Prelude to a Wedding (9 page)

What was the big deal? So he'd had this
impulse to show her where he grew up, to have her meet his parents.
That was how he did things. By impulse.

A curse muttered across his mind.

Who was he kidding? He'd fully intended to
introduce Bette to his old house, his hometown, his parents ever
since he'd first had the idea on Friday. How could it be an
impulse, when he'd been spending every waking hour, and more,
contemplating one, solitary woman?

He'd been planning this afternoon's stops for
two days.

And he didn't like that fact.

Even when he'd done it for a woman whose
navy-blue eyes lit at the sight of him, then shuttered themselves
faster than a blink. Even for a woman who talked about plans and
arrangements so stiltedly, then laughed with abandon over a
pumpkin.

Worse, he couldn't find it in himself to
regret any part of it, not the thinking about her, not the pumpkin
ploy, not the hometown tour. None of it, because it all meant she
was sitting here next to him.

"There are my folks," he said as he pulled
into the circular portion of the driveway. Spotting the car, his
parents waved and started toward them. Since they'd been
contemplating a flower bed on the far side of the considerable
front lawn, he had a moment to cover Bette's hand where it rested
on the front seat between them. "They're nice people, Bette.
Honest."

She met his look and gave a forced smile.

"Much easier to get along with than me. I
promise.

To his relief and pleasure, the teasing light
flickered into her eyes. "Thank heavens!" she said with soft
vehemence.

He was still chuckling when he opened her
door and they walked out to meet his parents.

"Paul! Why didn't you tell us you were
coming?"

His mother's affectionate scolding as she
hugged him harmonized with his father's dry interjection, "Because
he never does."

"I would have made something special for
dinner," his mother concluded, then barely paused as she smiled
warmly at Bette and extended a hand. "Hello, I'm Nancy Monroe."

Paul knew he'd have to hurry or his mother's
sociability would outstrip his manners, and for some reason he
wanted to be the one to make this introduction. "Mom, Dad, this is
Bette Wharton." He placed a hand at the small of Bette's back, with
some idea of encouraging her and reminding her of his support,
though he knew his parents could be counted on to welcome her. But
the feel of her soft sweater and the firm, smooth curve of her back
gave him something, too, something indefinably pleasing. "Bette,
these are my parents, James and Nancy Monroe."

"How do you do, Mrs. Monroe. Mr. Monroe."

She shook hands with them, and he glimpsed
the poise she must bring to business dealings, at least ones that
didn't involve him. He suspected he threw her off her usual
stride.

He liked that.

"Bette's in the market to buy a house, and I
thought she should see some of the other neighborhoods around, so
we swung by here."

He caught her dagger look of surprise and
dismay. She probably wanted to tell him she certainly wasn't
looking in this kind of neighborhood, because it was way out of her
price bracket, but was constrained by his parents' presence. He'd
remembered her comment Thursday about looking for a house and he'd
spotted the real estate listings on her coffee table, but he hadn't
known he'd make use of the observations until he'd spoken the
spur-of-the-moment words.

"A house is an excellent investment," said
James Monroe with an approving nod. "I wish Paul would make that
move so he'd build some equity in a property."

Paul shrugged at the familiar refrain. He
should have seen it coming. "I don't mind paying rent."

"You must not, since you've been doing it so
long, and now you have rent on your office as well as the
apartment."

"Property just ties you down." He worked to
keep the words light. It was an old skirmish line between his
father and him.

"Perhaps it's time you were tied down. We had
owned our first home for six years by the time I was your age."

"You owned it?"

Only the blink of his father's eyes showed
that the arrow had gone home. They both knew Walter Mulholland had
held the title on the Monroes' first house, as he had on this house
until the day he died.

"Well, I'm just glad you both came," smoothed
Nancy Monroe. "I have a lovely roast in for dinner, and now we'll
be saved from a week's worth of leftovers."

