“What did he mean, it wasn’t your fault?”
He’d entertained the vague hope that she’d let the matter drop. He should have known better. “Nothing, he was just talking.”
Gunning the engine, Malcolm took off. Then, as if silently chiding himself, he eased his foot off the accelerator.
Christa tried to read his expression and got nowhere. “About what?” she pressed. “The accident?”
He didn’t look at her. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
She wasn’t going to let him put her off any longer. She heard things in his voice that he wasn’t saying aloud. “Yes, you do.”
Malcolm’s hands tightened on the wheel as he struggled to hold on to his temper. “Don’t tell me what I want.”
Maybe she should have backed away, but she couldn’t. Not anymore. “We can’t keep skirting around it. Things aren’t going to go forward for you, or for us, until you bring this thing that’s eating away at you out into the open.”
Things had been fine until she’d come into his life. He’d resigned himself to the living hell he was in. Why did she have come barging in to remind him of the daylight that still existed?
His mouth hardened. “What makes you think I want things to go forward for us?”
That hurt. For a moment, she fell silent as all the air left her lungs. But this was bigger than just her hurt feelings. This was about him. About saving another human being.
She found her tongue. “What makes me think you want things to go forward for us?” she echoed. “The way you kiss me. The way you look at me sometimes. The way you looked with Robin tonight.” He wasn’t budging. Exasperated, she added, “The way you spent almost two weeks fixing a van that you could’ve had towed to your place and finished up in five days. Maybe six.”
She was hitting too close to home, making him admit things to himself he didn’t want to admit. “Repairs became complicated, and you didn’t have money for towing, remember?”
“You could’ve overridden that. You gloss over everything else that you don’t want to pay attention to.” She bit back her anger. He had to talk to her. He had to. “Tell me, Malcolm, tell me what happened, once and for all. Please.”
The silence separated them, pushing them each into a small corner on opposite ends of the car and slamming an invisible door.
Finally, he blew out a long breath, exhaling with it the final bit of his reserve.
“I didn’t see the truck coming.” As he spoke, it began to happen all over again in his mind’s eye. He was there, reliving it, feeling the helplessness as it ate away at his soul. “We were arguing and I didn’t see the truck coming.”
When he paused, she pressed. “Arguing?”
“Arguing. About racing.” It was so ironic—what had attracted Gloria to him in the first place became such a sore point after they were married. After Sally came. “It wasn’t a new argument, just more heated this time. Gloria didn’t want me to go on taking risks. She said I was a father now and had responsibilities to live up to. That I had to stop behaving like a selfish little boy and take a man’s job. She wanted me to go to work for her father.” There was no humor in the smile on his lips. “He manufactured sports equipment. I couldn’t see myself being a salesman for the rest of my life.
“So I argued with her. Racing was the only thing I knew. The only thing I felt I was good at. The only thing, I shouted at her, that I loved.” Tears threatened to close his throat as he remembered the horror and the guilt. And the emptiness. “When I woke up, that was all I had left. Racing. And I walked away from it. Because that was the last thing she’d asked of me. I…” His voice trailed off.
Christa felt as if her own heart was breaking. “Go on,” she urged quietly.
He let out a shaky breath. He didn’t want to continue, but she was right. He had to get it out. Inside, it was festering like a cancer, eating him up alive.
“I took my eyes off the road for one second, just one damn, lousy second. The driver in the truck was drunk. He’d fallen asleep at the wheel. It swerved into mine.” Malcolm bit down lips that were dry. “I tried to avoid it, but it was too late.”
He could see it all now, just as it had happened then. The headlights coming at him, Gloria screaming. The sickening crunch of metal against metal as he’d tried frantically to steer them out of the way.
“Sally and Gloria were killed instantly. So was the other driver. The police said it was a miracle I was alive. Some miracle.” He had wanted to die with them. Because he couldn’t save them from being killed.
