Unexpected

by Karen Tuft

  “Busy. He says he’s been busy.” He glared at Ross. “Do you take me for a fool? We knew what you were planning. I saw the ring. What happened when you talked to Natalie? What’s going on?”

  Ross had dealt with his old friend too long to think he would get out this conversation easily. Honesty, even in as limited quantities as possible, was the best and most efficient policy. And why not? Ross would laugh at the irony of the situation himself if it weren’t for the squeezing pressure in his chest. “I never got the chance, old pal. She left. Changed her flight and flew the coop. Left a nice little phone message, saying thanks but she had to go.”

  “That’s not right.”

  “No kidding, that’s not right!” Ross moved away from the door and stalked over to Neil. “She makes up some cockamamie story New Year’s Eve about how she needs to leave the party and call her girls. Leaves me standing there with Liz, of all people, and then—just gone.”

  “Liz was there?” There was something in Neil’s voice that put Ross on guard.

  “Yes. Floored me, I can tell you. But that shouldn’t have had any bearing on Natalie’s actions. She met lots of women that night. And she handled our lovely friend Gina like a pro.” Still, there had been something in her eyes, something almost resigned, when she’d met Liz. He’d been so caught up in the anxiety he’d felt coming face-to-face with Liz after all these years that he’d forgotten about it. Until now.

  “Um, you may need to rethink that, Ross.”

  Neil rubbed his face with both hands. The tension in his movements gave Ross that guarded feeling again. “What are you talking about?”

  “That meeting Liz had no bearing on her actions.”

  Ross’s uneasiness increased. “What do you mean?”

  Neil cleared his throat and looked Ross squarely in the eye. “Janis and Natalie had a little chat at lunch the other day. She wanted Natalie to know how grateful we were that she’d brought you back from the dead. And you were dead, Ross.” He paused. “As part of that, she told Natalie what happened with Liz all those years ago.”

  “Exactly what did she say happened?” Ross asked in a low voice.

  “Oh, you know, how Liz seemed so perfect, how things turned out. That sort of thing.”

  “Great,” Ross muttered. He went into the kitchen, filled a glass with water, and downed a couple of aspirins.

  Neil followed him. “Ross.”

  “What?” He gulped down the rest of the water and immediately refilled the glass.

  “She told Janis she loved you.”

  Ross didn’t move. “What?” he whispered.

  “Well, she didn’t exactly say it; she nodded when Janis asked her point-blank.”

  Ross could feel his hands beginning to shake. He gripped the glass tighter.

  “I’m telling you, if she went home without a word, there’s a reason. I believe that. Especially after seeing the two of you together. She loves you, Ross.”

  Ross was quiet for a minute as he allowed this new information to settle. Neil wouldn’t just say something like that. It gave him pause to think.

  “Tell me about the list,” Neil said.

  “Hmm? What list?”

  “Janis said something about a list. The perfect woman or something like that.”

  “Oh, that. It’s nothing. Just a list I gave Susan to get her off my back. She was throwing every female she could find at me until it was getting ridiculous. I finally had to set some ground rules. So I made tough ones.” He smiled mirthlessly. “Susan was ticked.”

  “What was on your list, if you don’t mind my asking?”

  “The usual stuff, I guess. The kind of things any guy would say if he were describing the ideal woman. Suz was such a pain about it that I got pretty specific with her. She needed a big deterrent.”

  “The usual stuff any guy would say. Uh-huh.” Ross watched Neil nod his head as if he’d just grasped a huge new concept. “What usual stuff is that? I’m curious. Give me those specifics.”

  Ross could feel himself getting irritated. “Fine. Beautiful. That’s a no-brainer. Then intelligent.”

  “How did you define intelligent?”

  “Well, the obvious definition was college educated. I think that was what I said to Susan—yeah, college educated. Advanced degrees an additional plus.” His irritation made a sharp turn toward foreboding.

  “And the next requirement?”

