With Strings Attached

by Unknown

  'Molly, tell me - '

  She interrupted him with a wild laugh. 'Oh, God, Patrick! Don't tell me you're going to look after it! Whatever it is, you'll solve it for me!'

  He took her chin roughly with his hand, forced her to meet his eyes. 'I'll look after it, Molly. Whatever it is.'

  'I don't want you to!' She gritted her eyes closed, said harshly, 'Let me go! That's what I want! I want you to take your hands off me and let me go in peace. I don't want looking after and caring for and... and... or... '

  His fingers dug in. 'You're running away from me?'

  In a terrible way, it was true. She blinked her eyes hard and stared back at him. Please, don't let the tears come yet! 'Yes. From- from you. It- I- you smother me! For God's sake, Patrick! Let go of me! Let me go! Please!'

  He released her so abruptly that she could still feel the place where his fingers had dug into the flesh under her jaw. She had never seen that look in his eyes before. She whispered, 'Please, Patrick, will you look after Trouble. She wouldn't come with me.'

  Something like a shudder went through his body, then he turned and walked away. She watched him all the way back to his car. He had parked four cars back in the ferry line-up, but all that way, he did not look back at her once. There was a woman in a Mazda just behind Molly's van, staring curiously. Molly didn't notice, but eventually she did realize that the door to her van was still open.

  That told her more than anything else that she had succeeded in convincing Patrick McNaughton she wasn't his business. Even an angry Patrick would have closed the door before he walked away from her, not left it open to get sideswiped by a car coming down the traffic lane alongside.

  She heard the slam of Patrick's door further back in the line-up, then the engine roar that changed to a powerful whine as the tires screamed. When the howl of the Corvette's engine died away in the distance, Molly's tears finally came.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Molly could not remember driving through most of British Columbia. She remembered the ferry line-up leaving Vancouver Island, scrambling for her purse and wondering if she had left it behind, not caring much... wondering how she had paid for the ferry off Gabriola and remembering that it was free. One paid only when going out to the island.

  Pay to get on, get off free. Ironic, because that was backwards. She had gone to Gabriola for free, riding on Saul's deceptive gift. But leaving was going to cost her. The painful shadows of loving would be with her always.

  She slept in a motel somewhere along the freeway, stumbled out to the van the next morning and started driving again. British Columbia was a fog of mechanical driving. Alberta was clearer. By the time she crossed the border into the province of Saskatchewan, she was able to wonder where she was going.

  She stopped in the city of Saskatoon, realizing that she could not drive blindly forever. For one thing, she would drive straight off the freeway on one of those slow curves. She told herself that stopping was a good sign. If she could think this clearly with only four days driving behind her, she might somehow manage to live the next few decades without Patrick.

  Was Patrick looking after Trouble?

  The next day, Molly telephoned her old room mate in Ottawa and asked if her bedroom was taken yet. 'Sorry,' said Wendy. 'It went the day after you left. There's the couch if you need it, though.'

  'Thanks, but I need a studio.' That was a lie, because Molly might never be able to paint again, but it was impossible to accept Wendy's invitation. Impossible to be a guest on someone else's sofa with the tears still coming without warning. She needed a door she could close. 'Do you know of anything, Wendy?'

  'Hmm... Well, there's this two bedroom I heard about, but it's kind of oppressive. Furnished, though.'

  Better to know where she was going. Maybe another five hundred miles along the way and she would be ready to call Clara, but her aunt would ask questions that Molly was not ready to answer. She thought fleetingly of Saul, vague worry as she was driving around the northern shore of Lake Superior, anything to forget that look in Patrick's eyes when she screamed at him to get away from her, to let her go.

  She was not going to start crying again. Concentrate on the details, anything but the memories and the broken dreams. Like how much money did she have to pay all these darned credit card slips for gasoline when the bills came in? That was the important thing. With gasoline at fifty-some cents a litre, she had better think about money.

  Concentrate on numbers, not on Patrick tearing away from the ferry in the Corvette. Patrick, who was always so controlled, except in her arms where the calm exterior dissolved and turned to flames.

