Bicycle Built for Two (29 page)

“I’ll get Ma ready for bed while you go get
chairs,” Kate said after a moment of stillness, unbroken even by
coughs. “Be sure to knock before you come in.”

As if he’d ever enter a woman’s bedroom
without knocking first. Rather than tell Kate so, he said only,
“Right,” and left the room in search of chairs.

The door closed behind Alex. Kate swallowed
the lump in her throat and blinked back tears. Her mother was
dying. She knew it. No matter how much she tried to deny it, her
mother was dying. Sucking in a deep breath, she turned to the bed
and proceeded to do her duty. “Here, Ma. Let me unbutton you. You
don’t have to sit up or anything. Just roll over.”

“Ah, Katie, I hate being so helpless. I wish
I could be strong for you.”

“Aw, heck, Ma, I’m strong enough for both of
us.”

“I know it. That’s the truly sad part.”

Whatever that meant. Her mother struggled to
sit upright, and Kate snapped, “Darn it, Ma. Don’t sit up.”

A spate of coughs greeted this admonition,
and Mrs. Finney sank back onto the bed, defeated. “I’m sorry,
Katie.”

“Nuts.”

By the time Alex’s knock came at the door,
Kate had managed to get her mother’s daytime clothes off her and
had slipped a flannel nightgown over her head. The nightie was one
Kate had made with her own two hands, out of cheap white flannel,
and it had little red rosebuds sewn around the neckline and hem.
Chinese Charley had sold her about a million of the fabric rosebuds
at a real bargain. Kate still had a ton of them. “Don’t move, Ma.
It’s probably Alex.”

Her mother nodded without opening her eyes.
Kate had to swallow more tears when she went to the door and opened
it. “She’s really weak,” she whispered as a greeting.

Alex didn’t move to enter the room. Kate saw
two comfortable-looking chairs behind him. “Do you think we ought
to forget the chairs?”

Glancing over her shoulder, Kate took in the
sight of her mother’s slight frame lying still under the covers.
Her body was so wasted, it hardly made a lump, and she was so weak,
she hadn’t made a wrinkle in the counterpane. She needed rest.
More, she needed her family. Kate shook her head. “No. Bring them
in. I think she needs companionship right now.”

With a nod, Alex turned and lifted both
chairs. They looked heavy, and Kate made a move to help him with
one, but his scowl stopped her. Pinching her lips, she decided to
let him be a hero if he wanted.

What a nasty thought. Shoot, when had she
become so unfair to everybody? Since forever, she guessed. And to
Alex, of all people. The only man she’d ever met, aside from her
own brothers and a couple of friends, who was worth more than a
bucket of spit. And that was character-wise. Money-wise, he was
worth God knew what. Thousands, certainly. Could she actually have
met a millionaire? Kate supposed stranger things had happened in
the world, but never to her.

“Why don’t you set them up over here?” she
suggested, rushing past him to the window.

He set the chairs to one side of the window
and gazed critically at the room. “I’m going to move the bed.”

“You’re what?” Glancing from him to the bed,
Kate doubted it. That thing was heavy.

But Alex had already moved to Mrs. Finney’s
side. “Would you like to see out the window, ma’am?” He winked down
at her.

“I’d love it,” Mrs. Finney whispered.

“But you can’t . . .”

Alex interrupted Kate’s protest. “I’ll just
slide the bed over so you can see outdoors.”

“Thank you, Alex.” It looked to Kate as if
her mother would have liked to say more, but she shut her mouth
fast, undoubtedly to stop coughs from leaking out.

“But . . .”

Again, Kate didn’t get her protest out.

“I’ll just have to move it a little bit,”
Alex said, and proceeded to do it.

Kate was impressed. Not only was he nice,
but he was strong as an ox, too. Maybe that’s what farming did for
a man. Kate approved, if so.

After he’d positioned the bed so that Mrs.
Finney could look out the window if she only turned her head, Alex
set the chairs beside the bed. He gestured to one of them.
“Kate?”

She hesitated for a moment, then gave up.
She didn’t even know why she’d been going to fight. Habit, most
likely. A bad one, in this case. Generally, Kate needed to keep her
wits sharp and the ability and readiness to fight for what she
needed was an admirable attribute. In this place, this farm that
had belonged to Alex English’s family for more than a hundred
years, she didn’t need it. Shoot, if this kept up, she’d lose her
edge.