Christa placed a hand on his arm, a hand he hardly felt. “It wasn’t your fault.”
“Yes, it was,” he shot back fiercely. “I was a trained professional, a skilled driver. I should have been able to-”
“To what? Make the car fly? You’re not God,” Christa insisted. She saw the way his jaw hardened. She had to get through to him. “Pull over.”
They were traveling down a lonely stretch of land. One of the last pieces of farmland left in Bedford was on their left, and a grove of eucalyptus trees was on their right.
“What?”
“Pull over,” Christa repeated. “Right there.” She pointed to the side. Just up ahead was a lamppost, casting a yellow-white light that pooled on the paved road. It looked like a spotlight.
He began to protest, then shrugged and did as she instructed. “All right. Now what?”
“Now you’ll listen to me.” Her voice was quiet but firm. “It wasn’t your fault. The man was drunk, he ran into you.”
What did she know? She wasn’t there. “If I wasn’t arguing with Gloria—”
No one could ever second-guess fate. “You still might not have seen him coming.”
Shifting, Malcolm glared at her. “So what are you saying, that I still would have killed them?”
So that was it; that was the burden he carried with him. “You didn’t kill them, Malcolm. You tried to save them and you couldn’t. You tried to save Robin and you could.” Trying to make him listen, she took his hands in hers and held on tightly. “Not everything is in your hands, Malcolm. You can only try your best. The rest gets taken care of without your say-so.”
She wasn’t reaching him, she thought in despair. She could see it in his eyes.
“Now I’m very, very sorry you lost your wife and daughter, but I am very, very happy you were there to save mine.” A tear rolled down her cheek. She ignored it. “And I would like you to be there to teach her how to color in the lines before she gets into preschool. And I’d like you there to hold me and make me feel safe.” Christa swallowed the other tears that threatened to come. Maybe it was admitting too much, but she couldn’t help herself. “You do, you know. You make me feel very safe.”
“Then you’re very foolish,” he whispered.
Malcolm slipped his hands from hers and slid them along her face, burying his fingers in her hair. He kissed her then, kissed her because his emotions were raw and exposed, kissed her because he had to, wanted to. Was compelled to.
He kissed her in hopes that all the broken pieces within him would somehow be joined together to form a whole.
He kissed her, praying that he could forget.
She felt the desperation on his lips, in his soul. Felt it and tried very hard to help it heal. But she knew it wasn’t going to be done in a moment or in a week. It could only be done a little at a time.
She fervently hoped that she’d said enough to make it begin.
Malcolm drew back, his heart drumming madly in his ears the way it always did at the beginning of a race. But this wasn’t a race. This was an interlude. Nothing else.
“Very foolish,” he repeated. Shifting around in his seat, he started the car again. “I’d better get you home.”
The way he said it, she knew it was her home, not his, they were driving to. And that he would be leaving her at the door.
The same door was slamming shut again, harder this time than before. She sighed quietly and sat back
in her seat, trying not to let the tears come.
Chapter Twelve
Christa tried to not let it bother her. After all, Malcolm had never actually given her a definite commitment. He hadn’t come out and said he was coming to the party in so many words. It was just something she’d inferred.
Something she’d hoped.
She should have suspected that he wouldn’t show, though. The van was in running order, and she hadn’t seen him in three days.
For Robin’s sake, she was so cheerful that it hurt.
It did hurt.
It hurt that Malcolm could just walk away without a word. That he couldn’t even call to tell her he wasn’t going to come to Robin’s birthday party.
With a little more vigor than was called for, Christa cleaned up the floor, which was littered with shredded wrapping paper. She shoved the trash into a huge garbage bag while her father showed Robin how to make music on the small portable keyboard June had given the little girl.
Who the hell needed Malcolm, anyway?
She did, damn it.
In an incredibly short amount of time, she’d grown to really need him. It wasn’t like her, this feeling she was carrying around. She had never needed anyone, not to this degree. Not even Jim.
