by Lisa Jackson
“She can be pretty persuasive.” Carlie tossed her purse on the couch.
“Can she?” he asked, one corner of his mouth lifting skeptically.
“Very.”
“I guess I’d better avoid her.”
“Like you do with all women,” she challenged, and his head jerked up, his smile fading quickly away.
“Only the ones that I think will be trouble.” He reached into his open toolbox, withdrew a plane and turned back to the sill, as if he planned to fix the damned window this very night.
“And that doesn’t take in the entire female population?” Carlie was spoiling for a fight and she couldn’t control her tongue. It had been a long week, worrying about her parents, thinking about Ben, wishing she could just start over.
“Not quite.” He glared pointedly at her and she blushed. He seemed so much more real today. The last time she’d seen him at Nadine’s wedding, he’d worn his military uniform and he’d seemed untouchable and remote. Distant. A soldier on a three-day pass. But today, dressed in faded jeans with worn knees and thin fabric over his buttocks, a tool belt and work shirt with the sleeves rolled over his forearms, he was decidedly more human and, therefore, more dangerous.
“You obviously don’t want me here,” he said as he shaved off some of the casing. Sawdust and wood curls fell to the floor.
“You got that right.”
“Look, it’s just a job, okay?” He scowled, as if he felt uncomfortable.
“A job in my house.”
“Live with it, lady.” He uncinched his belt and it fell to the floor with a thud that echoed in her heart. She averted her eyes for a second; she couldn’t even stand to watch him remove one article of clothing without thinking back to a time when she would have liked nothing more than to lie naked with him in a field of summer wildflowers.
But she couldn’t afford to feel this way; the strain on her already stretched emotions would be too much. She couldn’t be around him until they’d dealt with the past, cleared the air and started fresh. She wasn’t in the mood to pick up the old pieces of her life and start fitting them together, but she didn’t have much of a choice. Not if she was being forced to see Ben on a daily basis.
“This job going to take long?”
“Are you asking if I’m gonna be underfoot for the next couple of weeks?” He frowned, then ran his fingers over the newly smoothed wood. “That’s a distinct possibility.”
“I’m not crazy about the idea.”
“Neither am I.” He glanced up at her, and when their gazes touched, the breath seemed knocked from her throat. Damn the man, he had no right to look so sexy. “Couldn’t one of your men—”
“So far I am my men.” He set the plane back in the toolbox. “Does it bother you so much—that I’m here in your apartment?”
“It makes me uncomfortable.”
“Why?”
“Why?” She rested one hip against the back of the couch. “I guess there’re about a million reasons,” she admitted.
“Name one.”
“You’re an arrogant bastard.”
He grinned. “Name two.”
“You’ve tried your best to do nothing but insult me from the minute you stepped into town.” Crossing her arms over her chest, she added, “I can read all sorts of accusations in your eyes, Ben, but I don’t understand them.”
“I’m not accusing you of anything.”
“Like hell! Every time we’re together you insinuate that I’m some kind of...of criminal or something—that I did something terrible and wrong and God only knows what else.” She took in a long breath and asked the question that had haunted her for so many years. “Just what was it I did to hurt you so badly?”
“You didn’t hurt me.”
“I damned well did something. You took off out of town like a dog with his tail tucked between his legs.”
“My brother was dead, damn it!” He kicked the tool belt across the floor, sending it crashing into an ottoman. “Dead! And you...you...”
“I what?” she demanded, her lungs constricting, old memories burning through her mind.
“You didn’t care.”
“Oh, Ben—”
He held up a hand, to cut off further conversation. “Forget it, Carlie. Let’s just start back at square one. You didn’t do anything. Okay? Not a damned thing!” But a tic jumped near his left eye and the muscles in the back of his neck grew rigid.
“Wrong.” She shook her head and thought hard, rolling back the years, allowing the blinding pain of the past to surface. For over a decade she’d kept it bottled up, tucked away in a dark corner of her mind, collecting cobwebs, but now she let all of her suspicions surface. “It was because of Kevin,” she said quietly, finally saying the words that she’d denied so long. “Somehow you blame me for what happened to him.”
