by Anna Adams
“What do you want to talk about?”
“What happened the other night.”
“Between us?” He almost dropped the gun. She’d seemed to be content pretending nothing had happened. “I assume my mother dropped by for a chat.”
“Don’t be angry with her.” Olivia pointed to the chair she’d been sitting in.
“I’m not angry, but I can speak for myself, and I would have once I knew you were comfortable talking about it.”
“I would have called you if she hadn’t visited. I was upset because you were willing to talk to the journalists, but I was also embarrassed about the kissing.” She closed her mouth for a moment, as if she didn’t want to say more. “Maybe I feel things you can’t.”
He sat. “You know I feel plenty.”
“You sound cold.”
“Not emotionally, though.” He pulled back the edges of his shirt and tore the tattered material. “Look at my track record. I’m trying to take care of you as well as my son.”
“I’m used to taking care of myself. I’m not your problem.” Olivia glanced at him as she took out a bottle of hydrogen peroxide. “I don’t want to hear about your marriage. And I don’t have a right to know if there’s been anyone else.”
Who else had she been with? He didn’t care about rights. He wanted to know.
She opened the bottle. “Are you ready?”
“For this, yes.” He nodded at the bottle.
“You don’t have to restate your position. I understood that night.” She poured peroxide on a cotton wad and then slammed it on his arm.
He bit the inside of his cheek to keep from screaming like a baby boy.
“Did I hurt you?”
“Your sarcasm is pointed,” he said.
“I feel foolish, and it’s not a pleasant feeling.”
“Maybe I should be over what happened with Salva, but I’m not. I know people can die in a rescuer’s arms, seconds from safety. I seem to scatter destruction wherever I go, and you and I have Evan to consider.”
“You don’t have to tell me to think of my child first.”
She prepared another cotton pad with peroxide, but he took it away from her. “Don’t go easy on a wounded man, okay?”
“I’m not arguing that you should care for me, Zach. It was humiliating, and I don’t like being rejected, but I am actually thinking of you.” She wiped her hands on another piece of clean cotton. “And of Evan. How long are you going to live in a past you can’t even remember?”
He finished cleaning the gash where the bullet had dug a track across his arm. “Where I’m living is my business as long as I don’t hurt you with it.” He looked up at her and tossed the pad in the trash can. “And I’m not going to hurt you. You can’t imagine I’m holding anything back from Evan.”
She crossed her arms, taking a self-protective stance. But she looked vulnerable. If he took her in his arms, she’d give in. So he had to be smart.
“Have you ever talked to the Salvas? Maybe seen your friend’s daughter?”
Horror brought him to his feet. Look Kim’s little girl in the eye? Face the husband whose wife he’d lost. Not a chance. “No.”
“Maybe you should. Maybe they’d let you off the hook.” Uncrossing her arms, she picked up her purse. “I have to get back. Your mother will be bringing Evan back to the campground.”
“Mom?”
“She took him with her to teach a class at the baby farm.”
She surprised him. “Mom will like that you trust her with him.”
“You’ve all made him feel loved, part of the family. I’m grateful.” Her appreciation came out in a clipped tone. She headed for the door, a sharp gait replacing her normal grace as if saying thank-you wasn’t easy. It wouldn’t be—thanking your child’s father for accepting his son.
“Olivia, wait.”
She looked back.
“You’ll come to my grandparents’ anniversary on Saturday? They’re renewing their vows at eight-thirty in the morning, and then we’re going up on the mountain for the barbecue in my grandfather’s orchard.”
She softened immediately, looking uncertain. “Your grandmother sent an invitation, but I’m a stranger. I can see she’d want Evan, but maybe you should take him by yourself.”
“Lily and I will come for both of you.” His gran might not even notice, she was so excited about her “wedding,” but he wanted Olivia and Evan with his family on Saturday.
She rocked on her heels in doubt. Zach took shameless advantage. He cupped her elbow and all but ran her out of his office. “See you at 7:45 a.m. on Saturday.”
