The Heart of the Matter

by Muriel Jensen

  Then he drew away, his eyes focused for a moment on the lips he’d just kissed. When he looked up into her eyes, his own were curiously fatalistic.

  The kiss rattled her reality. She cleared her throat, trying to reestablish equanimity, knowing the kiss had been a thank-you because she’d come when Matt called for her.

  She made a small, open-handed gesture in explanation. “I’m very fond of Matt. I had to come.”

  Jason studied her for the space of a second, that fatalistic look still in place, then shook his head. “That wasn’t for him,” he said softly. “That was for me.”

  7

  It’s hard for a man to deceive a smart woman. That’s why God gave us children and dogs. Where Harvardhoned wit has failed, adoring looks, good appetites and wagging tails have saved the day.

  —“Warfield’s Battles”

  Jason was formulating a plan. He watched Laura clean up the kitchen with his sister and his niece and drank in the sound of friendly feminine conversation. There was nothing in the world, he thought, like the speed and pitch at which women talked when they found things in common and were comfortable together.

  Conversely, nothing quite matched the chill of a roomful of women who didn’t get along.

  While he settled Matt on the sofa in front of the television with Coke and popcorn and his treasured Power Rangers video, Laura, Patsy and Nickie talked with great enthusiasm about Nickie’s next year at school.

  Buttercup curled up at Matt’s feet, opening his mouth for the occasional popcorn kernel lobbed his way. Jason rubbed his ears and went to the window to look out on Adam and Eric, who were shooting hoops in the driveway. A couple of the neighbor boys had joined them, and the game was now loud and competitive. Jason smiled, reminded of the game he’d been playing when he’d fallen and been taken to the hospital. Laura stood in his kitchen at this very moment because of that night.

  The event had been significant; he was convinced of it. This was meant to be.

  And he was going to see that it was.

  The kitchen clear, Patsy and Nickie had run upstairs to gather up their things to drive to Boston before dark.

  Laura came to the window where Jason stood and handed him a glass of iced tea. “You may pour it on my head if you like,” she said with a smile of selfdeprecation. “Your sister and your niece are wonderful, and I apologize for jumping to conclusions about them.”

  He heaved a dramatic sigh. “I’ve already forgiven you for that”

  “Yes, well, I was pretty awful, and I thought you deserved to hear me admit it again.”

  He nodded consideringly. “Sure.” He sipped his tea, then looked with a frown into the beer-colored brew. “If you think that…rectifies everything.”

  She turned her back to the window and looked up into his eyes, her expression a little stiff. “Rectifies?”

  “Yes,” he returned evenly. “I mean, you did accuse me, a father of three and a fairly prominent celebrity, of a rather unsavory…”

  “Okay, okay.” She raised a hand to stop him. “I think I see where this is going.”

  “Do you?”

  “Yes.” She took his glass and walked past him a few steps to put it and her glass on the table. Then she came back to him.

  His point in this conversation was taking a detour here that he hadn’t intended, but he’d be damned if he was going to correct her impression. He stood calmly as she wrapped her arms around his neck and looked into his eyes.

  “You’re a man of brilliant words,” she said quietly, “yet you’re sometimes at your most eloquent without them. As you were in Matt’s hospital room when you kissed me as a thank-you.”

  He remained silent, wanting to remind her that it hadn’t been a thank-you, simply a personal indulgence, but he was afraid of derailing the moment.

  She stood on tiptoe, and the move required that she lean into him for balance. He bit back a sigh of satisfaction and put his hands at her waist to steady her. Her mouth was half an inch away from his, and he could feel the little stir of air when her eyelashes fluttered.

  “This is the apology again,” she whispered, “from the bottom of my heart.”

  The instant her parted lips closed over his he forgot completely whatever hurt feelings had remained from her accusation. Her mouth was warm, supple and creative as it teased a reaction from him.

  Not that he needed any coaxing, but he was still playing the game, making sure she didn’t see that this was not what he had intended, but some gift-wrapped bonus from the Fates.

