MIDNIGHT CHOICES

by Eileen Wilks

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  Chapter 8

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  Sometime after midnight Gwen gave up. Sleep just wasn't happening. She slid out of bed, careful not to wake Zach.

  Though that was a faint worry. He slept as if he'd been knocked out, always had. She remembered a few terrified "new mother" moments when she'd actually woken him up just to make sure she could.

  The house was dark and quiet as she descended the stairs, the air chilly even with her quilted robe. It would be colder outside. She grabbed an afghan from the couch and carried it with her.

  The McClain house had a fabulous front porch. It ran almost the whole length of the house and was covered by the roof, so the porch swing was dry when she ran a hand over it, testing. The air was still.

  There were stars. She didn't see the moon – maybe it wasn't up, or maybe it was hiding behind one of the peaks that cradled the little town. But the earlier drizzle had dried up. The clouds had moved on, and the dome of the night was thickly salted with stars. Gwen sat on the swing, tucked her feet up and wrapped herself in the crocheted warmth of the afghan. And let her thoughts spin.

  She wasn't sure how long she'd been sitting there when headlights swung around the corner, splashing light across the damp pavement. The streetlight gave her a glimpse of the car headed in her direction – a dark, late-model Mustang purring quietly down the street. In the still air the shush of tires on wet pavement was louder than the engine as the car slowed. Its headlights angled as it turned into the driveway.

  Silence returned as the engine died.

  Duncan was home. And here she sat in her nightgown and robe and freezing toes, bundled up in an old afghan. As if she was waiting for him.

  Was she?

  The muscles in her stomach went tight and anxious. It was very dark. If she sat absolutely still, he might not even know she was here. Especially if he'd been drinking.

  She knew it the second he spotted her. He froze with his foot on the first step. His head turned toward her. "It's late."

  "I couldn't sleep. Did you demolish someone at pool?"

  "Won one game, lost the others. Temper doesn't mix well with games of skill."

  He surprised her then. He sat right there on the porch next to one of the posts that held up the roof, stretched one leg out along the steps and cocked the other up.

  It's safe enough, she thought, without naming what, exactly, she was safe from. He was sitting some distance away.

  "I'd rather have picked a fight," he said. "Didn't care for the chance I might be arrested by my old buddy Jeff, though."

  "I think Jeff was the one you wanted to pick the fight with."

  In the darkness she could just make out the shrug of his shoulders. He was wearing the denim jacket she'd seen on the coatrack the day she'd told Ben about Zach. "Since it didn't seem like a good idea to jump Ben with his son watching, yes."

  "Good grief. Do you do that at your age? Get into fistfights with your brother?"

  His grin flashed in the darkness. "That's right – you don't have any brothers, do you? No, I don't, not anymore. But I used to enjoy a scrap with Charlie now and then."

  Gwen tried to get her mind around the idea of brothers fighting each other for the fun of it. "Men are weird."

  "Probably."

  "I guess you could get in trouble for picking a fight in a bar. Being in the service and all, I mean. I saw a movie once where a Green Beret fought to protect his wife in the parking lot of a bar. He accidentally killed one of the attackers, and the jury ruled it was murder because he'd had all that special training." She shook her head. "I always meant to check out the code on that. It didn't seem reasonable."

  He looked away. "I'm a sharpshooter, not a martial-arts expert. But you're right. The U.S. Army doesn't encourage Special Forces personnel to pick fights in bars."

  "A sharpshooter?" She brought her knees to her chest and hugged them, wondering what, exactly, that meant. What kind of assignments did a sharpshooter receive? "I don't know much about the army," she admitted, "except that most of the soldiers I've seen looked terribly young."

  "Seen a lot, have you?"

  "We don't get as many as places like Panama City do, being on the west coast of the state. Fewer beaches mean fewer tourists. But soldiers come from Georgia and Alabama, and air force and naval personnel from bases in Florida. They all look like kids to me, but they cruise the bars and crowd what beaches we do have."

  "I'll bet your mother warned you to stay away from them when you were younger."

