The House That Love Built

by Jean Brashear

  He was this big, utterly normal American male, a creature so exotic to Cleo’s experience that she was fairly certain no force on earth could make her forget him.

  That very insight yanked her to her feet. “It’s getting dark. We still have to find your van.”

  Malcolm’s head cocked as he studied her. “All right.” He helped her into her coat.

  As they walked, he took her hand. His own, big and callused, swallowed hers up. Cleo had a sense of safety she’d never experienced before.

  But he was a stranger and would soon be heading back to Texas. She was shocked at the depth of her regret over that. When he insisted on driving her home, she didn’t refuse. Once there, though, she forced herself to alight from his van with a quick, cool thanks.

  She didn’t expect Malcolm to follow.

  On the sidewalk, silence fell between them for the first time all night.

  She’d become so comfortable with him that it felt as if they’d met each other years ago, not hours. Anyway, through all the moves with Lola, Cleo had had to become a good judge of character.

  Still, her next words amazed her. “Would you like to come in?”

  His eyes widened in surprise. “You shouldn’t be asking that of a man you just met.”

  She was both flustered and furious. “Who put you in charge?”

  “Let me ask you this, then.” One eyebrow lifted. “Is your mother home?”

  “No,” she admitted. “She’s gone for the weekend.”

  Something flashed in his eyes. “Then you absolutely shouldn’t be asking me up.”

  Her jaw jutted. He couldn’t begin to understand that she was the adult of the family, not Lola. “Why not?”

  One long finger rose, stroked only once down her cheek. “Because, pretty Cleo—” his voice turned husky “—you are just about more temptation than this man can resist.”

  She had an urge to close her eyes, soak in that touch. “Maybe—” Her voice cracked slightly. “Maybe you don’t have to.”

  His smile spread slowly, heartbreakingly sexy. “Oh, yes. I surely do. You see, if I went up there, well, I’d have to tell my mama on myself. There’d be no choice.”

  Cleo burst out laughing, and the time-standing-still moment dissolved. “And how would she respond?”

  “She’d be forced to take a new switch from the willow tree. It’s a terrible sight, I promise you.” Golden lights twinkled in the soft brown eyes.

  Cleo couldn’t quit grinning. “How big is your mother?”

  “About two inches taller than you, but that’s not the point. Going upstairs without you wouldn’t be honorable.”

  Her smile vanished. “And you’re an honorable man, aren’t you, Malcolm?” she whispered.

  She could drown in those brown velvet eyes.

  Malcolm lowered his head, and Cleo sucked in a breath.

  “I don’t think my mama would mind if I kissed you good-night, though.”

  Cleo had no idea what to do. She’d never been kissed before.

  His lips brushed across hers, and Cleo jumped.

  “I have to keep my hands off you or I won’t leave, so you just be still, all right?” he murmured.

  Cleo nodded, her heart racing fast as a rabbit.

  He groaned faintly as, warm and surprisingly soft, his mouth pressed to hers. With exquisite gentleness, he sipped at her, nibbled at the corners. He slid his tongue against her lower lip, and Cleo moaned.

  Malcolm jerked away. “You’d better go inside, sweetheart.” His voice was raspy, his eyes hot.

  “But—”

  He shook his head. “Now, Cleo.”

  Reality landed between them with a thud. She didn’t know him. He would be gone soon. She wasn’t Lola, to flit from man to man.

  Straightening her shoulders, she walked up the steps to her building. At the top, she turned back. “When you get home, tell your mama that you were a real gentleman.”

  Maybe he looked a little sad at that, but he didn’t say anything, just nodded and waved.

  Cleo reminded herself that falling for a tall, dark Texan wasn’t in her game plan.

  But when the tall, dark Texan showed up early the next morning on her fire escape, waking her with taps on her window and flowers in his hand—

  Cleo felt certain that her carefully laid plans would never be the same again.

  Chapter Five

  Present day

  Malcolm stared out the smoked glass windows of his office to the view of Town Lake. Nine stories below, runners and walkers filled the hike-and-bike path, while canoes dotted the still waters. A jogger with a racing stroller caught his eye and resurrected the thought that had danced at the edges of his mind all morning.

