With Strings Attached (Gabriola Island)

by Vanessa Grant

  “Twins?” David was grinning.

  Patrick explained to Molly as he shifted two slices of roast beef onto his plate, “Sarah’s dead against any medical procedure she doesn’t think is necessary, and when the doctor admitted everything seemed okay, Sarah refused to have an ultrasound.”

  Jeremy wailed, “But, Uncle Pat, if it’s a boy and a girl, who wins our bet? If it’s a boy I get to go to the PNE in August, but if it’s a girl—”

  “We both won, so you get to work on the wood pile and I’ll get the tickets.” Patrick added with a laugh, “Edward’s stunned. He arrived around five, just after the big event. Incidentally, Molly, he’s staying over in Nanaimo tonight. I said you’d not mind staying another night, but I can stay just as easily.”

  “They can come here,” offered David.

  Molly shook her head. “I can stay. I don’t mind.”

  “Just call us if they give any trouble,” said Patrick, shaking his head at Jeremy’s yell of outrage at the suggestion. “Behave for Molly or you can forget the PNE,” he warned. “Now pass the potatoes. I’m starving.”

  After supper, David refused Molly’s offer to help with the dishes. “Pat and I will do them. Go relax in the living room.”

  It was a sprawling, comfortable room.

  As soon as Molly sat down, Jeremy found a piece of paper and a pencil and asked Molly to draw dinosaurs for them. She obliged, adding all sorts of unlikely creatures to the drawing as Sally kept coming up with wilder and wilder ideas. Patrick joined them and suggested a goose and an eagle. Then David came in, looked over Jeremy’s shoulder and commented that cows had shorter legs than that.

  “I haven’t studied cows,” Molly defended herself, laughing.

  Later, Patrick drove them back to the Hollisons” home in the station wagon, coming inside to help Molly settle the children into bed.

  Our children, she thought, and she was beginning to believe that one day it might be. He took her hand and led her out of Sally’s bedroom, whispering, “Penny for your thoughts.”

  She smiled. “That I’m glad Saul gave me the cabin. And that I like your family.”

  He drew her into the family room, then into his arms. “Only my family? Kiss me, Molly. I’ve been aching for that ever since I left you last night.”

  He kissed warmly, his lips firm and gently demanding. “I’m not staying,” he told her, his breath hot against her cheek, her ear. “I’m not making love to you for the first time in my sister’s house, with my niece and nephew bursting in in the middle.”

  She drew his head down, opened her lips to welcome his and whispered, “Stay for just a minute more.”

  “You’re a wild temptress,” he growled, taking what she offered.

  “Is that good?”

  “You’re good.” He slid his hands intimately along her body, leaving her gasping when he abruptly moved away, saying roughly, “We’re good.”

  “Patrick—”

  “You’re playing with fire, Molly. High explosives. I’m getting out of here while I can. Call me if you need anything.” His eyes seared into hers and she knew that he was right. If he stayed...

  She watched the tail lights of his car fading away down the drive until she heard a sound from behind and had to turn to tend to Sally, who wanted a big drink of water. Remembering Sarah’s concerns about bed-wetting, Molly gave her a small sip, then put her to bed and read three pages of Bronty Goes to Hawaii, by which time Sally was soundly asleep.

  Molly went out to the kitchen to clean up from the children’s bedtime snack. Her hand went to her own flat abdomen, thinking of children and babies. She bit her lip, knowing she was building dream castles with no foundation. Patrick wanted a relationship, yes, but that was a long way from children and forever. He was a man in his mid-thirties, a man who had never married. There was no reason to think that would change simply because his voice went husky when they were close. He wanted her. He liked her, too, but he might have felt the same for dozens of other women. Us, he had said, but she wasn’t naive enough to believe that meant forever.

  But her heart pounded thick in her veins when the telephone rang. She knew it would be Patrick.

  “I called to say goodnight.”

  “You already said it. You were right. Sally woke up.”

  “I figured she would. Do you dance?”

