After The Storm (Men Made in America-- Mississippi)

by Flanders, Rebecca

  "Oh, the usual things," he replied. His thumb caressed a hght circular pattern on the underside of her wrist. "Going bald, getting fat..." And he glanced at her through lashes that concealed his expression. "Growing old without having any babies.''

  That surprised her, and in such a deep, undefined way that the only way she knew how to respond was with a joke. "I don't know how to tell you this, Mr. Dawson," she teased, "but recent medical research has revealed that due to uncertain anatomical details, the chances are very slim that you will ever give birth."

  He smiled, but his eyes were serious. There was no mistaking that. "Don't you ever think about it, Katie?" he inquired gently. "Didn't you ever once, while you were busy doing your doctor thing and devoting your life to the service of others, think about having children of your own, a family of your own? Didn't you leave any room in your life for yourself?"

  She was uncomfortable, far more uncomfortable than she would have been if Kevin had asked that question a week ago. She could actually feel her throat tighten and her heart begin to speed as though in preparation for a battle she didn't want to fight. And it all was absurd, of course. Kevin's question was motivated by idle curiosity, nothing more. He wasn't by any stretch of the imagination suggesting that he and she...

  She relied, not looking at him. "Of course I have. I want a family of my own very much. Just because I happen to be a doctor doesn't mean I gave up being a woman, and most of my male counterparts have families. That's never been a conflict.''

  "But?" he prompted.

  She lifted a shoulder, very uncomfortable now. He was waiting for her to say, as she had said only a few days ago, that she hadn't found the right man. For some reason, those words wouldn't come today. "But I'm thirty-four years old..."

  "So am I. Don't you think it's time we started to get serious about this thing?"

  Her heart was beating very fast now. It was as though she could read his mind, and against all dictates of logic, knew exactly what he meant. Or perhaps it was the way he used the word we. Or the way his fingers tightened, ahnost imperceptibly, on hers. She cast around frantically for some reply, and what she came up with was what a mere week ago would have been the only possible answer. When she said it now, it sounded heartless, deliberately cruel and plainly stupid. "Well, I don't think you've got anything to worry about," she said brightly. "There must be at least a half-million women in this country alone who'd love to have your baby."

  The words hung, naked and unforgivable, in the still morning air. She felt him stiffen, and reciprocally, her cheeks scorched. She started to pull her hand away and get up, but his fingers closed tightly, not even allowing her that escape. And when she looked at him, for it would have been cowardly to do anything else, his face was not hurt and angry as she had expected. It was very calm, and his eyes were filled with patience.

  He said quietly, "I've had the feeling we haven't been communicating since last night, when I told you I love you. Now I'm sure of it."

  She simply looked at him, helpless and miserable.

  He swung his legs over the side of the chair so that he was facing her. He held her hand, lightly now, between both of his, and he looked at her soberly. "You didn't believe me, did you?"

  "Kevin, I..." She swallowed hard. Honesty had always been so easy between them, a mere second nature. Why was it suddenly so difficult? Oh, Kate, how could you have screwed things up so badly? "Kevin, I believe that you meant it." She had to lower her eyes briefly, but that was the coward's way out. She looked at him again. "I—I believe that you feel good about us, and so do I, and it feels like being in love... but let's not get carried away. It's only—"

  "No, it's not." His tone was sharp, though his expression was still placid, and she could feel tension radiating from him, in every inch of him. **I know what you're thinking. It's that I've said it lots of times before, and I have, but—"

  "Kevin, you don't have to—''

  "No, let me get through this." His eyes were dark, and she noticed that the tiny little lines radiating toward his temples were tight. His fingers were hard on hers now, and unconscious pressure that refused to let her go. He took a breath.

  "The reason," he explained in careful, measured tones, "I've said it so often before is because of you. Because I've loved you so long I can't even remember when it started and everyone else... was just because I knew I couldn't have you. I can't believe you never guessed it. Katie, I've worshiped you from the time we were teenagers. It took me ten years to realize that what I thought was an adolescent crush was really a grown-up, very adult love. And another ten years of waiting, hoping you'd realize the same thing... and learning to live without you."

