To Be a Family (Harlequin Superromance) (12 page)

But she wasn’t finished asking about Nena. Hopefully, like
lancing a boil, it would be painful but the wound would heal cleanly. She had to
brace herself to ask the next question. “Did you love her?”

“I knew her for three months. I don’t fall in love that
quickly. When I do, I stay in love for a long time.”

Did he mean he was still in love with her? Something flared
inside that for once she couldn’t—or didn’t want to—squash. A glimmer of hope
that what they had wasn’t dead after all, that with a little fanning of the
flames they could resurrect the spark.

But could they, really? Did she want to go there? She was
healed. Why pick at the scab, reopen the wound? Suddenly she felt very tired.
Her foot ached and she wanted to go to bed.

John seemed to sense her change of mood. “I should go.”

“You were going to tell me something.”

“It’s late. Another time.”

Katie grabbed the crutches and hobbled after him out the front
door onto the veranda. She stood beneath the porch light, questions still
buzzing in her brain. “When you found out about Tuti did you consider going back
to Nena, trying to make it work?”

John sighed. “I did. But Nena was smarter than I was. She knew
we liked each other but without love that wasn’t enough, not with all the
cultural differences we would have had to overcome. She didn’t believe I would
stick around. She didn’t want Tuti being devastated when I left, as she was sure
I would inevitably do.”

“But if she’d said yes,
would
you
have stuck it out?” For some stupid reason she hoped he would have tried at
least. Better he’d left her when she was sick because his love wasn’t strong
enough than that he was a person who couldn’t be counted on.

“I’ve asked myself that over the years. But until I’m actually
put in that position, I can’t say. Who can say staying with Nena would have been
the right thing to do? Marriage is difficult and messy at times. It takes solid
love and commitment to see it through, even in the best of circumstances.”

Katie propped herself against the rail and set her crutches
aside. In bad circumstances even greater love and strength were needed. Her
father had been a rock for her mother, never wavering all through her long
illness, remission, then recurrence and final stages when the breast cancer
traveled to her ovaries, then to her spine and then everywhere.

“My parents had a perfect marriage. There was no messiness. My
dad gave my mother unconditional love and support, even when she refused a third
round of chemotherapy. That was her choice and he respected it.” She’d hoped for
that kind of unconditional love from John but he hadn’t measured up.

“Are you so sure about that?” John looked skeptical. “No one
really knows what goes on behind the scenes in a marriage.”

“
I
know.” She didn’t like him
doubting her parents’ love. Without that ideal to strive for, her whole
grievance against John would come tumbling down and the past seven years they’d
spent apart would have been a huge mistake. But he
was
wrong. He didn’t know her mother and father the way she did.
“One thing I never understood. Why, if you loved me as much as I thought you
did, did you leave me? You’ve never wanted to talk about it. I can only assume
you felt so guilty—”

“Guilty? No, I was angry you wouldn’t do everything possible to
get well. It’s like you were giving up on yourself, on us and our future.” He
gripped her shoulders. Beneath the porch light shadows darkened his eyes. “I did
try to talk to you about it when I came back to Summerside seven years ago. It’s
what I’ve been trying to tell you all night.”

“How dare you be angry because I didn’t want to chop off both
my breasts?” She pulled away from him and got onto her crutches. “How do you
think it feels to be a woman and lose one of the most important elements of
femininity? You just admitted you were in love with my breasts from an early
age. How long could I have held you with no breasts? And if I lost you, what
other man would want me? Angry?
I
had a right to be
angry. Not you.”

“That’s from your perspective. If you’d died, what difference
would it make if you kept your breasts? I watched your mother die. I saw what
that did to you and Riley. To your father. I didn’t want to watch
you
die.”

She drew herself up as tall as she could on her sore ankle.
“I’m very much alive, in case you hadn’t noticed.”

