A Soft Place to Fall

by Barbara Bretton

  Susan froze. "What did you say?"

  "I loved him, Suz, but your brother wasn't perfect."

  "Meaning what?"

  Jack sighed. "Forget I said anything."

  "No," she said, suddenly angry. "I won't forget. Tell me what you're talking about."

  "His gambling."

  She made a face. "That was never a real problem."

  "Open your eyes, Suz. Take a look at Annie. She didn't sell the big house because she was tired of the view. She sold it because he left her with nothing."

  "You don't know that."

  "I know what I see."

  "She wanted to start fresh," Susan said, trying to ignore the hollow ringing of her words. "She was rattling around in that big old barn all by herself."

  The expression on Jack's face was so sad – and so knowing – that it brought her up short.

  "I think you're wrong," she said as the fight drained out of her. "Kevin was a wonderful husband. They were the happiest couple I've ever seen. Nobody will ever make her as happy as Kevin made her."

  But how happy was that really? No matter how hard she tried, she couldn't come up with examples to prove her thesis, not unless she went back fifteen years or more. Annie threw herself into making the flower shop a success and the hours she worked became a source of debate within the family. Of course everyone knew teachers didn't make huge salaries, even if Kevin was the most gifted English teacher the town had ever seen. He worked long hours too, meeting with parents and children after the school day ended, giving workshops and taking classes on the weekends. The wonder was that he and Annie ever saw each other at all. How many family gatherings had they had to decline because Kevin was out of town or Annie was too swamped with work to break away? After a while everyone had lost count. Invitations to the big old Victorian house dwindled until they became once or twice yearly occasions.

  Was that happiness? She had no answer to that question.

  "We can't stop her," he said, stroking her hair. "Annie deserves some happiness and she won't find it if she doesn't take a few chances."

  He was right. She knew he was right. But the thought of Annie out there somewhere with a man who wasn't family sent a chill of foreboding through Susan and not even Jack's warm kisses could make it go away.

  #

  Warren sat in his library with a glass of brandy in his hand and poor old Max asleep at his feet. It was a few minutes after midnight and unless he missed his guess Max would be spending the night.

  "You can sleep at the foot of the bed," he told the dog, "and Nancy will make you bacon and eggs for breakfast."

  The yellow Lab looked up at him with mournful eyes.

  "Don't worry," Warren said, reaching down to pet the old guy on the scruff of his neck. "He hasn't abandoned you." That was one thing Sam Butler never did, even if the boy didn't quite believe it himself yet.

  He heard himself and started to laugh. Now did that beat all? There he was, the man who was on the cover of last month's Forbes, trying to explain love to a dog who drank water from the toilet bowl. Hell, he had himself a nerve trying to explain love to anybody since he knew so damn little about it. He knew love complicated matters. He knew that when it went wrong it made a man's life a living hell.

  And he also knew that without it, nothing much else mattered.

  Were Sam and Annie in love? He wasn't sure. They'd barely known each other three days but stranger things had happened in a lot less time. His own parents had met on Sunday and married on Monday and spent the next thirty years telling the tale.

  He hoped they were happy. He hoped they would be kind to each other. He hoped that if it didn't work out they would each be left with hearts that were better off for the experience.

  Patience wasn't his long suit but he would do his best. He had brought them together. There was nothing more he could do. Nobody yet had found a way to make love happen when it wasn't meant to.

  Or to deny it either. He thought of the scared look in Claudia's eyes, the bristling anger that didn't quite hide her fear that their beloved Annie just might slip away with a man who wasn't Kevin. They still saw her as the vulnerable young girl whose parents had been lost the year she turned sixteen. The entire Galloway clan had opened their hearts to her and welcomed her into their fold and she had gone gratefully, eager to be one of the crowd, to be so indispensable she would never have to worry about being alone again.

  That was how they still saw her. Needy. Vulnerable. Unsure of herself and her place in the world. They hadn't a clue. Not a one of them had an inkling of all she had done to protect the reputation of the sainted Kevin. She was the one who had held it all together and never once asked for help from anyone.

  Warren had never told Annie that he knew about Kevin's gambling. He wondered how many other people in town kept Annie's secret and never let on. Sometimes he thought he should sit Claudia down and tell her the whole story, tell her how her daughter-in-law worked around the clock to keep a roof over their heads and food on the table while Kevin fell deeper into despair.

  That conversation at the dinner table still rankled. They had all teed off on Sam like he had come to town with the express purpose of ruining their happy family. Where the hell did they get off, passing judgment on a man they'd never met? And who did they think they were, trying to run Annie's life for her like she was still sixteen years old and scared to death. She was a grown woman now. If the gods had been kinder, she could have had kids in college who came home on weekends so mom could do their laundry. She could have had a husband who –

  Well, no sense going there. Some things couldn't be changed.

  Sam Butler was the best thing that could happen to her and if those narrow-minded morons were too blind to see that, then to hell with them.

  They would learn soon enough.

  And maybe so would Sam.

  Chapter Twelve

  Sam and Annie were in her kitchen making scrambled eggs and toast.