  When he responded, she became aggressively determined to reduce him to cinders. He felt her hands in his hair, over his shoulders, down his back. Everything inside him stalled when she hesitated at the waistband of his jeans. He prayed for even a modest dip of her fingertips inside or the quick brush of her hand over his back pocket.

  She stroked there a moment as though undecided.

  He held her closer, ran his hand down her spine in the hope of encouraging her to follow his lead.

  Then there was a clamor on the stairs and the sound of his sister’s laughter.

  Laura sighed against his mouth, leaned her forehead against his chin for an instant, then pulled out of his arms just as Patsy and Nickie erupted into the kitchen.

  Jason took their bags out to the car as they detoured to say goodbye to Matt. Adam and Eric gave hugs and gathered around with Jason and Laura to wave goodbye, then rejoined their friends in the basketball game.

  Laura walked back with Jason into the house. Matt stood at the counter with his crutches, staring at the cookie jar, obviously trying to decide how to hold himself upright and reach for cookies at the same time.

  Laura took a step toward him, but Jason pulled her back.

  Matt leaned his right crutch against the counter and, leaning on the left, reached toward the jar. It was slightly out of reach. He studied the problem for a moment then resourcefully took a wooden spoon from a nearby holder and used it to pull the cookie jar toward him.

  With it in reach, he delved in, then had to cope with the problem of how to hold the cookies while he replaced the lid, then the jar, and took up his second crutch.

  He decided on putting one cookie in his mouth and a second in his shirt pocket.

  Though not necessarily the most sanitary solution, it did work.

  Turning back toward the sofa on the crutches, Matt spotted them, gave them a garbled “Hi” and went back to the sofa.

  “Poor little guy,” Laura said sympathetically.

  Jason was proud that he’d coped so well, but for his own purposes, he went along with her empathy. “I know. It’s going to be a rough two weeks for him in New Hampshire with his brothers running off without him.”

  “Good thing he has you and Buttercup,” she said.

  “Well.” He stared after Matt with parental concern. “Buttercup will stick with him, but I’m supposed to try to put together a proposal for a new book that isn’t a collection of columns. It’ll take a lot of my time.”

  She looked up at him, at first sharing his concern. Then she obviously caught the drift of his subtle performance and folded her arms, asking point-blank, “What are you getting at?”

  “I’m getting at taking you with us,” he said directly. “Matt’s going to need help, he adores you, you like him, and you said you always take the last two weeks of August off.”

  She was going to resist him; he saw it in her eyes. “I have a food seminar.”

  “It’s been rescheduled for October,” he said, sure he looked pleased at being able to one-up her. “Julie Fuller called me this morning, too. I was scheduled to speak at the opening dinner.”

  “O-o-oh.” She drew out the word, taking a few steps away from him as she put together the pieces of the last fifteen minutes. “So this is what would.rectify my false accusation.” She closed her eyes briefly, then opened them again, her expression not angry as he’d expected, but just chagrined. “I misread you, didn’t I?”

  He wanted
to take her in his arms, but he knew this was a fragile moment. So he stayed where he was, a mere foot away from her. “You didn’t. I’ve needed you to kiss me-though not as reparation for anything-since I picked you up tonight. Now I guess you’ll have to forgive me for taking advantage of your misinterpretation.”

  She heaved a sigh and he waited on tenterhooks. She snatched up her purse and he was sure he’d blown it. Then she met his gaze. “Okay. I owe you that one. Now we’re square.”

  He was pushing it, he knew, but he could not envision two whole weeks without her. “So you’ll come with us?”

  “No.” She turned toward the door.

  He caught her arm and held her in place. “Come on. Don’t be afraid of this.”

  “This isn’t fear,” she insisted. “It’s…security measures.”

  “Padlocks, bolts, alarm systems?”

  She shook her head at him in exasperation that he could see was undermined by affection. “No. I’m not locking you out, but I know better than to go with you for two weeks to some wildly romantic rustic setting where…things’ll happen that can’t be taken back.”

