One Plus One Makes Marriage

by Marie Ferrarella

  Bess’s eyes held Melanie’s. The party and the people, all people she cared about, temporarily faded into the background. There were two people whom Bess loved dearly in this world, and one of them was out in the garage, rummaging for cider. Just like he was rummaging to find his way in life. Melanie could help him find it. Bess was sure of it.

  “I don’t know how things are between the two of you,” she began slowly. “Knowing Lance the way I do, you probably don’t, either. But I want you to know that you’re making a difference in his life. He won’t say it, but I can see it in his eyes.” She regarded the younger woman fondly. Melanie was exactly the kind of woman she’d envisioned for Lance. “You’re bringing the light back to them. To him.”

  “I think you’re giving me way too much credit.”

  “I don’t.” Remembering, her expression darkened. “After Lauren left, he was as black as the ashes of the fire they pulled him out of.”

  “Lauren?” Lance hadn’t talked about anyone named Lauren. “The woman he tried to save from the burning building?” she guessed.

  “No, the woman he was engaged to.” Bess’s eyes narrowed as she remembered the all-consuming hurt she’d witnessed in his eyes. She’d feared then that he wouldn’t pull through. Wouldn’t want to. And when Bruce had flown to his son’s bedside from Seattle, to try one last time to patch things up between them, Lance had gotten even worse. Withdrawing so far away Bess thought no one and nothing would ever reach him again. “The woman who took one look at his burned, bandaged body in the hospital, believed the worst when the doctors told her that there was a strong chance he wouldn’t walk again and fled. I guess she was afraid she’d actually have to do something substantial, like be there for him when he needed her.”

  Bess shrugged. It was over with and best left where it belonged. In the past. “I saw her leaving as a blessing in disguise. Lauren was very shallow.” Pausing, she gave Lance’s ex-fiancée her due. “Very pretty, but very shallow. The kind whose loyalty would be found wanting anytime it was tested.” Bess looked at Melanie for a long moment. “Not like you.”

  It warmed her to be thought so well of, but the pedestal Bess was placing her on was a high perch from which to fall. “I’m flattered, Bess, but you don’t know me.”

  “I’m sixty-seven today. I’ve been around a long time. I’ve learned a lot of things.” Her eyes crinkled with laugh lines as she smiled. “Especially how to read people.”

  It was futile to argue with her and Melanie knew it. Bess was a lot like Elaine. Set in her ways and accustomed to being proven right.

  Bess looked toward the garage and sighed impatiently. Lance was probably using the errand as an excuse to stay away from the party for as long as he could.

  “Now, why don’t you go see what’s keeping that nephew of mine? I sent him into the garage to get a few extra bottles of cider and a few cans of soda.” She pointed toward the door that led into the garage. “He seems to have gotten lost.”

  “Consider him retrieved,” Melanie said, going after him.

  “I consider him saved,” Bess said under her breath before she turned toward one of her guests.

  Melanie heard the voices before she even opened the door leading into the garage. Polite, strained voices with enough combustible tension behind them to set off a warehouse full of firecrackers.

  Stepping into the garage, she saw that the outer door was open. A silver BMW was parked behind Bess’s sedan, its tail just barely shy of the street. There was a man standing beside it.

  A well-dressed man wearing a three-piece, dark suit, who, she thought as she went forward, looked a great deal like Lance. It was as if someone had taken Lance’s photograph and used a computer-enhanced program to age it approximately ten years or so.

  Both men stopped talking and turned toward her in unison. Melanie inclined her head toward the other man in a silent greeting, trying very hard not to stare. Lance hadn’t told her he had an older brother. But then, Lance hadn’t told her a great many things.

  Slipping her arm around his waist in a gesture that Lance found far too familiar and comfortable for his own good, she looked up at him and said, “Bess is wondering where you are.”

  The words were directed toward Lance, but it was the other man who offered an excuse. “I was delayed. Traffic.”

