“Okay,” she whispered, but she felt another corner of her world on the verge of crumbling.
***
Will slept badly or, more accurately, he didn’t sleep at all. Since becoming an attending physician a couple years back, he rarely spent his nights in the ER if he could help it, but a few near fatalities came in after he’d left Dan Noelen’s office and, hey, why not be honest? He couldn’t stand the thought of his own company when he could, instead, be saving lives and pretending to live a useful existence.
He groaned and pushed himself off the hospital cot and into the staff washroom. He glared at his reflection. Bags under the eyes. Sallow complexion. Anemic-looking, even though his hemoglobin levels were healthy. Crusty matter clinging to his lashes. And wrinkles at the edges of his face. Wrinkles, for goodness sake. He looked as bad as he felt.
He splashed some hot water on himself and barged into the stream of ER chaos. It was comforting. There was no space, no time for his ego or his personal problems. No room for Charlotte Lucas or Beth Bennet or whoever the hell she was today. Not a second to spare to obsess over the lost funds for the clinic.
Cripes, she had a kid.
But he couldn’t think about that now.
He grabbed a handful of medical charts and buried himself in patients until well past noon.
When he couldn’t put off lunch any longer, he snatched a burger and a cup of their awful, no-name coffee from the cafeteria. He leaned against the window by the far wall, not wanting to bother with the confinement of a table. Looking out into the hospital’s courtyard, he spotted one of the first-year med students—male, Asian, early twenties, quiet—hunched up at the foot of a tree. Will downed his lunch and went out there.
“Hey, Lang, what’s up?”
The young man raised his eyes to Will’s, barely controlled anguish imprinted like a rubber stamp on his face. He straightened up a notch. “Nothing, Doctor.”
“What do you mean, ‘nothing’? You look worse than some of the ICU patients. Has there been a death in the family?”
Lang closed his eyes. “No, Dr. Darcy. I’m just aware of a death to come. Not in my family, but upstairs, third floor. A patient I’ve known for two months now.”
Will shrugged. “It’s a daily battle here. People come in. They get released. You can only try your best to try to fix what can be fixed. Make ‘em comfortable. Do what has to be done. The rest? That’s up to their bodies, their attitudes, their God.”
The guy looked at him. Compassion and unshed tears filled those dark eyes. “I hope I can be as detached as you someday, Doctor, but I…I don’t know…”
“It’ll happen for you,” Will said, feeling something prickly and unlikable creep down his spine at his own words, but he couldn’t take time to analyze it now. Nor did he want to. “Don’t worry,” he told Lang. “Your reaction is normal. Every med student is oversensitive at first. Time and experience change that.”
Will strode away wondering how much time and experience had changed him. Did he care about patients as much as he did when first he started? Was he really as “detached” as Lang implied?
Aw, forget it. His shift ended in another hour, and he had a major piece of unfinished business to deal with. He figured by the time he got to Little Miss Beth’s house, he’d work himself back to feeling as fully self-righteous as he had yesterday afternoon.
He didn’t want to cloud his anger with self-doubt or logic or analysis. He couldn’t. He’d deal with himself and his own stupid fantasies later. But not until after he told that woman a few things. And, by all that was good or holy, she’d better listen.
***
Beth pretended all day she wasn’t home. The wall phone only rang a time or two, nothing like last night, but she ignored it. No one, of course, came to the door. Why would they? She’d worked or been in class every weekday since the dawn of time, it seemed, so no one would have expected her to be hiding out in the most obvious of places.
She watched Charlie through the window as he made the transition from the school bus to Mrs. Moratti’s apartment. Uneventful as usual. Not that either of them knew about her required sabbatical. She’d tell Mrs. Moratti tomorrow in case of an emergency, but today Beth was too embarrassed and too tired to offer explanations.