Ben didn’t say a word, just stared at her as if she were Eve in the Garden of Eden, offering him forbidden fruit, trying to open his eyes to things better left unseen, forcing him to face the truth.
Shoving away from the couch, she picked up his heavy belt and walked the short distance that separated them, her footsteps muffled on the worn Oriental carpet. He never stopped staring at her and she only quit moving when the toe of her shoe nudged the tip of his worn sneakers. She dropped the belt at his feet. “You’ve blamed me, though I don’t know why. There was nothing I could do. Nothing either of us could do. We couldn’t have stopped Kevin from driving into that garage and letting the engine run.”
The air grew thick with cold. Rain pelted the windows and dripped down the sill into the house. Ben’s eyes narrowed a fraction and a deep anguish shadowed his eyes.
“Whether it was an accident or suicide, we weren’t to blame,” she said, wishing she could touch him and erase the pain that still lingered in his gaze.
“You don’t know that.”
Her heart ached for all the years they’d let the past keep them apart, for all the misunderstandings, the hatred and mistrust. “What could either of us have done?”
“I could have been there for him. I knew he was having problems,” Ben said gruffly. His throat worked and he stared at her with a venom so intense, she shuddered.
“Did you think he’d take his life?”
“No.”
“Neither did I.”
Ben snorted. “But I suspected he was in love with you and I didn’t care. Nadine even warned me, but I still took you out, bragged about it, even told him I thought I might marry you,” Ben said. His face was filled with self-loathing.
“Marry me?” she whispered, her heart aching.
“I’d thought about it. He’d tried to talk me out of it, claimed that you weren’t the marrying type—too interested in seeing the world.” He slammed the window shut and the room seemed suddenly still.
“Ben, I didn’t know—”
“You knew a lot, Carlie,” he said, his lips curling into a sneer of disgust, his gaze suddenly dark and menacing. He grabbed her by the shoulders, his eyes fierce, his expression haunted. “He loved you, Carlie. We both should have known it, but we didn’t want to. We were too wrapped up in each other to care about someone else. I rationalized everything—he was dating Tracy so it was okay for me to start seeing the girl that he couldn’t forget.”
“You’ve got it all turned around,” she said, but she remembered the day on the dock when Kevin had surprised her and professed his love. She’d conveniently forgotten how wounded he’d been.
“Do I?” Ben snarled, his face flushed in anger, his hands clenching and stretching in frustration. “Why didn’t you tell me about the letters, Carlie?”
“The letters?” she repeated. “What letters?”
He offered her a smile that chilled her to the bones. “You know the letters. The ones that Kevin wrote to you.”
“I didn’t get any—”
“Liar!” His fingers dug into the soft flesh of her upper arms. “We found some of the letters he hadn’t gotten around to
sending to you and they were pretty explicit about your relationship.”
“There was no relationship!” she said. “I’d broken up with him, if you can even call it that. There wasn’t even a reason to break up. We only had a few dates and I just told him I couldn’t go out with him anymore.”
“But those dates...they were powerful, weren’t they?” he said, his hold punishing.
“I don’t know what you’re getting at, Ben.”
“I know about the baby.”
Her heart stopped suddenly and she hardly dared breathe. “What baby?”
“The baby you wouldn’t have. Kevin’s baby.”
“Kevin’s baby? What are you talking about? I never had a baby....” Her voice failed her as her heart tightened in painful knots.
“Because you wouldn’t,” he snarled in disgust. The look he sent her was pure hatred.
“Oh, Ben, if you only knew.”
“I do know. You were too selfish—”
“Hey wait a minute!” She shoved hard on his chest. “You don’t know me, Ben Powell! Not at all. You didn’t stick around long enough to find out, did you?”
“I know you wanted to get rid of the baby.”
