by Robin Wells
Katie stepped through the door, and he followed her into the stairwell. The door closed behind them with a loud steel-on-steel bang.
He took her hand. “Kate—I’ve got to ask you something.” It was hard to talk around the lump in his throat. “Will you marry me?”
Katie’s mouth opened, then closed, her eyes so bright and hopeful it almost hurt to look in them.
“You know how we talked about being grandparents before we were ever parents? Well, this is a chance to be both. To help raise Gracie’s baby together. To be a family. I know how important family is to you, and I feel so bad that I wasn’t there for you when you had Gracie, and…”
Her expression changed. He couldn’t say exactly what happened, but it was as if the light went out of her eyes.
He spoke faster, hoping to smooth things over. “I want to be there for you and Gracie and the baby. I want to marry you, Kate.”
She gazed at him, her expression telling him nothing. “Don’t do me any favors.”
This wasn’t going well. Not well at all. He dropped to one knee. “Kate, will you marry me?”
“No.”
He stared up, startled by the word, equally startled by the curt way she’d said it. “No?”
“No way.” She shook her head. “I refuse to marry you to create some kind of weirdly retro family unit.”
“But…”
“You can be a father to Gracie and a father figure for her baby without making the ultimate sacrifice.”
He frowned. Where the hell had that come from? “Who said anything about a sacrifice?”
“Zack, I know how you feel about commitment. The very mention of the L-word sent you running for the Vegas hills. Call me crazy, but that is not the behavior of a man I want to marry.” She punched his chest with her finger. “You are not exactly ideal husband material, Ferguson.”
A nerve worked in his jaw. “Look, I know I’m not Saint Paul, and maybe this isn’t the proposal of your dreams, but we can make this work.”
“ ‘We can make this work?’ That’s supposed to convince me to marry you?” Her eyes blazed. “Well, here’s a news flash, Zachary—marriage isn’t supposed to be work.”
She turned away and huffed down the stairs.
He leaned against the wall and blew out a harsh breath. If he lived to be a hundred and two, he would never understand what women wanted.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
“Zack proposed?” Bev gripped the steering wheel of her Range Rover and stared at Katie. Katie had called Bev from the hospital and asked for a ride back to Zack’s place to pick up some clothing and other things for Gracie, the baby, and herself. “And that’s why you look mad as a wet hen? Because he proposed?”
“Well, yes. I mean, no. I mean, yes, he proposed.” Katie sank against the headrest and closed her eyes. “But I didn’t like the way he did it.”
Bev’s forehead creased like corrugated cardboard. “What? You wanted him to get down on one knee and he didn’t?”
“Actually, he did.”
“So what’s the problem?” Bev looked at her as if she were the most ungrateful moron on the planet. “You didn’t like what he said?”
“I didn’t like what he didn’t say.” She gazed out the window. “He didn’t say anything about love.”
“Ah.” Bev looked both ways as she pulled out of the hospital parking lot. “You know, honey, lots of men have trouble verbalizing their feelings.”
“Yeah,” Katie said glumly. “Especially if they don’t have any.”
“You know better than that. That man is crazy about you.”
“He was also crazy about Scarlett Johansson.”
“He’s been with you a lot longer than he was with her.”
“And that’s supposed to make me feel good?”
“Well, actually—yes. It would make me feel terrific, that’s for sure. And come on, Katie. He asked you to marry him. A guy doesn’t do that unless he’s got strong feelings.”
“Yeah. And those feelings are guilt and obligation.”
Bev frowned. “I don’t get it.”
“He doesn’t really want to marry me. He just thinks it’s the right thing to do. He’s all emotional from Gracie nearly losing and then having this baby, and he feels bad he wasn’t there when I had Gracie, and he thinks the only way he can make things right is to marry me, because that’s what he thinks he should have done when we were kids.”
“Even if what you’re saying is true—and I’m not sure I was even following all that, much less agreeing with it—none of this means he doesn’t love you.”