Vowing not to let that happen, Kate sat. It
might get complicated, but if she were only pugnacious in Chicago
and remembered that she didn’t have to be when she went places with
Alex, things might go easier for her. After thinking about it for a
moment, she snorted softly and decided she was being stupid. Again.
There was little possibility that she’d be going very darned many
places with Alex.

“What is it, Kate?”

Alex’s soft question jerked her attention
back to the bedroom. “Nothing. I was just thinking how—how pretty
everything is.”

“Beautiful,” Mrs. Finney murmured.

Kate peeked at her mother and found her
gazing out the window. When Kate did likewise she, too, she saw
only night, and would have said something to that effect only she
stopped herself. Because she realized she was probably being
unnecessarily hostile out of habit—again—she looked harder into the
darkness.

After a moment, she came to the conclusion
that, even though night had fallen and the gorgeous greens and
flower colors of the countryside could no longer be discerned, the
scene held great beauty and serenity, two commodities unavailable
to Hazel Finney on a regular basis. Small wonder she liked this
view. It was pretty, all right. The sun had set, and the moon hung
in the sky like a silver dollar. It tipped the trees with silver
and dimmed the stars twinkling against the blackness of the sky.
You could never see the stars in Chicago, although they were as
clear as anything out here.

Kate heaved a deep sigh of . . . Good Lord,
could it be contentment? Searching her innards for answers, Kate
decided that, by gum, it was contentment. How unusual. Not to
mention unsettling.

“It’s pretty here, isn’t it?” Alex asked.
She heard contentment in his voice, too, but his didn’t surprise
her. He deserved it, because he lived here.

“Beautiful,” whispered Mrs. Finney once
more.

“Amen,” agreed Kate.

They sat in silence for a long time. Kate
didn’t know how long, and she didn’t care. Every now and then she’d
glance at her mother’s face, pale and drawn in the moonlight, and
found her gazing out the window as if she couldn’t soak up enough
of this precious peace. Made sense to Kate, who made a quick swipe
under her eyes to catch stray tears. She’d never been weepy before;
couldn’t afford to be. It annoyed her that tears seemed so close to
the surface now, of all inconvenient times.

She needed to be tough. She needed to be
strong for her mother. And herself. And her brothers. Kate was the
rock and the mainstay of her family; she couldn’t fall apart now.
Not now, when her mother was dying.

Oh, God.

The next time she glanced at her mother,
Mrs. Finney’s eyes were closed. Kate stared hard, unable to discern
a rise and fall of her chest. Rising slowly, she reached out to her
mother, in a panic for fear she’d died. Alex caught her hand before
she could touch her mother’s cheek.

“Just a minute, Kate. We don’t want to
disturb her rest.”

She hadn’t realized he’d already arisen from
his own chair. “But . . .”

“Let’s just do a little test.” He pressed
two fingers lightly against the side of Mrs. Finney’s neck. Kate
knew from experience that he was searching for her mother’s pulse,
and that the skin was dry and brittle and felt like old leaves.
When he smiled, Kate released a gust of breath. “She’s asleep.” He
kept his voice quiet.

Kate allowed her head to droop for a second
as relief swept through her. She knew that one day, and probably
soon, she wouldn’t hear such good news, but she was grateful for it
now. “Thanks, Alex.”

He stood beside the bed, gazing down at
Kate. “Come with me, Kate. I have a question for you.”

“Yeah?” She stepped away from the bed, only
then realizing how exhausted she was. In Chicago, she never seemed
to get tired because she needed her strength to carry her from
hospital to job to job to hospital to home every day. Now that the
tension had drained from her during this
fresh-air-and-country-filled day, her knees wobbled when they tried
to support her.

Alex’s hand darted out, he put his arm
around her, and she didn’t withdraw from his embrace. With another
sigh, she murmured, “Thanks. Guess I’m all in.”

“I guess so.”

He sounded stern. Under Chicago
circumstances, his tone of voice would have provoked Kate into a
full-fledged rebellion. Since she’d come to the country, she’d
figured out that his stern voice was the one he used when he was
trying to get a point across to a recalcitrant female. Kate
imagined he’d honed that tone of voice on Mary Jo, and she laughed
softly.

