Least Likely Wedding?

by Patricia McLinn

  “Bloodthirsty little thing, aren’t you?”

  “You bet. There are winners and there are…”

  Alerted by her fade-out voice, he followed the direction she was looking and saw players, still in the sweat-and grass-and dirt-stained uniforms of a hard-played game. “Something wrong, Kay?”

  “Both teams? Both teams come to the same place?”

  “Sure. They all know each other. Some of these kids play together on the high school team.” He jerked his head toward two dark-haired teens sitting side by side, their uniforms showing they’d played for opposite teams. “Luke scored the winning run for Tobias. The other kid’s the pitcher who gave up the game-winning hit. They’re cousins.”

  He returned with the cones and found her still watching Luke and his cousin.

  “It’s hard to be gleefully bloodthirsty about beating a team when you know the other players, isn’t it?” she said with a gusty sigh. “When they’re your friends. When they’re your relatives.”

  “Yeah. And sometimes it’s fun to have that we-won-and-we-don’t-care-you-lost attitude,” he admitted. “But this way has its compensations.”

  She smiled. “Life often offers compensations like that, doesn’t it?”

  “Life definitely has its compensations,” he murmured as he watched her eat another ice-cream cone.

  “One more stop if you’re up for it,” Rob said, once they were back in the car. “I have something I want you to see. Something I want to show you.”

  How could she resist? Rob’s “tour” stops so far had stirred dozens of ideas for promoting Bliss House’s opening—none like her original concept—and more never hurt. Plus, she was having fun.

  “Of course. Remember me? I’m the one from the city that never sleeps.”

  He leaned forward, pointedly looking out the windshield at the dark street. “Tobias, on the other hand, gets its full eight hours of beauty sleep.”

  Was it just a comment, or a way to point out their differences?

  He pulled into the driveway of his family home, where one light glowed in a second-story bedroom that she guessed was Fran’s.

  He didn’t look at her, but took her hand, drawing her inside. Her pulse picked up and oxygen suddenly became an endangered commodity when he headed for the stairs. He didn’t slow and he didn’t release her.

  Instead of stopping at the second-floor hallway, he made the turn and headed up another flight. She looked once over her shoulder at the hallway, then concentrated on what was ahead.

  At a small landing he opened a door, and she followed him onto a roof deck where the night sky blossomed above.

  From this vantage, Tobias sloped down to the lake in a patchwork of gray silken streets, velvet-green lawns and scattered sequins of lights. The waters of Lake Tobias shone like rumpled satin under a nearly full moon.

  He carried two deck chairs to the railing, opening the first for her.

  “Tobias’s version of bright lights,” he said.

  She turned to him, smiling. “This is…magnificent.”

  “You have the most amazing smile.”

  His words—so unexpected, so deep with warmth—would have been enough, but that intent look was in his eyes. She gulped in more air.

  He seemed to catch himself, grinned ruefully, and she knew before he spoke that his next words would change the mood again. “Guess you’re told that a lot. Probably everyone comments on the Aaronson women’s smiles.”

  “No. No one’s told me that. And that isn’t what people comment about when they mention the Aaronsons. They’d much rather talk about the scandals.”

  Why on earth had she said that? As if she wanted to discuss any of that with him, or anyone.

  “I’m not aware of any scandal.”

  “I thought you’d know, since Dora came from here. Not that I really knew until I was thirteen and…” All hell broke loose. But he didn’t need to hear that. “Dora never married my grandfather. He was a Pelten, an old New York society family. He died before my father was born, and his family didn’t acknowledge Dora or my father. My father felt that unjustly denied him opportunities. It didn’t matter to Dora. She worked like crazy, building her art, building her career. But he…he resents what he didn’t have.”

  I was shoveled off to public schools among those common, dull urchins. She waited until I was nearly in high school to send me to an acceptable school, when it would have been too late. As it was, it took years of inching up to earn acceptance.