She pondered Dan’s questions. Was she proud of herself? Did a future life as a social worker live up to her dreams and ambitions? Too many pebbles bounced around in her head for her to see the boulders clearly. Maybe the truth on this was one of those things a woman had to come at sneakily, not attack head-on. Like a kid’s perception puzzle. One of those optical illusions. She could never see the 3-D picture unless she crossed her eyes or blurred her own vision somehow.
Then again, maybe gaining perspective was simpler than that. Maybe cookies and a soap opera were all that were required.
She slit open a small bag of bite-sized chocolate chip cookies Jane had left last week, saved half of them in an airtight container for Charlie and savored each and every one of the rest.
She flipped on the television and began surfing channels for something engaging. Talk shows about two-timing women who gave birth to alien babies. Celebrity entertainment reports. The financial news hour. She laughed when she got to that one. Imagine her investing all of her savings. “Excuse me, Mr. Money Adviser,” she’d say. “I have forty-three dollars in my checking account, but I’m sure you have several remarkable ideas for how to turn that into a fortune…”
She finally tuned in to the inevitable: her favorite childhood soap opera—The Bad, the Brave and the Brazen. Grant and Lexie Chandler were in the midst of rousing dispute over the custody of Baby Sven.
Grant said, “You can’t use my affair as a way to keep me from seeing Sven. He’s my son, too, and I won’t have my parental rights denied.”
“Yeah?” Lexie replied. “And where was all that conviction when you were off somewhere getting cozy with Miranda? You didn’t care about your son then. You’re only interested in him now because of Grandfather Dino’s inheritance.”
Grant gave a menacing laugh. “Listen you greedy, conniving—”
“I’ve listened to you long enough!” She threw a crimson-colored porcelain vase at him, looking pleased when it smashed on the wall above his shoulder. Shards of pottery cascaded like a rage-red waterfall over his gray designer suit.
Beth smiled. This was fun.
“Oh, but you should listen, Lexie. You like to think of yourself as above reproach, but I know your dirty little secrets,” he hissed. “I saw you…with Victor!”
Lexie gasped.
Beth chuckled.
“Yes, that’s right. I know all about your plan to forge a codicil on Grandfather Dino’s will.” Grant brushed the last of the shattered vase chards off his suit and stood to his full height. He looked his ex-TV-wife in the eye before taking a few slow steps forward. “And I have ways of preventing you from ever seeing Sven again if you cross me on this.”
Lexie sneered then ran her tongue over her heavily lipsticked lips. “You forget, Grant, that I have ways of my own. Ways I know will bring you to your knees.” She, too, took a few steps forward.
Beth leaned in toward the television set.
The soap-opera couple locked eyes then lunged at each other. Instead of striking or scratching, though, Grant and Lexie began kissing with all the passion of honeymooners in Tahiti. There was a pounding on their door, and Beth wondered who had arrived. Miranda? Victor? Was Baby Sven old enough to knock?
But the couple didn’t budge from their embrace. Beth looked away from the show, realizing it was someone at her own door causing the racket.
“Beth?” the voice in the hall called. “I can hear the TV. I know you’re in there. Open up. Now.”
Oh, no. Will Darcy.
NINE
Will let Beth Bennet inch open the door before he marched into her living room. He thought he’d done the right thing—waiting, that is, before coming over here. He thought he’d gotten his anger
in check. That, despite his feelings, he’d be able to speak coherently to the woman who’d just messed up his life. But, seeing her again, right in front of his eyes, he knew this wasn’t the case. He was madder now than he’d ever been.
“What kind of game were you playing, Beth?” He glared at her and watched as she took a few steps backward. “I want to know exactly why you were pretending to be someone who you so clearly aren’t.”
“Will, I, um, please come in.” She motioned him toward an old brown armchair.
He thought the fabric was very 1970s, but it was clean and had a sunny yellow and white pillow on it to brighten it up. He sat.
“Can I get you something to drink? We only have orange juice, milk and water…oh, and tea bags, so I’d could make—”
“No. I didn’t come here for a tea party,” he said, feeling cruel, angry and hurt all at once. “I’m only interested in one thing. The truth.”
