"Wasn't there another woman?"
"Yes, but he told me about her. We talked, and we tried to work things out, but he'd fallen in love with her. I knew that." She shrugged matter-of-factly. "I couldn't stay in a marriage like that."
"What if there'd been a child?"
It was the perfect opening. He was still holding her hand, still looking at her with that seductive mix of concern and comfort. All she had to do was say, There is a child, Zane. Our child. But, God help her, she couldn't do it. Not yet, not without knowing more.
"Do you think a child needs two parents?" she blurted.
"Is this a general question, or are you talking specifics?"
Julia's heart somersaulted and lodged in her throat.
"Because if you're talking about Joshua, who am I to say? He seems happy, well adjusted, like his parents are doing their job. In which case he's better off with both."
Profound relief washed through her. He'd been talking about Joshua; he hadn't looked into her eyes and read her secret. And now he wasn't looking into her eyes at all. He seemed distracted, far away, perhaps years away. Was he thinking about his parents, about those specifics?
Bringing up his past was risky, but she had to know which scars had healed and which still lay open to further hurt. And why, eight weeks before, he'd said marriage was low on his priority list.
"There are plenty of circumstances when a child is better off with only one parent, though," she said carefully.
Something flashed across the surface of his eyes, something cold and bleak, and for a second Julia regretted starting this, but only for a scant second. She had to know.
"What about you, Zane? When did your parents split up?"
"They didn't so much split up as tear themselves apart. My father was a real no-hoper, an alcoholic. Never kept a job longer than a month. If my mother had been stronger, she'd have kicked him out long before—" He stopped abruptly. Shook his head. "You don't want to hear about my sorry family."
Oh, but she did. She looked into his cold, closed expression, and she felt a stab of longing so sharp she swore it drew blood. She twisted her hand in his, squeezed his fingers. "Tell me. I absolutely want to know."
He stared at her a moment, as if judging her sincerity or her reason for wanting to know. When he pulled his hand free of hers, she held her breath and willed him not to cut her off completely. His Adam's apple dipped as if he were clearing his throat, and she clasped her hands tightly together. Talk to me, Zane. Please.
"There's not a lot to tell. Eventually he got caught stealing, and he died in a prison fight." He shrugged, but she knew it was a feigned negligence. "A few weeks afterward we landed here. In the town of Plenty."
His tone mocked the town's name, and she recalled the time he'd added his editorial comment to the town's Welcome sign. Unfortunately his opinion on what the town offered plenty of didn't exactly gel with the city council's. He would likely have ended up charged with vandalism if Bill hadn't stepped in and offered him a chance to pay off the damage.
"You hated the place, didn't you?"
"I hated how it made me feel." He studied his hands for a long silent moment, then let go his breath sharply. "You ever see that movie Pleasantville? Where the only road out of town circles around and comes back in the other side? That was my worst nightmare, being trapped in this town."
"And that's why you left."
"Just as soon as I finished my apprenticeship."
"Not because of Claire Heaslip?" she asked compulsively.
"Claire?" He glanced up, his eyes flat and hard. "I guess you heard the rumors."
"Yes, but gossip isn't always accurate."
"The bit about her using me for a trip on the wild side, that's accurate, but as for her allegations… She wasn't pregnant, at least not by me. That's not why she left town, and not why I left, either."
That was worse than the gossip she'd heard. A cold sense of misgiving washed over Julia. A supposed good girl from the rich end of town had used him for sex, had started pregnancy rumors. No wonder he looked so bitter now, remembering. No wonder he had sounded so bitter that morning on her veranda.
"I left because I couldn't wait to get out of this place. I was ashamed of the hovel we lived in. I couldn't invite my friends around, and I hated going to their places, seeing what we didn't have."
Julia ached to comfort him, to touch him in some way, but she recalled how he'd accused her of touching him in pity, and she knew that was the last thing he needed now.
"I hated who I was, I hated my parents for making me who I was, and I hated the town for making me realize everything I wasn't. Everything I could never be."