  “Dora had a solo show when my father was in middle school, and she was an amazing hit. Suddenly they had money. I’m not sure they ever saw eye to eye, but they certainly didn’t after that. My father’s life changed drastically, while Dora’s changed hardly at all, because her life was inside the studio. He was determined I would have what he felt he’d missed. You know the drill, enrolling me in the hot preschool so I’d get into the right college.”

  He gave a faint nod.

  But she shook her head. “You don’t know, do you?”

  “I saw that attitude next door. Lana Corbett had big plans for Steve and Zach. But my parents were comfortable. Comfortable financially. Comfortable with who they were. Comfortable with each other. Comfortable with Fran and me. I was lucky, and most of the time I knew it.

  “Dad was our rock. Mom…Mom made us laugh, but she also knew when a laugh wouldn’t work. When I was a kid, she’d hold me and hum this tuneless little thing, and just be there. But with Fran, I used to hear singing. Both of them. Singing as loud as they could to some rock song. I know—hard to believe that of Fran now. If Mom had lived longer I think Fran…well, Mom brought everyone out of their shells. When I was older she had a way of being quiet that could bring the words out—even out of a difficult teenager.”

  Kay blinked back tears. “You? Difficult? Who’d believe that?”

  “Ouch. That was a hit, a direct hit. Yeah, I could be a difficult kid.” Only when he dropped his hand onto her wrist, stilling it, did she realize she’d been tapping her fingers on the chair arm. “Not that I was a big rebel. But I had my plan, and I was impatient to grow up, have my independence.”

  “I never knew what I wanted to do, what I want to be—who I am.”

  She would have taken that back if she could. If not the words, certainly the tone. It sounded too poor-little-rich-girl.

  “You’ll—”

  “No—don’t, Rob. You don’t understand. You’ve always known. You played football, didn’t you?” She saw it in his face and laughed. “Quarterback, right?” And laughed again. “Quarterback because you wanted to make the plan and pull it off. In fact, I bet you liked to take the ball and run it in yourself. Bet you drove the coach crazy.”

  “You’ve been talking to Coach Callahan? Or are you a witch? And yes, I hated giving the ball to anyone else when I had that goal line in sight.” The start of a smile faded. “I was so certain my plans would get me to my goals. I thought that for a long time. I was wrong.”

  “Until your divorce.”

  “Yeah.” He said it a little too quickly, a little too willingly. But before she could probe for that other problem she sensed, he’d continued.

  “Janice and I met at college. It seemed easy to go from dating to planning our futures together. We were so in sync. We wanted the same things, agreed on how to get them and the timeline. We had it mapped out—finish our educations, get good jobs in the city, advance to better jobs, put aside money, then trim back on career, start a family, have a real home out of the city and enjoy our lives and family.

  “We started out hitting each point on our timeline like clockwork. Jobs in Chicago right out of grad school, the wedding and an apartment. We got better and better jobs. Pretty heady stuff. Neither of us brought it up when we slid right past the point our timeline called for pulling back. Instead we bought a condo near the lake. Not exactly kid-friendly, but convenient for people who weren’t home much.

  “Then my dad died. Nothing like the death of a parent to
make you take stock of your life. Janice and I had plenty of career success, but not the life we’d planned. I wanted to get back on track to that life.”

  He gave a humorless laugh.

  “I had to call Janice’s office to schedule time to sit down and talk. That should have told me something. And I sure as hell should have heard alarms clanging when she said she wanted to talk to me, too.

  “But if there were alarms, I was deaf to them. And blind. I drove full-speed at that cliff. Got a reservation at a top restaurant, arranged for the best champagne to be chilled and waiting. I held her hand, and said I felt as if we’d gotten into a rut. That I wanted to get out of it, and get back to what we had always dreamed of, to what we’d been working to establish—a real home, children, and a life that revolved around that instead of work. She said no.”

  “That’s it? She said no?” Outrage kicked Kay’s voice higher.

