by Diana Palmer
That did it! Chase bolted from his chair.
Calmly setting his cup on the table, Nelson showed his palms in a gesture of surrender. Sadly, he shook his head. “Everyone blames the messenger. All right.” Getting serious, he leaned forward. “How badly do you want full custody? To what lengths are you willing to go?”
“Any lengths.” The answer was swift, adamant, and Chase’s tone stated clearly that this was not a topic up for debate.
Nelson nodded. “There is a very effective cure for the problems plaguing this case.” Again he paused, as if his client was supposed to supply the answer himself.
Chase hissed through gritted teeth. “I’m waiting.”
“Yes, you are. And you know what they say about he who hesitates? Always a bridesmaid, never…No, that’s not it.” Nelson tapped a thin finger against his lips. “What is that…? What is it they say…?” He shrugged in defeat. “Ah, well.” Folding his thin, lawyerly hands neatly over his flat stomach, his myopic eyes never blinked. “Get married.”
Nettie drank flavored iced tea from a bottle, taking a brief pause from the amusing domestic anecdote she’d been sharing. Chase was hovering around the kitchen, listening to her, but obviously distracted and tense, a product, no doubt, of his current circumstance and of spending the past two days in a small enclosed area with a lawyer.
Hoping to relax him, she continued her account of the past two days at her house, where she and her sisters had babysat Colin while Chase tried to figure out how not to lose him.
The irony of Chase’s situation in relation to her own was not lost on Nettie. It was an uneasy balancing act she played. On the one hand, nothing seemed more important than helping Chase keep Colin. She wanted to devote herself to the cause, do anything she could to help him through the desert of uncertainty, share with him that she understood, as well as anyone and better than most.
On the other hand, the closer she got to father and son and the more she imagined the unthinkable—that Colin could be whisked away to England—the more nervous and frightened she became, for Chase and for herself. She doubted she would see Colin again, ever, if he went to live with his grandparents. England, after all, might as well be on another planet as far as she was concerned.
She hadn’t thought much about anxiety for the past few weeks. She was still using the program Lilah had gotten for her and was able to drive all over Kalamoose and even into the two cities flanking her hometown. After three years of being afraid of life—and even more afraid of the fear—getting back in a car, driving and actually enjoying herself felt like an accomplishment of heroic proportions. “Excitement” was replacing “fear.” But flying across a continent and an ocean? That was another matter entirely. Imagining Colin on a plane ride that long made her as jittery as a jumping bean. Picturing him in another country with people she didn’t know and had no reason to trust, wondering if he was happy and well and never truly knowing…
That was something she couldn’t think about at all. So the balancing act was to accept her desire to help, while reminding herself that caring about Colin and Chase was a temporary occupation. A goodbye was coming; it was just a matter of time. The only uncertainty lay in the details.
Reaching into a grocery bag, she continued her story, finding solace and distraction in the chatter. “So this afternoon Colin told Lilah he wants to be an actor, like her, when he grows up. But before you panic, a half hour later he told Sara he wants to be a police officer. Now here’s the absolutely adorable part. He looks at me and obviously doesn’t want to hurt my feelings, either, so he says—” Nettie laughed at the memory “—he says, ‘I’m going to write books and draw the pictures, too. Probably on the weekends.’ With that kind of schedule, your son will need a personal secretary by the time he’s eight!” Grinning, she set a bag of red peppers on the sink.
“Yeah.” Chase stared absently at her growing pile of spaghetti sauce ingredients.
“He has a caring heart, that boy of yours.”
“Yeah. He does.” Restless, Chase hopped off the tall stool he’d just sat on. “Listen, this all looks great,” he indicated the food, “but why don’t we go out tonight, just the two of us?” He reached for the tomatoes, intending to store them in the refrigerator.
Nettie slapped his hands. “Drop the veggies, pal. You’re not wriggling out of a cooking lesson tonight.” Grabbing his cheeks like a respectable Italian mama, she said, “You gonna make-a such a beautiful sauce. The best you ever had.” Planting a quick hard kiss on his lips, she patted his cheek and turned back to the ingredients. “All right.” She rubbed her palms together. “Let’s get started.”
