The Burning Point

by Mary Jo Putney

  "Then let's go back to necking and pretending we're adolescents." He scooped her up and lowered her to the carpet, then kissed her again. "If we were sixteen, I can imagine us getting so excited we'd fall off the sofa and hardly notice."

  "These days, of course, we have to be careful not to do anything disastrous to our aging joints." Her arms went around him. "I must say that not all of you seems to have aged."

  He waggled his thick eyebrows. "I'm not as good as I once was, but I'm as good once as I ever was."

  She groaned. "That's an old one."

  "Old is good--that's the whole point." He returned to her shirt buttons. "I wonder if I can manage to get to second base before dinner?"

  She'd always liked Charles's sense of humor, but this private, sweetly silly side of him was new to her. It was nice that someone she'd known almost her whole life could still surprise her. In a quavering, adolescent voice, she said, "I'm a nice girl. My mama says that if I let a man touch me like that, he won't respect me in the morning."

  Charles waggled his eyebrows again. "Trust me, little girl, the more I touch you tonight, the more I'll respect you tomorrow."

  She was giggling and he was unfastening the last of her buttons when the front door opened, and Kate and Donovan walked in, windblown in jeans and carrying motorcycle helmets. Paralysis was universal. Kate's jaw dropped, Donovan looked thunderstruck, and Julia wished that she were dead.

  Charles recovered first. He swiftly redid a couple of Julia's buttons, enough to make her decent, then got to his feet and helped her from the floor. "There is no point in pretending this is anything different than what it appears to be."

  Julia stammered, "Kate, I'm so sorry that...that..."

  "No, we're the ones who should apologize," Kate said, her face pale. "We were just coming back from Annapolis and thought we'd stop by and see if you wanted to join us for dinner. We shouldn't have...I mean, it never occurred to me that..."

  "That an adult child with a key can't walk unannounced into the house she grew up in," Charles supplied. "An understandable attitude. Any errors in judgment here were mine."

  A white-lipped Donovan was about to speak when Kate grabbed his arm and hauled him away. "Good night. I...I hope you both have a nice evening."

  When the door closed, Julia sank onto the sofa and buried her face in her hands. Charles sat down and put an arm around her shoulders. "I'm sorry, Julia. Getting caught by one's children is worse than getting caught by one's parents, I think. And it's all my fault."

  She couldn't go on like this any longer. "It was as much my fault as yours. I could have said no. So I...I'll say no now. Better late than never."

  He became very still. "Are you ending things between us?"

  "It's not that I haven't enjoyed our time together, but I...I..."

  "You're ashamed to be seen with me."

  In a sense that was true. Being caught with him by Kate and Donovan seemed like a negation of the marriage that had occupied the center of her life for almost forty years. "I'm sorry, Charles. The simple truth is that at the moment, I'm too...too mixed up to be any good for anyone."

  Charles's earlier playfulness vanished and he looked every minute of his age. "I thought that being together would be good for both of us. I know it was good for me. But I've had a couple of years to adjust to being alone, and to want something more." He got to his feet. "You haven't, and from your point of view, the most significant thing about me is that I'm not Sam. I can't change that, and wouldn't if I could."

  A word from her would prevent him from leaving, but it was a word she couldn't say. She had an identity, and it was defined by sorrow. That giggling teenager was a stranger. "Thank you for trying to help. I...I wish I could accept that better."

  "People heal in their own time and fashion," he said heavily. "I think it's best if we don't see each other at all. Good-bye, Julia."

  As he headed to the back yard to collect his dogs, she dropped onto the sofa again, knotting up in the corner with misery. Would she ever get over her current craziness, the mood swings and desperate loneliness that would exasperate a saint? Someday, perhaps.

  But at the moment, she couldn't believe that would ever happen.

  ∗ ∗ ∗

  Donovan was at the explosion point by the time Kate got him outside. "Christ, Kate, how could she?" He yanked on his helmet. "How could Charles? I never thought he was the kind of guy who hit on grieving widows."

  He swung onto the Harley and tilted it upright, then turned the key in the ignition. "Get on." The engine roared to life with his furious stamp on the kick start pedal.

