“Good enough. Melinda, get another one of those little plates.” He glanced from her to Cole. “Well, come on. Let’s have some of my birthday cake.”
Annie brought the baby to the table. Jimmy took the empty chair next to hers and Cole returned to his seat. Melinda pulled the candles from the cake, sliced it and passed it around.
Right then, she remembered the coffee. Excusing herself, she went into the kitchen and came back with the pot. She served a cup to everyone but Annie, who didn’t drink coffee since she was nursing.
When Melinda slid into her chair, Preston picked up his fork. They all began eating.
“This is a fine, fine cake,” Preston said, after he’d carefully brought the first bite to his mouth, chewed it and swallowed.
Annie said, “Melinda and I baked it together.”
“You did a fine job.”
Melinda and Annie spoke in unison. “Thank you.”
Preston was watching Melinda. She knew what was coming and steeled herself.
It came. “So. If you and my son don’t have a child together... do you have a marriage?”
Annie shifted miserably in her chair. “Dad, you have to understand. I... I didn’t know how to tell you that Brady was mine, and so Cole and Melinda were only trying to—”
Preston silenced her with a look. “Let one of them answer. It’s their marriage we are discussin’ here.”
Melinda tried to get the words out. All she managed was a silly, strangled sound.
It was left to Cole to say it. “No, Dad. We’re not really married.”
Preston brought his coffee cup to his lips and drank without spilling a drop. He set the cup down. “Then you’d better either get married, or stop sharin’ the master suite.”
Annie couldn’t stay out of it. “They’re not. Honestly. Melinda sleeps in the nursery and—”
Cole glared at her. “Annie.”
She hunched up her shoulders and stared down at her cake. “Sorry,” she said in a tiny voice.
“So, then,” Preston said. “Not every conclusion I jump to is the wrong one.”
The silence that followed said it all.
Preston picked up his fork again and carefully cut himself another bite of his dessert. “Oh, yes,” he said softly. “This certainly is one fine red velvet cake.”
Chapter Seventeen
After the cake and coffee, Preston thanked them all for the party.
“It’s been...real enlightenin’,” he said. “I am feeling just a bit tired now. But I’m sure by morning, I’ll be ready to join you all at the table again.” After sliding his napkin under the rim of his empty cake plate, he turned his chair around and wheeled himself back to his room.
Annie handed the baby to Jimmy and began clearing off. “Well. That didn’t work out so bad at all now, did it?”
Nobody answered, though Brady did let out a happy little gurgle in his father’s arms.
Melinda stood. “Annie, you and Jimmy go on. I’ll clean things up.”
Annie’s eyes glowed. “Oh, would you?”
“Sure.”
Jimmy rose to his feet a little awkwardly, because of the baby. He and Annie stared at each other. Clearly the passionate embrace they’d shared earlier had not been nearly enough.
Annie shook herself and gave a bright smile to Melinda. “Listen. Why don’t you just leave it? We can take care of it in the morning.”
“Don’t worry about it. You can leave the baby with me if you want to.”
“No,” Jimmy said, holding the small body closer. “We’ll take him with us.”
“Good enough.”
Annie set down the plates she’d gathered. Jimmy shifted the baby to one arm—and put the other around his wife. They turned as one, headed for the front hall and the stairs that led to Annie’s room.
Melinda picked up the plates Annie had set down. But before she could leave the table, Cole’s hand closed over her wrist, warm, rough—and undeniable. She met his eyes.
He seemed to be having a hard time deciding what to say.
“What, Cole?”
He let go of her wrist. “I’ll help you.” He stood.
“No, really, it’s—”
“I said, I’ll help.”
Together, they carried everything to the kitchen, where they loaded the dishwasher and put the remainder of the cake in the freezer so that the ice cream center wouldn’t melt. Then Cole got the stepladder from the closet in the front hall and took down all the crepe paper Annie had put up. Within a half an hour, all was back in order again.
