Almost Married

by Carol Grace

  With one hand he covered her flat stomach and reached lower with sure, knowing fingers.

  “Yes,” she breathed. “Oh, yes.” And she arched her body to meet his. If he stopped now she’d surely die. Did he know that?

  Somewhere in the distance a telephone was ringing, nagging and insistent. Only it wasn’t really in the distance. It was right there in the room. Ringing so loudly she was afraid Morgan would wake up. She paused only a moment, just in time to look at Cooper and to realize the mood was broken. With a groan, Laurie got to her feet and grabbed the receiver.

  “I’m very sorry,” said a clipped polite voice, “about the power outage. I hope it hasn’t caused any inconvenience.”

  “Inconvenience? No, not at all,” she said shakily, running a hand through her tousled hair.

  “We expect to have everything in order before morning,” the concierge assured her.

  Laurie hung up. She looked around the room, still dazed and confused. Everything would be in order by morning; it would take longer than that for her to still her beating heart, to even look Cooper square in the eyes. She was vaguely aware he was dressing and she wasn’t. She grabbed her clothes from the floor and went to the bathroom to shower and dress.

  When she came back he was standing at the window staring into the darkness. She didn’t know what to say, so she did nothing. There was something about his stance and his silence that confirmed her feeling that the moment was over. The passion that had flared so brightly had been extinguished by the ring of the phone.

  She felt cold and alone even though there were three of them in the room. She got into bed and stared at Cooper’s back, wondering what he was thinking.

  “I didn’t mean for that to happen,” he said in the darkness.

  “I know you didn’t. At least admit you wanted it to happen,” she said. He didn’t say anything. She turned her head and shivered. “All right, I was the one who wanted it. But it doesn’t work that way, does it? It doesn’t work unless both people feel the same about each other. You’d think I would have learned that by now, but I haven’t.” Her voice caught and the tears threatened again.

  He opened his mouth to speak, to protest, but she wouldn’t let him. She had to let it all out now. To make sure he knew how she felt. “Believe me, I won’t make the same mistake again. The next time I fall in love it will be with someone who’s free, who doesn’t come with any emotional baggage, who...” She faltered and she couldn’t continue, not with her throat choked with tears.

  Cooper’s brow furrowed. His lips parted, the lines deepened in his forehead. “What did you say?”

  “I said I won’t make the same mistake again.”

  “No, about falling in love. You’re not in love with me, are you?”

  She swallowed hard. “Of course not.”

  “And if you were?” he asked in a voice so low she almost didn’t hear him.

  “If I were... if I were...” If she were she’d cry herself to sleep, pound the wall in frustration, stomp on the floor, anything but stand there discussing it rationally with the man she’d come this close to making love with, who was looking at her so intensely, who was half dressed, his rumpled shirt only partly covering his chest.

  Facing him like this was more than she could bear, after what they’d done here tonight and what they hadn’t done. Her body still ached with frustration, her skin felt so sensitive and vulnerable. Her fingertips longed to touch him again, to feel his body respond to her touch. She wanted to hear his voice in the heat of passion call her name. She turned over and buried her face in the pillow, wishing she’d never come back to Niagara Falls. Hoping she’d learn her lesson at last.

  Cooper stood there watching her sleep and listening to the wind howl outside the window, feeling unfulfilled and hollow inside. The frustration built up as he turned over the scene in his mind. Laurie, the most generous, warmhearted woman in the world had offered herself to him, even knowing how he felt, knowing there was no future for them.

  He’d almost taken her up on it. If it hadn’t been for the telephone, where would they be now? Lying on the carpet, sated, fulfilled, satisfied beyond his wildest dreams? He had no doubt of that. His arms would be around her all night long. His body burned, throbbed with frustration.

  Did she love him? She might think she did, but that was his fault. He had to make it clear to her that he wasn’t free to love again. Instead he encouraged her, he kissed her, he wanted her, he took what she offered and gave her nothing in return. He had nothing to give.

