Marti merely shook her head, denying him, denying his declaration.
But before he could say more, a big black sedan pulled into the driveway of Hector Tyson’s house. Both Marti and Noah looked in that direction and despite the fact that the windows were too heavily tinted to see into the car, it was obvious that Hector had arrived home.
As the black sedan rolled slowly into the garage and the door automatically closed behind it, Marti turned back to Noah, finding his eyes on her again, dark and disturbed.
“If you don’t want to go in with me, you don’t have to,” she said.
But Noah shook his head once again. “I told you, I’m not letting you anywhere near Hector alone.”
Then Noah shoved off the side of his truck to stand tall and straight beside her and Marti was glad to have him there even if she had just rejected his proposal.
But going up to Hector Tyson’s house as if her heart wasn’t just a little bit broken all over again was one of the hardest things Marti had ever done.
Chapter Thirteen
“Y ou two don’t look happy to be here—have you come to say you were wrong and apologize to me?” Hector Tyson greeted Marti and Noah nastily when he opened his front door to them moments after Marti had refused Noah’s proposal.
“Hardly,” Noah answered.
“Then you aren’t really welcome in my house,” the old curmudgeon said, his hand still on the knob of the door that remained open with Marti and Noah barely inside of it. “I don’t have to be hospitable to someone whose lawyer has sent me a letter telling me of her intention to sue me for restitution because she doesn’t like the price her grandmother accepted for some land she sold me fifty-odd years ago.”
“You may not have to be hospitable,” Noah said, “but I’m here to make sure you talk to Marti.”
Marti was trying to regroup, to dig her way out of the feelings that had washed over her in response to Noah’s proposal. Feelings she couldn’t quite fathom when it didn’t seem as if disappointment and hurt should have been her reaction. What difference did it make if it had been a matter-of-fact, out-of-necessity proposal? It had come from someone she shouldn’t have wanted a proposal from in the first place…
But at this particular moment she needed to be focused on Theresa, she reminded herself, and she did a fast snap out of her own problems, forcing herself to concentrate and recall what Hector had said about the lawsuit.
“It’s more the principle than the price, Mr. Tyson,” she said then. “You took a vulnerable, grieving seventeen-year-old girl into your home, isolated her, seduced her, got her pregnant and then used that to blackmail her into selling the land to you for a pittance of money. Then you got her to leave town, leaving the baby she had—your baby—to what? For you to dispose of somehow?”
Marti’s own emotions had bubbled to the surface, fueling her anger.
“Who said I seduced Theresa or that she had a baby?” Hector challenged.
“Theresa told us, Hector,” Noah said in a calmer but extremely serious tone, lending weight to what Marti had said even though some of it was only supposition.
“Nothing a crazy woman says means anything,” the old man insisted with bravado.
“She told us about your affair with her,” Noah continued with confidence that seemed genuine despite the fact that he was only outlining their assumptions and not actually stating facts. “She told us about the baby. And we’ve talked to Emmalina—we know Theresa went to Emmalina and the minister, that Theresa was pregnant when she did, that she took their advice to do whatever she had to do not to break up your marriage.”
“Is Emmalina saying Theresa was pregnant by me?” Hector demanded. “Because no one has said anything like that to me all these years.”
“Because they wouldn’t,” Noah claimed, without revealing that Emmalina didn’t know for sure whether Theresa had been pregnant.
And since Noah had left Hector guessing, Marti chose that moment to push for more.
“We just want to know what happened to the baby.”
Hector’s eyes narrowed suspiciously. “I’m not admitting anything,” he decreed. “But I’ll tell you one thing—nobody gets anything from me unless I get what I want.”
“Which would be what?” Marti asked.
“First of all, keep your Home-Max store out of my town. Secondly, no lawsuit is filed against me—not now, not ever. You Graysons will have to sign something binding from my lawyers to give up your right to ever sue me over that land in the future.”
“Because you know they can win,” Noah said.
“Nobody knows that,” Hector countered. Then, aiming his attention at Marti, he said venomously, “But what I do know is that if you sue me, I’ll drag your grandmother’s name through the mud. I’ll say things about her that will make you rue the day you ever opened this can of worms. I’ll say she repaid my kindness to her by trying to destroy my marriage. By saying her baby—” He’d worked himself up into a frenzy and clearly that last part had come out on its own, because he stopped short.
“So there really was a baby,” Marti said, somehow shocked all over again to have it confirmed. “A baby that you took from Gram. That’s what she wants back—her son or daughter. That’s what’s so important to her, so important that she came all the way to Northbridge by herself.”
“That’s not what I said,” Hector swore, as if that took back the words. “What I’m telling you is that I won’t pay you people one red cent that doesn’t get wrung out of me. And if it does, I’ll make you sorry. But drop everything,” he added as if he were baiting a hook, “and who knows what you might learn from me.”
“Or we’ll find out what we want to know some other way and still sue you and open a Home-Max here!” Marti said, so angry and so full of contempt on top of her own personal issues that she just couldn’t maintain any control.