Without giving her time to answer he impelled her through the door and shut it. Then he waited, his pulse hammering, for her to come back and turn him down.
She didn’t.
ZACH CALLED ON Friday morning and asked if he could take Evan camping that night. Olivia half expected him to invite her along. When he didn’t, she felt left out, but she packed her son’s things with good grace.
Zach planned to take the children to his and Lily’s hot spring. It would be Evan’s, too, after tonight. Olivia tried not to think about it. She didn’t like camping anyway. She shouldn’t feel tempted or forgotten.
She packed clothing for the wedding, as well, since Zach had said they’d change before they came for her. And then she waved goodbye to the three of them, a huge faux smile plastered on her face, swearing she’d bury herself in her work that night.
And she had another plan. She and Evan had found a beautiful hinged platinum picture frame in an antique shop on the square. She’d already put a picture of Evan in one side, and Beth had promised her a photo of Zach for the other.
But when she drove up to Beth’s house that night, Beth took the frame and asked her to wait outside. From within came the loud laughter of the Calvert women. Waiting obediently with the closed door in her face, Olivia felt excluded again. It seemed odd coming from Zach’s family.
Beth eased back through the door, holding the photo to her chest. She handed it to Olivia and swept her into a hug.
“What do you think?” She turned the picture so they could both see it.
Zach, also late in his fifth year, was the image of his son. Down to the touching light of trust in his eyes and hair that cowlicked in several directions.
“I love it. In this frame they look as if they’re joined.” Olivia let Beth see her tear-wet eyes. “As if they’ve always been together.”
Beth grabbed her in another rib-shattering hug. “Greta won’t let any of us touch it after it makes the rounds at the party. I wouldn’t mind one myself when you can spare another picture of Evan.”
“My assistant overnighted this to me, but I’ll send you one as soon as we go back to Chicago,” Olivia promised.
“I’ll hold you to that.”
Silence dropped with a reverberating thud. Olivia muttered, “Well,” listening to the women inside again.
“I’ll see you in the morning, Olivia.” Beth held on when Olivia, her feelings hurt at being dismissed, would have pulled away. “I’m so glad you’re joining us.”
“Thank you.” Not much in the way of a response, but wanting to be one of them tonight unnerved her. Just as she’d once pumped Zach for information, she wanted to ask Beth what made these women—and their men—cling together without a family business in common. They didn’t need daily planners or limos or bodyguards. They only needed a chance to be together. “Good night,” she said and moseyed to the car, not letting herself run.
Beth was already inside when Olivia started the engine. She stared at the closed door, and then turned to head down the steep drive. Against her own will, surprisingly weak these days, she glanced over her shoulder. But no one came out.
A night alone wasn’t so bad. Her father had somehow persuaded an excellent cook to prepare meals for them in the mobile home. While Zach and the children were eating burned dogs and marshmallows, and Beth and her Calvert cohorts were sharing finger foods,
Olivia prodded exquisite salmon and a seasonal pumpkin seed salad.
A nice, blackened marshmallow sure sounded good.
After dinner she argued with her father, neglected her work and turned in to twist like a tornado in sheets that felt too hot. Every time she thought she might be drifting off, she awoke to an overwhelming memory of the demands of Zach’s lips against hers.
She finally scrambled out of bed to stare through the living room windows at the darkened tents and smaller mobile homes. The campground had filled up for the weekend, with playing children and parents who’d spent the afternoon shouting for them to come back or to stay away from the pool fence. Even the reporters seemed to have taken a break. After sun-down, only the leaves roamed the narrow, wet roads. All the people had taken shelter inside.
Except her son and his father and sister. She pictured Lily and Evan clamped on each side of Zach for warmth. And she wanted to be with them. During her time in Bardill’s Ridge, she’d grown to need the sound of Lily’s unabashed laughter. She felt her son was safe if he shared Zach’s indulgent gaze with his little sister.
