Authors: Brenda Minton
Yes, he told himself as he drove away from Chatam House, Brooks was definitely a better match for Simone, and now that he knew the good doctor was interested, the best thing he could do for everyone was quietly step back.
“And you always do the right thing, don't you?” he mocked himself savagely.
* * *
Simone didn't really want to go out to dinner, but she wanted to sit in her room and mope even less. If she and Morgan were going to dinner alone, she could talk freely, but it was nice of Dr. Leland to make the offer, and he had helped out that morning, more than he even knew. She wasn't certain how much more she could have taken without flying apart at the seams.
She didn't blame Carissa for being angry and resentful. Quite the contrary. That didn't make her sister's rejection and hostility any easier to bear, however.
The evening promised to be cool, so she chose to wear tweedy wool slacks, their slender legs tucked into a pair of tall leather boots, with a matching jacket and the same pink cashmere sweater from earlier in the day. She even wore her pearl earrings and the solid gold bangle with which she'd tried so mightily, and failed, to impress her sister earlier. She had come away from the Guillands with a few nice things to go along with her education, after all.
She was waiting in the foyer at precisely three minutes to six when Dr. Leland arrived, dressed just as he'd been that morning in a well-tailored brown-black suit the exact same shade as his hair and a dove-gray shirt that called attention to the distinguished spark of silver at his temples. He was a classically handsome man, very polished, with an engaging smile.
“Ah, you're ready,” he said when she opened the door in answer to his knock. “Wonderful. Shall we go, then, before one of the old sweethearts catches us? I meant what I said about not keeping you out late.”
Simone glanced around, but she didn't suppose she had any reason to inform anyone that she was going out, and her handbag was on her shoulder already. “Well, okay.”
She slipped outside and pulled the door closed behind her. A late-model luxury sedan sat at the top of the circular drive, and he escorted her across the porch, down the steps and along the walk to it.
As they were driving away from Chatam House, she asked, “Is Morgan meeting us at the restaurant?”
The car lurched to an abrupt halt. Leland hung his left wrist over the steering wheel and turned his head to stare at her.
“Simone, I didn't invite Morgan to dinner. I invited
you.
”
Her mouth fell open. “Oh!” Oh, dear. It wasn't that she wasn't flatteredâand a little irritatedâit was just that she didn't want to go out with Dr. Leland. He was Morgan's best friend, and they had a history that she definitely did not want to get dragged into. “I-it's just that he was standing right there, so I assumed...”
“But that was the whole point.”
“What?”
“I purposefully asked you out in front of him,” the doctor explained smoothly.
She couldn't believe her ears. “
Why
would you do that?”
“I did it for him.”
Now that one she had to think through, and what she came up with infuriated her. “You think I'm out to get him. You're trying to save him from my grasping clutches or some equally stupidâ”
Brooks Leland put his head back and laughed until tears squeezed out the corners of his eyes.
“Sweetie,” he said, “I'm doing my best to throw him straight into your arms.”
She caught her breath. “Really?”
“Unless you don't want him.”
“It's not that I don't want him,” she said, suddenly misty-eyed, “butâ”
“Buts are for billy goats,” he told her, taking his foot off the brake and starting to drive. “Now, let me tell you about Morgan Chatam.”
And did he ever. Over the next three hours, Dr. LelandâBrooks, as he insisted she call himâtalked nonstop about his good buddy and best friend. He told Simone things that Morgan himself did not know, specifically that the woman he had loved, Brigitte, had discovered her brain tumor
before
she'd broken their engagement.
“She was a nurse,” Brooks pointed out. “Knowledgeable enough to know that something wasn't right. We did the tests in secret and found the tumor right after she and Morgan got engaged.”
As soon as it had been determined that the tumor was inoperable, she had broken the engagement.
“It wasn't just that she wanted to spare him,” Brooks said. “We knew that we couldn't really do that. But the only treatments available at the time were even worse than the disease and with a very low success rate. She knew that he wouldn't let her rest until she'd tried everything possible, and she didn't want that.”