She sank into a beige sofa from the same era as the armchair. “I’m not sure there are words I could say that will explain this to you. I’m sorry, if that means anything. It was never my intention to hurt you.”
“The hell it wasn’t. Is your name Charlotte Lucas? Are you a child psychologist? No, on both counts, right? So then your identity lies were intentional.” He wanted to crush something with his hands. He grabbed the yellow and white pillow and squeezed.
“What I said was that it wasn’t my intention to hurt you,” she whispered. “It was my intention to lie, I’ll admit. I hadn’t expected to do more than email you, or maybe meet with you once, at most. What happened between us took me by surprise, Will. By the time I realized how far into it we were, it was too awkward to explain. I figured even if I did tell you the whole story that you wouldn’t be able to accept the truth. That my real life would be too shocking.”
He jumped up off the chair and pointed at her. “So you decided you’d think for me? Choose what I should or shouldn’t know?”
She sighed and slumped against the back of the sofa. “Come on. Had you known the truth—that I’m a mother, that I’m planning to be a social worker—you never would’ve spent time with me in the first place.”
He acknowledged this with a short nod and saw the pain in her eyes. He sat back down. But, hey, he wasn’t going to feel sorry for her. He may have gotten into the whole Love Match dating thing because of Bingley’s bet, but he’d never, not even once, lied about himself to her.
He glanced at the TV. Some guy in a gray suit pulled away from his onscreen woman and shouted, “We’ve only just begun this battle.”
The lady, pouting but with a glint of something sinister in her green eyes, pulled Gray Suit back. In the next second she nestled herself into the crook of his neck. Pouty Lady purred, “I’m fighting to win.” Then she covered his mouth with hers.
Will looked at Beth. “What is this?”
Beth gave an embarrassed shrug and clicked off the TV.
After a long, silent moment, she said, “Look, Will, I’m older than you thought. I’m twenty-six not twenty-two. After years of trying to finish my undergraduate degree, I’ll be completely done this month. The Love Match profile I did in March was part of a final research project for a sociology class I’m taking—”
“A research project? My God.” He tossed the pillow on the carpet and covered his eyes with palms. All he’d been to her was a freaking experiment.
“Yes. But Will—”
“Do you realize you could get into serious trouble for something like this? For falsifying personal data in a public domain? We all had click to verify their legal agreement before signing up, remember? If the owners of the Lady Catherine site found out about what you did…I don’t know. This might even be a federal offense,” he said, the angriest part of him liking the fact that this, at least, had her looking worried.
Her eyes grew big and round. Her lips pressed tight. Not that he’d actually report her. He hadn’t read the website’s agreement all that closely, so what the hell did he know? What she’d done might not even be against the law. But maybe she wouldn’t be so quick to string a man along next time under false pretenses.
She brushed a few trembling fingers over her mouth and took a deep breath. “It’s up to you to do what you feel is best,” she said.
“And you have nothing further to add? No other explanations for your behavior?”
“I can only offer you the truth. My real story.” She stared at him as if waiting for his permission to continue.
He bobbed his head in her direction.
She swallowed. “Charlie was born six years ago. He’s the only good thing that came from a marriage that had a very short past and no future. His father Pete was my college boyfriend. We married on impulse, and I got pregnant right away. His parents didn’t want anything to do with us.” She paused. “Pete was a year older than me and, it turned out, deathly afraid of being a father. He bolted the minute he graduated. Charlie saw him for the last time when he was two months old. Obviously, he doesn’t remember.”
Will thought of his own mom, his own experience, and he tightened his jaw. “What about your parents?”
“They’re both retired teachers, and they live in Arizona now. They were sympathetic and they didn’t disown me, but it wasn’t up to them to drop everything to fix my life for me either. So I flipped burgers, worked as a waitress, then as a checkout girl at the grocery store, among other jobs. Mrs. Moratti down the hall has watched Charlie since he was a toddler at half the cost of daycare because I wash her windows when they get grimy and vacuum for her and clean the snow and ice off her car in winter—”
“Why? Where are her kids?”
