Baby Blues and Wedding Bells

by Patricia McLinn

“What did you do after college?”

  “I was assistant director of a nonprofit that counsels troubled kids and their families, which meant I was a jack-of-all-trades: managing the office, fund-raising, dealing with the media, finding facilities in emergencies.”

  “What kind of job do you want now?”

  “Something similar would be good. I enjoyed that. But the important thing is that the job gives me enough time and enough money to take courses. So something near a university.”

  “Courses in what?”

  “All sorts of things. Not to go for another degree necessarily, just to explore—biology and astronomy and social science and Japanese and…”

  Fran Dalton being fanciful. Who’d have believed it? He loved it.

  “What else?”

  “Criminology, psychology, more history of art, maybe the history of gardening and…”

  Enthusiasm changed her face, turned the serene into exciting. Stirred something in him.

  She ended with a shrug. “Who knows if I’ll ever do it. Ever leave Tobias.”

  “You will. If you want to.”

  She shrugged again. “We’ll see. Here are your clean towels.”

  He took them with thanks. Halfway to the hall door a thought hit him and he turned around.

  “You know, Fran, there are all sorts of universities around where I live in northern Virginia. You should look into that area.”

  Right, like she’d leave Tobias and just happen to end up on Zach Corbett’s doorstep.

  She’d been bright enough as a kid never to fall for Zach or anyone like him, so no way was she going to make that mistake now, Fran thought. Look at what happened with Tim—and compared to Zach, he was a choirboy.

  Chester’s excited yips from the porch informed her Rob and Kay had arrived. Kay’s voice floated up, greeting the dog. Fran had to smile. Kay talked to her pet unlike anyone else Fran had heard. A native New Yorker, Kay talked fast—not as fast as when she’d arrived in Tobias, but still fast, even to her dog. And she talked to Chester as though the animal was another person. Genuine affection in her tone and words, but no baby talk. And she left pauses in the appropriate places as if the dog might answer.

  Fran reached the kitchen to find Rob and Zach metaphorically circling each other like dogs, and not the friendly variety like Chester.

  “Rob,” Zach said without moving from behind the counter.

  “Zach.”

  Kay rolled her eyes and stepped forward, extending her hand. “Hi. I’m Kay Aaronson. And I hear you’re Zach Corbett.”

  “Nice to meet you, Kay.”

  “Nice to meet you.”

  Fran hugged Kay and Rob. “What do you think of the puppies?” she asked Kay.

  “They’ve opened their eyes!” Kay’s face lit up. “You know, the next thing is they’re going to be getting around a lot more, climbing on each other, climbing out of the box. We’ll have to rig something to extend the sides, or you and Zach are going to have your hands full, Fran. And as the weather—”

  “Fran won’t have her hands as full if you’re here,” Rob said to Kay. “And Zach won’t need to worry about it. I’m sure that if he’s going to stay around any longer, he’ll find another place. Somewhere more convenient. On his own.”

  Fran walked into her brother’s line of sight, making him shift his gaze from Zach to her. “There’s no place more convenient. Zach’s helping me with the gardens and staying here, Rob. As long as he’s in Tobias.”

  “Fran,” Zach said softly from behind her. “Your brother’s concerned about you and—”

  “My brother,” she said, not taking her eyes from Rob, “is being absurd. Half this house is mine. Even if you could run Zach off to stay somewhere else—and that’s not going to happen—you wouldn’t be doing anyone any favors. Did Steve or Annette say they wanted him gone?”

  “No,” Kay said. “Annette said she was glad you’ve given him a place to stay and all of them time to deal with this. What’s that I smell cooking?”

  As a change of subject it lacked subtlety, but Fran appreciated the other woman’s support.

  “Spinach stromboli,” Zach said. “But—”

  “You made spinach stromboli?” Kay’s eyes lit up. “My God, the man cooks, too?”

  Fran’s concentration on her brother flickered.

  Too? What did Kay mean, too?

  Surely she wasn’t reacting to the famed Zach Corbett sex appeal. She was in love with Rob. She had to be immune. Lots of people were. Annette, Suz, her… Lots of people.

