“I see,” she said in a neutral voice.
“I’d be using my own room, of course,” he clarified.
He didn’t have to spell it out, for God’s sake. She knew he didn’t love her, not that way. She knew that the only time he’d ever shared his bed with her was when he’d been confused and emotionally battered, desperate for any comfort she could offer.
He was still in love with Amanda, but he was strong enough now not to require any sexual cures for his wounded heart from the local pharmacist. Of course he’d stay in his own room. No question about it.
“I want more time with Jamie,” he continued. “He belongs here, Shelley—I would never dream of changing the custody arrangement. You’re a wonderful mother, and he belongs with you. It’s just...” He sighed. “I’m his father, and he belongs with me, too.”
She toyed with a button on her shirt and tried to collect her thoughts. She wanted to say she was delighted by the idea—but the truth was, it scared her.
“I’ve been thinking about it for a while,” he said. “I wanted to work it out before I discussed it with you.”
“What have you worked out?”
“Well, my job, for one thing. Most of the consulting I’m doing now can be done long-distance. When I need to do an on-site I can do one, but I really don’t have to be in a downtown office every day. I can set up shop right here, in the house. I was thinking I could wall off part of the cellar and convert the space into an office.”
“The cellar? It’s so cold and gloomy down there. And all those spiders...”
He grinned. “I’ll bring in a space heater and kill the spiders.”
“We have power outages all the time—”
“I’ll hook into a back-up portable generator.” He studied her in the dusk shadows, assessing her response. “Do you really not want me to do this?”
“No. I mean—if you want to do it, Kip, it’s all right with me.”
“But?” he prompted her.
“No buts. I think...” She meditated for a minute, then forced herself to speak honestly. “I think there’s a lot to recommend it. Jamie misses you during the week. And having you around would lift some of the responsibility from my shoulders. I have no objection to that.”
He contemplated her. The evening light waned and darkness crept slowly across the small room, consuming everything in its path. She could guess what he was thinking: that she’d said yes, but her tone didn’t support her words. That for all her positive statements, she was besieged with uncertainty. “But?” he pressed.
“But nothing.”
“You’re afraid I’ll get in the way.”
“No, of course not. I’m at the pharmacy all day, and Jamie’s at Alice McCormick’s house. Why do you think you’d be in anyone’s way?”
“Well...” He shrugged. “This has been your home for two years. You’ve got your own way of doing things—”
“You know what my way is,” she said, managing a faint smile. “No toys allowed on the stairs, and I vacuum whenever the dust bunnies start to resemble an invading army. Laundry twice a week. If you move in, Kip, you’re going to get stuck with one of the weely laundries.”
He smiled, too. “I want it clear between us,” he said, still selecting his words with deliberation, “that my moving into the house won’t change our relationship.”
Right. They would be reserved and restrained with each other, all their love and affection directed to Jamie. Kip would find his relationships elsewhere, and Shelley would have her precious independence.
“Okay,” she said, averting her gaze.
“I know how you feel about marriage; that’s not what this is about. Unless, of course, you think getting married might make things easier.”
Her eyes flew back to him. It wasn’t the first time he’d proposed marriage, and it might not be the last. But she knew he was raising the subject—as he always did—only because he was well-bred and responsible, willing to accept his obligations.
“No,” she said, her voice low but steely. “I don’t believe in marriage. It causes more problems than it solves. I don’t want it.”
He seemed to feel the need to justify himself. “I mentioned it only because I thought it might simplify things.”
Her eyes suddenly felt hot with tears, her vision misting. “I know,” she murmured. “Maybe that’s a good reason to get married—but it doesn’t sound like much of a reason to me.”
They lapsed into silence. Outside the wind was picking up, whispering through the branches of the red maple. From the east came the moan of the ferry’s horn, announcing the day’s final departure for Pt. Judith.
