Heard It Through the Grapevine

by Teresa Hill

  Matt nodded, telling her with his eyes that it was the right thing to do, and then he could breathe again, hadn’t even been aware that he’d stopped. Life was so strange sometimes.

  A moment later, the conversation was over. Matt took the phone from Cathie’s trembling hand and put it back on the table at his side, then faced Cathie again. “You okay?”

  “My mother asked me if I loved you, and I told her that I do. For what you’re doing,” she rushed on breathlessly. “For me and the baby. I do love you.”

  “I know.”

  He understood exactly what she meant, but found himself remembering the last time he’d heard those words. They’d come from her then, too. She’d been sixteen and mad as hell.

  I love you, Matt.

  He’d thrown it back in her face, as if the words hadn’t meant a thing to him, as if she didn’t, either. She’d been wrong, of course. Not that it was so surprising she might think she loved him. She loved so many people. Everyone. Nearly everything. She was extravagant with it, as if there was an abundance of it inside of her, and it was nothing to add one more person to the list of those she loved.

  It seemed to come so easily to her, too. Love. It was one of the things about her that had fascinated the crazy, half-wild boy he used to be.

  He’d always thought she was begging to get hurt, by loving so easily and so generously. Which, no doubt, was what had happened. She’d fallen for some guy who was completely undeserving of her. It still made him furious, just thinking about it.

  He wanted to tell her there was nothing to love. That it was all an illusion, bound to do nothing but hurt her even more, if she persisted in believing in it still.

  But her words rolled around oddly inside his body, rattling around his brain, floating around in his chest and the pit of his stomach.

  Just words.

  They’d scared him so much all those years ago, and somehow sounded so good to him now.

  Chapter Four

  Matt reverted back to form so quickly and so completely, Cathie thought she might have dreamt that crazy twenty-four hours in which he’d magically appeared in response to her hastily scribbled prayer, heard all her secrets, then talked her into marrying him.

  If not for the phone calls from her mother as they planned a wedding—hers and Matt’s—for the day after Christmas, she wouldn’t have believed it actually happened.

  Matt became the polished, confident businessman once again, orchestrating their marriage as he might a business deal. Cathie talked to his secretary as often as she spoke to him, and when she did, he was fast-talking, making decisions in a split second, trying to pay for everything and handle everything.

  He arranged to have her things moved into his house after the wedding, wanted her to have an entirely new wardrobe, which seemed ridiculous until he pointed out that it couldn’t look like he wasn’t providing for his wife. She swallowed her pride and spent his money as sparingly as possible, so that if she needed to look like Mrs. Matthew Monroe on occasion, she could do it without embarrassing him.

  Matt insisted that she see an obstetrician, the best in town, a woman who came highly recommended by three of his female staff members.

  He drove her to the appointment himself—the only time she saw him in that three weeks—and played the attentive husband-to-be perfectly. She tried not to catch her breath every time he got too close, tried not to let those old dreams of her and Matt, together and in love, seep back into her head. How would she be able to breathe once they got married and he was nearby all the time?

  The doctor was friendly and thorough. Alone in the exam room with her, Cathie asked for an AIDS test and one for sexually transmitted diseases. A man had gotten her pregnant, after all. She had to consider he might have given her something else, too. The doctor merely nodded, promising to call with the results. She said the baby was just fine and calculated Cathie’s due date as July 15.

  Matt wanted her to see his house, had offered to let her make any changes she wanted, but the house was the last thing on her mind.

  She had to figure out what she was going to do. Try to slip into his life as unobtrusively as possible? Be grateful for what he was doing and for the fact that she’d be able to keep her baby? Or go for broke? Open up her heart and her life completely to him, in hopes he might love her back?

  He made it sound like they were going to do nothing but share his house and his checkbook. Like he wasn’t the same man who’d held her so tenderly and made her all those beautiful promises about taking care of her and her baby, saving her in a way that humbled her and had given her all those crazy ideas that maybe…just maybe…he could love her.

  Was she going to marry the man who’d been so kind and so gentle with her, or the completely self-contained businessman who’d swear he didn’t need anyone?

  She feared it would be the latter.

  That was the one who showed up three weeks later to drive her to her parents’ house for the wedding. Matt, all slick and polished, as calm and sure of himself as ever, driving that pricey, steel-gray sports car of his.

  She had so many doubts she thought she might drown in them.

  Matt carried her bags to the car and opened the passenger side door for her. She stood by the car door, gazing back at the tired-looking, old house she’d called home for the brief time she’d been here, wondering where she’d be three years from now and if she had the courage to take this leap of faith.

  “You can’t change your mind now,” Matt said softly.

  “I know.” But a smart woman would still try to protect her heart.

  Cathie got in the car, trying not to look back anymore. Matt knelt down in the open door of the car and said, “I won’t let you down, Cathie. I’ll do everything I promised.”

  And her silly heart started thumping like crazy. There was that man again.

  “I know you will,” she said.

  But what if she asked him for more? What if she found the courage? Would it be like that awful time when she was sixteen and had thrown herself at him?

