''I want out! Turn this car around and take me home immediately."
"Sorry, angel. You're on your way to Johnstown to meet the Minteers."
Nine
^^Relax." Matt reached over and took her hand in his. *'There's nothing to be nervous about. My family will like you and you'll like them. They're not the ogres you're imagining them to be."
'*I have no preconceived notions about them." Kay la pulled her hand away. His still rested in her lap and she lifted his wrist to place his fingers firmly on the wheel. "And I'm not nervous."
'^Aren't you?"
''Not at all."
"You've been tying and untying the strap of your purse into knots for the past hundred miles," Matt said dryly. "Just doing it for the exercise, hmm?"
Kayla quickly dropped the strap that she was still unconsciously kneading with her fingers. "I didn't want to come with you, I don't want to meet your family and I'm not going to marry you. You can hardly blame me for feel-
ing...uncomfortable about finding myself on this enforced trip with you/'
**Ever been to Johnstown before?" Matt asked casually, completely ignoring the fact that she had just denounced him.
Kay la scowled. Much as she would Ve liked to ignore him, she felt obliged to respond to such a simple, direct question. '*No," she said stiffly.
"It's a good, solid working-class town. It was badly hurt by the collapse of the steel industry in the early eighties, but it's still more bustling than most other western Pennsylvania towns. I guess the biggest, most uniquely defining thing about Johnstown is the Great Flood of 1889. It was one of the epic disasters of the nineteenth century with over twenty-two hundred dead or missing. It still casts its memory over the town. Each native Johnstown family has its tales of the flood, handed down from generation to generation."
''Does yours?" she asked. "Aside from that tall tale about Minteer's Tavern being swept down the river to Pittsburgh?"
"You remembered!" Matt smiled. "I remember how pleased I was that you laughed at my story that night. Most people don't laugh at my jokes. I'm not exactly known as a sidesplitting raconteur."
"You aren't one. I was merely being polite when I laughed."
"Nope, you really liked me, I could tell. You were as attracted to me as I was to you. And that was before our brains were blitzed by WINDS, Kayla."
She rolled her eyes heavenward. "You're quite good at recreating events to show yourself in a positive light. Are you sure you wouldn't consider working for Dillon and Ward? That's the sort of work they do for their clients, you know."
**Ah, Kayla, I know what you're doing. You're trying to inflame me by using all the buzzwords. But it's not going to work, baby. I'm not going to fly off the handle and call off our—uh—engagement.''
Kayla winced. "We're not engaged. I was engaged once and it was a disaster. An engagement is so stressful.. .all that pressure, all those unrealistic expectations- Choosing a ring, seriously reading bridal magazines, all the artificial sentimentality and cloying jokes... Oh, I'll never go through that again!"
**I know what you mean. I was almost engaged once." He grimaced wryly. ''It wasn't until Debra and I seriously started talking about marriage that I realized how wrong we were for each other. I couldn't have made a more unsuitable match if I'd deliberately gone out looking for one."
''Well, you certainly learned from your mistake, didn't you? This time you've decided to marry a stranger who got pregnant from a drunken one-night stand. There's a soUd match for you."
"We're going to be a soHd match," Matt insisted. "The more I get to know about you, the more I'm convinced we're right for each other."
His unshakable optimism astonished her. She'd never experienced anything like it. From childhood, she'd learned to be cautious, guarded, ready to be disappointed, to be wrong. "You're crazy," she breathed.
He shook his head. "Think about it, Kayla. We have the same values—you're loyal to your family—your sister and that wacky stepmother. You love them and are appreciative of them. It's that way with me and my family, too. Even more important, you want kids and so do I. You're willing to make sacrifices for your child's sake. You proved that by deciding to have our baby and to raise it, even before I entered the picture, despite the difficuhies and inconveniences a single mother faces."
Kayla flushed. ''You make me sound like some hallowed Mother Machree."
"I admire and respect you for putting the baby before yourself," he said warmly. "Our society has reached the point where it puts the individual's needs and rights ahead of the good of the family. People in other cultures are taught to be proud of making sacrifices for those they love, but that's not the case in ours these days."
