First Impressions

by Jude Deveraux

  “Yeah, sure,” Jared said as he left the office. Outside the door, he leaned against the wall and thought for a moment. He needed to find out who painted those watercolors of Eden’s old house. He needed to—Hell, there were a thousand things that needed to be done, and he was going to do them. He went back to his office and told his secretary that he wasn’t feeling well. In fact, he felt a bout of stomach flu combined with bubonic plague coming on, and he thought he was going to be out of the office for at least a week, maybe two.

  She smiled at him conspiratorially. “Call your mom and she’ll get in touch with you if there’s an emergency?”

  “Yeah,” Jared said with a grin, then he grabbed a couple of firearms and was gone.

  It took all of Eden’s courage to get dressed and drive to the Queen Anne office the next morning. She wavered between fear and courage, then back again. What if Brad wouldn’t see her? What if he ordered her out of his office and told her he never wanted to see her again? The next second she told herself that she was being absurd. They were adults. She and Brad hardly knew each other, so he had no claim on her and therefore no right to expect anything from her. In the next moment she was down again as she thought about what Minnie had told her about Brad’s ex-wife and how she’d been unfaithful. “I am not his wife!” she said aloud as she pulled into the wide road that led to the clubhouse. “And I wasn’t being unfaithful.”

  This morning with Melissa had been very bad. During the night her daughter seemed to have lost all her bravado. She’d stopped complaining and telling Eden that she was in the right and that she should be standing up to Stuart. Instead, Melissa had poked at her cereal and said that Stuart was working very hard to make a home for her and the baby.

  Part of Eden thought she should stay at home and hold Melissa’s hand. It was “mother’s instinct.” When Melissa had been a child Eden had stayed home from work whenever her daughter had even the slightest thing wrong with her—which is why Eden had lost job after job. “You do great work,” her employers had told her. “It’s just that you’re absent too many days, so we’re going to have to let you go.”

  As Melissa pushed her cereal around in her bowl, she looked up at Eden with sad eyes, the same eyes she’d turned on her mother when she was a child. But Eden looked at her hugely pregnant daughter and said, “I’m going. Melissa, dear, you have my cell number, the number of the doctor, and the hospital. If anything happens, let me know.”

  “But what if I go into labor?” Melissa said as she jumped down from the bar stool—and the dishes in the plate rack rattled.

  “You haven’t even dropped yet,” Eden said, pulling on her cardigan. “I think you have at least six weeks before you deliver. Why don’t you take a long, hot bath and watch a few movies on TV? I’ll be back this afternoon, and I’ll bring some fish. We’ll wrap it in paper bags and bake it, like we did when you were a child.”

  “But, Mother—” Melissa began.

  “You’ll be fine,” Eden said, then quickly kissed her daughter’s cheek and hurried out the door.

  Now, as she pulled into the parking lot of Queen Anne, her heart was pounding. How angry was Brad? And how did he express anger? Yelling? No, that didn’t seem like him. Coldness? Did he just shut out a person and say nothing to them? Is that how it would be from now on?

  Eden was sure her heart was in her throat as she walked into the office of Queen Anne. She’d already driven past his law office downtown and seen that his car wasn’t there. She decided to go to Queen Anne, and if he wasn’t there she was going to try his house.

  When she knocked on his office door, no one answered, and when she tried the door, it was locked.

  She felt as though someone was watching her. Turning, she looked into Minnie’s office and saw the young woman staring at her. But the moment Eden looked, Minnie turned her head away. Eden didn’t let that deter her. “Minnie!” she said brightly. “How are you?”

  Standing behind her desk, Minnie gave Eden a look so cold that she wanted to run out the door.

  “Is something wrong?” Eden asked, her voice close to breaking. Is this what she was going to get when she saw Brad?

  “Wrong?” Minnie asked quietly, but in a deadly voice. “You were rolling around naked in the mud with my boyfriend, and you ask me if anything is wrong?”

  “Your boyfriend?” Eden asked, eyes wide.

