Man of the Hour

by Diana Palmer

  “See what you’re asking for?” Bob asked Lang with a humorless laugh. “She said she wanted a husband and a family, but what she really wanted was a garage. You’d better agree beforehand about what kind of marriage you’re going to have,” he said bitterly.

  “Did you ever tell Connie how you felt?” Kirry asked hesitantly.

  “Until I was blue in the face, but it’s always been what Connie wants, not what I want.” He glanced at Teresa as she came into the room, shy and quiet. “Are you leaving, too?”

  Teresa explained in Spanish that she wanted to go to her brother’s home in San Antonio. She asked if Lang and Kirry would drop her off.

  “Come on, Teresa,” Lang said. “You can ride with us.”

  “Muchas gracias.” She walked to Bob and looked up at him with those huge, soft eyes. “Lo siento. No te puse furioso a mi, por favor,” she whispered.

  Bob’s face contorted. “Of course I’m not mad at you,” he said softly, and his expression and tone got through even if the words didn’t quite register.

  She smiled at him. “Hasta luego. ¿Nos vamos?”

  Lang nodded. “We go. I’ll be in touch, Bob.”

  Bob hesitated. “Don’t…blame me too much,” he said miserably.

  Lang moved forward and hugged him warmly. “You’re my brother, you idiot, I only want you to be happy.”

  9

  Lang and Kirry dropped Teresa off at her brother’s house on the outskirts of San Antonio. Lang went with her to the door, explaining that his sister-in-law had left the house for the night—without going into any detail about the reason for it—and that it wouldn’t be fitting for Teresa to spend the night alone with Bob. The brother was gracious and appreciative, and Lang came back to the car feeling less sad.

  “She’s got a nice family,” he told Kirry.

  “Your brother is really smitten with her,” Kirry replied. “I’m sorry for Connie, because I don’t think Bob is going to be able to resist Teresa.”

  “Don’t be so sure,” he said curtly.

  “You’re worried.”

  “I believe in marriage. Sometimes people give up too easily on a relationship.”

  “Sometimes they hang on to one that has no future.”

  He glanced at her, and his eyes became searching on her face. “Connie shouldn’t have married,” he said. “She should have opened her own garage and spent years building it up before she settled down.”

  “Yes.”

  He sighed heavily. “You don’t really want to get married yet, do you?” he asked with his attention on the road ahead. “You want a career, just like Connie.”

  Her heart leaped. Was that what he thought, that a job meant more to her than making a home for Lang and their children? Or was that what he wanted to think? Was he looking for a way to break the engagement already? It felt like a replay of the past.

  She twisted her fingers in her lap and watched them tangle and untangle. “Some women aren’t cut out to be mothers, I think,” she said. “Connie loves Mikey, but she’s never been particularly maternal.”

  “It’s a little late for her to find it out,” he said angrily.

  “Perhaps she didn’t know herself,” she said.

  He didn’t reply. He was taking it hard. Unusually hard.

  She glanced at him. “Some men aren’t cut out to be fathers, either, I guess.”

  He stiffened. “Really?”

  “You freeze up every time someone mentions a family, Lang, haven’t you realized?”

  His hands gripped the steering wheel and then relaxed. “Children mean permanent ties.”

  “I know.” She smiled. “You aren’t ready, anymore than Connie was.”

  “Neither are you,” he returned angrily. “You want a career.”

  “Of course I do. Everyone wants to make their mark in the world, but it’s possible to combine a career with a family,” she said, laughing. “People do it all the time.”

  “Like Connie has?” he asked angrily.

  “Connie is having trouble. She’s acting too single-mindedly to juggle a job and a family.”

  “Juggle them!” he snapped.

  Kirry was surprised at the antagonism in his deep voice. She knew that the Patton boys had lost their mother when they were just a little older than Mikey, but Lang never spoke of her. Their father had raised them and he’d died when Kirry and Lang were just noticing each other.