  There was more. He felt admiration and affection for her. He wanted to tell her he’d give anything if he were free to love again, to take another chance on love and start a new life. If he’d met her sooner. But that wasn’t how life worked. He couldn’t choose the time or place or the person.

  Laurie was the right person. She was strong, she was sweet, she was everything a man could want. She could comfort hundreds of passengers in the middle of a disaster and yet fall apart in a thunderstorm in his arms. He sighed loudly and lay down on the far side of the bed next to Morgan. When he finally put his tortured body and his tormented mind to rest it was almost dawn.

  Chapter Seven

  Cooper got the good news in the morning that his repair job was a success. The patch worked, the water stopped leaking and there was no reason for him to hang around. His boss told him to enjoy his “vacation.”

  Morgan, Laurie and Cooper had breakfast in the coffee shop of the hotel before they headed back to the orchard. Cooper left an extra large tip he hoped would make up for the pile of crumbs Morgan scattered under her high chair from her bran muffin. He tried to apologize to the waitress, but she waved it aside, saying she had one of her own at home, about the same age. He didn’t even try to explain that Morgan wasn’t theirs.

  But he wondered, as he surveyed Morgan sitting at the table in her pink coveralls, if the waitress’s baby could possibly be as cute as Morgan. She didn’t cry as much as she had when he first met her, he noticed. She was usually happy, as long she got what she wanted. He occasionally held her in his arms, just for a moment while Laurie was busy, but never long enough to get attached to her or to feel any emotional tie.

  He realized, as they drove through the fertile fields dotted with fruit trees, that he was looking forward to going back. He almost thought “back home,” but stopped himself. It wasn’t his home. He didn’t have a home. And he wasn’t going to get bogged down thinking of what might have been.

  Laurie’s voice broke into his reverie. “We’re not taking you away too soon, are we? What if there’s another crack?”

  “I left the number. If they need me, they’ll call,” he assured her.

  “I didn’t realize how important your job was until I read that book about the Falls yesterday. About how much power is produced and how much money is involved. I read how they draw extra water during the night and store it in reservoirs so the flow over the Falls won’t be diminished during the day. I was thinking about that last night.”

  “I thought you were asleep,” he said, keeping his eyes on the road. He’d envied her and Morgan’s sound sleep while he chased the shadows from his mind, willing the memories of the past to fade and recede.

  “I was,” she said, turning toward him. “But what about you? Did we leave you enough room?”

  Room? They’d left him too much room and too much time. The darkened room, the ready-made family asleep in his bed. As much as he enjoyed their company, was looking forward to returning to the farm, he had to break it off. And soon. Being with the two of them, Laurie and Morgan, acting like a family, had brought it all back, and with it the pain. He ought to drop them at the doorstep and sign up for another temporary job. But there were those damnable apples. His commitment to Steve, and sweet little Morgan, who for some unknown reason, had taken a liking to him. And finally there was Laurie, who was proving more and more difficult to treat as a mere friend. Especially after last night. But it had to be done. Soon, before
he made love to her one of these dark and stormy nights, or a clear day, or...

  “Plenty of room,” he assured her a little belatedly. But she looked at him as if she wasn’t sure about that. He hoped she didn’t know he’d paced the floor most of the night before he fell into bed next to Morgan. He hoped Laurie hadn’t seen him reach out and touch the baby’s soft cheek, then hastily withdraw his hand. He didn’t want her to know that the baby’s sweet scent had caused a shaft of pain to pierce his heart. But how could she?

  When they got back to the house Laurie changed into dirt-stained jeans and a baggy sweatshirt. Cooper set up the playpen under the trees hoping to keep Morgan happy for a while so they could both pick. Then they went up the ladders, each with a canvas bag over their shoulders. Morgan rattled a plastic tetrahedron educational toy with varied plastic shapes inside it and Laurie held her breath, hoping they’d get a few boxes filled before Morgan lost interest and demanded to be released from behind the bars of her playpen.