  “Um, financially successful in her career . . .” His voice trailed off. In the back of his mind, he was beginning to hear Susan’s sarcastic response. You’re looking for a beauty pageant winner who was her college valedictorian and is now a self-made millionaire. Does pageant runner-up count? What if she wasn’t valedictorian but is a member of MENSA? What if she has two undergraduate degrees but no postgraduate work? What if her portfolio took a dive and she is only fabulously wealthy instead of filthy rich? By the end, the words were screaming through his head. He knew the answer to the question he was about to ask, but he had to ask it anyway. The only way Janis could have heard about it was from Natalie.

  “Janis knew about the list?”

  “Yeah.” Neil’s eyes said it all.

  That stopped Ross cold. If Natalie had gotten wind of that blasted list he’d shot at Susan, he now understood the look she’d had on her face the minute she’d met Liz.

  Natalie wasn’t college educated. She wasn’t fabulously wealthy. Her career-to-date had been cleaning houses. There wasn’t a thing on that list, the way he’d worded it, that applied to her. And yet, he had discovered that she was more than the sum of her parts. Much more.

  He’d also been with her enough the last couple of months to know how battered her opinion of herself had been. He’d worked hard to help her find her value, see herself as he’d begun to see her. He’d watched her carefully at the party on New Year’s Eve. She’d been gracious, poised—but under stress. He’d hoped that placing her in that environment would help her see she had the caliber to fit in with that crowd. She’d managed to be gracious to Gina, which was a challenge for anyone. But after Ross had excused himself to deal with Dierdorff, had Gina done something else to shake Natalie’s confidence? He wouldn’t put it past her.

  He hadn’t read anything additional into Natalie’s reaction to Liz because he’d been thrown off by Liz’s presence himself. Now, knowing that Natalie was fully aware of their past, it showed her actions in a new light. When he added her detailed knowledge of that obnoxious list he’d conjured up to get his sister off his case, he thought he knew at least part of the reason she’d left New York: she’d bowed out of the picture to make room for Ross’s perfect woman.

  He didn’t understand her need to rush away in the middle of the night like a thief, though. He remembered the first time he’d seen her at the restaurant. How certain he’d been that she’d ditch the guy she was with but she hadn’t. She’d dealt with the guy face-to-face, despite the anxiety he’d seen in her when he’d followed her to the lobby. She wasn’t one to run. So why had she?

  Natalie loved him. That’s what Janis had told Neil. He wanted to believe it. He could see Natalie’s face when she’d promised her New Year’s kiss to him and how it had subtly changed when she’d seen Liz. That could mean only one thing.

  “I think I need to call the airlines,” Ross said.

  Neil nodded and clapped him on the shoulder. “I think that’s a good plan. You do that.” Then, grabbing his coat, he headed out the door.

  * * *

  It was midafternoon when Ross arrived at his Salt Lake home, and the January sky was a bright blue bowl. Crystals of fresh snow shot the sun’s rays skyward in icy brilliance, and he was nearly blinded by it.

  He unlocked the garage door that led past the utility room, deactivated the security system, and dropped his suitcase heavily to the floor. The house felt different to him. He didn’t have to move from his spot to know that Natalie wasn’t taking care of it anymore.

  The knowledge left him feeling empty. He�
��d half hoped he’d walk in to find wild music blaring, hear the semiautomatic staccato of her tap shoes, or smell the scent of pine and cinnamon lingering in the air. He found he was reluctant to move from his spot by the utility room and have his gut feeling confirmed.

  Taking a deep breath, his mouth set in a grim line, he grabbed the suitcase and headed down the darkened hallway. As he approached the kitchen, a curious thing happened. The hall got lighter from the big windows located there. He was used to that, but there was something different this time. Colors in the light that hadn’t been there before blazed all around him: tongues of orange licked up the walls, reds flashed fire. Cool blues and purples, greens, and yellows leaped to join the fray. What was causing this kaleidoscope of color in his house?