  “Lang, you never talk about your mother,” she remarked.

  “I never will.”

  She was shocked at the vehemence in the assertion. “Not even to me?”

  “What do you want to know about her?” he asked.

  She hesitated. “What was she like?”

  “She was a career woman,” he said with a cold smile, glancing her way. “She was one of those women who should never have married. She didn’t have time for Bob and me. She was too busy flying all over the country to sell real estate. And one day she went up in a plane that was due for an overhaul, but she couldn’t wait because she might miss a sale. The plane went down and we buried her in pieces.”

  Her breath caught in her throat. “Oh, Lang, I’m so sorry.”

  “Why? We never loved her, damn her,” he retorted. “She never loved us, either. We were a nuisance, an inconvenience. She told our father every time they had a fight that she never wanted us in the first place, but he’d worried her to death about wanting kids, so she gave in. We were her greatest regret. She didn’t remember a birthday the whole time we were kids, and she never remembered Christmas presents. I made her an ashtray at school in clay and painted it her favorite colors. She threw it in the trash.”

  Why hadn’t he ever told her this? She realized then that Lang had never shared his deepest feelings with her. In all the years she’d known him, he’d never spoken of his childhood at all—until now. And she understood for the first time why he was so reluctant to marry.

  “You think it will be the same for us,” she said suddenly. “You think I’ll be like your mother.”

  He looked in the rearview mirror before he made the next turn, with smooth ease. “Won’t you, Kirry?” he asked with world-weary cynicism. “This is the era of single-parent families. I know all about that. I was the product of one, even if my parents were married on paper. I was a latchkey kid from the age of six. Would you like to hear some horror stories that came from it?”

  “I can imagine,” she said. Her soft eyes slid over his face. “It’s a different world. Life-styles are changing almost overnight. What used to be the norm isn’t anymore. We can’t go back to the past, Lang. We all have to adjust. With the economy in its present state, most families can’t make it on one income, so women have to work. If we did get married, I’d still have to have a job.”

  He grimaced. He didn’t like what she was saying. It was all too true. They could hardly have a decent standard of living and children on just his salary, as good as it was. And what if he became disabled? If Kirry couldn’t work, how would she support herself and their family if something happened to him?

  “It’s not such a bad thing, a woman being independent,” she said gently.

  “My mother certainly was,” he said.

  He turned into the parking lot of the building where they lived, closemouthed and quiet. Old memories were hurting him. He didn’t like remembering his mother and her single-minded devotion to the almighty job. His father worked as a laborer at a feed mill. He didn’t make a lot of money and he worked long hours, so he wasn’t home when Bob and Lang got home from school.

  Their mother could have had time for them if she’d wanted to. She was pretty much self-employed. Her job schedule could have been rearranged. But she was always gone. And when she was home, she expected Lang and Bob to have the housework done and wait on her because she was tired.

  Their father had done his best to accommodate her, and that had made Lang and Bob resentful and angry at the way she used him. When she died in the plane crash, their stan
dard of living dropped radically. But Lang hadn’t cried. Neither had Bob. Their father had tried to explain it once, to make them understand that she’d loved them, in her way, but she hadn’t wanted to get married in the first place. He’d compromised her, and they’d had to, for her parents’ sake. In those days, in a small Texas town, church-going girls didn’t have babies out of wedlock.

  “My parents had to get married,” Lang muttered, staring into the past.

  “I’m sorry.”

  He cut off the engine and turned to her. “Why were you having chills?” he demanded. “Could Connie have been right with that shot in the dark?”

  “We used something,” she said weakly.

  “And nothing is foolproof.” He looked haunted. “Tell me!”

  “I can’t tell you what I don’t know, Lang,” she replied very quietly. “It’s way too soon to even guess yet.”

  He relented. His hand ruffled his own hair as he leaned back in the seat. “I don’t want you to be pregnant, Kirry,” he said.

