Birthright

by Judith Arnold

  Aaron had decided to pay her a call to see if he could convince her to make a donation to his summer program. It would be starting tomorrow, and he had enough cash in his budget to cover the basic costs of getting it off the ground. But he needed funds to hire more staff—and it would be nice if he could pay himself a salary, too.

  Aaron climbed the three steps to the porch and approached the front door, a thick varnished slab of oak with brass fittings and a small leaded-glass window. Through it he could see the entry hall. The walls were white and the stairway had a railing of polished wood and a fancy carved newel. To one side a pedestal table held a vase filled with fresh flowers.

  He rang the bell.

  No response.

  He should have phoned before coming, to see if she was home. But for some reason he’d thought it would be easier to talk to her in person than on the phone. Face to face, he’d have living breathing proof that she wasn’t the leading lady of his tormented adolescent dreams. She was just a woman. A very wealthy woman.

  He rang the bell again and waited. Nothing.

  Sighing, he turned to head back down the stairs, then changed direction and headed along the front of the wraparound porch and then down the side. If she wasn’t home, she wouldn’t object to his taking a peek at her property, would she? The house was so big and imposing, he was curious to see what it looked like in back.

  He halted when he reached the corner where the porch continued along the rear of the house. Lily sat on a folding metal chair in front of a bridge table, ignoring the more comfortable-looking wicker chairs near by. Clad in old jeans and a baggy white T-shirt, she had one bare foot tucked beneath her. Her hair was woven into a sloppy braid that hung down her back.

  She was painting. A small easel held a sheet of stiff paper on which she’d painted half a jug and most of a pear. Beyond the bridge table he noticed a jug and a real pear perched on a stool, the models for her creation. Along with the easel, the bridge table was cluttered with jars of murky water, small cakes of paint in a palette, paintbrushes, a box of tissues and a rag.

  She was so immersed in her work, she apparently hadn’t heard his approach. He stood silently, watching her as she swirled a brush in a jar of water and wiped the bristles on the rag. Then she dipped it in the water again, dabbed the bristles against one of the cakes of paint and applied a few careful delicate brush strokes to her painting.

  It was a good rendering, although Aaron couldn’t imagine why anyone would want a painting of a jug and a pear. The jug was fat, and she gave it dimension in the painting, using areas of white and shadow to make the jug seem to bulge out of the paper. Her hand moved with exquisite deliberation, and after each dab she sat back and studied the picture.

  Her fingers, he noted, were slender, her wrists and forearms slim. Her back was perfectly straight. The white cotton of her shirt draped in a way that hinted at the angular grace of her shoulders, the sleek lines of her body.

  She was, if anything, more beautiful now than she’d been in high school. More beautiful, and just as unattainable.

  If he stood watching her much longer, she’d be really upset when she finally noticed him there. He hadn’t meant to sneak up on her—he supposed shoes like his were called sneakers for a reason.

  He cleared his throat. She flinched and spun around in her chair. The paintbrush slipped from her hand and dropped onto the table, clinking against one of the glass jars.

  Her mouth popped open and then shut. She gripped the back of her chair with one hand and stared at him. He couldn’t tell from her expression whether she was angry or alarmed, whether she was about to charge him with trespassing or flee into the house and bolt the door.

  “I’m sorry,” he said quickly, hoping to avoid either possibility. His apology seemed to puzzle her, and he added, “For startling you like that.”

  She took a deep breath. Her cheeks grew pink. It occurred to him that she was shy, and the realization almost made him laugh. Lily Bennett, the dignified, self-possessed, most-likely-to-succeed girl from his high-school class, was shy.

  “I rang your bell,” he continued after her silence stretched a full minute. “I guess you couldn’t hear it out here.”

  “No.” She turned, lifted the rag and wiped her hands on it, then uncoiled from her chair and stood up.

  “Anyway, I don’t know if you remember me, but—”

  “Aaron,” she said.