  Kate had an eerie memory of the day Tom had come out. On that occasion Donovan was the one who'd pulled her outside, not vice versa, but the rage was familiar.

  He's mad as hell, and I'm not going to take it any more. She reached forward and turned off the ignition, then pulled away the key ring. "We're not going anywhere until you calm down, Donovan," she said in the sudden silence. "In your present state, you'll kill us both before we're halfway to Ruxton."

  "Give me the keys!"

  "Why are you flipping out?" she said wryly. "I'm the one who just found my mother about to get naked with the family lawyer. Are you having some weird Oedipal reaction?"

  He slammed his hand down on the bike's handlebars. "God damn it, Kate, don't psychoanalyze me!"

  She flinched. The terrified uncertainty of what might happen next was far worse than any physical injury had ever been. It was time to change the script. "Patrick, earlier today you said you wanted a future with me. That's never going to happen unless you get a better grip on your temper. Anger is normal, but bullying and intimidation are not acceptable."

  His face whitened, and for a scary moment she had no idea what he'd do.

  "Jesus." He lowered his head and pulled off his helmet, his fingers trembling as he ran his hand through his hair. "You sure know how to hit a body blow, Kate."

  "This isn't a fight. It's more like the journey of a thousand leagues that begins with a single step. And if you want to make this journey with me, you'll damned well have to prove that you've changed."

  A pulse hammered in his jaw, but slowly the tension eased from his rigid body. "I'm sorry, Kate. I keep thinking I've made progress on keeping my temper under control." He exhaled roughly. "Then something like this happens."

  "Cases involving sex and your womenfolk seem to set off weird primitive reactions."

  "Primitive isn't the half of it. My feelings about Julia aren't Oedipal. More filial, I guess. Since Sam isn't around to protect his woman, I feel like I should. Dumb, right?"

  "Right. Not that I blame you for being shocked. I am, too. I mean, she's my mother, we all grow up thinking our parents found us under cabbage leaves and that sex didn't exist before our personal coming of age." Kate's eyes narrowed. "But Julia's love life is basically her business, not ours. It's not as if Charles is an ogre or a sexual predator. They've been friends forever. Charles is a really nice man and a thoroughly eligible widower. I can understand why they've been drawn closer."

  "But Sam has only been dead for a couple of months!"

  "People react to grief in many different ways. What right do I have to criticize my mother, who was always there for me?" Kate realized that she had always taken her mother's quiet love and support for granted.

  Her father, who was so often away on business, was the parent whose approval she had yearned for. Only now, in the wake of death, was she beginning to learn Julia's heart. The least she could do was accept her mother's choices.

  "After you left me--how long was it until you got involved with another man?"

  "Do you really need to know this?"

  He looked away. "Probably not."

  "It was over two years before I went out on a date. More than four until I found someone I wanted to sleep with. Does it make you feel better to know that I didn't rebound into another relationship right away?"

  "Not really. It's a measure of how much I'd hurt
you."

  She poked him in the ribs. "All right, Romeo, your turn to say how long it took for you to get back into circulation."

  "More than a year. Less than four. A damned good thing I didn't know where to find you. I might have slipped over the edge into really dangerous craziness if you'd been nearby. For months, I was so sure that if I could just see you face to face, talk to you, I could persuade you to come home again."

  "That's why I did the divorce long distance. I was afraid that if we were in the same room, even a lawyer's office, it would feel so natural, so right, to be with you, that I'd have jumped right back into the fire. And if that had happened--I don't know if I would have had the strength to escape again."

  His fingers locked on the handgrips of the motorcycle. "I can't bear the thought that under any circumstance, no matter how angry I was, that I might have...Christ, I can't even say it."

  She had a swift, nightmare vision of the knife in her hand, the razor edge crimson with blood. "I don't know if it was luck or wisdom but the worst didn't happen." She buttoned up her jacket. "Are you safe? I'm getting cold and hungry."

