She’d said the name of his hometown as if it were a toxic waste dump site. He was used to the other reaction, the one that said that anyone from Lake Forest was a rich kid, and probably a bratty rich kid. Bette had made it sound as if he were taking her into one of the less stable portions of the Gaza Strip.
“This is the downtown area,” he informed her as they rolled between lines of neat red-brick buildings whose sharply angled roofs ended in green awnings or, for more adventurous establishments, green-and-white-striped awnings. He made a couple turns and brought her through the heart of the area, then completed their circuit.
“It’s very nice.”
He looked around at the shops, both familiar and trendy. “Yeah, it is.” If he sounded a bit defensive, too bad.
From the corner of his eye, he caught her looking at him. “Really, it is, Paul. It’s rather amazing. Everything’s so neat. Even the gas stations and train station.”
He said nothing as they passed the train station and drove next to the tracks for a while. When he turned, it was into a neighborhood of older, modest homes that seemed to grow bumper crops of bicycles and skateboards. He slowed nearly to a stop in the middle of a block.
“There, the light blue one, that’s where we lived until I was twelve.”
“Oh.”
Bette Wharton could infuse a lot of meaning into one syllable. He just wished he could interpret it. Glancing to his right as he pulled away from the curb, he caught her eyes on him and thought perhaps he saw someone truly looking at him—at him, beyond images, expectations. His shoulder muscles seemed to have abruptly grown tight, so he shifted position, steering with his right hand at the top of the wheel and his left elbow propped out the window. If that left less of his face open to his passenger’s scrutiny, well, that was a coincidence. He turned into a narrowly twisting street, and headed toward his parents’ house.
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.”