Cole turned to her. He said, “You’re leaving, aren’t you?”
All she could do was nod.
“When?”
“Tomorrow. In the morning, after breakfast.”
He took her hand, turned it over, kissed the center of her palm. The tender touch pierced her deep down inside. He laced his fingers with hers. “Is the door closed, then?”
She didn’t have to ask what he meant. She thought of Preston, of how he wouldn’t approve. “Your father—”
“This isn’t my father’s decision to make.” He asked again, “Is the door closed?”
Slowly she shook her head. “No. It’s not closed.”
He wrapped her fingers over his arm. They turned for the door to the front hall and went up the stairs together, just as Annie and Jimmy had done.
At the top of the stairs, Melinda saw that Annie’s door was shut. Her own door stood open. She could see Spunky in there, already curled in her spot in the center of the wedding ring quilt. Sergeant waited, stretched out, a few feet from Cole’s door.
They went into Cole’s room. He paused at the threshold to signal the dog, who rose and followed after them. Cole shut the door. The dog wandered over and dropped to a sprawl by the sofa.
Still holding hands, they walked to the bed and sat down side by side.
Cole let go of her hand and pulled off his boots. She slid off her shoes.
Then they just sat there, in the gathering darkness, shoulders touching, staring off toward the window that looked over the oaks in the front yard, as if they’d both lost the will and the energy to turn to each other. As if the heat and yearning that always burned so hot between them had all at once faded to embers and ash.
Outside, the bats had emerged from their daytime sleep. They wheeled and dived beyond the crests of the trees.
Cole said. “I know I shouldn’t ask it. I know what you’ll say. But if I don’t, I’ll always wonder if it might have made a difference.”
Melinda closed her eyes—against the question, against her longing to answer yes.
“Will you marry me, Melinda?”
She forced her eyes to open, turned to him—and shook her head. “I’m...not good enough for you, Cole.”
He looked confused. “Not good enough? What are you talking about?”
“You’re...such a wonderful man. The way you care for your father, the work you do that means so much to the people around here. The way you came after Annie in L.A. and wouldn’t leave until she finally came home with you. You...you’re so fine. You can do better than someone like me.”
“That’s not true.”
“Yes, it is.”
His face had changed. The confusion was gone now. His eyes burned with a fervent light. “There is no one better than you. You’re the one that got Annie home. And you brought my father out of his room. Pretty much everything that needed fixing around here, you took care of. If there’s one of us who’s too good for the other, that one isn’t me.”
His words warmed her—but not enough to change her no to a yes. “I told you from the first. I’m not... I don’t even really know who I am. Why would you want to marry someone like me?”
“Because I know who you are. You don’t see your own value. You look in the mirror and you see what others have taught you to see. Someone so beautiful, someone born to money, someone who never had to work a day in her life. You don’t see what’s really there. A g
ood heart and a helping hand. A fine mind and a willing spirit. But I do, Melinda. I see what you really are. If you think I’m so good, maybe you ought to have a little faith in my judgment.”
She cried, “Oh, Cole. It wouldn’t work. You know it wouldn’t.”
“No, I don’t. You know it wouldn’t.”
“And I am right.”
He made a low sound, something that hung midway between a laugh and a groan. “Well, that’s true. If you know it won’t work and you don’t let it work, then you will turn out to be right.”
She spoke urgently, willing him to see it her way the difficult way, but the realistic one. “We...we had an accident. And all this happened. But it’s not our real lives.”
His gaze didn’t waver. “What is your real life, Melinda? A man you loved who turned out to be a whole lot less than you wanted him to be? A baby you would have loved with all your heart—if it had been born? A job you lost that didn’t really mean that much to you in the first place?”
“Yes,” she said forcefully. “All those things...they are my real life.”
“No.” He shook his head. “Those things are the past. Your real life is now—from this moment on.”
