Picking up the phone, he said, “Garth?”
“Uh, hi, Dad.” The boy didn’t sound in pain and his voice wasn’t choked with sobs.
“You’re okay?”
Sounding surprised, his son said, “Yeah, sure. Why wouldn’t I be?”
“And your mom? She’s not sick, or—”
“No. I’m…well, see, I’m calling from school so she won’t know I talked to you.”
“You mean, you’re feeding quarters in?” Eric frowned and leaned a hip against the cabinet. “Why don’t you let me call you back?”
“No, that’s okay. I wrote down Mom’s callingcard number. She won’t mind.”
“When she gets the bill, she’ll know you phoned me.
“Nah,” Garth said without hesitation. “She doesn’t look at her bills that closely. I’ve made long-distance calls before.”
Who the hell had Garth been calling long-distance without his mother’s knowledge? But Eric didn’t ask; he was in the awkward position of a divorced father who hadn’t seen his son in almost nine months; he wasn’t really part of Garth’s life and he had no business interfering in the boy’s relationship with his mother. Maybe, Eric thought, he was misinterpreting things, anyway.
“I’ve got patients waiting,” he said. “What do you need to talk about?”
For the first time a small silence ensued. Then in a rush his twelve-year-old son said, “The thing is, there’s all kinds of stuff happening here this summer. But Mom says I have to visit you. I figured, if I talked to you, you wouldn’t mind if I didn’t come. It’s not like we had anything really special planned. I mean, what would I do every day? Here, I’ve got friends to hang with, and Mom needs me, you know. She just doesn’t like to say that to you.”
Eric’s stomach felt as if the morning’s stack of pancakes, eaten at a Rotary Club breakfast, was turning to concrete. Mom says I have to visit you. God. He’d lost his son.
“Dad?”
He couldn’t think of a damned thing to say.
“It’s not like I don’t want to see you. It’s just, the whole summer…”
Eric found his voice. “Let me think about this. Maybe talk to your mother—”
That provoked some real emotion. Panic. “But you can’t! She’ll be mad I called you. Why should you have to talk to her? It’s just between you and me, right?”
“Wrong. You know your mother and I don’t make decisions about you without consulting each other.” He and Noreen hadn’t been able to salvage their marriage, but they’d continued to share concerns about their son. Until recently, Eric realized, frowning again; he hadn’t spoken to his ex for more than a “Hi, is Garth around?” in quite a while. And something was clearly going on.
Or had she simply not wanted to tell him that distance had killed his relationship with his son?
Striving to sound dispassionate, he said, “I won’t tell your mom what you said. I’ll just discuss this summer in general, okay? But I’ve got to warn you, I was counting on some time with you.”
“Yeah, but it’s really important…”
“We’ll talk in a couple of days. Now, get to class.”
Feeling sick, Eric stayed where he was for a moment after putting down the phone. Because of his son, he’d hung on to his marriage longer than he should have. Even after the divorce, he’d stuck it out in a lousy job situation at a clinic in the Bay area because he wanted to be where he could see Garth often. Only when those overnight visits became unsatisfactory did he convince himself that having his son for the whole summer every year would be better, that it was time to make a change.
He couldn’t win. Maybe there was no way a father who didn’t live with his kids could be anything but irrelevant to their lives.
In frustration, he drove his fist against the wall just hard enough to hurt. The pain was a welcome distraction from the deeper anguish.
“Eric.” His partner laid a hand softly on his shoulder. “What’s wrong?”
When he lifted his head and turned to face Teresa, she let her hand drop. Snug black leggings showed under her white lab coat, which was beginning to strain just the littlest bit over her stomach now that she was four months along in her pregnancy. She’d remarried the year before, not too long after she’d bought into the practice and moved to White Horse. Today her dark hair was French braided, and she wore tiny gold studs in her ears. Her forehead creased with worry.
He said the first thing that came into his head— the first thing that had nothing to do with his son. “Do I have a reputation?”
