The kitchen, curiously, was empty. No fresh coffee, no breakfast dishes soaking, no paper, no crossword puzzle on the table.
Her smile faded. “Robert?” She opened the back door that led onto a cement patio. The smells of the morning rain were fresh and strong; the wrought-iron furniture still glistened with raindrops like crystals in the emerging sun. She closed the door.
“Robert?”
She peered into the library and opened the front door that faced the drive. From the distance, she could see the morning newspaper still in its yellow box and undoubtedly damp at the edges. Robert was nowhere to be seen.
Instinctively, her arms folded protectively around her stomach. She closed the front door and walked down the hall to Robert’s room. She knocked on the closed door, and received no answer.
“Robert?”
It was just as if he were asleep. His eyes were closed; he was lying on his back with one arm extended neatly over the covers. His face looked almost smooth again, with a far gentler expression than the one he usually wore.
Leigh sank down on the edge of the bed. She knew it had been coming for a long time; she had even prayed that it might end just this way, that there would be no pain. Still… “Oh, my friend,” she whispered softly. The sadness flowed over her in long, endless waves. This was Robert, a mixture of father and mother and friend, in a way no one else could ever duplicate. He had loved and protected her with a devotion that she had never understood, one she had always felt guilty about. She had loved him, yes, had seen that he was secure and cared for as best she could, but she had always felt that he did far more for her than she for him. He had been her anchor, her ballast.
The tears fell soundlessly, and Leigh rocked back and forth, her arms folded around her swelling stomach, allowing her grief its expression and her sorrow its freedom.
***
On the day before the funeral, she emailed Brian because she could not face a phone call. The message was simple and short, and overtly it asked for nothing. Just, Brian, Robert died, and the time and place of the funeral. She knew she owed him the notification, knew his fondness for the older man had been genuine. Yet she hoped all the same that he wouldn’t come.
Leigh did not think she could deal with any more emotion. The past few days had been bearable; she hadn’t had time to think but could only react as each problem came up. Dinner to be made; Monster to be walked; clothes to be washed; endless callers to entertain and all of the arrangements. Each was a problem she seemed to grope with blindly, as if the whole world was suddenly terrifyingly unfamiliar and frightening.
The nights had been much worse, filled with endless hours of despair and weariness. There was suddenly no feeling for the twins inside of her, no reason to get up in the morning. She could not cope; she had lost her best and only friend. Thinking herself independent and in control, she had never realized how much she relied on the old family retainer who had been so dear to her to see her through each day. Especially since she’d lost Brian. She had thought to leave him before he left her, but she hadn’t been able to cut him out of her heart. She had assumed time would ease the pain of that loss, but it hadn’t, and with the fresh loss of Robert, she found herself missing Brian more than ever. And over these past months, just the knowledge that Robert was in communication with Brian, even though she herself wasn’t, had been a strange comfort. Now all links were broken and she felt herself totally alone.
And so she waited through the long day of the funeral, feeling ever more certain that Brian wouldn’t come. She ought to feel relieved—she’d feared seeing him again—and yet, she was consumed with a sense of desolation.
Her attorney, Mr. Adams, drove her to the funeral and delivered the short and personal eulogy. Leigh refused to listen. There was nothing real about the box that was put in the ground—it had no relationship at all to the man she had known—and in a strangely detached way she resented the whole ceremony. She had few memories of Robert that were not good ones, and there was no question of putting them to rest, nor did she want to.
Mr. Adams drove her home in the middle of the afternoon, and then rather awkwardly invited himself in. He then proceeded to sit determinedly in a chair in the living room, talking monotonously of her father and events in the past when he had known Robert, when she was just a child. Leigh felt so weary and confused that she hardly recognized what he was doing; it was only as dinnertime approached and the white-haired attorney cleared his throat and offered to stay the night that she realized what was going on. Mr. Adams was doing his best to be kind; he was concerned about her being alone in this time of mourning.
“There’s absolutely no need,” she assured him. She wanted, in fact, to be by herself. “Mr. Adams, you’ve been wonderful to me over the last few days. I’m sorry I haven’t seemed more appreciative.”
“Didn’t expect you to be,” he said rather stiffly, and then paused. “I tried to contact Mr. Hathaway, Leigh. I called Florida, and I tried his office here in Chicago.”
“You shouldn’t have done that,” she said sharply. “You know I asked you—”
“Yes,” the attorney agreed. “I know.” Absently, he rubbed his forehead. “I’m afraid under the circumstances I found it difficult to think only as your legal adviser, Leigh. At any rate, I couldn’t get hold of your husband. That’s one of the reasons I offered to stay.”
Leigh apologized to Mr. Adams for her sharpness, but assured him that she could manage very well on her own. She ushered him out, and when the sound of his car engine finally faded down the drive, she simply leaned against the door for a long moment. The house was totally silent except for the ticking of a clock in the dining room. She had been waiting for this moment. She hadn’t been aware of it before, yet now she knew that she had been anticipating it and wondering exactly how the silence was going to affect her.
