To Laney, With Love

by Joyce Sullivan

  Whatever the explanation, she realized she owed it to herself and to Josh to hear Reese out. Somehow she had to get to Whistler, British Columbia, for Valentine’s Day—without Josh.

  LANEY BREATHED A SIGH of relief when she arrived at Scott’s house at five-thirty to pick up Josh for dinner and saw Ben’s dark-green minivan in the driveway.

  Laney rang the doorbell.

  Georgina Forbes, Scott’s grandmother, a trim, efficient woman in dove-gray slacks and a pastel pink sweater, answered the door, wiping her blue-veined hands on a colorful dish towel draped over her shoulder. Laney was sure Ben had inherited every nice bone in his body from his mother. Georgina watched Scott after school and often had dinner with her son and grandson before driving off to her apartment in Vanier. “Come in, Laney. I was just trying to get a brownie pudding in the oven for dessert. I’ll tell Josh you’re here.”

  Laney sniffed appreciatively. The house smelled heavenly of garlic, Italian spices and melted chocolate. The shouts and the monotonously merry music floating out from the living room told her the boys were happily occupied playing video games.

  She gripped the valentine tucked into her coat pocket. “Wait, Georgina. Is Ben home? I was hoping I could talk to him privately for a minute.”

  Ben’s mother’s lips quirked into a crooked smile that lit up her thin face and her pale-gray eyes. “He’s downstairs. He took the afternoon off and he’s been locked in the basement working on a top-secret project. Feel free to enter at your own risk.”

  “Thanks.” Laney slipped out of her fawn leather boots, but left her coat on. She made a quick detour into the living room where Josh and Scott sat side by side on the carpet in front of the TV. She ruffled Josh’s blond hair.

  “Aw, Mom, is it time to go already?” he complained. “I have a wedding to crash and a princess to save.”

  Laney tried to keep a straight face. So far, Josh and Scott had steered clear of girls. Video-game princesses were obviously excluded. “By all means, rescue the princess. I need to talk to Ben anyway.”

  “Good! Look out, I’ve got to kill the cake.”

  Scott tore his eyes away from a medieval-style iron-studded oak door that swung open to reveal a wedding chapel on the TV screen. His black eyes were characteristically solemn as he gave her a shy smile. “Good luck, Laney. Dad’s grouchy. He wouldn’t even let us practice shooting goals in the basement.”

  Just to be fair, she ruffled his hair, too. Scott’s hair was the same midnight shade as Ben’s, only curlier and saw a comb less often. “Thanks for the warning.”

  As she padded down the carpeted basement stairs in her socks, Laney could hear a slightly off-key male voice accompanying a song on the radio. Was that Ben? He didn’t sound grouchy. His deep voice vibrated with contentment. Still, her legs trembled as she rapped on the closed door of his workshop. What was she going to do if he said no?

  “Ben, it’s Laney,” she called in a shaky voice. “May I come in?”

  Ben stopped singing in mid-verse and went into a full-scale panic as he dropped the rag he’d been using to stain the interlocking heart-shaped puzzle he’d spent the afternoon cutting and sanding from an oak plank. Laney was here?

  “No! Hold on,” he barked, stripping the latex gloves from his hands and shutting off the radio. “I’ll be right out.”

  His heart hammered an uneven rhythm as he strode to the door and opened it, purposely blocking her view onto his workbench. His body reacted instantly as he took in the details of her pale face, the contrast of her auburn hair against her moss-green suede coat and the coral leggings clinging to her shapely legs.

  “I—I’m sorry...” she stammered “...I could come back if this is a bad time.”

  Ben didn’t know if it was the poor lighting in the basement, but he could swear he saw fear tainting her expressive eyes. Her hands were jammed into her pockets as though she was struggling to keep her composure.

  He instinctively stepped toward her, closing the door behind him. “Now’s fine. What’s up?” he asked in concern, battling an urge to take her in his arms. “You look as if you’ve seen a ghost.”

  To his dismay, Laney blanched and swayed unsteadily on her feet. Ben grabbed her shoulders. The ultrafeminine feel of her limbs beneath her suede coat jolted his senses. “Easy! Do you want to sit down?”