  A baby. His baby. More than once, he’d been back in long years past, after he’d convinced Cleo to move to Austin and marry him. Remembering the day Cleo had called out his name, then picked her way, hugely pregnant, through the job site where Malcolm worked as a carpenter to support them while he finished school in the evening.

  He could still recall the instant spurt of panic. “Now?”

  Cleo nodded. “Now.”

  “Let’s go—how often are they coming?” He was pulling her along so fast she could barely keep up. Finally, he swung her up into his arms.

  “Put me down, Malcolm. We have time.”

  “I don’t care. I want you safe.” He slid her into the passenger seat, then rounded the hood.

  “Malcolm, your toolbox—” She pointed toward the job site. It had taken them months to buy all the tools he required, many of them at pawnshops. He couldn’t afford to lose them. “You could probably finish out the day.”

  “We need the money, but—” He raked his fingers through his shoulder-length hair. Then planted a kiss on her mouth. “We’ll be fine. We haven’t starved yet.”

  Her getting pregnant before they’d planned hadn’t been easy, but Cleo’s earlier life had prepared her well. She might look like the Snow White he affectionately called her, but she was no fairy tale maiden. She could pinch a nickel until it screamed, knew all about making meals out of simple ingredients. In their little country rent house, they’d learned to garden and can the harvest. They belonged to a food co-op which bought in bulk. She had worked as a waitress until she’d gotten too big to squeeze between the tables, and made them both clothes at night while Malcolm attended class or studied. She baked bread from flour she’d ground herself. Their baby’s layette was a product of her own stitches, one much-loved garment at a time. Malcolm’s family had wanted to help, but pride had only recently let them accept anything—his mother’s old sewing machine when his mother had insisted she wanted a fancy new one.

  “And we won’t starve,” Cleo responded, leaning against him. “Now go pick up those tools and let’s get on with bringing our baby into the world.”

  Almost twenty-four hours later, they were getting close. “Breathe, Snow, come on, keep the rhythm.”

  The pet name didn’t buy him any goodwill just now. “This is your fault, you irresistible jerk.”

  Malcolm had been up for as many hours as she had, but from somewhere he found a chuckle. “We’ll discuss that later, babe, but right now, you’re going to pant.”

  She glared and gripped his hand so tightly he could have sworn his bones creaked. She panted, long past the relaxation they’d practiced in Lamaze class. When the agony slowed, she fell slack against the pillow, her head lolling. “I want drugs.”

  But nothing could budge Malcolm’s good humor. “No, you don’t. It was your idea—nothing unnatural in the baby’s system.” He kissed her temple and brushed back her sweat-soaked hair. “Remember what they said about transition? That you’d begin yelling at me and that would mean we were close?”

  For a second she seemed hopeful. Then her belly tightened into an angry mountain of pain, and she started to cry. “I can’t do this, Malcolm.”

  He kept his tone calm despite the urge to panic. How much more of this could she take?
“Yes, you can. You’re the strongest person I’ve ever met. Now, just listen to me and breathe.”

  And damned if she didn’t, summoning up the will to keep trying. At the end of the contraction, she fell limp against him.

  He stroked her hair. “Think about our baby, Snow. You’ll be holding her in your arms very soon.”

  “Him,” she muttered.

  The next one was already under way. He sought a distraction. “We can have boys later. I want a girl just like you.”

  “I have to push, Malcolm.”

  The doctor looked up from his examination. “Not quite yet, Mrs. Channing.”

  “Please,” she whimpered.

  “Come on, babe. Tiny pants, remember. Hold back through this one.”

  Cleo squeezed her eyes shut and clutched at Malcolm as though it meant life or death.

  “The head is crowning!” the doctor exclaimed. “Okay—push!”

  Everything melted together in a cacophony of voices and pain and Cleo’s scream. Through it all, Malcolm somehow managed to keep talking to her.