She was at a loss for words. Hearing him state that she embodied those admirable, traditional virtues made her feel confident and proud and strong. How do you argue with someone who makes you feel that way? she wondered dizzily. Why would you even want to?
"We'll have a good marriage," Matt continued in those same riveting, mesmerizing tones. "Maybe we don't know each other as well as some couples do when they marry, but deepened trust and intimacy and commitment aren't just handed out on the wedding day, Kayla. They have to be developed and we're going to work at that every day."
He reached over and took her hand again, carrying it to rest on his thigh, their fingers interlaced. This time Kayla didn't pull away. She was bemused by him, confused by him, too. Everything in her life's experience told her that a relationship between the two of them was doomed to failure, that she shouldn't depend on him. But some spark of hope, so faint she was scarcely aware of it, flickered within her.
They rode with her hand in his through the mountainous Pennsylvania countryside. Kayla watched the road signs, saw the number of miles pass as they approached Johnstown. Her anxiety level increased.
"Johnstown sits in a deep valley in a gap in the Allegheny Mountains at the confluence of two rivers. You can see what easy prey the city is to flood waters," Matt said as they drove down the steep mountain road leading into the town below.
*'Two rivers run down the mountains, the Little Cone-maugh from the east and the Stony Creek from the south, and meet at the bottom in Johnstown. With heavy rain, the two run wild, especially in the spring. The Signal Service-sort of a precursor to the National Weather Service—called the storm that triggered the Great Flood the most extensive rainfall of the century."
''I don't know much about the flood, but I seem to recall something about a dam bursting?"
Matt nodded grimly. "The South Fork Hunting and Fishing Club had an artificial lake made for the pleasure of their members, the coal and steel barons from Pittsburgh. The lake was fourteen miles above Johnstown and the dam that held it was known to be structurally faulty. When all that rain fell, the dam gave way and the water swept down the mountain with the force of Niagara Falls. Today, the U.S. Park Service operates The National Flood Memorial on the site of the club. The Johnstown Flood Museum is downtown and houses artifacts from the flood and runs daily showings of an Academy-award-winning documentary about it. We'll go to both places someday soon."
The morning was bright and sunny as they descended the mountain and Kayla tried to imagine it stormy and dark in a threatening downpour of rain, to picture the dam bursting and a lake full of water surging onto the unsuspecting town below. She shivered.
*'Tell me your family's flood story," she said. "Was the Minteer Tavern really swept away?"
"It was flattened. There wasn't a piece of it left. My greatgrandfather, Martin Minteer, was just a child of nine the year of the flood, but he could remember everything about it in stunning detail until the day he died. He told his son, my grandfather, all about it, and Pap passed on the story to every one of us. Martin described it so well you could almost see it—a wall of water roaring down the mountains with trees and parts of houses and railroad ties, animal car-
casses and all manner of debris in it, cascading along like a monstrous tidal wave, sweepi
ng away everything in its path."
*'He must have been terrified!" exclaimed Kayla.
Matt nodded solemnly. "He said it sounded like thunder, although others claimed the noise was more like an oncoming train. Martin and his parents and two httle sisters were running to climb to higher ground with his father's brother and three cousins when it struck. Only Martin and his father and one fourteen-year-old cousin survived. The others were lost... swept away and drowned."
**Oh! That's terrible!" Kayla exclaimed. And even though the tragedy had happened over a hundred years ago to relatives he'd never known, she added a heartfelt, 'Tra so sorry."
'^Martin's father, my great-great-grandfather Patrick, was a tough old bird," said Matt with a proud smile. *'He embodied the spirit of the city of Johnstown. He was determined to get on with his Hfe, to rebuild, and he did. Within a year, the tavern was back in business, serving the work-ingmen of the Cambria Iron Company. In those days, the saloon was a place where the workingman could stop off at the end of a long shift to have a drink and socialize with his friends. He was always welcome there, even if he was covered with coal dust or sweat from the heat of the steel furnaces. It was his club, and on Saturday nights, things could get a little wild. Still does sometimes, although the excitement there these days usually comes from the football games playing on the large-screen TV."