“I didn’t want to get rid of any baby,” she said, her throat closing as she shook her head in misery. Anger rushed through her veins. “You’ve got everything all twisted around. You think I was pregnant with Kevin’s child and...and that I had an abortion?”
Horrified at his accusations, she watched the play of emotions contort his face. He was serious! He really believed this insane bunch of lies. He didn’t say a word, but condemnation sizzled in his gaze and she died a little inside. If only she could reach out, touch his hand, explain...but the censure on his face was devastating.
Her knees nearly gave way when she thought of all the wasted years. All the lies. All the pain. Leaning against the wall for support, she shook her head. “I didn’t...I never...Kevin and I...we didn’t ever get that far.”
“Don’t lie to me, Carlie. It’s too late.”
“You should know better, Ben,” she said, fury taking hold of her tongue again. Eyes shimmering with unshed tears, she inched her chin up a notch and pinned him with her furious gaze. “You are the one man who should know the truth!” Her heart shredded a little. It wasn’t Kevin’s baby she’d wanted all those years ago, it was Ben’s. She’d hoped for a miracle, that though they’d made love only one night, that she would become pregnant. At the time, she’d wanted desperately to bear his child, and she’d been ecstatic when she’d skipped her period. But her euphoria had been short-lived. Though she’d taken an in-home pregnancy test that had showed positive, within weeks, she’d miscarried. Alone. The doctor had kept her secret and she’d never felt more miserable in her life.
A tear drizzled down her cheek, but she sniffed hard before any other traces of her regret tracked from her eyes. “Don’t you remember?” she demanded, pride stiffening her spine. “I couldn’t have been pregnant, Ben, because when I was seeing Kevin, I was still a virgin.”
He had been reaching for his toolbox, but he froze.
“That night on the lake. In the rain? That’s the night I lost my virginity, Ben!” she said, wounded and furious all in one instant. “And I didn’t give it to Kevin. I gave it to his brother.” And I got pregnant. With your baby. Our baby!
He stared at her in disbelief and she shook her head. “I don’t know why you want to believe this ridiculous story—”
His face drained of color. “You were a—”
“Too bad you weren’t paying attention,” she said bitterly. “You could have saved yourself a whole lot of time and trouble hating me for something that was so obviously a lie!”
“I don’t believe—”
“I don’t care what you believe,” she said in righteous fury. “You can think what you want! But the truth of the matter is that I gave my virginity to you, Ben, and if I’d been lucky enough to get pregnant it would have been with your child!” It had been with your child!
“But—”
“Kevin never touched me!”
His jaw clamped tightly together.
“I can’t believe that you let some lie and your own guilt twist things around so that you hated me for all these years. Why didn’t you come to me, Ben? Why didn’t you let me explain rather than set yourself up as judge and jury?” Trembling inside, she motioned to the door. “You’ve always been wrong about me. You were wrong then and you’re wrong now. I think you’d better go,” she said firmly. “This is my place—my private place—and I don’t want you here.”
“I don’t believe you.”
She smiled bitterly. “Then you’re a fool.”
His lips curled and she thought he might grab her and shake her, but he muttered something under his breath, snapped his jaw shut, grabbed his toolbox and strode past. The door slammed behind him with a bang that rattled the old timbers of the house and caused the suspended light fixture to swing from the ceiling.
Carlie collapsed on the couch. Ben had thought she’d been pregnant with Kevin’s child and then had aborted the baby? She let her head fall into her hands and the tears she’d held at bay ran from her eyes. How could he have believed that she could have been that heartless? Shuddering, she drew an old afghan to her neck. God, what a mess! She wished she could stop the cold that settled deep in her soul. She’d loved Ben, believed he’d loved her and yet he could be swayed by such vicious lies. And he didn’t even know the truth. She supposed that he never would.
So why would he believe such horrid lies?
Because his brother died and he felt guilty. But he didn’t have the right to believe the distortions of Kevin’s letters. The least he could have done was face her.