Without allowing him time to protest again, Nettie put him to work peeling garlic and onions, explaining the difference between a chop and a mince, a fry and a gentle sauté. Chase tried to concentrate…sort of…but he knew darn well that he was just avoiding the real task tonight.
Task.
He shook his head. Asking a woman to marry you and be your wife and the mother to your child should not be a “task.”
Darn it, he ought to go back to covering wars and dodging land mines for cable news; it was a helluva lot less stressful than trying to maneuver in all these relationships.
Tears sprang to Chase’s eyes as he macerated an onion with a large rectangular knife. Terrific. Nervous as a cat at a rottweiler convention and now crying to boot. Since that seemed like a pretty lame time to ask a woman to marry him, Chase procrastinated awhile longer.
He’d had the most interesting reaction to Nelson’s suggestion of marriage as a solution to his present predicament: Immediate dismissal followed swiftly and incongruently by grateful concurrence.
The thought of Nettie and Colin and him together as a family filled Chase with satisfaction, even pride, as if family were some mind-blowing new concept he’d come up with all on his own. Forever had always scared the filling out of him. What seemed frightening now was that she might say no.
“The timing couldn’t be worse,” he grumbled, hacking into the second onion.
“What?” Nettie turned from the sink, where she was peeling the tomatoes.
“Huh? Oh.” Surprised that he’d spoken aloud, Chase lifted his arm to wipe his tearing eyes on his sleeve. “Timing on onions and…garlic. Do you sauté the garlic a long time and then add the onions or…not?”
Cleaning her hands on a dishrag, Nettie approached Chase with a smile and a paper towel to wipe his flowing eyes. “I should have sliced a piece of potato for you to hold in your mouth. Keeps you from crying.”
“You’re kidding.” She shook her head, and he asked, “Why aren’t you crying?”
Nettie shrugged. “Onions never make me cry. Only movies about old people and animals who have to find their way home.”
He smiled. Even a coarse paper towel felt soft with her gentle ministrations.
How could he ask Nettie to marry him? Proposals were supposed to be romantic or lighthearted or tender. Not practical. And the fact was, Chase’s need was as great as his desire. A woman like Nettie deserved more than a “practical” proposal.
Nettie started to turn away, back to the cooking, but Chase caught her wrist. When she glanced back in question, he said, “We need to talk.” Immediately, his heart rate accelerated. “But not here,” he added quickly, cowardly. “Not…”
“Not what?”
“Not…in the kitchen…with all these tomatoes.”
Her finely arched brows rose higher. Chase cursed himself. There was an engagement ring burning a hole in his pocket. He’d driven into Minot yesterday and picked it out, barely an hour after he’d told Nelson to mind his own business.
“Let’s go out,” he tried again. “We’ll clean all this stuff up and make the spaghetti tomorrow. I’ll spend a few hours with Colin now and you can go home and—” his hand stirred the air “—take a bubble bath or whatever you do, and I’ll pick you up for a late dinner. Lobster. And champagne.”
“In Kalamoose?” Nettie la
ughed. “Something tells me Ernie’s fresh out of seafood.”
“We’ll drive to Minot. How about it?”
“We can’t. We have to make dinner here because—”
“No. No ‘have to’s.’ Not today.” He reached for her hands, realized his were covered in onion and garlic and went to rinse them under the sink. Man, the stench…“How do you get this smell off?”
“Yeah, garlic does tend to linger. We can rub them with lemon, but the best way, really, is to soak your hands in vanilla.”
Chase scowled. “Okay, never mind.” He grabbed a dishtowel, dried off and decided not to wait to ask her to marry him.
Colin’s grandparents made their first appearance next week; if Chase waited until then to ask her, he would never be able to convince her that his proposal was anything more than an attempt to secure his future with his son.
