Bess laughed shortly. "I’d have to be dead and buried not to. Those two are heading for something big."
Lance nearly dropped the plates he was taking out of the cupboard. "You mean you think they’re going to get married?"
That was something he hadn’t considered. His father marrying Margo. Would that make Margo his stepmother-mother-in-law'? Was there a term for that sort of thing, other than complicated?
Bess had never known Bruce to move quickly. She shook her head. "I didn’t say that, but there is a great deal of electricity bouncing back and forth out there. Sitting next no them. I’m surprised my hair isn’t standing on end like Christopher Lloyd in the clock tower scene in Back To The Future." She winked at Melanie. She shared a passion for movies. both old and new, with her new niece.
"But your parents’ behavior wasn’t what I was referring to." Pausing, Bess looked from her nephew to Melanie. It was high time they came clean. "Now if you expect me to believe that this is just an impromptu dinner you decided to hold at the last minute. you’re giving me far less credit than I deserve. I might be a lot older than you, but I am not senile." She could barely contain her glee. "Something’s up, isn’t it?"
"Maybe," Melanie allowed evasively, her eyes dancing. Because she was afraid she’d blurt the secret out before they reached the other room, she turned away. Picking up the cake. she started for the living room.
"Here, why don’t you let me take that’?" Before she could protest, Lance took the platter from her.
Bess smiled. That clinched it for her. "Don’t worry, they don’t break."
"They?" Confused, Lance looked down at the cake he was holding.
"Women in Melanie’s condition." Bess explained patiently. "On the whole, you’ll find that pregnant women are a great deal hardier than most men think they are."
Lance’s mouth dropped open. "Pregnant? How did you--I mean--"
As if he thought he could keep this a secret from her. Bess laughed to herself. Everything about the way the two had been behaving tonight fairly screamed of it. Bess shooed him through the doorway. "Just get out there and tell them before I do it myself."
Melanie felt too good to be disappointed about missing a chance to spring her surprise. "You knew?"
Bess laughed, giving Melanie a warm hug. It was going to be wonderful, hearing the sounds of a child again. Widowed early. before she’d had any children of her own, this pregnancy of Melanie’s was extra special to her. She could hardly wait.
"Not until just this minute, when you confirmed it. But let’s just say I’ve had my suspicions all evening. Now move, boy." Bess all but pushed Lance out of the room. "I’m tired of standing here."
Lance noticed that his father and Margo were deep in conversation when they walked in. Their voices were low and intimate, with only soft murmurs drifting back to him. His aunt was right, there was something powerful going on. He was beginning to like the idea of having Margo as his stepmother. It was about time his father enjoyed the same sort of happiness he had
.
Bruce straightened as the others walked in. "That looks delicious." Maybe he did have a little room left over, he thought.
Lance waited until everyone was back at their place. "Before we cut the cake. Melanie and I have something to tell you."
Margo couldn’t hold back any longer. "You’re pregnant." The words came rushing out of her mouth. Quickly she rose and came around the table to throw her arms around Melanie.
Her baby was having a baby. The lump that suddenly rose up in her throat threatened to choke her.
Lance’s shoulders drooped a little as he looked from one face to another. "Isn’t anyone going to let me say it first?"
He’d have thought that at least he would have caught his father by surprise, but Bruce looked as if he’d known all along.
"How did you know?" Lance asked, exasperated.
He knew for a fact that Melanie hadn’t told anyone. They’d only just found out yesterday themselves and had spent the entire evening debating how to break the news to the three people who mattered most in their lives. Now, with mental telepathy obviously alive and well, it looked as if they could have been spared the trouble.
Bruce clapped his son on the back, trying vainly to hold back the torrent of emotion churning within him. Grown men didn’t cry. "Hell, boy, you’ve been strutting around here all evening as if you’re the first man who’s ever successfully propagated his seed."
"Now there’s a romantic and charming image," Margo commented wryly. She gave Melanie another quick, fierce hug before releasing her. "I ought to make you say that in Italian just to make you pay for it."
Looking very smug, Bruce proceeded to do just that. In perfect, unaccented Italian.
Looking by turns surprised and then extremely pleased, Margo applauded him. It looked as if her job was at an end. He’d learned even faster than she’d predicted. Once started, he’d become her star pupil.
In oh, so many ways, she mused.
It was almost all over, except for the shouting. Something within her felt a little sad, but she pushed it aside, instead, she smiled at him. "I guess this means you’re ready for Italy."
With each day that passed, he found himself resisting the idea of going more and more. "Ah, but is Italy ready for me?"
He’d loosened up a great deal from that handsome man who’d met her on the other side of the door at church over a month ago.
"They will be, once they lock up their daughters," Margo assured him. Her eyes shifted toward Lance. "Your dad’s a very charming man when he gets going. Of course, he was a little reticent in the beginning." She leveled a telling look at her son-in-law. "I see where he gets it from." She put out her arms toward him expectantly. "Are you going to come here for a hug, or do I have to come all the way over there for it?"