Ever since she could remember, there had always been a small part of herself that she’d managed to hold in reserve, like a spare generator to fall back on when the main one failed.
But this time, there didn’t seem to be any extra energy supply available. She was emotionally spent. She’d already given everything to him that she had to give.
The package, obviously, had been returned, unusedunopened and marked Return To Sender.
Rising to her feet, Christa yanked the two ends of the garbage bag closed. These things happened, she told herself.
It didn’t help.
“Nice party,” Tyler commented as he cut another small piece of cake for himself.
The cake was sitting in the center of a dining table he, his father and brother had surprised Christa with. A belated housewarming gift. She’d christened it with her mother’s tablecloth. There was a feeling of closeness that pervaded the house. She wanted Malcolm to feel a part of it. To be a part of it.
Christa ran her hand along the table now and smiled in response. It was her brother’s third piece of cake. She’d held back cutting into the cake as long as possible, without telling the others why. She had a feeling they suspected anyway.
“Too bad she won’t remember it when she grows up,” Christa murmured.
In reply, she suddenly found herself the focus of Ethan’s video camera. It was her brother’s latest toy, and he was taping everything that moved. Robin’s birthday party seemed to be the perfect excuse for him to play Steven Spielberg.
“She can always watch it on tape.” Ethan zoomed in on her, only to have Christa avert her face. “C’mon, Christa, smile. I want to capture you for posterity.”
Sensitive to the look in Christa’s eyes, Tyler placed himself between his sister and Ethan’s lens. “Back off, Ethan. Can’t you see that she doesn’t want to be ‘captured’?”
“That’s because she already has been,” Jonas interjected. He placed the two empty plates he was carrying onto the table. Glancing at his daughter as he cut a piece for himself and one for June, he asked, “Speaking of which, where is he?”
“Whom,” Christa corrected automatically.
Jonas waved an impatient hand. “Which, whom, you know what I mean. Where the hell is he?”
Tyler flashed his father a silencing look that was ignored.
Christa moved past Jonas. She could feign cheerfulness, but she couldn’t withstand an interrogation. Not when she didn’t have any of the answers herself. “He couldn’t make it.”
Jonas pivoted on his heel so that he faced her again. “Why?”
Tyler took his father’s arm and directed him to the plates of cake. “Dad, I think June wants her cake before it gets stale.”
Jonas opened his mouth to say something, then just shrugged and crossed to June.
Christa let out a long breath, then raised her eyes to Tyler. “Thanks.”
They hardly looked like each other, except when they grinned. Then the family resemblance was evident.
“Hey, what are big brothers for?” So saying, he hooked an arm through Ethan’s and pulled him away. “Why don’t you take a few more dozen feet of film of Robin? After all, it’s her birthday, not Christa’s.”
“Yeah, but—” Ethan’s protest was cut short by the doorbell.
Christa and Tyler exchanged glances. There was no missing the hopeful look that had risen to her eyes.
Tyler crossed his fingers before him so that only Christa could see.
This was ridiculous. She was a grown woman, for heaven’s sake. Why was her heart suddenly hammering like a fire-alarm system gone berserk?
She was a grown woman who had fallen in love. Hard. Slowly drawing in a breath to steady her jangled nerves, Christa went to open the door.
Yes!
The single word drummed through her brain like the triumphant roar of a crowd when the winning home run was hit at the bottom of the ninth with two outs.
Malcolm was standing on her front step, a gaily wrapped package in his hands and a Big Wheel positioned at his feet. There was a big red bow affixed to each one of the handlebars. The multicolored streamers were waving softly in the wind.
Now that he’d come, he felt awkward. Uncustomarily shy. He had faced huge, cheering crowds and bars teeming with celebrating racing fans and friends and had embraced both. Yet a small room full of people, her people, made him feel awkward.
Maybe he shouldn’t have come.