"Oh, no, really. Thank you, but we can't drop
in like this for dinner." Bette stopped abruptly, turning wide blue
eyes on Paul, and for a moment he forgot everything else. "I mean,
I . . . I really should . . ."

He saw her floundering between not wanting to
impose and not wanting to deprive his parents of having their son
home for Sunday dinner. "We didn't mean to stay for dinner, Mom. We
just thought we'd drop off some pumpkins and I'd show Bette around
a little, then we'd be on our way."

"Oh, but you must stay for dinner. There's
plenty of time for you to show Bette, maybe take her to Beach Park,
then we can have a nice meal and get to know each other. This is
such a wonderful surprise, Bette. We don't get Paul home often
enough as it is, and we always enjoy meeting his friends."

Paul tried one more time against the force of
his mother's beaming smile. "But we don't want to interrupt your
afternoon, and—"

"Nonsense. We were just discussing the
arrangement of our spring bulb garden. It's so hard to remember
where things were the spring before by the time you get around to
planting in the fall."

He knew staying for dinner was all but a
certainty. Maybe he'd known it when he pulled into the driveway. He
refused to consider whether he'd known it when he'd first thought
about stopping by.

He cocked an eyebrow at Bette and gave an
infinitesimal shrug, indicating that if she didn't want to stay,
he'd do his best, but . . . A smile edged into her eyes and he felt
an easing of the muscles in her back where he was only
half-surprised to realize his hand still rested. She'd come to the
same conclusion and she didn't mind, at least not terribly.

Paul's father took a more direct approach in
trying to make the unexpected guest feel less awkward. "Bette, how
long have you known our son?"

Paul rubbed his free hand across his mouth to
mask a smile. Ever the lawyer, his father had asked the question to
set up some point he wanted to make. The flaming color he brought
to Bette's cheeks was inadvertent, and the surprise her answer was
about to administer to his parents came as a pure, unanticipated
bonus from his point of view

"Four days." Ah, another bonus. She'd been
counting. Otherwise, she would have hesitated to total them or said
"since Wednesday."

Paul saw his mother blink, then take a closer
look at Bette. When her gaze came to him, he looked away, suddenly
not so enthralled with surprising his parents.

James Monroe, however, nodded, as if he'd
half expected the response to his question to be "four days," then
took Bette by the elbow and started her toward the house.

"I don't imagine in that time he's introduced
you to any other relatives, has he? No? I didn't think so. So we
can understand your being a bit taken aback by all this. We just
hope you'll commiserate with us, since we've known him for
thirty-two years last March, and he's never brought a young lady
home to meet us before."

* * * *

"Is that true? You've never taken a woman
home to meet your parents?"

Paul gave Bette an extra beat to add the word
before, but she didn't, and he felt a frown growing. The way she
said it made it sound as if bringing her to the Lake Forest house
today didn't count.

"There really wasn't much need to," he
finally said.

He looked down the stretch of pebbly sand,
then out beyond the huge, jumbled boulders that created shallow
pools for summer-time beach-goers at the municipal park. This late
in the year, with the sun rapidly fading, the beach and the boat
ramp farther down the lake were deserted. Two distant fishermen on
the pier beyond the ramp were their only companions. He narrowed
his eyes as he considered the darkening eastern sky. The breeze had
picked up, and if he didn't miss his guess, Indian summer's spell
would soon be broken.

After a soft drink at his parents' house,
he'd brought Bette here by a roundabout route through town. He'd
been telling her about youthful summers he'd spent divided between
this beach and his home. "I think half my high school graduating
class spent three days a week at our house, so everyone I dated was
there all the time anyhow. Then in college we were too busy proving
we were grownup by going into Chicago to bother coming home."

"And since college?"

His head jerked around in surprise, then he
had to bite off a grin. He hadn't mistaken that note in her
voice—she was more than mildly curious. But her eyes, darkening
with storm warnings just like the lake behind her, told him the
consequences if he dared to make anything of it.

He knew a few people who'd be surprised to
hear it, but he
could
be cautious.