  “Yes. Why?”

  “I’m going to take you dancing when this is over, when Edward gets home to look after his own kids at night. Not on the island,” he added with a laugh.

  She smiled, remembering the group that had descended on them in the White Hart.

  “Do you know what I want to do with you, Molly?” He heard her soft intake of breath and said huskily, “Think about all the ways I want to touch you. Dream about me, Molly.”

  He hung up, leaving her with the dial tone in her ear and the memory of his voice. She felt the warm excitement that seemed to have become a permanent part of her since she met him.

  She went upstairs to look for a bed to sleep in, but the bedrooms were all made up and ready for guests, and they were too far away from the children. In the end she took a comforter from one of the guest beds and brought it down to the sofa in the family room.

  No guests due for two weeks, Jeremy had said earlier, so she didn’t have to worry about being called upon to run a bed and breakfast. She’d never even stayed in one.

  She expected to drift off with the memory of Patrick’s voice in her ears, but her mind churned with activity. She tossed from one side to the other, thinking of Patrick alone in the house next door, of her cabin lying empty, of Saul far away and Babette talking about smuggling.

  The sofa was too narrow for restlessness. Molly finally got up and made herself a cup of instant cocoa in the kitchen, then went to look in on the children.

  Sally was sleeping, angelic and sprawled all over the bed. Jeremy was tangled in the bedclothes again, his dark curly hair wild around his head. Would Patrick’s children have that curly dark hair and those black eyes? They would have to be dark with Molly and Patrick for parents.

  “Stop it,” she whispered to herself in agony. If she went on like this, she would end by begging Patrick to love her forever, clinging and turning his affection to irritation. Molly knew the rules, had learned long ago that nothing destroys love as quickly as asking for more. Don’t ask. Don’t want. Welcome what comes, but never ask for more.

  Saul’s mail, she thought, desperate for something other than Patrick to occupy her mind. She would open the bills and organize them. And Monday she would pay them. Not just because he’d been so generous with the house, but also because she didn’t want the power or telephone cut off. She supposed she would have to go round eventually and change things over into her name. Meanwhile, she would pay Saul’s utility bills and use his services.

  She took the stack of mail to the kitchen table and started opening bills, using a table knife for a letter opener. The telephone company had sent an overdue notice, and a current statement with several calls to Europe on it. Five hundred dollars! She would have to transfer some money from her savings to pay that one.

  The electric was a month overdue, too, but it wasn’t as bad as the telephone. Molly put aside an envelope addressed in fine, rounded handwriting. Female handwriting. She would send it on when she had Saul’s address.

  The library at Vancouver Island University was demanding the return of four books with fines of forty-three dollars accumulated to date. Molly would have to look for the books. If they weren’t in the cabin, she didn’t hold out a lot of hope for getting Saul to send them back.

  She slit the next envelope open and began to slide the statement out; then stopped when she recognized the familiar form of a Canada Revenue Agency income tax assessment. She smiled and put it aside without reading it.

  Telephone and hydro were fine, but she drew the line at paying Saul’s taxes.

  The next thing she opened was a bill from a courier company. He must have shipped
paintings somewhere. Four months ago, she saw from the statement. That would have been from his last showing in Toronto.

  She sorted the piles. Statements to be paid. The letter and the tax statement thing to be forwarded when she had an address.

  Taxes. Had he paid the taxes on the Gabriola property and the cabin? She frowned, trying to remember whether there had been anything about that in the papers from the lawyer. Tomorrow she would check for sure.

  Had Saul paid the lawyer?

  She shook that off. Utilities, that was as far as she was willing to go. And the courier, she decided, adding that to the utility statements. Her eyes fell on the blue envelope again and she wondered if she was misjudging Saul. He had obviously become more efficient about paperwork since her childhood. To get his tax assessment in April, he must have filed his return back in January. Three months earlier than required.

