“Hmm.... He’s good, too. Well, if you don’t need me for anything...”
The woman stole her heart when she smiled and said, “I know where you’d rather be, and if I were in your place, I’d want the same. Thelma is equal to two people in the kitchen. We’ll get along fine.”
Spontaneously she kissed the woman’s cheek. “I hope Sloan knows how fortunate he is to have you for his mother. Somehow, I think he does.”
She found him sitting in the garage holding a fishing rod while his father threaded it. My Lord, that man has a sexy body, she thought. Just look at those legs and that chest. When she realized that Connor had caught her ogling Sloan, she shifted her gaze to her feet. But Sloan’s father winked at her and said, “It’s allowed. Guys do it all the time.” She was about to be scandalized when she realized that the comment was his effort to put her at ease, and when he laughed, she saw the humor in it and laughed with him.
“Am I missing something?” Sloan wanted to know.
“Yeah,” Connor said, “but that’s life. If you’re walking on Apple Street, you miss what’s happening on Beetle Street. You know what I’m saying?”
Sloan’s eyes narrowed. “Sure. You’re not telling, but I’ll worm it out of Lynne.”
“You will not.”
“Wanna bet?”
She wanted so badly to kiss him, and she might have done it in his mother’s presence, but not in front of his father. She had to be satisfied with moving over and sitting beside him on the old alligator steamer trunk. She noticed that Connor didn’t miss that move or its significance, for he looked at her and nodded his approval.
I like this family, she said to herself. Sloan is like both of his parents. But Brad would turn up his nose at this three-bedroom wood-frame house, in spite of its attractive setting, style and interior. She hadn’t seen much of the living room, and although the kitchen wasn’t sparkling with chrome, it was large, modern and attractive with all the necessary features. A Persian-style carpet covered most of the dining room floor and the chairs, table, hutch and cupboard were made of walnut—“contemporary modern”—circa 1960 or 1970. They were not posh furnishings, but those of a knowledgeable and careful shopper of average means. You never know a man until you meet his parents. She recalled having heard the saying, and she concurred.
“We’re going to fish for our supper,” Connor said to her. “From the pier, not the boat. You want to come along?”
She was getting the message that both of Sloan’s parents wanted them to be together as much as possible. “I’d love it. Thanks. I’d better change into long pants and a long-sleeve shirt. I’m not too fond of the sun.”
She got up with the intention of entering the house through the kitchen, but she felt Sloan’s hand on her arm steering her toward the front door. Inside the foyer, he penned her between his body and the wall and began nibbling on her lips. He kept at it until she began to squirm, her body eager for more than he was giving.
As if he had warmed up a motor until he was sure he could drive the car, he let the fingers of his right hand dust her cheek slowly and lovingly. “What is it that guys do all the time?” he asked her.
He had her so besotted that she could barely recall her name, not to speak of a conversation half an hour earlier. “What? What do you mean?”
“My dad said to you, ‘Guys do it all the time.’ And you knew what he was talking about. What did he mean?”
“Oh, that! He caught me admiring your body, and I must have had a lustful look, because he winked at me. I couldn’t get the kiss I wanted, so I went over and sat beside you. That’s when he made that smart remark.”
“You could have kissed me.”
She stared at him. “Not in your father’s presence. Your mother, maybe. He’s a shrewd one.” A thought occurred to her, and her face clouded into a frown. “You mean you were being so sweet a minute ago only to get me to tell you... Shame on you, and to think I fell for it. Aren’t you ashamed of yourself?”
His face lit up in a smile that tugged at her heart. “No. I enjoyed every second of it.”
“Men! I’m going up to change.”
* * *
He didn’t care if his father knew that Lynne wanted him. In fact, he didn’t care who knew it; he took great pride in it. Heaven forbid he should fall in love with a woman who didn’t want him. He went back to the garage to help repair the fishing gear, but his father had finished the task.
“So you wormed it out of her, did you?”
“How’d you know?”
“From the looks of you, I knew it had to be either that or she agreed to marry you, and I don’t think you’re that far along. When a peacock spreads his plumes, he makes sure everybody sees him.”
Sloan’s lower lip dropped, and then he laughed. “Sometimes I forget how shrewd you are, and that’s a pity because I’ve always enjoyed it. I’m going to make a habit of coming home more often.”
“I’m glad to hear it. Thelma is very fond of you. I get the impression that she’d mother you to death if you let her.”
“She’s been a widow for thirty-five years, and her social life died along with her husband. Her son was killed while on active duty in Afghanistan. She’s been very much alone. She’s Lynne’s neighbor, and that’s how I met her. She’s good to us, and we’re good to her.”
“Well, she certainly is likable, and Lucille’s enjoying her. I’m glad you brought her.”
He hadn’t planned to ask, but the words fell off his tongue anyway. “Do you like Lynne?”
Connor rested his right elbow on his right thigh and rubbed his chin with the fingers of his right hand. It was a pose that Sloan was familiar with since he was old enough to observe his surroundings, one that he knew presaged serious words.