  As he entered the kitchen, he found the answer. There, hung at the very top of his spacious kitchen window, was the stained-glass creation Natalie had given him at Christmas. A sun catcher, she’d called it. Even with just the midafternoon light coming through his east-facing windows, his kitchen was awash in color. It pulsed and breathed and radiated life. It radiated Natalie’s essence. She must have hung it after she’d returned from New York.

  He laughed and slowly turned around. The daylight enveloping him was warm in itself. But Natalie’s stained glass captured the sunlight, turning its natural brightness into something more glorious. It focused it, splintered it into a million different suns, each with its own hue and glory. It engulfed him in the center of sunrise itself, with all of the color and hope the sunrise brought to each day. Her simple creation was made, he knew, of odds and ends collected along her daily path, raw materials with humble beginnings, and the end result was more than the sum of its parts.

  Just like Natalie.

  She had forged herself in much the same way. She’d been down a hard road, picked herself up time and time again, brushed herself off, and carried on. Carried on with a smile on her face and joy in the process. She’d crafted the pieces of her life, the odds and ends and raw materials, and had made a work of art.

  Standing in his kitchen, surrounded by so many colors, a new palette emerged in Ross’s mind: the zippy green of a hokey-pokey T-shirt, the sugary pink of cookie frosting, the buttery blondeness of her hair, the indigo of a midnight sky while freezing on a sled. She’d filled his life with color.

  She’d simply filled his life. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d laughed so much or felt so light. He suddenly couldn’t figure out how he’d gone for so many years without her. And he didn’t intend to continue without her. He loved her. He firmly believed—all right, if he was really honest, he just plain hoped—that Neil and Janis were right and that Natalie loved him.

  This time he would strategize beforehand. He would chart every angle, have all of his facts in hand. As anxious as he was to see her again, he would give himself the couple of days it would take to prepare. He would plan his approach as carefully as if he were battling his most formidable legal adversary. Natalie wasn’t an adversary, obviously. She was the prize. And Ross had every intention of winning.

  The first step was to listen to his home phone messages to see if there was anything to learn there. He’d been right; Esther Johnson had left a message saying she was thrilled to be back on the job; her husband was doing much better. There was a message from Jackie, telling him Natalie had returned her green dress to her. She was dying to know how the trip had gone; she hadn’t been able to pry anything out of Natalie other than she’d had a wonderful time. Well, Ross thought, so far he’d learned that Natalie was tying up any loose ends that dealt with him. No surprise there, really, but it was still a blow.

  The last message was his sister’s voice again, and her tone immediately drew his focus. “Ross, it’s Jack. Maybe I should break your rule and call you on your cell. I don’t know if this is important or not. It’s about Brett and some problem with Emma, Natalie’s daughter. They’ve become friends, you know. I overheard him on the phone talking about not seeing Emma since New Year’s. Then he said something like, ‘He’s more like a prison warden than a dad.’

  “Has Natalie said anything to you? Brett’s been really upset ever since the holidays. When I ask him about it, he doesn’t say much, only that Emma’s living with her dad right now. What’s going on? Any light you can shed on it would be so helpful.”

  Ross couldn’t shed any light on the situation for Jackie, but her message had shed a great deal of light for him. Now Brett’s cryptic message New Year’s Eve made sense. Something had happened on New Year’s that had sent Natalie rushing back home. Ross was sure of it.

  He picked up his cell and called his nephew. Very quickly, Brett filled him in on Emma’s frantic call from the house party—info he’d apparently felt unwilling to share with his mother—and the subsequent arrival of the police. The girls were now with their father, and Emma had been banned from all of her friends. Ross knew Natalie must be devastated, but he also knew that, despite Wade’s bullying, she wouldn’t take the loss of her girls lightly. She would fight, even if it meant fighting alone.

  What Natalie didn’t know yet was that this time she wouldn’t be alone.

