MIDNIGHT CHOICES

by Eileen Wilks

  All in all, it wasn't the sort of place she was used to, but it would do for now. Besides, it had a certain shabby charm. More than the only other real prospect she'd looked at, a furnished condo with all the personality of a hotel room.

  Her mother would have a fit if she saw where Gwen and Zach were living. A very dignified fit. That image brought the first hint of humor to her day.

  "I liked it at my dad's house."

  The whine was gone, leaving a wistfulness that made her drop the scrubber in the sink. Two steps took her to him in that little kitchen. She knelt and smoothed his hair back from his sad, stubborn little face. "I know you did. But we couldn't stay there forever."

  "We could if you an' my dad gots married."

  "But I don't want to marry him, honey." His scowl as he struggled with that idea was so much like his father's. "I love you very much, but when a man and a woman get married, they need to have very special feelings for each other. Your dad and I don't have those. But you and I will be staying here in Highpoint a long time, so you'll get to see your dad a lot."

  His lower lip stuck out. "How long is long?"

  "I don't know yet." Would she stay here if Duncan didn't? He wanted her, but if all he wanted was a flaming affair… She shut that thought away. "Certainly long enough for you and him to go on that camping trip you told me about."

  That brightened his face some. "We can stay out all night?"

  "If he says that's okay. Tell you what. Why don't I order a pizza, and we'll watch Aladdin together while we wait for it." She'd picked up the movie, one of Zach's favorites, in hopes that watching it would make him feel more at home here. She'd intended to save it for after supper, maybe use it to occupy him while she made some concrete plans for her future.

  But Zach didn't need to be told to go play, or to watch a movie by himself. He didn't need more words, more explanations. He needed her.

  Gwen didn't have local phone service yet, but she had her cell phone. A few minutes later she and Zach were cuddled up on the worn blue sofa. In lieu of an afghan, she'd spread her long robe over the two of them. On the TV – another of her hasty purchases – a young thief and his pet monkey outraced the people wanting to cut off his head. Zach was a warm and welcome weight against her side.

  Gwen's muscles ached as if she was coming down with something. It had been a rough day.

  She hadn't seen or heard from Duncan. When she'd gone downstairs to Ben's kitchen this morning, Duncan had been gone. He'd left last night, Charlie had said, to stay with a friend. He'd also left her his car keys.

  The irony hadn't been lost on her. She'd stuck to her guns when she first arrived in Highpoint, making sure she had her own transportation. And hadn't really needed it. Now, when she did, she'd had to borrow a car.

  "Mom?" Zach said.

  "Yes, honey?"

  "Are you still mad at my dad?"

  "A little bit. We didn't move out because I was mad, though. We'd never planned to stay there more than two weeks, remember?"

  "We weren't going to stay here at all. But now we are."

  She stroked his hair and wondered how to answer. Though Zach might not realize it, moving to Highpoint was going to be harder on him than not having a live-in dad. That, for him, was a temporary disappointment. When parents divorced and the father moved out, the children's sense of stability was shattered. But Zach had only met his father two weeks ago. He was used to Florida – to oceans, not mountains. "Do you miss your grandmother, sweetie? And your old room?"

  He nodded.

  "We'll be heading back to Florida to pack up the rest of our things and get Natasha soon. You'll see your grandmother then."

  He thought about that, his face screwed up. "It isn't the same."

  "No, it isn't." She thought that, in the long run, living near his father would make up for the homesickness that was sure to hit at some point. And for seeing so much less of his grandmother.

  She hoped it would. One thing she'd figured out about being a mother, though, was that half the time her decisions were little more than best guesses. And the other half she was winging it.

  On the TV an enormous blue genie was singing that Aladdin had never had a friend like him before. Zach didn't sing along, though he knew most of the words. After a moment he said, "Dad was mad, too, last night. He didn't like Unca Duncan kissing you."

  Her heart cramped. "No, he didn't."

  "Do you like Unca Duncan better than my dad?"

  "I like him in a different way than I like your father."

  "Do you got special feelings for Unca Duncan?"

  "Very special." Her heart was beating hard.