“I’m not sure Zack knows what love is.” She knit her fingers together so hard they hurt. “He’s never seen it up close. His parents’ marriage was a nightmare.”
“It’s not like you had a great example from your family, either.” Bev braked for a stop sign. “But you and Paul still managed to have a wonderful marriage.”
That was true. Katie closed her eyes and rubbed her temple. “You know what the difference is? I wanted love and marriage. And I believed it was possible.” She opened her eyes and stared at the light pole illuminated in the black night. “Zack never believed in it, and he never wanted it. And I don’t want to marry a man who only wants to marry me because he thinks he should. If I marry again, it’ll be to a guy who loves me with all his heart, a guy who can’t wait to share his life with me, a guy who loves me as much as I love him.”
She gazed out the window, her heart as dark as the rain-slicked street. “As much as I’d like him to be, I just don’t think Zack is that guy.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
Two days later, Zack cornered Katie in the hallway outside Gracie’s hospital room. His mouth was set in a hard, angry line. “We need to talk.”
He took her arm and steered her down the hallway to a doorless supply closet. One wall was stacked with bedpans and other creepy plastic receptacles. Another held folded hospital gowns, sheets, and towels. A mop sat in an industrial-style bucket, making the room reek of pine disinfectant. He loomed over her, his face like a storm cloud. “What the hell is going on?”
“What do you mean?”
“You asked me to stay at the hospital with Gracie today while you ran an errand.”
A little tremor shot through her. For the last two days, she’d avoided Zack as much as possible. She’d spent the night in Gracie’s room at the hospital, and she left whenever he came to visit.
“While I was here, you moved all of Gracie’s and your belongings out of my house.”
“My house is nearly finished, so I thought it would be best if Gracie and the baby and I adapt to the new normal as soon as possible.” A normal that didn’t include Zack as a day-to-day part of their lives.
“Why the hell didn’t you tell me?”
“Maybe I was hoping to avoid a scene like this one.”
His scowl darkened. “This isn’t a scene. This is a conversation. But if you think a scene is called for, I can damn sure ramp things up for you. In fact, I’m ready to do just that, because the thought of you lining up movers and bringing them in behind my back really chafes my ass.”
“I didn’t line up movers. Bev and her husband helped me.”
“Same thing. You planned things out and didn’t tell me.” He stepped closer. “What is the big idea?”
“It’s your big idea. I’m just following your plan.”
The furrows between his eyebrows deepened. “What the hell are you talking about?”
“Your plan. We’d share custody until Gracie had the baby and turned eighteen. Well, she’s had the baby. She’ll be eighteen in a few months. So I figured we might as well get things settled so that she doesn’t have to move twice. She can simply bring the baby home.”
“What’s wrong with my place being home?”
“You and I have no reason to live together. And you’ll soon be leaving Chartreuse.”
“Who says?”
“That was the plan.”
&nb
sp; “I’m not going anywhere. Gracie just had her baby.”
“She’s going to be raising that baby for the next eighteen years, and you’re going to be trotting all over kingdom come while she does it.” Katie deliberately kept her voice calm and upbeat, as if she were explaining something to a small child. “We all might as well get accustomed to the new routine from the outset.”
His scowl turned into a glower.
She forced what she hoped was a conciliatory smile. “You’re welcome to pop in for visits whenever your schedule allows.”
“My, that’s big of you.”
“I don’t understand why you’re upset.” Katie used her best talking-to-a-sulky-kindergartner voice. “This was our arrangement.”
“Initially, maybe. Before we started sleeping together.”
“That didn’t change anything.”
“It damned sure did. I proposed to you, didn’t I?”
“What do you want, a gold star? You proposed, yes, but you made absolutely no mention of love.”
“Oh, for Pete’s sake. If I haul out the abracadabra word, will that change things?”
