Wes’s eyes held a serious glint. “Not to me, it wasn’t.” He stepped toward her with the slow, patient purpose of a man with a mission.
“No?” Her voice cracked. “Why not?”
“Because I’m the one who suggested the whole thing. I called Sherry while you were cleaning up.”
Tension shimmied along her nerves at his touch, and he slid his calloused hands up her arms to her shoulders and stopped at her neck. She shivered. “Why?”
“Because,” he said in a deep voice. “I thought it would be nice if we spent some time alone together.”
Chapter Fourteen
You … you don’t have to do this,” Laney whispered, clinging desperately to the shields that protected her.
“Yes, I do. Believe me, I do.”
“But … Wes … if you think you owe me something, you don’t. Our arrangement is fine with me.” Her gaze gravitated to the family portrait that had haunted her, to the blond woman who had won Wes’s heart first, then left it aching because she had no choice. “Besides … your memories. They’re everywhere. They’re part of you. I don’t want you to try to feel something for me that you just can’t feel.”
His brows arched in denial, and his mouth formed the word “oh” on a long, drawn-out breath. “I wouldn’t do that, Laney.” How could he tell her how he’d dreamed about her, how he watched her when she slept, how he thought about her every moment during the day? How could he tell her that she was already healing him, that his weakness for her was also proving to be his strength?
“Not deliberately,” she said. Her eyes were still on the portrait, and he followed her gaze.
“Is it this house?” he asked finally. “Is it the pictures, the furniture, the things that were Patrice’s?”
“Partially,” she admitted with great effort. “I feel like everything I have really belongs to someone else.”
His eyes made a careful study of the floor. Of course she’d feel that way. He’d practically rubbed it in her face. “Then we could go somewhere else. We could go to your house. Sort of … take it easy, watch TV, swim, maybe. Just the two of us.”
Laney hesitated a moment. She’d never seen that warmth in anyone’s eyes, at least not in connection with her. And that barrier between them had given her an odd sense of security. She wasn’t certain if she was ready to make herself vulnerable to another man.
Wes’s eyes were longing, yearning, beseeching. His voice flowed over her racked nerves like warm, healing honey. “Please, Laney … I just want to get to know you better, without Amy looking over our shoulders.”
She wanted to cry, not from pain or rejection but from rising joy. She wanted to be alone with him, too, wanted to finish that kiss. With a heavy sigh, she thought of the moments over the past few days when one smile from him, one touch, could have made all the difference in her world. If he offered it now, it could make all the difference in their marriage.
“All right,” she whispered. “We’ll go to my house.”
Wes watched Laney from the kitchen window of her house as he stirred the iced tea he’d made. She stood beside the pool, her back to him, her hair sweeping across her back as the warm breeze flirted incessantly with it. The pool lights were on, bathing her in a blue, undulating light in the darkness. He closed his eyes and moaned. She was so beautiful it almost hurt to look at her.
She was still tense. Even now, looking at her from so far away, he could see the stress in her shoulders, in the way she balled her hands into fists, in the stiff set of her spine. He watched her dip a toe in the water as her skirt flapped across her calves, and realized there was more to her fear than the ghost of Patrice. Coming to this house hadn’t changed things. It had only made her escape one set of threatening memories to face another. Maybe, he thought as he dropped the ice cubes into the glasses, she needed healing too.
She didn’t hear him when he walked out to her, and quietly he put the glasses on the ground and lowered to the concrete beside her. When he reached out to take her hand and she gave it freely, he realized he’d been granted a second chance …
A second chance, Laney thought. He was giving her a second chance to love. A second chance to trust. But what if she failed again?
She had felt that warmth before, had been seduced beside this very pool, had made love in that house when her father was out of town. She had fallen in love, and it had been a mistake that changed her life.
Wes didn’t demand anything of her. He only sat quietly beside her, staring out across the water.
“Laney.” His voice was soft against the night. “Tell me about him,” he said. “About Amy’s father. He was the only one, wasn’t he?”
“The first and the last,” she whispered.
They were quiet for a moment, but Wes did not push her. His thumb made a light circular pattern on her hand, a simple gesture that spoke volumes, and she suddenly wanted him to know.
“I was eighteen when we met,” she said softly. “He was nineteen.”
“Were you in love with him?”
“Yes,” she whispered. “Hopelessly.”
A pine straw fell into the pool, and they watched it float across the surface. “He was a freshman at LSU, home for the summer, and I was just out of high school. He told me he loved me, said we’d get married. I believed him.”
“What was he like?”
Tension seeped out of her with a slow exhalation of breath, and her head relaxed against his shoulder.
“He had sandy hair and blue eyes,” she whispered. “He was in prelaw. Had aspirations of going into politics. He probably did. He was a lot like my father, I think. Hard to get to know, almost cold in his own way, and when you got some interest out of him, you felt like you’d accomplished something wonderful. But looking back, I see that it was part of his technique. I found out later I wasn’t the only one he was seeing at the time.”
“And you got pregnant.”
“Yes,” she whispered. “And when I told him that we would have to get married, he laughed at me. He wanted me to get an abortion. He said that I wasn’t mature enough to be a mother and that he wouldn’t let me trap him that way.”