  Laney closed her eyes tightly for a second and shook her head. “No, I’d rather stand.” Ben kept his hold on her just in case. “I need to ask you a favor.”

  “So ask,” he said, knowing damn well he’d grant her anything for the glorious pleasure of being close enough to her to smell the tantalizingly tropical scent of her shampoo.

  “I need to know if you can watch Josh for me for a few days next week,” she said flatly. “I have to go out of town unexpectedly and I’m not sure exactly how long I’ll be gone....”

  A sense of impending doom hovered over his heart. Next week? “When are you leaving?” he croaked.

  “I’m flying out on the thirteenth.”

  Great. Ben suffered a pang of disappointment as his hopes for a romantic Valentine’s Day with Laney were reduced to a pile of sawdust. Just his luck a business trip would ruin his plans. Then he noticed the tears glimmering in her eyes.

  He cupped her chin, nearly groaning aloud at the silky texture of her skin. Unbearable heat pounded to his groin. “Of course I’ll take care of Josh, but where are you going? And why are you crying?”

  A tear slipped onto her cheek as she pulled her right hand out of her pocket and thrust something at him, her voice brittle. “I’m going to see Reese. Apparently he’s alive.”

  Shocked, Ben closed his fingers around the crumpled valentine clenched in her trembling fingers. His lungs burned from lack of oxygen as he unfolded the glitzy red card and read the message.

  To Laney, with love

  From your one and only Valentine

  I know you have questions but I can explain

  The Rendezvous, 1:00 p.m. Christine’s

  Whistler, Valentine’s Day.

  Make this our little secret. No police.

  The knowledge Laney still belonged to another man paralyzed him. Ben drew a deep breath past the pain in his heart and tried to focus all his thoughts on the message in the card, which he didn’t like the sound of one iota. Hell, Laney could be walking into a trap.

  “How’d you get this?” he asked, examining the card carefully.

  “I found it in my mailbox. There was no stamp or postmark.” Her voice caught. From her left coat pocket she extracted a second card and opened it for him to see. “I got this one a couple of weeks ago, on our wedding anniversary.”

  Ben scanned the neatly block-printed words as she explained that she’d thought Josh had found it in the basement and put it in the mailbox to surprise her.

  Love is a mystery that can’t be explained.

  The harder one tries, the more hopelessly tangled one becomes.

  Never doubt you’re my one and only, Laney.

  R.

  Ben swore under his breath. “Are you certain this is Reese’s handwriting?”

  Laney nodded. Two more giant tears squeezed from her eyes. “How could he let us think he was dead?” She clamped her hand over her mouth, her whole body shaking.

  “I don’t know,” he murmured thickly. Ben’s heart tore into more pieces than the puzzle he’d made for her this afternoon. How could that jerk walk away from his wife and son? He’d always thought Reese was a selfish bastard, leaving Laney at home with their child while he indulged in his hobbies. He tossed the cards onto a storage shelf and slipped his arms around her petite frame, cradling her against his chest.

  “Oh, Ben!”

  He felt a sob shudder through her. “It’s okay,” he whispered against her temple, tightening his hold on her until their bodies were so close they nearly melded into one entity. God, she felt so right in his arms. The agony of it made him ache. And to think she’d been right under his nose while he’d been c
halking up one disappointing date after another in hopes of finding someone who’d make him feel whole again.

  He’d first met Laney three years ago when Scott and Josh ended up in the same grade-one class. She had a lot of sympathy for a withdrawn little boy who’d lost his mother the previous year. She’d earned Ben’s eternal gratitude and friendship when she’d encouraged Josh to invite Scott to his birthday party. The boys had become fast friends soon afterward.

  When Reese died, Ben had felt for her and Josh. He knew exactly what they were going through. He’d offered to help in any way possible...doing the odd repair job, cleaning out gutters, tossing baseballs and scrimmaging hockey with the boys.

