The New Man

by Janice Kay Johnson

  She was still laughing and crying when she hung up.

  Logan laid a hand on her shoulder. “Are you okay?”

  He didn’t seem to get it when she laughed even harder, until the tears were from happiness and not grief.

  ALEC HAD DAMN NEAR BEGGED to go with Lily, her friend Yolanda and Yolanda’s mother to the mall. With grim humor, he could just see it: Yolanda’s puzzled mother and he getting chummy over lattes at Starbucks while the girls squealed over cute shirts in one of those teenage shops.

  Hanging out at the mall with no purpose—and no Helen—was just about the only thing he could think of that sounded worse than slumping behind his desk pretending to work when he really felt like he’d been hit by a Burlington Northern freight train.

  Or he could go watch football practice.

  Slumping lower, he thought, Uh-huh. And embarrass the crap out of his son, who was just now remembering how to smile in his father’s presence.

  The doorbell rang, and for a moment he didn’t move. It would be one of the kids’ friends. Or a neighbor wanting Devlin to mow their lawn, or Lily to baby-sit.

  But they’d both be exasperated to miss a job because Dad was too depressed to answer the door.

  Aching all over, Alec got to his feet and went to the front door. He opened it to find Helen on the other side.

  She was…beautiful. Her incredible hair, shining in the sun, was slipping out of a loose topknot. She wore a green-and-white oxford cloth shirt loose over a white tank top and chinos. Soft pink toenails peeked out of sandals. He saw, because he gaped, looking her over from head to toe.

  She was a mirage. A figment of his imagination. He’d blink, and Mrs. Peirson from two doors down would be standing there instead.

  So he didn’t blink.

  “Uh…may I come in?”

  Not Mrs. Peirson’s voice.

  “Helen?” His voice was ragged, disbelieving.

  Looking distinctly uncomfortable, she nodded. “I was hoping to talk to you.”

  “Talk to me?” God! He sounded like an idiot. He’d only left ten messages on her answering machine, begging her to talk to him! Now he sounded like he didn’t know what the hell she meant. “Please.” Still stunned, he stepped back. “Come in.”

  He led the way into the little-used living room. Neutral territory.

  “I can’t believe you’re here.”

  She flushed. “It…took me a while.”

  He was afraid to ask what had taken her a while. To forgive him? To decide to hear his side? Or to march over here and tell him where to go?

  “I’d about given up.” He moved his shoulders to relieve tension. “Please. Sit down.”

  She nodded and sat at one end of the couch, perching on the edge of the cushion, her back straight, knees together, hands clasped on her lap. The image of a lady, or a woman ill at ease.

  An image of her lying beneath him, laughing up at him, her cheeks rosy and her eyes sparkling flashed through his mind.

  Alec sat abruptly, glad to have a way to hide his body’s reaction.

  They glanced at each other; Helen was nibbling on her lower lip and he was trying not to hyperventilate. When the silence stretched too long, both rushed into speech at once.

  “I came to say…” she began.

  “Helen, I never meant…”

  Laughing uncomfortably, they stopped.

  “Will you let me say I’m sorry first?” he asked.

  She gave a tiny nod.

  “It…genuinely never crossed my mind that my heart attack was an issue between us, or was important enough to mention.” Alec grimaced. “That sounds incredibly stupid, I realize now. I’ve spent a good deal of time trying to figure out what the hell I was thinking, and all I can come up with is that I didn’t want to admit even to myself that there was anything major wrong with me.” He muttered a profanity, rubbed his hands on his thighs. “I seem to be good at denial. I didn’t—wouldn’t—believe Linda was dying. Despite the thunderclap of being proved wrong—or maybe because of it—I refused to think of what happened to me as anything but a wake-up call.” He laughed with a certain grim humor. “That’s what I called it in my own mind. A wake-up call. Gosh, middle age is looming. Better start eating better, exercising, taking those vitamins.” He took a deep breath and met Helen’s eyes, dead on. “I was scared, Helen. Mainly for the kids, I think. I soft-pedaled my heart attack to them, too. Nothing for them to worry about.” God. He was sweating. He rubbed his palms on his jeans again. “Only thing is, Dev didn’t believe me. And I didn’t notice.”

  “That was it, then? He thought you were going to die?”

  “In a nutshell. Why say goodbye later when you can do it now?”

  Her cheeks reddened. In a low voice, Helen said, “I do understand. That’s what I was doing, too, you know. I had to get over being mad before I realized I was as sad as if you had died. Only, you hadn’t. I’d done it to myself.”

  Hope swelled in his chest. As sad as if he had died. She wouldn’t have felt that way if she didn’t love him, would she?

  “I need you to know,” Alec said, “that I wasn’t deliberately lying to you. Devlin hit me up a couple of weeks before that scene with you, asking if I’d told you ‘the truth’ yet. I had no idea what ‘truth’ he was talking about.”

  “Why would you, if he’d never expressed concern about your health?”

  “What I can’t figure out is why I didn’t notice right away that his attitude toward me had changed. We could have saved a lot of heartache—if you’ll forgive the pun,” he added, “if I hadn’t taken a year to start asking what went wrong. By then, I didn’t tie the two things together.”

  “He called me, you know.”

  “What?” Devlin?

  She smiled crookedly. “Your son. He told me you took him to see your cardiologist. He expressed great enthusiasm for cracking open chests and doing heart transplants, which really scared me. I thought he was telling me you were going to have to have one. But, no. He apparently wants to do them. It took a while to get him back to the point of the call, which was that Dad was bummed, it was his—Devlin’s—fault, and Dr. Ritter had convinced him that you really are okay. He said—I quote—that him and you are cool now.”