“Oh, I’ve noticed.” All at once the atmosphere changed, became
charged. He moved closer. Before she knew what was happening his warm, firm lips
pressed against hers. Her mouth opened and his tongue slipped inside. Blood
surged in her veins. She felt fully alive, just as she had rushing down the hill
on her mountain bike. Then just as she was about to push him away, his lips
softened and lingered.

Katie felt like crying and didn’t know why.

“I was angry,” he said, easing away. “But there was more to it
than that. I left so you wouldn’t keep your breasts for my sake, so you would
get the mastectomy and live. I’m so grateful you survived.” The back of his
knuckles brushed lightly down her breast, grazing her nipple. “I’m glad your
breasts did, too, despite the fact I still think you were wrong.” He sucked in a
breath. “There, I’ve finally told you. Before you ream me out for being an
idiot, I’ll go and you can rest.”

Before she could react he’d backed away, stepped off the porch
and was striding to his vehicle. The motor started.

She watched his taillights move off down the street. Her lips
still tingled with the imprint of his mouth.

He’d left to try to save her?
That
was crazy. But she believed he meant it. It was just the noble nutty kind of
thing he would do.

She’d been so sure she was over him. And she had been.

And yet…with one kiss he’d set her alight.

But she was confused. What had the kiss meant to him? He went
out with a lot of women. Kissing her might have been simply the way he closed an
evening. Or a way of closing out the past. It didn’t necessarily mean he was
attracted to her.

He’d said he was angry. Did that mean he hadn’t forgiven her
for not taking him back seven years ago? Had he confessed just to get this off
his chest? He hadn’t stuck around to find out what she thought about it all.

The truth was, she didn’t know what she thought.

She went inside and closed the door. The evening had raised
more questions than it had answered. Slowly she made her way down the hall. Baby
steps. Wait and see. Don’t rush into anything
. Que sera
sera.

* * *

W
HY
HAD
HE
gone and kissed
her?

John thumped the steering wheel as he drove away from Katie’s
house. He’d taken her by surprise. She hadn’t been ready. The circumstances were
all wrong given the nature of their conversation. But he hadn’t been able to
help himself. They’d been talking, openly and honestly for the first time in
years. And standing on the porch in the dark, feeling her so close, the years
had fallen away. He’d kissed her without thinking.

He slowed to make the turn onto his parents’ street to pick up
Tuti. And reminiscing about perving at her in a bikini? He winced. Not cool. Not
a mature relationship based on more than sexual attraction. Which was what he
wanted to have with her.

At first he’d simply wanted her to be civil to him. Then he was
content for them to be friends. Now, now he wanted much more. He wanted Katie
back in his life permanently. He was falling in love with her again, or, more
accurately, doubting that he had ever fallen out of love. And he wanted her to
love him.

Brief as the kiss was, it reminded him of everything they’d
once had. And all that he’d lost. One little kiss with Katie was worth more than
all his sexual adventures in the intervening years combined.

The anger between them still festered away below the surface.
He thought he’d forgotten, gotten over the past. But ever since Tuti’s arrival
memories and emotions had been surfacing.

Like his lack of security in their relationship. It had been
only annoying when she wouldn’t commit to a wedding date. Terrifying and out of
control when she was sick with cancer and possibly dying. All he’d ever wanted
was for them to be together and raise a family. He’d thought he had her…and then
she’d slipped away from him.

He felt a glimmer of hope that he and Katie could forge a new
relationship, one based on the present and not the past. They’d both moved on
with their lives, accomplished important things on their own. Now they needed to
approach the future from a different perspective, without always harking back to
the past. He needed to not second-guess her, always expecting she would balk at
the last hurdle. It would be hard to do but Katie would be worth the effort.

He pulled into his parents’ driveway and hurried up the path.
He knocked once and let himself in. Every light in the house was ablaze. A
Disney movie was playing on the TV in the lounge room. The radio was on in the
kitchen, barely audible over the sound of his mother and father squabbling
good-naturedly, as was their habit. Also in the conversation was another voice
he couldn’t place. No sign of Tuti.

