A Compromising Affair (The Harringtons)

by Gwynne Forster

  “You got it.”

  “Where’s Nana? I thought you said she’d be here.”

  Matt bunched his shoulders in a shrug. “You know Nana. She changed her mind, said Doug could come to see her and that she was going to church and pray for all of us.”

  Throughout that Sunday, he enjoyed the camaraderie, teasing and fortifying love with his brothers and his father. Matt went out and bought barbecued pulled-pork sandwiches, stewed collards Southern style, candied yams—especially for Doug, who hadn’t had any in two years—several six-packs of beer and four warm apple cobblers, plus two quarts of vanilla ice cream to top everything off.

  Raynor surveyed Matt’s purchases, threw up his hands and said, “Boy, when it came to food, your eyes always were bigger than your stomach. Who’s going to eat all of this?”

  “Don’t worry, Dad,” Doug said. “We’ll eat it, and you’ll be able to keep your svelte physique.”

  “Yeah,” Scott drawled. “My girlfriend carried on about him so that if I was stupid, I’d be jealous.”

  Raynor’s grin covered his entire face. “Since this is the second time you’ve mentioned it, I take it you’re stupid.”

  A round of laughter and whooping filled the room, and Scott leaned back in the big barrel chair, closed his eyes and let the happiness he felt flow through him. Nothing on earth matched the love among family members. You didn’t have to say it, and you rarely thought of it, but it was strong and steady. And like the lifeline for a bungee jumper, it was there for you, no matter what.

  The first thing Monday morning, Scott called his friend at Johns Hopkins and within minutes, he was able to speak with the chief of the OB/GYN service. “I wouldn’t put too much weight on that evaluation,” the doctor said. “It happened twelve years ago. And besides, that was mainly an informed guess. We’ll do some tests. Can she come in this afternoon at two?”

  “Yes. I can’t tell you what this means to me. Thank you so much.”

  “I do know what it means to you, and I’ll do my very best.”

  Scott couldn’t remember when he’d last prayed when he wasn’t in church with Nana, but he said a few words of prayer and then called Denise. “Hi, sweetheart. You have an appointment with the OB/GYN chief this afternoon at two. I’ll be at your place in an hour and a half. You may need to pack an overnight bag. He didn’t give me any details.”

  “Oh, Scott! You mean… All right. I’ll be ready when you get here.”

  “Don’t be nervous, love. After speaking with him, I have a very good feeling about this. See you soon.”

  After hanging up, he packed his briefcase, locked his desk and stopped by his secretary’s office. “I’ll be away for the remainder of the day. If a call is urgent, reach me on my cell phone.” He had urgent work to do, but he couldn’t allow her to go to that doctor alone.

  Minutes before Scott was due at her house in Frederick, Denise remembered to call her mother.

  “So you finally got around to telling him. Thank God. I want to see you married to that man, because you’ll have a hard time finding his equal. Call me as soon as you know something. I’d better not mention this to your father right now. You know how impatient he is. Good luck, honey.” The doorbell rang. She opened the door, walked into Scott’s arms and into the next chapter of her life.

  Three days later, Denise prepared to board a Delta Airlines Boeing 767 for Oakland, California, to fulfill a speaking engagement for Second Chance. She hadn’t had time to prepare for the talk, so she would have to rely on her experience with the subject. Still reeling from the news that the first two tests indicated that she could bear children, she knew that her efforts to stave off premature happiness would make it impossible for her to work on the plane or even to sleep. She wouldn’t know the outcome of the other tests for another week.

  Shortly before boarding time, she phoned Scott, who had to attend a meeting at the Pentagon. “I just called to say I love you,” she told him, remembering Stevie Wonder’s song. “I hope to see you Sunday.”

  “I’ll be at the airport. Don’t worry about anything. So far, you’re batting one thousand. I love you.”

  “Oh, Scott. It’s so wonderful to be able to say that I love you. I truly do.”

  “Listen, sweetheart. I’m in a room full of people who can barely remember that such a thing as a libido exists. I don’t think they’d be sympathetic if I let you stir me up ’til it became obvious.”

