Prelude to a Wedding (22 page)

Bette studiously ignored the quirked eyebrow
Paul directed at her. "But, Darla—"

She wasn't sure what she was going to say,
but it didn't matter, because Darla wasn't listening. "But,
nothing. Just say, 'Thank you very much, Paul, I'd love to come to
your parents' house for Thanksgiving." '

Paul looked a hair's-breadth short of
laughing as he prompted her, "You heard the lady."

Bette knew when she was licked. Even with the
unsettled sensation back in full force, she found it impossible not
to smile as she followed orders. "Thank you very much, Paul, I'd
love to come to your parents' house for Thanksgiving."

"You're welcome, Bette." He pitched his voice
slightly louder. "And thank you, Darla."

"You're welcome," came back the reply.

Paul grinned at Bette, then kissed her hard.
Her heart swelled, but so did the trembling in her stomach. And now
she knew what she feared: hope.

* * * *

That Saturday she went shopping with Judi for
the second time. Paul groused, "You spent the morning working and
the afternoon with my kid sister." The first was a familiar
complaint, but she suspected her growing friendship with his sister
pleased him.

She and Judi found a wonderful dress for the
upcoming college formal, and after Judi returned to campus, Bette
and Paul occupied the evening by making up for the time apart.

She finally got around to wearing the
royal-blue negligee. He took it off her without ripping it.
Barely.

The next day, he surprised her by insisting
she accompany him to dinner at Mama Artemis's home. Surely he had
to realize how people like Ardith and her family would construe his
bringing her along . . .

If he hadn't before, he must by now, she
thought as she headed into the huge, old-fashioned kitchen to
volunteer to help. The greeting had been warm, interested and arch.
In the few minutes from their entrance until Ardith's nephews
snared Paul to look at something in the basement, Ardith, her
mother, her sister-in-law and even her teenage niece had made it
clear they considered Bette and Paul an "item." Their bluntness had
made her feel a little uncomfortable. Since she'd been too chicken
to look at him, she could only imagine how it had made Paul feel—
probably like running.

Mama Artemis—a grayer, rounder, no less
forceful version of Ardith—and the others shooed her out of the
kitchen, where bustling seemed to be the only mode of movement. She
was a guest, she was told, she was not to work. It was just as
well. Not only wouldn't she have known what to do, she didn't think
she could have kept up.

She tracked down Paul and Ardith's two young
nephews in the basement. They were making enough noise that they
didn't hear her coming down the wooden stairs. When she got far
enough to see them, she sat on the steps and watched.

Taking up nearly half the neat basement, they
had a huge, complicated track circling the edges of the biggest
piece of plywood she'd ever seen, raised to waist-level by several
sawhorses. In addition to the main route, there were smaller loops
and shunts. Around the tangle of tracks grew a tidy, thriving
community. The downtown sported a railroad station, of course,
along with houses, shops, churches and schools. On the outskirts
she spotted a few farms.

Amid this imaginary world, Paul Monroe played
with as much verve as the two young boys.

Her lips lifted into a smile, but she denied
the simultaneous urge to cry. He truly was a kid at heart.

She was very quiet the rest of the night.

* * * *

Bette had found a house she wanted to buy,
and Paul hated it.

He hated the house.

It wasn't a bad-looking building, but it was
all wrong for her. It didn't have character, or charm. And, most of
all, it was several towns west of Elmhurst. Another twenty minutes
of driving wasn't going to stop him from making the trip, but this
distance couldn't be counted in miles.

He hated the process.

Bette worked too damn much as it was, and now
she spent all her spare time talking to loan officers and house
inspectors. Since he'd made his feelings clear about this house
right away, she didn't talk of her progress to him. He should have
felt grateful; instead he felt left out.

He hated the idea.

And that was what really bothered him because
he wasn't sure why he hated it.

Now he was driving her to the real estate
office to make a bid on the house. It was the last thing he wanted
to do, but the alternative was letting her go alone. At least this
way, she was in the car next to him, a foot or so away.