  "Yeah, I'm safe." He held out his hand again. When she hesitated, he said quietly, "As God is my witness, I swear that will never touch you in anger again. I don't expect you to believe that right away, but I hope that you will someday."

  She dropped the keys onto his palm and swung into the saddle behind him. Tonight, thank God, they hadn't even come close to the kind of explosion that had ended their marriage. She'd spoken up instead of denying and avoiding the issue, and he'd mastered his temper in a tough emotional situation. Progress had definitely been made.

  As she wrapped her arms around his waist, it was impossible to suppress a faint tingle of hope.

  Chapter 34

  Another day, another city. Atlanta in this case. Donovan finished his sandwich and threw the wrappings into the trash. Eating at his desk on a job site was seriously uncivilized. Though when he looked across the cramped office and saw Kate polishing off a portion of pasta salad, he had to admit that she looked civilized.

  The phone rang, and he picked it up to find Brian, a PDI foreman working on a job in Honolulu. After hearing why Brian had called, he swore under his breath. "Go ahead and hire new equipment, even if the price is exorbitant. We can't afford to get any further behind on that job. And...be careful."

  "More trouble?" Kate asked as he hung up.

  "Arson on the Honolulu job site. A Bobcat and a loader were destroyed. I've never seen such a run of bad luck at so many job sites. Arson, accidents, labor problems--you name it, we've had it."

  "Anyone hurt?"

  "No, thank God."

  Kate folded pasta dish, plastic ware, and napkins into the brown bag from whence they'd come, then dropped everything into the recycling bin by the table where she'd been organizing the necessary demolition permits. "That's good. Bad luck tends to come in clusters. Pretty soon the luck will change."

  "I hope so." In his more superstitious moments, Donovan wondered if God was telling him he shouldn't be in charge of PDI. Then he'd remind himself of other accidents the company had experienced over the years. The only difference now was that a number of things were going wrong at once. Pure coincidence.

  Kate continued, "I've gone through your list. Do you have any more office work for me, or can I swagger over to the site and play construction boss this afternoon?"

  "You do that. I'd go with you, but the client, Bob Glazer, will be here in half an hour or so."

  Reaching for her hard hat, she got to her feet. "See you later."

  An elderly gentleman in a sober suit and old-fashioned hat opened the door. "Excuse me," he said in a soft Southern accent. "Are you the folks from Phoenix Demolition?"

  "Yes, we are," Kate said. "Come on in."

  He entered, followed by a sweet-faced older woman wearing a flowered dress and carrying a tote bag. "I have a question you all are going to think is very foolish," he said.

  "I doubt it," Donovan said. "I like off-the-wall questions."

  "My name is Wilfred Bowen, and this is my wife, Essie. It was fifty years ago this weekend that we got married right here in the Hotel St. Cyr."

  "Yes?" Kate said encouragingly.

  "Wilfred is indulging me, honey," Mrs. Bowen said. "When I heard that you were fixing to knock the hotel down, I asked him to bring me by for a last visit."

  "I'm sorry, Mrs. Bowen, but the soft-stripping process has already started," Donovan said. "It won't look the way you remember."

  "Nothing ever does, honey. Has the ballroom been ripped up?"

  "Actually, I think that's one area that's still pretty much intact," Kate said. "I could take you over there, but you'll have to wear hard hats."

  "A hard hat! Oh, my, wouldn't that be fun," Mrs. Bowen said happily. "Can we go right now?"

  Donovan glanced at his watch. He had time before Glazer arrived. "Now would be good. The crew is on lunch break and the building is quiet. Once they get back to work, it will be too noisy to think."

  After introducing herself and Donovan, Kate pulled visitor hard hats from a box and gave them to the Bowens. Wilfred wore his hat with grave dignity, while Essie looked so cute she could have been a model in a commercial.

  Kate led the way outside and across the small plaza to the Hotel St. Cyr. After picking their way through rubble-strewn halls, the group reached their destination to find that it was dusty and shabby, but intact.

  Essie circled slowly, her gaze fixed on the molded plaster ceiling high above. "Do you remember our wedding reception, honey?"

  "Oh, yes, Essie Mae," he said softly. "I remember."