Simone remembered Morgan saying much the same thing.
“I loved them both,” Brooks went on, “so I convinced her to marry me instead. That gave me the right to make end-of-life decisions for her when she no longer could, spared Morgan the worst of it and gave Brigitte and me some good time together.”
“And you're convinced it was the best possible decision for all of you?” Simone asked over a plate of grilled salmon.
“Utterly. That isn't saying it wasn't hard or that I didn't get the best end of the deal. You see, I had Brigitte, and I'd give just about anything to have a love like that again. Morgan...” Brooks pushed a sugar snap pea around on his plate with the tip of his butter knife. “I think Morgan is convinced that true love is not meant for him. Don't get me wrong. I suspect he's wild about you, completely around the bend.”
Simone's heart flipped at the very notion, but she had to shake her head. “I don't know what makes you say that.”
“Oh, you think that just because he's nice and conscientious with everyone that you're nothing special to him, but I know Morgan Chatam better than anyone on the planet, and I have never seen him look at another woman the way he looks at you.”
Simone bit her lip. If Morgan could look at her like that after everything he knew about her, maybe he did feel something special. A terrible kind of hope filled her. Could it be?
“Of course,” Brooks went on, “I've always said that Morgan is the dumbest smart guy I've ever known. The man is utterly brilliant, but I figure he's worried about your cancer returning.”
“I can't blame him,” Simone said, deflated. “I'm concerned about that, too. It's not fair to ask someone to invest emotionally in a person who could have a serious illness.”
“You are talking to a man who married a woman he
knew
was dying,” Brooks pointed out. “But, hey, we're all dying, some of us are just doing it faster than others. And some of us who are perfectly healthy get killed crossing the street. Look, God doesn't promise us tomorrow. He promises us eternity with Him. So when He hands us love in this life, we ought to grab it with both hands, no matter what. Don't you agree?”
“Yes,” Simone said after a moment of thought. “Yes, I do.”
“The key,” Brooks told her, “is to know when it's something God has planned for you and when it's not. You see, the moment Brigitte told me she was breaking her engagement to Morgan, I knew exactly what God's plan was, but Brigitte struggled, and that's what I sense with Morgan right now. Like her, I doubt he can see past the issues to the design just yet, issues like the possibility of the cancer returning. And I suspect he may think he's too old for you.”
Simone laughed dismissively. “That's silly. It never even occured to me.”
“I know, but it would to Morgan because he's had so many young girls throw themselves at him over the years.” Brooks made a face and rubbed a fist against his eye. “Boo-hoo. Poor professor.”
Simone laughed again. “You should hear the way they talk about him on campus. A rock star would be envious.”
“Ridiculous, isn't it?” He waved a hand. “But that'll all calm down once he's married.”
Married.
Simone's heart skipped a beat. “You make it sound so easy, but he hasn't settled down yet.”
“You've only been on the scene a couple months. You don't break a forty-five-year-long streak in a wink of an eye. Besides, you
are
a student, and that is a problem.”
“I'll tell you a secret,” she said softly. “I would quit school, but I'd lose a vast amount of money, enough to pay for the rest of my education. Still, it would be worth it if he really cares for me.” She shook her head, not quite able to believe it.
Brooks waved a hand flippantly. “Oh, you don't have to do that. You're a grad student. All he'd have to do is get you on staff. Then the nonfraternization rules wouldn't apply.”
Simone didn't realize that her jaw was swinging in the breeze until the good doctor reached across and gently pushed it back into place.
“Was it something I said?”
“More something he did,” she squeaked out, gulping back the tears. “Now, if I just get the job, I guess we can assume that it's all part of God's plan for me and Morgan.”
Brooks sat back and slapped the edge of the table, grinning. “Why, that sly old dog.”