Wes’s hand tightened.
“He went back to school after that, and I never saw him again. Just like that. He didn’t know or care what I had done with the baby.”
“What a fool,” he whispered. The words, the declaration, hung inconclusively in the night air. Was he reacting as a father, a friend, or a lover? she wondered. Finally Wes said, “But I’m glad it happened.”
“Why?”
“Because if it hadn’t been for him, I wouldn’t have wound up with Amy … or you.”
She closed her eyes, resisting the urge to latch on to the illusion of something that wasn’t hers. Could it be that he was falling in love with her? Could it be that she loved him? Could it be that this time that volatile emotion wouldn’t break her heart?
He tucked her hair behind her ear. “You’ve been through so much. Are you happy now, Laney?”
She squeezed her eyes more tightly. “Yes,” she whispered. “I’ll never be Patrice. I know that, but—”
“You’re different from Patrice,” he cut in firmly. “But that’s good. I need someone who’s different. If you were the same, it would be harder …”
Harder to do what? she wanted to ask. To forget Patrice? To fall in love again? But those were questions she had no right to ask.
He looked over at her, and she would have given every cent she owned to know what he was thinking. “You really do make everything easy, Laney.”
She couldn’t meet his eyes, for she couldn’t risk letting him see the hope rising in them.
“This all makes you uncomfortable, doesn’t it, Laney?”
“What?” she asked, making herself look at him.
“Anything that borders on … intimate? You’re afraid of me, aren’t you?”
She tried to find an honest answer, for she wasn’t certain herself. Keeping each other a
t arm’s length was safe, but it didn’t breed happiness. Yet the very thought of it growing into more left so much potential for heartache …
“I don’t want either of us to be hurt,” she whispered. “We’ve both had our share.”
“And I don’t want you to be uncomfortable,” he said. “We don’t have to sit here and keep wondering where this will lead. We could go to a movie, get some dinner, then go back home and sleep the way we’ve slept for the past few weeks. No pressure.”
She couldn’t hide the intense disappointment that fell over her, nor the intense relief. “OK,” she said with a smile.
With the pressure gone, they went out like two people at the threshold of a relationship, getting to know each other on a date, and forgetting the marriage that stood like a wall between them.
Laney had expected her sense of well-being to be chased away when they arrived at Sherry’s the next morning to pick up Amy.
But the child seemed to have lost all her hostility of the previous day, and she bubbled over with stories about the movie, the popcorn balls she and Sherry had made, and the fact that she’d gotten to stay up until eleven o’clock. Her stories were addressed as exuberantly to Laney as they were to Wes, and when she disappeared into the bedroom to get her overnight case, Sherry took Laney aside.
“Don’t let her fool you. She spent most of the night with that little book you made for her. It was just what she needed, Laney.”
Laney saw that Sherry was right as Amy babbled all the way home, laughing and giggling. But when she suddenly grew serious as they arrived home and asked them to sit down, Laney held her breath in fear.
“I was thinking,” Amy said, as if she’d given it a great deal of thought, “that with school out soon and me being able to stay home with Laney every day, there isn’t going to be that much to do. Wouldn’t it be better if we lived at her house, where we could swim whenever we wanted, and I’d have that neat bedroom she fixed for me, and I could invite my friends over and …”
Laney’s hand came up to cover her mouth, and she turned to Wes, eager to share her joy with him. But the blank look on his face changed everything.
“No. We’re staying here. This is where we live.”
“But, Daddy, this house is too small. Why should we live here when we have a big house we could live in?”
“Because it’s our home,” he said sternly. “Besides, Laney’s house is for sale.”
“I could take it off the market,” Laney said quickly. Her eyes were pleading, entreating. “Wes, she wants to.”
“I don’t care,” he said, standing up. His mouth trembled. “I don’t want to.”
“But, Daddy—”
“I don’t want to discuss it anymore,” he said. And before another argument could be uttered, he went back to the bedroom and closed the door.
Amy stood with her arms crossed, gaping at the closed door, and turned back to Laney. “I just thought it would be nice,” she said, her lip quivering. “We don’t have to.”
Laney pulled Amy close and made her look into her eyes. “It’s hard for him to leave here,” she said quietly. “We have to give him more time.”
“OK,” Amy whispered with a dejected shrug. “I’ll go put my stuff away.”
Laney watched as Amy, her spirits suddenly lagging, vanished into her room. What happened? she wondered, astounded. How had she gone from the mountaintop to the barren valley? How had he given her such hope last night then turned his back on her this morning?
Quietly she slipped into the bedroom.
Wes was sitting on the bed, facing Patrice’s picture, pain and confusion etched in the lines of his face. “I’m sorry,” he said without looking at her.
“I know.” She sat down next to him on the bed. “I know it’s hard for you,” she whispered, glancing at Patrice’s picture. “But think of Amy, Wes. This is such a big step. It means she’s accepting our marriage. Maybe she’s even accepting me.”
He didn’t answer. His eyes remained locked on Patrice’s face.