"Since college, there hasn't been anyone I
thought my parents would enjoy meeting."

Pleased with himself—he'd told the truth and
paid her a compliment without tying himself to anything—he took her
arm and headed toward the pier. They could walk the length of the
beach before taking another path to where they'd left her car
overlooking the water.

He easily slipped into more tales of growing
up, including one of a sailboat race when he'd had his younger
sister as his crew, and had nearly thrown her overboard.

"Do you sail, Bette?"

"Not the kind you're talking about. Just
Sunfish on small lakes."

"You'd like it. I'll take you next—" He broke
off. He'd been out to say "next spring." He'd always believed in
keeping promises, which was why he didn't make them. But he'd been
about to commit himself to something six months in the future. What
had gotten into him?

Bette didn't seem to notice anything amiss.
She walked beside him, watching waves slip into shore.

"Anyway, it was a great neighborhood to grow
up in," he finished lamely.

"I'm sure it was." She sounded as if her mind
might be on another track. "It certainly doesn't look anything like
the house you described."

Contemplating the upward curve of her top lip
and remembering how it had felt against his own, he almost missed
what she said. "Oh, the house. Mom made a lot of changes. Actually,
the same fall after I ran away. I started thinking some of the
workmen were going to live with us permanently."

Work had kept his father so occupied those
months that James Monroe probably wouldn't have noticed if they'd
blown up the house. His mother hadn't gone quite that far, but
close. By the time her father had visited at Christmastime, light
and color had replaced somber bulk.

"It must have been quite a job."

"Yeah. Turning a mausoleum into a home kicks
up a lot of dust."

Walter Mulholland had raged, but there was
nothing he could do. Even at twelve, Paul had recognized the
lesson. Walter Mulholland was beatable. All it took was
determination and unbending resistance.

"It really is a wonderful place now. This
whole area . . ." Bette made an all-encompassing gesture, then
seemed to remember a complaint. "But what possessed you to say I
was looking at a house in this neighborhood? I can't afford this
area. And even if I could—what are you smiling about?"

"Nothing. Let's get going. I'm hungry and we
have pumpkins to unload. I wonder if the neighbors need
jack-o'-lanterns this year?"

* * * *

"Would you like more, Bette?"

"No, thank you, Mrs. Monroe. This was
wonderful, but I couldn't eat another bite."

"Are you sure? I don't think you young people
who live alone get enough to eat. I'd hate to think you'd be hungry
later."

Paul's chuckle spluttered into his glass of
water. Bette thought she heard something resembling "told you
so."

Giving him a quelling look, she politely
declined once more, then helped Mrs. Monroe clear the table. In the
kitchen she put a few things away while her hostess prepared coffee
and chatted of cooking, gardens, the symphony and family.

". . . I'll have to show you a portrait of my
father after dinner. Paul looks so much like him at the same
age."

Bette wondered if Paul had ever heard that
comparison. Considering his views on that relative, he wouldn't
like it.

In Nancy Monroe's mostly gray hair, Bette
could see the vestiges of Paul's chestnut color. Although he shared
a lot of mannerisms with his father, Bette saw that many of his
features had come from his mother. Physical features, but also the
ability to make people comfortable in an instant.

Bette could admit to herself now that she'd
been a bit awed. Not only by meeting Paul's parents so
unexpectedly—so soon, she almost added, as if it were an occurrence
she'd expected eventually, when that wasn't the case at all—but by
the house, with its sweeping, dignified exterior, its views of Lake
Michigan through multiple sets of French doors, its casually
elegant furnishings.

But Nancy Monroe melted away the awe. She was
a very nice woman. In fact, Bette thought as she prepared to take
the cream and sugar in to the dining room, they were a very nice
family. Not so unlike her own.

As she stepped into the dining room, she
became aware that the Monroes were not unlike her own in other
ways. She felt the tension immediately. Between her and her
parents, the topic was her living alone. Between Paul and his
father, it apparently concerned his business.