Another thought hit her. She had never again asked Steve about Zach.
Why not? She’d known he was worried about his brother. If it came to that, why hadn’t she asked him about all the things that had bothered her—the wedding, the sense they were drifting apart, her uncertainty that she could live in the world of the Corbetts. That he truly loved her.
Snapshots of the weeks leading up to the wedding pin-wheeled through her—not visual snapshots, but emotional ones.
She hadn’t asked him because she hadn’t wanted to acknowledge those questions and feelings, much less deal with the answers.
He was right. Suz was right. She had wanted to be protected. She had had hard knocks early, and Max had tried to cushion her from them. She loved him for that, but it also had taught her to expect other people to protect her.
She picked up those emotional snapshots one by one. She had known Lana did not approve of their marriage, but as with Zach’s departure, she had not asked Steve about it, instead letting him—no, expecting him to—deal with his mother. In fact, she’d been disappointed in him for not insisting Lana leave their wedding alone when she hadn’t stood up for herself. Even after her outburst about Max not being in the wedding, poor little Annette backed down. She had been a champion ostrich.
Had been. Past tense.
That was one unforgettable lesson from the disaster at their wedding—to face facts, because turning her back let them sneak up and grab her around the throat. She’d put that lesson to use in forming, running and selling Every Detail. In a way, she had Steve and their aborted wedding to thank for making her business a success. Although she had not been doing such a great job of facing facts since she’d come to Tobias. Especially when it came to Steve.
All in all, she had been wrong about Steve just about every step of the way.
First she’d thought he was perfect. The person she had looked to to protect her, to reassure her, to lead her…maybe even to define her. Then, in a handful of moments, he had turned out not to be the person she had built him up to be. For seven-and-a-half years she had defined him by how he had failed her. For failing her she had stripped him of all his strengths. She’d been wrong. And unfair.
He was a decent man with many good qualities. She could cooperate with him for Miss Trudi’s benefit. Respect his good qualities. Even acknowledge an attraction as a result of those flashback hormones.
But she knew better now than to let it go any further. He’d taught her to face the facts. She’d grown past the stage where she could be devastated by a man—this man—disappointing her. Again.
“Sorry I can’t give you better news.” Rob Dalton’s voice came over the speakerphone. “Hope it’s not too unpleasant a surprise.”
Steve had called and asked if she wanted to join his discussion with Rob. One part of her—cautious, not scared—wanted to say no. Another part noted that, considering the lectures she’d given him on accepting help, she should encourage this overture. So here she was at his office on this snowy Monday afternoon.
“Surprise, no,” Steve said.
“I’m not saying we couldn’t do it,” Rob added, “but I don’t see how it will get enough money to restore that house. What about other avenues?”
Steve had Annette fill Rob in on their conclusion that tax breaks from historical status wouldn’t do much good without having money in the first place. Historic property loans had too many strings, or weren’t big enough, or both.
“What about a local bank? Could we get a better reverse mortgage here?” Annette asked.
“No way Remtree will match the figures I gave you, Annette, much less do better. If you’re interested, we better do it soon. I’m thinking about taking a page out of your book and returning home for good.”
She didn’t look toward Steve as she said, “I’m not back here for good, Rob. As soon as Max doesn’t need me any more, I’ll be considering all my options.”
“Oh, I thought… I, uh… With selling your company, I thought you might be in the same boat as me, with nothing to keep me here. If I didn’t have a buddy going through hell right now…” Rob changed the subject.
As soon as he’d disconnected, Steve said, “You’re not considering all your options if you rule out Tobias.”
“We’re here to talk about Miss Trudi’s options. Not mine.”
He held her gaze for an extra count. “You hate it when I’m right. Okay, okay. What else is on our list?”
Max had said she didn’t need to come inside Town Hall while he submitted materials for the Dunwoody building permit and checked Bliss House’s files. But Annette had finished at the bank and had sat in the parked car long enough to be chilled, so she decided to check on him. Maybe he’d found something useful.
Inside the main door a high-pitched sound hit her ears. Another few seconds and she’d reached the door to the permits section. She encountered a moving, squirming, chattering groundcover of children. Trent Lipinsky cowered behind the counter. Max and two women stood amid the fray.
Annette retreated two steps before Nell squirted out of the mass, calling her name. Nell took her hand and led her to the bench at the base of the main stairway, talking all the while.
They were on a field trip, Nell said, but she already knew all this stuff, since her daddy was in charge of the whole town hall.
Apparently Nell’s thoughts shifted to a topic she didn’t know everything about, because her next words were, “Can I ask you somethin’?”
Annette eyed Nell with resignation. “Sure.”
“You knew my mom, right? Did she love my daddy?”
Who knew a child’s question could land such a blow to the gut? Had Lily acted out of love? Or spite? Or something else entirely?
“When they were in high school,” Annette said carefully, “they were the most popular couple. They were king and queen of homecoming. They drove in a red convertible in the parade, and your mother wore a blue sweater just the color of her eyes. She was dazzling.” Steve had looked uncomfortable but determined.
