by Lois Richer
“I look like I just gave birth to an eight-pound baby girl,” Caitlin snorted. “And you can’t keep changing the subject. You have to stop hovering, Jordan. We’re fine.”
“I know.” He smiled tenderly. “But I like hovering, as you call it. Especially when it’s over my two favorite women. So, now that the baby’s here, can we talk about getting married?”
Caitlin gulped.
“I know you’re tired and there are a hundred things going through your mind. My sister explained ad nauseam about hormones.” He made a face, his mouth tipping downward in disgust.
“She did? Robyn?” Caitlin frowned at his nod. “What did she say?”
“Oh, a bunch of stuff about women who had Csections feeling guilty because they didn’t have a normal delivery. I told her she was crazy.” He reached out and touched the baby’s arm. “As if there’s anything to feel guilty about. This little girl is a miracle.”
“Yes, I’m beginning to realize that.” Caitlin stared at the child who had come from her body. The thought of it stunned her. The perfectly shaped lips, the elegantly long fingers, the deep blue eyes. Micah was a miracle. And Jordan had helped get her here. She peered at him through her lashes.
“The thing is, I don’t want to waste that miracle. I love you, Lyn. I want to marry you and take care of you and Micah. Couldn’t we at least plan a date?”
She forced her attention away from him to stare at her fingers.
“Jordan, I’ve told you. I don’t think I can marry you. Not now.” Maybe not ever, she added silently.
“Sure you can. Doesn’t have to be a big wedding, though I’d like to show you off to everyone. We could have the ceremony right here, if you want.” His eyes shone down on her expectantly. “What do you say?”
“Jordan, I, uh, that is…the truth is, I’m not sure. I mean, everything seems so unreal to me. Everything is moving so fast. I just became a mother and now you’re asking me to marry you. It’s impossible to deal with!”
“Why?” His eyes narrowed, their golden lights piercing. “Are you going to say you don’t love me? Because you do, Lyn. I’ve seen it in your eyes.” His voice was so fervent she half wondered if he wasn’t trying to convince himself.
“You’ve been really wonderful to us, coming round day after day, helping with the baby, taking care of things. And I appreciate it, Jordan. But…” Her voice trailed away as she searched for the words to express her confused feelings.
“You love me. You can’t deny it. It’s been there for a long time now. It’s time you admit it, Lyn.”
“I do like you, Jordan.”
“Love,” he insisted, his mouth tightening.
“I like the way you care for us, the way you make me feel loved and protected. But to get married? I don’t think so, Jordan. Not yet, anyway.”
“When then?”
“I don’t know. Don’t you see?” She was losing her focus and that was dangerous with those tiger eyes watching. “I feel like I’m only just getting back control of my life. Coming out of the anesthetic was like being back in that car, clawing my way to safety.” She shuddered at the memory. “I felt like I was at the mercy of everybody while I recovered and I hated it.”
His eyes demanded total honesty, and Caitlin acknowledged that she owed him that.
“If I let myself get involved with you, I lose that control again. I don’t think I’m ready to do that just yet.” She flinched as his jaw tightened.
“We are already involved,” he said, lurching to his feet. “That’s what love is all about.” He glared into the fireplace as if he wanted to tear it apart.
“And now we get to the heart of the issue. Control. But what you really mean is that you want to go it alone, prove to the world that you can stand out there and take whatever it is that life deals you.”
He turned around, his eyes blazing. “Why, Caitlin? Why is it so important for you to be strong and independent, even at the risk of refusing help for your unborn baby?”
“I didn’t,” she gasped, furious that he would dare to mention that now.
“Yes, you did. And I don’t think it has anything to do with fear, Lyn. It’s really all about anger, isn’t it? You’re furious at all the people you love who go away when you need them most. So you back away from love, hide out, protect yourself. That way no one can ever hurt you again.”
“I don’t do that.” But she couldn’t look at him, his words cut too deep. Was she really like that? Selfish and self-centered?
