She pushed the glass aside. “Congratulations on your promotion, by the way.”
“Lynds…”
“You are taking over my job, aren’t you? It’s perfectly logical in hindsight. Who else could possibly do it with more flare and creativity?” Her green eyes riveted his. There was no mercy there.
“I haven’t said yes, yet,” he said flatly.
“You will, though. I don’t know why you insisted on the last promotion but I assume that motive is still in force for this one too.”
“I took it for the money,” he said. “But what about you? That’s what I—”
“The money?” She seemed a little shocked.
“Sure, why not?” He shrugged. “What about you?”
“Why?” she demanded.
He took a deep breath. No lying, he reminded himself. “For the project homes,” he said, forcing himself to voice it.
Her eyes widened. “I see,” she murmured. “I didn’t realize you were sinking your own money into the Habitat group.”
“I don’t think they realize it either.”
“Then why?”
“Because if I didn’t, half the homes we’ve finished over the last twelve months wouldn’t have happened. Whole families would have been without somewhere to live. What was I supposed to do? Say ‘so sorry, you’ll have to keep living on the street for another year because the only hardware store in town won’t supply us with free lumber’?” He could feel himself tightening up, his defenses kicking in. “Homes don’t come cheap, even with all the volunteers we get.”
She regarded him with a long, frank stare. “You’re still camping,” she said at last, softly.
His indignation propelled him to his feet and into the living area, where he paced the floor around the coffee table before spinning to look at her. “That’s ridiculous.”
“Is it?” She waved her hand around the room. “Look at this place. You haven’t done anything except exist in it. The walls are bare, there’s no knickknacks, no photos, no magnets on the fridge. There’s not even a favorite ugly, battered chair in the corner opposite the TV. It’s too perfect—like a hotel room.”
“This is—” he began to protest.
“Just temporary?” she finished sweetly. “Fact is, Pierse, you’re still moving on, still looking for the next sofa, hoping that’ll be the one you can call your own. This obsessive home building is part of it all.”
He ran his hand through his hair. “I thought we were talking about you.”
She nodded. “We are.”
“Huh?”
She lifted the glass of Perrier. “Any idea why I suddenly decided to try this?”
“Your mother drank it all her life,” he said, the cruel words pushed out by the childish need to hit back. She had struck home a few times now and it was stinging.
She smiled a little. “She drank Lapsing Soochong. No, I thought I’d better get used to avoiding caffeine for a while. Just like I thought I’d test your resolve one last time.” Her smile became sour. She pushed the glass away. “Same results, both times.”
“You’re not making a lot of sense, Lindsay,” he told her, genuinely puzzled.
Her smile took on a false brightness. “You shouldn’t have hurried out so fast last night, Luke. You would have been witness to a spectacular sight. Lindsay Eden passing out and not from too much Christmas cheer.”
“What…?” Luke couldn’t find the words but his mind was racing at light speed. All sorts of horrid possibilities were occurring to him and he didn’t have the courage to voice a single one of them. Leukemia. Brain tumor. Some sort of fatal disease that would take her away.
“It was warning enough,” she told him. “I had it checked and confirmed this morning before work. I’m pregnant, Luke.”
His mind really did go blank for an endless moment. He found he was sitting on the coffee table and couldn’t recall sitting down.
Lindsay was watching him. Silent. Goading him with her silence. She’d learned the tactic well.
“How?” he asked at last. His voice was a croak. “We used…”
“Nothing is one hundred percent effective,” she said softly. “I guess the universe really wants me to have a baby.”
He tried to wrap his mind about it and couldn’t. It was too enormous and too shocking.
“You’re supposed to ask what I’d like to do about it,” Lindsay prompted softly.
“You’ve had a few more hours than me to think about this. Give me a moment,” he said.
She nodded. “I can do that but I don’t think it’s going to do any good.” She tapped the glass. “I already have my answer.”
“That was before you said…” He couldn’t even voice it aloud. What was wrong with him?
“Okay, so what’s going through your mind right now?” she demanded. “Quick answer, no editing,” she added.
He tried. “I’m not ready…” he began. “It’s too soon…”
She nodded, pursing her lips. “Exactly,” she said and stood up. “For some reason, Pierse, you like camping. Maybe it’s because you’ve done it so long you’re comfortable with it and can’t imagine doing anything else.”
Alarm filtered through him. “Where are you going?”
“Home.” She picked up her coat.
“But what are you going to do?” The knowledge hit him anew. “Damn and you’ve just been fired. No one is going to hire a pregnant woman and give her maternity leave…”
“Thank you,” she said softly.
“For what? Getting you fired?”
“Did you?” She shrugged. “It hardly matters now, does it? Actually, I meant thanks for not airing the possibility of aborting. I don’t think I could have put up with that.” She slid the coat on. “Don’t worry about me, Luke. I’ve learned how to take care of myself. This’ll be no different.”
“That’s it? You’re just walking out of here?” Panic was gripping him now and he could feel himself starting to jitter with adrenaline overload. “Don’t I get any say in this?”