  “No. She agreed we were in a rut, and needed to get out of it. Our solutions, though, were not compatible. She said she didn’t want children, and she didn’t want a husband—not me anyway. I fumbled out something about our plan, and she said, Plans change.”

  “Oh, Rob.”

  “The champagne wasn’t poured yet. You know, that still seems such a waste—I hope someone drank that champagne.”

  “And now you feel like you failed.”

  He snapped his head around to look at her. “Failed,” he repeated. “Yes, I suppose I do.”

  “Failing isn’t such a big deal, Rob. You’re letting it bother you because you have so little practice at it. But you can learn a lot from failing. I have. All the jobs I’ve held, all the careers I thought I wanted…”

  “How many of those changes were because you failed and how many because you wanted to move on?”

  “Does it matter? Because that’s a kind of failure, too. Not finding where you belong, not finding the right fit in life—in a job, I mean.”

  “So if it is a failure, what have you learned from it?”

  “I suppose,” she said slowly, “that what I value more than anything else is loyalty. People who would never betray me.”

  He removed his hand from where it had rested atop her wrist. Her hand felt cold, vacant when she dropped it into her lap.

  “Betray.” His voice grated on the word. “You said that about Brice.”

  “It’s a sore spot. My family…well, it wasn’t a marriage breaking up, but there was a breakup of a kind. I told you my father and grandmother never saw eye to eye, but then there was a…an incident when I was thirteen. He and Dora haven’t spoken since.”

  “And they made you pick sides. But you were a kid, a—”

  “There was no being neutral about this, Rob. I… It’s complicated.”

  “Complicated.” He nodded. “That’s what people say when they don’t want to tell you.”

  “Or can’t.” She shivered as if a wind had kicked up, but the air was still. “What about you?”

  “Me?”

  “I know there’s something more than the divorce—in addition to,” she clarified before he could protest. “Something weighing on you.”

  He looked out at Tobias. “It’s like you said. It’s complicated.”

  She returned his words to him. “That’s what people say when they don’t want to tell you.”

  “Or can’t.”

  Rob sat on the screened porch and considered his future.

  There was no word from Mitchell Gordon. And no move to make changes. It’s what he’d expected after the call from Janice.

  That put the decisions in Rob’s court.

  He’d known his decision on the big question from the start, even though it would end his career as he’d known it.

  Now the smaller decisions followed—how and when and where. And then the personal ones, what to do after.

  He should organize his thoughts on paper. Prioritize. Plan.

  He knew how a legal pad and a good pen felt in his hand. Knew the sense of purpose. He just couldn’t imagine what he would write with that pen on that pad. Not a thought came to mind.

  “What are you doing?” Fran asked from the doorway.

  “Thinking,” he lied.

  “About Kay.”

  “No.” He’d been consciously not thinking about her.

  They had neared a brink on the roof after the baseball game, then backed away. Whether she had backed away or he had wasn’t totally clear. What was important was that it was the smart thing to do.

  Because Janice had been right, his career would be over, his options limited. No responsible man facing those sorts of uncertainties in his life should go over the brink.

  Yet the backing away also ticked him off, for no reason he could think of, which ticked him off more.

  He looked at Fran and saw her concern. “It’s okay, kid. I have my eyes open. I’m not fooling myself that Kay Aaronson wants what I want. You know me. I think things through, plan and—”

  “Yeah, and look where that got you with Janice.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “That I’ve been thinking that perhaps a different approach could produce a different result.”

  He stood, propelled by his kid sister’s bluntness. “I’m going for a drive.”

  She gave him a sharp look. But he was just going for a drive.

  In fact, when he happened to see Kay, walking with Chester four blocks from the Hollands’, he turned a block short, turned off the car and sat. So she wouldn’t spot the car.

  She walked slower than her first days here. She looked toward the treetops, not monitoring where she put her feet. No camcorder in sight. She smiled and waved to Mrs. Yee, who was watering marigolds.