“What’s on your mind, Olivia?”
She’d awakened her dad after all. “Zach and the children.”
“Why?”
“I miss them.”
“Them.” He digested the pronoun. “Not just Evan?”
“No. All three.”
“You know what’s going through my mind.”
“I’m in big trouble. Again.”
“Not pregnant, though?”
“Dad,” she said, turning. “I’m not that foolish.”
“I don’t know. Zach was bad news for you, but you couldn’t stay away from him before.”
“I loved him.”
“And now?”
“I’m angry.” She leaned against her father’s arm. “I want those years back. I want to know why he left without telling me where he was really going—what I might lose.” She sighed. According to Zach’s explanation about not letting her get close before, she hadn’t lost half as much as she’d mourned.
“He was a Navy pilot. I don’t know what he felt about you, but you can bet he never considered he might die.”
Olivia felt the pull of truth, the way she scented honesty when she was interviewing a reluctant subject. “Dad, that’s why he can’t forgive himself about the accident. He didn’t think he’d crash. The impossible happened.”
“Why does it matter, Olivia?”
At least he wasn’t rampaging for once. “I don’t know. Maybe it doesn’t or shouldn’t. But even if I felt nothing for him, I’d want him to be capable of having a relationship. He’s my son’s father.”
“And he obviously loves Evan. It’s you he doesn’t remember.” He said it gently, obviously trying to point out the truth without hurting her.
“Me he doesn’t want.”
Her dad straightened as if he’d suffered an electric shock, but she’d had to say it out loud. If she said it often enough, maybe she’d learn to accept it.
“You still can’t stay away from him.”
“I have to, for Evan’s sake, because Zach’s broken inside. Look at the way he lives—fighting moonshiners and bank robbers—and he’s just as excited, whichever turns up to shoot at him. I think he doesn’t want to stop long enough to see what might pop out of the past. And what I have to believe is that when the past catches up with him, he’s likely to run again.”
“He won’t run out on Evan or Lily.”
Olivia smiled, turning her face against her father’s sleeve. “I know what it cost you to say that, but you don’t have to worry I’ll go into some tailspin because I’m not Zach’s ideal woman. I’m not about to join the broken brigade. Evan needs me to be okay.”
Her dad shifted to put his arm around her. “I may not show love like Zach Calvert, with camping trips in the great dirty outdoors and train whistles, but I love you as much as he loves his children, and if he ever hurts you again, I’ll kill the man.”
He startled a laugh out of her.
“Has it been so bad, the two of us together?” he asked.
“No. It’s been a family.” She might long for the cozy Calvert kind of family, but she wouldn’t trade the love her father had given her—even if he barged in and drove her nuts on a regular basis.
“Be careful.”
“Yeah.”
“His mother invited me to the picnic tomorrow.”
“Beth?” Olivia found herself in her father’s usual position. She inspected the anticipation in his gaze. “What are you doing with Beth?”
“Battle with a tart-tongued woman. Keeping an eye out for my daughter’s welfare. Which I’ll be better able to do if I’m picking apples in the next tree. Can you tell me what kind of people pick their apples from trees when they have access to a perfectly good grocery store?”
“Calverts.” She tugged at her T-shirt collar. “Have you noticed how good all this fresh-off-the-farm produce tastes, Dad?”
“No, but I’m not imagining myself in love.” He took her arm again. “And you should think about whether you’re actually looking to Evan’s future or yours. His ideal family might be confusing you.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
TOWARD MORNING, Olivia fell asleep and then had to rush to dress for the wedding. When her father shouted from the bathroom where he was shaving that Zach and the children had come, she hopped to the door, putting on a sage-green pump that matched her dress.
She yanked down her skirt, twitched at her hair and stepped into a near-frosty morning that made her linen, three-quarter-sleeved jacket insubstantial. But Evan and Lily waving from the back seat quickly distracted her from the cold. She dashed to the front passenger seat, hardly even noticing how Zach’s black suit emphasized his light hair and sharp features.