  Alec winced at his son’s grammar. “I had no idea he’d think of doing anything like that. I’m…amazed. Somehow, as bad as these past two years have been, Devlin is still turning out to be a great kid. I don’t know how that happened.”

  “Maybe,” Helen’s voice softened, “he has a great dad.”

  “If incredibly dense.” He drew a shaky breath. “Is that why you came? Because Devlin asked you to? Because he told you I was okay?”

  Tears glittered in her brown eyes. “No. You may never believe me, but…no. I’ve already decided that I couldn’t bear it if you had a heart attack and died and I wasn’t here. I’m afraid—” she tried to laugh and failed “—I was being a martyr in my own mind. You know. ‘I must rush to his side and nobly, whatever the cost to me, give him my loving support.’ I’m embarrassed, but, uh…” She worried her lower lip some more, then met his eyes, her own open and vulnerable. “It’s also the truth. I want to be with you, whatever happens. To either of us. If you’ll forgive me for…for not listening. For being afraid.”

  The rush of relief was so intense, it weakened him for a moment. When it ebbed enough to let in other emotions, Alec rose to his feet and took the few steps to her. “Forgive you?” His throat felt raw. “You haven’t done anything, anything, that needs forgiveness. I’m the idiot who almost cost myself the chance with the woman I love.”

  Her eyes never leaving his, Helen stood, too. With a soft sigh, she wrapped her arms around his waist and leaned against him, her face pressed into his chest. “I love you,” she whispered. “I love you.”

  Alec’s arms locked around her, and he pressed a kiss on the top of her head. Damn it, he was crying! These last weeks had been hell. Knowing he’d hurt her in the way she dreaded most h
ad torn at him as painfully as the awareness that his idiocy—no, his cruelty!—had driven her away. He was lucky beyond belief to have met her, to have been persuasive enough to make her think she might overcome her own terrors to take a chance on him.

  Then he’d blown it.

  And now…now, she was in his arms, crying on his shirtfront, holding him as if she’d never let go. He must have made a muffled sound, because she looked up, eyes wet and mouth tremulous.

  Alec kissed her with all the desperation of a man who’d thought he would never be able to again. She tasted of tears and coffee and Helen, a mix that went to his head as no glass of wine ever had. Hands on each side of her face, fingertips in her hair, he kept kissing her until he was drunk on her taste and her textures and her tremors.

  “I love you,” he muttered against her mouth, and kissed her yet again.

  She strained up on tiptoe to press herself nearer to him, her arms leaving his waist to snake around his neck. The next time they drew breath, it was Helen who whispered, “I missed you. Oh, I missed you so dreadfully!”

  Tearing his mouth from hers, Alec said in a voice so hoarse it didn’t sound like his, “I want you.” Dazed, he looked toward the mantel clock and couldn’t make out the time. “The kids won’t be home…”

  “All afternoon.” Eyes cloudy, dreamy, Helen still summoned a hint of mischief in her smile. “Devlin told me.”

  “My son…?” Alec closed his eyes for a moment. “I don’t want to know what he had in mind.”

  “No.” She kissed the base of his throat, wrenching a groan from him. “You don’t.”

  “Will you come upstairs with me?”

  “I will,” she said simply.

  He shouldn’t have hesitated, but he did, so nearly did her answer echo the words he most wanted to hear.

  Swallowing, he asked, for the second time, “Will you marry me?”

  This time, her gaze didn’t glance away. Instead, tears welled again in her eyes. “Yes. Please.”

  Relief would have knocked him off his feet if he hadn’t had Helen for a prop. In a guttural voice, he said, “I thought I’d lost you.”

  Smiling through her tears, Helen whispered, “No. Never. You…scared me, asking for a commitment. Devlin gave my panic an excuse to flare. But I was too miserable without you not to fight it.”

  “I was about ready to lay siege to your house,” he admitted.

  Her smile faded, leaving pure emotion brimming in her eyes. “I’m lucky you’re such a stubborn man. If you hadn’t pushed, from the very beginning, I would have spent a lifetime telling myself I was content.” She said the word with loathing. “But I don’t think, somewhere inside, I ever believed it.”

  “I felt only half alive without you.” Alec shuddered. “I’m so grateful that I have my son back, too.”

  “When I told Ginny I was coming over here, she said, ‘Yeah! Can we tear out the wallpaper in my bedroom?’”

  He grinned. “The guest room? I never did like those flowers. No self-respecting artist wants her bedroom with anything but bare walls to allow room for her own vision.”

  Walking upstairs, Helen said dreamily, “I was thinking that your basement is unused.”

  “Soap storage?” His hand explored the curve at the small of her back. “We can’t live in a house that doesn’t smell like eucalyptus and vanilla and raspberries and sandalwood and…”

  She took up the litany. “Tangerine and bay, comfrey and rosewater.”

  “All at the same time,” Alec finished. “By all means, bring it on.”

  “Oh, good.”

  They stopped beside his bed. Hauntingly beautiful, she looked up at him. “I will love you forever.”

  “Till death do us part,” he murmured, lifting his hands to meet hers, palm to palm. “And something tells me that won’t be for, oh, say forty, forty-five years.”

  With a catch in her voice, Helen said, “I’m counting on it.”

  And then, in the most potent way possible, they embraced life and each other.

  ISBN: 978-1-4268-8672-0

  THE NEW MAN

  Copyright © 2003 by Janice Kay Johnson.

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  All characters in this book have no existence outside the imagination of the author and have no relation whatsoever to anyone bearing the same name or names. They are not even distantly inspired by any individual known or unknown to the author, and all incidents are pure invention.

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