Mr. Forever

by Sara Daniel

“Blasphemy,” Olivia responded with mock severity. “We’re making scones, not rocks. The difference is in the way you mix them.”

  Caleb slumped against the wall. She’d certainly relaxed her policies since he was gone. Guests were not only allowed in the kitchen, they were treated to cooking lessons. Not that he cared. He wouldn’t have taken cooking lessons if she’d offered. Besides, he could be reading the situation wrong. Olivia might be training new kitchen help. But surely, she could have found a competent woman to work for her.

  “The butter has to be cold,” Olivia said. “Work it into the flour mixture with your fingertips.”

  “I’m getting to the bottom of all your secrets now. Do you offer bedroom secrets too?”

  Caleb clenched his fists.

  “You’re a dirty old man.” Olivia didn’t sound offended. “I bet you have more secrets than I do. Take a plate of these to your wife as soon as they come out of the oven. Best bedroom secret I can think of for a satisfied woman. Don’t mix the dough any more than that. Smooth dough is the kiss of death.”

  “In other words, an unsatisfied woman.”

  Shoes clipped across the hardwood floor. “Ralph, are you behaving in there?” The approaching woman didn’t notice him. The laughing voice was unmistakable. His mother was on an emotional upswing. Her hair was shorter, her face fuller, and her clothing looser.

  Caleb had been so concerned about coming face-to-face with Olivia and instead he met her. He had been twenty-eight with his first Forever book on the bookshelves when he last saw her. He’d stood in her living room and thought of how hard he’d worked to bring Beth’s legacy to life while she announced she was back with her ex for a third go-around. He’d been angry and hurt that she’d dismissed everything he’d tried to teach her.

  If you marry Ralph again, you are out of my life. I’ll never speak to you again for as long as I live.

  I married him last night, Mom had said calmly.

  Then there’s nothing more to say. He walked away ten years ago and never looked back. Well, Olivia would say he’d looked back. She would say he’d spent his whole life looking back. Ethan had said it too.

  Maybe it was true. He also kept his word — to Beth and to his mom.

  “Caleb.” Now Mom’s voice was little more than a whisper. Her eyes widened and filled with a bright sheen.

  He couldn’t believe sweet, innocent Penelope had suckered him into this meeting.

  “Maggie, I’m guaranteeing you intense satisfaction this afternoon.” Ralph, as course and ribald as ever, walked out of the kitchen slapping his hands together, white powder billowing off them. He stopped when he saw Caleb. Immediately, he moved to Mom’s side and put his arm around her. “What are you doing here?”

  “That’s my line.” Caleb could only speculate how many times in the past ten years they’d split apart and come back together again.

  “Is there a problem?” Olivia stepped out of the kitchen. A shot of agony splashed across her face before her features became a bland mask of politeness. “Hello Caleb. I see you’ve met my guests, Margaret and Ralph Schneider.”

  Married again. Probably in the past year if they were indulging in afternoon sex. Apparently, Olivia knew nothing of their connection to him. All the better. He didn’t need her interference.

  Olivia folded her hands in front of her, more composed now than the first day he’d arrived as a stranger. “To what do we owe the pleasure of your presence?”

  No one was pleased to see him. That was obvious. His own mother bit her lip, her face crumpling a little more with each passing minute. Caleb felt terrible, as if he were the one who had wronged everyone. He’d dedicated his life to fixing their mistakes, but there was no swell of gratitude in the silence. He hadn’t asked for this reunion. “My fiancée asked me to come see her.”

  Olivia flinched.

  His mother started sobbing.

  The word fiancée didn’t give him the satisfaction he was looking for. In fact, it rolled off his tongue wrong and he felt spiteful for saying it front of Olivia, hurting her more than necessary.

  “Then go see her,” Ralph snapped. “If you can’t find the courtesy to say hello to your mother and ask about her health after all these years, stay out of our sight while you’re here.”

  His breath caught. “Is there something wrong with your health, Mom?” He may have pushed her out of his life, but he didn’t wish her ill or, worse, dead.