Kip wasn’t on that ferry. He was here. Shelley hugged her arms more tightly around her legs, wishing she could trust him but knowing she couldn’t. He was a man, and she probably loved him, and love and trust, when mixed together, were lethal.
For better or worse, though, Kip was here. She was just going to have to protect herself.
***
LYING IN BED later that night, he thought about Shelley across the hall from him. He thought about her climbing into her own bed and drawing up the covers, thought about her hair splaying across her pillow. He thought about the way she’d looked in her swim suit earlier that day—and the way she’d looked naked one night long ago.
He thought about how swiftly she’d turned down his marriage proposal, and a cold, heavy resignation descended over him.
The last time he’d raised the possibility of marriage had been a little over a year ago. She’d said no just as swiftly that time. “I appreciate your kindness, Kip,” she’d said, “but your heart belongs to Amanda. You know that.”
“I know that,” he’d concurred.
If she expressed that assumption now, he wasn’t sure he would agree. He wouldn’t deny that Amanda was a part of him. He still felt her presence sometimes, still found himself wondering what she would think of his child, whether she would love Jamie as much as he did, whether she would approve of his noble efforts at fatherhood.
Amanda was a part of him—but so was Shelley. Lately, when he closed his eyes, the image that filled his mind was Shelley: the joyous radiance of her eyes whenever she glimpsed her son. The tall, regal beauty of her body. Her courage, her competence, her generosity. Her sun-streaked hair and her full, soft lips.
She didn’t want to marry him. Whatever her feelings for him, they didn’t include a desire for a permanent legal commitment. To be sure, he wasn’t sure what the hell they did include.
Moving into the house with her might turn out to be one of the most stupid mistakes of his life. But he had to do it, for Jamie. He had to do it because he wanted his child to have a complete, stable family. Whatever was right or wrong between Shelley and Kip, he wanted to be more than a part-time father.
He shouldn’t have brought Shelley up to the cupola to discuss his plans—but he couldn’t imagine talking to her about them anywhere else. The cupola was where they went, where they’d always gone when they’d had to talk. Ever since they’d been kids.
The first time he’d really kissed her had been in the cupola. And the last time he’d really kissed her, she’d been lying with him right here in this bed.
He wanted her. He wanted her with the same fierce, unadorned hunger he’d felt as a fifteen-year-old boy discovering, to his amazement, that his good old summer pal had breasts and hips and an astonishingly sexy mouth. He couldn’t act on that hunger, though, not without jeopardizing everything he and Shelley had built together. He couldn’t even talk about his feelings, because the only subject of any importance he and Shelley seemed able to talk about these days was Jamie.
She probably had no idea what he was thinking, what he was feeling, how difficult it was going to be for him to coexist in the house with her. Given how much she’d done for him, he owed her the privilege of remaining ignorant. She would never have to know his feelings and frustrations. If she ever found out, she might open her arms to him out of pity. Or s
he might boot him out of the house altogether.
Perhaps she was right, perhaps he ought to forget about marrying her and making their family a legal, spiritual entity. If he needed a woman to love, he’d find one, and he’d leave Shelley out of it. What he had with her was too vital and too fragile to risk on something as painful as love.
Chapter Eleven
SHELLEY AWAKENED to silence.
Bolting upright in bed, she glanced at the clock on the nightstand beside her: seven-thirty. Sunlight filtered through the curtains, filling the room with a benign glow. Her heart began to pound. Anxiety stabbed her like needles of ice, sending shivers down her back.
Where was Jamie? Why hadn’t she heard him hollering “Mommy gemme out!” from his crib?
She leaped out of bed, grabbed her bathrobe from the chair and raced frantically out of her room. The door of the bedroom across the hall was open. Spotting the unmade bed, she let out her breath in a long sigh. Kip was here. Although it was Monday, Kip was here. He must have gotten Jamie out of the crib.