It was past five, and she had no more reason to hope or fear that anyone else was coming. Mindlessly, she heated some soup on the stove, fed the puppy, cleared away the clutter. She let Monster out, unloosed and brushed her hair, kicked off her shoes, but did not seem to have quite enough energy to get undressed yet. She let the puppy back in and closed the curtains against the late afternoon sun. Mechanical movements all of them, to block out that sound of silence. And suddenly there was nothing more to be done, and even Monster refused to create any further distractions, falling into an exhausted heap beneath a chair. Her condition conspired against her; her back hurt and she just had no energy left to invent tasks that would put off the quiet any longer.
She sat, finally, on the edge of the couch in the living room, and became part of the stillness. The shadows of daylight lengthened, blurred and finally faded with the sunset. Even the babies seemed asleep inside of her.
The rap on the door was so unexpected that she started at the sound of it. She momentarily debated the possibility of simply ignoring the visitor, but the knocking was persistent. Awkwardly, she got to her feet and ambled to the door.
Brian had a large brown sack in his hand. His light gray suit had an unaccustomed rumpled look to it, and his tie was improperly knotted. There were tired lines around his eyes, and his hair was disheveled, as if the wind had had its way with it.
Leigh’s detachment of the past few hours had been so complete that for a moment she could only stare disbelievingly at him. And suddenly she regretted, terribly, sending him that email because the first look of him immediately stirred her emotions, and she absolutely could not take any more pain, not now.
He looked back at her with an inscrutable gaze, and yet she thought she caught a glimpse of anguish, a pain that reflected her own, in his eyes before he brought the shutter down on them. His jaw tightened, and then just as quickly relaxed.
“Let me in, Red. I’ve got enough Chinese food in here for an army.”
It was Brian who switched on the lights, closed the door, led Leigh into the kitchen and searched through cupboards and drawers for dishes and utensils. He simply took ov
er, in a manner she had almost forgotten. She could not seem to stop looking at him, but she could not say anything, either. He was thinner; gaunt planes stood out on his face, but his expression was as unfathomable as ever. She could not tell if he was glad to see her or sorry, if he had come out of a sense of duty or something more. In her mind and dreams these past months she had envisioned a thousand times over what she would say and do if she saw him again, but she had never imagined that she would be too tired and heart-worn to even think, or that her stomach would be so full and cumbersome, or that she would be so thoroughly unable to hide her feelings of vulnerability and wariness. She was always perfectly dressed in her dreams, slim and chic, with exactly the right words at the tip of her tongue and a nonchalance that was devastating.
Now she found herself seated across the table from him, the food on her plate untouched. With both a smile and an impatient sigh, he wedged his chair closer to hers, filling her fork with food and bringing it to her lips.
“Brian,” she protested. The rest of her response was stilled as the fork was not too gently shoved in. She snatched it away with a rueful glance at him. “I just made soup a little while ago.”
“I saw. It’s still on the stove. You never turned it on.”
So she ate, while he told her about the house she was living in, how he had come to design it, one of his first. “The kitchen gave me fits. At this point, as you already know, I’m an expert at rubbery eggs, but at the time I couldn’t boil water, so I had no idea of how to design a livable floor plan.” He smiled at her, a totally natural smile that she found herself returning.
When the dinner was over, she rose, awkwardly of course, her face averted so she wouldn’t have to see his reaction to her burgeoning figure. Brian got up at the same time and helped her clear the dishes. His hands brushed against her arms, moving her aside or reaching around her—sheerly accidental movements, and yet they sent her pulse racing uncomfortably. How could it be…the stirrings of desire, the craving to be held in his arms? It was like a physical pain, blotting out everything, even Robert.
“Leigh?”
She turned to him, feeling her heart race as she saw him searching her face as intently as she was searching his, drinking in the sight of her, the exact color of her hair, every plane and hollow of her face. Slowly he moved closer, and then she was cradled so tightly she could not breathe, and her heart was beating against his. She buried her face in his shirt.
“I couldn’t come sooner,” he murmured. “I didn’t know. I was on the project site when I got your email and then I had trouble getting a flight. I called, but there was no answer.”
“I love you, Brian.”
He tensed just a little and drew back, but his eyes never left her face.
“I didn’t want to ask for your help,” she continued painfully. “I hated it, knowing you’d come out of a sense of responsibility—I never wanted to be a responsibility to you. But when Robert died—”
“Oh, Leigh…”
“I hoped you wouldn’t come, but now that you’re here I have to know. You have to tell me, Brian,” she burst out passionately. “Why? Was it because we were so different you didn’t even want to try? Because I was so inexperienced, so inhibited? Or so unglamorous, compared to the other women? Was it Rita Harris? Was it because I like to cook? Are my eyes the wrong color?”
“Your eyes,” he said gravely, “are the perfect color, Leigh. They always were.” His fingers curled in her hair, burying themselves in that copper thickness. “You’re the sexiest lady I know, Red. And thank God you like to cook—we certainly couldn’t live on my rubbery eggs. As for Rita Harris—oh Lord, did you think…? I haven’t seen her since the last time I saw you, love. You’re it, Leigh. There’s been no other woman, I swear. I want no other woman.” She looked up at him with the shimmer of tears in her eyes. “I love you, Leigh.”