  “I wear an estrogen patch, and am prone to hot flashes. And I could stand to lose twenty pounds. Otherwise, my health is fine. Thank you for asking,” she said, taking a Kleenex Olivia offered and blowing her nose.

  He hadn’t wanted to know that and she knew it. She was squeezing Ralph’s hand so tightly her knuckles were white. As if Caleb was the one who created family tension. He looked at Olivia again. She might not have expected his arrival, but he could see now that she’d known about the family connection before he arrived.

  “If you’re still here for community hour and would like to join us, perhaps my guests will have adjusted to your presence by then,” Olivia said.

  Adjusted to his presence? He was the one who’d been dealt a shock. He stared at her. “What about dinner?”

  “What about it?”

  “Don’t I get an invitation to eat too?”

  “I suggest you cook something for your fiancée and enjoy a romantic dinner to yourselves.” Olivia pivoted on her heel and pushed through the kitchen door. The door swung several times in her wake.

  “We’re about to put the scones in the oven,” Ralph said, wrapping his arm around Mom’s shoulders. “Come watch us.” He ushered her past Caleb into the kitchen.

  Caleb stood alone in the foyer. Low whispers came from the kitchen, the words too quiet for him to decipher. He’d continuously criticized Olivia for being like his mother. He’d blasted both of them for their faults. Meanwhile, they’d been plenty aware of his many faults all along and had still been willing to make him a part of their lives.

  Now their lives included each other but not him. He couldn’t blame them, and he couldn’t think of a reason why either one would be willing to forgive him for acting like a pompous, self-important jerk.

  Chapter 21

  Caleb walked downstairs to the basement. Penelope was supposed to be packing her stuff for the new lab and office building Ethan had leased in New Jersey. But as he looked around, he couldn’t see any evidence of it. She was hunched over her black table, measuring an oily liquid into her test tube.

  “Hi Penelope.” He rapped his knuckles on the tabletop to get her attention.

  After the second attempt, she glanced up. “Have a seat. I’ll be with you in a second.”

  “I dropped everything to come out here because you said we needed to talk and it was urgent.”

  “You’re right. It is.” She took off her goggles and set them on the table next to her assortment of bottles and jars. “I keep fiddling with this perfume for your mother. Every time I think I’ve got it right, I learn something more and have to adjust again.”

  “Since you knew she was here, you might have warned me. I am not on speaking terms with my mother. I’ve given her the tools to make good relationship decisions while she does everything she can to wreck her relationships and embarrass me.” It was his standard response, but saying it this time made him feel like a hypocrite. He’d bungled every personal relationship he’d entered into in the past two weeks and had done a good job of embarrassing himself and his employees, as well.

  Penelope squinted at him. “Are we talking about the same person?”

  That made him pause. Physically, yes, they were talking about the same person. But what if his mother had changed from the person she was during his childhood?

  “I can’t marry you,” Penelope said.

  He shouldn’t have jumped so fast when she snapped. He could have better dealt with her jitters through a calm, logical phone call. “Don’t let my mother come between us.”

&nb
sp; “Your mother has nothing to do with it. I can’t marry you because I’m in love with someone else.”

  “I know you don’t love me. I don’t want a marriage based on love.” He was doing this for Liam’s future and for The Forever Marriage. It was his duty and his legacy to Beth. He was trying not to resent that he’d had to turn his back on the bond Olivia had tried to create with him to fulfill it.

  “I don’t love you, but I do love someone. He’s the man I want to spend the rest of my life with.”

  “Who? There’s no one else.” It was part of the reason he’d picked her. She had no baggage. “The only people who have been hanging around you are me and Ethan.”

  “Yeah, Ethan.” The look on her face conveyed both her love and her chagrin.

  “So you want to be wife number four in a line of God-knows-how-many?” All he had to do was talk some sense into her. She was a woman ruled by logic. She would see how foolish it was to act on her heart.

  “No. I want to be his wife and his lover and his business partner till death do us part.”

  Caleb tried not to think about how logic was working against everything he’d build Forever into. If it had merit, it should have worked for the people who had already tried it. “What does Ethan say?”

