by Gina Wilkins
“I had CPR training back in college, but I’m not sure I’d have kept my head enough to remember it,” Evan admitted, warily eyeing the now-healthy baby. “I might have been one of those standing on the sidelines panicking.”
“I’ve got to admit I just reacted without thinking. After it was over, I went straight to the nearest bathroom and threw cold water on my face,” Tate confessed. “It’s not something I ever want to have to do again.”
Kim looked at him with a frown, wondering if it were true about the cold water. He certainly sounded sincere.
“So you won’t be volunteering to babysit anytime soon?” Evan teased him.
Tate laughed and held up both hands toward Daryn in a sigh of surrender. “Being wholly responsible for that little angel would scare the stuffing out of me.”
Kim focused very hard on her nearly finished meal. She kept being reminded of why it was just as well she hadn’t woven any romantic fantasies around her night with Tate.
“So, your aunt wasn’t as tough an audience as you expected?” Emma asked after a moment, apparently wanting more funny stories about the reunion.
Tate chuckled. “Considering the first words I heard her say to Kim was that if she worked hard, she could lose all that leftover pregnancy weight…”
Both Emma and Lynette gasped in outrage.
“Oh, no, she didn’t!” Lynette said dramatically.
“Oh, yes, she did.” Kim’s smile was rueful.
Emma scowled. “Why, that old biddy. She’s completely wrong, of course. You’re in excellent shape, Kim.”
“I’ll say,” Evan agreed with a teasing leer that was a nice little boost for her ego.
Tate cleared his throat rather loudly. “Treva isn’t really an old biddy. She’s not even fifty yet. But she certainly can be catty.”
“It sounds like it was a very interesting weekend,” Emma decided.
“Interesting is a good word for it,” Kim agreed in a murmur.
“Do you think you’ll go back and see them again?” Emma asked.
Kim hesitated a moment, then shrugged. “I guess I’ll wait and see how everyone reacts to Mother’s confession about Tate and me.”
“You really think she’s going to ’fess up?”
Kim nodded in response to Evan’s question. “Just before I left, Grandma told me that she’s giving her a choice of doing it herself or risking being humiliated by having Grandma break the news at the worst possible opportunity. Like in front of the church or garden club. As it is, she’s giving her a chance to present herself in the best light by telling everyone she was simply embarrassed to admit that I had a child out of wedlock, so she made up a husband for me.”
“That’s the best light?” Lynette scoffed.
“I guess so. Anyway, Grandma said she was going to tell everyone I gave in to my mother’s pleas and brought a good friend with me to the reunion, but she’s going to point out that I never once introduced Tate as my husband. That way, maybe they won’t lump me in with Mother’s lies.”
Lynette propped her elbow on the table and rested her chin in her hand. “You said you confessed to your grandmother because you felt bad about deceiving her. I guess the subject of her ring never came up?”
Kim and Tate shared a look across the table.
“Kim’s grandmother is in very poor health,” Tate said carefully. “I doubt that Kim wants to talk about her possessions right now.”
“Oh, of course.” Lynette looked at Kim guiltily. “Sorry, Kim, I wasn’t thinking.”
Daryn saved her from having to respond by tossing a handful of puffed baby treats into the air with a squeal that sounded much like, “Whee!”
Everyone laughed, which pleased Daryn so much that she performed a bit more while Kim and Tate scooped up puffed treats from the floor.
Kim didn’t linger long after dinner. “I need to get Daryn back on to her usual schedule,” she explained to her hostess. “I’ll see you at work tomorrow, okay?”
“Of course.”
“Oh, I almost forgot.” She dug into an outer pocket of the diaper bag for the carefully wrapped wedding band. “Here you go. Thanks, Lynette.”
“You’re welcome. I enjoyed watching my brother squirm.” Lynette glanced across the room to where Tate and Evan were absorbed in conversation about business. “So, Kim…you and Tate—you got along well this weekend?”
“Oh, no. Don’t even think about it,” Kim warned her friend with a fierce frown.
Lynette blinked at her innocently. “What do you mean?”
“Do not try to fix me up with Tate,” Kim warned, making sure he couldn’t hear from across the room. “I mean it.”
“Geez, Kim, it was just a question. Sure seemed to push one of your buttons, though, huh?”
“Just don’t, okay, Lynn? You’d only be causing tension in our lunches. None of us want that.”
“Well, no,” Lynette admitted. “You’re just so darned cute together.”
“So are you and Evan. Should I start pushing you at each other?”
“Evan and me? That’s crazy. Besides, I think Emma’s more his type if he were particularly interested in any of us—which he isn’t.”
“Hey, Kim, you need any help getting out to the car?” Tate called from across the room.
“No, I’ve got it, thanks,” she replied lightly. “I’ll see you guys Wednesday.”
Tate turned back to Evan, returning to whatever serious discussion they’d been engaged in before.
Nodding to Lynette to reinforce her earlier point, Kim shifted Daryn on her hip, threw the diaper bag over her other shoulder and moved to the door with her car keys in hand. She was making it clear that she needed no assistance in this or any other area of her life. She was getting along just fine on her own.
