Janey pressed her lips together. Her pretty chin took on that stubborn tilt he knew so well. “Not a good idea, either,” she said.
“Then where?” Thad demanded in a flat, non-negotiable tone. He looked deep into her eyes. “Because we are going to talk, Janey.” Whether you like it or not!
“Fine. I’ll follow you to your house.” She gave in with a beleaguered sigh and another stormy look. “But I’m only staying five minutes,” she said.
Thad thought about the ring in his pocket and knew five minutes was all it would take.
JANEY HAD NEVER BEEN any good at rectifying the mistakes she made in her life. And she sensed tonight was going to be the hardest yet. Her suspicion was confirmed the moment she walked in and saw the dining-room table set for a romantic dinner for two.
She turned to Thad, not sure whose heart she was going to be breaking—his or hers. Just knowing, for all their sakes, it had to be done. And done soon.
She tried to break it to him as gently as she could. “I never should have started seeing you.”
He eyed her cautiously. “Seeing me or sleeping with me?”
Leave it to him to try to boil it down to a mathematical problem he could solve. “Both,” Janey said succinctly.
She drew a deep breath, and plunged on, more than ready to get this over with. “I thought I could handle it, if I set out certain boundaries, made certain allowances.” Like the one that said it would be okay if she didn’t require him to love her, that said it was okay for them to run their relationship and upcoming marriage like some sort of sophisticated arrangement. But Chris’s injury had made her see that they were all still vulnerable anyway and feelings were involved. And it was that potential for hurt and spirit-crushing disillusionment that she couldn’t allow. Not in her life. Or in Chris’s. Not again. Now when they had already suffered so much.
Not that she expected Thad to understand.
He just saw what he wanted, and figured out how to get it.
But she couldn’t do that. And neither could Chris.
She ducked her head and continued what she knew she had to say, “The same way I thought Chris could handle chasing his dream of becoming a pro hockey player one day.”
Thad held out his hands beseechingly. “He can still do that.”
“Physically, maybe,” Janey allowed. She swallowed hard around the rising knot of emotion in her throat. “Emotionally, he’s not any better equipped to handle setbacks than his father was.”
Thad went very still, understanding at least some of what she was saying at long last. Concern etched on the handsome features of his face, he wrapped an arm around her shoulder and asked gently, “He’s still not talking to you?”
Janey shrugged and struggled not to cry. “I guess that depends on whether you count monosyllables or not. He’s stopped working hard at his math, too.”
Thad paused, thinking. “Maybe he just needs some extra help.”
“And maybe,” Janey said, shooting Thad a resentful glance as she moved away from Thad’s compelling touch, “Chris never should have started down this road in the first place.”
Thad clamped his lips together. “And for that you blame me.”
Janey lifted a hand, let it fall. She had to give credit where it was due. “If you hadn’t showed Chris’s letter to Joe or pushed to have him go to camp—” she accused hoarsely.
Thad frowned. “I would have broken his heart.”
Janey sighed and rubbed a hand across the tense muscles in the back of her neck. “It’s broken now.”
Thad’s legendary patience began to fade as he snapped, “He’s twelve, Janey. All he knows is that he didn’t get to finish camp and he’s got weeks of physical therapy to complete. Once that is done, he’ll be good as new.” Thad paused, looking her up and down in a way that could not be described as anything but critical. “But you won’t be, will you?” He advanced on her, muscles tense. “All this time you’ve been saying Chris can’t take rejection when you’re the one with the problem. You’re the one who falls apart the first time you hit a bump in the road or meet a little resistance.”
Janey gasped in dismay. “That’s not true.”
He grasped her by the shoulders. “Then why are you pushing me away?”
“Because I can’t do this.” Janey wrested free of his grip and moved away. She threw up her hands in frustration, angry that he wasn’t letting this be a simple painless goodbye, angry that it hurt so damn much. Angry most of all that she had let herself love him more than life itself!
“Can’t do what?” he stormed right back.
Sadness and regret colored her tone. “I can’t pretend that you and I can just decide we want to be a family and have it all magically work out. I can’t pretend that I can juggle all these balls, be a businesswoman and a baker and a mother and a lover to you, never mind a good wife, and succeed at any of it!”
Grimly, he looked her up and down. “So you’re afraid to risk your heart and open yourself up to marriage and family. At least over the long haul.”
Once again, Janey noted, Thad had said nothing about love. “I am wary,” Janey countered evenly, “of making a mistake that is going to cost us all. Just because it was something I wanted to do at the moment. Like make love with you.”
“So in other words,” Thad said slowly, looking more and more resentful with every second that passed, “now that it’s all becoming real—with problems and obstacles to overcome, instead of all heart-warming fantasy—you don’t want any part of it.”
The ice in his voice chilled her to her very soul. Janey folded her arms in front of her. “I wouldn’t have put it that way. But yes,” she said defensively, forcing herself to look him in the eye. “You’re right. Chris’s mishap on the ice and his reaction to it have brought me back to reality.