“She’s ready to move on, to put the past behind her. It’ll always be a part of her, just like your past will be a part of you. You can both take your past with you wherever you go. But Amy needs a clean break. She’s torn, and she feels those memories tugging at her.”
He nodded, saying without words that he understood that feeling for he felt it himself.
“It would be good to leave here,” Laney whispered. “Amy doesn’t want to slip me into the empty slot in her life that says ‘mother.’ By doing that she probably feels she’d be erasing Patrice completely. If we go to my house, start over in a new environment, she won’t be covering the old memories with new ones. They could coexist.”
He sighed heavily. Her wisdom wasn’t just for Amy. It was for him too. He squeezed his eyes shut. “It’s hard,” he said.
“Of course it’s hard,” she said. “And I realize that one of the reasons we got married in the first place was so you could keep this house. But you were doing it for Amy—and now she wants to leave.”
He got up and went to the dresser, braced his elbows on it, and hung his head.
“I can’t afford the mortgage on your house, Laney. I still owe you all that money. I hate that. I can’t stand the thought of living off you.”
“But the house is paid for. And we’re married, Wes. Everything I have is yours. I want it to be that way. My father’s money never gave me one minute of happiness until I was able to share it with you.”
Wes turned back around and regarded the beautiful woman sitting on his bed. Nothing in her generosity should have threatened him, yet it did. The fact that he had taken her money once haunted him daily whenever his own role as provider came to his mind.
“So much has changed,” he moaned. “In the last year, our lives have turned upside down. This house has been the only thing that’s stayed the same. It’s just like it was when Patrice was alive. I need that.”
The confession moved Laney, and she stood up and faced him. “I know you do, Wes. But the memories can go with you. You can pack them in boxes. You don’t have to make Amy live in them.”
He closed his eyes and pulled her into a fierce hug, and for a moment he rested his forehead on her crown. “It’s hard to pack memories in boxes,” he whispered.
“I know it is,” she said. “But I’ll help you. I’ll help both of you.”
He looked slowly around the room. If a real relationship with Laney was ever going to have the chance to develop, he would have to stop clinging to his guilt and his ghosts. Leaving would be like stepping out of the cloak that had been his life and stepping into a new one. It terrified him; it hurt him. But it was time he made a sacrifice for Laney. She had given him so much. And she’d never had a cloak of her own—not one that fit. It was so little for them to ask of him. And so much.
He tightened his embrace and set his forehead against hers, closing his eyes so she couldn’t see his pain. “All right,” he said at length. “We’ll move. For you and Amy.”
Chapter Fifteen
To make the move easier for all of them, Laney suggested that they pack only the things they would have immediate need for and come back for the rest as they needed it. That way, she reasoned, they could ease into the move without making it seem so final. Since Wes made no effort to sell his house, she knew it would be quite some time before he was ready to empty it completely of its memories.
The move, however, drew her closer to Amy and, surprisingly, to Patrice. As they sat on the floor and went through Amy’s things, deciding what to leave and what to take, Laney found herself hurting for the woman who had been forced to leave it all behind.
“What’s this?” she asked Amy when she found an old, threadbare doll with a stained face and only a trace of a mouth and eyes.
“It’s the doll I used to carry around when I was a baby. Mommy made it for me.”
Laney examined the doll. Despite the wear and tear, it had obviously been lovingly crafted. Smil
ing, she laid it aside and opened the little memory box that sat on a shelf. “Can I look in here?”
“Sure,” Amy said, taking it from her hands and gazing through the contents. “It’s my memory box. This is the ribbon I got for perfect attendance in choir at church. And this is the rose Mommy and Daddy got for me to wear to church one Easter. And this is the little Bible that Mommy gave me when I was baptized.”
Laney looked down at her, her eyes misting over. “You were baptized? Already?”
“Brother Alan says I have a very mature understanding of salvation for my age. I was five then.” She took the Bible out and feathered her fingertips across the lettering. “I’m really glad Mommy was still here when I got saved, so she knew for sure that I’d be with her someday. Daddy said God worked it all out that way.” Amy looked up at her. “When were you baptized, Laney?”
Laney shook her head. “I wasn’t.”
“Never? Really?”
“My father didn’t raise me in church. He didn’t believe in anything he couldn’t see.”
Amy’s eyes rounded as she gazed up at Laney. “But you believe, don’t you?”
Laney gazed down at her daughter. “I didn’t before. But I’m seeing God’s work all around me now. Miracles. Yes, I believe.”
“But have you asked Jesus into your heart?” The question came very natural to the child, and seemed very sweet, and it filled Laney with a deep sadness that something profound was lacking in her life.
“No, honey, I don’t guess I ever have.”
“But he’ll come, if you’ll ask him. I promise, Laney. It’s the coolest thing. I can help you ask him, if you want me to.”
Laney wasn’t sure why tears assaulted her with such force, but her face twisted, and she covered her mouth. “Would you do that for me?”
Amy got on her knees and put her arms around Laney’s neck. “I’ll tell you what to say to him,” she whispered.
And beginning with “Dear Jesus,” Amy led Laney into the prayer of salvation.
When they were finished, Laney sobbed against her daughter’s shoulder and clung to her with a mixture of joy and love and overwhelming gratitude.