  Chapter 23

  Natalie couldn’t understand it. She should be more nervous. Usually when she went up against Wade, she was shaking from intimidation, but she wasn’t shaking this time. She wouldn’t exactly say she felt calm, but she felt at peace. He had virtually barred her from her girls, with no legal grounds that she could see, not that she was an expert, but somehow she knew things were going to be okay. She was meeting with her attorney later that morning, and she was more than ready to begin the process of getting them back. She would do whatever it took, whatever the cost. What good were her personal goals and aspirations if the people she loved weren’t there to share them with her and reap any benefits that might come? Without her children, her achievements would be hollow.

  Wade monitored the girls like they were parolees and had confiscated their cell phones. Sandy took them to school and picked them up daily. The one time Natalie had attempted to talk to them, Wade had found out and made their lives miserable. He had left her another terse voice message telling her to stop contacting them, and a crestfallen Natalie was anxious for her attorney’s input in the matter. She wasn’t going to face Wade unprepared. She would plan her approach carefully since she was battling her most formidable adversary. Her girls, her very family, were the prize. And Natalie had every intention of winning.

  Heaven help her. She had spent so many hours on her knees the last few weeks; she desperately hoped it would turn out right. She had to hope. The alternative was unbearable.

  She’d gone through her entire wardrobe, paltry as it was, and found her most serious outfit, a gray suit she’d found a few months back on clearance at an outlet store. Feeling like she needed a little emotional firepower, she tossed on a bold silver necklace and some wrist bangles and pulled her hair up in a serious twist. Giving herself one last look in the mirror, she decided she was ready and realized she had more than an hour to wait before it was reasonable to leave. So maybe she was a little nervous after all.

  She sank to her knees one last time and prayed with all her heart that she would find the strength and fortitude to endure what was sure to be a long and costly battle. She prayed that she would know what boundaries to hold, what concessions to make, what to do to keep Wade in her girls’ lives in the most productive way possible. The girls needed their father. She would never ask of him what he was demanding of her right now.

  Why couldn’t he just be reasonable and really see what was in their best interest? Why did he insist on making her girls the bargaining chips for power over her? She prayed for wisdom and compassion and hoped desperately she wouldn’t fall short there. She vowed on her knees that she’d sacrifice whatever the Lord required of her to get her girls back. She prayed that when all was said and done she would still have a home to which she could bring her girls.

  It was time to count the plusses be
fore she became too discouraged. She would still have her son and her health. Her father and stepmother loved her. She had friends like Tori and Jim. Her bishop and ward were great. It would have to be enough to start again.

  Starting again sounded like so much effort. She would have to have faith that she would survive the worst-case scenario and that it wouldn’t come to losing everything in the end.

  Please, she prayed, please help me. Please guide me through this; please give me the peace to cope. Please soften Wade’s heart and help him realize his girls need their mother, and help him be generous in understanding that I need them just as much. Please help the large hole in my heart that is Ross to not ache so badly. Please give me the support and strength I need to face what lies ahead, to take this first step.

  Well, she thought as she got to her feet, faith was all about taking that first step. She’d taken tough steps by herself before—when Buck had left her a single mother, when she’d discovered Wade’s infidelities. She knew she’d never been more alone than she was right now. Yet, as she stood and straightened her skirt, she realized she didn’t feel alone anymore. So, strangely, she wasn’t surprised when she heard the doorbell ring, although she had no idea, other than Tori, who would be stopping by at this time of day.

  Still preoccupied with her own thoughts, she wedged two fingers between the slats of her window shades and peered out. Her heart stopped, then started racing. The strength ran out of her limbs like water. Ross was standing outside on her front porch.

  She threw the deadbolt and opened the door.

  Looking tall and serious and more than a little determined, Ross stood there, his hands slung deep in the pockets of his wool overcoat. There was a long, awkward moment while Natalie groped to find her voice. She was unsuccessful.

  Finally, a slight curve formed at the corners of his mouth. Bemused, Natalie couldn’t stop looking at it.

  “Hello, Natalie. It’s good to see you. I’ve missed you.” He took in her hairdo and gray suit. “Are you going somewhere? You look wonderful, by the way.”