Leigh’s door was wrenched open as she knew it would be, and she looked unrepentantly at the grim set to Brian’s features that she knew by now indicated a steel control on his emotions.
“Did I somehow neglect to mention to you that we’re only going to be gone for two days?”
“I need every one of the suitcases,” Leigh said calmly.
“You do not need five suitcases. We aren’t taking them. And we’ve hardly got time to sort through the mess at this time of night!”
“They’re presents, Brian,” she explained.
“I told you…” He had told her to forgo buying presents, except for his mother. He didn’t exchange gifts with his three brothers and their wives; they considered it a waste of time when it was so difficult to ascertain the needs, desires and sizes of people living so many miles apart. Brian was shouting at Leigh, but only because the wind made normal voices inaudible, and she was shouting back. The presents were for the children. He had four nephews and two nieces, and one never forgot a child at Christmas, and there’d be no time for shopping once they got there. She was not going anywhere without the suitcases.
“So you hid them in the back, thinking I wouldn’t find out until it was too late, did you?” He calmed visibly with an effort. “Leigh, we can send the presents later,” he said patiently. “They won’t let us take that much extra weight on board, can’t you see that? At the very least, we’re putting one suitcase in the trunk.”
“All right.” She motioned to the last, and then started out. Even though most of the cases were quite light, they were still bulky and cumbersome to carry. She had two, one of which slipped when Brian suddenly shouted out one more “Leigh” from behind her. She turned, feeling the icy wind on her cheeks.
“Just what was in the one you left behind?” he demanded ominously.
“My clothes,” she said quietly.
“What?”
“My clothes!” she yelled, trying to make herself heard above the shriek of the wind.
He looked absolutely enraged with her for a minute, but it didn’t last. It was becoming as fascinating as it was infuriating to watch him carefully don his figurative kid gloves, hiding his every emotion from her. He stomped back to the car, but did not say another word.
They were barely inside the crowded terminal before the loudspeaker announced that their flight would be delayed due to weather conditions. As Brian took care of the tickets and luggage, Leigh viewed the crowded terminal with mixed delight and dismay. People were everywhere, and there were no empty seats in sight. The enthusiasm of the holiday mood was catching, but it was also loud and boisterous.
“This way,” Brian said abruptly, taking her arm as he led her past and through the milling crowd.
“Did you have trouble?” she asked guiltily, oddly conscious of the pressure of his fingers on her arm. His stride was impatient; Brian hated chaos. He flashed her a dark look, saying nothing. Obviously, he had handled it, and the children would have their presents. He led her down an all-but-empty corridor, pausing before a door into which he fitted a key. Inside was a small, windowless room, outfitted with a cot and huge, overstuffed chair, a coffeemaker, simple tables—and an instantly peaceful relief from the madding crowd.
“What is this?” Leigh asked curiously.
Brian removed his coat and settled in the chair with his briefcase. “Just put your feet up, Leigh. It’s going to be a long day.”
“You rented this room?” she persisted, still confused.
He shuffled through his papers, all but ignoring her. “At this time of year, an on-time takeoff would have been a miracle,” he said absently. “So rather than standing for an indeterminate period of time…”
He left the rest unsaid. Thoughtfully, she removed her coat, revealing an apricot wool dress that clung to her rounded breasts, then flowed in loose swirls to her knees. She poured his coffee and then her own, studying him. A folder was perched on his bended knee. His absorption in his work was instant, but the black hair was still rumpled from their windy walk and his face still ruddy from the cold. He was preoccupied, with a moody air he did not normally wear. She backed up, without really knowing why, to a more shadowy corner, her coffee cup held in both hands as she leaned against the wall. Always in control, her Brian, especially where she was concerned. And suddenly she was uncomfortable with that—with his quick masking of his emotions whenever she was around, his treating her with kid gloves, his emotionless caretaking.
“Take off your shoes, Red, and lie down,” he suggested idly, without looking up from his work.
“You got the room for me, didn’t you?” she asked suddenly, warily.
“Hmm?”