"That's one way of looking at it," she said slowly.
"There's another?"
Ignoring the biting edge to his voice, she tilted her head consideringly. "Bill says you're a damn fine mechanic. Almost as good as him."
"I was better than him ten years ago!"
"Because he taught you everything he knows?"
He snorted disparagingly. "Because I questioned everything he didn't know."
"So, Mr. Hotshot Mechanic, don't you think you should be thanking your parents and this town and Bill? Seems to me they gave you the incentive to prove them wrong."
"This town doesn't see me as anything but a troublemaker. Haven't you heard that on the grapevine?"
"As I said before, Plenty gossip is rarely accurate."
He expelled a rough-sounding laugh, shook his head. "You're really something, aren't you?"
"Well, yes, but I'm not sure what."
Her dry response, the accompanying smile, were meant to lighten the mood, but somehow she became snagged in the lure of his answering smile, in the light of speculation in his eyes. In the strange charge in the atmosphere between them—strange because it transcended the physical, because it pulsed between them in some deeper dimension.
She knew he felt it, too… He felt it, and it disturbed him. He looked away, studied his hands again, and a wry smile kicked up one corner of his mouth. "You know, back in high school, whenever I thought of what I didn't have, it was Mitch Goodwin I was looking at. I wanted to be him. I wanted his life."
"You don't want to be Mitch now. He's devastated." Julia recalled the pain in her brother's eyes, his sense of helplessness, of bewilderment. "I wish there was something I could do, some way of easing his pain. I feel so ineffectual."
"Taking Joshua seems pretty effectual to me."
She made a soft scoffing noise. "It's a great big nothing."
"You think Mitch wants to be worrying about Joshua when he's on the other side of the world talking some sense into his wife? You think he isn't grateful as all hell to have a safe place to leave his kid? To know he's happy?"
"I hadn't thought of it like that." She met the directness of his gaze, felt some of its steady strength seep into her, comforting her as effortlessly as his words. "Now all I have to do is work out some way to keep my job while providing that safe, happy, child care."
"Can't you take a sickie?" He must have seen the horrified look on her face, because he smiled wryly. "No, of course not."
"I'll work something out." Except finding someone to cover on such short notice would be a nightmare.
"I could look after him while you go in and see your boss, if that helps any."
Julia shook her head. "I can't do that."
"Can't or won't?"
"Of course I can." She stared at him, remembering his guilt over failing with Jay, and she knew this mattered. That her trust mattered. "Perhaps if you'd just take him in the morning, until I can go in and sort out something for my other shifts. I hate leaving them in the lurch. Would that be okay with you?"
"No sweat."
"You're a life-saver." She smiled her gratitude. "Seems like I'll owe you another drink."
"You never bought me the first two."
"Yes, well, I seem to recall being sidetracked."
In two short sentences the mood chan
ged substance, became a thing of fire and electricity. "It's been a long day," he said slowly. "I don't think we should go any further down this road."
Their eyes met, and memories flickered, flared, flamed into life. That morning, their interrupted kiss, the pressure of his body, hard and ready.
Did she want to travel that road? Oh, yes, most definitely. But not until she'd cleared every one of the obstacles, and that was a huge task of road-clearing to be starting tonight.
So when he took her by the hands, pulled her to her feet and pressed a chaste kiss to her forehead, she didn't resist. When he turned her firmly in the direction of her bedroom, she kept on walking.
Somehow it just seemed easier.
* * *
Chapter 10
«^»
He was being watched by the dragon lady in number sixteen again, although watched wasn't the right word when it felt more like surveillance. Normally she would have driven him nuts hours ago, but this morning his mood was too laid back. Playing with trucks in the sandpit had that effect on him. His whole body felt looser, as though it had kicked back a few cogs and was running on the sweetest timing.
With a suddenness Zane was almost getting used to, Josh abandoned his Tonka truck and clambered to his feet. "Can we walk Mac now?"