  “Do you think he belonged to you. Do you think everything belongs to you?”

  Eden thought her brain must be spinning around inside her head. She took a deep breath. “I think that Jared McBride belongs to himself. Minnie, I wasn’t naked. No one was naked. The little truck got stuck in the mud, we were trying to push it out, and we fell. That’s all.”

  “That’s not what I heard,” Minnie said as she opened a file drawer and jammed in a folder.

  “I can assure you that—”

  “Save it,” Minnie said, turning to glare at Eden. “And here I thought you were different. You know what Brad went through with his wife. I told you the whole story as a warning. He can’t handle another adulterous woman in his life.”

  “Now wait a minute!” Eden said. Maybe she couldn’t stand up to her pregnant daughter, but this young woman was a whole other matter. “First of all, I am no one’s wife, so adultery is impossible. And second, what’s between Braddon and me, and even between Jared and me, is no concern of yours.”

  “Does that mean that you think you can walk into this town and suddenly you know what’s best for everyone? Are those of us who love Brad to stand by in silence and see him get hurt again? Is that what you think?”

  “Minnie,” Eden said softly. “I haven’t done anything to be ashamed of. If anyone thinks I have, then they are the ones who have the dirty minds.”

  “Then I guess that includes Brad.”

  “Brad thinks I—?”

  “Brad thinks you’re little better than his wife, that’s what. You hurt him, Eden. You hurt him deeply. He got on a plane just hours after he saw you in the arms of another man, and no one has heard from him since. You know what he did? He called my mother.”

  At that Eden drew in her breath. Minnie’s mother. The woman Brad had had an affair with.

  “At least I’m glad to see you remember who she is. Brad will never marry her, but she won’t believe that. You should see her now. She’s giddy with happiness because she thinks Brad’s going to ask her out again. I tried to talk to her, but she won’t listen. I told her that Brad will probably forgive you and that he’ll drop her again. But she won’t listen. And I’m caught in the middle. My mother wants me to spy on Brad, and he needs me to clean up after him. If it weren’t for my daughter needing her relatives, I’d leave this town forever.”

  “Minnie, I’m sorry,” Eden said. “I never meant—”

  “Right. You never meant to hurt anyone. You just loved having two men drooling over you, didn’t you?”

  “I think that’s quite enough.” Turning, Eden took a step to leave.

  “You were a slut as a teenager and you haven’t changed since, have you?”

  Eden drew in her breath, then she turned to look back at Minnie. The young woman’s face was so distorted with anger that Eden could hardly recognize her. There was nothing she could say to combat anger like that. She left the office.

  Minnie sat down hard on her chair, and for a moment she wanted to burst into tears. With Eden Palmer’s betrayal, all her plans for her future had been ruined. Brad would never marry Eden now. He’d had enough gossip about his first wife; he’d never set himself up for something like that again. And then there was Jared. Minnie felt betrayed by him too. She’d really felt as though they’d started something good, but it had all been an act. He’d only been in town because of Eden. Minnie wasn’t sure why Jared McBride had been there, but she knew it had something to do with Eden’s disgusting past. And as soon as he’d found out whatever he wanted to know, he’d left. So Minnie was right back where she’d started. She wasn’t going to g
et a house of her own, and she wasn’t going to get a gorgeous hunk of a man for herself. Instead, she was going to continue to be Braddon Granville’s cleaning woman and gofer.

  She put her head in her hands and thought how she’d like to make them all feel as bad as she was feeling right now. How could some girl who came to town pregnant and destitute have two men after her? And at her age!

  Minnie’s head came up. What was it Eden had said at that dinner about the man who raped her? He was head deacon at her church. Yes, that was it.

  She jumped up from her chair, jerked open the second file drawer, and pulled out Eden’s folder. She’d had to fill out an employment card, and on it was the name of her birth town in Ohio. It took only one phone call to the local library in Eden’s hometown to find the name of a “little stone church,” then she called the pastor and asked him if he could possibly find out who had been the head deacon in 1976.