  He thought nothing of it when she’d offered to bake Scott a spaceship cake for his birthday party in August or that she’d sewn Scott’s Superman costume for Halloween along with Josh’s Spider-Man costume. Or that trips to the movies and museums often became foursomes. It wasn’t until last November when Laney had asked him how long he’d continued to wear his wedding band after Rebecca passed away that he’d realized Laney had reached the point in the grieving process where she was ready to consider the possibility of a new relationship.

  The more he contemplated the idea of Laney getting involved with other men, the less he liked it. He’d thought their friendship was the cause of his knee-jerk, big-brother overprotectiveness. But then Christmas arrived and it had suddenly hit him that he loved her. And because he loved her, he was going to be there for her, even though he wanted to strangle Reese Dobson with his bare hands. Ben pressed a light kiss onto her scented hair, kissing his dreams of a life with her goodbye.

  Her sobs started to ease. “I’m s-sorry,” she stammered, wiping her cheeks with the backs of her hands. “I didn’t mean to fall apart on you.”

  “What are friends for?” he replied. The words penetrated his heart like a dull knife. “Listen, I understand why you want to go to Whistler. I’d move heaven and earth to see Rebecca again. But I’m not going to let you go alone. This sounds too dangerous. I’m sure I can get my mom to watch the boys. What do you say?”

  Her hands came to rest on his chest, on the damp spot her tears had made on his faded sweatshirt. Her clear blue eyes glistened with moisture, gratitude and trust as she tilted her head back and gazed up at him. “I say you’re the best friend I’ve ever had.”

  Regret and desire formed a thick knot in Ben’s throat. First and foremost, he and Laney would always be friends. “Your safety and Josh’s happiness are very important to me.”

  She nodded, but a shadow appeared in her eyes that Ben didn’t know how to interpret. She grasped a handful of his sweatshirt, catching a few of his chest hairs in the process. “I’m going to pay for everything,” she said brusquely.

  Ben winced, more from wounded pride than discomfort. He covered her hands with his own and peeled her fingers away from his chest. “We’ll argue about that later.” Even knowing Reese could be alive didn’t diminish the rush of awareness Ben felt eddying through his veins at the joining of their hands. The scarlet blush rising in Laney’s cheeks gave him the faint hope that she felt it, too.

  “What’ll we tell the boys and your mother? I don’t want to get Josh’s hopes up by telling him his dad is alive.”

  “We’ll tell my mother the truth and we’ll tell the boys you and I are going away for a few days and let them draw their own conclusions. We can explain everything if we come back with Reese.”

  Her mouth formed an O that could only stand for a major objection. “You realize the boys will think we’re dating or...s-something,” she spluttered.

  Laney just couldn’t say it: sleeping together. It was too close to the most private thoughts she’d been entertaining about him in the last few months. She felt her face grow even hotter and dropped her gaze to Ben’s broad chest. His paint-dotted sweatshirt looked as though it had shrunk to fit his muscular build.

  Ben’s strong fingers were locked around her own reassuringly. The symbolic iron professional engineer’s ring he wore on his working hand gently scraped the tender flesh at the base of her fingers. An all-male grin flickered at the corners of his mouth. “I realize they’ll think we’re sleeping together. We can always tell them it didn’t work out and we’re still friends.”

  Laney bit her lower lip. That’s exactly what she was afraid of. She knew Ben was offering a perfectly logical explanation for their being away together, but Scott was used to women coming and going in his father’s life. Josh, on the other hand, might interpret their going away together as a sign of a commitment and start building impossible fantasies of Ben becoming his stepdad. Josh had suffered enough loss and disappointment in the last fourteen months.

  “Laney, we’ll worry about explanations to the boys after we know whether or not this valentine is a hoax, okay?”

  She relented, hoping she was worrying about nothing. “Okay.” If Reese was indeed alive, Josh would have his father back and she would have much bigger issues to deal with, such as how one went about picking up the pieces of a marriage after a fourteen-month separation. Like most couples, she and Reese had experienced their fair share of problems.

  Ben let out a ragged sigh. “Now that we’ve got that settled, why don’t you and Josh stay for dinner? Mom’s making lasagna, there’s plenty. Afterward, you and I can talk to her about taking care of the boys and make some plans. Good enough?”