"Good a time as any, bud." Zane stretched and had to bite back a curse. He hadn't thought about sand inside his brace when he signed on at Josh's construction site. "How 'bout you get his leash while I clean out this bi—" He caught himself in time. "This big old brace?"
The kid was already steaming away to fetch the leash, his sturdy legs pumping like pistons. Zane grinned and shook his head. Yep, his mood was unusually sunny when even sand abrasion couldn't sour it. Of course, it was impossible to be anything but cheerful around Josh—the kid was a three-foot beam of pure sunshine—but he would be fooling himself if he didn't acknowledge the real reason.
Julia. He felt as if she'd handed him some rare gift last night, yet he couldn't even begin to fathom all its facets. There'd been the fact that she trusted him with Joshua, no hesitation, no provisos. And before that, the way she'd listened to his story as though she really needed to hear it, as though she wanted to figure out its significance. As though it mattered. Then she'd blown him away with that strange insight into what Plenty had done for him.
Needless to say, she'd blown him away all over again with her unspoken invitation … the one he had gently rejected. There had been a shadow darkening her eyes—a worry, a reservation, a concern. It could have been because of Mitch and the day's high emotion, or it could have arisen from his story. Whatever the reason, it had held him back when her body gravitated toward his. Told him to kiss her on the brow instead of the mouth. He hadn't stopped to analyze the reason, but he'd known that the next time he pressed himself into her soft body, there would be no shadows in her eyes.
Until then, he would keep on howling.
* * *
The neighbor—Mrs. H., Julia called her—was watering her front yard when they returned from their walk. He'd abandoned his crutches, and it felt damn good to be on his own two feet again.
"Lovely day for gardening," he suggested.
She glared at him a second before her acerbic eyes dropped to Josh. And instantly warmed. "Hello, young man. Are you visiting with your auntie Julia?"
"What's an arnty?"
The kid's question—like its two hundred odd predecessors—was directed at Zane, but Dragon Lady answered. "That means Julia is your father's sister. I saw you were visiting, and I made a batch of those cookies you love."
"The ones with hun'reds and fousads?"
She beamed with delight. "Yes, and if you send your auntie over later, she can collect them."
"Can Zane c'lect 'em now?"
Mrs. H.'s affectionate laughter evaporated as she glanced from Josh to Zane. He crossed his arms and smiled benignly. The perfect mimic, Josh crossed his arms and smiled, too, although his was definitely a winner. That and the magic word he suddenly remembered. "I forgot to say please."
"Well, in that case…"
When she hurried off inside, Zane high-fived Josh. "Good cookies, huh?"
"Uh-huh."
* * *
Removing that tub of cookies from her reluctant hands shouldn't have felt so sweet, Zane told himself as he demolished his third. But he couldn't prevent his grin from widening when he recalled the look on her face as she sternly informed him, "They're for Joshua, you hear?"
Now Josh put a chubby hand on his shoulder and peered into his face. "What you wanna do now, Zane?"
He considered the possibilities. Cookies aside, it was nearing lunchtime. Julia's knock-off time. "How about lunch in the park?"
"The one wiff ducks?"
"That's the one."
"Can Julia come, too?"
Zane grinned. "We can always ask."
* * *
Julia felt the sharp nudge of an elbow in her side, heard Kerrie's, "Oh, wow, serious babe alert," and looked up. Not to check out another of Kerrie's infamous "babe alerts," but to suggest that her workmate return her focus to the inventory checklist.
Then her attention was snared by the sight coming through the furnishings department. A tall man with tawny blond hair ruffled all out of shape by the fingers that gripped it. They belonged to the small boy with mussy blond hair riding on the man's broad shoulders. Two pairs of eyes scanned the floor with equal thoroughness.
The father-son imagery curled into her senses and made itself at home. Oh, yes, this was what she wanted. This man. Their child. The whole family deal.