  “Does that kind of thing happen very often?” Cooper asked, looking down at the baby.

  “What?” she asked from behind the tree. “That I sleep with strangers in their hotel rooms? No, no matter what wild rumors you’ve heard about us, flight attendants usually lead very dull lives.”

  Copper grinned at her between the branches, a flash of even white teeth in his suntanned face. “I’m relieved to hear it. But no, I didn’t mean that. I meant, are most kids Morgan’s age able to distinguish shapes the way she can? Look at her,” he said, gesturing in the direction of the playpen as Morgan fit the round piece into the round hole.

  Laurie paused with an apple in her hand and gazed at Morgan. “She’s pretty remarkable, isn’t she?” she said softly. “But then so is her mother.”

  “Steve is no slouch either,” he said, continuing to fill his canvas sack with apples. “He was Phi Beta Kappa plus the star of the soccer team.”

  “So she comes by it naturally,” Laurie murmured, “her intelligence and her coordination.”

  “What about you?” Cooper asked. “I’ll bet you never lose your cool.”

  “Me? When I was a flight attendant, I was scared to death in turbulence, ever since... you know. I do what I’m supposed to do, but the smile is one that’s pasted on my face. Underneath I’m a bowl of Jell-O.”

  He appeared to be studying her for signs of quivering, so Laurie planted her feet firmly on the top rung of the ladder to show him that was then and this was now and launched into another flight attendant story.

  “I’ll never forget the time I got stuck in Kansas City just before my sister’s wedding,” she began, and then went on to describe the route she’d finally taken, through Phoenix and Salt Lake City. Cooper seemed amused especially when she came to the part about leaving her suitcase in the overhead compartment after repeating hundreds of times not to do that very thing. She ended up having to borrow a dress from her sister to be her bridesmaid.

  When Cooper laughed out loud Laurie realized she didn’t care how flaky she seemed if it got a laugh out of him.

  “You and your sister are close,” he remarked, looking at her with something like envy in his expression.

  “Very,” she said, “though you wouldn’t believe it to hear us rag on each other.” She paused for a moment and studied the apple in her hand. “She’s going to have a baby soon.”

  “That’ll be nice for you,” he remarked, “to have a niece or nephew.”

  She nodded, but her lower lip trembled.

  “But you want one of your own,” he said quietly.

  “Yes. No. I don’t need one of my own,” she said a little too fervently. “I’ll have a niece or nephew to spoil whenever I want to. And Morgan here.” She sent a reassuring smile in Cooper’s direction.

  He glanced at Morgan in her playpen, engrossed in pounding on her toy piano, filling the air with discordant sounds. Laurie and Cooper exchanged a long look of mutual understanding bordering on pride. Why? She wasn’t theirs. But they’d accomplished something just by keeping her happy. Laurie tore her gaze from Cooper when she heard the sound of an approaching car above the banging of the toy piano. There across the field she saw a car pull up on the road next to the fence. She backed down the ladder, and tossed her sack onto the ground.

  “Who’s that?” Cooper asked, following her down the ladder.

  She shook her head and they walked briskly together toward the fence where four people, a man, woman and two children had gotten out of the car and were waving and calling to them.

  “Hello,” the man yelled.

  “A case of mistaken identity,” Laurie said to Cooper. “That’s all. Hi,” she called when they were close enough to see the out-of-state license plate on their car. “Can we help you?”

  “The woman at the country store at the crossroads told us you had a roadside stand where we could buy fresh produce.’’

  Laurie exchanged a quick glance with Cooper, “Sorry,” she said. “But it sounds like a good idea. Maybe we ought to try it. But this is just an ordinary orchard.”

  They nodded, piled back in their car and took off.

  At that moment Morgan let out a loud scream and Laurie ran back to get her. She lifted her out of the playpen and gave her a snack of a banana and a cup of juice. Then she peeled a banana for herself and sat down under the tree with Morgan in her lap wondering what was taking Cooper so long.