'There's still a Minteer's Tavern, to this day," Kayla marveled. It was an interesting legacy, a continuity that her life had always lacked. Her baby's wouldn't; her baby would share the Minteer family history.
Kayla caught her breath. Did that mean that she was actually considering marrying Matt? This was the first time
she'd acknowledged to herself that Matt Minteer had a part in her child's life, a role in both their futures.
Matt, unmindful of her internal upheaval, chatted on about Minteer's Tavern. "It's not as rough and rowdy as in the old days. Sometimes families come in for dinner, but after eight o'clock, it's pretty much a male club where sports and politics are always the hot topics of conversation. My brother Mark helps my dad and mom run the place. My brother John owns the local beer and soda pop distributorship. I worked in the tavern summers and school vacations till I graduated from college and I'll still pitch in and tend bar sometimes. For as long as I can remember the tavern has been a meeting place, a sort of pulse beat of local news and opinions."
*'A natural political springboard," Kayla observed. "You know, I just realized something—you and your brothers are Matthew, Mark, Luke and John."
"We took a lot of kidding growing up because we weren't at all saintly like our namesakes. We're two years apart, with me the oldest. Two years after John came Anne Marie and two years after her, Mary Catherine. Then there was a five-year-gap and Tiffany was born."
''Tiffany? All those biblical names and then there is a Tiffany? Isn't that a bit modern?"
Matt chuckled. "Mom claimed a woman having her seventh child ought to be able to name it anything she wanted, and she was set on Tiffany. Tif's nineteen now, a college student at Penn State's Johnstown campus."
"I guess I'll be meeting her soon." Kayla gulped. "There certainly are a lot of Minteers."
"You'll soon be meeting them all," Matt said eagerly.
Kayla said nothing. She was suddenly very nervous about facing a multitude of Minteers in the role of... what? Exactly how did Matt plan to introduce her to them?
"You—you're not going to say anything to your family about the baby, are you?" She'd intended to sound author-
itative; instead, much to her consternation, she sounded pleading.
'*Not if you'd rather I didn't," Matt said soothingly. ''We can tell them later."
"What about Luke? Do you think he might've told them already?"
Matt frowned. "Not a chance."
They drove through the city streets to a residential neighborhood where big, old brick houses lined the streets. "Here's the old homestead," Matt said fondly, pulling alongside the curb of a three-story red brick house. "We all grew up in this house, but only Mom, Dad and Tiffany live here now. Everybody else is married and lives in the suburbs with their own families, except Luke and me, of course. We live in Harrisburg, but we also own a duplex a few blocks from here. Each of us has his own side, which makes it a safe arrangement." He smiled ruefully. "You never know what Luke might be up to... or at what time. He can be a very nocturnal animal."
Matt took her arm to help her out of the car. Kayla felt an overwhelming urge to remain right where she was. Slowly, her eyes wide, her stomach churning, she walked to the front door of the big old house, Matt's arm clamped around her waist. To onlookers, it would appear that he was being solicitous and devoted. Kayla knew he was imprisoning her so she couldn't take off and run.
To her surprise, the Minteers, a group of countless men, women and children of all ages, were gathered at the house and obviously expecting her.
"Matt called from Harrisburg yesterday to tell us you were coming," said Rosemary Minteer, Matt's mother. "It was short notice but everybody is here, from Gram and Pap right down to little Ashley." She beamed at her youngest grandchild, three-month-old Ashley Minteer. "We're so excited to meet you at last, Kayla." Impulsively, she swept Kayla into a warm hug.
i
*'At last?" Anne Marie, the oldest sister, repeated, arching her eyebrows. She juggled a squirming two-year-old on her hip. ''We didn't know of her existence until yesterday, Mother."
Anne Marie turned to Matt, eyeing him severely. ''Matthew, I can't believe you've been secretly dating her and never bothered to bring her home until now." With her free hand, she gave his arm a sisterly punch. "Kayla must've been wondering why you didn't introduce her to your family long before this! That's just not the way it's done."