  She heard the amusement in his voice and wished she could see the twinkle in his mesmerizing eyes. “You wicked man. I suppose I’ll have to take a rain check. Stay sweet.”

  “And you do the same.”

  Denise boarded the plane, took her business-class window seat, accepted orange juice and declined champagne from the steward, grabbed the quilted coverlet and prepared to sleep. Four hours and thirty minutes later, she awakened groggy, hungry and wishing she didn’t have to make the trip back to Baltimore. She vowed that on the return trip she would at least stay awake long enough to eat. The next morning, she delivered her best lecture ever on the rights of immigrant children.

  “I wonder what Scott would have thought of it,” she asked herself, suddenly uncertain as to whether she was working with him or against him. Shrugging it off as unnecessary worry, she decided to spend the remainder of the day sightseeing and having fun. There was time enough to think about her future when she got back home.

  Scott left his car at home that Friday morning and took a taxi to work. If the weather became any fiercer, he’d either spend the night in his office or try to make it to the nearest hotel. He wasn’t easily alarmed, but the force of the wind had fear lurking in him. By three o’clock that afternoon, the wind’s force had lessened well below gale strength, and he set his mind on spending the night at his home in Georgetown. However, a telephone call from his buddy Judson changed all that.

  “Hi, buddy. What’s up?” Scott asked Judson.

  “I just got a call from Morton Sykes, Denise’s stable manager at Whispers. He said that storm knocked down trees, hedges and posts, and that Denise is in California. The brothers and I will be out there at eight tomorrow morning to clean up. If you—”

  Scott interrupted him. “I’ll meet you there. I know where it is.”

  “Good. Velma’s packing a lunch for us, but you may want to eat breakfast before you get there. I hope the damage isn’t bad.”

  “So do I. What about the horses? Are they all right?”

  “So far. He said he needs to make some adjustments, but that he’d do that after we get there. I figured you’d want to know.”

  “Damned straight, I want to know. See you in the morning.”

  He arrived at Whispers a few minutes before eight, and Morton opened the gate for him. “I would have called you,” Morton said, “but I didn’t know how to reach you. Judson and his wife are here often, and I know them, so I called him. I didn’t call Denise, because I didn’t see the point in alarming her. She’s two thousand miles away, and she can’t do one thing about it.”

  “You were wise. I’ll tell her when I meet her at the airport.” He looked around as he drove toward the stables. “I suppose it could have been worse,” he said to Morton after he got out of his car. “These trees look as if they should be cut.”

  “I think so. Looks like the Harringtons are here,” he said as a black Buick rolled into view.

  Both men went to greet Telford, Russ and Drake Harrington and Judson Philips-Sparkman. “I suppose it could have been worse,” Telford said. “Let’s work out a plan. Six men ought to be able to clean this up today.”

  They developed a plan, each man got an assignment and they went to work. By noon, they had cut the trees and begun turning them into firewood. Scott uprooted the damaged shrubs, covered the roots with burlap, tied them and stored them in the shed to be set out in early spring. Drake and Judson repaired the side of a stable, and Morton returned the horses to the stable that each normally occupied.

  When they gathe
red to eat lunch, Scott commented on how easily the brothers and Judson worked together, taking and giving suggestions, singing, joking and supporting each other. “It’s easy, man,” Russ said. “You’re married, and you learn pretty quickly that the best way to stay married and keep your wife happy is to be agreeable even if it kills you.”

  “It sounds funny, but I think you’re serious,” Scott said.

  Telford put a fried chicken leg on his plate and reached for the potato salad. “Of course he’s serious. But he wouldn’t change his life for anything. There’s nothing like having gone through hell all day when nothing went right, getting home and that woman opens the door and spreads her arms to you. Your children run to you, letting you know by their greeting that you’re king of their world. You love your siblings and other relatives and your close friends, but your joy, your happiness is in your own home with the woman who’s told the world that she belongs to you and with your children. Your family doesn’t remove your problems. Hell, problems can start right there, but you gladly relinquish your arrogance, self-righteousness and even some of what you once considered as your rights in order to preserve the love you find there.”