  Laney nodded. The prospect of flying out to the West Coast wasn’t nearly as alarming, now that she knew Ben would be accompanying her. But she felt a twinge of guilt. Ben did so much for her and Josh already. Was he going to have to cancel a date for Valentine’s Day or use up some of his vacation time because of her?

  He let go of her hands. “Wait here a minute while I clean up my workshop. I’ve just got to throw something in the trash and I’ll walk you upstairs.”

  “What are you doing in there anyway?” she asked, rising up on tiptoe to sneak a peek into his private domain. “Your mother and the boys are dying of curiosity.” The smell of paint and sawdust tickled her nose.

  “Nothin’ any of you need to know,” he replied gruffly, closing the door in her face.

  Laney laughed and wrapped her arms around herself, tempted to inform him that she’d probably learn what the secret was from Scott and Josh anyway. The man had two spies in his midst. Her gaze fell on the valentine and the greeting card that Ben had tossed onto the storage shelf and her smile died. This was a pretty big secret to keep hidden from two inquisitive boys, who’d already concluded the Tooth Fairy and the Easter Bunny didn’t exist. They’d spent from Boxing Day to New Year’s discussing the boot prints Santa had left in front of each of their fireplaces and comparing the handwriting on their Christmas gift tags.

  Laney had a sinking feeling her ingenuity was about to be sorely tested.

  “MOM, CAN WE HAVE DINNER at Scott’s house more often?” Josh demanded as they trudged over the slippery sidewalk toward home. Ben had offered to drive them, but Laney had refused. They’d already taken up enough of his evening.

  “Depends on whether or not we get invited,” Laney murmured. “Are you trying to tell me you liked Georgina’s lasagna better than mine, or that you liked being able to play video games with Scott after supper instead of doing your homework?”

  Josh shrugged his shoulders, obviously smart enough to back away from a trick question when it was presented to him. Laney squeezed his mittened hand and suppressed a wave of anxiety about what life held in store for them in the coming week. “We still have homework to do,” she reminded him. “What’s four times twelve?”

  “Forty-eight.”

  “Nine times seven?”

  “Easy. Sixty-three.”

  Laney kept him plied with equations until they reached the driveway and the familiar lights of home. She paused in mid-stride, an eerie feeling prickling her scalp. Was it her imagination or were there more lights on than when she’d left? She hadn’t been in Josh’s bedroom all day, and yet the
table lamp on his dresser cast a halo of light against the navy miniblinds.

  Oh, Lord, was someone in the house?

  Reese?

  Her heartbeat thundered in her ears like thousands of tiny hooves as emotions of fear, dread, anger and longing stormed deep in her breast. What should she do? Had she been so distracted by Reese’s valentine she’d forgotten she’d turned on the lights?

  She gripped Josh’s hand tighter.

  “What’s the matter, Mom?” he asked.

  “Honey,” she said, dropping her tone to a whisper. “I don’t mean to scare you, but I think someone might be in the house. Do me a favor and go next door to the Munks’ house. Tell them what’s going on, and wait for me.”

  Josh yanked sharply on her hand and peered up at her, his pale eyebrows butting together beneath the band of red and green ribbing of his navy toque. “Aren’t you coming with me?”

  Laney curled an arm protectively around his shoulders. “No, I’m just going to take a quick peek in the kitchen window before we call the police. Maybe I’m imagining all this. Now hurry.”

  Josh didn’t budge an inch. “You’re not going inside, are you?”

  Laney struggled to keep her voice from telegraphing her rising panic. “Of course not! I’d never do that.” If it hadn’t been for the possibility that Reese could be in the house, she’d have already banged on the Munks’ front door and demanded they call 911. She placed her hand on the middle of Josh’s back and said firmly, “Go, speedy bullet.”

  Seconds ticked by with the excruciating slowness of snowflakes meandering down from the sky as she watched his snowsuited form struggle through the deep drifts blanketing the neighbors’ lawn and dash up the front steps. Laney was sure the Munks were home. Both their cars were squeezed into their post-age-stamp-size driveway and the downstairs lights were on.