“A reputation?” Teresa’s eyebrows rose. “I hope so! My livelihood depends on it. If people don’t think you’re almost as good a vet as I am—”
“Not that kind of reputation,” he interrupted. “I mean socially. As a lady’s man.”
“Ah.” Humor warmed her brown eyes and she leaned comfortably against the wall, waiting until a technician had walked down the hall and gone into the nearest examining room. “You mean, do people talk about the fact that you’ve dated every nice-looking woman in the county? Yeah, I think I can safely say that you have a certain reputation.”
He growled, “I never dated you.”
“I would have said no.”
“Why?”
“Because we work together,” she answered immediately. “We’d have fouled the nest, so to speak. Besides…you weren’t any more interested than I was, were you?”
She was right, but he’d never understood why. “I don’t chase everything in a skirt,” he said grumpily.
“No, only the pretty ones.”
Her obvious enjoyment of his discomfort was the last straw. He uttered a profanity.
Teresa’s grin faded. “Do you want to tell me what’s wrong?”
“When we have a spare fifteen minutes.”
“We have it right now. Not a soul waiting. I have some calls to make, but I can do that later.”
They retired to his office, marginally larger than hers, and she ate a cup of yogurt and wistfully watched him drink a mediocre cup of coffee.
“My doctor insists that a little caffeine won’t hurt the baby, but I don’t like the way they keep changing their minds. When I was pregnant with Nicole and Mark, it was taboo.” She sighed. “I’ll live. Now. Tell me what set you off.”
“You know that cat shelter, Ten Lives? A volunteer came to see me.” He told her what Madeline Howard had proposed and his own offer. “You have any problem with my giving away our services?”
“You know I don’t.” She set down her yogurt and leaned forward, face alight with enthusiasm. “We can offer care at cost—”
“Yeah, but what’s that? We have overhead, staff salaries and benefits…”
After some amiable bickering, they settled on charges he figured wouldn’t break the bank. He was half hoping she’d forgotten their earlier conversation, but no.
“So let me guess.” Teresa licked her spoon, then smiled. “This volunteer is single and attractive. And she turned you down.”
“She told me she was tired of being judged on appearances.” He shook his head.
“My, you must have been subtle.”
“I asked her out to dinner!” Eric said in outrage. “I didn’t say, ‘Hey, baby, your place or mine?’”
“When’s the last time a woman turned you down?”
“For dinner?” He had to think. “I don’t know, I don’t usually ask unless I think there’s interest on both sides…”
“Never,” Teresa concluded with quick glee. “And your ego’s bruised.”
Maybe she was right. Maybe that was all that was wrong. It wasn’t as if he’d had a chance to fall for Madeline Howard’s inner beauty.
Except, dammit, he had glimpsed it. He’d made up his mind to ask her out, not when he first saw her, but while she was telling him about the shelter and the cats the volunteers were able to save. The color in her cheeks, the sparkle in her eyes, the verve with which her hands shaped their plans. Inner beauty, or outer?
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“Look at it this way,” his partner said, pushing herself to her feet. “In another few weeks, you won’t have time to date, anyway, not with Garth here.”
The dull ache of loss he’d been trying to ignore sharpened to a knife stab. “He doesn’t want to come,” Eric said starkly.
“Oh, no.” Real compassion in her eyes now, Teresa sank back onto the chair. “You didn’t say anything.”
“I just talked to him. I don’t know what the hell to do about it.”
But he did of course; the first step was calling Noreen and finding out what was going on in Garth’s life that was so much more appealing than a summer with his father.
He waited until nine-thirty that evening, hoping Garth would be in bed so that Noreen could talk without an audience.
She answered right away, but when he asked if his son had gone to bed, she said wryly, “Bed? I doubt it. But he is in his room. Probably with earphones on.”
“He’s, uh, seemed a little different lately when we’ve talked. Anything going on I should know about?”