  “Yeah, man,” Drake said, “because you get new rights that more than compensate for what you think you lost.”

  Judson handed Scott a can of beer. “Now that you’re sufficiently well-informed on this subject, you know what to do.”

  Scott finished eating a warm buttermilk biscuit. “Thanks for the advice, but having a wife who can fix a lunch like this for six men, keeping the cold stuff cold and the hot stuff hot and the dessert at room temperature and who’d actually do it is a solid recommendation for marriage.”

  “Yeah,” Morton said, striking a match on the sole of his boot. “It’s the only rational reason for marriage that I’ve heard yet. Been there, done that and no longer tempted. Anybody want to help me exercise the horses?”

  “Sorry to hear that, Morton,” Telford said. “You must have made a few missteps somewhere.”

  Morton pushed himself up from his lawn chair and brushed off the back of his jeans. “Missteps! Huh. An understatement if I ever heard one. From now on, I’m sticking with horses. At least, I won’t be tempted to marry one of them.”

  When the laughter subsided, Drake dumped the remnants of his meal into the black plastic bag that Morton provided. “I’ll help you exercise them after we stack this wood and clean away the brush.”

  “You help Morton exercise the horses,” Russ said to Drake. “I’ll help stack the wood and clear away all this brush.”

  Seeing some of the wealthiest men in Frederick County, Maryland, cutting, sawing and stacking wood for a friend of one brother’s wife told Scott a lot about the Harringtons and what it meant to have one of them as a friend. Shortly before sundown, the men packed up their tools, and Scott surveyed the results of their efforts. Whispers looked as if it had always been that way, and the horses were calm, fed and apparently happy.

  Scott walked over to Morton. “The place looks great. I think it would be best if I tell her when I meet her at the airport tomorrow evening. There were six of us here, but you did a Herculean job, and I’ll see that she knows it.” He frowned when Morton lit another cigarette. “It’s none of my business, man, but those things will kill you. Have you tried to quit?”

  “I’ve about decided that I can’t do it solo, so I’ve made a date with a doctor to start on it seriously. It’s getting to be too damned expensive.”

  Scott laughed at that. “I wish you luck with it. See you.”

  “Come on and go with us,” Drake called to Scott.

  “Yeah,” Judson said. “Your woman is on the other side of the country. If you go to Washington, you’re subject to get into trouble. Spend the night, and leave tomorrow in time to pick her up at the airport.”

  “I’ll leave tomorrow morning, go home and change before I meet her. You wouldn’t meet Heather with two inches of mud caked to your shoes.”

  Both of Judson’s hands went up, palms out. “I stand corrected. You coming?”

  Scott wouldn’t have imagined how much he’d missed being at the Harrington estate with the brothers, Judson and their families. Henry greeted him with a rebuke. “I thought you’d forgotten where we lived. I don’t manage to avoid me enemies better than you avoid this place,” Henry said. “You haven’t come back and neither has Denise. At least I hope you’ve been seeing each other.”

  He slung an arm across the older man’s shoulder. “Not to worry, Henry. We’re getting on fine.”

  “Fine ain’t good enough. Sit over there on that stool and scrape some potatoes. We’re all eating at Judson’s place. Heather ain’t used to cooking for so many people, so I told her I’d make some gourmet potato pancakes to go with her herb-stuffed roasted chicken. Now you take Velma, me second daughter. She can plan and cook for as many people as you want. Russ got himself a real woman. Well, all of my boys did real well for themselves and brought me some wonderful daughters. What’s holding you back?”

  “I’m working on it, Henry.”

  “That ain’t good enough. Ya making any progress?”

  “Oh, yes. I don’t believe in standing still, Henry. I’ve done my part, and the next is up to God. If I get my wish, you’ll have another daughter.”

  Scott couldn’t believe the grin he saw on Henry’s face. “Yer a man like me other boys, and you’ll get what yer after.”

  He considered hugging Henry, but decided to leave well enough alone. “Where’s Tara? I haven’t seen or heard her.”