“You did get your say. You were very eloquent.”
“What about support, then. Money?”
She shook her head. “You keep it for your homes.” She picked up her briefcase and bag. “If I can’t have you totally in my life, totally grounded to a home that we make, then I don’t want you in my life at all.” She smiled and there was a deep sadness in her eyes. “You kept warning me and finally I listened. I don’t want you in my life, screwing it up any more. I don’t think my heart could stand it.”
He watched her, stunned, as she opened the door. True to form, Lindsay threw a passing comment over her shoulder as she left—the last word.
“No offence, but I’ll name this child.”
It was too much. The pressure of emotions in him was too overwhelming. Horror, self-hatred, anger. And beneath it all, a keening, building sense of loss that loomed larger than all the others.
You did this to yourself.
All the names and epithets in the universe would not remove that simple fact.
Bravo, Lucifer. You really topped yourself this time. You not only royally screwed up Lindsay’s life, you just totally destroyed your own into the bargain.
Luke pushed his fingers into his temple, trying to expel the thoughts, almost moaning with self-loathing.
Chapter Fourteen
“Happy New Year, Linny.” Her father held up his glass and Lindsay reluctantly tapped hers to his. She sipped and pushed it away.
The log in the fireplace popped, sounding loud, emphasizing how quiet the room was.
“Is it?” he added, softly.
There was a scratch on the table top, an old one that had always fascinated her because if she tried hard enough, she could make out a man’s profile from the odd little bumps. There, there was the nose—
“Lindsay.” His hand rested on hers.
She looked up. Edward was watching her with an odd intensity she had never seen before.
“What?”
“You have to tell me. Whatever it is.”
She blinked and found herself staring at the blackened scratch.
“You’re worrying me,” Edward added. “You’ve been silent for a week, you’ve barely eaten and you’re not going into work.”
“You haven’t been in your workshop for a week, either,” she pointed out.
“Because you didn’t come to find me there.” He moved his chair closer to the table. Settling down to business, she realized. “You’ve always come to talk to me there and this time you didn’t. So I’m afraid you’re going to have to do without the sawdust this time, Linny. Tell me what has made you so pale.”
She bit her lip. The need to spill it all, to lay it at his feet, was so strong.
“I don’t want to dump my troubles on you,” she said, managing to keep her voice steady. “I got into this, I have to carry the load.”
His piercing blue eyes did not skitter away, his attention did not wander to the project at hand. Instead the eyes narrowed.
“It’s that bad, sweetheart?”
She swallowed. “Yes.”
He patted her hand. “Tell me.”
“I’ve been fired from my job.”
“Oh.” He looked puzzled, so she finished the rest of it quickly.
“And I’m pregnant.”
Total silence this time.
She cleared her throat, feeling the ache from holding back tears. But suddenly, the need to cry had gone. In its place was a sweet relief.
“Does Luke know?”
“Yes.”
“And?”
She bit her lip. “I sent him away.”
His eyes widened enormously.
“Oh my,” he gasped. “Why, Linny? He seems like a good man.”
She shook her head and suddenly the tears were there again and spilled down her cheeks. “He doesn’t want a home and a…f-f-amily. He thinks he does. He’s spent his life looking for somewhere that he can call home but he doesn’t really want it. Not deep down. He’s got used to not having it. He likes it now. And I know if I tie him down, sooner or later his real nature is going to break through and he’ll be gone.”
A sob stoppered her words and she put her hand over her mouth to hold it in. No self pity! She’d made a bargain with herself.
Edward sat patting her hand. She felt him tuck a handkerchief under her fingers and she wiped her face.
“Is that what you would want? Luke, a home, a family?”
“Well, of course!” she spluttered.
“No, there’s no of course about it, Lindsay. Listen to me.”
She wiped her tears again and focused on her father. Gone was the gentle man who wandered around the workshop. Gone was the worried father.
“I learned a long time ago that home and hearth is not for everyone. Not the sort of idealistic version that most people reach for.”
“You’re talking about Mom, aren’t you?”
He nodded. “She would never have been happy staying at home and raising you. I knew that before she got pregnant. I knew it and accepted it. Because I loved her.” He sighed.
“She gave as much of herself as she could. She stuck by us both through good and bad times. She’d maybe not get back here on the Friday for dinner but she always made it back sometime during the weekend, even if it was just to tuck you into bed on the Sunday night before she got on a plane for New York again.”
Lindsay sniffed back the last of her tears, her attention caught. “You mean…that’s what I should accept from Luke…if he offers it?”
Edward smiled. “Oh, I don’t think that’s really all he’s got to offer, though.” He patted her hand again, firmly and straightened up. “I was talking about you. About what you really want. You’ve spent many years now carving a career for yourself. You really want to throw it all overboard?”
“As a single mother, I can’t see that I have much choice.”
“Take single parenthood out of the equation. I’m talking about family. What’s your ideal family, Lindsay? What would you really want?”
