By Candlelight

by Janelle Taylor

  And then the door swung inward.

  It was so unexpected they both jumped, still locked in a tight embrace. It was his mother, staring at them with an expression of horror, until her manners took over and she said in her brittle way, “Well, Jake, why don’t you and your—friend—come inside out of the cold…”

  It had been a stupid, stupid thing to do, but in retrospect he wondered if he hadn’t flouted convention on purpose, just to get a rise out of his folks. At the time, though, he was a slave to raging sexual needs, and they were all tied up with Katie. Now that he was at the house, he just wanted to be alone with her, but he was forced to sit in the living room with his mother across from him, Katie at his side. His father had parked himself in his den and seemed oblivious to their arrival.

  When his mother looked inquiringly at Katie, Jake made the introductions. “Katie, this is Marilyn Talbot, and Mom, this is Katie Tindel.”

  “How do you do?” Marilyn said, to which Katie made appropriate responses.

  Though Katie sat next to him on the couch, there was too much space between them. Jake chafed. With a familiarity he shouldn’t have revealed, he moved closer to her, taking her hand with his. It showed a united front, and though Katie was dead quiet, Jake sensed that his mother got the message.

  He couldn’t remember the conversation, something about where Katie was going to college and what her parents did for a living. She was careful in her responses. Her father worked as an independent logger, and her mother filled in as a part-time checker at a grocery store.

  “Maybe your father would like to meet Miss Tindel?” his mother suggested to Jake, and before Jake could protest she had risen stiffly from her chair and crossed to the den door, rapping twice, loudly.

  His father appeared, a scowl on his features. He detested being disturbed when he was working. But when his mother whispered something about “Jake’s girlfriend,” Phillip squinted a glance in Katie’s direction. He managed to cross the room and shake her hand, then pour himself a drink before he disappeared back into his lair. His mother, taking note, poured herself a heavy splash of scotch, something Jake had never seen before or since.

  It felt like ages before Jake could herd Katie out of there, and then when he managed it, he said, “Come on,” and dragged her toward the stairs and up to his bedroom.

  “Jake!” she hissed, hanging on to the rail.

  “Just for a minute,” he insisted.

  “Your mother’ll call the cops!”

  “Stop being paranoid.”

  He damn near had to haul her over his shoulder in the fireman’s carry, but finally he got her safe inside his bedroom, shutting the door gently behind them.

  “Do you want her to hate me?” Katie demanded.

  “No. I just want to be alone with you for a couple seconds more.”

  And he wanted her to see his room, though he wouldn’t have been able to admit it. Why, he couldn’t say; but it was the only part of the house uniquely his, and he wanted Katie in every facet of his life.

  Nervous as she was, she managed to glance around, noting the myriad of Little League baseball trophies, the football helmet given to him at the end of this season, and the books and paraphernalia he had amassed over the years. Her fingers touched on a picture of him holding up two, thirty-pound salmon.

  “Fishing trip with my dad and Phillip.”

  “Looks like fun.”

  “All they did was fight.”

  Something in his tone arrested her, and the way her gold eyes looked into his soul was the real reason he loved Katie Tindel. She understood. They might be from two different worlds, but she understood him like no one else.

  “Come on,” he said, leading her back out of the bedroom and down the front stairs.

  His mother waited in the entry hall, unsmiling and holding her drink between clenched fingers. Katie glanced nervously at Jake, and he clasped her hand within his. They stopped in front of his mother. He towered over her; but she was on a level with Katie, and her austere, judgmental regality made Katie lean toward him in support.

  It ticked him off. This, then, was what was wrong with his relationship with his parents. He wanted to yell at his mother and tell her, “This is the girl I’m going to marry, so stop being such a bitch!” He managed to hold his tongue with an effort; but it put a pall over the ride back to Katie’s place, and when she began to climb from the car, he grabbed her arm, holding her still for a moment.

