve checked out the other two bedrooms. One of them was Sally’s, believe it or not. I don’t know how she stood it. The mattresses in both rooms have to date from the 1920s. Don’t laugh,” he said severely. “Try one.”

  Still giggling, she said, “I’ll do that.”

  As he took a bite, Alec had the brooding realization of exactly how much he was going to miss Wren. Her giggles and her smiles warmed him deep inside, where he’d been cold for a long time.

  He frowned. What an idiotic thing to think.

  “It’s a big house,” he said after a minute. “Bigger than I need. Sally and her brood live in a rambler about one step up from being a shack. It seemed to make sense.”

  He could hear the angry edge in his voice. Wren watched him, her brown eyes grave.

  “Sally’s husband works at the mill. It’s on again, off again. It never seems to occur to him to pick up
any other work.”

  “Is there other work around here?”

  “Not much,” he had to admit.

  “What does he do? Just sit around?”

  “No.” Being fair almost killed him, but Alec wasn’t going to lie. “He’s handy. Seems like every spare minute he’s helping out some friend or other. Rebuilding an engine, adding another bedroom, caulking a boat. God forbid he add on a bedroom to his house. Or paint it. Or do a damn thing to make Sally’s life easier.”

  “She seems to love him.”

  It bothered Alec that Wren sounded tentative, as if she was unsure how he’d react if she argued with him. He didn’t like thinking he reminded her in any way of Abby’s son-of-a-bitch father.

  Disturbed by the awareness that how she saw him mattered, he pulled his mind to his sister and her husband. “I guess she does.”

  “Have you spent much time with him?”

  “I’ve tried not to.”

  She opened her mouth, hesitated, then closed it.

  “What were you going to say?” Alec asked. Whether he wanted to hear it or not, Wren shouldn’t feel she had to stifle her opinions around him.

  “Um…maybe you should spend time with him. And I know it isn’t any of my business,” she added hastily. “But it might help if you got to know him better.”

  He was silent. Sally had said the same. Alec’s mother had said it, too. Implied he wasn’t being fair. And maybe he wasn’t, loath though he was to admit it. He’d been in a holding pattern these past eight months, since burying his mother. He’d done his best not to relate to anybody except on the most superficial levels. Even Sally. He didn’t want to feel more than he could help.

  “I suppose eventually I’ll sell the place,” he heard himself saying. “Hell, this might be a good time to do it. There’ll be people who want to stay in town but would rather not rebuild, especially if this isn’t the first time they’ve been flooded.”

  “But…where would you go?”

  “I don’t know.” The idea bothered him, which might be why he hadn’t started prepping the house to put on the market. “Something smaller, I guess.”

  “Yes, but…” Her forehead puckered again. “This house represents your family history, doesn’t it?”