She had never heard that wrenching, painful tone in his voice before.
“But you sent me away, Brian. And all these months…”
“I had to, Leigh. Can’t you understand? We didn’t form this peculiar alliance of ours out of love. You’d never even gotten your feet wet in love before, and it’s so easy to mistake the first throes of passion for the real thing. That’s what I thought you were doing, and I had to make you leave before you broke your heart over someone you really didn’t love—me. I never meant to touch you, Red, but then I couldn’t stop myself. I wanted to be the one to show you love and how good it could be for you.”
“And you did,” Leigh said softly.
Tenderly, he kissed her. Then he drew back swiftly, his eyes boring into hers with a need so intense she wanted to cry. “But once wasn’t enough, not for me—I wanted to be the one all the time. But I’d rushed you, Leigh, stormed your defenses. Don’t you see, Red? It would have been taking advantage.”
Almost without being aware of it, Leigh was cradled in the nook of his shoulder and led out of the kitchen, past the living room and down the narrow passage of hall. “If I’d just understood how you felt, Brian. I thought you wanted Rita, wanted to go back to your playboy lifestyle. I loved you before we ever made love. I tried to tell you. I’ve loved you so long.”
Before she could protest, he had the zipper down on her white linen dress, the lamp on by her bed, and the two of them were leaning back against the pillows. The slip did little to cover the shape of her figure, and he gazed at it tenderly, stroking the silky fabric that covered her abdomen. The weight of the babies nestled between them, as she relaxed for the first time in days. The lower-back pain she had felt all day was forgotten, and her self-consciousness over her appearance…well, it just wasn’t there anymore. He touched her with love, one arm folded around her and the other resting on her burden.
“I thought I would go out of my mind all these months, thinking you didn’t want me.” His mouth twisted in a small, unwilling smile. “No, I didn’t want to love you in the beginning. I had a few barriers of my own to break down.
“For a man who didn’t want ties, Red, I kept finding myself in an incredible hurry to finish work so I could come home to dinner. I expected demands, Red, but you didn’t make any. You so obviously were amazed at even the least consideration. I expected to be bored, but you’ve got so many interests, Leigh, that I can barely keep up with you. And I expected at least a basic exchange of needs, but while you were all prepared to take on mine, it wasn’t the same the other way, now was it? That evening when you barely had the strength to hold your head over a basin…I could have killed you, Leigh, for not coming to me.”
He shifted, still gazing at her as he brought her pillow down and encouraged her to lie flat. He pulled the covers up protectively to her chin and lay on his side next to her. Leigh watched his every move, filled with love, savoring each word. “And then there was this,” he admitted, as his left hand again caressed the mound of her stomach. “I’ve been jealous from the beginning, Leigh. You so obviously intended to put the baby first, before anything else in your life. And even after I made love to you, I still thought it would be that way. I could just picture a houseful of children where all I would ever have of you was the leftovers.” He paused. “I was raised in a home with four boys, all closely spaced together. I hated the confusion, the lack of privacy. You couldn’t even read a book in my house, or study, or concentrate on anything. And then my dad died, and I was responsible for the lot of them.”
“So you don’t want your children raised that way,” Leigh said calmly. “I don’t either, Brian. I love children, but they’re only a short-term loan—they grow up and leave, and that’s as it should be. I never wanted a dozen, or a houseful. Just one. And when you first met me, Brian, that’s all I thought I would ever have. A husband should be forever, but for me there was no forever…”
His hand on her stomach rose noticeably. “Good God, what’s that?”
“They’re just turning over, Brian.”
His hand remained until the motion stopped, and then, with a
very set expression on his face, he kissed her firmly and got up. “Time to erase those circles under your eyes, Leigh.”
He would listen to no protests. There were a thousand things she wanted to say to him, but their love was so fragile, the admission of it so new.
“You think I want to leave you, Red?” he reproached her. “You’re out of your mind! But for tonight and tonight only, you’ll sleep alone. Oh, yes, Leigh, you need some solid, uninterrupted rest. No!” He ignored her gesture of protest. “I’ll be right in the next room. Just call me if you need anything.”
Chapter 17
“Brian!” It was more a scream than a call. The pain came again, searing sharp, lasting endless seconds before it finally passed.
Brian appeared in shorts and bare feet, his brows knitted together and his black eyes alert. The night-light beside her bed was already on and he blinked as his eyes adjusted to the brightness.
“It’s not going the way it’s supposed to, Brian. I can’t breathe like Dr. Franklin said. It was all right in the beginning, but—”
“How long?” he interrupted sharply.
“Since about one.” Another pain started, bringing beads of perspiration to her forehead as she fought to bear with the wave while it peaked and finally receded.
“Since one—you damned idiot! It’s five o’clock! Why the hell didn’t you call me?”
“They were only coming every fifteen or twenty minutes. But then it changed so quickly.”
Furiously, he fumbled at the notepad she pointed to next to the bed, snapping questions at her as he phoned the doctor’s answering service. Dr. Franklin would be calling in shortly. He had barely hung up the phone when the doctor called back, and Brian explained to her that Leigh had gone into labor. Dr. Franklin said she’d be right over.
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