  She shook her head. Three months early? Saul? That was so unlikely as to be virtually impossible. More likely late, she thought. It might not be a statement at all, but a demand of some sort for a delinquent return. In that case, she had better know so she could tell him when he called again.

  It wasn’t an assessment, she realized as she unfolded it again. At least, it was not the original assessment. It was one of the statements they sent out, balance due and interest on deficient installment payments. She’d had them herself, because it was almost impossible for her to guess her proper installment payments ahead when her royalties varied so much.

  So Saul must have-

  Her statements had never had penalties added on. The hydro and the telephone weren’t the only people Saul had kept waiting. This particular creditor had placed a very specific threat on the bottom of the bill. Pay, or have everything you own seized.

  Only Saul would be crazy enough to forget to pay his taxes. She would have to pay this, too. She’d better go to Nanaimo on Monday, find a branch of her bank and pay this thing, because the deadline on the statement was only a few days away. If it didn’t get paid, the bailiff would be after Saul and his worldly possessions.

  They would come looking at his last known address first. Official cars, official people demanding to know where Saul Natham was. She could not answer that question. How could he be so stupid as to neglect his tax bill?

  Molly smoothed the statement and looked at the details of what was owing. This had been going on a while. Interest and penalties. Legal fees? That sounded ominous.

  Surely that total was wrong.

  She remembered Babette saying gleefully what fun it was to be a fugitive. Molly had though it was some crazy joke. Now she knew better.

  Chapter Seven

  Amazing how easy it was to avoid Patrick when she set her mind to it. He knew. Every so often she would catch his eyes on her, as if he were biding his time.

  Molly could feel the ominous pressure building up as the days crawled past. Waiting for the other shoe to drop, she thought wildly. So much like the days of ramshackle wandering with Saul. At the age of eleven she had known how to act as a buffer between the looming creditors and her father, how to negotiate two more weeks in rooms with rent in arrears.

  Never again, she had vowed when Aunt Carla rescued her from all that. Molly would stay out of trouble and play every game by the rules. Keeping out of trouble meant, of necessity, keeping out of her father’s tangled life. That might have been difficult, because Molly loved her father deeply, but Saul’s own wandering life-style had protected her once she went to live with her aunt and uncle.

  Their contacts over the last fourteen years had consisted of Saul’s unexpected visits, occasional off-hand gifts, and Molly reading about her father’s successes in art magazines. Once, she had attended an exhibition of his paintings in Toronto, had seen him across the room in a tangle of people. A year later he had telephoned her from Bolivia. She had no idea where he had been in between.

  Aunt Carla had warned her. Any gift from Saul would have strings attached. Molly shivered, staring at the dinosaur taking shape on the canvas in front of her. Why had she let Saul hand her another dream with a catch? After all these years. As if she were still a gullible kid.

  Patrick was waiting, watching. Patient, but he would not let her avoid him forever. She hated the thought of the end, official men in official cars, asking questions and the news flying everywhere. She was living at Saul’s last known address, and they would come. Then everyone would know. Molly was a newcomer, but she had overheard the easy gossip that flew. Natural, in such a small community.

  Molly Natham? You know, that artist’s kid. The one who’s up for tax evasion. Yes, off somewhere in Europe, and I saw the sheriff up on McNaughton Road yesterday, and the daughter was...

  Patrick was an honorable man, and tax evasion was no joke.

  Molly supposed it would be easier if she packed her van and drove away. Perhaps she would, when Sarah returned home; although running from awkward situations was Saul’s game, another pattern she had vowed not to repeat. Meanwhile, she blessed Sarah’s hospital stay, because otherwise there would be no Hollison children to keep Molly busy.

  Sarah’s husband Edward turned up Sunday morning, looking tired and faintly worried. Molly sent him off to bed to get some rest. She could look after the children.

  Monday morning, Jeremy and Sally went off to catch their school bus with lunches Molly had packed. Patrick called to say he was off to Nanaimo, but would see her that evening.

  “Have a good day,” she said, neither agreeing or disagreeing about that evening.