“I guess it’s up to you,” the old man sneered. “But if you want to take the easy way—the only way you’re sure to get the information you want, the only way that’ll save your grandmother from having everybody in town hear an ugly story about her—you’ll drop the lawsuit and do what I want.”
“You know, Hector, I always knew you were a bastard, but I never guessed you were this big a bastard,” Noah said.
“You and everybody else around here,” the old man countered. “It gives me less to lose because I don’t care what any of you end up saying about me. But I’m betting your little girlfriend here cares what gets said about her precious lunatic grandmother and that gives me two aces in the hole—Theresa’s reputation and that baby they want to know about.”
Marti didn’t think she could stay another minute and not throw something at the old man, so she merely turned and walked out.
“Always a pleasure, Hector,” Noah said snidely as he followed her.
Marti kept on going to the curb, to the spot where Noah had so unromantically proposed and on to her brother’s SUV. She got in behind the wheel, and Noah caught up with her as she was closing the door.
“Are you okay?” he asked.
Marti shook her head, but all she could say was, “I need some time to think.”
Because the truth was, suddenly nothing seemed okay and she wasn’t sure why.
It was as if just in the past half hour everything she’d thought she had a handle on had slipped out of her grip.
For her grandmother and for her.
“We’re not going to take that!” Ry said over the phone late Sunday evening after Marti had told him what had gone on with Hector that afternoon. “That old buzzard can’t get away with what he’s done to Gram and call the shots, too.”
She’d waited until Theresa and Mary Pat had gone to bed before calling Ry, because she hadn’t wanted to take any chance that she’d be overheard.
“I’m not too sure how we’re going to find the son or daughter that Gram had, though,” she said.
“We’ll just have to do what we can to dig up the truth on our o
wn,” Ry reasoned.
“And if we can’t?”
“Then we’ll talk about going through Tyson. And even if we have to do that, the lawsuit is the only flex-point, as far as I’m concerned. Home-Max goes in one way or another, so we can stick it to this guy on the business front, at least. But you stay away from him from here on,” Ry said. “Let me or Wyatt deal with him. It sounds like he got to you.”
“It’s just been a bad day.”
Following such a good night…
“Something else is going on.” Ry was guessing, but he was so sure of himself that it came out as a statement of fact.
Marti debated about whether or not to tell her brother what else was going on. But everything would come out sooner or later—by breakfast this morning Theresa had already told Mary Pat that Marti was pregnant and that Noah was the father—and Marti needed to talk. So she did.
She told Ry everything, including that Noah was the baby’s father and all the details of his proposal.
“And I just don’t know why I care that it was so…so practical…”
Or why she’d been having such trouble keeping herself from crying since she got home from Hector’s. But she certainly didn’t want to start again now on the phone with her brother.
Who was chuckling slightly on the other end of the line.
“Could it be that what you really care about is Noah?” Ry asked.
“Care—as in love?” she said as if that were unthinkable.
“Not impossible, Marti,” Ry said, interpreting her tone. “Look, Jack was The Man—you know we all thought of him as one of the family from when we were kids. Wyatt and I loved him like a brother. But he’s gone. And as lousy as that is, it’s a fact. Plain and simple. And you have to get on with your life. Especially now.”
“Are you saying you think I should get married just because I’m pregnant, too?”
“Marti, no one—certainly not me—wants to see you make a lifelong calling out of being Jack’s almost-widow. Jack would have hated that, and you know it. So you’re pregnant by this other guy and you care enough about him to wish he hadn’t asked you to marry him as if he were making a deal to buy a new car. All I’m saying is, maybe you should consider that there’s a reason you slept with him in the first place and have been hanging out with him since you got to Northbridge—all reasons that don’t have anything to do with the baby.”
“But that is the reason I’ve been hanging out with him since I got here,” she said out of contrariness when she knew better—the baby had only been an excuse, she’d wanted to see Noah. To go on seeing him…
“Don’t try to feed me that,” Ry countered. “If you didn’t care about the guy, you wouldn’t care how he proposed. And if you care about the guy, then maybe you should think about exactly what it is he’s proposing. Especially when you sound so bummed out. This guy got under your skin, that seems pretty clear to me.”
Okay, she knew it was futile to deny that any longer. To Ry or to herself.
“Besides,” Ry went on. “Noah seems like a decent guy. Wyatt likes him. Gram and Mary Pat do, too. Maybe you should cut him some slack. From what you’ve said, I don’t think that proposal was all about the baby, I just think that was the part you latched on to in order to give yourself the chance to ignore the rest. It sounds to me like he made that easy for you because he was a little afraid you’d reject him—probably because you’re still focused on Jack.”
“I am not.”
“Oh, you sooo are. And if I were in Noah’s shoes, that’s what I’d be thinking—go with the baby angle because that has the best odds. Anything else runs up against that perfect lost love that nobody can beat.”
Leave it to Ry to be blunt.
“It can’t be beat with a let’s-make-the-best-of-a-bad-situation proposal, that’s for sure,” Marti persisted.
“Like I said, if you didn’t care about the guy you wouldn’t care about the proposal. So maybe you need to let him know you do care.”