  “I don’t know. I called him up here too. In a couple hours I’m either going to be heartbroken or the happiest woman in the world.”

  Either way she wasn’t coming back to him. He slammed his fist on the tabletop. “Darn it Penelope, I pinned all my hopes of resurrecting Forever on you.”

  She gathered her rattling bottles and settled them with more attentiveness than she’d ever bestowed on him. “I didn’t even hurt your feelings. I just made you mad because I messed up your career.”

  “It’s more than my career. It’s my life. It’s my one chance to create a stable childhood for Liam.” But what if their marriage failed and he didn’t create the stable environment he was banking on? Ethan, Olivia, and other clients’ marriages had already failed because Forever didn’t work.

  “I’m not really a baby person. I’m perfectly happy having nothing to do with his childhood until he’s old enough to use a chemistry set. I picked you because you were the safe choice. But the truth is I don’t want to be safe and miserable.”

  “We won’t be miserable. We’ll be practicing Forever.” But it was a lie. He was miserable just thinking about being tied to her. Instead of saving marriages and sparing people from emotional upheavals, Dr. Caleb Paden, Ph.D. was creating chaos and instability.

  Caleb shifted Liam on his hip as he walked through The Scot’s Mansion. Liam had a late nap at Maude’s and was awake, so he’d dropped by for community hour before he went to his hotel for the night. Liam deserved to meet his grandmother.

  Austin was walking toward the kitchen just ahead of them.

  “Aren’t you supposed to be in bed?” Caleb asked.

  He jumped guiltily. “I’m getting a drink of water.”

  Olivia always had Austin tucked in bed before the start of community hour. But Caleb would be the last one to judge how late the kid stayed up. Nothing he’d done in two decades had had a positive impact. He’d wasted his life on a promise he shouldn’t have made, let alone kept. Not only had he dishonored his dead childhood friend, he’d neglected his son and intentionally hurt Olivia. “How was your ski trip?”

  Austin scowled at him. “It would have been great if you’d taken care of Mom like I asked you to.”

  Caleb flinched. He knew how highly observant children were about their parents’ lives. Yet, he’d pushed that knowledge aside when it mattered most. “I’m glad you’re concerned about your mother, but she can handle herself. You better go back to bed now.”

  “I can take care of myself.” He stomped into the kitchen.

  Caleb made his way to the sitting room. He’d lost his camaraderie with Austin. They’d had a good rapport for a couple days. Only a couple days. Disappointment shouldn’t sting this badly. He’d been silly to envision their relationship would stay the same when he’d severed all ties with Austin’s mother. He was even sorrier the broken engagement with Penelope had cost him the chance to keep Austin in his life.

  He was responsible for this newest emotional upheaval in Austin’s life, even though he’d dedicated his Forever rules to making sure he would never destroy a child’s stability. Not only was he ruining Austin’s life, he didn’t know how to fix his own. He didn’t have a chance of creating a perfect childhood for Liam or fixing where he’d gone wrong with Olivia.

  He paused in the doorway to the sitting room. Mom was sitting alone on the couch. She didn’t say anything, just stared at him with bright blue-green eyes. Olivia and Ralph were standing by the refreshment tray with their backs to him.

  “Those are the maple walnut scones. These are the lemon ginger,” Olivia said, pointing to the food on her doily-lined, silver tray.

  “Where are the orange currant ones?”

  “I’ll bring them out in the morning. I didn’t want to overwhelm you with too many options.”

  “I think I can handle it.” Ralph patted his protruding stomach and they both laughed. They turned toward the center of the room. Their amusement died as they caught sight of him. Great, he was also the party killjoy.

  Liam squealed and wiggled in Caleb’s arms as he recognized Olivia.

  He watched Olivia’s face fill with surprise, happiness, and anguish. Then she pasted on a bright smile and opened her arms wide for Liam. “I’ve missed you, honey. Oh my goodness, look how big you’ve gotten.”