She shook her head in astonishment at how far he had come, from his first frantic retreat in response to the news that she was pregnant until this moment, when he’d moved physically into the house and taken over the job of rescuing Jamie from his crib at dawn. She never would have guessed, two years ago, that someday he would appear at the house and announce, “I want more time with Jamie. I’m his father and he belongs with me.”
He’d done all the right things back then: transferring to a new office in Providence, finding Shelley a doctor at Rhode Island Hospital, meeting her whenever possible at the doctor’s office and apologizing profusely for her inconvenience at having to travel to the mainland for her examinations. He’d purchased his parents’ house and helped Shelley to settle in, and he’d shipped baby furnishings to her from “America.” He’d arranged with the Air Ambulance service on Block Island to have Shelley transported to the hospital as soon as she went into labor, and he’d sat beside her, holding her hand and murmuring words of encouragement throughout the ordeal.
But she’d always sensed something automatic and unthinking in his actions, a definite whiff of obligation. Kip was a decent man, and he’d done what a decent man was supposed to do when he got caught. He hadn’t provided Shelley with everything an expectant mother might need because he loved her. He’d done it because it had been the proper thing to do.
Or so she’d thought, right up to the afternoon she went into labor. She’d telephoned his office in Providence to alert him, and by the time she’d arrived at the hospital he’d been there—calm, businesslike, completely in charge. The nurses had helped her to undress while he’d stood on the other side of the curtain with the doctor, speaking soberly about whether he should scrub up now or wait a while, whether Shelley should be strapped to a fetal monitor, whether all the proper health insurance forms had been filed.
The labor had been long and tiring. Shelley had cursed and cried, counted breaths and sucked on chips of ice. Through it all, Kip had been the ultimate gentleman. “Would you like some water?” he would inquire. “Would you like to try standing for a while? I’m sorry it hurts, Shelley.”
More than once she’d found herself thinking he would have done just as well sending her a greeting card.
At three o’clock the following morning, though, everything had changed. Especially Kip. At three o’clock, Jamie arrived.
As soon as she’d heard she’d delivered a healthy boy, Shelley had collapsed into the pillows in exhaustion, only dimly aware of the activity at the foot of the bed: the cord being cut, the baby’s face being washed, his mouth and nose being cleared of fluid. She’d closed her eyes and gulped in deep, relaxing breaths, allowing herself a small grin of triumph that expanded when she’d heard her son’s first tremulous cry. Then she’d opened her eyes and propped herself up.
The baby had been swaddled in a fleecy receiving blanket. “You rest,” a nurse had ordered her as she’d handed the baby to Kip. He’d pulled off his face mask and peered at the squalling, squirming bundle of life in his arms, and tears had streamed down his cheeks.
After so many months of stoical self-control, he’d cradled his son and kissed him and wept.
Shelley hadn’t dared to ask whether his tears were of joy or of grief and bitterness that Shelley and not Amanda had mothered his child. She’d assumed they were a bit of both.
At least he had yielded to emotion. At least he’d stopped being so composed and circumspect. Kip Stroud—brooding widower, affluent yuppie, honorable gentleman—had metamorphosized into a fanatically sentimental daddy.
When he’d returned to the hospital later that day to visit Shelley and Jamie, his wedding band had been gone. Shelley had never seen him wear it again.
And now he was here, on the island, moving in. Becoming a part of the household. Whatever unresolved tensions and missed connections existed between her and Kip, she would never stand in the way of what he had with Jamie. He was a dad. He deserved to be here, and Jamie deserved to have him here.
She tied the sash of her robe around her waist, then descended to the first floor in time to see Kip and Jamie entering from the front veranda. They were both dressed, and they both looked far more alert than Shelley felt. Kip held Jamie high in his arms, making the child appear amazingly light and small on his lofty perch.
“Mommy! We see mitt,” he announced proudly.
“Mist,” Kip corrected him.
Jamie scrunched his face in concentration, “Mitt,” he said.
Shelley smiled. One of her favorite things about Jamie was his sheer enthusiasm for everything, including the mist that floated eerily above the lawn until the sun burned it away. He refused Shelley the opportunity to become blasé about the island’s natural splendor.