  "Are you gonna get married with him?"

  "I don't know, honey. Grown-ups usually take a long time to decide things like that."

  His face took on that familiar, determined frown as he tilted it up to her. "I like Unca Duncan, but I got special feelings for my dad."

  "Well, that's good." She smiled and touched his nose. "Though those aren't exactly the kind of feelings I was talking about. Your dad will always be your dad, Zach, no matter what. Just like I'll always be your mom."

  He thought about that for a minute, then nodded and snuggled closer. Just when she thought he was caught up in the movie he said, "Mom?"

  "Yes?"

  "That lady said we could have pets here."

  "Yes, I wanted a place I could bring Natasha."

  "Dogs are pets, too, you know."

  She laughed and rumpled his hair. "Point taken. Now, let's watch the show, okay?"

  Gwen tried to pay attention to the movie. She wanted to shut off her mind for a while. It didn't work. She was too busy listening for a phone that never rang.

  After dousing the men last night, she'd tossed the hose outside, wiped the tears from her face and hurried to the kitchen – and panicked. No one was there. After a moment her overloaded brain had taken in the fact that the back door was open, and she'd gone outside to find Charlie and Zach filling a pan with snow.

  Bless Charlie, she thought, stroking Zach's hair. She'd expected him to hate her for causing trouble between his brothers, but he'd done everything he could to help. Today he'd taken her to rent a car and promised to give Duncan and Ben her new address. He'd managed, with utmost tact, to let her know why he and Ben and Zach had shown up with such disastrous timing last night. The storm had been much milder on the other side of the pass, so when a trucker had told Ben that the road was clear, he'd decided to head home, after all.

  And last night – oh, for what he'd done then, she could have kissed him. No, cancel that. Gwen grimaced. She'd been kissing too many of the McClain men. But Charlie deserved a medal for getting Zach away so fast and then distracting him.

  Since Zach had never seen snow before, Charlie's distraction had worked – to a degree. But Zach had known something was wrong. With the adults in his world behaving like raving idiots, of course he'd known.

  Being Zach, anxiety had turned him hyper. And stubborn. He'd wanted to build a snowman and have a snowball fight. He for sure hadn't wanted to go upstairs and take a bath, though it was past his usual bedtime, and had thrown one of his rare screaming fits.

  Zach's temper fits were, thank God, as brief as they were wholehearted. He'd fallen asleep quickly.

  She hadn't.

  The doorbell rang before she fell back into the same pit she'd spent the night in. "Bet that's the pizza-delivery guy."

  Zach scrambled from her lap and bulleted for the door. Gwen paused the movie, grabbed her purse and followed more slowly. "Hold on, tiger. Don't open that door until I see who it is."

  "I know who it is," he said with great certainty, and managed to get the lock turned. He pulled the door open.

  It wasn't the pizza-delivery guy.

  "Hello, Ben," Gwen said quietly.

  He shifted uneasily from foot to foot, a big man in a flannel shirt, a lightweight jacket and a grim expression. His left eye was swollen nearly shut. "May I come in?"


  "Hi, Dad!" Zach tilted a sunny face up to his father. "You gonna have pizza with us?"

  "Pizza, huh? Sounds good, but I don't think so this time." His gaze lifted and met Gwen's. "I need to talk to your mom for a few minutes."

  Zach tugged on Ben's hand. "Your eye is hurt. What hurted it?"

  Ben touched the skin beneath his eye gingerly. It was green and yellow with some purple mixed in. "Quite a shiner, isn't it?"

  "A shiner." Zach repeated the word, committing it to memory. His forehead creased. "Did you—"

  "Come in," Gwen said quickly. So far, she didn't think Zach realized his uncle and his father had argued physically. She wanted to keep it that way if she could.

  Ben looked around as he stepped inside, frowning.

  "Are you mad at my mom?"

  Ben looked startled. "No."

  "She's not mad, either, 'cept a little bit. We're watching Aladdin," Zach announced. "C'mon and watch with us. The genie's gonna make Aladdin a prince."

  "I don't think—"

  The doorbell chimed again.