“Brian, what are you doing?” she whispered softly.
He looked up then. Lightning-fast, she felt his glance take in the soft, alluring lines of her dress, the rich russet of her hair, the care she’d taken with her makeup. The results of the assessment she didn’t know. She rarely knew. And that, too, was becoming irritating.
“I don’t like it,” she said stiffly. “I didn’t expect this. A conventional wife would expect all kinds of consideration—but you married me because I don’t, Brian, and you know that. So what are you doing?” There was a crazy desperate note in her voice that startled her.
Brian finally looked up, pinning her with a strangely intense black-eyed stare. “What am I doing?” he repeated lazily. “Taking care of you, my unconventional wife. In my own way.”
The little silence was uncomfortable. Leigh looked down into her coffee cup and saw a distressed pair of topaz eyes reflected in the clear brown liquid. “I don’t need taking care of. That’s the point. This kind of thing—this room—isn’t necessary.”
“I’ll decide what’s necessary,” he said tersely, returning to his work.
She set down her cup angrily. She didn’t understand him, and because of that he frightened her, and even after all this time she couldn’t rid herself of the feeling. Like a moth to the flame, she was increasingly drawn, increasingly repelled. Like a fool, she seemed to crave something from him, a closeness she had no right to want, more of the easiness they occasionally felt around each other. But what did he want? She was certain only that he wanted something different from her than what he’d originally told her.
***
It was not a long flight, hardly more than an hour. By the time they were in the air, Leigh’s normal good humor had been restored. She was delighted to be going on this short vacation, had always loved the holidays, and it had been ages since she’d been part of an old-fashioned, big family celebration—exactly the kind Mrs. Hathaway had promised in her letters.
Leigh already knew a great deal about the family from her mother-in-law. Brian was the oldest of four boys; the other three were long married and had children. His father had died when Brian was a teenager, so his mother had depended on her first-born child to control the wild and rowdy group—highly competitive and argumentative, in and out of scrapes, boisterous… Secretly Leigh thought Mrs. Hathaway approved of it all. In her letters, she came across as warmhearted, endowed with both intelligence and humor, and fiercely loyal to her sons. Richard was a doctor, Gerald owned a farm a distance from St. Paul, and Barry was an executive in business. In her letters, Mrs. Hathaway had made no secret of the fact that Brian was her favorite. When Mr. Hathaway died, she had worried that Brian was being forced to take on too much responsibility, and later she had despaired that he would ever be willing to settle down and take on a family of his own.
She’d also told Leigh that she already thought of her as a daughter, and hoped for a closeness between them that she already enjoyed with her other daughters-in-law: Jane, Julie and Sandra. She had also hinted that she hoped Leigh would find in her a second mother rather than a mere in-law. You haven’t any parents, Leigh, and after four tries I gave up on having a daughter. As much as I love the boys, I’ve had men around me all my life, and frankly, at this point they’re too much for me.
Leigh had thought the last comment rather strange, until she stepped off the plane with Brian behind her and saw three massive men with strong-featured faces dominating the busy airport crowd, striding toward her with a relentless determination against the surge of bodies. She nestled back against Brian, and then was all but wrenched from him, swept up from the ground and hugged and kissed by all three of his brothers. Brian was treated with an equally boisterous enthusiasm, and by the time he’d grabbed her hand and returned her to his side, she was laughing as hard as his brothers were.
The names and facts Mrs. Hathaway had imparted in her letters were immediately forgotten. They all looked so much alike, with their dark hair and black eyes, and they were, en masse, quite overpowering…and not. The laughter was spontaneous and nonstop, and Leigh felt a crazy high just from seeing them so rambunctious and just plain happy.
“I don’t understand—did you pick this one with room to grow?” Gerald teased. “Or are all the girls so tiny in Chicago, Brian?”
“Gerald was going to come alone,” Barry volunteered, “but we decided we’d all better size her up at once. You don’t mind, do you, Leigh?”