  She couldn't keep the shock out of her eyes or the disbelief that permeated every cell of her body. She couldn't sort out the emotions that coursed through her in never-ending waves. Was joy one of them? Was horror another? Hope, amazement, dread, pain?

  He took another short, tense breath. "I don't know how to explain it any better. When you came to me... when we made love..."

  Then she managed a single, strangulated syllable, not knowing what to say or even what she wanted to say, only that she had to say something. "Please..."

  Suddenly he took her fingers and brought them to his chest. His heartbeat was strong and rapid beneath her hand, pulsing with the same frightened intensity as was her own. His voice was a little breathless now. "Feel that, Katie. I'm scared to death. This is the hardest thing I've ever done. Just let me finish, okay?"

  She nodded, mutely, and blinked back an inexplicable sting of moisture in her eyes. Oh, Kevin, what do you want from me? What do you want me to say? What do I want to say?

  "I wish there were some way I could make you believe me," he said, and he let her fingers drop to his thigh, where they curled beneath the shelter of his hand like something broken and hurting. "I can't prove it in bed... it's so much more than that. I can't prove it with words—I just don't know the right ones. But, Katie, you're the only woman I've ever loved, and I've loved you forever. You're the only one who makes me feel right about myself and makes me want to be better than myself. You take me out of myself, but that's only part of it. I only know that I want to be with you for the rest of my life," he finished simply. The gaze that held hers was brave and quiet, and it went through Kate's soul like an arrow. "All right. Now you can say whatever it is you feel you have to say."

  But she couldn't, not just then. She leaned her head back against the chair, and all she could think was that she, too, wanted it to be like this between them for the rest of her life. She had never known a greater contentment, a surer happiness, a more certain feel of rightness about anything, as she had known with Kevin these past days. She wished then with all her might that it could be real, and permanent, and she struggled to remember all the reasons it could not be. '

  Kevin said he loved her. He said he had loved her forever. But how could that be possible?

  At last she had to look at him. One of them had to be sensible. For the first time in her life, Kate wished desperately it did not have to be her.

  "Kevin," she said with difficulty. Her voice sounded broken and weak. "I don't know... what to say." She looked at him helplessly, willing him to understand. "These last few days—you seem so different. You've changed since the storm. I hardly know you anymore."

  And he smiled, shaking his head slowly, almost seeming to relax. "No, Katie, I haven't changed. And neither have you. You're still smarter than I am, and stronger and braver and more in control of your life. I'm still irresponsible and shallow and careless and all those things you've always detested about me, though I'm trying to do better." He looked at her with such simple confidence in his eyes that everything within her ached to believe him. "The only reason these past few days have seemed different is because for the first time you and I were being real with each other. We were letting things happen that should have happened a long time ago. Can't you see that? We stopped playing the games and hiding behind
the roles and just let ourselves be ourselves. And if that's what you mean about the storm changing everything, then maybe you're right. If we turned to each other and found only what had been there all along, what can be bad about that?"

  Kate didn't know. She only knew that it was impossible between them, but she wanted it to be possible so desperately that she couldn't think of the reasons why. Give it a chance, Kate. For once in your life, give it a chance.

  And he must have seen the doubt in her eyes, the hope and the yearning, for he seized the moment, not by pushing his case but by backing away from it. He knew Kate too well to try any other form of approach; that was why he had always been able to manipulate her so easily.

  He glanced at his watch. "If you want to make rounds, you'd better get started." And then he smiled at her gently. "I know you need time to think. We'll talk when you get home, okay?"

  He knew she would agree. No matter what her decision, he knew she would return and face him with it. He also knew that by giving her this time alone, he was showing his trust in her. Because, deep down inside, he knew she was feeling the same things he did. He was just allowing her time to realize it.