  Three thousand miles, more or less, from Ottawa to the ferry at Vancouver. Then back again. What kind of mileage did she get on the highway in this van? Three thousand miles twice. That would be about ten thousand kilometres, and it was time she stopped doing everything in miles per hallon. Litres per kilometre. No, that was wrong. Miles-no, kilometers per litre. Oh, damn! What did it matter. Who cared?

  Ottawa was blooming, flowers lifting their petals to the spring sunshine, the parliament buildings standing on the hill with their green copper roofs turned to the sky. Time had stood still. A month was nothing. Canada's capital city was unchanging.

  As Wendy had promised, the new apartment was depressing, nothing-coloured walls and indifferent but clean furniture. Molly transferred the contents of her van to drawers and cupboards. She pushed the bed in the second bedroom to the wall and set up her sketching easel. No music. Her tapes and her stereo were back on Gabriola Island, in the cabin.

  Had anyone slapped an official lock on the door of Saul's cabin yet? Saul's cabin. Her cabin. The government's. She supposed she should contact the lawyer who had done the transfer, but hadn't the energy to do anything but wonder how Saul had tricked her into his problems after fourteen years of keeping clear. By twelve, Molly had learned far too much about looking after her irresponsible parent. At twenty-six, surely she knew better than to feel responsible? Different if she could actually do something, but he had hung up on her, and he would hang up again if she ran him to earth.

  This new thing, the urge to find him and shake him and tell him he'd ruined her life... No, there was no sense in that either.

  She finally called Clara and got thoroughly bawled out. 'Molly, where the hell are you? I've been calling and calling that number out west- there's never an answer.'

  'Sorry. I'm back in Ottawa, tied up with painting a new picture.' Lies. How had she come to telling lies to people she loved?

  'That's why I've been calling you, among other things. Your agent's wild to get hold of you. Something about all those full sized paintings selling, and when could you do a showing because the gallery wants to set up something for the spring.'

  A year ago, when Molly realized that the children's books were selling quite well, she had started doing full-sized dinosaur paintings. Her agent had been sceptical that gallery paintings of children's fantasies would sell, but he had agreed to try. 'I'll call him.' she promised Clara. 'Getting ready for a showing will keep me busy, anyway.'

  'I thought you said you were busy? Painting a new something, you said. Molly, just why are you back? I assumed you'd gotten bushed out there in the wilds, but- '

  'It's not exactly the back of beyond,' Molly said, automatically defending Gabriola. 'It's beautiful,' she added, because Aunt Clara believed that the civilized world ended at the western boundary of metro Toronto.

  'If it's so great out there, why didn't you stay?'

  She put a shrug into her voice. 'As you said, the cabin had strings attached. Can-'

  'What strings?'

  Molly grimaced. She should have known she would end up saying too much. 'It's complicated, Aunt Clara. Too involved for the telephone. Can you send me those cases I stored with you? I need the clothes.'

  After she said good-bye to Aunt Clara, Molly called her agent and let him bully her into agreeing to do twenty paintings for next February. She bought canvasse
s and replenished her acrylics and brushes, but the light in the spare bedroom was terrible and nothing she painted looked right. Perhaps it was the light in her imagination that had dimmed. She knew she had to get back to the old Molly somehow, back to caring about today and tomorrow and the rest of her life.

  She went for long walks along the Rideau Canal, but whenever she returned to her dingy makeshift studio, the dinosaur on her canvas stubbornly refused to come to life. Should she try painting something else? Trees or flowers? Patrick's face, his dark brows lowered over those black eyes as he read her soul? Yes, one day she would paint him. When she was ready.

  Did Patrick ever dream of her? She thought not, because she had seen his face and knew she had killed his love with words. One day she would see his name in the news, she supposed. The new MLA in the British Columbia legislature. Then, after he had conquered that arena, he might turn up in federal politics here at Ottawa. Years from now, Molly might walk past parliament hill and see a black limousine drive up with Patrick in the back seat, a beautiful stranger at his side.