But if he asked now, if he could somehow find the right words so she understood that this was what he wanted even though it was too soon and they hadn’t had enough time to themselves and he had no idea how to be a husband, well then perhaps together, over time, they could build a future. One that was rich and worthwhile. One that would last.
Chase began to perspire.
A kitchen seemed like an asinine place to propose, but something prodded him. Now or never.
Taking Nettie’s hands in his, he walked her over to the high stool by the center work island. “Here. Sit.”
Bemusedly but without argument, Nettie did as he asked and Chase felt some minor encouragement.
Now, if he knelt down as in a proper proposal…
He’d be making his pitch to her kneecap. Chase grimaced. Maybe the stool wasn’t a good idea.
“Stand up,” he redirected. Nettie tilted her head, looking at him as if he’d lost his mind. “All right, never mind. You sit. I’ll stand.” Taking a moment to assess their positions before he asked his question, he nodded to himself. “Okay, this is good. This works.”
Perspiration gathered with ever-increasing momentum along his brow and above his upper lip.
Letting go of one of her hands, he touched the ring in his pocket for reassurance. His throat felt dry as dust. Attempting to clear it once, he tried to swallow, then hacked again more forcefully.
“Do you want something to drink?”
“Do you have champagne?”
“No.” She looked confused. “I thought maybe water for your—” she touched the base of her neck “—congestion or whatever…”
Congestion. He sighed. Score one for suave. “No,” he said. “I’m fine.”
Nettie sat atop the stool, one hand held rather tightly in Chase’s and wondered what was going on. She had seen Chase tense, had witnessed his fear and glimpsed his anger. But this was different. This afternoon he was discombobulated.
“Are you especially worried about Colin?” she asked gently. “Did Nelson say something that upset you?”
“You mean something more than usual? No. Well.” He nodded. “Yeah, of course. Nelson’s mission in life is to say something that upsets me.”
“Tell me.”
Breathing heavily, Chase swiped the perspiration from his upper lip. Man-o-mighty, his heart was backfiring like a ‘78 Chevy. He couldn’t believe people actually enjoyed this. If Nettie said no, he would just stay single the rest of his life.
“So?” Nettie softly encouraged him.
“Right.” Hoarse, he cleared his throat again. “Right. So…Nelson and I were discussing my life, and he pointed out that I’ve never been the most stable sort when it comes to, well, my life. What he meant was I’m always traveling, can’t remember the neighbors’ names. In five years I haven’t been home long enough to finish a quart of milk.”
Great. Good strategy, genius, begin with the low points. “Of course, Nelson knew me in college, so his perspective may be a little—”
“You went to college together? I didn’t realize that.”
“—warped…what? Yeah. Yeah, and he thinks—”
“Has he been your lawyer since he passed the bar exam?”
“Huh? Yeah.”
Nettie beamed. “I’d say that shows stability right there.”
Chase thought about it. “Right. That’s right! Well, he thinks I should get stable in other areas, too. And I said, ‘Which other areas, for example?’ And he said, ‘For example, women. Most of your relationships haven’t outlived the average housefly.’ So after I punched him—” Chase laughed heartily “—I said, ‘What do you suggest, Nelson?’ And he said, ‘Turn over a new leaf. Get married.’” Chase paused, lips peeled in an unnatural smile.
What an idiot! He expected her to say yes to that? Mentally Chase kicked himself. How could a man who had been all over the world, who had previously been hailed as the king of selfassurance, turn into such an incontrovertible doofus?
Nettie Owens was either the best thing that had ever happened to him or she’d be the end of him before he hit forty.
He needed to begin again. Dropping the smile, he asked, “Can you forget everything I just said?”
“No.” Nettie studied Chase with an unblinking frown. “No, I don’t think so.” Perhaps, she mused, she felt as calm as she did because he was so obviously keyed up. She didn’t feel any of the emotions she might have expected to feel under the circumstances. Or under what she thought were the circumstances. “Are you proposing to me?”