“Why don’t you go get dressed?” Kip suggested. “I’ll start Jamie on breakfast.”
“Thanks.” Still smiling, Shelley turned and headed back up the stairs. To be able to shower and dress at her own leisurely pace on a weekday morning was a luxury she couldn’t resist.
Maybe Kip’s move to the island wouldn’t be so bad. Maybe his living in the house would turn out better than expected. They’d been together nearly all the time as kids, and they’d been wonderfully close. The brief, intense interlude that had culminated in Jamie’s conception—they’d seen each other every day then, too, and they’d been intimately attuned to each other.
Shelley had long ago learned to anticipate the worst, to trust only herself and assume that men operated in their own self-interest, without regard for the wreckage they left behind. But Kip...Kip had always been better than that.
Maybe it was time to start trusting again.
***
“I WANT WABBOOS,” Jamie whined.
“There aren’t any waffles,” Kip told him, returning from the pantry with a box of puffed wheat.
“I want wabboos.”
Kip allowed himself a wry smile. A quick survey of the pantry had informed him that Shelley was a lot stricter than he was when it came to Jamie’s diet. In Providence Kip served Jamie waffles or pancakes or took him out to Dunkin Donuts. Judging by the contents of the pantry cabinets, Shelley fed Jamie only healthy cereals for breakfast.
He was pouring puffed wheat into Jamie’s plastic Kermit-the-Frog bowl when Shelley entered the kitchen. Dressed in a flowered cotton dress, with a clean white lab jacket draped over one arm and her purse clutched in the other hand, she appeared refreshed and poised, prepared to face the day. In truth, he preferred the way she’d looked when she’d first stumbled down the stairs in her nightgown and robe, her feet bare, her hair mussed, her cheeks rosy from the warmth of her pillow and her eyes a muted gray color, still half-glazed with sleep.
He was going to have to stop thinking that way.
“I made some coffee,” he told her, angling his head toward the coffee maker on the counter. “I didn’t know what else you wanted.”
“I haven’t got time to eat anythi
ng,” she remarked, pulling a bottle of orange juice from the refrigerator. “I’m not used to sleeping so late. What time did Jamie wake up?”
Well, then, there it was—a conversation revolving around Jamie. As always.
He fixed himself two slices of toast while Shelley packed Jamie’s tote with diapers and wipes, a clean lidded cup, a bib and a change of clothing—all items he might need at the baby-sitter’s. “Has he got a sun hat?” Kip asked.
“It’s in the front hall closet.”
“Do you want me to bring him to Alice’s today?”
“No, that’s okay,” Shelley answered. “Her house is on my way to the pharmacy.”
“I don’t mind taking him. Especially since you’re running late.” It was with a certain disbelief that Kip listened to the words emerging from him. Not that any of it wasn’t important, not that Jamie wasn’t the center of his universe, but damn it, why couldn’t Kip say what he was really thinking? You look lovely, Shelley. That dress makes your eyes look almost blue. I want to give you a good-morning kiss and I’m afraid to. Tell me how not to be afraid. Tell me you wouldn’t hate me for kissing you.
“Use your spoon, Jamie,” he said, instead, forcing the baby spoon into his son’s chubby fingers.
“I use hand.”
“You’re a big boy, Jamie. Use your spoon,” Shelley chimed in as she sat at the table with her coffee and juice. Kip carried his toast to the table and joined them. “What are your plans for the day?” she asked him.
“I’m going to organize the stuff I unloaded from the car last night,” he told her. “I may spend some time clearing out a section of the cellar. I’ll be heading back to `America’ this afternoon, though. I have an appointment tomorrow morning in Providence, and then I’ll load up the car and bring some more stuff over on the ferry.”
“So you won’t be here for dinner,” she said.
“Not tonight. Tomorrow night, yes.”
Safe Harbor Page 17