“Yes, you do, Lyn. And it hurts. I think you’re trying to prove you don’t need us.” He sighed, raking a hand through his hair.
“Michael didn’t want to die, Caitlin. Neither did your parents or your aunt. They didn’t want to abandon you. It wasn’t their fault that God called them home.” He stopped, watching her face.
Caitlin shook her head, all the while his words raced through it. Was it true? Was she angry with all of them? Was she trying to get even in some strange way?
“You’re just jealous because I chose Michael,” she lashed out, and then wished she hadn’t. Jordan was moving closer, so close she feared he wouldn’t let her hide any more.
He smiled tenderly, his hands gentle as they closed around her arms.
“I know you loved my brother, Caitlin. I’ve accepted that. You’ve just had his baby. That’s wonderful. Nobody could be happier than me.” He brushed a thumb over her blouse-covered arm, fingering the warm flannel.
“But he’s gone now, honey. And you love me. There’s nothing wrong with that. Love isn’t meant to be hoarded, it’s meant to be shared. It can grow and grow.”
He wrapped his arms around her and hugged her close, his voice soothing.
“For a long time I fought against the idea of loving you, even though I knew it was true. I thought it was disloyal to Michael. You were his wife, you chose him over me. I realized almost immediately that I’d been wrong to let you go back then, you know. I had to get away from here.” He brushed his chin against her cheek.
“When I came home, after you were married, I realized that I loved you more than ever. But you weren’t mine. Still, you were very happy. I could see that. I decided that I would go away again and that I would wait. I knew the love I had for you wouldn’t die. I thought I’d see what God intended for me to do with it.” His hands brushed down her back.
“But sweetheart, that love didn’t go away and Michael did die. He didn’t want to, but he’s gone. And it isn’t your fault. You can’t make yourself pay for his death, or your parents’. That was part of your life. A hard part, sure. But you got through it.” He leaned back, his generous mouth tipped down in a frown.
“You need to accept the past and move on, Lyn. You can’t make anything better by hanging on to your anger. Let it go.”
Jordan’s eyes glowed with an inner light that made his words all the more tenable.
“You’re not a child anymore, you know that God directs our paths. You’ve grown up. You don’t have to hide away anymore, like a scared little girl who needs protecting. You don’t have to prove you can handle life. You’ve done that. Now you can get on with your life, because you know that He’ll be there, watching out for you.”
His words hit a nerve. Caitlin felt the frustration rise inside her brain, red-hot and boiling. What did he really understand? The long lonely nights when the house creaked and moaned, the reminders that she had no one of her own, the longing she felt to let go of it all and be someone completely different? Someone not quite so pathetic?
Jordan Andrews thought that he knew everything about her, that he could direct her to do his bidding no matter what she wanted. Whatever he said was law! What did he know about her worries, her fears?
“You know nothing!”
“I know more than you want me to. I know you’re letting the past control the future. Our future. But I won’t let you ignore our relationship. I won’t.”
She shoved him away, walked over to the door and yanked it open.
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“You think you’ve got me pegged, don’t you, Jordan? You think it’s so easy to just toss it all away, to forget about my parents dying so horribly while I lived and watched it, to see Aunt Lucy every day and know I didn’t matter to her, to pretend Michael’s death didn’t affect me?”
She dashed the tears away, drawing on the facade that had seen her through years of going it alone.
“I’m strong because I learned that everything comes with a price. It just depends on how much you’re willing to pay.”
“I know all of that affected you, Lyn. It colored the past and altered your perceptions. But now it’s getting in the way of your life today.”
“Thank you, Dr. Freud! Why would you even think that I could love somebody who’s so hard? Michael was your brother!”
“I know that.” He stood before her, his shoulders straight, his eyes shadowed. “And I loved him. But I can’t live in the past, Lyn. Neither can you. I love you. I want to move on with our lives. I want all of the things God promised us.”
He slipped his hand over the shining fall of curls that tumbled down her back. His touch was so delicate, so tender, Caitlin almost leaned into it.