“You’re asking me if I like Lynne? Well, I assume you want my answer. She’s a beautiful, warm, sensuous woman, and she loves you. She’s also intelligent, modest, independent, self-confident and goal-oriented. She’s what a man wants in a wife, and if he’s smart, she’s what he would look for in the future mother of his children. You know whether she is loyal. If I were looking for a wife, I’d stop the search the minute I got to know her.”
He had expected a simple yes or no, but instead he had practically been told that Lynne was the woman for him and that he should marry her. “I’m glad you like her, Dad. I think I would have been unhappy and disappointed if you didn’t.”
A half laugh slipped out of Connor. “I can’t imagine that you gave that much thought. Surely you know you’ve got a gem.”
“I know it. She’s...she’s so important to me, and until we split up a few weeks ago, I didn’t know how much. The incident taught me never to rush to judgment.” He looked around. “Where is that woman?”
* * *
When they sat down to supper that night, he felt like a whole person, a man with his house in order. “This is the best snapper I’ve ever eaten,” Thelma said. She looked at Lynne. “What the corner of your garden needs is a grill.”
Sloan deliberately waved his fork at Thelma. “Do not plant any seeds in her head, Thelma. I don’t want her to get too comfortable in that house.”
“Never mind,” Thelma told him. “Lynne isn’t stupid. She’s got better sense than to laugh in God’s face. When the Lord gives you something, you show your appreciation by taking good care of it.”
“I’ve always wanted to be able to talk in parables,” Lynne said to Lucille, “but after listening to this, I see that I should have been striving for something else. And I think that if they’re going to talk about me, they should leave the Lord out of it.”
“Oh, no,” Connor said. “In this house, we don’t leave the Lord out of things. Out there in the garage, maybe, but not in the house, and especially not at the table. Preach on, Sister Thelma.”
“Ame
n,” Lucille said.
He knew his father was engaging in a little leg-pulling and that, as usual, his mother encouraged her husband in his foolishness. He looked at Lynne to see how she was taking it and discovered that she could give as good as she got.
“You know, Mr. McNeil,” she began, “for several years back, some power or other spent a lot of time laughing in my face.” She looked toward the ceiling. “You don’t think it was...uh...anybody up there, do you? If it was, I’m entitled to do a lot of laughing myself.” She didn’t look at anybody when she said it. “I hope you know how to set up a grill, Thelma, ’cause I don’t, and I have a feeling that SM doesn’t think much of the idea.”
“Oh, don’t worry,” Thelma said. “I’ll bake him a pie. Anyhow, he’s such a sweet gentleman, he wouldn’t want us to struggle with something that he could do as easy as snapping his finger.”
Connor leaned back in his chair and roared with laughter. “Son, if they set you up like this regularly, I don’t envy you.”
“They’re just showing off,” he said. But he didn’t know when he’d felt surrounded with so much love. She’s not getting away from me, he vowed silently. She fits in like my gloves fit my fingers; I’ll never let her go.
He marveled at the ease with which the three women prepared Thanksgiving dinner the next day. Ordinarily he and his father would have helped with the preparations, but his mother explained that five people couldn’t work in that kitchen without stepping on each other. As he observed Thelma from time to time, he thought he had never seen her so happy and so animated. He saw in the woman evidence that loneliness could sap a person’s enthusiasm for life, destroy their vigor and change their personality. He meant to see that his parents didn’t dry up for lack of contact with people, and as long as he lived near Thelma, he would visit her as regularly as he could.
At dinner that afternoon, he watched his father carve the turkey and thought how thankless the job of perfectly roasting the big bird was only to dismember it as quickly as five people could devour it. He saw in his mind’s eye a similar table with himself at its head, Lynne sitting opposite him and their children sitting around them. After Thelma served the pecan pie with a flourish, he and his father cleaned the kitchen and they all assembled in the living room to listen to Connor’s favorite jazz recordings, drink coffee and liqueurs and tell tales.
Several times, he caught Lynne watching him, but he couldn’t think of a way to get her alone. Just before sundown, he said to her, “If you love to see the sunset, come with me.” She got up immediately.
He drove over the Pelican Island Causeway and on to Seawolf Parkway until Galveston Bay was all that they could see. He parked. “Please humor me and sit there until I open your door,” he said. She stepped out of the door and into his open arms. “Just look at that,” he said of the yellow, orange and purple streaks that surrounded the great red disc that was the sun on a quiet journey to its rest. As it was about to disappear, the sky above it darkened to a midnight-blue, the perfect backdrop for the sinking sun. She gasped as the sun slipped out of sight.
“That was...so beautiful that it was almost frightening, as if something so beautiful and so precious could slip away—” she snapped her finger “—just like that.”
He wrapped her in his arms. “Are you telling me that you’re afraid we’ll lose what we feel for each other?”
“I just don’t see how anything so perfect could last.”
“It will last because you and I want it to last. No more negative thinking.”