  She felt her body stiffen. That was blunt enough. “You can’t forgive your mother, so I’m to be punished for her sins, is that it?”

  He looked puzzled. “That has nothing to do with it.”

  “Sure.” She opened the car door and got out. Her legs felt shaky. Her self-confidence was on the blink entirely.

  He got out, too, and followed her into the building and the elevator. He rammed his hands into his pockets and stared at her broodingly as they went up.

  “Don’t pretend that you’d be thrilled about it any more than I would,” he persisted.

  She didn’t look at him or answer him.

  They got off on their floor and she paused at the door of her apartment. “Lorna said that you didn’t want to live here anymore. You denied it, but was it true?”

  He frowned as he studied her. Lorna’s threat came back full force. She was a vindictive woman, and Lang knew from the past that she didn’t bluff.

  “What if you lost your job, Kirry?”

  “I’d find another,” she said. “I’m not hopelessly untalented.”

  “If you left under a cloud, it might be difficult to find something else as good.”

  “I’m not going to be fired,” she said heavily. “Lorna may not like me, but Mack does, and he can clear me with the Lancasters. It isn’t as if I’ve done something unforgivable.”

  He looked worried and couldn’t hide it. His dark eyes searched her green ones quietly. She didn’t know what Lorna had threatened. He couldn’t tell her, either.

  “Are you sure that there won’t be any consequences from what we did?” he asked heavily.

  “You’re worrying it to death because of one idle remark Connie made! Lang, I’m not pregnant, all right?”

  “All right.” He laughed at his own concern. He was overreacting. “Then if you’re that sure, maybe it would be better if we let the engagement fade away.”

  Her eyes narrowed. “That’s what Lorna wants, I gather?”

  He hesitated. “Yes,” he said. “That’s what she wants.” He didn’t add why.

  She searched his face as if she were saying goodbye. In fact, she was. “Then give her what she wants,” she replied. “I don’t want to sacrifice my future to your conscience. The only reason you wanted the engagement in the first place was because you felt guilty that we slept together. That’s a bad reason to marry someone, especially when there is no possibility of any consequences,” she added firmly.

  Women were supposed to know if they were pregnant, he assured himself. She sounded confident. Right now, getting Lorna out of the picture before she could damage Kirry’s future was the most important thing. Let her think she’d won. Yes.

  “Consider the engagement off, then, if that’s what you want,” he said.

  She managed a smile, but it was strained. “It’s what you want,” she said, pointedly. “You can’t let go of the past, can you? I never knew why you really wanted out. You never told me anything about your life, and I didn’t even realize it. “You wanted me. That’s all it ever was.”

  He didn’t deny it, but his face was taut and his eyes unreadable.

  She turned away. “That’s what I thought,” she said quietly, as she unlocked her door.

  Lang watched her hungrily, averting his eyes when she looked back at him.

  “I’ll still be around,” he reminded her. “Don’t let your guard down where Erikson’s concerned. And if you’d rather not keep the lessons going with me, I’ll have one of my advanced students work with you. It would be a shame to stop now.”

  “Whatever you think,” she agreed complacently.

  His eyes were weary. “Maybe I am living in the past,” he said then. “The fact is, I don’t want children and I can’t settle for half a marriage. I’m sorry. Sex isn’t enough.”

  She knew her face had gone pale, but she smiled like a trooper. “No, it isn’t,” she agreed. “See you around, Lang.”

  He nodded. He couldn’t trust himself to speak.

  She closed the door with a firm click and Lang stood staring at it with his heart in his eyes for a long moment before he turned and went back to his own apartment. It had never seemed as empty in the past.

  Kirry lay awake most of the night, thinking about Lang’s comments. Somehow she couldn’t equate the man who’d said sex wasn’t enough with the incredibly tender lover of the other night. It had been much, much more than physical lust. But he wouldn’t acknowledge it. And he’d seemed withdrawn the night before, especially when she’d mentioned Lorna. She didn’t know what was going on, but it had to have something to do with her job. Was she going to be fired? Did he know something she didn’t?