“No. No, it won’t.” Not at this point. Not when I know you don’t mean it. A lump formed in her throat. She willed herself to shove it down, to keep her voice calm and unemotional. “Zack, thank you for bringing Gracie into my life. Thanks for helping out after my house was ruined. Thank you for the”—she swallowed—“romantic interlude, too. It was very therapeutic.”
His face was beyond a storm cloud. It was a tornado of fury. “You thought our romantic interlude was therapeutic?”
“Yes. It helped me move on.”
A muscle worked in his jaw. “From the little scene I witnessed in your closet, it didn’t help at all.”
“What?”
“After you were so talkative in bed. I went up to your room later that day, and saw you sitting on the floor, wearing your dead husband’s clothes and going through his things.”
“I…”
He cut her off, his face hard as a steel trap. “You haven’t moved on. You haven’t moved an inch. You’ve simply moved back to your house—or should I say, to your rebuilt shrine.”
Anger flashed through her, white-hot as lightning. There was no talking to this man—no point in trying to explain. Zack would never be able to fully commit to her, to give her the unconditional, full-hearted love she needed. He couldn’t even listen to her!
“This conversation is over.” Katie’s arms went rigid at her sides. “I have nothing further to say to you. I will be polite to you in front of Gracie and everyone else. I will include you in birthday and holiday celebrations, and I will be civil and kind. But you and I have no reason to ever have any more conversations of a personal or romantic nature. Do you understand?”
“Oh, I understand, all right. I understand more than you know. I understand that nothing really personal ever happened between us, because there was always a third party in the room. Well, I leave you to him. I hope you two will be very happy together.”
He was the most impossible, pigheaded, insensitive man she had ever encountered. She wanted to walk away, but he was closer to the door, so he walked out first.
It made her furious. It made her tremble with rage. It made her burst into tears after his back disappeared around the corner in the hallway.
• • •
Annette sat in Katie’s new kitchen and watched her turn on the stove under the teakettle. “I understand you and Zack had a big argument at the hospital.”
“Where did you hear that?”
“Nellie has her sources. Apparently you were overheard.”
“Great, just great.” Katie sank onto a barstool at the kitchen counter, her heart sinking with it.
“What’s going on with you two, anyway? I heard Zack proposed.”
Bev was the only person she’d told, and Bev knew how to keep a confidence. “How did you hear that?”
Annette lifted her shoulders. “Apparently someone coming down the stairs a couple of days earlier heard you talking in the stairwell.”
Terrific. Were there no secrets in Chartreuse? “Does the whole town happen to know what kind of toilet tissue I prefer?”
Annette smiled. “That would be Charmin.”
Katie stared at her.
“Just kidding. I happen to know because I once changed a roll at your house.” She shifted, stretching her leg. “Seriously, Katie—Zack proposed and you refused?”
“He doesn’t love me. The word didn’t even come up. He’s just trying to do what he thinks he should have done back when I had Gracie. And I’m not going to rope him into something that he’ll resent in a year or two.”
“But…”
Katie held up both hands. “I’ve already heard the ‘people can change’ speech so many times I know it by heart.”
“Okay, okay. I’ll spare you. But I do have two things to say, and I’d like for you to hear me out.”
As if she had a choice. Suppressing a sigh, Katie nodded.
The teakettle started to rumble. “First of all, people sometimes reverse their opinions—even their most deeply held opinions. Take you, for example. You hated Chartreuse, and you vowed you’d never live here. Well, here you are.”
“That’s not the same.”
“Isn’t it? It’s a strong belief you held as a teenager, based on your childhood experiences. As your own life experiences accumulated, your perspective changed. The things you wanted—and didn’t want—changed. It happens to everyone. Zack is no exception.”
It made sense on the surface, but Annette didn’t know how deeply Zack was set in his ways.
“The second thing I have to say is, look at this from the man’s perspective. Zack walks into your house, and the first things he sees are your wedding picture and Paul’s ashes on the mantel. You move into his house, and you keep the ashes by your bedside and Paul’s things in your closet.”