Chapter Twelve
D
espite the tense encounter with her sister earlier in the day, Simone slept well and, thanks to her dinner with Dr. Leland, woke on Sunday morning anxious to get to church and see Morgan. He did not, sadly, seem as anxious to see her. He went out of his way to avoid her, always managing to put a long line of people between them. She wound up sitting next to his father, while Morgan sat next to his brother-in-law, who sat next to Morgan's sister, who sat on Hub's other side.
He'd have bolted up the corridor immediately after the service if Kent and Odelia hadn't gotten in his way and blocked the aisle, giving Simone enough time to work her way past Hub, Kaylie and Kaylie's rather large hockey-player husband. When Simone finally reached Morgan, she laid her hand on his arm. He briefly looked at it but not at her and offered not a word of greeting.
“You're angry with me,” she said softly.
He almost looked at her then, but checked himself in time. Instead, he practically turned his back on her. “Don't be ridiculous. Why would I be angry with you?”
Seeing no point in playing that game, she told him forthrightly, “I thought Brooks was inviting both of us to dinner.”
That shocked a glance out of him, but he quickly covered. “You're not that naive.”
“I guess I am.”
“Well, I'm sure you enjoyed yourself anyway.”
“I did, actually. Brooks is an interesting man and a good friend.”
Morgan seemed to lose his patience then, prodding his aunt rather loudly. “Aunt Odelia, would you mind?”
As he was already crowding past her, the poor old dear gasped a confused, “Oh!” and pressed against her husband, who frowned at Morgan as he charged past them up the aisle. Being smaller, Simone was able to slip by without making physical contact, offering an apologetic grimace as she did so. She almost had to run to catch up, zigzagging around people who had stopped to chat.
“Are we really going to argue about this?” she asked breathlessly, drawing near to him.
“Who's arguing? I'm not arguing,” he tossed over his shoulder, plowing on toward the doors.
“Well, what are we doing, then?” She wanted to know.
He stopped dead in his tracks. She smacked right into him. He turned and caught her before she bounced into the end of the nearest pew.
“I don't know,” he answered, looking her straight in the eye. “I simply do not know.”
With that, he released her, turned and fled. She had no other word for it.
Frustrated and confused, Simone dithered, her hands going to her hair. God knew she'd messed up everything in her life, every relationship, every chance, every hope to this very point. But if He had a plan for her, for them, if she could get it right just once, then this had to be it.
Sweet Lord, please let this be it!
She stiffened her spine and marched off after him, up the aisle and into the grand foyer of the magnificent Spanish revival church.
Tiptoeing, she caught sight of Morgan as he slipped out the far right door. She hurried after him, knowing that if she didn't catch him on the front steps, she'd lose him. Shoving the heavy, carved door open, she pushed out into the autumn sunshine and immediately spied Morgan on the sidewalk, speaking to his cousin Phillip, her brother-in-law. Phillip spotted her and lifted a hand in greeting before jogging up the stairs to meet her as she quickly began to descend.
“We didn't think to get a phone number,” he began, “and Chester said you'd be here, so I thought I'd swing by to try to catch you.”
“Is there a problem?” she asked tensely, concentrating on negotiating the steps as rapidly as possible without falling.
“No, no, but because everyone around Chatam House usually fends for themselves on Sunday, we figured you might take off on your own before we could catch you there.”
The Chatam sisters were well known for “eating simple” on the Lord's Day, to spare their staff the work of meal preparation and the resulting cleanup. Simone usually made a sandwich, skipped lunch entirely or headed over to the mission to pick up a snack there. None of that explained why Phillip was looking for her, however, so Morgan did.
“Phillip and Carissa would like you to have dinner with them at their house today.”
That brought her up short. She was almost afraid to believe him. “Dinner?”
She looked to Phillip for confirmation. He smiled in invitation.
“You haven't met the children yet.”
Tears rose in Simone's eyes. “I would love to do that, but...are you sure?”
Phillip lifted his very broad shoulders. “I'm not saying it won't be a little awkward. Okay, maybe a lot awkward. But you're sisters. You need to work this out.”
She licked her lips, trying to maintain her composure, and admitted, “I really want to, but I'm a terrible coward.”