  It was his turn to be startled. He had never heard her speak his name before. They’d never talked to each other in school. He’d known who she was, but she’d had no reason to know who he was.

  Whether or not she’d known who he was in high school was irrelevant. They were fifteen years older now, and she knew his name. He had to focus on the reason he’d come, not on the fact that even in an extra-large T-shirt and fraying jeans Lily Bennett Holden was the most beautiful woman in Riverbend, if not the entire world.

  “That’s right,” he said, extending his right hand.

  “Aaron Mazerik.”

  She slipped her hand into his. Hers was fine-boned and smooth. He stood a good six inches taller, but she tilted her head and looked directly into his eyes. The blush remained in her cheeks, and her faint smile really did look shy. But not so shy she couldn’t meet his gaze squarely.

  “I didn’t mean to interrupt you,” he said.

  She shot a quick glance at the paper on the easel and shrugged. “That’s all right.”

  “It’s very nice.” He gestured at the painting.

  “Thank you.” She glanced at it again, as if to make sure he wasn’t lying. Actually he was, sort of. The painting was very nice but, hey, it was a jug and a piece of fruit.

  He wondered if he could discreetly put some distance between her and himself. She wasn’t crowding him, but her scent was. She smelled of summer, warm and tangy.

  It irked him that all these years later, he was still affected by her. It irked him even more because he knew how wrong it was to be affected by her. He’d grown up thinking there was something bad inside him, something evil that made him desire her, but he hadn’t cared. Being so damned attracted to her was still bad, only he did care now.

  He pushed those thoughts away. He’d come here on a mission. The sooner he embarked on it, the better. “I was wondering if we could talk for a few minutes.”

  She took a step back, then twisted to study her painting, as if deciding whether she could leave it alone and give Aaron the few minutes he was asking for. “Sure,” she said, lowering her gaze to somewhere in the vicinity of his chest. She shoved a loose strand of hair back from her cheek and shaped another shy smile.

  He recalled that she was in mourning. Shattered, his mother had said. She didn’t seem shattered, though. Only distracted and a bit skittish.

  “Would you like to sit down?” she asked, indicating the wicker chairs with a wave of her hand. He nodded, then waited until she’d sat in one before lowering himself into the other. It was stiff, the seat cushion thin and hard. Just as well; no point in getting too comfortable.

  “I’m surprised you knew who I was,” he said, then grimaced inwardly. Not a good start.

  Her smile grew warmer. “We were classmates, Aaron. It wasn’t such a large class.”

  “I didn’t know most of the kids in it.”

  “But you knew who I was?” she asked.

  God, yes, he thought. “Everyone knew who you were,” he said. “You were at the center of things.”

  She shook her head. “I’m not so sure about that. But I’ll concede that you and I traveled in different circles.”

  “I didn’t travel in any circle at all,” he said, then let out a long breath. He wasn’t managing this encounter well at all. If he’d believed reminiscing about the good old days was the way to get money out of her, the conversation would be fine. But for some reason, with absolutely no evidence to go by, he suspected that Lily was the sort of person who appreciated a direct approach.

  “I’m running a summe
r basketball program at the high school,” he told her. “Originally it was supposed to be for the high-school team to stay in shape and keep sharp over the summer. But younger kids wanted to participate, and they wanted teams and skills training, and there are a lot of kids whose parents can’t afford summer camp. So I thought it would be a good idea to offer a low-cost program of basketball and swimming at the high school.” He took a deep breath. He was talking too fast.

  She shook her head. He hadn’t asked her for money yet, so he knew she couldn’t be saying no to that. “Charlie Callahan told me you were the basketball coach at the high school,” she said. An amazed laugh escaped her.

  Granted, the notion of him working at Riverbend High School would have seemed pretty funny to him, too, if he hadn’t lived it. “Wally Drummer—remember him? The old coach? He was ready to retire and he recommended me for the job. I guess someone must have misplaced my school records, because they hired me.”

  “I’m sure they hired you because you’re a good coach.”