She stared at him. Where had this articulate, logical and wise man come from?
“This isn’t like you,” she said, at last. “You’re not usually this…concise.”
Edward smiled. “I was the terror of the lecture hall when I was teaching, didn’t you know?” He tapped the table. “And you need guidance, right now. Now you’ve got rid of this miasmic idea of proving yourself better than your mother—”
“You knew!” The accusation was jerked out of her involuntarily.
He nodded. “I figured it out. I was never as quick to understand people as your mother was but I’m no slouch. Neither are you, darling daughter, although you seem to have convinced yourself you are.”
“But I am bad. I don’t pick things up about people as quickly as…”
“Luke? No, you wouldn’t. He has a natural, in-built divining rod when it comes to people. Comes from a lonely childhood, I suspect. When you’re that young, you learn quick how to read people so you can get what you need.”
Lindsay stared at her father. “You’re scaring me,” she said. “You’ve never talked like this before.”
“You’ve never been ready to listen. To really listen, I mean.” He picked up Lindsay’s glass of champagne and poured it into his own. “You don’t need this,” he told her, with a smile.
“So…now you think I’m willing to listen?”
“Willing? Perhaps not. But you’ve been jarred out of your old ways of thinking, so now’s the time to say what I want to say and maybe you’ll hear it.”
“Hear what?”
“It’s time you figured out what you want in life, Linny. No more running after your mother. No more being her substitute. You’re not like her. You’re so different from Catherine that you need to turn your back firmly on her choices and see what’s out there for you.”
“What’s out there for me is motherhood,” Lindsay answered softly. “It’s a bit late for this lecture, isn’t it?”
“Not in this day and age. Motherhood is going to be part of your choice, obviously but there’s so many other choices to be made to go along with it.”
He sipped the champagne. “So what’s your definition of family? You lay that equation out, Linny and you’ll be able to extrapolate the rest of the answers.”
“And what if I want Luke as part of that equation? He doesn’t want me. Not really.”
“Are you sure? Did you really give him a chance to decide? Or had you already decided for him?” Edward smiled a little and the gentle man from the workshop was back. “I know what you’re like, sweetheart. You can be a bit of a steamroller when your mind is made up. That’s why I haven’t tried to give you this lecture before now. Your mind has been made up pretty much for the last ten years now.”
“Are you saying I pushed him away?”
“No. Are you?”
She bit her lip, trying to remember the things they had said to each other, that last time. All she could remember was the bitterness she’d felt when he had hesitated.
Bitterness…and a sense of inevitability.
Wasn’t it that she had been fully expecting him to shy like that? She had almost anticipated it, planned around it.
“Damn,” she murmured.
Edward patted her hand again, sympathetically.
“Family is the most blessed gift an individual could have and if your Luke doesn’t want it, it’s because he hasn’t learned that he needs the cement that holds a family together—any sort of family, no matter how it’s built.”
“Cement?”
Edward shrugged. “Love, of course.”
“He doesn’t love me.”
“No?”
“He never said he did.”
Edward just looked at her, patiently, his eyes not letting her go.
She had to break the gaze.
“So what are you going to do now, sweetheart?” he asked softly.
She
sighed. “Think, I guess.”
“Think hard,” he advised. “You’re only going to get this one chance, now.”
“I don’t know that I have even one chance, Daddy. He hasn’t rung, or been to see me…”
“You sent him away. He’s not going to come back easily. If you truly want him in your life, on whatever terms you want and whatever terms he wants, then you’re going to have to do some very hard bargaining indeed.” He stood up. “But do the thinking first, Linny. Get it straight in your own mind before you try to lay it out for him. Because when you see him, you’ll mess it up if you haven’t got it down pat.”
“Is that what happened to you? With Mom?” she asked, curiously.
“Every time.” He sighed. “Every time. She made me feel like an elementary school kid, all knees and stutters. Asking her to marry me took more courage than I’ve ever had to use since. I still don’t know how I managed to get the words out and I still don’t know what made her say yes.” He shrugged. “I always thought she deserved so much more than me and my paltry offerings.”
Lindsay grew very still, her father’s words echoing and chiming, connecting and growing. “Yes,” she said quietly. “Yes. That’s it. It’s something like that.”
“What is?”
She stood up and kissed his thin spot. “You’ve just given me more to think about..”
He smiled again. “Good. I’m glad. It’s about time you indulged in some clear thinking.”
She went to bed, knowing sleep would be an absent friend tonight. Her father’s words were circling through her mind.
I always thought he deserved better than me.
But it was her voice whispering them.
* * * * *
When the phone rang the Wednesday after New Year’s Eve, Lindsay gave a little start. Luke. It’s Luke.
Her certainty was so strong that she found herself running for the phone and snatching it up breathlessly before her father, who was sitting next to it, could so much as reach out his hand.
“Lindsay Eden speaking.” She still was using her office manner despite being officially unemployed for nearly two weeks. But then, the phone hadn’t rung all too often since then. And none of the callers had been Luke.
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