Easy Loving

by Sheryl Lynn

  “I have to go home,” she announced and tossed the napkin on the table. “Gus, the fettuccine was superb and do tell the chef the sorbet is excellent. Thank you.”

  “Catherine, wait—”

  “I’m sorry, I have an early morning appointment. I’ll call you, okay?” She grabbed her purse and scooted out of the booth. Her gauze skirt tangled around her thighs and for a moment she feared falling flat on her face.

  Jeffrey’s pale eyes turned flinty in the flickering candlelight. “The champagne. It’s Dom Pérignon—”

  “I can’t drink and drive.” She swiped at her skirt, knowing she made an ass of herself, but unable to help it.

  Two booths away, a slim blond woman wearing a tailored suit stood up and stared. Catherine recognized the title company closer who had processed the paperwork for Catherine’s house purchase. Jeffrey claimed he and the woman were good friends, but at the closing the woman had seemed uncomfortable and not friendly in the least. At the moment, she appeared horrified.

  Noreen, Catherine finally remembered. Her cheeks burned, but she forced a smile. “Well, hello, again. Noreen?”

  Noreen shifted her stare to Jeffrey. “I thought I recognized your voice, Jeff. Did I hear right? You guys are engaged?” A sickly smile thinned her lips. She lowered her gaze to the cart holding the champagne. Her voice rose an octave. “You’re going to get married?”

  Jeffrey had said “good friends,” but Noreen’s reaction clearly showed they’d been closer than mere friends. Catherine had never asked Jeffrey about his past relationships—she’d never cared. All she cared about at the moment was escape.

  “Nice seeing you again, Noreen. I’d love to stay and chat, but I have…” Her ability to continue the lie ran out of steam. “Goodbye, Gus.” She fled the restaurant.

  Jeffrey caught up to her in the parking lot while she unlocked the door of her Blazer. “Darling, what’s the matter?”

  “You know I’m not comfortable with public scenes. How could you do that to me? I’m so embarrassed.” She stared miserably at the toes of her woven sandals. “I’m sorry, I need some time to be alone. To think.”

  He opened the car door for her and reached past her to place the bouquet of roses on the passenger seat. “You do love me,” he said. “I know it, you know it.” He pressed the ring box into her hand. She resisted, but he persisted until she closed her fingers around the box. “We can’t fight fate, darling.”

  The velvet box seemed to weigh a hundred pounds. “I can’t—we don’t—you don’t know me!”

  He stepped back and hung his head, his sheepish smile painted gold by the parking lot lights. “I’m a fast learner. I’ll never do anything to embarrass you again.” He pulled his fingers across his lips in a zippering motion. “I won’t pressure you either. I won’t say a word about it. All I ask is that you take the ring and think about how much I love you.”

  Somewhat soothed, she nodded dumbly. He pressed a tender kiss to her forehead.

  “I’ll make you the happiest woman in the world. I’ll devote my life to making you smile. Think about it.” He gave her room to slide behind the steering wheel. “I love you.”

  She wished she could say, “I love you,” back at him. Except she could not say what she did not mean. Until she trusted him enough to tell him the truth about herself, she could not love him. Unless she loved him, she could not tell him. She hoped he returned to the restaurant and shared the champagne with Noreen. They could rekindle their romance, and Catherine wouldn’t have to deal with Jeffrey anymore.

  Ambiguous emotions wore on her during the long drive home.

  At home she set the ring box on the fireplace mantel in her studio. She tried to forget it. It was like trying to forget a sore tooth. She refused to open the box, refused to try on the ring—Mrs. Jeffrey Livman.

  She didn’t sleep well that night.

  “WOULD MARRIAGE BE SO BAD?” she asked Oscar and Bent, the greyhounds, when the three of them took their morning run. Up and down the hilly red graveled road she jogged, trying to regulate her breathing in the thin high-country air. The greyhounds focused straight ahead, their long legs springing in graceful motion.

  The dogs liked Jeffrey. Or at least, they tolerated him with the same regal aloofness with which they tolerated most visitors. She frowned at their knobby, bobbing heads. If the greyhounds judged character, they kept it strictly to themselves.