No, he should have, he thought. This was the next logical step. He’d already called Wally and told him that, he was going to go in on the driving school with him. He’d taken himself out of the netherworld he’d existed in. Now he had to close the door behind him.
Malcolm glanced down at the toy. “Um, it took me longer to put this thing together than I estimated. You’d think a mechanic could slap the pieces together with his eyes shut, but—”
Impulsively, she touched her lips to his, cutting his explanation short. “It doesn’t matter now, Malcolm. You’re here.”
Malcolm looked about the room as she pulled him inside. “The party’s not over yet.” He’d entertained the faint hope that maybe it would be by now.
“Almost,” she said.
Had he purposely been late to avoid the others? Or was it her he’d tried to avoid and not succeeded? That didn’t matter, either, she told herself. He was here.
“And here’s the birthday girl,” she announced as Robin made a beeline for them.
“Bi-w’ee!” The words burst from Robin’s lips as she ran over to the toy. Her eyes looked as if they were going to pop out of her head.
Belatedly, it registered. Malcolm had arrived bearing the toy that she had burned up the phone wires searching for. The three Toylands in her area all professed that their supply had been depleted and wouldn’t be replenished until the beginning of the next month. All the other, smaller toy stores gave her the same answer. For some reason, there was a dearth of Big Wheel toys.
She stared down at the toy. “Where did you get this?”
He didn’t want to tell her that he’d combed first Orange County and then L.A. for it. At least, not in front of witnesses.
“In a toy store,” he answered vaguely.
She knew how to read him and didn’t press. It was enough to know that he must have gone through one hell of a search to find this. And he’d done it for Robin.
“Well, you can see that you’ve really made her day.” Christa nodded at the gift he still had tucked under his arm. “What’s that?”
“Just something else I picked up for her.” Malcolm moved aside as Robin tested out her vehicle. He liked his shins unbruised. Turning to Christa, he handed her the box. “You might as well open it. She seems to be busy.”
“Here, let your old uncle the motorcycle cop show you how to mount one.” Ethan grasped Robin by the waist and deposited her on the seat.
Christa rolled her eyes at Ethan’s words before carefully unwrapping the other box Malcolm brought.
Her breath caught in her throat as she stared, then raised questioning eyes to his face. Beneath the ivory tissue paper was the red velvet dress from Tots ‘n’ Togs. The dress he’d told her was far too impractical to buy.
“You bought it,” she whispered.
“Thought it the best way, seeing as how you have three policemen in the family who might not be very understanding if I stole it.”
“Hey, don’t look at me,” Jonas quipped. “I’m retired. I’m just a private citizen now. You can do whatever the hell you want.” He chuckled under his breath as he shared something in private with June.
“But why?” Christa asked Malcolm. He’d made the purchase sound so frivolous, so foolish, that she had given up thinking about it.
He hadn’t thought that he’d have to explain his actions to her. He’d assumed she’d thank him and that would be that. He was beginning to see that nothing was ever just that with Christa.
Malcolm shrugged in reply. “A girl’s got to get dressed up once in a while. Besides, I owed her an outfit after I let hers get drenched.”
“It wasn’t ruined,” she corrected gently.
Malcolm placed a finger to her lips. “Don’t quibble. Just take it.”
Her smile was beginning to curl all through her, rising from her toes on up. Taking Malcolm by the hand, she turned toward the rear of the house.
“If you’ll excuse me,” she said to the others, weaving her way to the patio, “I have something to take care of.”
Malcolm was aware that the others were looking at them with knowing smiles—except for Robin, who was too busy making noise and tearing around the living room on her new mode of transportation.
“What’s this all about?” Malcolm addressed the question to the back of Christa’s head.
Christa didn’t answer until she had him where she wanted him: on the patio. Sliding the glass door closed behind them, she turned, her body brushing against his in the small enclosure.
The Man Who Would Be Daddy Page 15