With a laugh, Lance traded places with his wife and let himself be enfolded in Margo’s embrace.
Rays of bittersweet sunshine shone all through her as she kissed his cheek. "You did good, Lance."
Mischief rose to Melanie’s eyes. "Don’t be that sure, Mama." Margo looked at her quizzically. "You realize what this means, don’t you?" Melanie bit the tip of her tongue to keep the laughter back. "He just made you a grandmother."
Margo shivered. Having had no grandmother in her life, the term only had the most stereotypical connotations for her. "There’s something very old about the sound of that." She looked at her daughter. "How many months do I have, to come up with a viable alternative to 'grandmother'?"
Melanie nestled against Lance. "Eight."
That meant the baby had to have been conceived on their honeymoon. Margo suppressed a bawdy chuckle, but just barely. "Boy, you do work fast, don’t you?"
His grandchild was going to have one hell of a grandmother, no matter what she finally settled on calling herself, Bruce thought.
"There must be some form of 'grandmother' in all those languages you know that’s acceptable to you," Bruce ventured.
Grandmother by any other name still meant grandmother, Margo thought. Which meant that she was getting older. It wasn’t the process Margo minded so much, it was that she was growing old alone. There was never going to be anyone at her side, sharing life with her in every sense of the word, the way she’d once dreamed.
But that was all it had been, she reminded herself. Just a dream. Dreams very rarely became reality.
Or, if they did, she amended. looking at the way Lance had his arm draped lovingly over Melanie’s shoulder, they weren’t her reality.
"Yes," she said with a sigh, getting her mind back on Bruce’s comment. "There must be. I just have to think about it."
She could feel her eyes misting as she looked at her daughter, at how happy Melanie was. Thank God she’d found someone like Lance.
Noticing the way her eyes were glistening, Bruce offered her his handkerchief.
But Margo waved it away. sniffing. "You know, the quality of air must have changed in Southern C
alifornia since I was here last," she told the others as if she were making a scientific observation. "There’s something in it that keeps making my eyes tear up."
Bruce slipped his arm around Margo’s shoulders as he pocketed his handkerchief. "It’s called happiness."
"It’s called an allergy." she countered. Briskly, she moved away from him. "You sit." she instructed her daughter. "Let me cut this cake."
Melanie nodded sagely. "Good point, Mama. The knife must weigh all of three ounces."
Margo gave her a look. "I only hope your kid has the same smart mouth you do."
Melanie pretended to cower, covering her head with her hands. "Oh, here it comes, the infamous 'Mother’s Curse,' heaped on the heads of unsuspecting daughters from one generation to the next since time immemorial."
"See?" Margo looked at the others, vindicated. "What did I tell you? Smart mouth." Giving her the first slice, she kissed the top of Melanie’s head. "Girl or boy, I hope the new little Reed is exactly like you," she told her with feeling. "Damn, there goes that allergy again." Margo blinked, sniffing.
Lance laughed, only to find himself looking down at a very blue pair of eyes.
"The primary rule, Lance," Margo informed him, "in Survival 101 is never laugh at a woman with a knife in her hand."
"Yes, ma’am," he said meekly.
"That’s better." Margo nodded, slanting a look at her daughter. "He’s trainable, I guess you can keep him."
The others, including Lance, laughed. As Bruce accepted his slice of cake, he decided that it was only his imagination that made him think Margo had become the slightest bit distant when he’d put his arm around her. She was certainly in form now.
Silence, something Bruce had become so accustomed to after Ellen died, now occupied the inside of his car like an uninvited stranger.
They’d dropped Bess off first at her new house, then had driven to Margo’s apartment. It made him feel better to think of it as Margo’s apartment rather than Elaine’s, the way she referred to it. If it was Margo’s, it meant that she had a permanent place she called home here. A place where he could find her if he wanted to. Calling it Elaine’s always gave him the feeling that Margo was only visiting.
That any moment, she would take flight.
Never mind that it could and probably would still happen. He didn’t want to think about it. He’d finally allowed himself to enjoy her company, really enjoy it. Bruce didn’t want anything marring that feeling tonight.
But it was because he enjoyed her company, because he was getting to be so -in tune with her that he realized that there was something slightly off tonight. Something was different. Interwoven in the fabric of her gregarious, out-going personality was a thread that was a different hue, a different texture. It didn’t belong, but it was there nonetheless.
Why?
He’d thought it was his imagination, like when the lights go off then on again so quickly that you begin to doubt your eyesight. Just long enough to make him wonder.
He needed to know.
Bruce pulled the car up to the curb beside the shop. Margo had been very quiet since they’d dropped Bess off. Granted it had only been a few minutes, but that alone caused him to be concerned.