Nell was interested in the stories, though not as enthralled as Annette might have expected.
“Do you know my uncle Zach? He went away, and I never met him.”
He went away. Such a simple phrase for something so complicated. She and Steve had been sitting on the front porch drinking iced tea after playing tennis. Zach had come storming out, followed by Lana, with red blotching her neck and cheeks and her movements fast and jerky. Zach had thrown out accusations that Annette only half heard. But she remembered Lana’s words.
“You have an obligation to the name Corbett in this town, and if you can’t live up to it, then you shouldn’t carry it.”
“No problem, Mother,” Zach had shouted as he pounded down the steps to his motorcycle. “No problem at all.”
Her expression impassive, Lana had watched Zach leave, then went inside with the roar still echoing. She never acknowledged Steve by so much as a glance.
But none of that had disturbed Annette as much as the pale stillness of Steve’s face when she’d turned to him. “Steve…”
“We’ll talk about it later.”
But they hadn’t. Like so many things then. And she hadn’t asked.
“So is he?” Nell demanded. Her eyes glittered. “Is he really a pirate?”
“I don’t know what Zach’s doing now, but I very much doubt he’s a pirate.”
“That’s what Caitlin said her best friend’s mother said.” She clearly preferred that explanation. “My Uncle Zach was a pirate and a real wash bucket.”
A wash bucket? A pirate and a real wash bucket? Aha! “Swashbuckler? Is that what Caitlin said?”
“I guess.” But Nell was on to other matters. “Did you know he brought a dog into Grandmother’s house? A muddy dog.” Her eyes grew wide, but an impish smile overtook the expression. “With big muddy paws. The whole downstairs—even the music room—and all the way upstairs. That’s what Fran said.”
Annette had th
e oddest certainty that Nell was plotting how she could reprise this feat. Nell was fortunate that the flair for the dramatic she’d inherited from Lily was tempered by Steve’s good sense.
The child heaved a sigh. “I want to meet Uncle Zach. He sounds so fun.”
“I’m sure you would like your uncle Zach very much. But you know your dad is pretty spectacular, too. Did you know he was a state swimming champion? And when he raced, it was so exciting.”
Annette didn’t have time to wonder at her defense of Steve’s excitement quotient to his daughter because Nell peppered her with questions.
As she finally ran out of steam, her classmates were emerging from the permits office. She scooched close to Annette and said, “My daddy’s neat, isn’t he?”
Impulsively, Annette put her arm around the girl. “Yes, he is.”
She couldn’t have said what surprised her more, her own words, Nell’s response of flinging her arms around Annette’s neck or how good it felt.
Steve stepped back so the corner at the top of the stairs provided cover.
Annette and Nell sat together on the bench at the bottom. He’d been about to wave to attract their attention over the growing noise of the second grade field trippers. He’d come to collect the class and lead them upstairs. How Annette came to be there he didn’t know but took it as a pure bonus.
Then Nell had cuddled close and Annette had put her arm around her, and they had hugged.
He felt as if his body were trying to go in two directions at once. His throat constricted, and his heart gave an outsize ka-thump in his chest. But at the same time his stomach clenched and his head pounded.
Maybe it’s more important that you tell the truth than that you hear it.
Twelve days until she left.
What would she take with her? His heart? Nell’s?
The truth?
Having hit a wall in trying to come up with the total figure Max had set for making Bliss House livable, Annette had suggested they try a different approach.
So that Tuesday night, while Max was at a brick mason’s birthday party, she and Steve sat at Max’s kitchen table trying to schedule a five-year plan of work based on the funds Miss Trudi had. So far, the house was going to fall down before the rewiring could be finished.
“God, this is impossible.” She pushed her hair back as she raised her head from the column of uncooperative figures.
“Then go ahead and give up. Why not leave? It’s what you plan to do in the end anyway. And you’ve proven you’re good at it.”
Annette had been getting up to get them both more decaf when he started that little speech. One sentence into it and she stopped, staring at him.
Steve had been edgy since he’d walked in. If he rearranged the three pens on the table one more time she might scream. Triangles, Fs, lines, Is, Us and a V and a half. At first she thought his mood had something to do with the other night at his house when they’d kissed and she’d stopped them from… But he hadn’t been this way at his office talking to Rob.
Whatever it was, she’d been careful to keep this meeting strictly on topic. Well, not any more. No more kid gloves. In fact, the gloves were off.
“Odd how finding out at her wedding that her groom got another woman pregnant will send a girl running in the opposite direction. And if there’d been any doubt, any sliver of daylight left, well, you slammed the door good and hard when you married Lily.”
“I married Lily because it solved a lot of problems. Besides, I had no reason not to marry her. You’d left me.”
He seemed oddly at ease now, as if a decision had been made, and that made her angrier.
“You’re blaming me? You’re saying my absence was the reason you married Lily? When my presence hadn’t stopped you from getting her pregnant? And you knew she was pregnant. So what were you doing, weighing up until the end which of us to marry? Was I supposed to feel special because you were going through with our wedding and all you did was sleep with Lily and get her pregnant?”