He wished he could delay the moment she'd
walk into that real estate office and make the move farther away
from him. If there were some way . . .

"I think we should go see Jan and Ed."

"Jan and Ed?"

"Robson. And the baby. I haven't seen the kid
since the christening. It'd be fun. We'll go pick up some Chinese
and take them lunch. It's a perfect day for Chinese."

"Today? Now? I want to be at the real estate
office at noon to make the bid."

They had pulled up at a stoplight. He turned
to her, reached out to outline that tempting upper lip with his
fingertip. "You could call them. From the way you explained it,
it's not a firm appointment. Is it?"

"Well, no, not really."

He heard the uncertainty in her voice, and
pressed his advantage. "Besides, when I talked to Jan earlier this
week, she sounded pretty down. You know, new mother stuff. Feeling
like she didn't have any contact with the adult world."

"I guess that can happen when you have a
newborn baby."

"She practically begged me to come see her
soon," he added.

"I don't know . . ."

"We'll just stop in and say hello."

It didn't take much more for him to persuade
her to call the real estate office and tell them she would be in
later in the afternoon, although she did give him a pointed look
when they arrived nearly an hour later at Jan's with Chinese food
in hand to discover the new parents in obviously fine spirits.

"This is great!" Jan said for about the
eighth time since they'd settled around the dining room table. The
sideboard sported a baby carrier flanked by an oversize box of
disposable diapers and a stack of neatly folded terry sleepers. The
food had long since been disposed of, and the conversation had
proceeded in comfortable fits and starts, with Edward Robson, Jr.
the recurring theme.

"We really should be going now," Bette said
for the second time, but with enough regret in her voice that Paul
didn't feel guilty for ignoring it.

"You can't leave yet," Jan said. "You have to
wait and see Eddy. He should wake up any moment."

She proved a prophet. Practically on the
heels of her words came the dissatisfied sounds of a baby
waking.

"I'll get him," volunteered Ed before anyone
else could react.

Jan's eyes followed the direction her burly
husband had gone, then she grinned at Paul and Bette. "He does
dote, doesn't he?"

As background to Jan's tales of her husband
as a father, the baby's noise intensified, then changed to neutral
commentary and finally to small sounds of pleasure.

"Here he is," she announced as Ed appeared at
the doorway with the baby, dressed in a minute version of a Chicago
Cubs uniform. The baby puckered his brow and smiled at the same
time.

"I figured I'd put him in the Cubs uniform in
honor of your visit, Paul," Ed explained.

"You gave a newborn baby a baseball uniform?"
Bette pretended disgust, but he caught the amusement
underneath.

"Sure. Got to start him out right."

Jan nodded as she took the baby. "The Cubs
outfit is from Paul and the Bears is from Ed. It's amazing how
early the brainwashing starts, and it's so unfair. There's no cute
little outfit for brain surgeon or engineer."

Counterpointing their laughter, Ed, Jr.
expressed a request.

"Oops, I think it's lunchtime," said Jan.
"We're about to find out how Eddy feels about Chinese."

Somehow, as Jan and Bette moved into the
living room to he more comfortable, it turned out that this was the
best time for Ed to show Paul the deck he'd added to the house.
Paul was relieved. As the two groups parted, he saw Ed cup a tender
hand around his son's head, then stroke his wife's cheek, and envy
pierced him. Would he ever know that fierce peace he saw in Ed?
Would he and Bette ever exchange a look so full of love and
understanding? Would he ever watch Bette nurture their child?

It wasn't until they'd exhausted the details
of deck construction and returned to the living room to find Jan
coaxing bubbles from the baby that one level of his mind bothered
to wonder why he'd focused his questions on Bette.

He didn't know the answer; he didn't like the
question.

Avoiding the couch where he could have sat
next to Bette, he chose an easy chair across from her. Too much
family, that was his problem. Too much happy family and cute baby.
A guy could take only so much.

"Here, hold him a minute."

Jan plunked Ed, Jr. into Paul's arms as she
walked past where he sat.