  "She did." Gwen grinned. "Zach's passion for everything military drives her nuts." She hesitated, sure she shouldn't say anything about his argument with his brother. But maybe it was the darkness, or the way the sky glowed down on them both, or the late hour. For some reason she couldn't seem to stop herself. "Are you still angry with Ben?"

  "You aren't going to give me advice, too, are you?"

  "I'm supremely unqualified for that. And I'm sure I don't have to say this, but … you do know that he's just worried about you, don't you? Because he cares?"

  His sigh barely reached her it was so soft. "I know." Of course, Ben was an idiot. He showed his concern by trying to boss his thoroughly adult little brother around. It was distressingly familiar. Though her mother had never offered to pound some sense into Gwen's thick skull, she remained convinced she could manage Gwen's life better than Gwen did.

  One thing was different, though. The brothers fought hotly, not with the chilly courtesy she and her mother used.

  "I hope we didn't upset Zach," Duncan said.

  She hesitated. Not because she thought Zach had been upset. Because she had been. For a second, when Duncan had spun so quickly to face his brother, he'd looked poised, ready … dangerous. For that second she'd actually thought he was going to attack Ben. "He's not used to raised voices," she said at last. "But I don't think he was frightened."

  "I heard what you said to him."

  "Um, well, I'm afraid I was sarcastic."

  "But accurate. Though it's little girls who stomp their feet, isn't it? Boys are more likely to swing at each other."

  A sudden image of Duncan stamping his foot like a prissy little girl made her grin. "I guess so. We pout, too, though I prefer to call it maintaining a dignified silence."

  "But you don't yell?"

  "Well, I don't. At least, I suppose I must have when I was small, but I don't remember. I'd like to yell," she added wistfully.

  "I'd offer to give you shouting lessons, but I'm not much of a yeller myself. Until recently."

  She rubbed her thumb absently back and forth over a small hole in the afghan. Chances were excellent that if she said anything more, it would be the wrong thing. Women were supposed to instinctively pick up on all sorts of subtle clues that gave them insights into people. Gwen was convinced she'd been shorted in the instinct department. She always guessed wrong.

  But saying nothing could be a mistake, too. "Do you want to talk about it?"

  "There's not much to say." He turned, leaning against the post. "I don't know what I want to do, so naturally it infuriates me when other people think they know what's best."

  "You aren't sure if you want to stay in the army?"

  "If I were, Ben's fussing wouldn't get to me."

  That made sense. Her lips twitched. "After you left, Ben muttered about how some people are too pigheaded to take advice, so I offered him some. I don't think he's going to take it."

  His chuckle warmed her. Apparently she hadn't messed up yet. She lowered one foot long enough to push against the wooden floor of the porch and set the swing to swaying.

  He sat in comfortable silence with her awhile, broken only by the faint squeak of the swing's chains. Then he asked, "So what's keeping you from sleeping tonight?"

  The answer slipped out before she'd even decided to tell him. "Ben asked me to marry him."

  Duncan didn't say anything. For much too long, he didn't say a word, just sat there, utterly still. Why h
ad she blurted it out that way?

  Her foot was freezing. She brought it back up and tucked the afghan around it. "I shouldn't have said anything. I haven't given him an answer yet."

  There was another, shorter pause before he said. "I knew he was going to ask you."

  "Actually, he didn't. Make it a question, I mean." Marry me, he'd said. Once she'd regained the power of speech, she'd told him it was much too soon for her to make a decision like that. He'd given her a level, determined look and asked her to go out with him.

  She'd put him off about that, too. Gwen shook her head. "I don't remember him being this way before."

  "Bossy, you mean?" Duncan asked dryly. "No, don't answer that. I shouldn't … he was on vacation when you met him, wasn't he?"

  "Yes. So maybe I only saw part of him, the part that comes out to play when he's away from home and responsibilities. It didn't seem that way, but the fact is, I barely knew him." She sighed, melancholic over her young, hasty self. The swing had drifted to a stop. She contemplated unwrapping her foot long enough to give it another push, but didn't move. "The thing is, he still doesn't know me. I was a different person back then." Yet he'd asked her to marry him. However he'd phrased it, that was what he'd meat.