  “Fran, if you need help that badly with the gardens, we’ll find funds in the budget somewhere.”

  Rob’s words snapped her focus back to him, and the new worry in his eyes. A worry that had to be strong to make him offer to find more money in the strained Bliss House budget. She would have to reassure him…later. For now she had to set him straight.

  “I have the help I need—Zach.”

  “That doesn’t mean I have to stay here,” Zach said. “If it’s—”

  “It’s settled. You’re staying, and you’re working on the gardens.” Fran gave Zach a quelling look over her shoulder then returned her gaze to Rob. He’d have more to say to her, but it would be in private and she recognized the signs that he was beginning to accept that he couldn’t change her mind. “Everything’s settled.”

  “Not everything,” Kay said. “We still have to figure out what to do about the puppies roaming around.”

  Dinner would have been as tense as a guitar string if it hadn’t been for Kay Aaronson.

  Zach noticed she talked about wide-ranging subjects that drew each of them at the table into the conversation, at least temporarily. If one person dropped into preoccupied silence, she set off on another topic.

  The best one was Bliss House.

  “So here I was, shooting B roll for a music video and the lead actor walks out, and Miss Trudi shows up with this guy—” Kay beamed at Rob and they shifted slightly toward each other “—to save the day.”

  “How’d you come to be doing a video in Tobias?” Zach asked.

  “Oh, didn’t I tell you that? My grandmother’s Dora Aaronson.” The renowned artist was the town’s only claim to fame. “She insisted Bliss House was the perfect setting for the 1899 wedding I needed to shoot. Then Dora came out and— I don’t know if you’ve seen the mural in the tearoom area?”

  “I haven’t been inside.”

  “Oh, God, you’ve got to see the inside—it’s amazing. And so’s the mural of Fran’s gardens. Dora painted it.”

  “With your help,” Fran inserted.

  “A little.”

  “A lot,” Rob said. “Along with working up all the publicity for the opening.” He turned to his sister. “She’s at it nonstop at my place.”

  “Everybody’s going nonstop,” Kay said. “It’s going to be a great opening. I have all sorts of things to update the committee on at tomorrow’s meeting. I can’t believe we open two weeks from tonight.”

  “Neither can I.” Fran sighed.

  Zach saw the slight discoloration of the delicate skin beneath her eyes. She’d been working herself hard for a long time.

  As he looked away from her, his gaze met Rob’s. For the first time there was something other than wariness there. Now there was shared concern about Fran.

  “All the more reason,” Rob said to Kay, “for you to stay here instead of coming back to Chicago.”

  “As long as you’re talking to investigators in Chicago, I want to be there, Rob.” Kay looked at Zach and did a mini double take, then turned to Fran. “Didn’t you tell Zach?”

  “Zach’s got other things that need his attention,” Rob said dryly.

  “Well, I’ll tell him,” Kay announced. “Rob discovered his firm—you knew he was in financial management, didn’t you, Zach? Anyway, he discovered his firm was doing things that weren’t kosher.”

  Rob gave a quick grin. “That’s one way to put it.”

  “Rob gav
e his boss a chance to fix it,” Kay said. “And when the sleazebag didn’t, Rob went to the authorities, because it was the right thing to do. And they’re going over everything he knows in excruciating detail.”

  “Must be tough,” Zach said.

  Rob met his gaze, then shrugged. “It’s not going to last forever.”

  Pieces fell into place for Zach. “Attracting media attention?”

  “Some.”

  Fran stood, picking up plates. “Ice cream, anyone?”

  As she took Zach’s plate she gave him a look that delivered an explicit order not to bring up the No comment phone call from his first morning here.

  Kay Aaronson wasn’t precisely subtle but she sure was determined, Zach soon realized.

  She’d decided he and Rob should talk, and here they were, on the porch, with Rob rubbing Chester’s ears into canine bliss and him sitting opposite, catching glimpses of Fran and Kay cleaning up.