  She cleaned the Hollison house, and then slipped over to her own cabin for three hours with the dinosaurs. By the time Patrick got back from his offices in Nanaimo at five-thirty, Molly was back at the Hollisons”, cooking supper and answering a million questions from Sally about where was Ottawa and did they really have the gover'ment there for all Canada.

  Patrick frowned at the salad and said, “I didn’t intend to turn you into a maid, Molly. I’ll talk to Edward. We’ll get someone in to take over here.”

  She turned away to get the tomatoes from the crisper. “I don’t mind it.” She was not ready to be alone with him yet, she thought desperately. Perhaps Saul would call. Maybe she could talk him into straightening out this mess. Then Patrick would never need to know.

  "Molly, this is too much. You’ve got your own work to do.”

  “It’s all right,” she insisted. “Jeremy and Sally go to school. Today I went to the cabin and worked most of the day on dinosaurs.”

  Mercifully, he let it pass.

  Tuesday, Molly made a quick trip into Nanaimo, going to a branch of her bank to transfer funds so she could pay Saul’s bills. Paying her father’s European telephone calls certainly put a hole in her savings, but five hundred dollars was nothing to that other massive threat. She checked the balance of her own accounts, but no magic was going to turn a small nest egg into an extra two hundred thousand dollars to pay Saul’s tax bill.

  Wednesday she learned that Sarah had a slight infection and was being kept in hospital with the babies for a few days more. Not serious, Edward told her, although he himself seemed worried. When Patrick heard about Sarah’s extended hospital stay, he renewed his suggestion that he hire help for Molly.

  “Or I’ll take a few days off work myself and help you out,” he decided, although Molly knew that he had in important deadline on a major contract.

  Edward decided, “We’ll hire someone,” and Molly found herself talking to him, easier than meeting Patrick’s eyes.

  “I’m really enjoying it, Edward,” she insisted. “I’d be disappointed if you got someone else.”

  She was still sleeping at the Hollisons”. Easier for looking after the children’s breakfast, she told Patrick. In between the meals and the children and avoiding being alone with Patrick, Molly was pursuing a fierce telephone search for Saul. She knew it was foolish to think talking would change anything, but she had to try. She had found Saul’s address book stuffed into a bookcase upstai
rs in the cabin. Alone in the cabin during the days, she was working her way through the telephone numbers in the black book.

  A woman in New York told Molly she had heard Saul was living somewhere on Vancouver Island. Saul’s agent hadn’t heard from the artist in two months. A California number rang endlessly with no answer.

  Friday was the deadline on the notice from Revenue Canada. Molly spent the day walking around in a state of near panic, accomplishing nothing. How long did she have before the sky fell on her? If she got through Friday without disaster appearing, she would be safe until Monday morning?

  She called numbers in Vancouver, San Diego and Tijuana, then spent the rest of the day trying to get through to the Mexican number and facing a stream of incomprehensible Spanish when she succeeded.

  Nobody admitted to knowing where her father was.

  Babette’s number was in there, in the P”s. The blonde had an answering machine. Molly had left messages on it every day since Wednesday.

  Friday, and the weekend loomed with its own problems. Patrick, and sooner or later they would be alone. If only she could find Saul first!

  Molly was sleeping in her own bed now, although she supposed it was really the government’s bed. She had once taken a business law course and she knew it was illegal to transfer property for the purpose of avoiding a debt. There wasn’t much doubt Saul had given the cabin to Molly to avoid letting the government have it. That meant the transfer wasn’t legal and could be cancelled by the court. And even if that didn’t happen, she would have to give up the cabin. Morally, it belonged to the government in settlement of the overdue taxes.

  She was living here on borrowed time. Neither the government, nor Patrick, would wait forever to claim what was theirs. One of these nights Patrick was going to come knocking on her door. She thought he would wait until Sarah was back home. He knew that Molly was going short of sleep, staying late at the Hollisons” each night so that Edward could visit Sarah in Nanaimo