  “The baby’s head is out. Now, once more to get the shoulders through,” the doctor urged.

  “Deep breath, okay, babe, one more time, you can do it—”

  With a groan torn from the depths of her, Cleo summoned the strength for one last push.

  The room rang with shouts. “It’s a girl!”

  Malcolm sagged and pressed his lips against her hair. “You did it, Snow—” His voice broke. “You did it.”

  Then they waited to hear the one important sound. Finally, it arrived, a shocked and angry wail.

  “Let me see her.” Cleo demanded.

  “For just a minute—there are things we have to do.”

  Her arms trembled with exhaustion, so Malcolm slid his beneath them. The doctor laid the tiny creature, coated cheesy white and smeared pink with blood, into their waiting embrace.

  Cleo curled protectively around their child. Tears plopped on the jet-black hair. “Oh, baby,” she whispered. “Hello, sweetheart. I’m your mommy and this is your daddy and we’re going to love you forever.”

  Malcolm lifted one hand, cupped it around their daughter’s head and realized he was shaking. “Thank you, Cleo.” He cleared his throat. “For this beautiful child. I’ll protect both of you and never let anything hurt you, I swear it.”

  “What will you call her?” a nurse asked.

  They’d thought long and hard. Cleo’s most urgent requirement was simple—no frivolous, flamboyant names like Cleopatra. Going against the mood of the times where children were named Moonflower or Sunshine, she wanted something solid, a name to grow into, to wear with pride. If it had been a boy, he would have been David. But Malcolm had gotten his girl.

  Just then, their daughter’s eyes opened as though she was eager to hear, too. Cleo glanced at Malcolm, and he nodded back.

  Her smile was tender and beautiful. “Hello, Victoria. Welcome to the world.”

  After her had been Betsey, small and dainty, always trying to be perfect. Cuddling against his side as he read her a story, his own brown eyes watching him from a smaller face, her tiny hand patting his own as if to hold him there with her. So still, while her sister climbed up and down from the big chair a dozen times.

  And the miracle of David, growing inside Cleo’s belly. The girls were so much older then, Victoria ten and Betsey eight, that it was almost like having a first child, the experience fresh and new, yet familiar. He’d spent hours rubbing scented oils into Cleo’s belly in the quiet time after the long hectic days ended, the girls in bed asleep. Cleo had been feline in her sensuality then, luxuriating in his hands on her, in her hunger for him. The woman who was always alert, ever organized and poised on her toes, ready to race, had floated through those months, and Malcolm had floated with her.

  And when he’d cradled his son in his arms for the first time, Malcolm had wept. They had shed tears together, and their love had seemed strong enough then to survive worlds colliding, hurricanes, floods…fire, wind and famine.

  But guilt had undone them, in the end. Guilt, and its legacy of pain. And blame.

  Malcolm shook his head and turned back to the contract he’d been evaluating. He had tried, through the day, to envision having that same idyll with Joanna, that sense of completion.

  He couldn’t.

  He attempted to imagine himself telling her, Fine, it’s up to you, go on with the abortion. Treating the child as though it was merely a deal that fell through, a momentary idea quickly forgotten.

  He couldn’t do that, either.

  A day ago, a week ago, he would have argued fiercely that a mother’s needs had to carry more weight than a father’s because hers was the body that would change forever, her life marked for all time by whatever path she chose.

  It was common belief that a child wasn’t real to a father until it was born, that bonding began only at that moment. But Malcolm knew better. He had felt his children tumble, listened for hours at Cleo’s belly and talked to them, even sung to them, felt them kick him in the night.

  Things weren’t the same for men as women, he knew that. A father could walk through a day and not think about the unborn child for hours at a stretch; a mother could never forget for an instant. He wasn’t the one who had to pee fifteen times a night or turn green at the smell of food cooking. He kept his familiar shape, did not become a stranger to his own feet.

  But that didn’t mean that a father wasn’t fundamentally changed by his children. Some men walked away and left mothers and children hanging, but he could not believe they ever totally forgot, even then. And for a father like himself, the change was monumental, cellular. Life-transforming.