But fear, her constant companion for years, held her back, restrained by her whispering what ifs inside her brain.
“I’m waiting for you, Caitlin. My family is waiting for you. We want you to join the living. They don’t care that you locked them out of your life for so long. They’re ready to welcome you back with open arms.” Jordan swallowed. His hands dropped to his sides and his head tilted back.
Caitlin shivered, knowing something monumental would come out of those soft lips. She steeled herself.
“If your life isn’t full and happy today, Caitlin, the only person you can blame is yourself. We’re here, all of us. We want to love you. But you have to let us in. You can’t keep withdrawing. You have to choose what you want, sweetheart. Fear, anger or love?”
Caitlin swallowed. There were tears at the corners of his eyes. His voice was sad, filled with regret.
“I can’t come back, Lyn. Not until you’re ready to face life and deal with its possibility of hurt. None of us controls life, that’s up to God. But if we don’t accept the pain, we miss the pleasure.” He wrapped his arms around her and held her close to his heart, his lips against her ear.
“I love you and Micah so much. I want us to be a family, to grow together. I want to share your pain, your fears, your joys. I want to laugh with you and grieve with you. But you have to want it, too. It’s time to grow up, Lyn. It’s time to choose. What will it be? Love? Or safety by yourself in your shell of self-pity?”
Jordan kissed her so tenderly Caitlin thought she’d melt. She could have stayed there forever, but mere seconds later his arms fell away.
His lips touched hers one last time, his voice aching in its intensity. When he looked at her, she could feel the love in his eyes reaching out, desperately trying to touch her frozen heart.
“Choose love, Caitlin. Please, choose me.”
And then he was gone.
Chapter Fourteen
“Choose me.”
Caitlin shook herself out of the fog Jordan had left her in.
She closed the door, entered her apartment and started up the stairs, determined to get on with her life. She was a single mother, alone, with a baby. She had responsibilities. She had to be strong.
The sound of brakes applied too heavily rang through the house. Caitlin stopped, her eyes wide with fear. Jordan! Was he hurt?
“Not again! Please God, not again! I can’t lose Jordan, too. I love him so much.”
The knowledge coursed through her like a lightning bolt, awakening her to the folly of letting him go.
She’d let him walk out the door without telling him how much she loved him. Not the same as she’d loved Michael, it was true. This love was different. But it was a deep and lasting love that would be a foundation for the future.
Caitlin raced for the front door, ripped it open and stood on tiptoes, staring to the west as her heart beat double time. What was the pain of the past compared to the grief she now felt, knowing she’d turned him away, knowing she loved him more than life.
Relief swamped her as she spied his car, patiently waiting at the end of the block for a young boy to cross the intersection.
Jordan, dear Jordan. He was fine. He was alive!
Caitlin sank down onto the thickly braided rug inside the front door of Wintergreen, her mind whirling with the wonder of it.
She loved Jordan Andrews. Loved him. With all her heart and soul and mind. Of course, she had loved Michael, too; but that was a different kind of love. She’d been young and needy. She’d expected Michael to care for her, to protect her, to cherish her. She’d never even considered what her young husband might need from her, and never found out how their marriage would have worked, what she would have contributed to their union.
But she had to consider it now. Jordan was here, alive and well, and in love with her. He didn’t want a little girl for a wife, he wanted a woman who was prepared to stand by his side and face the world head-on, good or bad.
“He needs me to be there for him,” she murmured, trying to sort it all out. “He wants me to share his life.”
But to share meant giving herself, freely, without holding back. Could she do that? Anything less would be cheating, a childish pretense that would hurt him. And she and Micah would suffer as much as Jordan. They needed him in their lives, needed his comfort, his compassion, his strength.
But most of all they needed his love, backing them, supporting them as they supported him. There would be problems, certainly. But, oh, the joy she’d share. How wonderful it would be to just let go and love him.
Jordan was gone.
He wouldn’t come back. Not now. Not when she’d turned him away, mocked him for pointing out how childish she had been. He’d given her the chance, asked her to trust him, and she’d turned him away, let him walk out of her life and Micah’s.