The knowledge didn't strike her like a thunderbolt, didn't knock the breath from her lungs or the strength from her legs. It rippled through her like liquid sunshine and pooled somewhere near her heart. She loved him. Absolutely, unreservedly, forever-and-a-day-ly.
While she was still absorbing the significance of that acknowledgement, Joshua spotted her. He pointed and bounced and, judging by the grimace on Zane's face, tightened his hair-hold with the other hand. Julia was smiling all over her face before their gazes met and held, and she felt such a giddy rush of hope and joy and love that she laughed out loud.
Kerrie nudged her again and suggested she stop gawking and get back to work, but Julia ignored her. They were only ten feet away and closing fast, and she felt a sudden attack of shyness. A certainty that everything she felt was right there on her face, that he would take one look and decide to bolt. With infinite care, as if it were something incredibly fragile, she put down her pen. Then looked up into eyes the clear gray of spring rain.
"Hi."
"Hi." She mimicked his greeting, although she wasn't sure how. Then Joshua was chattering about how they'd come to take her to the park to feed ducks, and to hurry, because the bread would be stale, until finally he stopped to take a breath.
"So," Zane said slowly. "You want to come to the park with us?"
She thought there might be a challenge in his eyes, but she hadn't a clue what it meant. All she knew was if he continued to look at her that way, she would crawl over glass to get to the park. Although she didn't think she would tell him that quite yet—not until she'd told him something much more daunting.
She felt that shadow cross her happiness like a storm cloud and attempted to chase it away with a smile. "Did you bring lunch for anyone other than the ducks? Because I'm starving."
Joshua rummaged in his jacket pocket and produced a severely crunched bag. "You can share wiff the ducks. They won't mind."
* * *
Zane and Julia bought sandwiches and ate them while Joshua wore himself out dashing between the play equipment and the lagoon that looped the park's southern boundary. Finally he collapsed against Zane's bad leg, and when she saw his involuntary wince, a bolt of contrition shot through her.
"Come over here, sport, and I'll piggyback you home."
"I'm not sport, I'm bud," he informed her without releasing his grip on Zane. "Will you piggyback me?"
"’kay."
And before Julia could do more than open her mouth to object, Joshua had clambered aboard Zane's shoulders.
"Are you sure you can manage?" she worried.
"If bud here takes his hands off my eyes."
Joshua giggled. Julia rolled her eyes. And they started for home.
"What happened to your crutches?" she asked.
"Threw them away."
"Was that wise?"
He glanced down at her. "Worried I'll drop the kid?"
"No, I'm worried you'll hurt your knee again."
"Worrywort."
"Man."
He laughed out loud at her teasing choice of insult, and the husky-edged sound burrowed deep into her heart. She'd rarely seen him so relaxed, so quick to laugh. If only they could maintain this easy mood. If only … if only. She sighed heavily and felt the immediate touch of his gaze, and with a sinking heart she saw the question forming. But before he could ask it, Maisie Davis came out of the butcher shop and stopped to beam at them all. "Lovely day," she said.
"We've been to the park," Joshua supplied.
"I bet you had fun. Are you going home now?"
"No. We're going to Julia's place. Zane lives there, too, y'know."
Julia felt a burning heat in her ears and wished her hair wasn't tied back, but Maisie was too busy inspecting Zane to notice her discomfort. "You're young Kree's brother, aren't you? I do hope she comes back soon, because Tina doesn't know how to set my hair." She patted her tight curls. "Well, you all have a nice day. I have to finish my shopping."
In the next three blocks they exchanged pleasantries with at least six more townsfolk, all keen to chat with Joshua, to ask about Kree, to study Zane. She didn't dare look at him, to see how he was taking the unasked-for attention.
When they turned the last corner into a deserted Bower Street
, she heard him blow out an incredulous kind of laugh. "I've been out walking every day this last week, and you know, this is the first time anyone's passed the time of day."
"Well, a child is a proven conversation starter," she said lightly. "Or perhaps it's because you're not so fearsome when you're smiling."
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