Gray stood where he was, his eyes riveted to the woman and child until they disappeared around the shady curve farther along the path. She had the prettiest laugh…did she know how that laugh affected him?
He was standing beside the fire at a party with several friends, watching as a trio of young women entered the room. They stopped beside a gaily decorated Christmas tree, looking around as people do when they first enter a group, trying to catalog the crowd. Then the shortest girl spied one of the guys that she knew and made a beeline, the other two trailing in her wake. They performed introductions all around. One of his buddies said something stupid and the girls giggled. Usually he found giggling women annoying, but the one with the long blond hair had a pretty, silvery laugh that made him want to hear it again.
Catherine. Wasn’t that her name? Without hesitation, he stepped forward. “Hello, Catherine. I’m Mike Thorne. May I get you a drink?”
She looked up at him, and he fell into the depths of eyes so blue and pure they simply swallowed him whole.
When his brain thawed and began to function again, the first thought that leaped into his head was: I’m going to marry her.
“Jesus.” Gray put his hands to his head, shaken beyond belief. He realized he had sunk to his knees in the path although he didn’t remember doing so. On the other hand, he remembered perfectly the scene that had just played itself out in his head…even though it had never happened to him.
He shook his head dazedly. He’d never considered himself possessed of an especially vivid imagination, but he’d never expected he’d need a heart transplant at the age of thirty, either.
This was nuts.
He climbed to his feet and for the second time, brushed at the knees of his pants. And then it occurred to him that there was a way to find out if he was dreaming or not.
“Hey, Catherine?” He went down the path before he could give himself time to think about why this was a bad idea.
She and Michael had walked out of the shadows of the big bushes and on to a velvety green lawn by the time he found them. The little boy headed for a sturdy, tot-size playset at the far end of the yard.
“Catherine?” he said again.
She turned, clearly surprised to see him. “Yes?”
He hesitated. “This sounds like a weird question but…how did you and your husband meet?”
Her smile faltered, uncertainty clouding her eyes. “That is an odd question.”
“A bet with a friend,” he improvised. He looked at the little boy rather than her, afraid she might see the need for her answer in his eyes. “I’m polling everyone I know.”
“Oh.” Her expression cleared and she smiled fully again. “Well, in the interests of science…I was home during Christmas of my senior year at college and I went to a party with some friends. Mike was there. We hit it off right away.” She laughed, and as it had before, the sound struck a chord deep inside, enchanting him so that he had a hard time focusing on her words. “Now Patsy is a completely different story. She and Mike’s dad Giles were neighbors growing up. He pulled her hair and teased her unmercifully. She couldn’t stand him.”
“So how did they come to get married?” he asked. He wanted to keep her talking, to mask the shock that had rolled through him at her casual confirmation of what he’d already known.
“He was drafted,” she said. “They exchanged letters and she swears she fell in love with him long-distance. They got married three days after he came home at the end of his first year.”
“Ma-ma? Push?” Michael’s shrill tones drifted toward them, and they both began to walk toward the child who was diligently trying to sling his short legs over the seat of a swing.
“I’m coming, Michael,” she called.
Gray stood to one side as she lifted the child into a safety swing.
“No!” the little boy protested. “Big s’ing!”
“All right.” Catherine pulled him out of the seat and settled him on her lap in one of the larger seats. “Mommy will swing with you.” She held on to the child with one arm and gently began to move the swing with her feet.
“Mac push.” Michael appeared to have definite ideas about this whole swing thing, Gray thought with amusement.
“Sure.” He stepped behind the pair, cautioning Catherine, “Hang on to him.”
“What are— Gray!” It was a shriek as he pulled the swing back toward him and then let go. They didn’t really go very high, but Michael giggled and screamed.
“More!”
He obliged, pushing Catherine and the little boy back and forth for a few moments until Michael began to squirm. Catherine slowed the swing and set him down and he instantly trotted off toward the sandbox that was placed to one side of the play area.
As she straightened, an envelope that had been in the back pocket of her casual slacks slipped free and fell to the ground. Small pieces, many of them slick magazine-style paper, scattered and she bent to gather them.
Gray helped her, realizing as he did so that he was picking up already-clipped coupons. He smiled. Coupons reminded him instantly of his mother.
“You don’t have to help—” she began, but when he held out the fistful of coupons he’d retrieved from the light breeze, she said, “Thank you.” Her cheeks were pink, and as she stuffed them back into the envelope, she said, “For the senior center.”
“Ah.” He watched as she stuffed everything back into the envelope. “My mother was the coupon queen. I never saw anyone stretch a budget as well as that woman did.”
The edges of her lips softened from the firm line into which she’d drawn them. “Coupons can be very helpful to someone on a limited income.”
He nodded. “It’s thoughtful of you to do that.” She hesitated, and he wondered what she had been about to say, but then she shifted her attention to the little boy who had plopped down in the middle of the pile of sand. “Michael! We don’t eat sand.”
Gray chuckled as the child removed a shovel from his mouth with a distinctly guilty look. “Apparently, some of us do.”