  Melanie could feel Lance’s whole body become rigid. “At least you thought to show up,” Lance ground out tersely.

  There was no anger in the other man’s face at the veiled accusation. If anything, he looked resigned. Melanie couldn’t help wondering if she’d stumbled onto a family feud of some sort.

  “It’s Bess’s birthday,” he pointed out. “I wouldn’t have missed that.”

  Lance’s face was impassive. Hard. As if birthdays meant nothing to him. “I can think of others you’ve missed.”

  “Lance, I—” the man began and stopped.

  The argument that was brewing would leave the confines of politeness at any second, Melanie sensed, escalating into something ugly. Things were going to be said that at least one of them was going to regret.

  She turned toward Lance, her hand on his chest as if to keep him in place. “She’s really getting thirsty for that cider—” Melanie shot a quick look toward the stranger “—and I had the distinct impression when I just spoke to her that she was waiting for someone.” It was a lie, but the only thing she could come up with at a moment’s notice. It was either that or run for cover. She offered the stranger a smile. “Why don’t you come in out of the dark?”

  The man walked away from his car and into the garage. “I’ve been trying to do that for a while now.”

  “Maybe you should have thought of that before you left,” Lance bit off.

  With that he shrugged Melanie’s hand away and walked back into the house, leaving her stunned in his wake.

  The older man joined her. “You’ll have to excuse him,” he said quietly. “I’m not exactly his favorite person right now. I haven’t been for quite some time, not that I can really blame him.” He lifted his shoulders in a half shrug. “I guess Bess didn’t tell him that she was inviting me.”

  “It’s her party. I don’t think she has to clear the guest list with him.”

  Melanie turned around to look at the man. In the light, the resemblance was even more pronounced, more uncanny. The man wore a dark, well-trimmed mustache, but the cheekbones, the shape of the nose, the strong jaw, they were all Lance.

  She realized that she was staring and flashed him an apologetic look. “I didn’t know Lance had an older brother. I thought he was an only child.”

  He laughed softly, but there was a sadness to the sound.

  “He is, and I think I’m really going to like you.” He put his hand out. “I’m Lance’s father, Bruce. Bess’s baby brother.” There was a time when that description had annoyed him, but now it merely tickled him to say it. There was twenty years between them, and he’d always thought of Bess more as his mother than his sister.

  “Lance’s father?” Melanie echoed. The man looked much too young to have a son as old as Lance. “He never mentioned a father.”

  “I’m not surprised. Things have been strained between us for a very long time. My fault.” Bruce looked toward the doorway with deep regret. All his attempts at a reconciliation in the past few years had failed. “But he won’t let me make amends. Stubborn.”

  The smile returned again. It was, Melanie thought, a very nice smile. The same smile that she’d glimpsed occasionally on Lance’s lips. She had to find a way to coax it out again.

  “Like me,” Bruce added. He tucked the gift he’d brought for Bess under his arm and opened the door for Melanie. “But we shouldn’t be standing here, talking in the garage. Lance might get the wrong idea.”

  She sincerely doubted that Lance would care one way of the other. “Lance doesn’t have any ideas when it comes to me,” she said with regret.

  Bruce raised a brow just the way she’d seen Lance do.

/>   “Bess never raised any idiots,” he told her. And then he thought better of his testimony. He’d lost his wife, decades too early, through no fault of his own. And in the bargain he’d managed to lose his son, too. But that had been his fault, and he meant to change that any way he could. “Except, maybe one.”

  He meant himself. Something else she wanted to find out about, Melanie thought as she crossed the threshold into the house once again.

  The warmth within the house was in direct contrast to the frost she saw in Lance’s eyes when she entered.

  “If you’ll excuse me?” she murmured to Bruce, already beginning to make her way to Lance.

  “Your father seems very nice,” she told Lance. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Bruce greet Bess with a quick hug.

  Lance shrugged, feigning disinterest. Why hadn’t he just stayed away? It was what his father was good at, Lance thought. “Some people think so.”