“That's a bald-faced lie,” Morgan refuted.
“No, I really am,” she insisted. “Would you go with me?”
She thought for one horrible moment that he might refuse, but then he looked to Phillip, who shrugged.
“Family's family, dude. Come on over.”
Morgan sighed and conceded. “I don't have anything better to do.”
Simone held out her hand. Morgan shook his head, gave a self-deprecating snort and clasped her hand in his much stronger one. She burbled a laugh, dashing at tears with a knuckle.
“You'd better change out of your Sunday best,” Phillip warned, heading off down the sidewalk.
“What should I wear?” Simone called after him anxiously.
“Something sturdy!” he shouted.
She looked at Morgan, but he just raised his eyebrows. “Jeans it is. Pick you up in twenty minutes?”
She nodded hopefully and hurried back into the church to tell the Chatams about her dinner plans. They were very accommodating and drove her straightaway back to the house, where she spent precious minutes dithering over what to wear. In the end, she chose the aforementioned jeans, her boots and a claret-red textured knit sweater with a boatneck. Morgan and his aunties waited at the foot of the stairs when she came down, Kent having gone off to prepare the meal.
“There now,” Hypatia said, coming forward to give Simone a quick hug, “I knew we could rely on your sister's sweet nature and good sense.”
“Better hers than mine,” Simone quipped, but the joke fell flat, too true to be funny.
“Let's go before you beat yourself to a pulp,” Morgan interjected.
“Try to relax,” Hypatia counseled.
“And give this to Grace from me,” Odelia said, handing over a length of bright pink feathered boa. As if to legitimize the gift, she'd draped herself in three of the things, all in different colors, twining one in her hair.
“This is for Tucker,” Magnolia announced, coming forward with a pinecone.
“And this is for Nathan,” Hypatia said, pulling a small faded hardbound book from her pocket. “It's very old and should be handled with care. Be sure he sees the inscription.”
On the trip across town, Simone cradling the gifts for the children, Morgan told her about Phillip and Carissa, how they'd met at a grief recovery session facilitated by Hub and fallen in love while both were living at Chatam House, where Phillip had moved after giving up mountain climbing when some friends and coworkers had died in an accident. Carissa and the children had been forced to accept Chatam House charity after the death of Carissa and Simone's father. Disabled by his disease, he'd been living in a subsidized apartment when Carissa and the children had moved in with him after the bank had foreclosed on their home. They couldn't stay once the disabled person entitled to the subsidy had departed. Together, Phillip and Carissa had started a surprisingly successful smart-app design business, which they ran from their home, which turned out to be in an older neighborhood just a couple blocks off Main Street.
The place had two driveways, one on each side of the white-brick-and-brown-stone house. Even with grass tanned by frost and the surrounding trees and crape myrtles bare, the evergreen shrubbery and climbing ivy added greenery to the landscape. Morgan had driven the sedan and parked in front of a spacious three-car garage, as the other driveway was for business use.
“I saw the offices from the inside when I was here for the wedding. They have a pool, by the way.”
“That's nice.”
They strolled up the meandering walkway, both anxious and reluctant.
“Nervous?” Morgan asked.
“Very. I feel sick to my stomach.”
The front door, inlaid with leaded glass, had been painted a shade of red very like that of Simone's sweater. It opened suddenly and a small figure darted through it. Coming to rest right at Simone's toes, she turned her piquant face up and studied the pair of them. Her hair was longer and thicker than Simone's and perhaps half a shade lighter, and her nose was little more than a suggestion, but the resemblance was breathtaking.
“You must be Grace,” Simone said, hoping the child couldn't hear the quiver in her voice.
“You're the runned-away one,” she announced unabashedly.
“Now I'm the came-back one,” Simone said.
Grace giggled and pointed at the boa in Simone's hand. “That's for me, I figger.”
“From Mrs. Monroe,” Simone said, draping it around the girl's neck.
“Who?”
“Aunt Odelia,” Morgan clarified.