  “You don’t look so sure, Cath.”

  “Just nervous.”

  “About seeing everyone? About making them believe this is real?”

  “About everything,” she confessed, and thought he was going to take her in his arms again. That would be nice. Maybe she wouldn’t cry or forget to breathe, and then she could just enjoy the feeling of having his arms around her.

  Nothing felt like being in Matt’s arms.

  She dared a glance at his face. He might have turned to stone, right there hunkered down in the doorway of the car. Finally, he said, “It’s the right thing to do.”

  That was the businessman talking. The one who drove a status symbol, probably lived in one, as well. Couldn’t she just have her teenage car thief back? She’d understood him so much better and known how to handle him.

  “Just keep thinking about the baby,” he said.

  “Okay.” That helped. “I’ll always be grateful to you for this.”

  “And don’t thank me again,” he said, giving her a warning look.

  She fell silent. He stood up, came around to the driver’s side of the car, and off they went. They made it out of the city and onto the interstate, heading west toward the mountains, before he said anything else.

  “All we have to do is get through Christmas and the wedding. It’s three days. Then we can live our own lives,” he said. “Your parents will come to visit every now and then. Your brothers might show up from time to time, but that’s it. No one else is going to put this marriage under a microscope and try to analyze it or judge it. We get through these three days, and we have nothing to worry about.”

  “You’re right. It’s just…it’s not going to be easy. They’ll expect certain things from us….”

  They’d expect her to be in love with him. How hard would that be? All she’d have to do was drop her guard and let all those old feelings show through. But at the same time, she had other secrets t
o hold inside. The fact that she was pregnant. That the baby wasn’t Matt’s, and that her marriage was intended to be nothing but a sham.

  How was she going to manage that?

  “Cathie, we’re talking about your family at Christmas and on the day you get married. It’s going to be pure chaos. A dozen people dropping by to see you and your brothers and your parents. Everyone talking at once, pulling us in six different directions and probably not giving us a moment’s peace. It’s a perfect setup for us.”

  “You’re right.” Maybe they could pull it off. And then they’d be married. Oh, boy.

  “Try to relax.” Matt punched a few buttons, turning up the heat, bringing soft, soothing music from the CD player. He grabbed his overcoat from the back seat and put it over her. “Or maybe try to get some sleep. It’s going to be a long three days.”

  So, he was going to take care of her? That would be nice. And familiar. When she was a little girl, pestering him shamelessly and leaving him wanting nothing more than to get away, he’d still been the first person to come running if she ever got into trouble or got hurt.

  She was starting to worry that it wasn’t fair to him, to marry him letting him think this was going to be nothing but a sham when she wanted so much more. That was about as dishonest as a woman could get, wasn’t it?

  Or was this the chance she’d always wanted with him? One for him to have all the things he so desperately needed. She wasn’t sure if he’d ever loved anyone in his whole life, and he wasn’t going to start now, not on his own. She doubted he was even looking for anything like love, and his life seemed so empty to her.

  But it was his life, and he claimed to like it just fine.

  Who was she to turn it upside down? Or to claim she wanted one thing from him, when she wanted something else completely?

  “You’re worrying again,” he said.

  “Sorry. Are you sure this is what you want to do?” There. She just said it.

  “Cathie, the whole thing was my idea. I’m sure.”

  “It may not turn out the way we planned,” she tried. “I mean, life would be so much simpler if things just worked out the way we expected them to.”

  “What do you expect to happen, Cathie?”

  “I don’t know. Things have a way of getting complicated.” She thought about saying she didn’t want to hurt him, but he’d think that was ridiculous. He was like the man of steel, couldn’t be hurt. The man without a heart. So her heart was the only one at risk, right?

  She just didn’t know.

  He took her cold hand in his warm one. “Cathie, just let me take care of things for a while, okay?”

  “I’m trying to.” She closed her eyes, trying not to think too much about what was right and what was wrong, trying to just be grateful to him for giving her and her baby this chance.

  She slept, waking when they were only five minutes from her home.

  “Matt!” she complained.

  “What? You wanted more time to be nervous?”

  “No.”

  He grinned. “That’s what you would have done, and you know it.”

  She might have begged him to stop, told him it was all a big mistake, that they couldn’t go through with this. As it was, she didn’t have time to do anything. They pulled up to the house. Someone must have been watching for them, because people started spilling out. Everyone was talking at once. There were hugs and kisses and more tears. Matt got pulled one way, and she was dragged another.

  Her mother and her aunts wanted to go over every detail of the wedding, until her head was spinning. Sprinkled into that conversation came questions about her and Matt, about how secretive they’d been and how despite that, no one was really surprised. Had she been that transparent in her feelings for him? She supposed she had and didn’t want to think of what everyone was telling Matt.

  They all finally came together hours later in the family room, around a roaring fire and a beautifully decorated tree. Her mother passed out glasses of champagne punch, and her father stepped into the middle of the group to offer up a toast.