  This time it was the pizza.

  * * *

  They left Zach in the living room with the pizza, Aladdin, and a promise to plan the camping trip when Ben finished talking to his mom.

  Ben supposed he must have lived through worse days in his life. Sometime. Even if he couldn't remember when at the moment. Lord, he'd been dreading this moment.

  "This place isn't what I expected." He'd known she was leaving his house. She'd told him so this morning, very stiff and polite. He didn't blame her for that, though he regretted it. Along with a lot of other things.

  "Oh?" She sat at the little dinette. "Have a seat, Ben."

  He paced the narrow length of the kitchen, turned. "I figured you'd rent one of those pricey condos on Wilshire, not a made-over place like this." He frowned, looking down. "The sink is stained."

  "I know. I liked this better than the condos. It has personality – and a backyard. Ben—"

  "Would you have liked it better five years ago?"

  Puzzlement broke through her chilly formality. "I don't know. Maybe not. I didn't think in terms of what a little boy needs back then."

  He nodded and looked down. She'd tried to tell him more than once that she'd changed, that she wasn't the same woman he'd met on that soft Florida night. He hadn't understood. "I came to apologize."

  "Well." She clasped her hands together on the table. "That's generous of you, under the circumstances." She bit her lip. "Is … is Duncan's arm all right?"

  "What do you think I am? I didn't hit his wounded arm, for God's sake! Not that it seemed to be giving him much trouble," Ben grumbled. "I was lucky to get in a decent blow anywhere. Probably couldn't have if he hadn't been holding back."

  "He was holding back? Dear God, he let you beat him bloody—"

  "He didn't let me do anything," Ben snapped. "He wasn't going at it all out, that's all. If he had been, I'd have some broken bones now." Or worse. Ben didn't underestimate his own abilities, but Special Forces personnel didn't accomplish their missions by blacking an opponent's eye. They were trained to kill or disable.

  And Duncan was damned good. Quick. Absently Ben touched his eye again.

  "It looked like the two of you were trying to kill each other."

  "Never seen a fistfight, have you?"

  She shook her head. "It was … upsetting. I appreciate your apology."

  "I wasn't apologizing for that. We should have taken it outside, but Duncan swung first and I was damned if I—" He shook his head. This wasn't what he'd come here to say. "Never mind. I'm ashamed of the way I spoke to you. It wasn't true, any of it."

  She stared. "I will never understand men. Never. Ben, for heaven's sake, sit down."

  Reluctantly he pulled out a chair and sat across from her. There was a pot of bright purple pansies in the center of the scuffed old table. "Pretty flowers," he said, touching one bloom. He was still having trouble fitting his idea of who and what she was into this setting.

  "I found them at the grocery store. I'll accept your apology, Ben, if you'll accept mine." She grimaced. "Not that the blame is even. I am so sorry, so very sorry for the way… I realized while I was gone, you see, that I couldn't marry you. I intended to tell you before…" Her voice trailed off.

  "You have feelings for Duncan."

  She nodded, her face sad and solemn.

  He sighed heavily. Charlie had tried to warn him.

  "I guess your living room is a mess."

  He waved that aside. "Does Duncan share your feelings?"

  "I … we didn't talk about it. It didn't seem right, when I hadn't spoken to you. Are you and he going to be okay? I mean – oh, shoot. To put it in Zach's terms, are you still a whole bunch mad at him or only a little bit?"

  He scowled. He hadn't seen his brother today. He hadn't wanted to. He still didn't. "That's not your problem."

  "If I've caused trouble between you two, it certainly is my problem."

  "You didn't cause anything. If he'd kept his hands to himself—"

  "Ben, he didn't seduce me or anything like that."

  "You're not responsible for what he did. So, are you staying here awhile? Here in Highpoint?"

  She eyed him as if she wanted to argue some more, but answered his question. "For six months, anyway. Maybe for good. You were right about one thing – Zach needs you in his life, and a weekend now and then isn't enough."