  Later, when her agent called from New York, Catherine asked, “Margaret, what do you think about marriage?”

  “I think it’s a hell of an expensive way for a man to get his laundry done.”

  A grin tugged Catherine’s lips. “I forgot. You’re a cynic. Never mind.”

  “Does this have to do with that car salesman you’re dating?”

  “He’s a real-estate broker, and yes.” She fixed her gaze on the ring box and sighed. “He asked me to marry him.”

  “Cars, real estate, it’s all the same. Forget it.”

  “He gave me a ring. You ought to see it, it’s beautiful. A sapphire.”

  “Keep the jewelry, dump the man. I need your full attention right now, sweetie.”

  “Lots of artists are married. In fact, all the ones I know are. So are the writers and the editors and the art directors.” Catherine laughed. “Considering that my work is for children, don’t you think having a few of my own would be a plus?”

  Margaret groaned loudly. “Babies and diapers and nannies and preschools—don’t do this to me! You are about to become very, very hot. Tabor Publishing is now talking a twenty-book series.”

  Catherine sobered; her hand tightened on the telephone. Her stomach suddenly felt very heavy. “Twenty?” The word emerged in a squeak. “I thought they wanted three?”

  “Doc Halladay loves your work. He’s renegotiating the book series. He’s convinced it’ll be as big, maybe bigger than his television show. He’s full of crap, of course, nothing is bigger than TV, but these books are going to sell millions.”

  Catherine didn’t doubt it. Doc Halladay, the Science Brain, had taken the media world by storm. With a winning smile, a magician’s shtick and a gift for making the complicated sound easy, he’d won a bigger preadolescent audience than Barney the dinosaur and Sesame Street combined.

  “If we put this together, this could make your career and set you up for life. You could end up being the hottest children’s book illustrator of the century. Of two centuries! You’ll win a Caldecott.”

  “Twenty books?”

  “After Doc Halladay saw those mock-ups you did using photographs of him along with paintings, he flipped. As far as he’s concerned, you’re the second coming of Michelangelo.”

  “How much money are they talking?”

  “A cool million. Of course, that’s a five-year commitment, and we’re still squabbling about royalties, but it’s a very nice package.”

  Catherine had to take several deep breaths to calm her fluttering belly.

  “The contract proposal needs a Rosetta stone to decipher it. I’m overnighting you an outline of the terms and payouts. It looks complicated because it is complicated, but try not to be intimidated. I’ll have the whole thing vetted by an attorney before anything gets signed.”

  Catherine loved her work, which combined her two great passions—art and science. In college, believing there was no future in fine art, she’d earned a biology degree with the goal of going to veterinary school. Then a friend had asked her to illustrate a children’s story she was trying to sell. The publisher had rejected the story, but asked Catherine if she’d submit more illustrations. Her career had been born.

  After dozens of projects, she still loathed contract negotiations. She didn’t understand the fine print. The money terms were convoluted with the publisher paying out in bits and pieces based upon schedules apparently created by a necromancer scrying moon signs in springwater.

  “They’re asking impossible deadlines, too,” Margaret said.

  “I can do impossi
ble. I live for impossible.”

  “I know, sweetie. So don’t do something stupid like get married and run off to Tahiti to paint flowers on black velvet.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  Margaret ended the conversation with details about the contract. Catherine tried very hard to keep her excitement under control. Contract negotiations could fall apart at any stage, and nothing was certain until everyone signed the paperwork.

  After she hung up, she clasped her hands and danced around the studio. “Doc Halladay loves my work,” she sang. “I’ll be famous—”

  Oscar and Bent lifted their narrow heads and looked toward the front of the house. Greyhounds, Catherine had discovered, were the perfect house pets. They were tidy, quiet, dignified and loved to lounge around on the furniture. They rarely barked. She’d set up an old sofa for them in her studio where they spent their days with their long legs sprawled, luxuriating in comfort.

  “Is somebody coming?” she asked. “Normal dogs bark, you know.”