  “I don’t have to look up the answer,” the man said, “because you’re not the only person to ask me that question. It was Walter K. Runkel.”

  Minnie didn’t ask who else had called; she didn’t care. “Mr. Runkel isn’t by any chance still living, is he?”

  “Yes, he is. He works at the local carpet store. Would you like to have the number?”

  “Yes, I would,” she said, smiling at the phone. “I’d like that very much.” Minutes later, Minnie hung up, then she called Eden’s house. Minnie and the rest of Arundel knew that Eden’s pregnant daughter was staying with her.

  “Is Eden Palmer there?” Minnie said in her most businesslike voice. “I have the information she requested.”

  “Information?” asked a sleepy Melissa. “She’s not—”

  Minnie cut her off. “I have the information she requested about her daughter’s father.”

  “Her…?” Melissa asked slowly, coming awake. “Father? I don’t understand. She doesn’t know who the father is.”

  “I can only give the information about the father of her child to Ms. Eden Palmer herself. Are you Ms. Palmer?”

  There was a hesitation on the phone, then the voice changed. “Yes, I’m Ms. Palmer. You can give the information to me.”

  “Do you have a pen and paper to write down the address and phone number?” Minnie heard a drawer being opened.

  “Yes,” Melissa said. “Go ahead.”

  Chapter Twenty

  EDEN couldn’t sleep. She’d tried everything she could think of, but, still, she couldn’t sleep. The over-the-counter pills had done nothing. She’d had two glasses of wine. She’d watched one of those sci-fi movies about giant ants attacking a town full of overly-made-up people, but that hadn’t put her to sleep either. Even the manuscript about the Jack the Ripper–like killer hadn’t made her sleepy.

  She wanted sleep more than anything in the world. She’d like to get into bed, close her eyes, and…What? Never wake up?

  No, that was too dramatic, but at the moment, she felt as though her life had gone from being wonderful to horrible. Odd, she thought, that having her house ransacked and being locked in a cellar hadn’t upset her much, but now she was truly miserable.

  She’d left Minnie’s office with her shoulders back, and her head high. She was innocent and Minnie was crazy. It was simple, wasn’t it? And Eden was a hundred percent in the right, wasn’t she?

  So why was she feeling so bad?

  She’d gone to the grocery, taking her time to choose foods that she knew her daughter loved. This will be all right, Eden told herself as she put lemons in a bag. Maybe she’d lost Brad, but it was better to find out that he was so jealous and unforgiving before she got serious about him. As she chose broccoli, she thought that her sympathy should go to Brad’s wife. Maybe she’d had a reason to be unfaithful.

  But Eden knew she was lying to herself. For a moment tears came to her eyes, but she blinked them away.

  It will be okay, she told herself. She had her house and her garden—and maybe she was going to have her daughter and grandchild living with her. That would be fun, wouldn’t it? She’d buy a big play set, one of those redwood things with a climbing wall. No, that would be too dangerous.

  Maybe this time she’d be able to give the child a good childhood. No day care centers such as Melissa’d had. Yes, Eden told herself, she was being given a second chance. Melissa would, of course, get a job, and she’d leave the baby with Eden, so she’d get to raise a second child.

  Eden conjured a vision of a lovely afternoon in the garden with her grandson, but unbidden to her came a TV commercial for a cruise line. A handsome couple, older, were standing at the rail of a cruise ship, arms about each other and looking at the sunset. There was another scene of dinners with wine and dancing. A couple laughing together. No children anywhere.

  “Ow!” Eden said. She had an artichoke in her hand and had been clutching it so tightly the spines on the tip of the leaves had nearly punctured her skin.

  Again, she blinked away tears of self-pity. She finished the grocery shopping, then drove home.

  Melissa was sitting in the living room, and when she saw her mother, for a second, there was a look of anger on her face that almost made Eden’s heart stop. But in the next second, the look was gone, replaced by a false cheerfulness that Eden almost found worse than the anger.

  “Did you get the fish?” Melissa asked, heaving herself out of the chair.