  Rob had said he’d help. Zach had said he’d clean up alone and let the three of them catch up. Kay wouldn’t hear of it. Maybe Fran could have turned the tide, but she seemed to approve the plan, and they’d been shooed out to the porch.

  “These gardens—” Rob cleared his throat and started again. “These gardens are consuming Fran.”

  Zach heard his worry. What would Rob say if he knew reporters were contacting his sister?

  “I haven’t seen Fran this excited since she left for college,” Rob said. “She wraps it all in that calm of hers. But I can see it. And the hours she put in learning about historic gardens… After Suz asked her to be in charge of the garden renovations, she spent night after night poring over books, catalogs and magazines.”

  “Fran’s got a good head on her shoulders.”

  “In a lot of ways, she does. But when it comes to helping other people, she doesn’t know how to balance, how to hold anything back. There was some guy in Madison after she graduated… She lets herself be taken advantage of. Unless other people look out for her.”

  In other words, Rob intended to look out for his sister and make sure Zach didn’t take advantage of her.

  Zach had no quarrel with that. In fact, he agreed.

  Maybe Rob saw that, because he dropped his head and resumed rubbing Chester’s ears.

  “I should know,” Rob said. “Because I did it to her. When Dad got so sick—when he was dying, I left it all to Fran. Oh, I visited. Came flying in for a Saturday night, but had to be back Sunday to catch up on work, you know. The day-to-day, that was all Fran’s. We got help in, but still, dealing with the doctors and his medication and the house, dealing with watching him slip away each day, each hour, that was all Fran’s. She gave up her life to come back here.”

  “She doesn’t regret it, Rob.”

  “That’s beside the point. I took advantage of her. And when he died… I hadn’t realized how much it was taking out of her, not until it was over. That’s the thing about Fran. She holds on until she thinks she isn’t needed anymore. But then…she was exhausted, depleted. She needed this time here. And yet now…”

  Rob’s telling him all this surprised Zach, and yet it didn’t. This whole conversation was a warning. It was only at the end of that last bit that Rob had veered from the warning. Then he’d been voicing concerns he’d had in his head for a long time. Perhaps he’d barely realized he’d spoken them out loud.

  “The point is, I’ll regret leaving it all up to her as long as I live. Family should make life easier for each other, not harder.”

  “Greatest joy, greatest sorrow—that is family. A man I met once said that to me,” Zach told him. As if that explained anything.

  “Smart guy.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Do you have any idea what your running off did to Steve?”

  And now Zach understood all the talk about family. Rob was equating how he’d left Fran carrying the burden of their dying father with Zach leaving Steve to raise his child.

  “Some. But that’s the difference, Rob. You knew what was happening with your father, and caring for him was something you could have shared with Fran. I never knew about Nell. And Steve’s made it damned clear he wished it had stayed that way.” Zach stood. “I understand you looking out for your sister, Rob. But this is between me and my brother.”

  “That’s where you’re wrong, Zach. Maybe you can tell me to butt out. But Steve isn’t the only one involved. There’s Annette and there’s Nell. There’s even your mother. And there’s everybody who loves them. It’s not just between you and Steve.”

  Zach was silent as Fran drove to Bliss House. He’d hardly talked since he came in from the porch last night and left Rob out there with Chester and the puppies. Kay had joined Rob. Zach had gone up to his room, and Fran had double-checked that she had all the papers for today’s meeting of the Bliss House committee.

  Now, as they separated inside the back gate of Bliss House, Fran asked if he knew what needed to be done today. He gave an uncommunicative grunt and headed off.

  As if this weren’t all difficult enough without Zach going mute.

  Her mood lifted when she entered Bliss House. Max and Suz and their workers had kept the warmth of the old materials while opening the space with modern simplicity.

  Other members of the committee were already there, talking together, but when Annette saw Fran, she hurried over to her.

  “Fran,” Annette said, a tentative smile on her lips, worry in her eyes. “I want you to know Steve and I appreciate what you’re doing. If it’s seemed like we were—”

  “Don’t give that another thought. How are you, Annette?”