“The hard fact is,” she continued with heartfelt weariness, “you’ve been as recklessly caught up in the one-solution-fits-all as I have been, thinking that in hooking up with each other and getting married, we would both magically have the ideal family we have both always wanted. You’d have a son again. Chris would have a father again, and I’d have someone to share parental responsibilities with. Heck, we’d even have a—a—‘sex buddy’ in the bargain.”
“A sex buddy!” Thad echoed furiously, as if he had never heard the term.
Janey flushed. “Well, what else would you call it?” she demanded, embarrassed beyond belief. “We’ve certainly never talked about love.” Because if he had, things might have been different. But they weren’t. And like it or not, Janey had to remind herself of that. Again and again and again, if necessary.
“So you’re saying what? You want me out of your life?” he demanded irately.
“Yes,” Janey snapped right back. The sooner the better. Before she broke down in front of him and started crying like there was no tomorrow. Because even if he didn’t love her and never would, she did love him.
Thad continued facing her. He looked as he did at the end of a hockey game, when the chips were down, the seconds were ticking away. And he still hadn’t given up, he was still sure with the right maneuvering he would bring his team to victory.
“I’m not abandoning Chris,” he told her quietly after a moment. “I’m still going to be there for him if and when he needs a friend. Regardless of how you feel about me.”
Janey knew he was trying to reassure her but it was the absolute worst thing to say. Because Janey had feared he only wanted a ready-made family all along. And now he was proving it to her, with his actions and attitude.
“As for us—” Thad’s voice softened tenderly “—I think you should take your time and really think about this before you make a decision. You have what it takes to have a successful marriage with me, Janey. We both do.”
He was talking to her as if this were a game or a mutually beneficial business deal.
“Right now, you’re holding back, the way players do when they’re in a slump and things aren’t going
their way.”
Janey put up a hand, unable, unwilling to hear any more. “I know as a coach, you can usually do whatever is necessary to get what you need or want from people, Thad.” And that you usually succeed. “Not from me. Not this time,” she told him bitterly. Not ever.
Chapter Twelve
“It’s over,” Molly told Thad several days later, when she stopped by his office at the practice arena to see him. “Johnny and I called it quits, and we went to see a lawyer about a marriage dissolution.”
Thad shut down his computer and pushed away from his desk. He wrapped his younger sister in a hug. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay.” Molly leaned against him wearily. She stepped back and drew in an enervating breath. “I’m mostly relieved, anyway.” Sadness filled her eyes. “We weren’t ready to get married. We realized we don’t even love each other anymore, at least not the way we should. Still,” she bit her lip uncertainly, “it’s going to be hard to tell Mom and Dad.”
An understatement. During the years Molly and Johnny had been dating, Lionel and Veronica had become very fond of him and his family. “You want me to come with you?” Thad asked.
Molly nodded gratefully. “I could use a big brother about now.”
Veronica and Lionel weren’t as surprised by the news as Molly thought they would be.
“We knew something was wrong,” Lionel said, when Molly had finished explaining everything to them. “We just couldn’t figure out what.”
Molly paused. “Then you’re not mad at me?” she asked tentatively.
Lionel embraced her every bit as warmly as Thad had. “Of course not. We want you to be happy.”
Veronica hugged Molly, too. She smoothed her hair with maternal affection, and consoled her compassionately, “Making mistakes is part of life. It’s what you do afterward that counts. And it sounds to your father and me that you’re doing your best to set things right.”
Thad agreed with that. Errors happened. In hockey, in life. You still had to pick yourself up and go on. As he was trying to do.
When Thad was left alone with his mother after Lionel and Molly went to pick up dinner for the family, she looked at him knowingly. “Want to tell me what’s going on with you?” she asked.
Thad figured he had to tell someone sometime. God knew it wasn’t helping him to keep the heartbreak all to himself. Briefly, he explained the rift between him and Janey while his mother listened intently. “Well, what did you expect?” Veronica asked eventually, a lot less understanding about his situation than she had been about his younger sister’s. She frowned at him disapprovingly. “I warned you not to come between a mother and her child.”
Thad bristled at the unfair criticism. “I didn’t do that.”
Veronica scoffed as she got out dishes and began to set the table in the dining room. “I beg to disagree. I’ve seen the way Chris is now treating Janey. While it’s still completely respectful, he’s aloof in a way that’s out of character!”
Thad felt a wave of guilt as he accepted a stack of napkins from his mother and set one at each place. “Because of me.”
Veronica shrugged, as she carefully laid out the silverware. “I can’t say why.” She paused and looked Thad straight in the eye. “All I know is that since his injury Chris has shut down. And he doesn’t seem to be bouncing back, the way any of us would have expected.”
His mother’s words stayed with Thad. He knew he had to talk to Chris. So he went to see Chris at the hospital during Chris’s next physical therapy session, making sure he arrived at the end of his range-of-motion exercises with his physical therapist.
Thad held out an assisting hand as Chris got slowly down from the padded table. “How’s it going?”
Chris winced as he landed on his feet and began making his way stiffly and painfully to the whirlpool. “How does it look?” he asked as he climbed in. “Lousy.”
Thad lounged against the wall while the physical therapist set the timer and walked away, before continuing his probing. “Because you can’t skate.”