He walked through the house, glancing into rooms. And stopped
in the doorway of the kitchen. His mother was seated at the table, addressing
brightly colored invitations. His dad was on Skype talking to someone while his
mother kept interrupting with her two cents. Tuti was lying on the tiled floor,
sleepily stroking the cat.

“Mum, Dad. Sorry I’m so late.” He bent to touch Tuti on the
shoulder. She glanced up and smiled. “Hey, sweetheart.”

“Get a second estimate on that transmission,” Marty Forster was
saying to his laptop computer.

John glanced at the screen and recognized his dad’s sister,
Gena, in Brisbane. He waved hello. “Hey, Aunt Gena. Dad’s right. Get another
estimate.”

“Mechanics see a single woman walk in the garage and rub their
hands in glee,” Marty went on. “Crooks, the lot of them.”

“They’re not all crooks,” Alison objected, licking an envelope.
“Gena can handle herself. She’s not stupid.”

“Did I say she was stupid?” Marty huffed. “I said mechanics are
crooks.”

“They’re not
all
crooks—” Alison
began again.

“I’ve got to go,” John said. “Tuti needs to get to bed.”

“Of course she does.” Alison reached around to hug Tuti, but
the girl sidestepped into the safety of John’s arms. Pressing her lips together,
Alison turned back to the invitations. “I’m almost finished,” she said brightly.
“Tuti, you’re going to have the best birthday party ever.”

John noted the thick stack of invitations. His mother turned
every social occasion into a major event. Tuti wasn’t prepared for this. “How
many people are you inviting? I thought it would be just close family.”

“Plus a few friends. You having a daughter is a big deal.”

“Have you got an invitation there for Katie? I can give it to
her myself.”

Alison frowned. “Do you really want her there? She’s—”

“She’s giving Tuti extra help with her English skills,” he
said, cutting his mother off before she could say anything mean about Katie in
front of Tuti. “Tuti is crazy about her.”

“What about you?” His mother’s blue eyes searched his. “Don’t
go getting your heart broken again.”

“No fear of that,” he said lightly. Even though he could still
taste Katie’s lips and feel the soft skin of her cheek beneath his fingers.
“We’re friends, that’s all.”

His mother had been almost as gutted as he when Katie hadn’t
taken him back. She was prejudiced against her. No way was he confiding in her
about his hopes for a new beginning with Katie.

Alison sniffed. “She’s got you running after her again,
rescuing her, waiting around the hospital till all hours. Was anything wrong
with her ankle in the end?”

“A bad sprain. She’s on crutches.” John gently pushed his
daughter in the direction of the hall. “Go get your backpack and put your shoes
on. Then wait for me at the front door. I’ll be right there.”

When she’d left the room John pulled out a chair next to his
mother. “You used to be fond of Katie. Said she was like a daughter to you.”

“That was before.” Alison grudgingly handed him an invitation.
“I suppose she can come if you and Tuti want her.”

“We do.” His mother was only being loyal out of love for him,
but her antagonism added another layer to his conflicted emotions. It made him
realize that while part of him wanted to explore a fresh relationship with
Katie, to see where it took them, part of him agreed he would do well to keep
his distance.

Their breakup seven years ago had been the first time he’d
faced the loss of something really important to him. Katie, despite saying she
loved him and wanted to marry him, had disregarded his feelings and dismissed
his fears about her long-term health. If she’d truly loved him she would have
found a way to compromise.

And what about her comment tonight about her father’s perfect
love for her mother? She’d said as much years ago when they were teenagers, but
he’d put that down to the romantic idealism of a young girl. Clearly she still
thought that way. But how much would Katie know about what went on between her
parents? She’d only been ten years old when her mother died at a relatively
young age. Barry Henning’s love for his wife had been enshrined in Katie’s eyes
as perfect and unsullied. How could he compete with that?

“Bapa!”
Tuti called from the front
door. “Tie shoes.”

“She hasn’t learned that yet?” Alison shook her head.

“She’s only had laced shoes for a few weeks. Give her a break.”
He shifted impatiently. “I should go help her.”