  “They hired me because Wally told them to.”

  “Well, Coach Drummer always seemed to know what he was doing.” She drew her feet up onto the seat, hugged her knees and rested her chin on them. She looked almost girlish, not like a woman who’d been married and widowed, who owned this enormous house. He could more easily see her as a four-year-old getting her first set of watercolor paints than as a bereft widow.

  “I shouldn’t have laughed,” she said contritely.

  “I bet you’re an excellent coach. Better than Coach Drummer.”

  “No one was better than him,” Aaron said, meaning it. “It’s out of respect to him that I’m working so hard trying to get this summer program off the ground.”

  A breeze wafted across the porch. She glanced toward the bridge table to make sure nothing had been disturbed. Following her gaze, he studied the painting. Pears ought to be eaten, not painted, he thought.

  “Did you come here to talk to me about basketball?” she asked.

  “Yes, in a way.” He leaned forward, resting his forearms on his knees. He’d worn khakis and a tailored cotton shirt. He’d figured he couldn’t show up in his usual Sunday garb—old T-shirt, denim cutoffs and ratty sandals—and hope to make a good impression on her. “The program needs funding. I’ve gotten some money from the Rotary Club, a little from the school board and some from private donations. The kids pay thirty dollars a week to participate. Abraham Steele had implied that he would help bankroll the program, but he died before we got anything down on paper.”

  She turned back to him. “You came here for money?” she asked, sounding suspicious.

  “Yes.” No sense trying to sugarcoat it.

  She regarded him for a long silent moment. “Why?”

  Because your husband left you drowning in cash, he wanted to say. Instead, he relied on tact. “I’ve talked to lots of people about making donations. It’s a good program, but with adequate financial support it could be great.”

  “Thirty dollars a week from the participants isn’t enough?”

  “No.”

  “Then why don’t you charge more?”

  “Like I said, this is for kids whose parents can’t afford expensive summer programs.”

  “They can’t afford it, and yet you’re charging them thirty dollars.”

  “Because if we didn’t charge anything, they wouldn’t value it as much,” he explained. “If their parents pay thirty dollars, they’re going to show up every day and appreciate it. If it was free, they’d come now and then, when they remembered. It means more to them if it costs money, even if it’s just a nominal amount.”

  She nodded. Then she turned from him and gazed out at her backyard. A detached garage stood in one corner at the end of the driveway. A trellis on the side of the building held climbing yellow roses. The lawn was as uniformly green as in front of the house, but it was broken up with little patches of flowers. An apple tree stood close to the porch, its blossoms long gone.

  She was thinking, and he let her. A bird chirped somewhere nearby, and the breeze rustled the leaves of the tree. He returned his attention to her painting, wondering why she’d chosen to paint that jug, instead of the tree, or the flowers, or anything else on her well-cultivated property.

  She finally met his gaze once more and broke the silence. “Did someone tell you I was rich?”

  He used to be a pro when it came to lying, and although he was out of practice, he didn’t think he’d lost his touch. But he couldn’t bring himself to lie to her, not about this. He sat up straight. “I heard about your husband dying,” he said. “I’m real sorry.”

  She turned away again, her gaze traveling from her painting to the screened back door, to the porch’s freshly painted white railing. “Thank you,” she said in such a dull, flat voice he almost questioned her about it. Did she think he was just paying lip service to her loss? Did she think he was happy her husband had died? Even when he’d been spending the better part of every night dreaming about her, he’d known she was never going to be his, so her marrying someone else didn’t matter to him. If her husband had been poor, his death would have been sad. As it turned out, he’d been rich and it was still sad.

  So why did her eyes appear so hollow? Why was she looking at him as if he wasn’t even there? All he’d done was offer his condolences. Nothing unusual about that.

  Unless there was more to her husband’s dying than he knew.

  He didn’t want to know. All he wanted was for the life to come back into her eyes.

  “All right,” he said, leaning forward again as if he could will her to cheer up. “Yes, I’ve heard rumors you inherited some money. This is a small town. People talk.”

