Temporary Father (Welcome To Honesty 1) (15 page)

Even if he was right, it didn’t matter. Her gut told her to run. She departed Aidan’s bedroom and his house, but she was too late to escape.

He already owned too much of her heart.

S
INCE HE HADN’T DIED
saving Eli or losing Beth, Aidan stopped taking life easy. He put in a fax machine and a small copier, which Van okayed. He even made a run into D.C. after office hours, where he picked up work and earned himself an affronted phone call from his parents the next day.

“Dad,” he said, midlecture, “I like living out here.” An hour and a half wasn’t that bad a drive.

Unless a man were making it for a woman who invented reasons to avoid him. Beth wouldn’t even answer the phone to ask him to stop calling.

“What are you talking about, son?”

“He’s trying to divert us,” his mother said. “Pretending he wants to quit the company and move to the country to molder away at forty-two.”

“I’m talking about an office in Honesty,” Aidan said. “Maybe even in my home if I build one.”

“Uh-huh? When I look out my window and see you zipping by on a flying monkey, I’ll believe it.” His mother took a deep breath that nearly blew out Aidan’s eardrum. “If you’re well enough to work, ask for what you need and we’ll send it. Don’t try to shock us into shutting up with threats of quitting or moving.”

It didn’t matter. Beth didn’t want him. Eli had told him to go away.

He drove down the road to the fishing lodge a night or two during the next two weeks. The roof had gone up with lightning speed, as had the Sheetrock. On a Thursday at about ten at night, he saw
Beth in a white tank top, her hair curling around her shoulders, taping and spackling the drywall.

She tilted her head, evidently blowing her hair out of her face. Strands of it caught rays from the work light that hung on a hook above her head.

She looked good enough to—beg.

He backed down the driveway and out to the anonymous darkness of the main road, afraid he’d give in to temptation and fall on his knees at her feet.

He pulled out his cell phone and left a message at his cardiologist’s office. “I’m through playing around. I’m going back to work, and if you don’t want another patient, you should call my mother and let her know you’re available if she needs you after I show up.”

Next, he dialed Van’s number. Van actually picked up.

“Aidan, are you calling for Beth? Has something happened to Eli?”

“He’s fine as far as I know.” Aidan’s voice jumped as the car bumped over a pothole he couldn’t miss.

“How about you?”

This family. They saw him as an invalid with a weak mind. “Fine, Van. I just wanted to let you know I’m going to start moving back to D.C.”

“Already? You’re welcome to the cottage for as long as you want it.”

“I appreciate that, but I need to work again.” Then he thought of actually leaving Beth and Eli.
He didn’t want to. “I’ll take my things back gradually. I’ll still be in and out.” Having made love to Van’s sister all night long with more pleasure and hope than he’d felt in his adult life, he felt uncomfortable with her brother. “So, I’ll talk to you whenever I’m back if you’re around.”

“Great. We should meet next time I’m in D.C. Catch a Nationals game.”

“Sounds good.”

It was all bland. Talk and times he’d share with clients and colleagues. He wanted more and he wanted it with this man’s sister. “Talk to you later, Van.”

Van needed no further prompting to hang up, and Aidan envied the other guy his busy schedule.

He tried Beth’s number one last time. It rang and rang and rang three more times. Then there was a click and a second one. She’d answered and hung up. She didn’t even want him in her voice mail.

I
F THE CELL PHONE
weren’t her only tie to Eli, she’d have thrown the thing into that still cold lake. Beth wiped sweat off her forehead with the back of her wrist and slipped the cell back into her pocket.

Her jeans were fitting looser. Worry and work, an unbeatable diet, but not one she’d recommend.

In the past two weeks, she’d prepared almost every inch of the lodge for painting. As soon as the crew put up two pieces of drywall, she’d taped and slathered on spackling. Then came the sanding.
After the first hour of doing it by hand, she’d rented an electrical sander.

Each night, a couple of the drywall crew stayed behind to help. She donated beer and pizza and gratitude.