  When he finally appeared from the opposite direction they’d come from, she looked up inquiringly. “I ran into one of the farm workers,” he said, holding out a half-eaten apple in his hands. “Look what they found.”

  Laurie wrinkled her nose. “Who did that?”

  He shook his head. “They said it looks like deer. They’ve stripped the branches on a dozen or more trees out on the back forty where the workers are.”

  “Deer, as in Bambi? How could a sweet little deer do all that damage? It must have been a whole herd. What do we do about it?”

  “They said when there are more workers, they stand guard at night.”

  “And then what, shoo them away?”

  He shrugged. “I guess.”

  Laurie tried to rise to her feet, but with Morgan falling asleep in her arms, she gratefully accepted Cooper’s outstretched hand. To her surprise, he took Morgan out of her arms and they walked back to the house together as if they’d decided they’d had it for the day. Laurie’s mind was spinning with the possibility of a roadside stand, of deer decimating the crop but most of all with the image of Morgan’s face cradled against Cooper’s shoulder. In the nursery, Cooper put Morgan into her crib and covered her with her blanket while Laurie watched.

  Laurie tried to act nonchalant, as if it happened every day, Cooper putting Morgan to bed, but it didn’t and she didn’t want to say anything that would embarrass him. But watching Morgan’s eyelashes flutter as she snuggled under the blanket caused a longing so fierce to fill her heart that she pressed her hand against her chest. Cooper’s gaze met hers and she thought she saw a longing that matched her own. But for what? For a baby? He said not. For her?

  A shiver went up her spine. With a jolt Laurie was taken back to the first night they’d come here together, when they’d stood this way looking down at a sleeping Morgan, when the breeze had blown through the curtains as it did now, bringing with it the sweet scent of ripening apples, bringing, too, a heightened awareness of each other, a tingling of the senses, an excitement that surged through them, a longing that couldn’t be denied today any more than last night. Feeling the touch of his hands on her shoulders, she turned to face him and lift her lips to his, just as she’d done that last time in the nursery.

  But this time it happened, as she’d wanted it to before. In spite of what happened last night, or maybe because of it, his kiss was instantly searing, demanding, possessive, promising nothing, asking nothing in return. He knew better than to do that. But she gave him everything she had, all the pent-up emotion of the last few days. All the frustration of sharin
g that bed with him last night, but sleeping on opposite sides, of the phone call that pulled them apart. The frustration of sharing this house and this baby came out in their wild kisses, their frantic desire to close the gap between them. Laurie staggered backward, her heart pounding wildly, and reached for the wall with the back of her hand so she wouldn’t fall down.

  “What was that...” She choked, unable to finish her sentence.

  “Just a kiss,” he said with a half smile that sent her heartbeat off the chart again. But his pounding pulse, as he gripped the side of the crib for support, told Cooper it was more than just a kiss.

  He had no business kissing Laurie like that, like he meant it, like he couldn’t get enough of her. Not now or ever. It wasn’t fair of him to lead her on. And it wasn’t fair for her to look at him the way she was doing now, as if she knew something about him he didn’t know about himself. What that was didn’t bear thinking about. It was time to apologize and get out of this room, this room that had a very strange effect on him.

  “Sorry about that,” he muttered.

  “Why?” she asked, leaning against the wall and staring at him.

  “You know why,” he said, locking his gaze with hers. “You deserve better. Somebody who’s got something to offer you.”

  “What about-”

  “I told you before. I was married once and that was it. I’m not going to get married again and I’m not having children again.” He didn’t mean to say “again.” He hoped she hadn’t noticed. The look in her eyes, those wide expressive eyes that mirrored her feelings, told him she did. But in the long silence that followed, he realized she wasn’t going to pursue the subject. Not now anyway, and he would make sure there was no opportunity to pursue it any other time.