  “We’re okay.” She gave a small shrug. “It’s just living with the unknown. Has Zach—I don’t want to put you in the middle, but if Zach’s said anything about…custody.” The word came out ragged. “Or the future or…”

  Fran shook her head. “Nothing, Annette. Truly. I think he’s trying to adjust to the facts. But you and Steve are going to have to talk to him about it sometime. I think, maybe, if he were used to seeing you in more relaxed circumstances—as relaxed as possible in this situation—it might help.”

  “You’re right. Thank you. How about if we come over tomorrow to see the puppies. All of us.”

  Bringing Nell would force Steve and Zach to be polite to each other. “Good idea. Where is Nell now?”

  Annette’s smile bloomed. “She and her friend Laura Ellen are having lunch at Miss Trudi’s.”

  “Miss Trudi’s not going to be here for the meeting?” That was unusual.

  “No. She said she had a good idea of the progress from being right here every day, so she was going to skip today to be with the girls. They were chattering all the way over here about how Miss Trudi made them turtle soup last time. Steve and I can barely get her to try broccoli, but for Miss Trudi she’ll slurp down turtle soup.”

  “Good day, Zach.”

  Miss Trudi stood flanked by Nell on one side and another girl about the same size on the other.

  He said hello, then watched the mismatched trio depart. Nell said something to the other little girl behind Miss Trudi’s back. From the looks the girls shot at him, they clearly were talking about him. But not to him, not approaching him.

  How the hell was he supposed to deal with her? What was he supposed to do?

  Over and over, he jammed the shovel into the ground. He’d get the biggest damned rototiller he could get his hands on if Fran didn’t have a plant every other foot that she wanted saved. So he jammed the shovel in again, driving it to a satisfying depth with his foot.

  “Zachary.”

  Recognizing that voice immediately, he turned over the shovelful of earth and broke it up methodically. As far as he knew, his mother had nothing to do with Bliss House. So chances were good that she’d come to find him.

  “Zachary,” Lana said again, “I want to talk to you.”

  He straightened and slowly turned.

  “Now there’s a phrase that makes me sure I’m back in T
obias.”

  She ignored that. Ignoring what anyone else said was one of Lana’s best-honed abilities.

  “You are dragging the Corbett name through the mud.”

  The laugh he produced had enough sharp edges to leave his throat raw. “Literally you mean? Because I’m doing manual labor? I’ve got news for you, Lana. I’ve done worse than this. Lots worse.”

  She froze to the outraged stillness he’d induced in her so often when he was growing up.

  “You will not do this, Zachary. You will not make a scandal of this and disrupt the entire family.”

  “What the hell are you talking about? You’re the one who said we should get a DNA test. How was that going to fit into your myth of a happy family?”

  “That has nothing to do with—”

  “Give it up, Lana. You wanted me to have a DNA test to prove Nell’s not my daughter, not Steve’s, not a Corbett at all.”

  “No. I—”

  “What? Has she refused to fit into your neat little Corbett box, too? So now you want to kick her out of the family? Poor Lana, all these people named Corbett and not one of them’s living up to your ideals. Well, give it up, Lana. Steve and Annette don’t give a shit about Nell’s DNA. And if they did, I wouldn’t. I’d claim her in a heartbeat. My daughter. Still a Corbett. So either way, you lose.”

  He turned his back on her and resumed digging.

  Chapter Six

  His cell phone rang, jerking Zach out of a muscle-sapping, sweat-pouring marathon.

  “Yeah,” he snapped into the speaker.

  “Vacation sure as hell hasn’t improved your mood any, Zach.”

  One kind of tension eased out of his shoulders. “Waco.”

  “You’re so pissed at me for talking to Doc that you’re lying on a beach somewhere and you didn’t even tell me where? Or is this to get out of helping me with the cabin again?”

  It was damned tempting to take the out. To say, yeah, he’d left town to avoid working on his buddy’s mountain cabin. “I’m in my hometown.”

  “Christ, I didn’t know you had one. You never talk about it. Thought you came from a rock.”