  “And you think that’s bad?”

  She got pugnaciously close to him. “Yes. Because in the end, you have three great kids who need a wonderful mother, and I…” She paused and sighed. “I know this is really leaping ahead, but I don’t have the…the give to raise kids.”

  “Nobody has what it takes to raise kids,” he disputed. “We just do it because we started it and there’s no one to resign to.”

  She scolded him with a look.

  “All right, I’m sorry,” he conceded. “I know you’re serious, but I also know you’re wrong. Matt wouldn’t be so crazy about you if you didn’t have what he needs.”

  “All I did,” she said wryly, “was find a sale on Power Ranger sheets.”

  “Which were precisely what he needed at that moment,” Jason said, holding firm. “That’s what parenting is. Plugging the moments with what the child needs, one at a time.”

  She backed toward the door.

  Jason got between it and her to stop her. “Laura, I’m not letting you go until you tell me you’ll come with us.”

  “Jason,” she said reasonably, “you said it yourself the night we argued in the church hall. Love is about letting go, and I’m about holding on.”

  He folded his arms and firmed his stance. “Laura, I have let go of everything they’re going to get from me in this lifetime. You’re coming with us.”

  “Jason, think!” she implored. “How…” Then the door opened on Adam and Eric as she finished her question, so that all they heard was “Can I come with you to New Hampshire?”

  “Yeah!” Adam said, twirling the basketball on his index finger. “Sure. That’ll be cool.”

  “All right!” Eric, almost her height, put an arm around her shoulders. “She can come with us, can’t she, Dad?”

  There was the out-of-rhythm thump of crutches hurrying in from the family room, Buttercup following but keeping a careful distance from the awkwardly swinging sticks. Matt was big-eyed with disbelief. “Laura’s coming with us to the cabin?” he breathed, his expression so adoring, so hopeful, only a robot could have refused him. Buttercup was right beside him, tail-wagging at everyone’s obvious excitement

  Jason braced himself as Laura turned to him, her eyes pleading with him to intercede for her and correct the misunderstanding.

  He challenged her with a raised eyebrow and left the resolution of the dilemma to her.

  Matt threw down both crutches as though he’d been healed by some TV evangelist and wrapped his arms around her waist. “You’re coming?” he demanded, needing to hear it from her. “You’re really coming?”

  Jason waited with the boys.

  She sent him a threatening look. “Yes, I’m coming,” she replied, then added over the effusive cheers, “but I’m buying the groceries and doing the cooking. No junk. And nobody is spending sunny days in front of the television. Do you still want me to come?”

  The cheers were still loud and enthusiastic, though Adam caught Jason’s eye over Laura’s shoulder as he hugged her and gave him a desperate look.

  As Eric picked up Matt’s crutches and Laura helped Matt back to the sofa, Adam drew Jason into a shadowy corner of the kitchen.

  “It’s okay,” he said. “Eric and I’ll smuggle in some junk.”

  Laura found the New Hampshire woods magical. Had Hollywood established the setting for the perfect family getaway, Jason’s “cabin” could not have been more perfect.

  It was rustic in construction, though she guessed it probably wasn’t more than several years old. It was two stories high with a steep roof and diamond-paned windows reminiscent of European hunting lodges. The siding was weathered, but the window frames were painted green and bore window boxes filled with shaggy wildflowers, some of which stood up tall, some of which cascaded like a colorful fall over the boxes.

  The cabin sat in high grass a small distance from a lake, and a little boat bobbed at the end of a rope tied to a dock. Ducks played and fished in the afternoon sunlight.

  Laura studied the scene in amazement as the boys carried bags and groceries into the house, and Jason helped Matt, who insisted on negotiating the porch steps himself. She swore she already felt calmer than she had this morning when they’d left Farnham.

  This was like an outdoor version of the room with a light in the window. And she wasn’t outside looking in. She was actually here, part of the rowdy, rambunctious group whose laughter spilled through the cabin’s open door.