  Perhaps he’d made that suggestion about an alternate campaign for a purpose. When she got up the next day, it was with a new resolve. She wasn’t going to hang around and wait to be bumped from the company roster. She had some good ideas. Lorna might not appreciate them, but she knew someone who would. She put in her notice that very morning, cautioning Mack not to share it with the Lancasters just yet. He agreed, feeling personally that Kirry had been deliberately dealt a bad hand through Lorna’s catty remarks to her friend, Mrs. Lancaster.

  Kirry went to see Reflections, Inc., on her lunch hour. It was a new public relations firm, and the owner had a lean and hungry look. He hired Kirry on the spot when he heard some of her ideas, even going so far as to offer her a percentage of the business as well as a salary if she pulled in new business for them. Her feet hardly left the pavement on the way back to work. Marrying Lang would have made her float twice as high, but now the job would have to be her satisfaction. If she allowed herself to think about losing Lang again, she’d go mad.

  By the time she got ready to leave the office, much later than she’d planned to, she’d forgotten all about Erikson in the joy of the day. Her mind was on her new position and the delight she was going to feel when she walked out the door for the last time. Her only regret was poor Mack. His ideas weren’t pleasing Lorna, and she was taking out most of her frustrations on him. Everyone in the office could hear her displeasure.

  “I’ll cope,” he’d told Kirry, tongue in cheek. “When she’s had enough, she’ll go looking for another agency. The joke will be on the Lancasters, not me.”

  Kirry had to agree, and she couldn’t help feeling a little sting of pleasure at the thought. Mrs. Lancaster hadn’t learned that friendship had to be kept separate from business if she wanted her company to prosper. By allowing Lorna to manipulate her, she’d cost herself a lot of new business. And an employee who could have helped her keep it.

  She was thinking about the markets she could help bring to Reflections, Inc., when she suddenly realized that it was dark and she was alone in the parking lot.

  Her car was in plain view, and the lot was lighted. She looked around quickly, but there wasn’t another car in sight. She was being paranoid, she told herself. Erikson hadn’t been seen all day. It was highly unlikely that he’d be laying
in wait for her tonight.

  She had her keys in her hand, locked in between her fingers to make a formidable weapon if necessary. She walked quickly and her eyes darted around cautiously. She unlocked the car, but before she got in, she looked in the back seat. Then she dashed inside and locked the doors again. Safe!

  There was nothing suspicious in the interior, and she checked carefully. Then she started the car and put it in gear. No Erickson. She’d worried for nothing.

  She turned the car out into traffic and drove toward her apartment building. It had been a very profitable day. She wondered how Lang had fared, and if Bob and Connie had talked over their differences. It would be sad for little Mikey if his parents divorced. She felt sorry for all of them. She felt sorriest for Lang and herself.

  As she pulled into the parking lot of her apartment building and turned off the engine, she looked around cautiously. But there were other people nearby and she relaxed. Nothing to worry about, she assured herself. He was going to give it up. She knew he was. She felt better about everything.

  She got her purse and locked the car, pulling her coat closer against the chilly night air. Her eyes sparkled as she thought about her one pleasure, the change of jobs.

  She walked into the apartment building and got into the elevator with a couple of other tenants. Nobody spoke. She got off on her floor, wondering as she walked down the hall if Lang was at home. She stared at his door, but she only hesitated for an instant. He’d made his feelings clear. She was no longer part of his life. In fact, he might have even moved out by now. She was just going to have to learn how to live without him.

  She unlocked her apartment door, idly aware that it was unusually easy to get into tonight, and closed and locked it behind her. She turned on the light and walked into her bedroom to change clothes.

  As she entered the room, an arm came around her neck and trapped her, hurting.

  “Hello, girlie.” A familiar voice chuckled. “Did you think I’d forget about you? Not a chance! It’s payback time, blondie.”