  "This is crazy," Annie said as she pulled the carton of eggs from the refrigerator. "We should be asleep." She wore nothing but his denim shirt and a loopy smile.

  "You're tired?" Sam, clad in nothing but a towel, popped two English muffins into the toaster and depressed the lever. "Can't imagine why."

  Maybe having a postage-stamp sized kitchen wasn't such a bad thing after all. She leaned over and pressed a kiss to his shoulder. "Liar," she said.

  He took the carton of eggs from her and placed them on the counter. "Come here," he said then gathered her into his arms.

  "This is a kitchen," she said, as she wrapped her arms around his neck. "We don't do things like this in the kitchen."

  "Why not?"

  She thought for a second. "Tradition?"

  "Turkey for Thanksgiving is a tradition."

  "You really shouldn't make me laugh when you're trying to be romantic."

  He loved her laugh. He loved everything about her. "You laughed before," he said. "A lesser man might've worried."

  "I'm happy," she said, knowing he couldn't understand – not yet – all that those words meant to her. "You make me happy."

  They stood there for a long time, bodies pressed together, and maybe they would have stayed like that until dawn if George and Gracie hadn't chosen that moment to tear through the kitchen like the hounds of hell were after them then skid to a stop in the door.

  "They're not too crazy about me," Sam said, eyeing them over the top of Annie's head.

  "You're new," she said. "They'll get used to you."

  "How about you? Think you'll get used to me?"

  "No," she said, raining kisses along his throat and jaw. "I hope I never get used to you."

  Sam was no stranger to the kitchen. It didn't take Annie more than a few seconds to see that he knew his way around colanders and chopping blocks.

  "You're awfully good at this," she said as he buttered the English muffins and slathered on the blueberry jam. "Did you ever work as a short order cook?"

  "On
ly at home," he said. "I come from a big family."

  "So did my husband." She felt surprisingly comfortable mentioning Kevin, as if it were the most natural thing on earth to do. "How big is big?"

  "Three boys, three girls."

  "Including you?"

  "Including me."

  "And you're the oldest."

  "How did you know?"

  "You like to take charge."

  "You mean, I'm aggressive."

  "No, I mean you know how to get things done."

  The look she gave him was pure heat and he laughed.

  "You have a way about you, Annie Galloway," he said and popped a piece of muffin into her mouth. He took a good look at her. "Only child of older parents. You were spoiled rotten."

  The look of sorrow in her eyes almost brought him to his knees.

  "Only child." She cracked a large white egg against the side of a stainless steel bowl then tossed the empty shell into the trash pail under the counter. She reached for another egg. "My parents married right out of high school. I came along six months later." She chuckled and tossed more shells into the trash pail. "You can imagine the whispering that went on around here, can't you?"

  "Makes you glad times have changed."

  "Don't get me wrong. They loved each other and they were planning to marry anyway but I don't think they were planning on doing it quite so soon – or starting off with an instant family."

  He had the sense that he was treading into uncertain territory but he took the next step just the same. "Are they still together?"

  She rested her hands on the counter and it was a moment before she answered him. "I hope so," she said then met his eyes. "They died just before I turned sixteen." She told him in plain, unadorned language about the nor'easter that capsized the small fishing boat and took the lives of Eve and Ron Lacy. "The Galloways took me in. Can you imagine that? I was nobody but Kevin's girlfriend and they opened up their hearts to me and made me one of the family. When I think of what might have happened –"

  "I was seventeen."

  She stared at him. "What?"

  "I was seventeen when my mother died. My father died two years later."

  "Oh, Sam –"

  "Courtney was four when the old man died. She was the youngest."

  "So you know," she whispered. "You know what it was like."

  "Yeah," he said quietly. "I know."

  Their eyes met and once again they both experienced a sense of inevitability that ran deep and true.

  "You're lucky you have a big family," she said. "There was somebody to take you in." I was so young, Sam, just a girl really and the world seemed so big and cold. Claudia made a home for me . . . a real home . . . marrying Kevin only made it that much better.

  He shook his head. "Afraid not. My mother was an only child and my father's family thought we should be broken up and parceled out to foster homes. There was no way in hell I was going to let that happen." They weren't much more than babies . . . the whole lot of us were scared shitless . . . the only thing we had was each other . . . what else could I do?

  "You mean, you took care of the rest of the kids?"

  "Not much choice," he said matter-of-factly. "Nobody else stepped up to the plate."

  "But you did," she said. "Somebody else might have turned and run away." You were only a kid yourself. Who would have blamed you for handing it all over to somebody else.

  "I thought about it. Hell, there were days I wondered why I bothered." The night Tony broke his leg . . . the weekend Courtney ran off with that guy . . . nothing prepares you for any of it.

  "But you didn't," she persisted. "You were there for them when they needed you." Claudia used to sit by my bed until I fell asleep those first few months . . . she would hold my hand and tell me I was safe . . . if only you'd had that too.

  "Warren helped me find my first serious job," he said as she poured the beaten eggs into the sizzling pan then moved them around with a narrow spatula. "There wasn't much available for a college dropout with five dependents but he knew I was quick and hardworking and had the gift of gab and next thing I knew I was cold-calling down on Wall Street."