And she wished that just one of them would make her feel the slightest hint of interest. All tough, hard, good-looking guys, they were just friends. Her only interest was in Aidan, who’d invaded her dreams day and night.

When the phone rang again, she almost didn’t look at it. She didn’t trust herself to talk to Aidan. But she had to check the caller ID.

Her knees buckled when she read the camp’s name.

She punched the Talk button. “Yes?”

“Mom?”

“Eli, are you crying?” She pressed her hand to the wall and smeared her palm in spackling. Eli’s name repeated in her head. She couldn’t get to him.

“I’m not crying. I’m yawning.”

“Good try, buddy, but that doesn’t even work when you’re home. You’re still a man if you cry. No matter what your dad says.”

“Okay, I’m crying, but I have a good reason. You have to listen to me.”

“I am.” If she expected him to make changes, she had to as well. Campbell was a lousy father. She couldn’t change that, but she could stop being an overprotective, neurotic attempt at two parents for
the price of one. She stood still when what she really wanted was to run to her son. “Tell me.”

“I think I—” He broke off, and then started again. But he was crying, sobbing.

“I can’t understand you, honey.”

He tried again, to no avail.

“Eli, I’ll come. I’m on my way.”

“No.” It must have been a magical threat because he pulled himself together. “I’ve been talking to the doctor here, and I told him something I couldn’t even tell Maria.”

“But you need to tell me?”

“I’m trying.”

She pressed her hand to her mouth.

“I think I burned down our house. I tried a cigarette, and it made me throw up. When I came back from the bathroom, my room was on fire, and I couldn’t find the cigarette.”

She couldn’t believe what she was hearing. “You’re wrong, sweetie. You’re the victim of some horrible coincidence. Lightning literally struck when you did something you shouldn’t. The firemen told me, and they can tell the difference.” Poor guy. “This has been torturing you. It’s why you wouldn’t come to the lodge with me.”

“I left the cigarette. I burned the house.”

“No.” She didn’t know whether to laugh with joy that he’d finally told her something so painful or cry because he’d suffered for nothing. “If it had started with a cigarette, they’d know. Apparently, there are
burn patterns, and our fire burned like a lightning strike.”

She expected him to be relieved, too. He didn’t say anything. She couldn’t hear him breathing any more.

“Eli?”

“I don’t know whether to believe you. Are you saying that because you’re afraid I’ll try to do that thing I did again?”

“I’m telling you the truth. You never had to worry about this. I just wish you could have told me.”

“That I ruined our life? I was afraid you’d start acting like Dad. Who would I have left?”

“I’ve tried not to say anything bad about your father, but you have to know one thing through and through. I’m nothing like him. If you need me, I’ll be there. You couldn’t do anything to make me leave you. If I’m still around when we’re both old and infirm, you’ll still be giving me that tired ‘Mom’ that means you wish I’d leave you breathing space.”

He laughed, but still with tears in his voice. “Okay.”

“Really okay?”

“I’m trying.”

Would he ever sound like a child again? “I love you, Eli.”

“I’m glad I didn’t burn down the house.”

“Me, too, ’cause when you come home, you’ll have no excuse to avoid helping me paint.”

T
WO WEEKS AFTER
he left, Beth returned from her visit to Eli, singing. She parked in Van’s garage, noted her brother’s car with surprise, and climbed out of her own, balancing a wooden salad bowl Eli had made for her. By the time he came home, he planned to finish a set of six smaller bowls.

A man appeared in the garage door. With the last of the day’s sunlight at his back, he was only a long, tall shadow.

Beth gasped.

“It’s me,” Aidan said. “Sorry for scaring you.”

“I think Van’s in the house.”

“Don’t pretend I’m here to see him.”

“I’m sorry I ran out like that,” she said, facing him at last. “But it’s not just that Madeline’s on your conscience. You can’t even talk about her, and I’m afraid you still love her. I can’t stand to be around you thinking that.”