  She heard an engine, throaty, powerful, unmistakable—a Harley-Davidson motorcycle. The noise increased, approaching the house up the long, curved driveway through the pine trees. Wondering who in the world she knew who owned a Harley, she stepped out onto the deck. She blinked in the bright sunshine. Oscar and Bent joined her. They stretched their long bodies and yawned mightily.

  The motorcycle appeared, a modern-day destrier of sleek black shine and glittering chrome. The rider wore a black, full-face helmet. He guided the motorcycle around potholes and ruts in the wide, but ill-maintained driveway. The bike’s rear tire dropped and bounced in a pothole, and Catherine winced. Having the driveway graded and paved was her next home-improvement project.

  The rider wheeled the bike around the circular drive to park before the deck. He was a big man, his suntanned arms roped with muscle. She glanced at the dogs, now flanking her feet. They weighed eighty pounds apiece and could run down a rabbit without breathing hard, but protect her?

  The rider cut off the engine. The sudden silence heightened her awareness about her seclusion, with the pine forest shielding her from the road and neighbors. She watched the man dismount. With his back to her he worked off the helmet. His hair, thick and sooty black, gleamed with bluish lights. Despite her nervousness, her artist’s eye delighted in his powerful shoulders and the sinewy curves of his back.

  He turned around.

  He smiled and his dark eyes glittered like obsidian.

  “Hello, Tink,” he said. “Long time, no see.”

  Her brain froze. All sensations centered square in her chest where emotions long buried burst from their shell. For years she’d wondered what she would say to Easy Martel if she ever ran into him. She’d wondered what she would do, how she would act, what she might feel.

  He was bigger than she remembered, his youthful slenderness grown into lean, broad-shouldered maturity. Once smooth olive cheeks now sported a definite beard shadow. He wore his black hair short rather than letting it hang shaggily down his neck. The smile remained the same, however, wry yet warm, completely focused, while those dark, dark eyes melded into hers.

  Heart melting. Soul searing.

  “Don’t you remember me?” he asked. “It’s me, Easy—”

  She whipped about, raced into the house, slammed and locked the door.

  Chapter Two

  Easy Martel slid a hand around the back of his neck. He frowned at the half-glass door where curtains swayed gently. He stood chest level to the deck flooring, eye to eye with a pair of dogs who poked their narrow heads between the railing. They watched him with quiet curiosity. Despite the dogs’ whip-thinness, they were large animals.

  “Nice doggies.” He sidled to the steps. Alert for a growl or other threat, he climbed the steps slowly. “Good doggies.” He offered a hand for their inspection.

  As one, the dogs turned and walked around the corner of the house. The clicking of their toenails on the decking faded in the distance.

  Wary that this might be some canine trick, Easy hesitated. Maybe Catherine had trained her dogs in ninja tactics. He waited a few moments to see if the animals returned. When they didn’t, he knocked on the door. “I didn’t mean to startle you. It’s me, Easy Martel. Wasson High School?”

  He considered she may have forgotten him, but she’d been as madly in love with him as he’d been with her. She’d never forget him. More likely she still had that weird habit of running off when flustered. Smiling in fond remembrance, he knocked again.

  The door opened an inch. He glimpsed a hostile eye glaring back at him. Memories rushed in with tidal-wave force, sweeping him back twelve years. Catherine’s eyes had always fascinated him with their jewel-rich color and expressiveness. In high school she’d walked hunched over with her eyes downcast, her messy hair falling over her face. Despite her being awkward, pudgy and painfully shy, he’d looked into those sapphire depths and known she was beautiful. Cursing his own cowardice, he regretted every second they’d missed in the past twelve years.

  “What are you doing here?” Her icy words startled him.

  “Don’t you remember—”

  “I know exactly who you are. Now go away.”

  He retreated a step and rubbed his chin, thinking. Their breakup had been messy and acrimonious. That, however, had been when they were only kids. If he remembered correctly, she’d dumped him. “It’s been a long time, Tink. Are you still mad at me?”

  She threw the door wide. Chin up, feet spread, shoulders back, she faced him squarely. She wore a cropped T-shirt that clung to the rounded rise of her breasts and revealed an alluring inch of flat belly. Denim shorts showed off a pair of shapely legs. Barefoot, she sported a thin gold chain around one slim ankle. He leaned forward for a better look. Gone were the baggy black clothes and self-conscious posture.