  Of course he would marry, have children. Without Molly. She turned away from the lazy flow in the Rideau canal and hurried back to her apartment. She had to stop these thoughts, had to find something to erase Patrick's image from her mind. At least let it fade, she thought desperately.

  She opened the security door and went to the elevator, admitting bleakly that she did not want Patrick to fade, that she would hold him in her heart forever. If she could go back and beg him to love her again, she would, but nothing had changed. Molly Natham was still a time bomb for any man destined for a life in the public eye.

  The elevator wasn't coming. Molly pushed the button again, but the indicator seemed stuck on the seventh floor. She shrugged and went to the fire stairs. One of these days she would get angry about something. She would be on her way back to life the day she found she could care about something other than the man who had loved her and the cat she had abandoned.

  Four flights of stairs, then she pushed open the heavy fire door and emerged in her own corridor. At first, she did not see the man standing near her apartment door. Then she did, and she stopped in mid-stride, frozen. Patrick, leaning against the wall. Waiting.

  It had to be another trick of her mind. Patrick. Here. He turned and she knew it was real. Is eyes. In her fantasies, it was always love in his eyes.

  Anger, she thought. Freezing fury, hot ice. If he were driving, he would be jamming the gears with a hard rage, not spinning the tires. How had he got into the building? This was supposed to be a security building, but she did not suppose that would stop Patrick. Why had he come? Patrick, glaring at her with derision or hatred in his eyes, not love.

  Her fingers were clenched, nails digging into her palms. Somehow, the pain got through and she unclenched them and took one step after another until she ended up beside her own door. 'What- why are you here?'

  He jerked his head towards her apartment door. 'Open it.'

  She fumbled in her purse, but the keys evaded her. He took the purse from her, demanding, 'Which key?'

  'The... ah- that one.'

  Why was he here? Not smiling, but grim and threatening. She followed him into her own apartment and he stood a few feet inside, looking around slowly, taking everything in. She tried to see it through his eyes and it looked about the same as always. Bare. Empty. Lonely. Why had he come? His eyes finished their circuit and came to rest on her face.

  'So this is your preference, Molly?'

  'It's what I could find on short notice.' Her hands tangled together. 'Why are you here, Patrick?'

  He laughed harshly. 'What's the matter, Molly? Are you afraid I want you?'

  She winced. 'Did you come here to hurt me?' He had a right, she supposed, but she had not known that he could hate with the same passion that had fuelled his loving.

  He paced across the empty living room and glared at the uncomfortable sofa, demanded, 'Where to you work? Here?'

  'The door on the right.'

  She followed him, standing in the doorway watching as he studied the dinosaur on her studio easel. He did not need to be an artist to know it was no good.

  'Bloody-minded dinosaur,' Molly said uncomfortably. 'I don't think he wants to be immortalized on canvas.' Patrick did not laugh. He might never laugh for her again. 'Patrick, how did you find me? I didn't- didn't expect you to try.'

  'No?' He turned to look at her and she could see the lines of weariness around his eyes. 'You made it perfectly clear you didn't want following.'

  'How?' It didn't matter, except that she could not imagine how he could have found her. 'Clara? But you don't know her surname, do you? And in Toronto- Well, there have to be pages of Wilsons.' He shrugged and she guessed, 'Saul's address book? Back in the cabin?'

  He laughed, but it was only a sound, did not climb as far as his eyes, or cut into the laughter lines at the sides of his mouth. 'If you left any clues back in the cabin, they weren't much use. The whole place is sealed up under court order. You knew that?'

  She nodded mutely and his mouth hardened. He said, 'I came for your power of attorney.'

  'What?' Confused, she squeaked, 'My- Why?'

  He lifted his shoulders, dropped them again and glared at the poor dinosaur who stood so stiffly on the canvas. 'You'll find out soon enough, won't you?'

  She was frightened, knew this was way beyond her control. 'That's... ridiculous! What do you want with- Why should I give you my- Why?'

  'Why? Perhaps because you trust me.' He made it sound a black joke. She spread her hands helplessly, but there was no softening in his eyes.

  'What are you intending to do, Patrick?'

  'I'm going to get back what's yours.'