  The mid-1980s had been rife with financial opportunities in the world of stocks and bonds. Sure the Ivy League graduates with the MBAs had their pick of jobs, but there was still plenty of room for a street smart kid driven by need rather than ambition.

  "Warren put me through college," she said as they sat down at the kitchen table that had once belonged to Ellie Bancroft. "I was the first winner of the Warren Bancroft Scholarship. You had to be a fisherman's kid to qualify."

  "A smart fisherman's kid."

  "Good thing I was, otherwise somebody might've thought the whole thing was rigged."

  "A slam dunk?"

  "Afraid so. If Warren can't help you directly, he'll find a way to help you indirectly and he won't take no for an answer."

  "He told me about the work you're doing for the museum," he said. "It sounded pretty ambitious."

  She tapped her forehead with her index finger. "I have all sorts of knowledge tucked away up there but no place to use it. Did he show you the mock-up of how the whole thing will look when it's finished?" She had an idea for a sculpture of a fisherman's family but it had been so long since she'd even attempted anything that ambitious that she couldn't bring herself to broach the topic with Warren even though he had been encouraging her to tackle something for the museum.

  "No, but he did end up recruiting me to build the canoes."

  She made no attempt to disguise her pleasure. "Then it looks like we'll be working together." She explained how some of the lighting techniques she hoped to utilize needed to be built into the structure of the boats they suspended from the ceiling.

  "Sounds like we'll be working closely together," he said and they smiled at each other like two lovestruck teenagers.

  George and Gracie strolled back into the room and surveyed the scene. Gracie indulged in a few delicate sips of water from their bowl while George fixed Sam with one of those patented stares cats were known for.

  "He hates me," Sam said.

  "George hates everyone but Gracie. Don't pay any attention to him."

  Gracie stepped away from the water bowl and strolled out of the room, tail at full mast, with George close behind.

  "There's a metaphor here somewhere," Sam said.

  "Or a punchline." She gestured toward his plate. "Eat your eggs before they get cold. There's nothing worse than icy, rubbery scrambled eggs."

  He made short work of his food then reached over and grabbed a bite of her muffin.

  "Hey!" she protested then remembered that she had swept him out of Cappy's before he had a chance to grab a meal. She pushed her plate toward him. "Here," she said. "Eat."

  He said something to her, something earthy and blunt and so sexual she almost melted right there on the spot. Kevin's praise had been couched in metaphor and allusion. It had vanished in the face of reality. Sam's praise was – oh, God, it was flesh and blood and pure heat and she felt it in every part of her body. It anchored her in the world yet somehow gave her wings.

  A second later they were in each other's arms again. He backed her up against the refrigerator. She wrapped her legs around his hips and lowered herself onto his amazing erection, taking him deeper than she thought possible. He groaned as she tightened her muscles around him, and she grew stronger with every movement of her body, every sound of pleasure she drew from him. This was a kind of lovemaking she'd never known. There was nothing gentle about their coming together. Their union was fierce and urgent, as if they had waited all their lives for that moment and for all they knew, maybe they had.

  #

  "Start the waffles, Nancy," Warren called out. "They're pulling in the driveway."

  Max was beside himself with excitement. He leaped against Warren and placed his big hairy paws on his chest and barked at full volume.

  "I told you he'd be here," he said to the big yellow dog a
nd threw open the front door. "Go say hello."

  Max tore down the steps and galloped across the lawn full speed, barking at the top of his canine lungs. He skidded to a stop inches away from Sam and Annie, then threw himself at his master in a frenzy of pure pleasure.

  "My second and third wives never gave me a greeting like that," Warren said as he walked down the driveway to meet them.

  "Dog biscuits," said Annie, waving a large Milk-Bone. "Wins their hearts every time."

  He slipped an arm through Annie's while Sam and Max bonded.

  "You look happy," he observed as they strolled back to the house.

  "I am," she said.

  "He looks happy too."

  She glanced over her shoulder. "He does, doesn't he?"

  "I'm glad you two are getting along," he said, "because Sam will be working on the museum with you."

  Her eyes danced with amusement. "I'm sure that was worrying you."

  It was one of those days that made an old man glad to be alive. These two young people – they would always be young to him – had changed before his very eyes. Annie glowed with pure happiness. Her loveliness had always been shadowed with worry and, since Kevin's death, sorrow had taken its toll. This morning, with her thick curly hair pulled back in a ponytail and her face scrubbed clean of makeup, she was the girl he'd watched grow up before the sadness came to stay.

  As for Sam – hell, he hardly recognized the boy. His laughter was loud and easy and his eyes never left Annie. The expression in them warmed Warren's heart. It was everything he'd hoped for when the notion first presented itself. Not that he could take any credit for the laughter that rang out as they shared blueberry waffles and stories at his breakfast table on that sunny Labor Day morning. All he did was sell a house to Annie and give Sam a place to stay while he sorted out his problems. Love was a funny business. Just because you thought two people were right for each other didn't mean spit if the magic wasn't there.

  And all you had to do was look at Sam and Annie to know the magic was present and accounted for.