“And you know this, how?”
“Gracie told me.”
Of course. Every vestige of privacy had disappeared the moment Gracie moved in.
“Then you and he start a love affair, and one day he walks in and apparently sees you wearing Paul’s shirt and going through his things,” Annette continued. “How can he help but feel that he’s competing with a dead man and coming in second?”
Katie’s heart started to pound. “And this information came to you via…”
“Lulu. She heard the conversation you two had in the hospital closet.”
The whole friggin’ town knew every bit of her business. In fact, apparently they knew more of it than she did, and they were putting pieces together in ways that Katie hadn’t.
The teakettle whistled. Katie got up and took it off the stove, glad to have a diversion.
“Zack thinks you’ll never love him the way you loved Paul.”
“And I won’t,” Katie said. Her eyes filled with unexpected tears. “But I could love him differently.”
“You already do.”
“I’m trying not to.” A tear spilled down her cheek.
“But you do.” Annette’s eyes were kind and warm. “And honey, it’s all right. Paul would want that for you.”
“That’s not the problem.”
“Zack thinks it is.”
“Well, he’s wrong.”
Annette put her hand over Katie’s. “Maybe you’re wrong about Zack, as well.”
Annette’s words rattled around in Katie’s head for the next three days. Zack gave her a wide berth at the hospital, then, in typical Zack fashion, he left on a trip to Seattle two days after Gracie came home. He IM’d and texted and phoned Gracie several times a day, but Katie heard nothing.
She thought about calling him, then decided against it. He was the one who’d left—the one who hadn’t seen fit to talk to her, to tell her his feelings, to sort things out. If he wanted to be with her, he’d have to prove it.
Besides, she’d already written him off. Now that little Fai
th was here, she had far more important things to do than wonder whether or not she’d been mistaken about Zack. Obviously she hadn’t been. If he couldn’t or wouldn’t reach out to her, she was better off without him.
The only problem was, her heart wasn’t buying it.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
Zack stood on the porch of Katie’s house three days later, clutching two bouquets of pink roses. Gracie opened the door, then broke into an ear-to-ear grin. “Zack!” She hugged his neck. Zack hugged her back, careful of her incision. She smelled like Oreos and baby powder. He handed her one of the bouquets.
“Thanks!” She smelled the flowers, then looked up and grinned. “You texted me just this morning, and you didn’t say a thing about coming home. I thought you weren’t due back for two more days.”
“I know. I got homesick.”
It was true. He’d never been homesick before, had never even really thought of a place as home, but all he could do now was think about Gracie and the baby and Katie.
Especially Katie. Gracie and he texted and Facebooked and IM’d several times a day, but he still hadn’t heard from Katie. He’d told himself that the next move should be up to her. He should just leave her alone. If she wanted to be with him, she’d call.
But she hadn’t. He’d pumped Gracie endlessly for information about her, and Gracie had fed him tidbits: Katie watched the baby during the day while she worked on lessons with Annette; Katie had fixed chicken fricassee for dinner; Katie had gone to her book-club meeting; the beauty-supply guy had the hots for Katie; Lulu was trying to fix Katie up with another porcelain-veneered loser.
And then the news had stopped. When Zack asked Gracie about Katie, he’d learned that Katie had seen one of the messages two days ago, and told Gracie to stop discussing her with Zack.
Surprisingly, Gracie had complied with the request.
Zack stepped into the foyer, took Gracie’s hands, and held her at arm’s length. “Just look at you, sweetheart! You’re beautiful.” Gracie’s resemblance to Katie was more marked than ever. Her face was fresh-scrubbed, free of black eyeliner and nose jewelry. Her hair was spike-free and a normal-looking brown, a shade somewhere between his and Katie’s. She wore jeans and a long red T-shirt. “You look so grown up.”