  “My mother’s always like that,” he apologized urgently. “It’s not you; it’s her. She doesn’t know how to unbend, and I’m sick of it. It won’t matter for us.”

  “Won’t it?” She shed his letter jacket, laying it over the passenger seat, a move packed with meaning.

  Jake’s jaw hardened. “No, it won’t. You’ll see.”

  Her lashes fluttered, hiding her expression, but he knew she didn’t believe him. He wasn’t certain he believed it himself; but come hell or high water he was damned sure he was going to marry Katie Tindel, and Marilyn and Phillip Talbot could just get over it!

  That meeting made Jake realize more than ever that he was fighting an uphill battle. Spring break arrived, and he spent every moment he could with Katie, though with her job and his parents’ demands on him, that time was more limited than he would have liked. But then the weeks started counting down to graduation, and with each passing day came a fever of anticipation mixed with dread. Changes were in the air. Serious changes.

  And somewhere in there Jake conceived the idea to “marry” Katie Tindel in the old, forgotten church.

  It was a chance comment by his mother to a friend that put it in his head. He was home, locked in his bedroom where he spent most of the few hours he was forced to be at home, if he could, though Darcy, the Talbots’ maidcum-cook, had informed him in her sympathetic way that his presence was expected at dinner. A command performance, Jake knew, for when his mother decided to stand on ceremony, the rest of them had to salute and fall in line.

  A couple Marilyn had known before she was married—Celia’s parents, as it turned out—were visiting the West Coast for business, and she had made certain they stopped in Portland before their return. They were staying at one of Portland’s nicest hotels, and they arrived in Lakehaven via limousine, an ostentatious touch that amused and delighted Marilyn.

  As Jake headed downstairs and tried to slip past the living room where the adults were enjoying the cocktail hour, he overheard his mother say in an aggrieved way, “I wouldn’t have allowed that wedding to stand. It wasn’t legal, in the eyes of the state, so those two kids were just living together, no matter what you call it. Marrying each other doesn’t count. You must have someone legally certified to perform a marriage.”

  “Oh, you’re absolutely right!” Celia’s mother gushed. At the time Jake had only known her as a rather round, easily swayed middle-aged women with too much money and too little sense.

  “I told Dorothea if she wanted grandchildren who weren’t bastards, she was going to have to force a wedding. Reciting vows of love is all well and good—” Marilyn’s voice was withering—“but it doesn’t stand up in court.”

  “What did Dorothea do?”

  Marilyn snorted, her voice trailing away as she walked across the room. “Told her daughter she wouldn’t get a dime unless she moved out or married him proper. They were married within a month.”

  The other woman sighed. “Still, it’s kind of romantic, don’t you think?”

  “Silly vows of love by candlelight? It’s for children with no sense.”

  His mother’s words haunted him as Jake sat down at the table for dinner. He was the first one into the dining room, and he stared at the crisp white linen, fine china and crystal candlesticks. The candlesticks had been his grandmother’s, a delicate woman who had shown a quirky sense of humor even as she was dying. She was the only person in the family Jake had ever really related to, unless you counted his brother, who had his moments now and again.

 
As he stared at the candlesticks, the wheels began turning in his brain. Candlelight, weddings, Katie in his bed once and for all…

  Then his brother suddenly strode into the room.

  “Phillip!” Jake declared, surprised. He had been banned from the house, the last Jake had heard.

  “The proverbial bad penny,” Phillip responded insouciantly. “Think the folks’ll care that I dropped in? What is this? Some special dinner?” He frowned at the elegant table array.

  “Mother has friends from the East Coast.” Jake shrugged. He was inordinately glad his brother had decided to show up, especially now, when the evening had looked like a big yawn before.

  “Hey, Darcy!” Phillip called. “Why don’t you set another place? I’m starved.”

  Jake lifted a brow of amusement. As Darcy complied, shooting anxious glances over her shoulder as she expected Jake’s parents and guests to appear at any moment, Phillip lounged in the chair across from his brother. He looked like hell. His eyes were red-rimmed, and his waist was thickening. He had once been a fit, fairly handsome male, but already years of wasting his life had taken their toll.