She had eyes only for Evan and Lily. “Hey, guys, you survived the night.”
“There weren’t no bears,” Evan said solemnly.
“Bears?” She attempted to control the squeak in her voice.
“We talked about them when Evan woke up about midnight.” Zach looked solemn, though his eyes—which matched her dress a lot better than her shoes did—seemed to glow with joy.
“But Dad did a no-bear dance outside the tent,” Lily said. “So we weren’t scared.”
Olivia turned swiftly, so the children wouldn’t see her laugh at their father’s safety measures. “I can see you’d feel safe. Zach, maybe you could teach me that dance sometime.”
He seemed to study her, and she erased her smile. She might not trust her feelings for Zach, but she had to deal with them before they showed like a neon sign.
“I’ll gladly teach you,” he said in a deep note for her alone.
She might have hated him for letting her see he was attracted, but she suffered the same problem—being unable to hide her feelings just because she believed she should.
“I know how to do the dance now,” Evan said.
“Me, too.”
Two children dancing at rogue bears presented a scary picture. “But you have to be six feet tall for it to work,” Olivia said.
“See, your mom knows all about it, too,” Zach said. To her, he added, “Sorry. I didn’t think of that part of it.”
She smiled, absently checking to see if she’d remembered to comb her hair as she turned to see Evan and Lily. “What did you eat?”
“I caught a fish,” Lily said. “It was too small, so we ate the ones Dad bought from the store.”
“That was smart planning.”
“My grandfather would say I cursed myself with no faith.” Zach turned toward the campground entrance. “But we would have had a big fight over Lily’s fish.”
“Nope.” Lily smoothed her pink silk skirt over her white tights. “All mine.”
“Hear the woman roar.” Olivia offered Lily a high five, which the little girl returned with enthusiasm.
“What does that mean, Miss Livia?” she asked.
“I mean yo
u’re strong. You’re making your own way.”
“You woulda been hogging the fish,” Evan added.
Olivia caressed his soft cheek. “Thanks for clearing that up, sweetie.”
“Mom, your face looks funny.”
Great. “Your grandfather was in the bathroom.” She turned and flipped down the visor. She’d applied lipstick with a fine Bozo effect. Glancing at Zach, she searched for her purse and realized she’d left it behind. “You might have mentioned it when I got in.”
“I thought you meant to do it.” He made a sound suspiciously like a snort. “I have some baby wipes in the glove box.”
“’Cause I spill stuff,” Lily said from the back. “And I can’t see Mommy dirty.”
Olivia sobered. She’d forgotten about Helene. She must be kidding herself. Deal with her feelings? Whatever she felt, she’d end up hurting Helene and possibly Lily, and maybe even Evan. Physical attraction, however strong, wasn’t worth it.
Olivia stared at her hands as Zach turned through the square. She shouldn’t assume he was still interested. He seemed to be an expert at backing away.
“I think we’re going to have to walk,” Zach said. The parking spots closer to the church were full. He turned into the closest open slot.
“This is fine.” Olivia got out and turned to the back door. She shivered in the chilly morning as she helped Lily out of her booster seat.
Zach must have seen as he and Evan circled the car. He let go of Evan’s hand, moving between their son and the road as he shrugged off his jacket. “Take this.”
“I’m not cold.”
“Olivia.”
He held it out, but she still hesitated. “It’ll look funny,” she said.
“You’re cold. Fashion comes second to pneumonia.”
“I’m not talking fashion.” She glanced toward the people filing into the church. “I mean, me climbing out of your car at this time of the morning, wearing your clothes….”
He followed her gaze. “Oh.” He took Evan’s hand again. “Don’t worry about it. Lily, button your coat.”
It was pink wool and perfectly matched her dress. “You look beautiful, Lily.” Olivia pulled Zach’s coat around her. His warmth seemed to reach all the way to her toes. The smell of his body in the material made her breathe in.