* * * *
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.”
“Bette . . .” He reached for her, but she hitched her shoulder away and he lowered his hand.
She took a deep, slow breath that for a terrifying moment he thought might turn into a sob. The thought of Bette crying turned something sharp and painful inside him.
“They sold the house to someone else.”
Her words didn’t connect in his mind immediately.
“Your house?”
“Yeah, my house.” The bitter sarcasm was worse than her earlier calm.
“A couple looked at the house this morning, and put in an offer at two-thirty—two and a half hours after I had planned to be here making my offer. No inspection, no research, they just sailed in and made an offer. Thirty minutes later, the seller accepted. It’s all done. The house is off the market.”
Reaction jumbled on top of reaction. He wanted to celebrate. She wouldn’t be moving farther away, at least not yet. He wanted to console her. Disappointment slumped her shoulders, and he knew he was largely at fault. But he couldn’t regret it.
“I’m sorry I got you here late.” He knew he should stop with the apology, but he couldn’t stem the next, belligerent words. “But it wasn’t the right house for you.”
“Oh, really? When did you become an expert on real estate?”
“It doesn’t take an expert to see anything so obvious. It’s not the right house for you,” he repeated stubbornly.
“Why not?” she challenged, her voice this time shorn of the sarcasm.
What could he tell her, when he wasn’t sure himself? “It was too far away.”
“From what?”
“From your work, from downtown, from—” From me.
The words were nearly through his lips before he stopped them. He could have said them; she would have taken them as he meant them. Only how did he mean them? Was he talking about geographic distance? So what if it would be a fifty-five-minute drive instead of thirty-five?
But in some indefinable, unalterable way he felt that buying this house, maybe any house, would take her away from him.
It was stupid. He wasn’t making any sense. If she’d already owned a house when they met he wouldn’t feel this way, so what was the big deal?
He shook his head, and watched her frown deepen. “From everything,” he finished flatly. They looked at each other. He thought perhaps they both regretted the isolation that surrounded each of them. He wished he could reach out, hold her in his arms. But a crowded parking lot didn’t offer the privacy for delivering an apology. He had to satisfy himself with touching her hair, pushing the silky dark cloud back behind her shoulder and cupping her cheek with his palm.
“I’m sorry, Bette. I’m sorry you’re disappointed. I’m sorry I disappointed you.”
Tears pooled immediately in her eyes, her lips parted, but no words came. She gave a futile gesture with her hands. He had never had an apology so eloquently accepted.
“You’ll find another house. A better one,” he promised. “I’ll help you.” No matter how he felt, if that was what she wanted, he’d do his damnedest to help her.
“Thank you,” she mumbled in a tear-clogged voice. He dredged up a smile and switched on the ignition. Bette stared at her gloved hands as they twisted in her lap, but the tears threatened to fall, so she faced the side window. She’d seen the confusion in Paul’s eyes, and she couldn’t blame him. She’d lashed out at him, and it was herself she should have been berating.
She owed him an apology at least equal to the one he’d given her. But how could she apologize without betraying herself?
She’d been trapped by her own good sense and organization. She’d set up the criteria, the checklists, the measurements, and then, when she’d found the house that fit them all, she didn’t want it. It didn’t feel right.
But she’d ignored that. She’d planned so carefully that following each step had to take her to the right place. That was the lesson she’d learned from her grandfather, it was the tenet she’d followed through life.
She’d arranged to put the bid on the house. But when she realized Paul’s schedule-be-damned attitude had cost her the house, the spurt of relief had been so strong it had terrified her. So she’d put all her confusion and anxiety on Paul’s shoulders.
Now she had another problem.
She didn’t want to find another house—at least not one to live in alone.
Watching Jan and Ed, she’d finally admitted to herself how tempted she was to look to a future with Paul. She wanted what the Robsons had—a marriage, a child, a home—and she was having a harder and harder time not thinking of those things in connection with Paul.
Jan, she feared, had seen her longing. If she wasn’t careful, she’d give herself away to Paul. She didn’t know how much longer she could fight off the wanting before the sorrow of knowing it wouldn’t happen would poison the present he could give her.