Gwynneth Ever After

by Linda Poitevin

  “Any man who can do what Jack did to Katie doesn’t deserve a second chance,” she said, her voice steady. Cold. “He walked away from his own kids and never looked back. Never called, never dropped by to see them. It was as if he forgot they ever existed.”

  Despite her rapid blinking efforts, a tear escaped and slid down her cheek. She swiped it away with the back of one hand. “So to be honest, I don’t know if I’d let him. I don’t know if I could.”

  Long seconds ticked by. Then Gareth reached to set his cup on the trunk with careful deliberateness.

  “It’s late,” he said. “I should go.”

  A hollow spot formed beneath Gwyn’s ribs. That was it? No comment, no nothing? She watched him rise.

  He paused as he reached the kitchen, looking back but not meeting her gaze. “Don’t forget to lock the door behind me.”

  She stared after him, listening to the retreat of his footsteps, the opening of the door, the finality of its closing again. So that was it. The fantasy had come to an end, wreathed in the flames of reality. She closed her eyes. Damn. She’d known this would happen if things turned too personal.

  She just hadn’t expected it to sting quite so much.

  Chapter 14

  Gareth flicked open the newspaper and ignored the half-naked blonde parading through Sean’s living room on route to the kitchen. It was her fifth trip in twenty minutes.In spite of the fact Sean slept soundly just down the hall, she’d made no secret of her interest in Gareth – or her availabilityif he returned the interest.

  Which he did not.

  Christ, what was she, half his age? He snapped the newspaper again, staring at it without reading. He needed a coffee but didn’t dare emerge from behind his flimsy protection. He also needed a shower and a shave, but he didn’t trust Sean’s friend not to pick the lock and join him. Five more minutes, he told himself. Five more minutes and then –

  A door opened down the hallway. Finally.

  Gareth peeked over the top edge of the paper. Sean saluted him lazily, tugging a tee-shirt over his tousled head as he wandered into the living room. He dropped into a chair opposite and lifted his bare feet onto the coffee table.

  “Morning. You got in late.”

  “I’m surprised you noticed.”

  The blonde returned from the kitchen. Leaning over the back of Sean’s chair, she wrapped her arms around him, exposing more than Gareth cared to see. He went back to staring at his paper. A muffled giggle reached him, then soft steps padded down the hallway.

  “She’s gone,” said Sean.

  Gareth dropped the paper onto his lap and rubbed both hands over his face. “Please tell me Bunny isn’t a regular here,” he muttered.

  “Her name is Carolyn. And when did you stop appreciating a beautiful woman?”

  “Maybe when she started looking the same age as my daughter?” He ignored Sean’s glower. “I need a coffee.”

  Sean snorted. “You look more like you need a good stiff drink. Did you get any sleep last night?”

  “No.”

  “Your non-involvement with the single mother getting to you?”

  Gareth glared at his cousin. “No. If you must know, I was thinking about Amy.”

  “Oh?”

  “Something Gwyn said – ” Gareth broke off and sighed. “It messed up her oldest daughter pretty badly when her husband left.”

  Sean linked his hands behind his head and regarded him in silence. “You’re worried that the same thing happened to Amy,” he said at last, his voice quiet.

  Gareth nodded. He turned his head to stare out the window at the gray morning. “Katie asked about her dad for three years after he left. Gwyn still doesn’t think she understands.”

  “How old is Katie?”

  “Seven.”

  “And when her dad left?”

  “Three.”

  “It’s hardly the same thing with Amy,” Sean pointed out. “You weren’t that much in the picture to begin with, and by the time Catherine remarried, Amy probably didn’t even notice you were gone.”

  Gareth forced a breath past the knife embedded in his chest. “Thanks a lot.”

  “You know what I mean. Besides, you weren’t the one who left, remember? Catherine did that.”

  “But I let her go, Sean – I gave up any right I had to her. How the hell do I explain that?”

  Sean rose to his feet, stretched, and headed for the kitchen. “Be honest,” he suggested over his shoulder. “She’s eighteen now, remember? I imagine she understands life a little better than your girlfriend’s seven-year-old daughter does.”