Chris leaned back against the rim, beginning to relax as the warm swirling water did its magic on his healing muscles. “Because my mom’s unhappy again.”
Thad did a double take. He had expected this to be all about Chris and his inability to play hockey right now. “I don’t get it.”
Chris shrugged his thin shoulders. Guilt flashed across his face.
For a second, Thad thought Chris wasn’t going to answer him, then he finally admitted in a low, troubled voice, “She hasn’t looked so scared and sad since my dad died.” Chris shook his head, sighed remorsefully. “She didn’t like my dad doing dangerous things, either. She always got mad when he went off to heli-ski in avalanche areas. But he did it anyway. Then when he didn’t come back, she blamed herself. She said over and over she should’ve talked sense into him and made him stop. Just like she tried to talk sense into me about not playing hockey or going to camp this year.”
Once again, Janey was taking too much on herself. And now her son was doing the same thing. Thad couldn’t let it happen. “You thinking of giving up hockey?” he asked casually.
Chris’s expression turned even bleaker. “I don’t want to. It’s the best thing in my life. But I don’t want to make my mom miserable, either.” Chris fell silent. Eyes shimmering, he went on in a low voice heavy with culpability, “She was crying when she came to the hospital the other day. Did you know that?”
Thad felt guilty, too—for not being able to accompany Chris to the hospital or be there with Janey to tell her the news about Chris’s on-ice mishap. “I figured as much. But then, moms always cry when their kids get hurt. Even mine.”
Chris’s eyes widened in surprise. “But she’s a physical therapist.”
Thad grimaced as he thought about some of his own adventures in doctor’s offices and physical rehab units. You didn’t play a sport as tough and demanding as hockey without sustaining some injury, now and then. But that was just part of it. “And my mother gets scared and worried just like anyone else,” Thad told Chris.
Chris took a moment to mull that over. “Did your mom ever try to get you to quit?”
“No.” Thad smiled. “She always said when you love doing something—” or being with someone, Thad amended silently to himself “—it’s always worth the extra effort.”
“CAREFUL, CAREFUL,” Janey said, as she and two other servers from The Wedding Inn set the wedding cake on the center of the antique mahogany dessert table.
“Beautiful, as always,” Helen said, as she came up to stand beside Janey.
Janey sprinkled rose petals around the base of the cake, as the bride and groom had requested. She was no longer at a point in her life where she needed her mother’s approval, but she always appreciated it. “I’m glad you think so.”
“You’ve really outdone yourself lately, with the confections you’ve created,” Helen continued, looking as pulled-together as always in a mint-green suit fit for the proprietress of the premiere wedding establishment in the central Carolina area.
“Thanks.” Janey observed the basket-weave frosting from all angles, making sure it was still perfect.
“And while I’m happy you’re succeeding—” Helen paused to lay out the sterling silver serving pieces, engraved with the happy couple’s names “—I also wonder what is causing you to be so passionate and creative.”
“Maybe I’m more focused,” she said, as she added white satin ribbons around the edges of the layers to create an elegant appearance.
“And maybe you have a lot of emotional energy you don’t know what to do with,” Helen said as Janey artistically placed a few delicate blossoms over the top of the towering confection.
“Not that succeeding in business is a bad thing, mind you,” Helen continued. “Just that I don’t like to see you looking so…grim. And you have looked grim lately, Janey, despite all your success.”
Finished, Janey straightened and did a final check of the cak
e. Satisfied all was in order for the cake-cutting ceremony later, she collected her things and moved away, fighting tears. Which was something that had been happening all too often in the days since Chris had gotten hurt.
“I don’t think that’s a surprise, Mom,” Janey murmured as the two of them left the room and headed in the direction of Helen’s office. “Thanks to all five of my brothers and Thad Lantz’s interference, Chris is barely speaking to me.”
Helen guided her inside her private haven, and closed the door behind them. “So talk to him,” she encouraged, as sure as always that everything would work out if they only worked at it.
“I’ve tried.” Janey placed a hand on the back of her neck and rubbed at the tense muscles. Usually she appreciated her mother’s can-do attitude, but today it was only aggravating. “But he’s acting just like Ty,” she protested.
Helen surveyed her carefully. “Chris is reacting like any frustrated, injured athlete. And since you are the sister of a pro hockey player, you should know that.”
“What are you trying to say to me?”
“I’m not saying anything. I’m asking. Are you in love with Thad Lantz?”
Janey folded her arms in front of her defensively. “What does it matter if I am?” She slumped down onto the sofa in the corner.
Helen perched on the edge of her desk. “So it wasn’t just a fling the two of you were having.”
“Not for me.” Janey ran her hands through her hair, feeling more frustrated and discouraged than ever. “For him I was just a means to an end. To the family—the son—he’s been wanting but didn’t have.” And knowing that just slayed her.
Helen scowled. “I don’t believe that.”
“Believe me, I didn’t want to, either,” Janey retorted, jumping to her feet once again. “But even when he proposed to me, Mom, he didn’t mention love. Not once.” And that had hurt, even when she told herself it didn’t.
The Secret Wedding Wish Page 17