Three pair of midnight eyes surveyed her from head to toe, and three smiling faces beamed their approval. For once she did not care; their frank appreciation, instead of being disturbing, made her feel strangely lighthearted with laughter. She was a sister, just that quickly, a little old to be seeking the attention of big brothers, but that was part of it, too. She was surrounded by the four men as they made their way out of the terminal.
“The group’s already at Mom’s. We’ve got to get the tree yet this afternoon,” Barry told Brian. “Christmas is at Gerald’s tomorrow—he’s the only one with a house big enough to hold all of us. Mother’s orders are to feed Leigh and bring her right back, but—”
“We don’t want to do that,” Gerald interrupted. “You don’t really want to be around a bunch of gossipy women, do you, Leigh? You’ll have time for all that later. We’ll still have you home in a couple of hours. Otherwise, it’s a separate trip back there and—”
“Leigh’s not only been up since five,” Brian interjected swiftly, “but she’s hardly dressed for an outing.”
“That doesn’t matter,” she intervened just as swiftly, not wanting to upset any plans.
“I really think—”
“Brian!” As the other three forged ahead through the snow with the suitcases, Leigh murmured to Brian, “They can’t go all the way back to your mother’s just to let me off. I’m perfectly all right.” His hand on her shoulder tightened possessively and she glanced up, startled to see the warm amusement in his dark eyes.
“All the way back to Mother’s,” he repeated teasingly. “Just how far do you think that is—Siberia? You don’t have the least idea what you’re letting yourself in for, Red.”
His three brothers had stopped at a newish green station wagon, and the luggage was being stowed in back. “Besides, I know you want to go with them,” she pointed out, watching Barry and Gerald climb into the front and Richard get in the back. She glanced up again to see Brian’s jaw set at a stubborn angle. “I’m perfectly capable of deciding whether or not I’m tired,” she argued.
“Come on, you two!”
Determinedly, she bent to get in the backseat next to Richard, and felt an admonishing thump on her backside. Her jaw all but dropped at the unexpected familiarity, and then Brian was wedged in beside her. There was suddenly no room to breathe as she sat between the broad shoulders of Richard and Brian; the car was not the largest of station-wagon models.
“So what’s it to be, boss?” Gerald asked Brian as he started the engine.
Brian suddenly grasped her by the waist and shifted her onto his lap so that she was sitting sideways with her back to the door, facing Richard, who took the immediate opportunity to stretch out his legs. “More comfortable, Leigh?” Brian asked blandly, and to the others, “The redhead insists she’s going—as long as we’ve got some way of keeping her warm.”
She only half heard the rest of the conversation, though the men’s chatter was continuous throughout the drive. She caught certain inferences: that in some way she had surprised the brothers; that Brian was consulted on every turn as if old habits were reasserting themselves; that she and Brian were under intense and awed scrutiny, as if the brothers had never expected to catch Brian acting possessive or affectionate—or like a newlywed.
But Leigh knew it was all just an illusion, an illusion Brian had created by seating her easily on his lap, pretending there was no awkwardness to her stiff form, forcing a closeness he had never forced before. His coat was open and her coat and dress had been mortifyingly rearranged in the shift; the top of his thighs were warm and hard and intimate underneath her own. His arms were clasped loosely around her waist. When the car heated up, he raised a hand to unbutton the two top buttons of her coat as he talked, his fingers lingering on the erratic pulse at her throat, then up, brushing an errant strand of dark copper hair first from one cheek, then the other. His fingertips lingered on the soft skin of her face and then trailed down to her throat, threading in the hair just beneath her ear to encourage her cheek to the rough texture of his coat. “Relax, Leigh,” he murmured, his lips a sensual whisper in her ear.
Leigh could not move. She had been prepared to play the game of closeness for the sake of his family—a kiss in front of the Christmas tree, a hand on her shoulder, a warm hug in front of his mother, perhaps a casual caress or two. But this did not feel like a game. It felt like a very private world where only the two of them knew certain secrets, where the two of them were making secrets, and the intimacy Brian was establishing was in deadly earnest. His strength increasingly held mixed messages for her—a protective promise and yet a threat more potent than the one she had lived with in her nightmares. She wished suddenly that she had never met him, even as she found herself beginning to relax and feel comfortably cozy on his lap.