  Pausing in the doorway, he gave Gareth a sly grin. “And speaking of being honest, was it really only Amy who kept you awake all night?”

  Gareth thought of the pain he’d seen in Gwyn’s eyes the night before – pain he’d caused with his questions but hadn’t been able to ease because he’d been too wrapped up in his own guilt.

  The knife in his chest twisted and slid in a little deeper.

  “No,” he said. “It wasn’t just Amy.”

  ***

  Gwyn was having a bad day.

  It started at midnight when Maggie crawled into bed with her, followed by a feverish Nicholas an hour later. At three a.m., Gwyn ran a bath for Maggie, and after one look at Nicholas, added him to the same tub. A second bath for both followed at four forty-five, and a third at six thirty.

  Things had gone downhill from there.

  Nicholas and Maggie squabbled endlessly. Having run out of calamine lotion, she’d had to resort to baking soda paste, not nearly as effective, until Sandy could take her lunch break and run by the drugstore for more of the precious pink liquid. By noon, she’d dealt with no fewer than three telemarketers – the last of whom would no doubt reconsider being quite so perky in future – and a client who wanted major structural changes made to his already completed plans.

  Just as she finished arguing about everything from when she could do the work to whether or not she would bill him extra, frantic cries for “Mommy!” made her drop the phone on the desk and bolt from her office. The sound of running water penetrated as she tripped halfway up the stairs, scraping the entire length of one shinbone. She ran faster.

  Limping and cursing, she hobbled into the bathroom to find the tub near to overflowing and Nicholas gamely trying to turn off the tap. Gwyn dived over him and shut off the water. Closing her eyes and clinging to the tap, she took a moment to breathe.

  And to remember she was a mother, her children were merely sick, and they didn’t deserve to be locked up until they were thirty.

  She turned to her pathetically spotted, crestfallen little boy, trying to muster what calm she could. “What were you doing, Nicky?”

  “Helping,” he said in a small voice. His bottom lip quivered. “Maggie was itchy, and you were on the phone, so I was making her a bath.”

  “I see.”

  “I put porridge in it like you.” He held out the tin that he’d concealed behind his back.

  Gwyn took the container, hefted it in her hand, and then gave it a shake. She eyed the murky bathtub water.

  “All of it?” she asked. She wasn’t sure she wanted to hear the answer, even though the empty tin spoke for itself. “Did you wrap it in a cloth?”

  Nicholas shook his head. A tear fell from his lashes onto his rash-roughened cheek.

  Maggie produced the rubber plug from the bathtub from behind her back. She held it out to Gwyn.

  “The water was icky,” she said. “So I pulled the plug.”

  Gwyn stared at the plug in her hand, then at the near-to-overflowing, sludge-filled tub.

  She closed her eyes.

  Her shin throbbed.

  The doorbell rang.

  Sandy. Thank God.

  With Nicholas and Maggie trailing after her, Gwyn limped downstairs. She halted the twins at the foot of the stairs, reminding them that Auntie Sandy didn’t need to catch their chicken “pops,” and then opened the door.

/>   Gareth stood on the porch, one hand braced against the door frame, hair neatly pulled back once more, eyes hidden behind sunglasses as black as his leather jacket. Gwyn’s mouth turned into the Sahara.

  “Hi,” he said.

  Her mouth flapped in response. Mortification settled over her like an itchy sweater and her fingers tightened around the door, resisting the impulse to slam it shut. She wasn’t ready to face him. Not after the scene in her sitting room last night. A scene that had played over and over again in her mind ever since: her poor-wronged-woman performance of a lifetime; the way she’d come within seconds of bawling all over a Hollywood mega star.

  His abrupt departure.

  Heat flooded her face. The more she thought about it, the more painful it became.

  “I dropped by to see how things were going.” He looked down at the two faces peering past her legs, and the corners of his mouth curved up. “You seem to be fighting a losing battle.”

  She swallowed several times before risking her voice. “I’m trying to look on the bright side,” she said, forcing a lightness she didn’t feel. “At this rate, we’ll be back to normal in a week.”