He shifted in his seat to look at her. "Anything wrong, Margo?"
All evening she’d been experiencing this nervous flutter, as if things were slipping out of her hands, out of her control. Whenever she saw Bruce look at her, the response she felt tied her stomach up in knots.
Margo forced a smile to her lips. "What could possibly be wrong? My daughter and your son have just taken a step on the path to life’s greatest miracle." Margo pushed the smile a little further, though she avoided his eyes. "And you’re becoming fluent in Italian, something you would have sworn was a miracle just a little less than a month ago."
He reached for her. "No," he corrected, "the miracle here is you."
He wasn’t imagining things. She had stiffened just then, like a laboratory mouse feeling an electric shock. The response did more than bother him. lt hurt.
But he continued, pretending not to have noticed. "And you're wrong."
Trying desperately to ignore the jumbled feelings scrambling through her, she forced herself to remain outwardly calm as she looked at him.
"There’s always a first time, I suppose." Her voice was appropriately breezy. Maybe she could have been an actress at that. "About what?"
He wanted her, he thought. Wanted her so badly he hardly recognized himself. He couldn’t see, hear or smell anything but her. "About a baby being life’s greatest miracle. It isn’t."
"Oh?" The way he was looking at her made her melt. And freeze at the same time.
"Love is." Very slowly he ran his fingers along her cheek. So soft, so silky. "Finding love is. Margo, I--"
Alarms went off all through her as panic bit out large chunks of her soul. She didn’t want to hear this. Margo jerked the handle down, opening her door.
She needed to get away before she couldn’t.
"It’s getting late, Bruce. I’m a little tired. Would you mind terribly if I just called it a night? You’re doing so well, I don’t think there’s a reason for another lesson."
She was talking fast, like she was fleeing something. Someone. He caught her hand as she began to slide out. Margo was pale, and it wasn’t just the moonlight. "Margo, what’s wrong?"
She thought of pulling her hand away, of just running into the shop, but that was much too melodramatic. And cowardly. She refused to be a coward, and struggled to get hold of herself. Nothing was going to happen that she
wouldn’t allow.
That was just the problem.
"Nothing’s wrong," she insisted. Damn it. Stop asking me questions, just let me leave. "I just--"
With effort, he tried to read between the lines. It still wasn’t easy for him. "Is it about becoming a grandmother?"
She began to deny it, then saw it as her way out. If she said yes, he’d be satisfied and stop probing.
"Maybe." She paused to examine her heart. Perhaps that had a little to do with her reaction, but not much. "I mean, I’m thrilled she’s having a baby. Having Melanie was the most wonderful thing that ever happened to me." And she wanted that same experience for her daughter. "It’s just that..." She blew out a breath. Life seemed too long to go by so fast. "I never thought I’d see myself at this point in my life."
He could understand that. Somehow the news had hit him in ways he hadn’t anticipated, either. After years of feeling old before his time, he’d just begun to feel young again. Because of her.
"Nobody starts out saying 'I can’t wait to be a grandparent.' But it’s a natural progression of life." He smiled into her eyes, her vivid, vivid eyes that all but enslaved him. "Of love."
She had it under control now, she told herself. Her feelings were all boxed and neatly wrapped up again. The momentary aberration was over, just a panic attack for no reason. There was no reason to feel as if she had to bail out now. Bruce would be leaving for Florence soon, and she had an interview set up with DataLinc about a position in Nice beginning next month.
Everything was fine.
Taking a deep breath, she smiled at him. "Of course it is. I guess I was just being silly and vain."
"Not vain," he told her. "No one runs to embrace old age."
What he said reminded her of Elaine. "My aunt never seemed to mind getting older. She said people forgave you things they held younger people accountable for."
He raised a brow, curious. "Such as?"
She grinned now, remembering. Elaine had been so vital, so alive. It was by following Elaine’s example that she had learned how to live again. And enjoy the process.
"Flirting. Having affairs." She wondered if she was shocking him. He wouldn’t have been, had he only known her aunt. Elaine would have liked him, she decided. Really liked him. "Aunt Elaine had an eye for men until the day she died. It’s probably what kept her so young looking. Not a wrinkle
on her. And she was in her seventies."
He couldn’t help asking. Couldn’t help, too, that slight shaft of jealousy that traveled through him. "Is that what’s kept you so young looking?"
Margo looked into his eyes before answering. "It’s in the genes," she said evasively. Then humor played along her mouth. "That, and I’ve updated my birth certificate a couple of times," she teased, wishing it were only that easy to erase time.
Bruce shook his head. "Age is just a number." It was more than just a saying on a greeting card meant to cheer someone up. He firmly believed it. It was how you felt that counted. And right now, he felt young enough to make some very foolish mistakes in hopes that things would eventually take care of themselves.
Never Too Late For Love Page 13