“What’s so funny?” He still sounded
stern.

“Nothing.” She allowed him to lead her into
the hallway outside her mother’s door. “Thanks for being so nice to
Ma, Alex. I really appreciate it, and so does she. I’m afraid . .
.” But she couldn’t voice her fears. It was now possible for her to
acknowledge her mother’s impending death to herself, but she
couldn’t talk about it. Not yet. Not now. Not here.

“I have a question for you, Kate.” He didn’t
sound so stern now.

“Oh?” She yawned and slapped a hand over her
mouth. “Beg pardon.”

“Don’t be silly. You have every right to be
totally exhausted. But I’d still like to ask you something tonight.
Before you go to bed. That way you can think about it and give me
an answer tomorrow.”

All of Kate’s protective barriers went up
and quivered, on the alert. “Yeah? What kind of question?”

“Not that kind.”

Oh, good, now she’d offended him. With a
sigh, she said, “I beg your pardon. As you must know by now, I’m
not used to people doing nice things for my family. And I’m not
used to entertaining questions of a polite nature from men.”

“For God’s sake, Kate! What
do you take me for? I’m not that kind of man. As
you
ought to know by
now!”

She held up a hand to stop his outraged
spiel. “I’m sorry. I know you’re not that type. What do you want to
ask me?”

“Let’s go downstairs.”

She hung back. “I don’t like to leave Ma
alone. Can’t you ask me here?”

He frowned. “No. This might take a while.
You’re probably going to protest, and I’m going to have to explain
my reasons, and then you’ll argue about it, and it will doubtless
take a while for you to understand and agree to my point of
view.”

Was she
that
bad? Probably. “Well, come into
my room, then.”

Now it was he who looked shocked. Kate
sighed. “I’m not going to seduce you, Alex. I just want to be here
if Ma has a coughing fit or something.”

“Of course.” He still sounded shocked, but
Kate didn’t care. She opened the door and led the way into her
room. Someone had turned the counterpane back and plumped up the
two feathery pillows. Kate supposed it had been Louise, since it
was the maid’s job was to do stuff like that.

Although it still boggled her mind to know
that people could afford to hire other people to do such things,
she thought it was nice to walk into a bedroom and have everything
already prepared for her. She considered the possibility of getting
a job like Louise’s, here, in the country. She probably wouldn’t
make as much money as she did dancing and telling fortunes, but the
air was better, and the working conditions were superb. And she
wouldn’t have to fend off the advances of disgusting men, who
thought she was easy.

After Ma died, Kate would have only herself
to support, so she wouldn’t need to earn as much money. She almost
sobbed aloud, and covered this uncustomary lapse into emotionalism
with a show of opening the curtain covering her window.

When she turned around, Alex had drawn two
chairs over so that they could peer outside. “Have a seat,” he
said, gesturing.

With a deep sigh, she took his suggestion.
No fight about that. Truth to tell, Kate didn’t feel up to fighting
about anything at all. She kept her gaze on Alex as he sat down,
too. She realized he was bracing himself for battle. She felt bad
about that, since he didn’t deserve all the hardness she’d flung at
him since they’d met. Not all of it; only a little bit. She didn’t
want to lose her edge, which was important to her everyday life, so
she didn’t say anything by way of apology.

“Now,” he said, his voice firm, “we need to
talk about your mother.”

“We do?”

“Yes. I think she’d be better off here in
the country than in the hospital in Chicago.”

Kate stiffened. “She wouldn’t have to stay
at the hospital. She could stay—”

Alex forestalled her. “At your place?”

“Well . . . Yes.” Bristling, Kate said,
“It’s not that bad, Alex. It’s clean and warm.”

“It’s a room above a butcher’s shop!”

“It may be a room above a butcher’s shop,
but it’s home! Not everybody can have a grand palace like this!”
The gesture she made with her was about as choppy as the commotion
in her heart. “She needs to be with her family!”

“She wouldn’t be with her family! She’d be
alone all day, every day. If she stays here, she’ll have people
with her constantly.”

“But it wouldn’t be her family.” The words
came out taut since she had to squeeze them past the ache in her
throat.