Starting right now, it was time to get back to the perfectly comfortable way things had been prior to this bizarre weekend.
She drove straight home, muttering her displeasure with Lynette beneath her breath. They’d all been so careful to avoid any potential drama during these past months of pleasant, undemanding lunches. She didn’t want Lynette rocking that boat with any ill-advised attempts at matchmaking.
Come to think of it, Lynette had been one of the driving forces behind that trip to Springfield. She’d pushed and prodded and challenged until it had all somehow seemed almost logical. Kim had thought at the time that Lynette saw it all as a lark, but had there been an ulterior motive behind her seemingly innocuous manipulations?
She really hoped not. It was bad enough that there would always be a slight undertone of tension between Kim and Tate now, even after they put this weekend long behind them. She’d hate to think any wedge would form between herself and Lynette. Lynette and Emma had become her closest friends, and she wanted nothing to change in that respect, even if the guys eventually grew tired of the weekly lunches and drifted away—a possibility that made her rather sad to even consider, despite her best efforts not to let herself get that attached to the ritual.
She did not recognize the older model used car parked at her curb when she pulled into her driveway. But she immediately identified the young man sitting on the edge of her low porch. Moving slowly in shock, she climbed from behind the wheel of the car and stared at his glum, wary face.
“Stuart? What on earth are you doing here?”
Chapter Nine
Stuart stood when Kim spoke to him, his hair falling into his face, his hands shoved deep into the pockets of his baggy jeans. “Hey, Kim.”
“You didn’t—wait, let me get the baby out of the car and then you can come inside and tell me why you’re here.”
Her head was spinning as she opened the back door and unstrapped her daughter from the car seat. Th
is weekend just kept getting stranger. Carrying the baby and the diaper bag, she walked past her brother to unlock the front door. “How did you even find me? Did you drive here by yourself?”
“Your address was in Mom’s book,” he muttered, following her inside. “I used the map app on my phone to find your house. Wasn’t that hard.”
“And Mom said it was okay for you to make that four-hour drive by yourself?” She turned to frown at him doubtfully while Daryn studied him curiously from her arms.
“I didn’t ask her. I’ve moved out.”
A dull ache was beginning to throb in her temples. She bent to set Daryn on her play blanket on the floor, then turned to her brother with her hands on her hips. “What do you mean, you’ve moved out? I thought you were planning to live at home while you attend college.”
Stuart drew a deep breath, then blurted in a tone that was both wary and defiant, “I’m not going to college.”
Kim’s hands fell limply to her sides in shock. “You’re—what? But—”
He pushed a hand through his brown hair, leaving it tangled around his miserable-looking young face.
“It was all Mom’s idea for me to live at home and go to classes, not mine. But I’ve left home, and I’m not going back. I went to Julian’s place, but he threw a fit and told me I had to go back home and start school like everyone expects me to, so I came here. I mean, you left because you couldn’t deal with all the crap anymore, right? So you can understand why I’m doing the same thing.”
It was probably the most he’d said to her…well, ever. His expression held a mixture of appeal and defiance. She had no idea what to say to him.
She pushed a hand through her hair. “Okay, wait. We should sit down, talk about this rationally. Have you had anything to eat?”
“I had a hamburger a couple of hours ago.” Looking at her with a touch of shyness now, he added, “I’m still kind of hungry, though.”
She nodded. “I have some lunch meat and cheese. Why don’t you sit down and I’ll make you a sandwich.”
“Okay, thanks. I’ll uh, I’ll watch the baby while you’re in the kitchen. I am her uncle,” he added defensively when she hesitated.
She softened. “Yes, you are. Okay, I’ll just be a minute. Call if you need me.”
“I won’t take my eyes off her,” he promised, obviously remembering the scare at their grandmother’s house.
Kim hurried into the kitchen to prepare food for him, thinking that doing so would give her a chance to wrap her head about her brother’s announcements. He must have had a falling-out with her mother or Bob or both. She was stunned that he’d come to her, but maybe he’d felt as though he had nowhere else to go. Was he really using her as a role model for leaving home? Didn’t he remember that she had left to go to college, not to avoid doing so?
Both her hands were full a few minutes later when she heard her doorbell ring. “Oh my gosh, now what?” she asked of no one in particular.
“Got it,” Stuart called from the other room.
“Um—”
But she heard the door open before she could rush in to see for herself who was ringing the bell. Setting the sandwich plate on the table, she moved quickly toward the living room. Her steps faltered when she saw who had just entered.
Could this day get any more difficult?
Tate gave her a quizzical look. “I wasn’t expecting to see your brother here.”
“Neither was I,” she assured him. “Stuart was just about to explain to me why he’s here. Why are you?”
Maybe she’d spoken a bit too bluntly for courtesy, but she was reaching the end of her tether.
Tate didn’t seem to take offense. He held up a baby bottle. “You left this in Lynette’s fridge. She asked me to bring it by to you on my way home.”
Lynette could very well have dumped the milk, rinsed the bottle and returned it to her tomorrow at work. Apparently it was going to take another stern talk before Lynette gave up completely on pushing Kim and Tate together.