  Essie pulled a large object from her tote bag. "My youngest grandson lent me this gizmo of his, a boom box, he called it, an my daughter gave me a music tape. Would you mind terribly if we had one last dance?"

  "Of course not," Kate said.

  "Wilfred, honey, could you make this go?"

  Her husband frowned over the small buttons for a moment, then hit play. The lilting strains of big band dance music filled the room.

  Essie handed a small camera to Kate. "Could you take some pictures, please? So we can show the family at our anniversary party this weekend."

  She began shooting as Essie and her husband danced with the expertise born of decades of moving through life together. In the dim light of the ballroom, it was easy to imagine how they had looked on their wedding day.

  Donovan tried to imagine what Kate would look like in forty or fifty years. She'd have silvery hair, fragile skin stretched over lovely bones, and that smile. She'd be beautiful.

  When she finished shooting, Kate set the camera down by the boom box. Donovan said, "Miss Corsi, is this dance taken?"

  She blinked. "Sir, have we been properly introduced?"

  "No. I'm the bad boy gatecrasher," he said.

  "Wonderful. I have a secret weakness for bad boys."

  He clasped her right hand with his left, his other hand going to rest on her supple waist, just above her heavy belt. In hardhat, denim work shirt over T-shirt, and jeans, Kate was as graceful as the debutante she had once been. Donovan envied those young men who had danced with her that night when they'd met. But she'd ended the evening with him, so he'd been the lucky one.

  Silently they spun through the room. If this were a real date, he'd pull her close so that her head could rest on his shoulder and he could feel the rhythmic sway of her body against his. The mere thought made his breathing change. Damnation, she'd been wise to insist on no touching in the beginning, because the more they touched, the more he wanted to make love to her. In passion, perhaps, he could truly make amends for the past. Say what couldn't be said in words. A pity this was only an unusual break in the middle of a work day, not a date or a seduction.

  The music stopped. Kate lowered her arms, but she didn't move away. For the space of a dozen heartbeats they stared at each other.

  The roar of a Bobcat coming to life on the floor above broke th
e mood. Kate turned to the Bowens. "You timed that exactly right."

  "Thank you for letting us have our romantic moment." Essie smiled as she packed away the camera and boombox. "Don't you and your young man ever forget to take time for romance. It helps keep you going through the hard times."

  While Kate blushed, Wilfred said sincerely, "Essie, with you there were never any hard times. You were always the sweetest thing in Dixie."

  "You see why I've kept him all these years?" Essie said with a smile.

  Donovan said, "I'll take you back to the site office now. I have to meet our client there in a few minutes."

  "Time to get back to work," Kate agreed.

  As Donovan ushered the elderly couple outside, he thought of Essie Bowen's comment about taking time for romance. He liked that idea a lot.

  ∗ ∗ ∗

  Another city, another building to implode. Kate would never get bored by PDI's work, but already she'd passed through the excited novice stage into matter-of-factness. Born to be wild, or at least to bring buildings down. Despite her parents' best efforts to civilize her, she felt more alive, more herself, on a job site than she had at that cotillion.

  The Hotel St. Cyr had been solidly built, and a lot of careful calculations and prep work would be required to bring it down cleanly in the middle of a mess of skyscrapers. The project had originally been handled by Sam, so Donovan had to make his own survey of the structure before finalizing the explosives plan. When he'd learned what he needed to know, they'd return to Baltimore, and a PDI foreman would fly in to supervise the rest of the prep work.

  Taking Dinah to Julia's house before this trip had given her a chance to get past the awkwardness of the scene Saturday when she and Donovan had chosen the wrong time to drop by. In a triumph of WASP communication, neither of them speaking about the subject openly, Kate had indicated that she had no intention of passing judgment on her mother, while Julia had made it clear that the affair with Charles was over.

  Kate wasn't quite sure how she felt about that. A selfish part of her had been relieved by the news--yet how could a daughter be glad to know that her mother had lost a source of comfort at one of life's most difficult times? When Kate got back to Baltimore, she'd have to talk with her mother.