  For Zach. That was why Ben wanted to marry her. She wanted … oh, she didn't know what she wanted, except that she didn't want to be married for her son. Did that make her foolish, selfish? A dreamer? Her mother would say it did, but her mother would also say she was a fool to consider marrying Ben.

  Of course, Deirdre didn't want to share Zach with his father.

  "Different how?"

  "I was a mess." She gave a short laugh. "Maybe I seem like one now, too, but I was really a mess back then. Needy, immature … my father had died about two months before I met Ben. I was so angry."

  "That's not an uncommon response to death."

  "I suppose not."

  "What was he like? Your father, I mean."

  There was no simple answer for that. Gwen took her time putting words to a man and a relationship she hadn't understood until long after he died. "Stern, almost Calvinistic. He had tremendous personal integrity – George Washington had nothing on him in the 'cannot tell a lie' department. He was religious about the value of hard work. Everything had to be earned with him." She heard the bitter edge in her voice and added quickly, "Not that that's a bad thing. He and Mother were very conscious of the way so many children with wealthy parents are given too much, too easily. It ruins some of them."

  Duncan's quiet voice soothed her. "Was he hard to please?"

  "If I brought home all A's and one B, he lectured me about how to bring the B up. He wasn't harsh," she said quickly. "Or unreasonable, not really. He loved me. I knew that. But … I only knew it in pieces, a glimpse now and then. I didn't have it in here." She pressed her fist to her chest. "So I was always trying to earn another piece of his love."

  He was looking straight at her now. Starlight reflected off the liquid surface of his eyes, making them gleam faintly in the darkness. "When he died, you couldn't collect any more pieces. Of course you were angry."

  "Yes." She was so surprised she forgot about keeping her foot warm and stretched out her leg to give the swing a push. "That's it exactly. It was a long time before I realized I didn't need pieces. His love had been there all the time. I just hadn't known how to see it."

  Duncan turned his head slightly and his eyes lost that stolen bit of starlight, falling back into shadow. "So you met Ben while you were furious with your father for dying and leaving you. Then Ben left you."

  Her mouth gaped. "Oh," she said. "Oh, I never thought of that. Why didn't I? It's so obvious." That was why she'd been so furious at his rejection, why she'd clung to her anger for so long. Had she confused Ben with her father in other ways?

  It was not a comfortable thought.

  Duncan propped his foot on the top step, letting his arms hang over his thighs. "Can I ask you something?"

  Anything, she thought, and was alarmed at herself. She wrapped her arms around her knees again. "What?"

  "I can't figure out why Ben did leave you. He isn't one for flings, and you… I don't get it. Can you maybe enlighten me?"

  She wasn't sure what she'd expected him to ask, but that wasn't it. "A lot of men react one of two ways when they realize my family has money. Some like the idea too much. Some run the other way." She shrugged. "Ben didn't like it."

  In his silence this time she read all sorts of things. Mostly, though, she knew them for her own thoughts. She still had more money than Ben. And he was still uncomfortable with it.

  "At the risk of sounding like Mrs. Bradshaw, one more nosy question. Just how rich are you?"

  "My mother's rich. I'm not."

  He spoke dryly. "We may have different notions of what 'rich' means."

  "Mother inherited the family business and most of the other investments. I do have a trust from my father, though." She hesitated, then told him how much that trust amounted to. She wasn't sure why. Maybe just because he'd asked. Ben never had. He was probably hoping her money would go away if he ignored it.

  He whistled softly. "That's not pocket change."

  "It's less than lots of people win in lotteries every month. The income from it means I don't have to work if I don't want to, true, but it hardly makes me a jet-setter."

  "I doubt that's much comfort to Ben. And you stand to inherit a good deal more one day."