“It’s ridiculous, Beth.” He lifted one hand, to stop her from arguing. “Were you just visiting Eli?”

“He’s better. It turns out he thought he’d set the
fire at our house. After he told me that, Dr. Cook said he started improving.”

“Did he start the fire?”

“Not according to the firemen.” She nudged the car door shut with her hip. “Not that I’ll be asking them to take a second look. He tried a cigarette to get back at me.”

“For what?”

“Being such a wet blanket,” she said. “So I’m trying to change.”

“But not with me?”

She couldn’t think of anything she’d rather do than make a happy, healthy life with Aidan. “You aren’t over her.”

“I told you everything changed when I found Eli. I wanted him to be safe. I didn’t help him because I thought he was Madeline. I wanted
him
to be safe. Your son—who matters to me, too.

She pressed her hand to her stomach. The words were exactly what she wanted to hear, but too late. “He doesn’t want you in our lives.”

“He told you that?”

“He told you.”

“He was upset that day. Let me try again with him.”

“I’m trying to see myself clearly because I tend to want things my own way, and I have too much pride, but this is about you. Until you’re over your past, you can’t ask me or Eli to think of you as part of our family.”

He flinched. Then he turned and walked out of the garage, down the hill. She found it harder to stay put this time. She wanted to run after him and say it didn’t matter that he couldn’t talk about his ex-wife.

Except it did.

“H
OW’S
E
LI
?” Van handed her a beer as she set her stuff on the kitchen counter.

“Good. He’s bruised and he scratched his face on a rock, but he smiled—I don’t know how many times—and he organized a poker game. With cards,” she said. “It wasn’t on a computer screen or a portable game player.”

“Did he take your money?”

“Crackers. They’re not allowed to play for money.” She put the beer back and got water. Her chat with Aidan had left her throat dry. “Thank goodness. I’d have had to mortgage the car to get home. It’s burning oil.”

“I’ll look at it tomorrow.” He sipped his beer. “Was that Aidan outside?”

“Don’t bother with the careful tone. I’m not seeing him anymore.”

“But you were? I thought so in the hospital.”

“I thought he cared for me.”

“I think he does, too.” Van didn’t sound as if he approved.

“He wanted to save someone. His wife is still on his mind.”

“How?”

“He can’t talk about her. It’d be different if she was like Campbell—if he’d disliked her. But he loved her, and every time her name comes up, he changes the subject.”

“How does he say he feels?”

Beth’s skin went hot from her throat all the way up.

“You really care about him?” Van asked.

Just like that, “I love him” ran through her mind. “Eli liked him until he realized something was going on between us.”

“Eli needs a dad.”

“You think that’s what he liked about Aidan?”

“That and the hero act.”

“It was no act. He helped Lucy and Eli would have died without him.”

He smiled. “You’re arguing on his behalf.”

“Cunning of you to trick me.” She drank long and deep of her water. “I make mistakes, too, but Madeline’s on his mind, and Eli’s fragile. I can’t ask him to consider Aidan as—anything—only to have him leave.”

Van considered his answer. Finally, he shrugged in surrender. “What are we doing for dinner?”

“Wishing Mrs. Carleton lived here full time.” Beth opened the fridge. “She usually leaves something for me.” Sure enough, a plate of sandwiches nestled in plastic wrap. “I would marry her,” she said. “She thinks of everything and she wouldn’t
know how to shade the truth if you gave her directions.”

“You’re calling Aidan a liar? Not even his worst business adversaries accuse him of lying.”

“I don’t mean that. I just can’t know how he really feels, and he acts as if Madeline still matters.” She braced her hands on her hips, no longer feeling strong, so she tried to look it. “I’m not hungry. I’m going to have a shower.”

“I saw him loading his car when I got home. He’s started moving his things back to D.C.”

Beth turned to the nearest window that overlooked the cottage. Breathing suddenly took all her energy. She had to will her feet to the floor, or she’d have run down the hill.

And say what?