She laughed, too. “Some of us more than others,” she said dryly as she moved forward to halt her son’s snacking. “I have to watch him like a hawk. He wants to taste everything.”
“I’ll keep that in mind in case I’m ever in a position to discourage a taste test,” he said.
Catherine had settled herself on the edge of the sandbox and was helping her son fill a big bucket, scoop by scoop. She smiled up at him, and his breath caught like a fist in his chest. God, she was so lovely. “Thanks,” she said. “Don’t let us keep you from working. I’ll try to keep him quiet.”
“Oh, you won’t bother me.” Ha. What a lie.
“Mac!” Michael was pointing up at him, and he couldn’t resist hunkering down beside the sandbox and grinning at the little boy.
“Hey, buddy, what’s up?”
“Mac.” Michael thrust one of the sturdy sand scoops at him. His vocabulary might be limited, but his meaning was certainly clear.
“All right.” Gray accepted the scoop. “You want me to build you a castle?”
The little boy’s eyes lit up and his tiny, perfect teeth glistened as he grinned. “Uh-huh!”
The sand was cool, shaded by the long shadow of several trees that overlooked the little play area, and faintly damp from a late-afternoon shower yesterday. Perfect for molding and holding a shape.
Gray grabbed a bucket and started filling it, and Michael immediately joined in, patting the top industriously when the bucket was full. Gray turned it upside down and tapped carefully, and when he lifted it off, a perfect round tower stood on the level spot Catherine had made.
They did it several more times, making a fort of sorts, and then Gray set about fashioning walls between the towers. Michael squealed and filled the bucket again, his small, dimpled hands patting the top down.
Gray had almost finished scalloping a design along the uppermost edge of one of the towers when he noticed that Michael had lost int
erest in the project and was busily loading sand into a red truck.
He sat back on his heels, rubbing the sand off his hands and brushing at his clothing, now liberally sprinkled with white grains of sand. Looking over the little boy’s head at Catherine, he said, “I guess the construction crew’s finished for the day.”
She smiled fondly, looking at her son. “His powers of concentration leave something to be desired. From everything I’ve read, short attention span comes with the age—Michael!” Her voice rose to an urgent pitch. “Don’t—”
Gray turned his head just in time to see the child plop his bulky bottom squarely into the middle of the castle they’d built.
“—sit on that,” she finished in a resigned tone.
Gray watched intently as Catherine plucked the little guy out of the sand and dusted off his minute overalls. He’d never spent much time around toddlers—or kids of any age, for that matter—but he figured Michael’s behavior was probably pretty typical. The little guy was clearly tickled pink with himself, squealing and giggling. He squirmed away from his mother’s ministrations. The minute she let him go, he was off across the grass on another adventure.
Catherine’s eyes met Gray’s over the remains of the sandcastle. They were brimming with mirth and he felt a bubble of amusement rise in his own chest. An instant later, she burst into peals of silvery laughter. Unable to resist, he began to chuckle himself.
She laughed until the tears ran. “The look on your face was priceless,” she gasped, holding her stomach. “Your masterpiece, smashed flat by a smelly diaper.”
“It was worth it,” he said when he could talk again. “Did you see how pleased he was with himself?”
Catherine nodded, still chuckling. “Little stinker. Whenever I see that gleam in his eye, I know he’s cooking up something ornery.”
“I’ll have to remember that.”
Her laughter faded away and there was a companionable silence between them as they watched the tot amble across the yard, babbling to himself in some incomprehensible language. She sighed. “He’s such fun. It breaks my heart that he’s going to grow up without knowing his father, and that Mike will never share all these precious moments with me.” She wasn’t tearful, just sadly reflective.
Gray nearly bit his tongue, so strong was the impulse to blurt out the truth to her. But…what was the truth, he asked himself? She’d think he was a nutcase, and maybe he was. Maybe all this was in his head.
Yeah. You just happen to know all kinds of intimate details about Catherine’s life with her deceased husband. Details you couldn’t possibly know unless you’d known the family before your transplant.
His heart transplant. It all came back to one split second on a rugby field, one flying kick that had struck him squarely in the chest, doing unimaginable damage and sending him to the hospital in full cardiac arrest, broken bones tearing jagged rips into the vital, life-giving organ, damaging it beyond any hope of repair. One moment, he’d been the picture of health. The next, he’d rocketed to the top of the transplant list, with little hope of a match occurring in time to replace his failing heart.
What cosmic stroke of fate had ended Mike Thorne’s life in Baltimore, less than an hour by air from the hospital in which he, Gray, lay dying? And by what even less likely chance had they been a perfect match?
It was almost enough to make him believe in pre-destination. Fate. Whatever. All he really knew was that he wanted Catherine Thorne, wanted her more than he’d ever dreamed he could want a woman.
And he couldn’t have her. There was simply no way he could ever hope to explain why he’d kept his transplant a secret from her, much less the rest of it.
No way at all.
Four
For the senior center. Catherine snorted inelegantly as she gently misted the climbing rose on the trellis at the back of the house with aphid spray later that same evening. It hadn’t been a lie…exactly. She did give coupons to the senior center, after she’d gone through them to determine which ones she couldn’t use herself.