  She studied his profile. It was so unyieldingly rigid, she could have ironed on it. “But you don’t.”

  He was in no mood to discuss it. It was only because he knew it would upset Bess that he didn’t just walk out. But that didn’t mean he had to put up with an amateur psychologist.

  “Don’t try to analyze me, McCloud.” Wanting to get away from her, from the crowded house, he went out on the patio.

  Melanie followed him. She stood her ground, even though he sounded ready to bite her head off. “I’m not analyzing, I’m asking questions and trying to understand what’s going on.”

  Lance shoved his hands into his pockets, staring up at the sky, trying to get in control of his anger. Why did he still let it get to him like this?

  “Why?” he demanded. “Why does it matter to you?”

  “Because it just does, that’s all.” She swung him around until he had to look at her. “You matter to me, okay?”

  No, it wasn’t okay. It wasn’t okay at all. Hearing her say it just messed with his head. He was trying his damnedest not to let her get to him. But his damnedest wasn’t good enough.

  He sighed. “What’s going on is that my father thinks he can just come back into my life, say he made a mistake and expect everything to be the way it was fifteen years ago. Well, it can’t.”

  She nodded her head solemnly. “You’ve gotten taller for one thing.”

  “Don’t make a joke out of this,” he warned.

  “I’m only trying to lighten your mood,” she told him gently. “It’s your aunt’s birthday, and you look as if thunderbolts could come shooting out of your brows at any minute.” She laid her hand on his arm in a silent entreaty. He was letting this eat him up. “Whatever he did, it’s in the past. There’s your whole future to think of. Do you want it to be just like this moment, full of anger and hurt?”

  He didn’t want to be lectured to, even for the best of reasons. She didn’t understand what he’d been through, not any of it. “You think you know everything? How would you feel if your father walked out on you and never looked back?”

  She didn’t miss a beat. “He did,” she told him quietly. “And I forgave him for it a long time ago. There was no point in hating him. It was only hurting me, not to mention my mother.”

  Lance looked at her, stunned. He could’ve kicked himself, if it was anatomically possible.

  Blowing out a long breath, he dragged his hand through his hair. “Hey, I didn’t mean—” He wasn’t any good at apologies, never had been. “Look, I’m a jerk.” The laugh was harsh and self-deprecating. “But you should already know that.”

  She touched his face, making him look at her. Making him look into her eyes. What he saw scared him. Because he wanted it so much.

  “No, I don’t,” Melanie told him. “Because you’re not. You’re a little hotheaded and you’re probably vying for the honor of being selected as the poster boy for the word brooding, but you’re definitely not a jerk, Lance.”

  She was unbelievable. He began feeling the anger, the tension, draining from him. “Why do you always try to put the best spin on things?”

  “Because the alternative is very depressing, and I don’t like being depressed for more than two hours.” She saw he didn’t understand. “That’s about the time it takes to watch the uncut version of Stella Dallas.” She grinned. “Ten hankies, no waiting.”

  He threw back his head and looked up at the sky. It was completely dark. A new moon and no stars. Just like his soul had felt a few minutes ago.

  But not now, he realized. Lance looked at her, awed by the change she could make without even trying. “I’m not like you, Melanie.”

  He’d called her by her first name. She liked the sound of it on his tongue. She refrained from commenting, knowing that would sound the death knell. “I’m beginning to realize that. Doesn’t mean you have to live in a black hole for the rest of your life.”

  He shook his head, the slightest hint of a smile playing on his lips. “Nothing lives in a black hole.”

  “My point exactly.” She tucked her arm through his and began to lead him back inside. “Why don’t you return to that armed truce you had with your father for the time being and let Bess blow out her candles in peace?”

  How was it that she managed to keep guessing accurately about him, as if she could somehow look into his soul? “What makes you think there was a truce?”