"Hey! I don't know how to—"

"Of course you know how to hold a baby. You
must be a natural," said Jan with a sly smile as she kept going out
of the room, "because you're doing it exactly right."

He glared in the direction she'd headed, but
the muscles of his face rearranged as he looked down at the small
person dressed in Cubs colors in his arms. A bottom well padded
with diapers drooped between where his left arm propped the baby's
shoulders and head and his right arm rested under the knees. In his
hands, Ed, Jr. wriggled and smiled and felt incredibly alive.

Paul met Bette's deep blue eyes, and felt
something slam into him. Not the gentle warmth that so often seeped
into him when they were together, and not the fierce flow of
passion she could stir so easily. Something more visceral.
Something as deep as the warmth and as powerful as the passion. And
a hell of a lot more disorienting.

A scene from some movie he'd seen flashed
into his mind, the vision of an earthquake caught at its peak right
along the fault line, where the ground heaved, trembled, then
resettled itself into a new, unfamiliar landscape.

And from the look in Bette's eyes, he thought
she'd felt it, too. Somehow that was both less—and
more—frightening.

Blinking, he looked at his hands and was
surprised to see Eddy, still grinning owlishly up at him.
Apparently earthquakes didn't rattle the younger set. Jan came back
into the room, and Bette moved restlessly on the couch as if in
preparation for leaving; he took all that in, but it seemed
distant, not quite real.

Not knowing why, he grinned at the baby in
his arms.

"Paul, we really have to leave. Now. Before
it's too late."

He caught Jan giving Bette an indecipherable
look. At least it was indecipherable to him, but maybe Bette got
some meaning out of it, because she flushed, a warm, bright color
that made him both more irritable and more eager to have her
entirely to himself. And—remembering what came next—without some
damn real estate appointment hanging over their heads.

"Oh, I was hoping you could stay for dinner,"
said Jan. "Nothing fancy, but it would be fun."

"You heard the lady," said Paul. He couldn't
prevent harshness from entering his voice, even if it wasn't
entirely fair. He couldn't have explained it, but he didn't give a
damn about fairness right now. "She has a schedule to keep."

Bette glared at him, but said the right,
pleasant words of leave-taking to Jan and Ed, with promises to
call. He knew she'd keep those promises. To him, she said
absolutely nothing.

In fact, he realized forty minutes later as
they neared the real estate office, she still hadn't said anything
to him. He hadn't noticed because he'd been sunk in a dark mood he
would have labeled brooding in someone else.

"Turn right at the corner." Her first words
since they'd left the Robsons.

He did, and saw the sign for the real estate
company. He pulled in to the parking lot and turned off the engine,
but made no move to pull the keys from the ignition.

"I'll wait here."

"It may take a while." Her voice was distant
and cool, devoid of underlying spice. He wanted to shake her.

"Fine."

"Fine."

She seemed totally unaffected by his mood,
getting out of the car and walking into the office with her usual
calm. For some reason, that irked him more, and he couldn't for the
life of him figure out why.

He turned on the car radio, picking up a
college football game, then failing to make sense of a single
word.

Why did it bug him so much that she was in
there buying a house? He didn't want one himself, but he'd thought
it was great when Michael bought the place in Springfield. Despite
the long hours and traveling required by his job, Michael was the
kind of guy who needed a home.

A thought pricked at him. Did it bother him
that Bette was the kind of woman who needed a home because he
wouldn't give her one?

He didn't even have to bother pushing aside
the idea, because the real estate office door flew open, and a
woman stalked out. Jerky, angry strides brought her to the car
almost before he comprehended that this walking emotional storm was
Bette.

If her earlier calm had irritated him, her
agitation amazed him. She got in the car, pulling the door closed
with enough force to shudder the frame.

"Don't you ever say anything about my
schedules again." She practically hissed the words, but didn't look
at him. "Four hours and forty-five minutes late. I was four hours
and forty-five minutes late. I have never been that late in my
life."