“Oh! Auntie Od,” the child crowed, turning toward the house and waving for them to follow.
Simone blinked at Morgan. “Surely no one calls her that.”
“Not to her face,” Morgan muttered.
Grace ran to the door, which remained open, stuck her head inside and bawled, “They're here!”
Immediately two boys appeared, their heads stacked one atop the other. The shorter, younger one looked very like his late father. The older, taller boy wore glasses and a very serious expression. Simone saw something of her own father in him.
The younger ran forward, hand outstretched, and demanded, “What did you bring me?”
Simone tossed Morgan a wry smile before producing the pinecone.
The boy whipped around and shouted, “Dad, I need a shovel!”
Phillip appeared in the open doorway, a wriggling baby in ruffled pink held against his chest. Again, Simone looked to Morgan, but he just shrugged, obviously as puzzled as she was by this tiny surprise.
“What for?” Phillip wanted to know.
“To plant a tree.”
“That's not a tree,” the older boy said.
“Is so.”
“Is not.”
“Is so! Aunt Mags explainedâ”
“They're
seeds.
”
“Tree seeds, so it's the same thing.”
“Is not.”
“Is so. Dad, can I get a shovel?”
“Go ahead. Just don't plant any fingers or toes.”
The boy loped off in the direction of the garage.
“You must be Nathan,” Simone said to the older boy.
He nodded and said, “Tucker's rude.”
Simone ignored that and held out the book, which was small enough to fit comfortably in the palm of her hand. “Miss Hypatia sent this to you. She said to tell you that it's very old and for you to read the inscription inside.”
The boy stepped down off the small covered stoop and took the book from her. Opening it carefully, he thumbed through the first few pages. He smiled up at Phillip then.
“This was Doc Doc's.”
Phillip clapped the boy on the shoulder, nodding, before saying to Simone, “That's my father. His name is Murdock, Doc for short, and he's a doctor, so the kids call him Doc Doc.”
“I'll tell Mom they're here,” Nathan said, folding the book closed and disappearing back into the house.
“Dad and Nathan are very fond of each other,” Phillip said to Morgan. “Who'd a thunk it, right?”
Morgan chuckled. “What I want to know is what that is attached to your chest.”
Phillip jiggled the wriggling, cooing bundle in his arms. “You don't know a cousin when you see one? This is Marie Ella. We're babysitting Asher's little girl. I think my big brother's trying to give me ideas, like we don't have enough rug rats running around here.”
“Asher is the attorney, yes?” Simone asked, trying not to stare covetously at the baby.
“Asher is the attorney, yes,” Phillip said, backing out of the doorway and motioning for them to enter.
“He's helping a friend of mine,” Simone said as they stepped up into a small entry that was really nothing more than a space set apart by a short wall.
“That's our Ash,” Phillip noted, leading them into an enormous great room tiled with gleaming vanilla ceramic. A large living area furnished with a comfy sectional sofa and numerous chairs gave way to a lovely wrought-iron dining set that stood before a massive fireplace, behind which sprawled the kitchen. The whole of it was bookended by window seats in the living area and an entire wall of glass in the kitchen, overlooking a gorgeous pool and backyard.
“It's stunning,” Simone said.
“We like it,” Phillip told her proudly.
He covered Marie Ella's ear with an enormous hand and pressed her little head to his chest. She didn't like it much, but he didn't burst her eardrums when he shouted, “Honey!”
Carissa came out of a hallway on the left, straightening the hem of a top she had obviously just pulled over her head. “I'm coming. I'm coming.”
“I think she's tried on every blouse she owns today,” Phillip divulged.
“I have not!” Carissa snapped. “Only maybe half of them.”
“You look beautiful,” Simone said sincerely.
“She's a knockout,” Phillip bragged.
“Oh, you.” She reached up and plucked the baby out of his arms, but as she did so, she turned her face up, and he kissed her soundly, lingering at it as long as she would let him.
Grace suddenly pirouetted through the room, giggling. “They kiss all the time!”