  An indignant meow from the back of Jason’s Mercedes reminded Laura that Sergei had been forgotten in the excitement of arrival. She removed the small wire cage.

  Sergei was a black Persian with a mien and a disposition that reflected the background he should have had, rather than the pound in which she’d found him. And riding in the same vehicle with a dog for several hours had done nothing for that disposition. He looked very displeased with his circumstances.

  Laura carried him in his cage up the steps and into the cabin, then stood and looked around in pleased surprise.

  The living room was large and light with an openbeamed ceiling and a broad gallery that ran along three sides of the room. Framed honors and awards decorated the upstairs walls and a bright quilt hung over the railing at the far end.

  Downstairs, the room was filled with an eclectic collection of furniture in bright colors, a large home entertainment system and one wall of books. Stairs led upward on both sides of the room.

  Jason pointed toward the back as he stood protectively behind Matt, who hobbled up the stairs to the second level.

  “Adam and Eric put the groceries in the kitchen,” he told Laura. “Go ahead and look around.”

  Laura walked into an enormous, fully equipped kitchen decorated to appear rustic with beige-and-blue wallpaper and glass-paned oak cupboards. But an enormous side-byside refrigerator gleamed beside a Ceran glass-top stove and a dishwasher with more controls than her car.

  Laura felt the comfortable warmth of the place chip away at her concern at being here. It was the kind of house that welcomed and enveloped you and made you want to stay.

  Well, she would, she thought. For two weeks, anyway.

  She put the cat carrier down and opened the door. Sergei didn’t move.

  “Come on, kitty,” she coaxed, tapping the floor in front of the carrier. “Come on, Sergei. You can come out now.”

  He came to the edge of the carrier, sniffed her finger, but remained inside.

  Laura rooted through the groceries the boys had left on the counter, found the plastic jug of milk, then opened a cupboard and found neat stacks of plates, dessert plates and saucers. She filled a saucer with milk and put it down in front of the carrier.

  Sergei leaned out to lap it up greedily, but remained inside the wire cage.

  Laura left him to adjust in his own time and began putting groceries away. Jason had told her t
hat their last visit had been Memorial Day weekend, and she saw that the cupboards were still well-stocked with canned goods and staples, and that the freezer held two packages wrapped in butcher paper-one marked Steaks and one marked Chops.

  She pushed the beef to the back and stacked chicken and fish in it, along with a few bags of vegetables and a couple of cartons of egg substitute. She stored fruit and fresh vegetables in the crisper, and milk, eggs and margarine in the fridge.

  She found a cupboard for cereals and rice, and a drawer for pasta. Flour and baking supplies did not have a home, so she looked through cupboards and drawers until she found an empty space at the bottom that held only tin foil and plastic wrap.

  She looked for pots and pans and found some of them hanging from an extended overhead rack above a kitchen island, and others stacked in a storage area under it.

  As she looked around, groceries put away, cookware and appliances waiting, she felt an excitement that had been rare in her lately. The professional part of her life had so overtaken the domestic part, that she seldom had time—or took time—to do the cooking and baking she once loved to do.

  Jason stood in the kitchen doorway and watched her scan the room. There was a small smile on her face that was entirely happy. And that made him happy. He didn’t bother to analyze why that was or what it meant. He was on vacation, and he was glad to see that she also seemed to be in a more relaxed mood.

  The cat, however, did not look so relaxed. It had retreated into the back of its carrier, watching him with enormous and mistrustful golden eyes.

  Buttercup, who’d come bounding down the stairs with Jason, hoping for a treat, went toward the carrier to investigate. Sergei responded with a hiss and a warning whine that began on a high note and ended on a low, primitive rumble deep in his throat.

  The dog, who did not have a hostile bone in his body, stopped several feet from the carrier, soft snout sniffing the air, plumed tail wagging in an offer of friendship.

  Laura came to pet Buttercup. “Does he like cats?” she asked Jason with a smile, “Or is he just hoping for a taste?”