  That wasn't manipulation, Kate realized slowly. It was caring.

  She smiled at him, though it hurt a little to smile through all the turmoil inside her. She got up and then leaned down and kissed him gently on the lips. She wondered if she knew how much she wanted to be able to tell him what he wanted to hear. She wondered if, by this evening, she would.

  "I'll see you about four, okay?" she said, a little thickly.

  He linked his fingers through hers and held them for just a moment before letting her go. His eyes were deep and clear. "I'll be here."

  Chapter Twelve

  Afterward, Kate would wonder how she could have ever been confused at all, how she could have made so complex something that was, after all, painfully simple. She usually was so much more on top of things than this. Her only excuse was that the business of being in love was very new to her. Emotionally inexperienced as she was, she had few defenses against what was happening to her.

  She made her rounds in somewhat of a daze, feeling almost as though she should apologize to her patients for being their doctor. She kept thinking, Why couldn't Kevin be right? You must know he's right deep in your heart. You've never felt like this before. We were meant for each other; we always have been. It had nothing to do with the storm throwing us together, and it's not going to disappear tomorrow, not if both of us remember how good this is and want it to last. It wouldn't be easy, but it could work out. Why couldn't it?

  And then she picked up a national newspaper in the lobby of the hospital, and she knew why.

  The front page teaser read ''Code Zero—Fact Stranger than Fiction.''

  Standing there in the lobby, she flipped the pages to the entertainment section. There was a picture of Kevin—a press-release photo, larger than life—and a sidebar of downtown Victoria Bend after the storm. The headline read "Colt Marshall: Real-Life Hero" and was subtitled, "Kevin Dawson Risks Life to Save Woman from Flaming Car."

  She read only a few lines. "During the tornado that recently devastated the small town of Victoria Bend, Mississippi, residents were fortunate to have on hand a television star who lives his role. Kevin Dawson, of Code Zero fame, was visiting his hometown when..."

  Kate closed the newspaper and walked slowly to her car. Her mind was calm, her decision certain. The excited, hopeful yearning had settled into a dull, aching lump in her chest, and everything was suddenly very clear.

  She did not really think that Kevin had planted the story or used the tragic misfortune of others to further his own publicity—although the thought did occur to her briefly. She was certain that not even Kevin would stoop so low to seek to profit from something like this. It was simply that seeing Kevin's face featured in a story in which a hundred other dramas played equally important roles brought everything into abrupt and clear perspective for Kate. It was more than the differences in their life-styles, their values and their outlooks on life that had kept her and Kevin apart all these years. It was that, to their very cores, they were different people, and they had never—even during the past few days of passion and insight—connected on any except the most superficial levels. When it came right down to it, they simply had nothing in common.

  That was, perhaps, an oversimplification, a cliché, but it was undeniably true. She had known it all along, and she had ignored it for no other reason than that she wanted to prolong the good feeling she had fabricated for herself out of the sexual attraction and easy rapport she and Kevin had discovered together. It made her angry that such a stupid thing, such a mundane thing, could stand between her and the kind of happiness she had known these past few days. They had nothing in common. It was a trite barrier that kept her away from love but a very powerful one. And perhaps what hurt Kate the most was that she did not seem to be able to rise above it.

  There was a car parked in front of Kevin's house when she arrived, a black Continental with a hired driver. So, she thought as she got out of her own car and walked slowly up the drive, the world has caught up with us at last. It was amazing how little it took to bring down the house of cards.

  She heard the voices before she opened the door. Kevin's was terse and angry; another man's was soothing and complacent. She paused for a moment, and with a kind of weary amazement, all she could think was that nothing in her life seemed to be happening in half measures lately. She had come to say a goodbye that would most probably break her heart, and from the sound of things, she was about to walk in on a fistfight.