* * *
That Sunday afternoon when he parked in front of Lynne’s house after taking Thelma home and making sure that her house was in order, he asked her, “When are you leaving for Australia? You understand that I can’t be with you because I have to get things working smoothly at Castle Hills. Ben will be the manager there, Jasper will replace Ben at the San Antonio service center and I have to hire and train a man to replace Jasper. That means I’ll be taking calls a full day rather than mornings as I’ve been doing. I know how important this is to you, and it distresses me that I can’t be with you.”
“I’m leaving January 5. From now until then, I’ll be training and practicing rigorously.”
“We’ll see each other, and regularly. I’m not about to let this part of my life go to pot. Do you remember my introducing you to Drake Harrington and Pamela Langford at a meeting of my university alumni?”
“Yes. Why?”
“I have an invitation to their wedding on December 29. He lives in Eagle Park, Maryland, near Frederick, and the wedding’s to be in Frederick. You and I would be guests at Harrington House, the family home. I’d like you to go with me. It’ll take up the better part of a weekend. Can you manage it?”
“I’ll be glad to go with you. Would you please check the dress code for me?”
“Sure. Lynne, this weekend was precious. It exceeded anything that I imagined, and my parents are enchanted with you. They liked Thelma, also, and they want her to visit with them whenever she feels like it.”
“I like your parents, too, and I don’t know why, but I felt as if I were at home. It was wonderful.”
He leaned toward her and pressed a kiss to her mouth. “I’m not going in because I have to get up no later than five in the morning, and if I walk into your house, I can kiss that notion goodbye. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
As he drove home, his mind took a route that hers took earlier. Could the happiness he felt possibly last?
Chapter 10
The question of Sloan’s place in her future plagued Lynne, although not because she had any quandary about her feelings for him, but because he seemed to be in a hurry, and she wasn’t. She knew the reason was that she had experienced marriage and found it lacking, while Sloan had never married and looked forward to it as a way of making his life complete. She also knew that if he gave her an ultimatum—marry him or he was out of her life—she wouldn’t hesitate to marry him. He hadn’t said so, but she was certain that he wanted a family, and so did she.
She walked from one end of her bedroom to the other and back, and then repeated her steps. Sloan would be a good husband and father and he loved her. She went to the bathroom, turned on the lights and faced herself in the mirror. “If it’s a choice between being number one and having a family, there’s no contest—I’ll choose a family. And if the choice is between life with Sloan and life without him?” She stared at herself for a long time. “He’s got the music that makes you dance, kiddo,” she said to the image before her. “So you’d better get busy and make yourself ready for the next tennis season starting with the Australian Open, because if you don’t make it to number one, you’ll always be dreaming of what might have been and always staging comebacks.” She hadn’t faced the question whether she’d choose life with Sloan or life without him, but she knew the answer.
“You were so mad with me that you chose to go somewhere else for Thanksgiving,” Brad said to her when she called him the next morning. “We’ve always been together for Thanksgiving.”
“I gave you my reasons, Brad, and I’m sorry if you prefer not to accept them. I had a wonderful time with Sloan, his parents and a neighbor who went with us. I’m glad I went, because I liked his parents very much, and I think they liked me.”
“What the hell are you talking about? Why do you have to like his folks? Worse, why do they have to like you? You’re taking this nonsense too far. Next, you’ll tell me you’re...you’re fornicating with this mechanic.”
“I wouldn’t be that crude. Talk with you later.” She hung up because she wasn’t in the habit of disrespecting her brother, and she had come close to doing that.
Two weeks later when he asked if he and Debra could expect her for Christmas, she said that they could, and immediately regretted it because she would have preferred to spend the holiday with Sloan and his pare
nts. Her schedule of training and practicing left too little time for Christmas shopping, so, from museum catalogs, she purchased cut velvet scarves for all the women she knew and silk scarves for the men, except Sloan. She would give him the leather case that she purchased in Seoul at a time when she thought he might never receive it.
“We can spend Christmas Eve together and fly to see our families Christmas morning,” Sloan suggested, and she welcomed the idea.
For their Christmas Eve dinner, he chose an elegant restaurant that served mainly American-style food. When she opened her door and looked at him, so handsome in a gray pinstriped suit, white shirt and gray-and-red paisley tie, she wanted to put a sign on that read, This Is The Property Of Lynne Thurston. The thought amused her, and she laughed.
“Tell me,” he said. “I’m in the mood to laugh, too.”
“I don’t think I’d better. I had a moment there when a streak of possessiveness nearly got the better of me.”
“Possessiveness about what?” he asked and bent down to kiss her. “You’re so beautiful. I’m a proud man, Lynne.”
She fixed her face with a serious expression. “Thanks. Uh, would you be annoyed if I hung a sign on you? I conjured up a picture of you wearing two, one in the back and one in the front.”
“And that’s what made you laugh?”
“Uh-huh. I was laughing at what was on the signs.”
“Well, if the sign read, This Man Is Mine, I’d be pleased.”
“It was something like that.” She was glad she’d worn a red dress and her red sandals with the three-inch heels. Sloan didn’t consider himself elegant, but anybody who looked at him would.
After a traditional Christmas dinner of turkey and all the trimmings, he took her to the lounge above the restaurant. He reached across the table for her hand and rubbed her right thumb. “What would you like to drink?”
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