  “True.” Gareth stared at the porch floor. “Gwyn, about last night – I’m sorry I left like that. So abruptly, I mean.”

  Gwyn blinked at him. Wait a minute. She’d all but come apart at the seams and he was apologizing to her? Gareth peered over the top of his sunglasses, his heavy brows drawn together. She knew he was waiting for her to reply, but shock had robbed her of speech.

  He sighed, lifting his chin and becoming invisible behind the dark lenses again. “I know I should explain – ”

  “You don’t owe me any explanations,” she interrupted. She’d intended to articulate her own apology, but the stiffness she heard in her own voice made her cringe anew. She looked away from the gaze she could feel but not see. Why couldn’t he have called instead of coming over? At this level of embarrassment, I’m sorry would be a great deal easier over the phone rather than face to face.

  Gareth straightened and shoved his hands into his jacket pockets. Hell, this wasn’t going at all well, and he couldn’t blame her a bit. First he’d run out on her, now he was botching his apology. If only he could just tell her –

  “Gwyn, there are things about me – things you should know, but - ” He paused as a car horn tooted behind him. He glanced over his shoulder at a red sports car that had pulled up by the curb in front of the house. “Are you expecting someone?”

  “I ran out of calamine lotion this morning. Sandy said she’d bring some by on her lunch hour. That’s her.”

  Nicholas edged past his mother’s leg, but Gwyn caught him back. “Oh, no, you don’t. Auntie Sandy hasn’t had chicken pox. She doesn’t need to catch them from you, my spotted little monster.” She glanced at Gareth. “Can you just watch the kids for a second while I run out to her car?”

  “You have no shoes. I’ll go – ”

  “No! It’s fine, thanks. I’ll just slip these on.” Gwyn snatched up a pair of muddy clogs and slipped them onto her feet.

  “I’d like to meet her.”

  “No, you wouldn’t.”

  Gareth laughed, not sure what else to do. “Gwyn – ”

  “I’ll be back in a minute.” Gwyn rushed out the door past him, down the steps, and across the lawn to the waiting car.

  Gareth frowned after her. What was that all about? A desire to protect his privacy? Given that she’d already introduced him to her babysitter, he doubted it. And besides, she’d looked embarrassed. Ashamed, almost.

  He struggled with a foreign sense of offense. He’d never had anyone want to keep him a secret before.

  He realized Nicholas had ventured out onto the cold wooden floor to stand beside him, accompanied by Maggie. Both children waved madly at the red car’s occupant, Nicholas inching his way toward the stairs.

  “I don’t think so,” he said. He placed a hand atop each blond head and turned them in an about-face. “If you come down with pneumonia on top of everything else, your mother will have my head. Back inside.”

  “What’s new – new – ” Nicholas grappled with the unfamiliar word but trudged obediently back into the house.

  “Pneumonia,” Gareth repeated. Casting a last glance at Gwyn, who leaned through the open passenger window of the sports car, he closed the front door and turned to answer Nicholas’ question.

  Chapter 15

  Gwyn took the plastic bag Sandy held out to her, shivering in the chill November wind and wishing she’d thought to grab a jacket, too.

  “Thanks so much for bringing this over, Sandy, you’re a real life saver. I don’t know what I’d have done if I’d had to get it myself. Can you imagine the looks if I paraded my two spotted kids through the drugstore? You know, they should sell this stuff in gallon tubs. I’m sure that’s how much I’ll go through – ”

  “Gwyn.” Sandy stared at her.

  Gwyn stared back. A wave of heat rose in her face.

  “You’re babbling.”

  Gwyn dropped her head onto her forearms against the car door. “You noticed.”

  “It was pretty hard not to. Such uncharacteristic behavior wouldn’t have anything to do with the man who was standing on your front porch just now, would it? The one you so obviously didn’t want me to meet?”

  The man who was standing on her porch? She snuck a quick glance at her house and her heart sank. Great. Gareth had stepped inside with the kids – eliminating any chance of politely not inviting him in. She held back a weary sigh. She was in no shape to cope with Gareth Connor today. She had trouble dealing with that magnetism on a good day. She couldn’t imagine doing so when she felt like this.