  “In case any of you haven’t heard, we have a wedding to celebrate. I’m trying to tell myself I’m not losing a daughter. That I’m just gaining a son-in-law, but…” He looked right at Matt. “She’ll always be my little girl.”

  “I know,” Matt said, slipping his arm around Cathie.

  “You’d better take good care of her, son.”

  “I will,” Matt promised solemnly.

  “Or else,” one of her brother’s shouted from the side of the room, the other three chiming in with good-natured warnings of their own.

  Matt gave her the barest hint of a kiss on her lips. They touched their glasses together, and she pretended to take a sip, while the room exploded into another round of congratulations and laughter.

  They all attended an eight o’clock service Christmas Eve. Her father talked about the blessings for which he was so grateful—one of which was being able to officiate at her wedding in two days—and mentioned many other people in the congregation who’d been blessed in one way or another in the past year.

  It was a close-knit community. The people truly cared about each other, in good times and in bad. All those connections were what made life bearable and joyous and fulfilling, her father said. Cathie wondered if Matt, who sat by her side, believed any of those things. If there was anyone who was particularly close to him these days, wishing for his sake that there was. She wanted him to be happy.

  Which reminded her. She hadn’t even asked if there was a woman in his life.

  Cathie groaned at the entirely obvious omission.

  “You okay?” Matt, who sat by her side, asked.

  “Yes. I just thought of something we forgot.”

  “What?”

  “Later,” she whispered. “When we’re alone.”

  It took some doing to arrange that. Late that night at the house, they slipped out the back door into the cold. Snow had fallen earlier in the week and still blanketed the ground. The mountains were a purplish-black in the distance, blending into the night sky.

  Matt put his jacket around her and said, “What’s wrong?”

  “This is…I feel so stupid. I didn’t even ask—”

  “Ask what?”

  “If there was someone else. A woman, I mean. In your life. Now.” He got quiet. The look on his face told her there was. “Oh, Matt. I’m so sorry.”

  “Cathie, it’s nothing. She’s nothing to me.”

  “But you were…together?” Sleeping together?

  “It was nothing, and now it’s over.”

  Which meant, they had been sleeping together. She closed her eyes and asked, “What did you tell her?”

  “That I was getting married.”

  “Oh.” And she’d just accepted that? That Matt would go from sharing her bed to marrying someone else so quickly? Cathie didn’t want to think about that, either.

  “She and I didn’t make any promises to each other, Cathie, but you and I did. Which reminds me…” He reached into his pocket and pulled out a tiny, prettily wrapped box. “I was going to put this under the tree for you, but…well, this is probably not the kind of thing people usually do in front of an audience.”

  “Oh, Matt.” She wanted to say he didn’t have to do that, but she supposed he did, to keep up appearances and everything. Oddly, no one here had even asked about a ring, and it had been one detail she’d forgotten all about.

  “Go ahead,” he said. “Open it.”

  She did, finding an exquisite diamond inside. Square-cut, large and flawless, it rested on a band of intricately carved platinum in a swirling pattern, old-fashioned, like something out of the forties. Like her grandmother’s, which was impossible because she’d never taken it off in her life and had asked to be buried with it. Cathie had always loved her ring.

  “I asked Mary if she had an idea of what you’d like. She had a photo and remembered your grandmother’s had come from a place here in town
. The same family still owns the store. They were excited about the idea of trying to copy the old design,” he said, taking it out of the box and putting the ring on her finger.

  Which was why no one had asked. They’d all been in on the secret.

  The ring looked exactly like one she’d dreamed a man she’d marry would someday slip on her finger. Matt would tell her to keep it when she walked away from him in three years. She could just hear him now saying it didn’t mean a thing. What was he going to do with a ring, anyway?

  Cathie wondered if he’d ever do this for real. Take the chance? Put his heart on the line?

  Before she could say a word, his head was coming down to hers, his arms closing around her. He touched his lips to hers and whispered, “I think we have an audience.”

  Cathie sank into the kiss and him. She felt his hesitation, felt his touch all the way down to her cold toes. Her nose was cold, too, and his face and his lips were warm. He took the barest taste of her mouth, holding her so softly, like she was a most expensive piece of something terribly fragile and extremely rare.

  Just like this, she thought. Touch me just like this.

  Dangerous thoughts for a woman whose marriage was supposed to be about anything but love.

  Christmas made it easier to pretend and to get lost in the crowd. As Matt predicted, the house was spilling over with people.

  Hours slipped away, the wedding rushing closer.

  She got more nervous every minute, couldn’t help but think, What if I misread the signs? What if there hadn’t been signs at all? Just coincidences she’d assigned some meaning to, because she’d wanted so much to believe it was possible for her to have him, that it was meant to be?

  What kind of mistake was she making?

  She’d brought the Box with her, had hidden it in the back of a drawer, and she kept pulling it out and staring at the thing.

  Faith was an odd thing.

  A hard thing.

  Believing in things you couldn’t see or hear or ever really completely understand.

  Matt didn’t believe in anything but himself and his own abilities and willingness to work hard to get what he wanted. He’d have said anything more than that was not only unnecessary but foolish.