“I didn’t sleep with Lily that spring or any time you and I were together.”
She crossed her arms. “Right. And how do you explain Lily giving birth to your daughter without—”
“She’s not my daughter.”
“—your sleeping with her.”
The two phrases echoed in the suddenly silent kitchen.
She’s not my daughter. How could Steve say that? If she’d ever seen a man who adored his daughter…
He slowly raised his head, revealing his face inch by inch.
All shadow had cleared his eyes, and she could see into them. The blue and the gray together, steady, balanced. His gaze met hers, open and direct. The look that had always had her believing. Whatever he said now would be the truth.
Chapter Ten
“Nell is not my biological daughter. I didn’t sleep with Lily that spring. I didn’t get her pregnant. I didn’t cheat on you.”
Annette sat down. Hard.
She didn’t remember reaching for the chair or even considering if one was there.
“But…but how? She looks like you.”
That wasn’t what she wanted to ask, wasn’t what she wanted to know. But she couldn’t channel all her questions into anything except a big, jumbled, howling why, a word too small and a question too large.
“Zach is Nell’s biological father.”
“Zach.” She wasn’t questioning what Steve said because she hadn’t taken it in. She repeated the word to make sure her mouth was working.
“He and Lily had a thing going that spring before he left town.”
“He told you?”
“Not directly. But I knew. Even before Lily came to me. That—”
“Wait—Lily came to you? Before the wedding?” Those weeks when people had seen them together and had been oh, so eager to tell her that Steve was seeing his high-school girlfriend again. “So you knew before the wedding what she planned—”
“No!” he roared.
She couldn’t ever remember Steve raising his voice, and certainly not to her. But what surprised her the most was how unsurprised he seemed. He resumed, his voice strained but at its usual volume.
“I had no idea she would do that. I thought it was all taken care of. A couple weeks before the wedding—that was, what, three months after Zach took off—she came and asked me if it was true that we didn’t know where Zach was or how to get hold of him. Of course, none of us knew then that Zach was gone for good. When I said it was true, she became…upset.”
“What did she say, Steve?”
“Among other things,” he said slowly, “that she was damned if she was going to be left taking care of a kid on her own. She would sue the family, she would drag Zach’s name through the mud. She would bring the Corbetts down—that was a favorite phrase.
“I told her the baby was a Corbett, and the family would stand by her. I gave her money to make sure she got the right prenatal care, things like that. And I promised we’d keep helping her—financially and otherwise. She wanted a legal document. Right away. I told her we could get something drawn up, but not until after—” he closed his eyes for an instant “—you and I were married.”
“That’s when you were seen with Lily. When she made her demands.”
“Yes. That’s what I meant the other night about the timing—I was seen with her so close to the wedding, but her baby had to have been conceived months before. Nobody saw me with her then, because I was always with you.”
Annette was trying to take it in. Trying to keep her thoughts from speeding after one implication, only to dash off in pursuit of another. Trying to break it into basic facts. She stood, needing to move. From the refrigerator to the door to the sink and back.
Nell was Zach’s daughter.
Lily had lied when she burst into their wedding.
Steve hadn’t been two-timing her, cheating on her, running around on her—all the phrases Annette had tormented herself with.
“…still
trying to find Zach. I hired several detectives,” Steve said. “We were under the gun because Lily’s due date was getting close. She’d made it clear she had to be married to a Corbett or she would keep the baby away from us and make any legal fight public and ugly. Not only for Zach, but for the baby.”
“Did your mother know?”
“No. I thought it would be best for the baby. I kept thinking about you. Kept seeing your face….”
She stopped pacing to look at him.
“When you talked about growing up without a father. And I kept thinking about this baby Lily was carrying. Lily couldn’t deal with life, much less motherhood. This baby wouldn’t have the kind of mother you had, sure wouldn’t have a big brother like Max.”
But the baby did have Steve Corbett.
I married Lily because it solved a lot of problems. Besides, I had no reason not to marry her. You’d left me.
If she’d stayed… If he’d told her—
“But…but then you knew. At the wedding, when I asked you—you knew Lily was pregnant with Zach’s child. All you had to say was it wasn’t your baby, and we would have been married.”
Even as she said the words, a discordant jangle scraped along her nerves.
“Was that all I had to say? No, I’m not the father of Lily’s baby? Would we have been married? Would you have stayed? I sure didn’t get that impression standing at that altar with you.”
“What was I supposed to think when Lily said she was carrying your baby and you said nothing—nothing!”
His mouth formed a faint, rueful smile, though his eyes remained stormy gray. “I hoped you wouldn’t think. I hoped that you loved me enough to trust me. To believe in me.”
“Love doesn’t mean you stop thinking, Steve. And I remember that day so clearly. I didn’t move when Lily came in, or when she said the baby was yours, or even when you didn’t immediately say it wasn’t. It was when you wouldn’t answer me. When you said we’d talk about it later.”
Wedding of the Century Page 17