"Hey, I wanted to surprise you, Annie. You're always saying I'm too controlled—now you're complaining because I'm being spontaneous."
Grinning unashamedly. Matt clamped his hand around the nape of Kayla's neck and guided her out of the crowded vestibule into an even more crowded living room. "Anne Marie has an opinion on everything and she's not shy about sharing it."
Kayla was not concerned about his outspoken sister, she was still reeling from his mother's remark. "You called yesterday from Harrisburg to tell them we were coming?" She stood on tiptoe to murmur in his ear in a low, fierce voice that no one but him could hear. To the curious, fond onlookers they appeared to be lovers sharing a private word. "Yesterday, before you came to see me in D.C.?" A tremor shook her. "Where you then proceeded to seduce me and then steamroller me into coming with you!''
In turn. Matt leaned down and whispered in her ear, "I plead guilty to the steamroller charge, but the seduction was definitely mutual."
"Matt, Kayla, smile!" someone with a video camera shouted.
"Look this way," called another person with another video camera.
"I want to see the ring," demanded someone else.
'*There is no ring," Matt said jovially. **We both hate engagements and everything to do with them, so we're skipping all that and going directly to the wedding ceremony."
''Everything's fixed, Matty, my boy." An older man slapped Matt's shoulder. ''All you have to do is go down to the hospital for the blood test. Judge MacClaren worked a little magic and got you the license." He reached into the pocket of his jacket. "It's right here."
Matt grinned. "Thanks, Uncle Mike."
Kayla glimpsed the notarized piece of paper as Matt took it from his uncle. The words swam before her eyes. It was, unmistakably, a marriage license.
"The church is reserved and Mary Catherine's brother-in-law, Father Aaron, is going to officiate," said Jack Min-teer, Matt's father.
"I hope that's all right with you, Kayla," Mary Catherine said. "My husband, Ed's, older brother is a priest, and he officiates at all our family services. I guess we never thought to ask if there was someone you wanted to perform the ceremony."
Kayla cleared her throat. It seemed imperative that s
he make some comment, but things were moving too fast for her to fully comprehend them. From the clues she'd seen and heard—the marriage license, the talk about a church and priest and ceremony—it was clear that something was afoot. But a wedding? That just couldn't be! Apprehensively, she looked up at Matt with questioning hazel eyes.
"Father Aaron is fine, Sis," he said, holding Kayla's gaze. "What time is the wedding scheduled?"
"This afternoon at four," Anne Marie informed them. "You certainly didn't give us much advance notice. Matt. I barely had time to run over to the mall in Altoona to get a new dress and shoes for me and new outfits for the kids."
"But she did it. Anne Marie can always make a shopping deadline," her husband chimed in cheerfully.
Kayla's legs nearly buckled. If Matt hadn't been gripping her firmly around the waist, she probably would have collapsed to the floor. *'But—but—" she began, her voice shaking with shock. The Minteers had arranged for her to marry Matt today at four? She stared wildly around her. There seemed to be hundreds of them crowded in the house, blocking the entrances, prev^iting her escape.
'*Are you worried that Kristina might not be able to make it by then?" Matt asked in a perfectly natural tone of voice, as if they'd discussed all this before, as if Kristina's appearance was the only thing that might be troubling her. For a minute, Kayla wondered if she were losing her mind.
**Kayla and Kristina are identical twins," Matt explained to the relatives pressed around them, listening. ''I bet you'll have trouble telling them apart. I know I've had my share of mixed-up moments," he added dryly.
''Don't worry, sweetheart," he said, turning to Kayla with a heart-melting smile. ''Kristina is driving down from Har-risburg today, and bringing your dress, of course. She should be here by one.''
Kristina was in on this, too? Her own sister had conspired with the Minteers to marry her off to Matt today? Kayla was speechless with shock; an aura of unreality enveloped her. One event was following another with dizzying speed and she had no control, no options. She felt a vague connection to the hapless flood victims, trapped before that overpowering fateful deluge.
Double trouble Page 13