“Don’t go. I love you. I don’t care that my son resents you. I’m not really afraid because I care this much about a man I’ve only known a month. I’m not positive you still love Madeline.”

“Beth?” Van said, “You’re from different worlds. He’s always chased business. He has a tragic past that colors the way he looks at you and Eli. You’re happy in naive little Honesty, and he travels more than he’s home.”

“See? You’ve thought of more reasons than I did.”

He nodded. “But maybe you’re more distrustful of Aidan than you should be. I love Eli as if he were my own, but I can see he’ll learn to love Aidan because Aidan won’t let him down.”

“You’re arguing for him now?”

“I’m suggesting you don’t let him go without talking to him about what you really want.”

“We’ve said it all. He’s building a home for people with trouble like Madeline’s. His therapist told him to do it for his health’s sake. And I think, instinctively, he wanted to build another little home here. Dragging Eli and me back from that tree with the broken branch signed the dotted line on his bill of good health.”

“He told you that?”

“He didn’t have to. He thrives on good works, and Eli and I needed a few.”

“What if all your worst fears and mine are true, but he’s a nice guy, and he honestly cares for you and Eli?”

“What if time goes by and he learns to live with what happened—while he’s living with Eli and me. He cares about us—fine, but one day, a woman walks into his office or bumps into him at the lodge—and he falls in love. Truly in love—she’s not a Band-Aid over the past.”

“Have a little faith in yourself. You’re no one’s idea of a Band-Aid.”

A
IDAN HAD TWO THINGS
to do on his last day in Honesty. First he had to thank Van for the cottage and second, he had to deliver a fishing pole he’d ordered for Eli.

It sat beside his laptop case, but he kept circling
it. He’d ordered it the first night he went to the lodge, coming home with that glittering lake on his mind. He’d seen himself and Eli fishing off the deck, as he’d done with his grandfather.

Eli would prefer a skateboard. Aidan should toss the fishing pole or better yet, donate it to Goodwill. Maybe he’d ask Van to.

Just as well Beth’s car wasn’t in the garage when he walked up to the house.

Van came out. “They’re at the lodge.”

“I came to say thanks.” Two months had passed since he’d come to Honesty. He could have gone home, back to work, at least a month ago. Instead, he’d kept returning to Honesty and the people he loved most.

He wasn’t using Beth to bind his own wounds.

“You’re welcome.” Van shook his hand. “Use it any time. Nice pole. Is that for Eli?”

“Yeah, but I think he’d rather have a skateboard.”

“I ordered that kit he wants,” Van said. “But he likes to fish, too. His pole burned in the fire.”

“He had one?”

“Living a few hundred feet from that lake? He learned to fish before he could walk.”

“Would you give it to him? Tell him I’m sorry I missed him.”

“The lodge is on your way out of town.”

“The last time I saw Eli he told me to leave.”

“He’s better,” Van said. “Not well yet, but better. Give him a chance to apologize.”

“He doesn’t have to.” Aidan set the fishing pole against the porch rail.

Van picked it up. He tilted the box as if he were aiming a gun, making a big deal of reading the small print. “My sister’s been sad.”

“She’ll be better when Eli is.”

“That’s the funny thing. That trip up to the mountains helped Eli, but Beth looks as if her life has gone wrong. And usually she’s looking toward the cottage when I think that.”

“She doesn’t believe me.”

“She’ll kill me for doing this, but stop by the lodge. Talk to them.” Van held out the pole.

Aidan hesitated. How many times had he run to her rescue like the nut she apparently thought he was? Shouldn’t he get out of her life and assume he’d learn to care for someone else?

“If I loved a woman, I wouldn’t wait for everything to be right. I’d take action.”

Aidan had just about had it with this family. Unless he was mistaken, Van had just called him a lazy coward, and Beth, whom he loved with everything that was best in him, assumed taking care of her was an act to ease his conscience, and that he really loved his former wife.

He took the fishing pole, listing overnight delivery services in his head.