  At that moment the entourage entered the dining room. Marilyn couldn’t quite conceal her gasp of horror at sight of her eldest son. Celia’s parents hovered behind the Talbots, peeking over their shoulders, eager to see what calamity had befallen their friends. Phillip scratched his ear and said, “I’m Phillip Talbot, Jr., the uninvited guest. Could I get a drink, do you think? Or would that make everything even worse.”

  “You might have called,” Marilyn managed, her lips tight. She seated her guests, ignored Phillip’s request, then managed to monopolize the conversation with one brightly introduced topic after another.

  Phillip didn’t even care. He ate the succulent prime rib, potatoes and vegetables as if he hadn’t seen food in a year, which was highly unlikely given the state of his girth. When a delicate, creamy flan was served, he wolfed it down. Jake’s father eyed his son with displeasure that bordered on revulsion, and at that moment Jake almost envied his older brother’s complete lack of social conscience. Wouldn’t it be nice to flout convention, just once? To be out from under the thumb of parental expectation?

  That’s when the idea took root. The idea of a secret marriage appealed to him on many levels. He loved Katie and wanted to make her his wife, but he knew they were both too young. His parents, of course, would have a collective coronary at the idea, but that wasn’t even the issue for Jake. He wanted to be able to provide for her, to be his own person. If that took a few years of college first, so be it.

  But Katie Tindel was going to be his wife.

  “Hey, Phillip,” Jake said, corralling his older brother as soon as they could escape the dinner table. “Got a minute?”

  “Bring a snifter of brandy to the back porch, and I’ve got an hour. In fact, bring the whole bottle. By the way, how was the champagne?”

  “Gross.”

  Phillip clapped Jake on the shoulder, chuckled heartily, then headed out the back door while Jake went in search of the brandy. Luckily, his parents were touring the house with their guests, so he sneaked a half-full bottle and a crystal snifter off the corner bar, thrust them under his jacket and joined his brother outside.

  It was a chilly spring night. Phillip, however, didn’t appear to feel the cold as he lounged on the rattan outdoor furniture his mother had artfully arranged for this occasion.

  Jake handed him the bottle, then the glass, to which he poured himself a healthy dose. “What is it?”

  “This girl I’m seeing. Our parents would never give her a chance.”

  “And?” He gazed at Jake over the rim of his glass.

  “And I’m going to marry her.”

  Phillip wheezed out a laugh. He practically buckled over in amusement. “You got a lot to learn, little brother,” he advised. “You don’t have to marry ‘em.”

  “This girl’s different,” Jake explained tersely.

  “They all are,” he muttered ironically. “Trust me, I know.”

  Jake’s envy of his brother died a quick and permanent death. Phillip saw issues only in terms of himself, and it didn’t look as if he were likely to change. If Jake planned to “marry” Katie, he would have to find a way to handle it all on his own.

  He came up with the idea of the old church when he happened to drive by that section outside the city on a windy day in late March. The church itself was locked up, but Jake figured it wouldn’t be hard to break into. This wasn’t his forte, generally speaking, but he was willing to step outside himself in the name of love.

  When he outlined his idea to Katie, her eyes filled with glistening tears. “I’ll get a dress,” she whispered, and they set the date for a Saturday afternoon the following month.

  The date dawned dark and gloomy, but with that feel of a storm approaching that makes one almost welcome it. The future had arrived in force, and Jake, dressed in a pair of black cotton slacks and a white shirt, threw his letter jacket on over the top to make himself appear more casual. He didn’t want to have to explain things to his mother, should she somehow catch him on the way out.

  But it was his father who arrested him as he stood with one hand twisting the front doorknob. “Where’re you going?” Phillip, Sr., demanded.