  “Yes,” Eden said softly. “Melissa, has something happened?”

  “Absolutely nothing. Why don’t we make dinner together? Like we used to do when I was a child?”

  Her daughter’s tone was making Eden’s hair stand on end. She put her hand on Melissa’s shoulder. “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing!” Melissa said, shrugging away from her mother’s touch.

  Eden wanted to sit her daughter down and make her talk, but she couldn’t do it. Eden knew that whatever was wrong with Melissa would be said to be her fault. “My fault,” Eden whispered.

  “Did you say something, Mother?” Melissa asked in a chilly voice.

  Eden knew that right now she didn’t have the emotional security to take on more complaints about herself. Minnie’s angry words still haunted her.

  It had been a cool dinner, with stilted conversation between them. Twice Melissa had shot Eden that look of anger—or was it hatred?

  Immediately after dinner, Melissa had gone to her room and shut the door.

  Slowly, trying not to think, Eden had cleaned up the kitchen, then gone to her room and tried to copyedit a manuscript. But she couldn’t keep her mind on what she was reading. Instead, she kept asking herself, Now what? Now what was she to do with the rest of her life? Would Stuart never show up and take his wife away? If he didn’t, would Melissa blame Eden for that too? “If you’d just been nicer to him,” Eden could hear Melissa say. “If you’d just—” Was it a fact of motherhood that you got blamed for everything bad in your child’s life?

  At two A.M., Eden was still awake, still trying to not think about her future. What was she to do now? How did she make the best of what life was handing her?

  At two-thirty, she got up, pulled on her jeans and a sweatshirt, and tiptoed down the stairs. Maybe if she had something to eat she could sleep. Or maybe if she—She stopped thinking when she looked out the window and saw a tiny light. It was like a cigarette tip or a little flashlight. Whatever it was, it shouldn’t be there.

  Her cell phone was in its charger on the kitchen counter. She’d already programmed Jared McBride’s number into it. Should she call him? He was probably back in D.C. by now, she thought. He was probably far away. He was—She picked up the phone and pushed the buttons to send the call through to him before she argued herself out of it.

  He picked it up on the first ring, but he said nothing.

  “There’s someone outside my house,” Eden whispered.

  “I know. It’s me,” came Jared’s voice. “I saw your light on. If you want to talk, I’m here.”

  Without thinking about wha
t she was doing, Eden snapped the phone closed, then ran out the door into the night. She ran past the herb garden, then headed toward the orchard. There wasn’t anything clearly in her mind about what she wanted to say, but the thought that there was someone nearby who she could talk to made her frantic. “Where are you?” she asked in a loud whisper, then felt a touch on her arm. Turning, she looked up into the dark blue eyes of Jared McBride.

  “What’s wrong?” he asked, and his face was that one she’d seen earlier: full of concern and ready to listen.

  “I…” Eden began, meaning to sit down with him and talk over her problems, one adult to another. But the moment she looked at him, she collapsed. If Jared hadn’t caught her in his arms she would have fallen to the ground.

  “Hey, hey,” he said softly, pulling her to him, holding her tightly and stroking her hair. “What’s happened? Has someone hurt you?”

  “No,” she said as the tears began. “Yes, I…I…”

  “Sssssh,” he said, holding her tighter. Then he bent and put his arm under her legs and lifted her.

  Eden sank into him, limp and helpless. Never in her life had she felt such a need to surrender to someone. When she’d been a pregnant teenager there had been a lot of fight in her, defiance. There was a streak in her that made her determined to win, no matter what she had to do. She was going to do anything she could for the child she was carrying.

  But now the fight seemed to have gone out of her. Tears came that seemed to have been buried for years and years, maybe for all of her life. As he carried her across the lawn, she clung to him, tears pouring out of her so hard that her entire body was shaking.

  After a while Jared stopped and put her down on something soft, but her arms were still around his neck. She tried to stop crying, but couldn’t.

  He sat down with her, still holding her, took out a handkerchief, and began to wipe her face.

  “I’m making a fool of myself,” she managed to say.