  The guys in high school who used to call her a dog ought to see her now. Their eyeballs would pop out of their skulls.

  “You’ve got some nerve. How did you find me?”

  Suspicion prickled up and down his spine. Her attitude transcended hostility—she hated his guts. “I looked you up.”

  “How? I’m not listed in the phone book.”

  He accepted that insurance cheats, disability frauds, embezzlers and adulterers took exception to his snooping around. But an old girlfriend?

  “I looked you up in the public records,” he said. “Your property is listed.” He tried a smile and a compliment. “You look great. You got yourself in shape. Took off the baby fat.”

  Her mouth fell open. Color drained from her cheeks. She gasped.

  Knowing he’d said something wrong, he backed up another step. “What?”

  “You are so heartless, so cruel. You haven’t changed a bit, Earl Zebulon Martel. Not one tiny bit!”

  Call “Ripley’s Believe It or Not,” he’d found a woman who didn’t like compliments about losing weight. He showed his palms in appeasement. “I mean you look nice. Your hair and everything. It’s pretty. You’re pretty.”

  “That gives you the right to make cracks about the baby?”

  Now he was so lost he may as well be out of state. “You have a baby?”

  She charged out of the doorway like a grizzly bursting from the brush. Easy scooted backward until he hit the deck railing and could go no farther. She came close enough for him to smell an intriguing mixture of paint and vanilla. Each time she waggled a finger at his face, scent wafted to his nose. Memories teased and distracted him—her scent had always intoxicated him.

  “That stupid, dumb jock act worked in high school, but don’t you dare pull it now. You know damn well I had a baby!”

  His cheek’muscles twitched. Every inner sense screamed danger, but as yet he couldn’t quite identify the source. Cautiously he tried, “Congratulations?”

  “Get off my property or I’m calling the police.”

  He half turned in automatic response, but stopped. He replayed in his head the confrontation thus far. She recognized
him, she despised him, the comment about baby fat enraged her, and she accused him of knowing she’d had a baby. Logic said, since they hadn’t seen each other in twelve years, then the only way he could have possibly known about a baby…

  “You had a baby?” Sensing how she would reply, his words came softly, slowly. “My baby?”

  She flipped her left hand. “Knock up your girlfriend.” She flipped open her right. “She has a baby. It’s biology, you idiot.”

  Jeffrey Livman and John Tupper faded into insignificance. Memories built, the details growing clear. It had been the night of the winter festival right before Christmas break. At the dance he’d been horsing around with his friends; they began ragging him about Catherine. His buddies hadn’t understood why Easy loved her. She wasn’t popular, she didn’t know how to dress, she made straight As and she wasn’t cheerleader pretty. At eighteen, he’d been immature enough to join his friends in making fun of her. She’d blown up at him, telling him she never wanted to see him again. During Christmas break, she refused to see him or return his phone calls. When school resumed, she’d cut him dead, pretending he didn’t exist when they passed in the halls.

  “You never told me you were pregnant.” As the implication sank in, his temper rose. He’d loved her—maybe he still did. They’d planned a future together and she hid a baby? “You never said one word.”

  She clamped her arms over her chest. Her eyes blazed in heated challenge. “That’s why you dropped out of school and ran away to join the army.”

  “I didn’t drop out. I had enough credits to graduate midterm. You’re the one who ran away. When I came back from basic training, you were gone. You dumped me,”

  “You were a creep. And irresponsible.”

  “You said you never wanted to see me again. You wouldn’t talk to me.”

  “And give you a chance to not just call me a fat cow, but a fat, pregnant cow? You were cruel, Easy.”

  She had him there. He hung his head. “I wrote you about a hundred letters from basic training. I thought joining the army would make you miss me and—” he shrugged “—maybe scared I’d be killed. I was trying to be a hero. But you didn’t answer my letters. You wouldn’t take my calls. When I went to your house, your parents wouldn’t let me see you. Nobody knew what happened to you.”