“Here we are! Come on, Leigh, we’re going to set you up so warm you’ll think you’re in the tropics. Unhand her, Brian, for heaven’s sake. Does he let you go to the mailbox all by yourself?” Barry asked Leigh teasingly.
They got out of the car, and the air was crisp and bright, brilliantly clear. Two feet of snow covered the forested area, and outside an old two-story barn a horse-drawn sleigh from a bygone era looked ready to be used. They were at Gerald’s farm, and less than fifteen minutes later they were skimming over the snow according to an old family tradition. Leigh had a thick fur pelt over her lap, and Brian’s arm was around her to keep off the stinging wind that whipped up color in her cheeks. She was freezing, lightheaded with the rushing sensation of sheer exhilaration. When the men stopped the sleigh, the fur rugs were wrapped tightly around her before they traipsed off with ax in tow to argue over the choice of a Christmas tree in the middle of the Minnesota woods—and they did argue. She had a vision of exactly how it must have been when they were boys. The pines were blanketed with white; there was no possible way to judge shape or size, and still they argued. As they shook the snow from the trees to make more accurate assessments, the arguments culminated in a playful snowball fight—but at last Brian broke up the nonsense, the ax was put to work and then the sleigh was skimming the open fields again.
“So what do you think, Leigh?” Richard called out from the front seat.
She laughed with sheer delight, loving all of it—Christmas, the tree, the lovely sleigh, the brothers, the clearest day she had ever seen. “I didn’t know families really did this! I love it!”
Barry nodded next to her. “I guess we’ll keep you, Shorty. You cold, darlin’?”
She was freezing. “Of course not! I’m fine!”
“I believe I already mentioned that if she got cold I was going to kill all of you,” Brian mentioned pleasantly, and the other three hooted at him.
“Listen to him!” Richard howled. “He’s got it so bad he’s nearly a basket case. Oh, have you come dow
n like a mortal!”
“All these years we’ve envied your bachelor status. How are the mighty fallen!”
It was so very different from what they thought! The pretense had worked like a charm with Brian’s brothers, yet Leigh wondered fleetingly if his mother would be so easy to fool.
Chapter 10
Ruth Hathaway was as gregarious, warm and lively as her letters had indicated, but much more petite than Leigh had pictured her. Indeed, she was startled to see the little bit of white-haired fluff who came storming out to the car without a coat. No one that tiny could conceivably have given birth to the four tall Hathaway men!
“I told you to bring her right home! Now she’ll be too tired to talk. You boys are so thoroughly selfish at times that I’m tempted to take a hairbrush to the lot of you! Oh, Brian! Aren’t you as handsome as ever!” She hugged and kissed her son and then Leigh, accepted all the apologies that were due her, and with one arm about Leigh and one about Brian, she led them into the house.
“Leigh, you’re beautiful! And not painted-mannequin beautiful, but the genuine article. Brian, you’ve got a lot more sense than I ever gave you credit for, or should I be giving you all the credit, Leigh? Come in, I’ll get you something to drink—you’ll have to meet everyone. We’ve got hamburgers grilling on the fire for dinner and we’re eating in shifts—there’s just no room to do it any other way—and then we’ll put up the tree. If you’re just so tired you can’t stand up, you could rest for a bit, Leigh—”
“She is,” Brian interrupted.
“I’m not,” Leigh lied.
It was more a cottage than a house, small enough for Mrs. Hathaway’s needs but very obviously not the place where she had raised her four sons. The room they entered was a fairly large one, but so crowded that it seemed quite small. Children were everywhere, and the three sisters-in-law sat on antique furniture clustered around a massive stone fireplace. Pictures, pillows and hand-knit afghans added color and clutter. Leigh’s suitcases were taken to a room off the left, and from the right she saw the hallway to the kitchen, but other than this, she could guess nothing about the rest of the house.
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