“No!” Chase grimaced. “I mean, yes, but not like that.” He blew out a long, forceful stream of air. “You ever feel like you were trying to order filet mignon and you wound up with hash?”
Nettie smiled. He was proposing. Her heart thumped strongly but steadily in her chest. “Hmm. I suppose I have.” There was something both sweet and endearing about his utter lack of confidence.
He let go of her hand finally, and Nettie flattened it on her jeans. Her nails were clipped short, serviceable for work and for sticking her hands in a bowlful of bread dough. She wasn’t a decorative person.
“I’m not the filet mignon type,” she admitted aloud. “I like hash.”
Chapter Sixteen
Chase looked up from his scowling contemplation of the linoleum, and the hope that suffused his face was a sight to behold. Nettie felt her first flutter of nerves.
“Lilah and I were talking last night about you and Colin. She said pretty much the same thing Nelson did.”
Chase winced, but some humor returned to his countenance. “What? That I’m a relationship-shy workaholic?”
“No.” Nettie tilted her head. “I think she said ‘commitment phobic.’” Chase gawped. “Just kidding.”
Inching a hand out to fiddle with a bunch of parsley, Nettie said, “Lilah watches reruns of ‘The Practice’ and ‘LA Law’ in case she ever has to play an attorney, so she gets most of her ideas from TV, but she thinks that if Colin’s grandparents thought you were getting married, they’d have to back off.”
The parsley leaves began to wilt as she toyed with them. She couldn’t believe she was saying this to him. She couldn’t believe she was this relatively calm.
Last night, her conversation with Lilah had seemed like nothing more than the result of an overactive imagination and too much cable TV. But with Chase bringing up the topic of marriage and clearly feeling so clumsy and awkward it seemed merciful to admit that she and Lilah had talked about it, too.
“Lilah thinks you and I ought to pretend to be engaged for a while until they can see for themselves that Colin belongs with you. Once they’re reassured and they go back to England, the engagement could just naturally break up.” Letting go of the greens, she laughed a little. “See? You and Lilah had the same idea. Not that Lilah’s ideas are exactly mainstream.”
Nettie released a breath that felt a bit shaky. Was she accepting his proposal? Defining terms of the agreement? Or simply reassuring him? She braved a look at Chase’s face. He was frowning.
“Let me get this straight,” he said. “We pretend to be engaged for an indef
inite period of time.”
“Yes—if we decide to actually do it…if it seems like getting engaged is really a good idea, then yes. I imagine the time period will be indefinite. But closed-ended. No one will be able to fault you if the breakup is timed properly. Lilah says timing is everything.”
“It sure is,” Chase muttered. He looked decidedly less than pleased as he muttered, “A fake engagement.”
“Temporary engagement,” Nettie corrected. “Lilah says that when you’re playing a role, you want to believe in it as much as possible. So anytime you discuss it, even if you’re only rehearsing, you should talk about it as if you believe it’s true.”
There was a long, heavy pause. “You’d agree to something like this?”
Nettie breathed in. Now she was nervous. Very. Her mind began to race. What would she be agreeing to? A temporary engagement for the sole purpose of preserving the relationship between a father and son. Put like that, it sounded rather altruistic. Of course, for a few weeks…or what, a month at the most?…she’d be pretending that she had a commitment to the man and child who made her days hum with life and purpose again. Put like that, it sounded altogether dangerous.
Feeling her arms and legs quiver, Nettie reminded herself there was a built-in safety net in the knowledge that the relationship was not meant to last. The stated end gave her a sense of control. Her main intention was to keep Chase and Colin together; stealing a few more moments of joy would be her reward for a job well done.
A woosh of adrenaline sent her heart skittering, but she told herself to embrace the sensation; after all, she was about to do something that would make anyone’s heart palpitate.
Surprised by the strength in her tone, Nettie said, “Yes. Yes, I’d agree to a temporary engagement.”
Slowly, Chase nodded.
It was a strange way to accept a proposal, he thought. But then, it had been a strange way to extend one.