“Nothing serious,” she said immediately. “Otherwise I’d have told you. He’s been in trouble at school a couple of times—a fight with another boy, talking back to a teacher—normal things for a boy his age. But his grades are still decent, and I figure it’s just a stage.” She was silent for a moment and he sensed she wasn’t done. Her voice changed. “Eric, I’m remarrying.”
Remarrying. He waited for a reaction more profound than mere surprise. They’d been divorced for—what?—six years now. No, five-and-a-half. But before that she’d been his wife for ten years. Shouldn’t he be jealous? Resentful, because she’d moved on so completely?
“Congratulations,” Eric said automatically.
“Thank you.”
“Garth hasn’t mentioned anyone. Who is he?”
Either he was numb, Eric thought, or he really didn’t care. He felt mild curiosity at most.
Until it occurred to him that the advent of a new stepfather probably had something to do with Garth’s desire to stay home this summer.
There’s all kinds of stuff happening here this summer.
Like a new father.
Noreen was telling him about the man she loved. Chuck Morrison was a corporate type, something to do with plastics. He was kind, civilized, supportive of her career, tolerant of Garth’s occasional sullenness.
Eric felt a burst of rage. Who the hell was Chuck Morrison to be with Eric’s son more than he, Eric, was? And “tolerant” sounded goddamned condescending.
It was hard to make his tone civilized. “How does Garth like him?”
“Well…” Noreen sounded doubtful. “He seemed to like Chuck fine as long as we were just dating. Since we’ve become engaged, he’s been a brat. I figure he’ll get over it. It’s normal for him to be scared about such a big change, right?”
“Yeah, I imagine so.”
“In fact,” she spoke faster, with more animation, “we’ve planned the wedding for early June so that Garth can be there, but then he leaves immediately to stay with you. That way, we can have a leisurely honeymoon and some time on our own before Chuck and Garth butt heads.”
“I see,” Eric said mechanically. For once he knew something about their son she didn’t. Garth didn’t want her to have a leisurely honeymoon and some time alone with her new husband.
But Eric didn’t tell her. He wished her well, they discussed the airline tickets he’d be sending for Garth and said good-night.
His resolve hardened. He couldn’t do a damn thing about Chuck Morrison, corporate executive, playing father to his son from September through May, but he wasn’t going to give up his own time and his last chance to remind Garth that he already had a father.
CHAPTER TWO
“LILY, WILL YOU SEE if Mrs. Peterson needs a different size? She’s in room three. I’ll get the phone.” Madeline paused only a moment; Lily, although just twenty-two, was a dream with the customers. When she smilingly complied, Madeline moved behind the mahogany counter to answer the telephone. “Madeline’s. May I help you?”
The caller was her mother. “Madeline, did I get you at a bad time?”
Aware of a customer browsing a rack of suits only a few feet away, Madeline didn’t allow herself to. frown. Her mother, who lived in Southern California, often chose to call her at the store rather than waiting for evening. “No,” she said, “although I do need to leave in five or ten minutes.” She wondered how prompt Dr. Eric Bergstrom would prove to be.
“Oh.” Her mother dropped the single word forlornly. Given their usually distant relationship, that was out of character for Gloria Howard. “Well.” Her customary briskness returned. “I was simply wondering if a summer visit would be convenient for you. Perhaps in July. I thought I might stay several weeks.”
Madeline turned her back on the customer. Several weeks? They hadn’t spent more than a week in the same house in the past fifteen years! Not that they argued or did anything else dramatic; it was just that they had little to say to each other. Or too much, which amounted to the same thing, as none of it could be said. Not if they were to maintain their pretense of a normal mother-daughter relationship.
“Several weeks?” Madeline said, letting no more than faint surprise sound in her voice. “Is this a special occasion?”
“No, not really.” Gloria Howard hesitated. “I just thought…well, we see so little of each other. And I’m not getting any younger.” This last was said lightly, as though she meant it as a joke, but Madeline heard the loneliness underlying her mother’s usual attempt to hide any real emotion.