  Relief crashed over him, so big he had to close his eyes for a second. Big enough that it almost drowned out the question of whether she was staying so she could carry on with his backstabbing brother. "That's good. That's really great. I hope you'll make it permanent. Well." He cleared his throat and shoved his chair back. "I'd better go make plans for a camping trip."

  "He's excited about it," she said, standing, a tentative smile on her face. "It's very early in the year for camping, though, isn't it?"

  "It'll be another month before we can go, but we can start getting him ready for it. A short hike, maybe. There's an easy trail to a picnic spot west of town."

  Her smile warmed and steadied. "On the plane on the way here, he asked if he could climb one of your mountains."

  They were standing close. He looked down at her smooth skin and hopeful eyes, at the mouth he'd tasted again after five years.

  Why couldn't it have been him? Why did she have to choose his brother? "I didn't have a chance, did I?" he asked abruptly. "Not this time around. But the first time – we might have made something good then, if I hadn't blown it."

  "Who knows?" Her voice was soft. "Might-have-beens can eat us alive if we let them. But, Ben, you still have most of what you wanted. Zach won't be living with you all the time, but you'll be able to have him a lot. We'll work that out, put it in writing."

  She didn't have a clue. The realization hit Ben hard. She thought it had been all about Zach, not about her.

  Maybe it had been at first. And maybe it was best she go on thinking that way. He turned away. "Yeah," he said. "That'll be good. I'd appreciate that, Gwen."

  He walked back into the living room, shoulders squared, ready to smile for his son. Half a dream was better than none.

  * * *

  Chapter 15

  «^»

  Duncan drove around the block four times. The first time he didn't stop because Ben's truck was out front, parked between an old Chevy and a Jeep. The next three times he didn't stop because he was an idiot. A scared, witless idiot.

  He'd told himself he wouldn't go to her. Ben wouldn't forgive easily, but forgiveness would come in time if Duncan stayed away from Gwen. And she would be better off with someone else. He didn't doubt that.

  Yet at eight o'clock he'd climbed in his car and driven to the address she'd given Charlie, just as if that had been his plan all day long. So then he told himself it was only right to see her, that he was going to break off with her. It would be easier on her if he did that before they became lovers.

  Tha
t was a lie, too. He wasn't thinking of what would be easier on her, better for her. Some remnant of honesty finally forced him to admit the truth: he was afraid she'd realized the truth herself last night, that she would be the one to end things.

  He was just as afraid that she wouldn't. Truth doesn't always make sense, he supposed, but he'd never been this ripped up by his own contradictions before.

  It was no wonder he kept driving around the block. More surprising, maybe, that he finally pulled into the only open spot in front of the house – the same place Ben had parked.

  Following in his big brother's footsteps, wasn't he? In more ways than one. The twist to his mouth was bitter when he climbed out of his Mustang.

  The night was crisp and cool, the sky as clear as if twenty-four hours ago it hadn't dumped rain, sleet and snow on them. He tipped his head back. Were there really more stars over Highpoint, and could they really shine brighter here than anywhere else? Or was it just that this was home?

  Funny. He'd almost forgotten what it felt like to truly come home. Yet he'd been coming here for years on holidays or to touch base with his family. He shook his head and headed for the house.

  Canned laughter drifted through the walls of the old frame house as he followed a narrow sidewalk to the outside stairs. The sound was coming from downstairs. At the top of the stairs, a porch light glowed.

  Gwen had probably turned it on for Ben when he left. Had she forgotten to turn it off? Or was she waiting – hoping – Duncan would come? His heart pounded as he climbed the stairs.

  He knocked on the door. A moment later it opened.

  Her skin was pale, almost translucent. There were faint mauve shadows under her eyes, two pale freckles on that slightly crooked nose and questions, instead of a smile, in the green eyes raised to his. She wore a pale yellow sweater, neatly pressed jeans. And no shoes.

  Hunger rose in him, and longing. He stuffed his hands in his pockets to keep from reaching for her. Once he touched her, there would be no talking, no turning back. Not for him, anyway. "The first time I saw you," he said quietly, "you blindsided me. I opened my door and stared at you like an idiot. Now I'm at your door. May I come in?"