  “Tara’s visiting Grant Roundtree, her boyfriend. The two are inseparable and have been since Tara was four.”

  “I met his father. I hope he’s a nice kid,”

  “He’s crazy about her, and he takes good care of her. Boys do that when they see their daddies looking after their mothers. Tara’s smart. She didn’t have to deal with nonsense from her own daddy, and she’s not gonna take it from anybody else. I think I heard her come in.”

  Tara danced into the kitchen holding Grant Roundtree’s hand. “Mr. Henry, do you have any more black-cherry ice cream and can Grant please have some? He loves it, too. Oh, Mr. Scott!” She came over to him, bringing Grant with her. “Mr. Scott, this is my best friend, Grant Roundtree. Grant, this is Ambassador Galloway. He works in the State Department.”

  Grant shook hands with Scott and turned to Tara. “If he’s an ambassador, where else would he work?”

  “How old are you, Grant?” Scott asked him, amused that the boy had already developed a healthy self-confidence.

  “I’m nine, sir, and I’ll be ten before Tara is nine.”

  “And if ya want black-cherry ice cream from me,” Henry said, “you’ll stop beating yer chest like a chimpanzee.”

  “Yes, sir,” Grant said, then sat down beside Tara and prepared to gorge himself on Tara’s favorite ice cream. Scott stared at the two of them. If only he could see his own children happily playing with their friends. He stifled a sigh, and told himself to remember the power of positive thinking.

  Chapter 10

  Scott did his best to enjoy the evening. He had already learned that the Harrington clan used any excuse to come together and consume food and drink and enjoy each other’s company. As much as he loved being with them and sharing their camaraderie, he couldn’t give in to the occasion. He’d be unhappy if the results of Denise’s test didn’t turn out as he hoped, and he’d have to deal with her disappointment and unhappiness. If that wasn’t enough, he had to tell her how the storm had damaged Whispers, the place that she loved so much.

  After dinner, Tara came over to him and sat on a leather pouf that sat beside his chair. “What’s the matter, Mr. Scott? You don’t seem happy. If we were at my house, I’d play something for you. Is something wrong with Miss Denise?”

  She’d heard the adults talking about his relationship with Denise. “She’s fine, as far as I know, Tara. I’ll talk to her sometime tonight. Thank you for asking.”


  Tara’s face bloomed in a smile. “You don’t mind that I asked? Mommy and Daddy say I’m too nosy.”

  He told himself not to laugh, and he decided not to tell her how right they were. “Try to be more careful about the questions you ask and of whom you ask them.”

  “That’s what Mommy says. But Daddy says I ought to act like a child and stay in my place.”

  “Did he tell you how to stay in your place?”

  “I’m not sure. He hugged me and told me I was the best little girl a daddy could have, so I guess I’m okay.”

  “Yeah,” Scott said, relieved that the question had resolved itself and wondering why he was so anxious to be a parent. Any child as precious as Tara could jerk your chain.

  Alexis glided over to them. Her calm demeanor always amazed him. It seemed she lived in a state of grace. “Tara, darling, you and I have to leave. You’re supposed to be in bed by nine-fifteen, and it takes you forever to get ready. Tell Mr. Scott good-night.”

  “But Mummy, if I leave he might get lonely.”

  “I don’t think so, Tara,” Alexis said. “He’s among family and friends, and they’ll keep him company. Drop by before you leave, Scott. Come with me, Tara.”

  Tara’s lips brushed his cheek. “Good night, Mr. Scott.

  “If he gets lonely, Mummy, is it going to be my fault or your fault?” he heard Tara ask as she walked away from him, her hand secure in her mother’s hand.

  “Don’t worry, darling, Daddy and your uncles will keep him company.”

  “I’d love to have a little girl just like that,” Scott said when Drake joined him.

  “She’s a delight and has been since she came to us a little more than four years ago. How are things going with you and Denise, if you don’t mind my asking?”

  “They’re coming to a head. Keep your fingers crossed and your lips sealed.”

  A roar of laughter erupted from Drake, who usually expressed amusement more subtly. “Way to go, man. You won’t hear it from me.”