“Her sons live in Boston and Sarasota. And with my parents far away, she and I do the things we can to help each other. We’ve become a kind of family. She reminds me a little of my Grandma Kate, who I really, really loved. In some ways, with Mrs. Moratti, I kind of feel like I have my grandmother back.”
He was feeling angry again, this time at himself for getting sucked into her story, for feeling empathetic against his will. He glanced around the tidy but very sparse room. “So you chose social work as a profession because…why? It’s not an occupation known for its high salaries.”
She nodded. “My parents asked me that as well. They’d wanted me to study engineering or law or something more lucrative. I was a good student, well organized, too, and I wanted to make at least a modest living, but I couldn’t see myself in a field I wasn’t passionate about. Up until Charlie was born, I’d taken all the required general studies classes and a few electives in psychology and sociology, both of which I really liked. But then I had to drop out to make money to support us.”
She fidgeted with a loose thread on the sofa. “Mimi Jeffries, the lady who just left the agency, was the social worker assigned to me at the hospital when Charlie was born. I took her business card but didn’t contact her for months. When I finally did, her kindness and encouragement changed the direction of my life.” She smiled up at him, the first warm, radiant smile he’d seen since he’d arrived.
“I wanted to do the helpful things for other people that she’d done for me, and I especially loved being around the elderly,” Beth said. “So I started picking up one or two classes at a time to finish my degree, and I began working part time at Social Services to gain experience. It’s also where I’m doing my field practicum.” The smile drained from her eyes.
“Dan Noelen has been a wonderful boss for me as well a caring field-work sponsor,” she said. “I hope you won’t take out on him any of your negative feelings toward me. He’s one of the good guys.”
Pride reared its ugly head, and Will just couldn’t stand the thought of her playing his emotions any longer. Yes, yes, Noelen was a good guy, he’d seen that firsthand. Okay, maybe some social workers weren’t like the heartless witches he’d seen terrorizing his mother back when he was a kid and in between stepfathers…
When a check for one of the school fees bounced.
<
br /> When the doctor’s bills couldn’t be paid on time.
When the neighbor across the street reported his mom for “neglect” because she was sewing at the tailor’s shop from six a.m. to eight at night in order to put food on the table.
His heart clenched as though it were trapped in a vice. “I’ll allow that your experience was different from mine,” he managed to say.
“Thank you. Listen, Will, I’m really sorry we—”
“Forget it, Charlotte…I mean, Beth…whoever you are,” he said in his iciest voice. “The truth is, I went out with you on a bet.” There, he’d said it. Now she couldn’t feel sorry for him.
Her eyes turned squinty with confusion. “A bet?”
“You got it. My cousin Bingley was going to pour major funding into the clinic if I dated some woman five times and brought her over to meet him before his birthday this month.” He shot her his best steely look as a way to belie everything mushy he felt inside. Dammit all, but he refused to let her see through this.
“Yeah, that was gonna be you, babe,” he said. “Only one date and one Mother’s Day weekend get-together to go. But I guess I’ll need to pick up someone else now. No need to hold your breath or anything. You’re off the hook.”
Tears filled her eyes, but he didn’t see them fall. Maybe she couldn’t allow that. Maybe pride was working on her too.
“I see,” she whispered. “I hope your cousin will still give you t-the money, I guess, if that’s what you’d been planning on. The clinic is such a good cause. I, um, well, if you need someone to take to meet him—to prove, um, whatever, I could go—”
“Oh, no, sweetheart. Bingley is a bright guy. He’d see through a scam like that in a second. He’d know right away we weren’t really a couple.” He turned fast on his heel and strode to the door. He wanted to wipe every shred of pity off her beautiful little face. Glancing back at her one last time, he saw that he had. She looked sad, despondent even, but not the least bit sorry for him. It was a hollow victory, but a victory nonetheless.
Pride, Prejudice and the Perfect Match Page 10