Bleakly she watched the taillights of his car disappear.
Caitlin pushed the door closed, then burst into tears at the enormity of what she’d done. Jordan had left believing that she didn’t want him, didn’t need his arms around her, his lips close to hers. How could she have denied herself the one thing she most wanted?
“Caitlin? Caitlin, what in the world is wrong?” Maryann stood inside, staring. After a moment she hunched down beside her, tugging at her shoulder. “Is it the baby?”
“Why doesn’t she answer? What’s wrong with her?” Beth’s concerned voice only encouraged her tears and Caitlin sobbed all the harder.
“I forgot to tell you…What in the world is going on here?” Eliza’s worried voice broke through the others’ conversation. She listened to the others for a moment, then tugged on Caitlin’s arm.
“Tell me what’s wrong?” she encouraged, a tiny smile twitching at the corner of her lips.
“She keeps asking for Jordan.”
“Ah! I thought so. Come on, dear. Inside before you catch your death.” They urged her to the sofa. “Spill it all,” Eliza ordered.
“I’ve ruined everything,” Caitlin sobbed after the whole story had poured out. “He’ll think I only want him here for Micah if I tell him I love him now. He’ll think I can’t stand on my own two feet!”
“Good gracious. I’ve never seen you so out of control. Mop up, my girl. We’ve got work to do. I haven’t coaxed and coached things this far to let everything fall apart now.”
Eliza motioned to Beth and Maryann and Caitlin watched as they formed a circle in the middle of the room.
“What are you talking about?” she asked uncertainly. There was something in Eliza’s glance that sent a squiggle of reservation up her spine.
“We’re talking about your future, my dear. A wonderful happy future that you deserve and that I intend to see that you have.” She smiled. “You don’t think I’m going to throw all my hard work away, do you?
No sir!”
Caitlin thought she looked like a cat that had lunched on a canary and now just finished a very big bowl of thick cream.
“Now go with Maryann, my dear. She’ll help you change. Beth and I have things to do. First of all we need flowers. Lots of flowers.”
“What things? Why do I need to change?” Caitlin dashed the tears from her eyes, frowning at them all. “What are you doing?”
“Playing Fairy Godmother,” Eliza giggled as she brushed a stack of baby clothes into Maryann’s arms and waved her arm toward the stairs. “It’s my best role.”
Caitlin flinched, stunned by the glow of anticipation in those eyes that were so like her baby’s.
“Come on, Caitlin. Let’s get you pretty.”
Caitlin trailed Maryann up the stairs, her forehead creased. “What are they doing?”
“Planning a nice romantic dinner for you and Jordan. And it’s about time!”
Two hours after he’d left Lyn’s, Jordan was headed back. He kept his foot pressed to the floor, ignoring the yellow lights and honking horns. Caitlin needed him his mother said. There was no time to dillydally. This was important.
He made the corner to her cul-de-sac on two wheels, barely missing a station wagon that was illegally parked by a hydrant.
“Calm down,” he ordered his racing heart. “Everything’s fine. The baby’s not sick, Lyn’s okay. Mom would have said if it was serious. Take a deep breath. You’re not a kid going out on his first date!”
It didn’t help much. He still lurched to a stop in front of the old Victorian house with a squeal that would have done a teenager proud.
“Probably burst a pipe in this mausoleum,” he consoled himself as he loped up the walkway and took the stairs three at a time. “Or the furnace went out. Yeah, that’s probably it. The furnace.”
He punched her doorbell four times in rapid succession before he could physically force his hand down. The door was oak and really solid, but he figured if she didn’t answer in about twenty seconds, he would kick it in.
The door opened.
“Hi.” Lyn, his Lyn, stood there smiling, her hair gleaming as it flowed over her shoulders in a river of curls. She wore a dress in some green velvet stuff that showed she hadn’t kept so much as an ounce of Micah’s baby fat. If she had, it was well placed. “Come on in.”