  'You- '

  Yes,' he said grimly. 'I'm going after your bloody father. Make him pay his own debts.'

  'You-You're crazy,' she spluttered. 'He won't. He would never-You can't make him.'

  'You're wrong.' He was growing impatient. Patrick, who was always willing to wait if it was worth it. Where was the lover she had known? What had she done to the tenderness in his eyes? And why had she done it, if he was still going to get mixed up in this mess?

  He pushed past her. She followed him through the corridor and into her bedroom where he jerked open the closet door, stared into the darkness for a moment, then pulled out a suitcase.

  'Patrick, what are you doing?'

  'Start packing.'

  She licked her lips uneasily. 'Patrick, if you knew Saul, you'd know there's no way anybody can make him face up to his responsibilities.'

  He pulled a handful of hangers out of the closet, blouses trailing as he dropped them on the bed. 'Did you bring all this from the cottage?'

  'No, I- I left some things with my aunt when I went west. My things are mostly still back on... on Gabriola.'

  He went back for the last of the hanging clothes. She shifted uncomfortably, aware that there was no warmth in his eyes. No feeling in his voice, either, as he said, 'You left in quite a hurry, didn't you?'

  'Does it matter now?' Thank God the tears had all dried up. She had cried for a week, then her eyes had gone hot and dry and even now she felt nothing much, even with Patrick standing only a hand's reach away. Just that familiar feeling of nausea that she hadn't felt since she left Gabriola. Not ulcers, just love gone sour.

  He was throwing underwear and cosmetics into her suitcase in a jumble. She said dully, 'Didn't you hear me? You can't make Saul do anything. You probably can't even find him. I couldn't. If you knew him like I do- '

  He swung on her and she jerked back, frightened at the fury in his eyes. 'If you knew anything about me, Molly, you'd know that you're wrong. Now, get packed. I'm taking you home.'

  Home? She gulped. 'I don't want you to-I-' He reached for her and she screamed, 'Let go of me! You can't force me to go with you!'

  His laugh was harsh. 'Can't I?'

  'I don't want- '

  'I could care less what you want. Not a
ny more. You're packing, coming with me, or I'll pick you up and carry you out of here, kicking and screaming if you want, but you're coming.'

  She licked her lips uneasily. The mood he was in, he would not hesitate to toss her over his shoulder and carry her out like a sack of potatoes; and if anyone tried to stop him it would make no difference.

  'Forget it, Molly. Don't expect reason from me. I'm so bloody furious, I could throttle you. Now get packed. I'll give you ten minutes.'

  'Ten minutes? That's ridiculous. I'm not going.' Another lie, she realized miserably. Even with his eyes harsh and hating her, she would pack and walk away from from places a lot more appealing than this dismal apartment if he asked.

  'Ten minutes,' he repeated. 'And if you're not ready, I'll carry you out of here.' He sent a scornful glance around the jumble he'd made of her clothing. 'You shouldn't have any trouble. You've got some practice. It couldn't have taken you much longer than that to clear out of the cabin at Gabriola.'

  He had threatened to toss her over his shoulder and carry her out, and she ached for him to touch her. She would be in his arms then, and the anger would melt, draining away and leaving only love in his eyes.

  He left her with the mess in the bedroom, called from the kitchenette a moment later, 'Are the dishes yours?'

  'No.'

  Ten minutes, he had said, but it was more like an hour. An hour for Patrick to organize Molly's few possessions into boxes and instruct the caretaker about their disposition. An hour until he carried Molly's suitcase out to a rental car in front of the building.

  'Get in,' he told her. 'I'll bring the rest.' The rest consisted of the dinosaur canvas, Molly's wooden paint box and her easel. Everything else was in the hands of the caretaker.

  'What about my van?'

  'Where is it?'

  'Parking lot. Under the building.' She couldn't even talk any more. Her words were turning as jerky and harsh as his.

  He held out his hand for the keys. She didn't even ask him what he was going to do about the van. This Patrick was frightening, determined not to listen to any protest she made. She wondered why he was bothering with her at all when there was no tenderness or softness in his eyes or his voice.