“But I have to—”
“Think,” he said. “Listen. Isn’t it just possible that your real life could be here—in the middle of Texas, in this house with me and my troublesome father and my bossy little sister? Could you have, maybe, found your real life by accident?”
She put a hand against his lips, to try to get him to stop saying such hopeful, impossible things.
But he didn’t stop. His mouth moved against her fingers. “Your real life is your choice. Don’t you see that? Can’t you figure that out? Your real life isn’t something your parents made up for you. It’s not all the bad things that happened to you, or the choices you made once that didn’t work out. Your real life is right now. It’s what you make it, what you want it to be.”
She dropped her hand, turned away. “I... I know that. I do.”
He took her shoulders, pulled her around to face him. “No. No, you don’t.” His fingers dug in, hurting her a little. “You don’t trust yourself. You don’t trust your own heart. You think your heart has betrayed you—will betray you again.” He looked at her hard.
Whatever he sought in her eyes, he didn’t find. He let go of her abruptly and asked with a kind of dull fury, “There’s no point in this, is there? I might as well beat my head against a wall.”
“Oh, Cole—” She reached out.
He flinched away. “No.”
“Cole, I—”
“Look. I shouldn’t have asked.”
She couldn’t stop herself. She needed to touch him. She reached out once more.
He caught her wrist, held it between them. “I shouldn’t have asked,” he repeated. “And I won’t be askin’ again. I’ve got a heart, too, Melinda. And you’ve pretty much broken it.”
“Oh, don’t say that. I didn’t mean to do that. I never wanted—”
“I know you didn’t. Neither of us did. We never should have started this. You should have stayed away after that first night, once I kissed you and you turned me down. And me, I should have done a better job of resistin’ my hunger for you. But you didn’t. And I didn’t. And now, well, I’ve asked you to marry me and you have said no. There’s not much else to do but kick dirt on this campfire and move on down the trail.”
He let go of her hand. She pulled it protectively against her heart as he said with great weariness. “It was a bad idea, my askin’ you to come in here tonight. I think you better just pick up your shoes and go back to your own room now.”
When she didn’t move, he bent down, picked them up for her and held them out. “I’ll be gone on rounds when you leave tomorrow. So I’ll say it now. Thank you. For helpin’ me get my baby sister back home, for getting my father to come out of his room. And goodbye, Melinda.”
She wanted to cry out, to beg him to let her stay with him for this lust night.
But she said nothing. What good would begging do? He didn’t want her to stay.
She look the shoes from him and made herself stand.
He looked up at her, spoke gently. “You be careful on that long drive home.”
Home? she wondered. Where was that?
He waited. For her to go.
She forced her feet to start walking, across the braided rug and the stretch of bare floor to the door between their rooms. She went through it.
When she got on the other side, she shut it quietly and dropped her shoes on the floor. Then she took off the rings that had belonged to Cole’s mother. She set them on the bureau and climbed onto the bed. The gray cat started purring. Melinda closed her eyes and listened to the steady, soothing sound.
The next morning, Melinda was all packed before she went down to breakfast. She waited until the meal was done to tell Annie, Preston and Jimmy of her plans.
Preston said, “Does Cole know this?”
Melinda kept her shoulders very straight. “Yes. We...said goodbye last night.”
Preston lowered his gray head, a movement that seemed to speak of acceptance. After a moment, he raised his eyes to meet hers again. “I had hoped you might stay with us.”
“I’m sorry. I can’t.”
“You are welcome here. Anytime you might choose to return.”
She thanked him and looked at Annie, but Annie said nothing, only pursed her mouth and glared.
Melinda stood, thinking that she would load up her car and then say a last goodbye to her friend. “I want to get going. I have a long drive ahead.”
Annie stood, too. “You’re not going anywhere. Not till you and me talk. Alone.”
Melinda didn’t like the sound of that. But what could she do? She turned for the stairs and Annie followed right after.