  His candor brought a spark back to her eyes. “No kidding,” she muttered, evidently not pleased that people talked—even though he couldn’t imagine anyone ever saying anything bad about her.

  “So I thought I’d give you a try. It’s a terrific program, and if I can get a little extra money, I can hire an assistant and handle more than ten kids a week. I also want to hire a certified water-safety instructor so the kids can use the pool when they aren’t playing hoops. Right now I can’t budget any of that into the program.”

  She appraised him, her gaze steady and mildly intrigued. “You have only ten children in this program?”

  “Ten a week. That’s all I can handle at one time. I’ve got around forty kids signed up, and I’ll be rotating them from week to week. I wish I could take more into the program, but I can’t with the funding I’ve got.”

  “Aaron Mazerik,” she murmured, a faint smile tracing her lips once more, assuring him that she had, indeed, come back to life. “Who would have thought?” She tapped her fingers on her knee, then got to her feet and shrugged. “How much do you need?”

  “A hundred thousand dollars would be great,” he said, then flashed a grin. “I’d be thrilled by a thousand. Even a few hundred. Right now I’ve got coffee cans in the Sunnyside Café, the IGA, Sterling Hardware and a few other places. I’m collecting nickels and dimes. Paper money would really turn me on.”

  She laughed again. It wasn’t a big boisterous laugh, or even a frothy, charming laugh. It was low and…rusty-sounding somehow, as if she hadn’t laughed in a long time—which was probably the case, given that she was supposedly shattered. “At the risk of turning you on, Aaron, I’m going to think about this. I’m not saying yes or no. I’m saying I’ll think about it.”

  “Great.” If she wanted to risk turning him on, all she had to do was laugh again. Or smile. Or just look at him.

  He gave himself a shake. He wasn’t going to let her turn him on. Even if she wrote him his dream-come-true check, he wouldn’t let her turn him on. The money, yes. Lily, no.

  Not wanting to overstay his tenuous welcome, he rose to his feet. “I appreciate it. The program starts tomorrow. If you have any questions, you can reach me at the high school. The gym office is extension 407.”

  “All
right.”

  He extended his hand to shake hers, this time in farewell. But she seemed distracted by her painting. “You strike me as an honest man,” she said.

  He wasn’t sure what to say to that, so he merely shrugged.

  “Tell me what you really think of the painting.”

  He sensed that this was some kind of test. If she wanted her ego stroked, she’d come to the wrong person. If she wanted honesty, though…“The truth? It’s too safe.”

  “Safe?” She eyed the painting, her head tilted to one side. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, it’s good, but…Look, I’m no art critic.”

  “I asked your opinion, Aaron. I’m not going to hate you for giving it.”

  Maybe she would, maybe she wouldn’t. “A jug and a pear don’t mean anything to me,” he admitted. “And you’ve painted them so—” he struggled for the right word “—precisely. It’s so neat and pretty and…I don’t know, safe.”

  She stared at the painting for a minute longer, obviously dissatisfied—with the painting or with him, he couldn’t say. For all he knew, his critique might have screwed his chances for getting any money from her for the program. It had probably screwed his chance to be anything more than a former classmate to her—if indeed that chance had ever existed. And it hadn’t. It wouldn’t.

  Her silence continued, unsettling him. It occurred to him that he was never going to see a penny from this meeting, and he was never going to feel anything but uncomfortable around Lily. “Anyway, thanks for hearing me out,” he said, edging toward the side of the house. “I won’t take up any more of your time.”

  She turned from the painting. Her eyes had come fully back to life, he noticed, glittering like stars in a night sky. “Safe, huh?”

  “I shouldn’t have said anything.” He didn’t care about the money. He just didn’t want her to feel offended. “When it comes to art, I don’t know what I’m talking about.”

  “I’m not so sure about that.” An enigmatic smile flickered across her face. “I’ll think about your program, Aaron.”