  Caleb was surprised Liam remembered her, but the baby went to her willingly and happily. He was so little that after two weeks he should have forgotten her and his attachment faded away. Of course, Caleb knew personally how hard it was to forget a woman as special as Olivia.

  “Who is your little one?” Mom finally spoke to him.

  “This is Liam, your grandson.”

  “And you’re his mother?” Mom asked Olivia.

  “No, I — ” She choked up. “No. His mother gave birth while she was here, and I raised Liam for the first three months until Caleb came.”

  “His mom’s not in the picture. It’s just me and him,” Caleb said. Liam’s replacement mother wasn’t in the picture either. She’d run off with Caleb’s brother. “Anyway, you’ll be happy to know Forever as I built it is dead. The Winstons are buying me out and moving the company in a new direction.”

  “Why would that make me happy?” Mom asked, sounding genuinely bewildered.

  “Oh, come on. You’ve been married and divorced more often than most people shower in a week. I did everything I could to help you. You purposely ignored my advice.” And he was an arrogant bastard to appoint himself God. Listening to himself speak, he was disgusted.

  “How dare — ” Ralph blustered.

  Mom silenced him with a brief shake of her head. She looked back at Caleb. “You haven’t seen me or Ralph in ten years. You obviously haven’t spoken to your brother about me in all that time either. How do you know what I do with your advice?”

  “You’re back with Ralph. It’s obvious.”

  “Is it?” Mom rose to her feet. “How long do you think I’ve been back with Ralph?”

  “Two weeks. Two months. Two days. I don’t know.” He made a conscious effort not to clench his fists.

  “Ten years,” she said.

  “What’s ten years?”

  “How long Ralph and I have been married with no separations and no divorces.”

  Caleb looked at Olivia as if she had the knowledge to confirm the truth of the statement. Her expression was one of utter disdain. He’d completely blown his chances with her.

  Gradually, his mother’s words sunk in. She had stayed married to the same man for a decade and she’d done it while Caleb’s back was turned. He’d completely written her off for the same reasons he’d discarded Olivia. “How did you make your marriage last?”

  “You made it last.�
� Mom crossed the room to him. “You hate me and won’t speak to me, but you sent me every single one of your books. I read them cover-to-cover. I absorbed everything.”

  He didn’t hate her. He wanted a better life for her. And for himself and Ethan and Beth and Austin and Liam.

  “She made me read them too.” Ralph walked over to stand next to Mom. “We had marriage meetings every Monday night. I missed Monday Night Football for three straight years so I could talk to my wife about how we could be better friends and strengthen our relationship.” He jabbed his index finger at Caleb’s chest. “Monday Night Football. I may never forgive you.”

  Caleb wouldn’t lose sleep over that. “I still haven’t forgiven you for those horrible meals I had to sit through while you practiced your chef skills on me.”

  “I’m his guinea pig now.” Mom squeezed Ralph’s hand and sent him a meaningful smile. “I like knowing I’m making a difference in his dreams.”

  Caleb still couldn’t believe they followed Forever. It was the miracle he’d stopped believing in. Forever failed everyone. Now the one person who couldn’t keep a marriage together had used it to save her relationship. “How did you make it work?”

  “We followed your roadmap,” Mom said. “We learned about each other’s hobbies and career goals. We talked and talked until we became each other’s best friend. We already had love and passion in abundance. You brought us logic and steadiness and direction, so we didn’t get lost in all the emotions that had clouded the issues before.”

  But they didn’t give up those emotions. They hadn’t followed Forever the way it was technically supposed to work — the way Ethan had implemented it and failed with it. He’d had several meetings with John Winston this week. John had admitted he wanted to add love and emotion to the company’s foundation. Maybe it would work, but it clearly wasn’t the same Forever his adolescent self and Beth had dreamed up. Defeat was coming at him from all sides. He wasn’t sure why he continued to fight it.

  “I hate your guts for turning your back on your mother,” Ralph said. “And I’ll always resent you for my years of lost Monday nights. But I do thank you for giving me a happily ever after with the woman I love more than all the Monday Night Football in the world.”