  Kevin was nervously pacing back and forth in front of the fireplace when she came in; his adversary, a plump, balding man in an expensive suit, was lounging on the sofa, looking at ease and unconcerned. As Kate closed the door, Kevin whirled on the other man and demanded furiously, "How did you let it happen; that's what I want to know!" He was holding a folded newspaper clenched in his fist, and to punctuate his point, he threw it at the sofa. Sheets of newsprint floated harmlessly to the floor. "Damn it, Carl, I told you on the phone—"

  "Precisely the point, my boy." The other man had a British accent and seemed completely unruffled by what was apparently only another temper tantrum from the star. "I haven't been able to reach you by phone for days. What was I to do but to use my best judgment? And we'll get mileage out of this, old chap, never you fear—"

  "I don't want mileage!" Kevin shouted, and took a step toward him. Physical violence was imdoubtedly in the offing, but at that moment he noticed Kate for the first time.

  For a half second he looked disconcerted, and the effort he made to resolve anger with welcome was painfully obvious. In the end, however, the best he could manage was a terse "Kate, do you know my agent? Carl Cason. Carl, this is Kate Larimer."

  The other man got to his feet and murmured a polite greeting, which was drowned out by Kevin's grating "Good God, Katie, did you see this?" He gestured furiously to the newspaper scattered on the floor. "They make me sound like I'm at death's door! My mom's going to be having a freaking fit! How the hell could you do something like this?" he demanded, turning on Carl again. "I told you all publicity had to be cleared through me."

  Carl resumed his seat, untroubled. "Interesting point, your mother," he said mildly. "As I've been trying to bring up since the moment I arrived, your family has been quite concerned since the story broke, and as you were, ah, incommunicado, it has been left to me to deal with the frantic mumsy and daddy. In the end, the best I could do to placate them was to promise to deliver you safe and sound on their doorstep by nine this evening, and if we want to make that plane, we'd best hurry."

  Kevin stared at him.

  "Works out quiet well, actually," continued Carl smoothly, and Kate was torn between an instant dislike and an instinctive admiration for the man's composure under stress. "A few days in Florida, recuperating under mumsy's doting care—good human-interest angle there—and then we hit t
he talk-show circuit. We've got Donahue on the twelfth, and—"

  Kevin exploded. "I'm not doing talk shows! Not about this, not now! Damn it, Carl, when are you going to get it through your head that this was not a publicity stunt I dreamed up for the benefit of Colt Marshall?"

  Carl arched a delicate eyebrow and moved gracefully toward the bar, finding a bottle of well-aged Scotch in the cabinet. "Perhaps not, but it is better than anything I could have dreamed up, I must admit." He examined the label on the bottle, seemed satisfied and twisted the cap, pouring a measure into a glass. "And no matter what your personal feelings, old friend, we will take advantage of it. You know the rules of the game. You've got an obligation to the studio as well as to a hungry audience eager to hang on your every word. This is news, my boy, real news." And he met Kevin's eyes with a quiet force that even Kate could not imitate. "Best to handle it our own way, I think, than to let the reporters write their own stories. If you ever want to have any input into how the rest of the world views what happened here, you'd best begin now. Otherwise, the rags are going to build an image so bloody heroic even you won't be able to fill it. Don't you agree?"

  Kate could see the debate on Kevin's face. Anger, disillusionment, rebellion—and acceptance. He had wanted to keep this private; she understood that. He had always been so concerned about being forced to live up to Colt Marshall's image; he knew that if he didn't tell the story in his own way, things would become much more complicated later on.

  But there was more. Kevin was not accustomed to taking his life into his own hands. He never had to make decisions like this on his own. The only thing he knew was how to take the path of least resistance, and even though it went against his personal instincts, he had never had any choice. His life was not his own.

  She saw resolution fade slowly into resignation, and when he looked at her, there was helplessness mixed with distress in his face. "Damn," he said softly. He was begging her to understand, though why he thought she wouldn't, Kate couldn't imagine. "I have to see my folks. They'll be going crazy."