“You didn’t have to do that, but thank you. Stuart, your sandwich is on the table.”
Rather than immediately moving in that direction, Stuart looked from Tate to her. “I heard the truth about you guys. Finally. I was pretty mad at you both at first, but then I realized that Mom’s the one who’s been lying to me all this time. She just dragged you into it.”
“I was going to tell you, Stuart,” she assured him guiltily. “I mean, I didn’t know myself that she’d made up a husband for me until recently, and then I let her talk me into—but I can’t blame her, really. I should have said no. I just…”
“You wanted to see Grandma again before she dies,” he said quietly, his prominent Adam’s apple bobbing with a hard swallow. He didn’t look angry, she decided. Just tired, and a little sad. “Mom told me that was why you did it. She tried to make herself sound all noble for giving you a way to come to the reunion without being embarrassed by your circumstances, but I told her she was full of bull. She just wanted you not to expose the truth about her.”
Kim studied his face. “That’s why you left? Because you found out the truth about Tate and me?”
“Final straw,” he said with a shrug. “I’m just fed up with being jerked around by her. Dragged from place to place. Never knowing what’s real or what’s a figment of her self-centered imagination. Trying to be who she wants me to be. It’s no wonder you and Julian both got out of there as soon as you were eighteen. She ran you both off, and I was stuck there by myself. But now I’m eighteen, and it’s my turn to leave.”
Every word he said struck her like a blow. She’d had no idea her younger brother had been so unhappy. So lonely. Had she really been so wrapped up in herself that she hadn’t even considered she’d left him in the same circumstances she had been so impatient to escape? Of course, when she’d left Julian had still been at home. She’d always assumed the boys had a closer bond with each other than they did with her.
“What are you going to do now?” she asked in bewilderment. “Do you even know?”
“First, I’m going to eat that sandwich.” He moved toward the kitchen. “You want something, Tate?”
Tate gave Kim a look of rueful amusement as he replied, “You go ahead.”
He turned fully to her when Stuart was out of the room. “Making himself at home, isn’t he?”
“Can you believe this? He just packed his car and drove four hours to find me after having not seen me in three years.”
“I told you he wanted a relationship with you,” Tate reminded her in a low voice. “He’s decided to blame your mother for driving you away. It makes it easier for him, I guess.”
“I don’t know what to say to him.” It galled her to have to ask Tate for help again, but she didn’t have a clue what to do with Stuart. Tate was the one who seemed to have insight into a teenage boy’s mind. “Should I try to defend Mother’s actions and send him back home? Should I offer him a place to stay until he decides for himself what he wants to do? I hate to think he’d be missing the first week of college.”
“You need to talk to him. Find out exactly what happened to make him leave home. Find out what he wants. Then you can offer advice.”
She drew a deep breath and looked at him in appeal. “Will you stay for a little while?”
“I think he wants to talk to his sister,” Tate said gently. “I don’t want to intrude.”
“No, stay, Tate,” Stuart said, coming back into the room with the more-than-half-eaten sandwich in hand just in time to overhear. “I wouldn’t mind a dude’s opinion.”
Kim lifted her eyebrows. “You’ve already almost finished that sandwich?”
“I was hungry. So, could we, like, sit down or something? You, too, Tate.”
Tate watched as
Stuart dropped onto the couch. “You remember I’m not really family, right, Stu?”
Stuart smiled a little, but shook his head as he swallowed the last of the sandwich. “I know. But you and Kim are friends, right?”
Tate sent a smile toward Kim that made her toes curl. “Yes. Good friends.”
Oblivious to the undertones, Stuart continued to focus on his own problems. “So you can give me some pointers. You own a business, right? Do you have any jobs available? I’m going to need a paycheck. Place to live, that sort of thing.”
Settling into a chair, Tate nodded gravely. “I could put you to work. The only jobs I have available for someone your age and with your lack of experience would be minimum wage, manual labor. Digging, hauling supplies, cleaning up the sites, that sort of thing. Entry-level. You wouldn’t be able to afford much rent, so you’ll either have to find a roommate or settle for a dump.”
Stuart looked a bit daunted, but he swallowed. “Okay. Fine. I can do that.”
“Now, if you’d get your degree, either in mathematics or computers, I could maybe offer you a job that’s more interesting and rewarding.”
Stuart scowled. “You’re not going to start lecturing me about going back home to school, are you?”
“You really don’t want to go to college?” Kim asked tentatively. “I mean, I know college isn’t for everyone, but you’ve always been such a good student. Mom sent me copies of your report cards and your academic awards, and you did so well in everything. I know you were an honor graduate. I have a photo of you accepting your diploma on my computer. I’d have been there to see you graduate in person, but Daryn was still so little then, and harder for me to travel with on my own.”
He looked taken aback. “You’ve kept up with my schoolwork?”
“Of course, Stuart. Just because I needed to put some distance between myself and Mom didn’t mean I’d lost all interest in your welfare. I always asked about you when I called, even if that wasn’t very often.”