And how was she supposed to accomplish that? Should she just hope her brother knew what he was talking about—that Noah might have feelings for her that he just wasn’t saying much about—and go out onto that limb herself?
That didn’t seem like the best idea she’d ever heard.
“I don’t know…” she said, not willing to talk more about this with Ry. “I guess I’ll have to think about it.”
“Well, think about that instead of about Gram and Tyson and finding that baby from so long ago. I’ll take over on that front, and you just work on your own problems.”
Marti assured him she would. Then she changed the subject.
Finally they said good-night. And Marti was left sitting alone in her room wondering if her brother was right.
Did she care so much about the way Noah had proposed because she cared so much about Noah?
And had Noah used the baby as the main reason they should get married because it had seemed to carry more weight than he thought his feelings would?
Or were there just not many feelings on his part other than wanting to protect his rights to the baby?
Just as that thought put a damper on her spirits all over again there was a knock on her bedroom window that startled her nearly to death.
Then she heard a hushed, “Marti!” from outside and she knew instantly that it was Noah.
She was dressed in what she’d intended to sleep in tonight—a cream-colored, lace-edged camisole that buttoned up the front and a pair of silky navy blue pajama pants. It was hardly accepting-company clothing, but Noah had seen her in much less, so she went to the window without covering up and opened the aged velvet drapes.
Sure enough, he was standing in the yard directly below the ledge, looking like a sexy cat burglar in jeans and a black turtleneck with the sleeves pushed to his elbows. His hair was tousled, and he was clean-shaven. Because she’d wanted some of the cool spring night air to come in, her window was open halfway and when she parted the curtains the scent of his cologne wafted in to her.
“What are you doing?” she said in greeting, not sure whether it was good or bad that a single glimpse of him gave her goose bumps.
“Come out,” he instructed without answering her question.
“Or you could come in,” she suggested, thinking fleetingly of the previous night that they’d spent in this room…
But Noah shook his head and merely said, “Come with me.”
Of course he’d roused her curiosity, so Marti slid her feet into a pair of flip-flops and snatched a cardigan sweater to slip over her shoulders like a cape as she left her room and the house.
By then Noah was standing in the driveway on the passenger side of his truck with the door open.
“Get in.”
“I’m not dressed to go anywhere—”
“You’re fine. Just get in.”
Marti got in. Noah went around the rear, hoisted himself behind the wheel and started the engine.
“I’m really not dressed,” she said more insistently, but it didn’t matter because before the words were completely out of her mouth he’d backed down the driveway and was headed away from the house.
Maybe they were going to his place to talk.
They certainly weren’t going to talk now, she assumed, since Noah wasn’t saying a word or looking anywhere but out the windshield as if he were alone.
“Where are we going?” she ventured as they passed the town square and the sleeping college.
“It’s a secret,” he allowed, reaching over to turn on the radio and effectively letting her know he didn’t want any more said.
With her curiosity really roused now, Marti opted to just go along. Soon they’d driven onto Noah’s property, past his house and barn and were going far out on a dirt road.
At such a distance from everything, the only illumination was moonlight, and just as Marti was about to demand to know what was going on, they came to a wooded area where Noah pulled to a stop and turned off the engine.
“I’ll be right back,” he said, getting out himself.
Marti lost sight of him in the darkness and through the trees until something sparked and suddenly there was a campfire burning in the distance.
Then Noah was back, opening the passenger door and holding out his hand for her to help her down from the truck.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
But Noah merely took her hand and urged her out so he could lead her to where he’d started the fire. A thick, downy quilt was laid out on the ground beside it, in a clearing surrounded by evergreen trees.
“Take a deep breath.”
Marti complied, drinking in the strong scent of pine.
“What does it remind you of?” he asked. “The hotel in Denver?”
The hotel in Denver had been on the outskirts of the city, nestled in a rustic setting amid the same kind of fragrant evergreen trees. Fir logs, branches and bows had burned in the fireplaces in the lobby and restaurants, so inside and out the place had been scented with pine.
“Okay…” Marti agreed, “it smells like the hotel in Denver.”
He still had hold of her hand and he took the other one, too, bringing her with him onto the quilt, into the golden glow of the fire that gilded his handsome features.
“Sit,” he said when they were in the center of the quilt, sitting cross-legged himself and manipulating things so that she was, too, so that they were facing each other knees to knees.
“Now listen to me,” Noah said in a voice that was soft and deep. “When we were in Denver there was nothing but you and me. We met and something combustible happened, something that no amount of good sense could keep us from acting on. There was nothing else then and—right here, right now—there’s nothing but the two of us again.”
So that’s why they were out there.
“Somewhere along the way,” he continued, “even though it wasn’t my plan, something happened. I started thinking about you every minute of every day and every night. I started wanting to be with you constantly. I started putting everything in terms of you—it’s you I want to be with at every meal, every time I’m walking down the street, when I’m at home or anywhere else. It’s you I want to go to sleep with every night and wake up with every morning.”
A Baby for the Bachelor Page 15