  “Because—” she stepped into the living room, moving the sliding glass door back into place “—Bess wouldn’t have invited all these people to watch the two of you fight it out.” Melanie guessed that in some ways Bess was as private as her nephew was. “And besides, I heard the two of you ‘talking’ before I opened the garage door.” She turned to look at him. “There was enough frost coming from you to decorate the set of the winter carnival scene in Shine On, Harvest Moon.”

  He could only shake his head. “Does everything remind you of a movie?”

  “Pretty much.” She decided to play it up for his benefit. “So, are you willing to forgo reenacting the climactic gunfight scene from Gunfight at OK Corral for the time being?”

  He considered the comparison. “More like the last gunfight in High Noon since there’s just two of us and not a crowd.

  She looked at him in surprise, a wide smile he wanted to kiss away forming. “Why, Lance, I’m very impressed. You did watch movies.”

  “Some,” he conceded. “With Bess.” It was for her sake that he decided to rein in his feelings. Hers and Melanie’s. Somehow—though he wasn’t exactly certain just how—Melanie had defused the hostility he felt.

  “I’ve got a huge collection of videos,” she told him as they watched one of Bess’s friends come out with the cake.

  “Why doesn’t that surprise me?”

  She’d meant it as an opening line. If he’d watched old movies as a boy, maybe he’d want to see some of them again. “Maybe you’d like to come over and watch something with me sometime.”

  “Maybe,” he said.

  The conversation was curtailed as everyone began to sing “Happy Birthday.” But there was no curtailing the smile that was blooming on Melanie’s face.

  Chapter Ten

  Okay, maybe he was asking for trouble.

  Lance frowned as he stood before the narrow door that was just to the left of the entrance to Melanie’s shop.

  The lights in the shop itself were out. Dreams of Yesterday was closed. It had been for the past hour and a half. Twilight tiptoed around the street behind him, careful not to disturb anything as the city settled down for the night.

  He wasn’t settling down. He felt as restless as a cat standing in front of a pet shop filled with dogs. Lance shook his head. Even the simplest fool knew enough to get out of the way of an oncoming truck before getting flattened. And he was no fool.

  Yeah, he was.

  Otherwise he wouldn’t be standing there, in front of her private entrance, with some lame excuse bouncing around in his brain. It went further than that. If he wasn’t a fool, he wouldn’t have sent her those flow
ers, either. He would have just seen the threat she posed to him and kept on going.

  And she did pose a threat. A very real threat to the life he’d painstakingly reconstructed for himself. Why the hell was he jeopardizing that by seeking her out this way?

  He was functioning now, wasn’t he? Something he had doubted he could do two years ago when he had lain there in his hospital bed, staring at the ceiling.

  Not just because of the injuries to his body. Those he’d always known would heal, even though the doctors initially had their doubts. Scarred flesh would heal, his legs would move. But the other, that was much harder to overcome.

  It was the other injury that had stood in his way. The injury to his soul. There was a helplessness that pervaded it. The helplessness that he’d felt when he couldn’t save that old woman from the fire.

  The helplessness he’d felt watching Lauren walk away, and with her, his last hopes for something better than what he had. An emptiness that invaded every part of his being.

  It was the same emptiness that had been there when his father had left him. But then there had been Bess to pull and tug at him until he finally made it back to the surface again. Like a continuing flow of water wearing away the surface of a rock, she’d kept after him until he became a functioning, contributing human being.

  The emptiness had been waiting for him after he regained consciousness in the hospital. Waiting like an old dreaded adversary biding its time until it could vanquish him. But somehow, maybe it was strength of character, maybe it was stubbornness, he’d pulled through again. Not as well as the first time, but he’d risen above the emptiness enough to get back to work, to find something he was still good at and then do it.

  But if there was a third battle, Lance wasn’t sure he could survive it. He wasn’t sure he wanted to. Because if he gambled, if he let this woman into his life, let her affect him so that there was a glimmer of hope again, and then she walked out on him, what would there be left of him to continue?