  Yes. She wasn't looking forward to that, and not just because she wanted her mother to live forever. Money on that scale came with strings, responsibilities. "My mother may leave a lot of it to Zach."

  Duncan didn't say anything, and this time she knew he was thinking the same thing she was. Ben would have a hard time with that.

  "Well," she said at last, speaking lightly, "now you know why my mind was too snarled for sleep. I notice you're too clever to offer advice."

  "Easy enough to restrain myself. I have no idea what's best for you."

  "Still, you helped. I'm not good with problems unless they involve contracts, deeds or case law. I'm afraid I wasn't as helpful to you as you've been to me."

  "I'm a lot more screwed up than you are." Abruptly he stood. "You must be getting chilly."

  "Just my feet." Reluctantly she put them on the wooden floor and gathered the afghan around her.

  "You're barefoot?" He shook his head. "Better not let Ben see you wandering around without slippers."

  "I don't own slippers. At home I go barefoot all the time."

  "You're not in Oz anymore, Dorothy."

  She chuckled. "I think California is nicknamed Oz. Not Florida."

  But she wasn't thinking about what she said. She was thinking that if she married Ben, she would be the one to relocate. A law degree was more transportable than a construction firm. There was a test she'd have to take to be accepted into the Colorado State Bar, but after all those years of proving herself to her father, she was good at tests. Her specialty would transfer to Colorado easily – like Florida, most of Colorado's land-ownership records went back only to the late nineteenth century, which made it simpler to research titles.

  It was cold here most of the year. Too cold to go barefoot.

  And that would be a pathetic reason to turn a man down. Wouldn't it?

  He waved a hand in front of her face. "You still in there?"

  "Sorry." She grimaced. "I'm getting spacey. Must be time for me to go to bed." She stood.

  The swing creaked as her weight left it. Somewhere in the distance a dog barked. Duncan was standing so close, right in front of her. This close to him, she could smell the malty, brash scent of beer.

  He didn't move.

  Her heart began to pound, heavy and slow. She searched his face in the darkness and found only the suggestion of eyes meeting hers. Her fingertips tingled. A little shiver shook every drop of sleep from her cells. He was going to kiss her…

  He spoke, quiet and dispassionate. "We'd better not indulg
e in any more late-night tête-à-têtes."

  Gwen thudded back into reality, landing hard, with a vague stir of nausea. "I don't know what you're talking about." When she moved forward on icy feet, he fell back. She had the front door open when he spoke again.

  "Yes, you do."

  She hesitated for a second in the doorway, then hurried inside without turning around, her heart pounding and pounding in her chest.

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  The swing was still warm from Gwen's body when Duncan sat in it. He shoved it into motion with his foot, then sat and rocked.

  Hard to believe he'd actually played Dear Abby to his brother's woman. She thought he'd showed restraint by not offering advice. His mouth twisted bitterly. Oh, yeah, he'd restrained himself. But not that way.

  Gwen was rich and vulnerable and the mother of Ben's child. She was everything he had no business wanting. But dammit, she was also smart and funny, so determined to do the right thing, and so wryly unsure what that might be.

  She stirred him.

  Duncan knew it was time to leave Highpoint. He had an apartment near the base; he could bunk there while he figured out what he was going to do with his life. He needed to get out of here before he did something unforgivable.

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  Chapter 9

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  For the next three days, Gwen was courted. On Thursday Ben brought her flowers, a cheerful bouquet of daisies and freesia. On Friday he took her and Zach out for pizza and a movie. He was paying attention now.

  And he touched her. Not constantly, and not in an implicitly sexual way. In a claiming way. He was announcing his intentions, and he wanted them made public. He ruffled her hair at the pizza parlor and introduced her and Zach to the owner, whom he'd gone to school with. He helped her in and out of his truck as if she'd turned feeble. Standing in line at the movies, he chatted with several people – with his hand resting at the small of her back.

  But an announcement was as far as he went. Arm, shoulder, back – he touched her, but he didn't kiss her, didn't do anything Zach couldn't see. Even when Zach wasn't there.