She felt her cheeks heat as remembered embarrassment returned to haunt her. He’d been smiling, laughing at her, she’d thought at first as she’d scrambled to gather up the coupons before he could see them. But then he’d mentioned his mother and she’d realized his smile was one of reminiscence. Had his child hood been one of counting pennies, too? If it had been, he didn’t seem to have been negatively affected by it.
Neither had she, she supposed. Her father had loved her deeply, and despite his ineptitude at managing money, she’d loved him as well. Still, her growing-up years had been a recurring episode of coming home from school to find the electricity had been cut off or the telephone service had been suspended. By the time she was thirteen she’d begun to open the mail and remind her father to pay the bills promptly. She’d become quite good at making the small amounts he remembered to hand her stretch to a week’s worth of groceries. It wasn’t until after his death when she’d gone through his things that she’d realized all the little ticketlike papers she’d found were betting stubs from the track, with the names of the horses, the odds and his bets listed beside them. She’d never really questioned their lack of funds, assuming that his salary as a university librarian had been less than adequate. It had been a shock to see proof of a gambling addiction, though it hadn’t dimmed the love she’d felt.
She’d attended Smith College on a scholarship, coming home just often enough to be sure her father didn’t get his water or lights cut off again. Smith was an elite school with many of the students coming from the old-money East Coast’s most influential families. Some of them had been pleasant, but a lot of them had been exceedingly conscious of their own status compared to that of the rest of the student body. She had found it difficult to overcome the stigma of being a scholarship student who also pursued a work-study program to make ends meet.
After she’d married, money had no longer been a concern. But she would never forget the humiliation she’d felt when she’d lacked the funds to join the prestigious sorority into which she’d been invited. Or when she’d had to take an extra baby-sitting job to pay for her books, when she’d worn the same clothes for four years while girls around her changed wardrobes with the change of seasons. She’d told herself those things didn’t matter, that she didn’t want to be as shallow as her college acquaintances, that there were many things in life more important than money.
And there were. Mike’s death had vividly illustrated the insignificance of money compared to the loss of a loved one.
But even when Mike had been living and money hadn’t been a problem, she’d never been frivolous. Good items of clothing, not too flashy or trendy, made wardrobe staples for years, and she wasn’t about to change her habits just because her financial situation had changed.
It was an attitude for which she was thankful as she’d realized the extent of Mike’s financial straits after his death.
“Catherine?”
She came back to the present with a jolt to find Gray standing on the path staring at her curiously. “Oh, hello. Sorry,” she said hastily, ignoring the way her pulse kicked into a more rapid gear. “Daydreaming.”
“Where’s your sidekick?” he asked, looking around.
She smiled, tapping the face of her watch. “It’s eight-thirty. Michael’s usually in bed by eight. I just wanted to give these roses a shot of spray to keep the bugs from ruining them.”
“They’re beautiful,” he said. “I noticed you have a lot of roses. They’re a good bit of work, aren’t they?”
“Yes.” She laid down the spray and picked up pruning shears, moving to a lovely apricot specimen on the other side of the path. “But I don’t mind. Gardening is therapeutic for me. It only takes a few hours a week to keep things in good shape.”
“I assumed you had someone to take care of this,” he said, sounding surprised. “You do all the work yourself?”
“Almost all.” She kept her gaze on the rose she was pr
uning, although she could feel heat stealing into her cheeks. Thankfully, it was dusk already and he probably couldn’t see her face well. “It’s not that much of a job. The landscaping really doesn’t take much work if I give it a little time each week and I don’t do the mowing myself.”
He shook his head. “You’re an amazing woman, do you know that?”
She shook her head. “No, I’m not.” She set the pruning shears back in the basket she carried.
“According to Patsy, you’re a combination of a superhero and June Cleaver all rolled into one.”
That made her laugh as she got to her feet. “That’s a scary notion.”
“She’s determined to get you into circulation again,” he said. He’d stepped forward to offer a hand when she’d risen but she’d pretended she hadn’t noticed. Touching Gray wouldn’t be a smart thing to do, not when the man’s mere presence in her vicinity made her whole body feel as if it were loaded with fizzy champagne bubbles. “She thinks you’re far too serious for a young woman.”
Abruptly, she was angry. Far more angry than Gray’s words warranted, and she had to concentrate on beating back the unreasonable fury that rose. “If I’m serious, it’s because I have a family to take care of and a house to run,” she said sharply. “Patsy doesn’t seem to understand that someone in this family has to be responsible.”
There was a dead silence in the dark garden. Guilt gnawed a hole through her annoyance and left shame in its wake. Patsy loved her, depended on her. It wasn’t Patsy’s fault she’d never had to think about money a day in her life. And she should be grateful that her mother-in-law worried about her happiness. If she were going to assign blame for their present circumstances—no! That wasn’t a road she could allow her thoughts to travel, and she worked at calming the anger still simmering inside her.
“I apologize,” she said quietly.
Gray’s head swung from contemplation of the garden, and even in the semidusk she could feel the intensity of his eyes. “For what?”
Billionaire Bachelors: Gray Page 5