“Is there something wrong?” The strength of her fear caught her unprepared. What if her mother had cancer or a heart condition? What if she was dying? Madeline edged around again to keep her face averted from the customer who was browsing her way through the store. “Are you sick?”
“No, no, nothing like that. I’d enjoy seeing you, that’s all.” Her mother’s voice cooled. “But if you already have plans…”
Madeline was being let off the hook. All she had to do was say, Yes, I’m afraid I do. Then make something up. Suggest a shorter stay. Or that they meet at a nice resort, like Rosario in the San Juans, for a pleasant weekend as they’d done before.
But the sharp fear and the thought, What would I do without my mother? had left a residue, an ache that made her feel like crying. The words “Oh, I’m sorry,” wouldn’t come.
“Mom, I have no plans,” she heard herself say. “You’re right. It’s been ages. July would be great.”
“I’ll let you know exactly when I’ll be arriving.” Back to normal now, her mother sounded as if she were concluding plans for a business meeting. “And of course, I’ll bring my allergy medicine.” A pause. “How many cats do you have now?”
After a brief mental review, Madeline decided not to mention the six kittens currently in her guest bathroom. They’d be gone before July. “Seven. Only one more than last year.”
“So long as I can keep them out of the bedroom…”
It was all Madeline could do to hide her irritation. “You know you can. Mom, I’d better go. I have an appointment.”
Leaving Lily to handle the last hour and close up the store, Madeline hurried out to her Subaru station wagon, parked in one of two slots behind the building.
Several weeks. Dear Lord. She started the engine with an unusually vehement roar. How was she going to survive?
The drive took her about twenty minutes, which gave her plenty of time to brood. A year before she had bought her first house ever, in White Horse, a small town in the foothills of the Cascade Mountains. Today she turned off the highway before she reached the town limits and followed a narrow, winding country road to the shelter.
Where the gravel drive turned into an opening in a split-rail fence, a discreet hand-painted sign showed a black-and-silver tabby curled around the words Ten Lives. The shelter itself, housed in a large 1950s rambler, was hidden from the road by a
stand of alders clothed in silver-green leaves that rippled in the breeze.
Madeline parked in front of the detached garage beside Joan’s van, which had the same tabby painted on the side. No unfamiliar cars, thank God; she’d cut it close, arriving only five minutes early.
In fact, she was just closing her car door when a canopied pickup pulled in and stopped right behind her station wagon. Wearing brown cords and a khaki shirt, Eric Bergstrom climbed out slowly. She guessed he was no more excited about meeting her again than she was about meeting him.
Nervousness twisted in her chest, although she hardly knew its cause. He wasn’t the first man to come on to her for no other reason than her looks. He hadn’t even taken it all that badly when she’d turned him down.
No, it was something about the man himself. What made her feel like a hypocrite was her suspicion that she was reacting to his appearance.
Experience told her that the camera would find him magnificent. She hadn’t met a man in a long while with his looks. Tall enough to make her feel petite, he was also lean and graceful, in the way of a natural athlete. Classically handsome, his face was all angles—stark cheekbones, with creases deepening the hollows beneath, and his nose narrow and aristocratic. In keeping with his Scandinavian name, his hair was light blond, silver and gold shimmering together in the sun. And his eyes, narrowed now as he scrutinized her, were a pale clear gray-green that seemed to see more than she wanted them to.
She immediately regretted the moss green suit that hugged her waist and hips. She should have taken a change of clothes to work.
“Dr. Bergstrom.” She gave him a pleasant aloof smile.
“Ms. Howard.” He sounded brusque; sulking, she thought with a mental sigh. Then he slammed the pickup door and winced.
She took a step forward. “Are you all right?”
“Yeah. Got kicked today. My own fault.” His face was closed to her; his male pride demanded stoicism.
“We could have rescheduled.”
“Unless you have pet cougars in there—” he jerked his head toward the house “—I think I can handle it.”
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