In Melinda’s room, Annie shut the door and leaned against it, as if she could hold Melinda there by force. “What are you doing? This is all wrong. You can’t just leave.”
Melinda rubbed her eyes. They were achy and red from lack of sleep. “Annie. Come on. You don’t need me here anymore.”
“Of course I do. I’ll always need you. And Cole—he needs you, too.” Annie slumped against the door, her face crumpling. “Oh, don’t leave, Melinda. Please don’t leave. I know you love him. I know he loves you.”
Melinda drew herself taller against the bone-deep exhaustion that kept trying to drag her down. “Annie, stop. I can’t...take it, right now.”
“But you belong here. With us.”
“No. No, I just don’t know where I belong.”
“That’s a lie,” Annie cried. “You are lyin’ to yourself. Breaking your own heart, and Cole’s heart, too. Why? Why do a thing like that? Cole is not that man who hurt you, that man who didn’t want his own child. Cole is good. Cole is—”
Melinda put both hands out, in a warding-off gesture. “Annie, please. You can’t have everything your way all the time.”
“Oh, why not? Why not as long as what I want is what’s right and what is meant to be?”
“Annie, please. Just let it alone, will you? I did what you needed. Now, I really have to go.” She took her purse from the bed and slung it over her shoulder, then picked up the suitcases, one in either hand. “I left your mother’s rings on the bureau there.”
“They’re your rings, Melinda. You know that they are. And you are the sister of my heart.”
“Please. Just...give them to your father.”
Tears streamed unheeded down Annie’s smooth cheeks. “Oh, Melinda. Melinda, don’t go. You gave me so much. I want...you to have the best. I want...you to have Cole. And for Cole to have you...”
Melinda couldn’t bear to hear more. Swiftly she cleared the distance between herself and Annie, dropped the suitcases and grabbed her friend in one last, tight hug.
Annie sobbed and clung. Her tears wet Melinda’s shirt. “Be well,” Melinda whispered, stroking the silky brown hair. “Be happy.
Kiss Brady for me.”
“Oh, don’t go. Don’t go...”
Melinda took Annie by the arms and pushed her back, away from the door. Then she flung it open, grabbed the two suitcases and fled. Annie’s sobs echoed behind her as she hurried across the landing and started down the stairs.
Jimmy Logan met her halfway. She froze, with a few feet between herself and Annie’s young husband.
His dark eyes accused her. “I can hear my wife cryin’.”
“She’s okay. She just...doesn’t want me to go.”
“Maybe she’s right. Annie’s right a lot of the time.”
“Not this time.”
His mouth curved in a humorless smile. “You sound like me—and you’re runnin’, aren’t you? You’re runnin’ away.”
Behind her, Annie’s sobs continued. She couldn’t stand hearing them anymore. “Please step aside. I have to go now.”
For a moment, she thought he wouldn’t budge. But then he flattened himself against the railing. She swept past him.
He called to her back, “Runnin’ never does work. It only goes in a circle—right back to where you started.”
She didn’t reply, didn’t turn, just continued down the stairs and out the front door.
It must have been her exhaustion from the grim and sleepless night just past.
Because somehow, Melinda managed to take the wrong road. She thought she was doing fine until she came to a town called Mason—she distinctly recalled that she and Annie had driven through Mason on their way to Bluebonnet the week before. But then, evidently, she had turned right when she should have turned left. Or something like that. She drove about thirty miles in the wrong direction before she came to a town called Llano, got out her map—and discovered she’d been going east instead of north and west. She pulled out onto the road again and got herself turned around—she thought.
But forty minutes later, she was driving into Fredericksburg—which was distinctly south of Bluebonnet. She got out the map. Really, the route looked very simple.
So why in the world couldn’t she get it right? She rubbed her eyes, folded up the map—and tried again.
This time she definitely went north, as she should have. She was certain. She’d been on that particular road four times, after all—two trips down and two trips back.
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