Closing her eyes, she remembered all the guilt, all the pain that had seared through her soul. She’d felt somehow responsible for Kevin’s death because she hadn’t loved him, because she’d never felt for him what he’d sworn he felt for her, because she’d fallen in love with his younger brother.
Though Kevin had left no suicide note, the general consensus in town was that Kevin had killed himself. He’d been unhappy and troubled for years. Some final straw had caused him to drive into the dilapidated garage of his tiny house, close the door and leave the Corvette running.
Carlie had gone to the funeral hoping to speak with Ben, but the Powells had kept their distance from the rest of the mourners and the icy glares she received from Ben’s parents kept her from approaching the grieving family. Donna had returned from the Midwest to bury her son, and George, looking pale and wan, had made his wishes clear: no one was to bother the family. Especially not Carlie Surrett.
Carlie hadn’t wanted to intrude; she’d just wanted to talk to Ben. She’d seen him in the funeral parlor and again at the grave site but he’d never so much as glanced her way. Standing still and straight, like the soldier he would soon become, he’d stared at a point far in the distant hills while Reverend Osgood had given a final blessing over the coffin.
The entire town had been stunned by Kevin’s unfortunate death. Gold Creek was a small community and the loss of one of its young citizens was a shock. Friends, family and acquaintances had come out in droves, paying their respects and grieving. For weeks after Kevin was buried people had spoken of the Powells’ “tragic loss” while shaking their heads.
Carlie had tried to see Ben, before and after the funeral, but he’d refused her calls, and sent back her letters, unopened. Desperate, she’d even plotted to go to the Powells’ home on the outskirts of town where Ben was rumored to be staying with his father and demand that he see her.
Rachelle had tried to talk her out of it. Brenda had advised her to let time go by. Her parents had told her that the Powells deserved their privacy in their time of loss.
So Carlie had waited, working up her nerve, planning what she would say to Ben. By the time she’d found her courage and was ready to tell him that they were going to be parents, Ben had already
taken off. She heard through the grapevine that he’d left town for the army. “That’s what Patty Osgood says,” her friend, Brenda, had told her three weeks after the funeral. They’d been seated at the counter in the drugstore and sipping lemonade. Brenda had swirled her ice cubes with her straw. “I usually take what Patty says as gospel, if you know what I mean. She hears all the gossip in town in church, y’know. If I were you, I’d forget him.”
But he’s the father of my child, Carlie had wanted to scream and had held a protective hand over her abdomen.
The rumor that Ben had joined up had proved true and Carlie had been left trying to mend her broken heart, hoping that Ben would call or write.
She’d started cramping the day after she found out that he was gone. The bleeding, just a few drops at first, followed. She’d lost the baby that one night and her romantic dreams of Ben had turned out to be the foolish wishes of a girl caught in a one-sided love affair: she’d never heard from him again.
“Oh, Lord,” she whispered, refusing to shed any more tears for a past that could never be changed. “Stop it, Carlie! Get a grip, would you?” Angry with her runaway emotions, she shoved herself upright and walked to the kitchen where she found a bottle of wine and poured herself a glass of Chablis.
“Not a good sign,” she told herself as she took an experimental sip and felt the cool wine slide down her throat. “Not a good sign at all. Drinking alone.” But she didn’t care, not tonight, and she wasn’t going to sit here in the dark crying over Ben Powell or his ridiculous accusations. Let him think what he wanted. It didn’t matter.
So why couldn’t she convince herself?
Her stomach rumbled though it was barely five o’clock and she remembered that she’d missed lunch. The photography shop had been busy and during the noon hour, she’d driven to the hospital and visited her father. Later, there hadn’t been any time to grab anything to eat.
Still, food wasn’t appealing. Without a lot of enthusiasm she fixed herself a small dinner of crackers, cheese and apple slices. Sipping her wine, she ate the less-than-exciting meal and didn’t taste anything, not realizing how the time was passing as she wasted the evening thinking about Ben, the man who had sworn he’d never wanted her. Not then. Not now. Not ever.