  He might not have been the best; he was sure he had not been. Busy building a career and income with which to protect them, he had left much up to Cleo, had not tackled all that fathers did nowadays, when society understood better that two parents were needed. But he had not been an absentee dad—every night, every weekend, he had been there. He had attended plays and dance recitals, had coached endless games of soccer and baseball.

  But, paternal virtues aside, he had failed in the most fundamental way. He had not protected his family, had not managed everything right, so that in the end there was only one child left, and no family. David was lost forever. Victoria had vanished…been banished, perhaps, in the violent, angry clouds of blame and guilt that had suffocated them all. Only Betsey remained.

  Until this child.

  There had to be a way to make it fair to Joanna and still give him the life of his baby. Malcolm leaned his head against the glass and begged a God he didn’t trust, for answers.

  His intercom buzzed. “Mr. Channing? Mrs. Channing on two.”

  Mrs. Channing? Cleo?

  He snatched up the phone. “Cleo? What’s wrong?” He hadn’t heard from her in a very long time.

  “Malcolm.” The tone was amused, but he heard something odd in her low voice. “Does something have to be wrong?”

  “No, but you don’t—” Maybe he’d imagined the strain. “It’s been a long time.” He sat down. “How are you?”

  “I’m fine. How about you?” She was lying. He hadn’t misheard. She was strung taut as piano wire.

  He’d long ago lost the right to pry, but fresh on the heels of his memories, her voice sounded good to him, nerves or no. “Never better.”

  A ponderous silence fell.

  Then they both spoke at once.

  “Betsey’s kids seem—”

  “It’s Victoria, she’s—”

  “What?” Malcolm wasn’t sure he’d heard correctly. “Did you say Victoria?” His heart thumped once, hard. “Have you heard from her?”

  “She showed up on my doorstep this morning.”

  “Why? Is she okay? Is she staying? What’s—” He’d given up hope of seeing her again. Wasn’t sure he’d ever be ready.

  “I don’t know why she’s here, exactly.” She sighed, and suddenly, they were parent
s again, united by a problem. “She hasn’t changed, Malcolm. If anything, she’s worse. She looks terrible, all starved and filthy.” There was a pause. “She hates me, Malcolm. Still.”

  Cleo and Victoria. Oil and water. The too-sensitive child had grown into a teen bent on destruction. She stole. She drank. She lied. For every time Cleo had held out a hand to help, Victoria had slapped it away. He’d had only slightly better luck with the teenager who’d once been Daddy’s girl.

  “I could talk to her, see if she needs—” He raked fingers through his hair, gusting his breath out hard. “Hell, I don’t know what to do with her, but I could try to get her settled somewhere. I might have an apartment empty in one of my projects. I, uh, don’t have room at my place or I’d—”

  “I understand. Betsey told me about—Joanna, is it?”

  Malcolm winced, viewing himself from the outside, through Cleo’s eyes. She had a rapier wit and plied it with skill. It had been a game with them, people-watching while Cleo made up stories to explain them.

  Old guy needs young babe to make him feel he’s still got it—that would be her take. The image turned his voice harsh and don’t-go-there. “Joanna Wainwright. She’s a lobbyist. Bright woman.” Who the hell was he defending, Joanna or himself?

  “I’m sure she’s lovely. Blond, right?”

  He’d always liked them blond and tall. Cleo had been the only brunette he’d ever dated, and she was tiny, to boot. He had no idea why he’d departed so far from the fantasy.

  Except that he’d loved her, not them. She’d been like air and water and food. Necessary. Essential.

  “Yeah.” His jaw tightened. “Tall and beautiful.”

  “Young.”

  Now he remembered the worst of times, the ways they’d known just where to aim to hurt, to speed up the untangling of the bonds of love and time, strained past bearing by their guilt. By silence that built walls. By unforgiving memory.

  “Yes.” He sat up straighter, fingering the papers on his desk. “Listen, Cleo, I’ve got to get back to work. I’ll see what I can do to take her off your hands.” He focused on the contract, ready for goodbye.