  “I didn’t say I don’t want you to meet him,” she said. Despite her denial, however, she avoided her friend’s gaze and, after several seconds of stony silence from the car’s interior, she caved. “Fine. I don’t want you to meet him.”

  “I’m trying very hard not to have my feelings trashed here, Jacobs,” Sandy said. “But you’re making it pretty difficult.”

  “I told you I’d fill you in after your birthday, remember?”

  “Bull. My birthday has nothing to do with you babbling – or with you keeping secrets from me. You owe me an explanation.”

  Gwyn floundered. “I don’t know. I guess it just seems so unreal – ”

  “What, are you afraid he’ll disappear if he crosses paths with the rest of your life?”

  “I guess. Maybe. I don’t know.” She did know, actually, but she wasn’t about to confess the truth. Sandy might be her best friend in the entire world, but she was also a hard-core realist who didn’t believe in pulling her punches. Gwyn didn’t think she could handle hearing what an idiot Sandy thought she was by indulging in this little fantasy. Much better to extricate herself first…and to recover.

  “I’ll give you a week,” Sandy announced. She started the car. “Maggie and Nicky won’t be contagious then, and you can have Rob and me over for dinner. But no birthday stuff. I’ve decided I’m in denial.”

  “When are you not in denial about your age?”

  “True. Oh, before I forget, I know you have lots of kids’ movies, but I thought you might be able to use some adult entertainment, too. Your favorites,” she added with a wink, handing another plastic bag to Gwyn. “I borrowed them from someone at the office, so there’s no rush to return them.”

  Gwyn peeked into the plastic bag. Three Gareth Connor DVDs in full-color cases. She held back a bubble of laughter - hysterical, no doubt - through sheer force of will. Clutching the bag in stiff fingers, she summoned a smile that felt more like a grimace, and stood back to wave as Sandy pulled out onto the street. Then she started back up the walkway to her house – and the man inside it.

  The front hallway stood empty, but voices coming from upstairs simplified her search. She found her children perched on the counter in the bathroom, watching Gareth, who was up to his elbows in the murky bath water. He g
rinned at her over his shoulder as he hauled out a handful of what looked like lumpy, gray glue and dumped it into the bucket by his side.

  “I’m not sure I’m making any progress,” he said. “For every handful I pull out, it seems two more take its place.”

  He leaned back over the tub, shirt straining across his shoulders and jeans across his – she sucked in a swift, strangled breath. Gareth looked over his shoulder again.

  “Are you all right?”

  Gwyn started to shake her head, stopped herself, put a hand to her hot cheek, and made herself nod instead. “Yes, I’m fine. But I should be doing that. You’re getting soaked.”

  On the counter, Nicholas and Maggie giggled, and she sent them a look that quelled them instantly.

  Gareth pulled another oatmeal glob from the water. “Did your friend have the lotion for you?”

  Here it came. But she had behaved rather strangely when he’d offered to go out to Sandy’s car, so she supposed he had a right to ask why. She just had no idea how she’d answer. She braced herself. “Yes.”

  “Good.”

  That was it? She blinked in surprise. He wasn’t going to ask difficult questions? A sudden thought occurred to her, warming her cheeks all over again. Maybe he just wanted to avoid any deeper involvement – and after last night’s display, who could blame him? The glob plopped into the bucket.

  “I’ll run out for more oats when I’m done with this,” he continued. “Or I can sit with the kids if you need to get other things as well. You might enjoy the break.”

  “I can’t ask you to – ”

  “You didn’t ask, remember? I offered.”

  And that was supposed to make her feel better about having a movie star remove cold porridge from her plumbing?

  For the second time in the space of a few minutes, she bit back a somewhat hysterical giggle. Lord, between hormones and mood swings, she was losing it. Maggie and Nicholas had better let her get some sleep tonight, or –

  Gareth sat back on his heels and raised an eyebrow. “What’s so funny?” he asked.

  “Nothing.” The corners of her mouth twitched.

  Gareth’s eyebrow rose another notch.