“See you around,” he said. “Thanks again for everything.”

“Maybe I went one piece of advice too far.” Van
stepped back, shoving his hands in his pockets. “Have Beth call me if they’re not coming home for dinner. Mrs. Carleton hates cooking for three if she only has to feed one.”

Aidan had no laugh to spare for a Mrs. Carleton joke. He walked down the hill, tossed the pole on top of his laptop in the car’s back seat and went back to lock the cottage door and drop the key in the letter box.

Driving through Honesty, he was surprised by a feeling of wistfulness. The trees had filled out so that many of the shop roofs were hard to see.

Trey Lockwood nodded at him, exiting the hardware store with a length of chain in his hands. A couple more of Beth’s friends nodded as Aidan drove by.

He passed the park. The memory of Beth standing at the picket fence, and then lying beneath him in his bed later that night nearly choked him. Memories too sweet to be real. Need and passion too mutual and potent to ignore.

He tried. How many times could he beg Beth to turn him down? He saw the lodge road and told himself to drive by. Drive on by.

At the last minute, his hands turned the wheel. The car skidded into her lane. Swearing, he kept going. He didn’t know when to shut up and go home.

He met Eli on the road. The boy, splattered with paint, was trying to ride a skateboard in the grass. It stuck so suddenly, he fell over.

Aidan stopped and let down his window. Only Beth’s car sat in front of the house. Eli glanced back at it. Then he stood, dusting off his jeans.

“I’m fine,” he said.

Still mad. “How’s Lucy?”

“Fine. She’s in the woods, chasing things. She won’t get hurt here.” Where Aidan didn’t belong.

“I have something for you.”

Eli brightened. “Are you leaving?”

“It’s more than time.” He’d hoped Eli might have been annoyed in the hospital because he didn’t want any guy around after Campbell, but treatment hadn’t changed anything. Aidan got out and opened the back door.

Eli stayed where he was. Inwardly, Aidan sighed. No indignity too large. He carried the fishing rod into the grass. To his surprise, Eli’s mouth formed an O when he held out the pole.

“That’s top of the line. I can’t take that.”

“I ordered it before you were angry with me. My grandfather gave me one like it when I was your age.”

“You fish?” Eli unbent.

“When I get the chance.” Aidan offered the pole again. “Not often in the past few years.”

“That’s how my mom would have to live if she liked you.”

“What?”

“She’d have to give up stuff she likes. Living here, canoeing on the lake. Friends, Uncle Van.”

“I care about her, Eli.”

“So did my dad.”

That tore it. “I’m not like him. I’d never ask your mom to give up anything.” He got down to what he suspected Eli really feared. “Just like I’d never ask you to. I live in D.C. I’m just getting to know you and your mother, and I like you both. It doesn’t mean I’d ask you to move to Washington.”

“But eventually… And then, when you got tired of us, there we’d be, stuck.”

“I don’t get tired easy,” Aidan said. “And I know how much you like being with your friends. I don’t think I’m more important than you.”

“My dad does. Is he so different from other guys?”

“He’s different from me.”

Eli stared at him, torn between taking up for his father, and the sad truth he’d so recently learned. Finally, he took the fishing pole. “Thanks. My mom may make me give it back.”

“I’ll tell her I want you to have it.”

“Eli?”

Aidan looked toward the house, happy at the sound of Beth’s voice.

“How much do you like her?” Eli asked.

“This is a funny conversation to have with a young man your age.” Eli stopped looking young. The old man who’d looked out of his eyes during that first week came back. “I love her,” Aidan said.

Eli froze.

“It’s the truth,” Aidan said, “and it’s what I’m going to tell your mother. I want you to be my family.”

He turned his head and shaded his eyes against the sun. Beth looked back, also beneath the shade of her hand. Aidan started up the hill.

Beth came down to meet him, as if she didn’t want him in the house taking shape behind her. “Where’s Eli going?”

“I brought him a fishing rod.” As they watched he walked down to the dock. Without looking back.