  When Mrs. Yee went inside, Kay Aaronson looked around, as if checking for anyone watching, and stepped to the telephone pole with one of the Found Dog notices he’d watched her put up.

  In one quick movement, she tore it down and stuffed it into her tote. She crossed the street and repeated the action. Now that she was closer, he saw the tote was stuffed with what had to be other fliers.

  Kay Aaronson, the woman who didn’t know what she wanted, knew that she wanted to keep the dog named Chester.

  “Would you like to go sailing after the meeting?” Rob took the loaded tote bag from Kay as they walked to his car in the Hollands’ driveway.

  He was giving her a ride to Bliss House to present her second round of ideas for the opening.

  He would have taken the poster boards, too, but she clutched them. The white poster board showed stark against a bright blue tank top he hadn’t seen her wear before. “We’ll leave from the town-side pier. Give you a different angle on Tobias.”

  “I can’t. I’m going to pick up Chester at the vet.” Suz had given Kay a lift this morning while he and Fran had met with the bank about their father’s estate. Other than showing her Town Hall and the hospital, he hadn’t seen much of Kay the past several days as she’d devoted most of her time to preparing for this presentation.

  “What time do you get Chester?”

  “Five.”

  “Kay, that’s more than four hours. That’s plenty of time—” He backed the car out of the shade of the oak in the Hollands’ yard and sunlight highlighted her face. “Hey, is something wrong with Chester?”

  “No. Yes. I don’t know. They said no. But maybe there is.”

  They said no was the important answer, but she didn’t seem to know that. “You covered every possible response, Kay.”

  “It’s not funny.” She meant that.

  “Tell me what they said.”

  “The woman who called said they want to make sure I have time to talk with the vet. She wouldn’t say about what. She swore Chester’s healthy—but there’s something the vet wants to discuss with me.”

  “That’s Allison Maclaine’s office you’re talking about? She wouldn’t lie about something like that. She wouldn’t let her staff lie, either.”

  “Really?” Hope pushed back the wor
ry in her eyes for an instant, then worry surged forward again. “She might know the owner or—”

  “I’ll go with you. In the meantime, we’ll go to the meeting, then sailing.”

  “You’d do that? Go with me?”

  “Sure. Now, are you ready for this meeting?”

  “Absolutely.” Her fingers tapped at the webbing of her seat belt and her foot bounced against the transmission hump, both at double time. Apparently easing her worry about Chester had allowed her nerves to take over.

  “You’ll do great.”

  She cut him a sharp look. “You didn’t think so last time.”

  “That was before you had the benefit of my expert tour-guiding.”

  She gave a sour “Humph.” But the tapping and bouncing slowed.

  “Be gentle. Remember, these are simple folk from Wisconsin, not hardened New Yorkers.”

  She snorted as they unloaded her supplies at Bliss House.

  “Simple folk. Right. Like Annette and Suz aren’t brilliant. Like Steve and Max couldn’t hold their own anywhere. Like Miss Trudi couldn’t outtalk a New York politician.”

  That was better, though she was still wound tight about the presentation. What he needed was something to take her mind off it.

  She held up her hand to forestall any comment from him. “All right, all right, so I should watch my mouth.”

  “You don’t need to worry about that.” He held the door into Bliss House open. “I watch your mouth enough for both of us.”

  She stopped dead for a second, looking over her shoulder at him. Then she marched inside with her old New York gait.

  He supposed he should congratulate himself that he had taken her mind off the presentation. Now he could use something to take his mind—and body—off the track he’d substituted. Especially since his duty as a committee member called for him to pay close attention to her throughout this meeting.

  Fran set the poster boards on the easel he’d dropped off at the same time he’d set up a VCR and TV as she’d asked.

  Barely waiting for them to be seated, Kay revealed the first poster board with photos and drawings of a refurbished Bliss House.