  “Out.” Jake shrugged as if it were of no consequence. A faint clink sounded inside his pockets as the crystal candlesticks within knocked lightly against each other.

  Jake swallowed. Two pilfered ivory candles and a book of matches rounded out the booty. Distantly, he remembered he needed to filch a Bible as well, but now it looked like the gig was up anyway.

  “Just out?” his father questioned.

  “I’m going to see Katie,” he mumbled.

  “Who’s Katie?” his father asked, catching his mistake instantly as he said, “Oh, that girl.”

  “Yeah.”

  They stared at each other, both waiting for the other to offer more. Eventually Phillip sighed and gave Jake a desultory wave of goodbye. Jake headed for the bookcase, grabbed the family Bible, then let himself out into a wild, rain-driven afternoon and the promise of a wedding to the woman he loved…

  * * *

  Now, heaving a sigh, Jake hit the automatic stop button on the treadmill and turned from a fast jog to slow walk, then eventually a dead stop. He glanced around the exercise room as he swiped at his sweating chest and neck, glad that no one was paying any particular attention to Talbot’s president.

  Grimly, he headed to the showers to wash up. He recalled that wedding to Katie Tindel painfully. It was excruciating to remember how long and hard he had worked on the vows he had uttered that day. Now, as he remembered pulling that crumpled piece of paper from his pants pocket and reciting solemn words of love and commitment while candles flickered and the rain beat outside, he felt almost ill. He had been so callow. So green! He had loved her with all that he was, his heart hers for the taking.

  And she had taken it and stomped on it well and good.

  Muttering an oath beneath his breath, Jake tossed off his workout gear and stepped under the shower’s hot, needle-sharp spray. Never, never, would he allow any woman to treat him like she had. He hoped, with a passion that wasn’t altogether healthy, that she and her lovely daughter stayed out of his way.

  He wanted nothing to do with either one of them.

  Chapter Seven

  Jake finished redressing and was leaving the exercise room when he ran into Phillip, who was just entering.

  “Working out?” he asked his older brother sardonically. He knew Phillip’s habits, and it was a pretty good bet he had never even seen the working side of a treadmill or weight machine.

  “Nah. Well…yeah, maybe.” He shrugged, glancing down at his gut. “Probably be a good idea.”

  “So, what are you doing?” Jake couldn’t help asking. Phillip wasn’t known for slaving away at the office. He didn’t even have a specific job. Jake’s father had just made it clear that as lon
g as Phillip wanted it, he was to have a job with Talbot Industries. Jake complied, but it wasn’t easy explaining what Phillip’s function was to the other employees at the best of times. Today, while he felt unsettled and uncomfortable, Jake couldn’t help needling Phillip a bit. After all, Talbot Industries had over a thousand hard-working employees who earned their pay. A loafing member of the Talbot family did not sit well with anyone.

  “I’m getting ready for those auditions next week,” Phillip answered.

  “They’re not till Tuesday,” Jake responded irritably.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  Jake opened his mouth to tell him, then thought better of it. Phillip wasn’t interested in becoming a full-fledged, functioning employee, so Jake would be just wasting his breath. Instead, he changed the subject. “We’re meeting with Marcus Torrance and the other developers from Diamond Corporation this afternoon. Did you want to be there?”

  Phillip hesitated. “Diamond Corporation?”

  “The company that wants to do a joint venture on that property by the airport. Miniwarehouses. That kind of thing.” Jake sought to jog his brother’s memory. It was a multi-million dollar deal that had been in the works for months.

  “Oh…yeah…” Phillip seemed to be off on his own train of thought. It irked Jake that he couldn’t keep his mind on anything but the damned audition. “No, you go ahead,” he said, unaware of Jake’s growing impatience. “By the way, Pam’s looking for you.”

  Pam was Jake’s secretary. Nodding to Phillip, Jake headed down the dark green carpeting that led to the elevators. When he returned to his own offices, Pam looked up in relief. “There’s some problem at the Beaverton strip mall. Sabotage.”