by Laura Abbot
He stood holding the phone, staring at it in disbelief. They were going to help him “settle all this”?
Damn it to hell! He could respect their position, but they had better reciprocate. They were not in charge of his life, or Kylie’s. He was. And his daughter was happier than she’d been in months. He couldn’t let anything jeopardize that—or the promise of a renewed relationship with the woman he loved.
LIBBY HAD NEARLY overslept and arrived at school breathless, just before the first bell. Some kindly deity was looking out for her, though. The children were well behaved, full of smiles and, best of all, cooperative. The geography lesson had gone well, and wonder of wonders, Rory had actually raised his hand to volunteer that map reading was required to excel at one of his video games, and Bart’s breakfast must have been sugarless since even he sat attentively.
Then there was Kylie. Whenever Libby glanced in her direction, the girl flashed her the covert grin of a true conspirator. Another reason to be thankful last night had not progressed any further than it had. Somehow a full-blown physical relationship would seal the future in a way Libby wasn’t quite ready for, but Kylie’s implicit approval would make turning back that much more difficult.
But Libby wasn’t turning back. However, she couldn’t move on until she’d dealt with Doug. When she had seen Mary standing outside the office this morning directing traffic, her spirits had flagged. She didn’t want to hurt Doug. Hurting him meant hurting Mary, as well. Libby was definitely not looking forward to the next few hours. She had called Doug over the lunch break and asked him to meet her for a drink after work. The hope and elation in his voice had nearly done her in. For the umpteenth time she reminded herself he was a good man. But for reasons that last night had made abundantly clear, he was the wrong man.
THE DIM INTERIOR of the hotel bar should have been soothing, but the upcoming ordeal had set Libby’s nerves quivering. Two businessmen huddled at a table near the door, deep in conversation. Nursing a cocktail, a lone woman, long legs threaded around a stool, sat chatting with the bartender. Libby had deliberately chosen this site as neutral ground. Both her place and Doug’s would have been too private, too full of memories. On the way here, she’d gone over and over what she would say, knowing full well that no amount of rehearsal would prepare her for the reality.
Doug, dressed in a sharply creased pair of tan slacks and a navy blue turtleneck sweater, rose from a secluded corner booth to greet her. “Hey, pretty lady, you’re a sight for sore eyes.” He kissed her cheek, took her coat and led her to the booth, which, given what she knew was to come, felt more like a cell.
They had just settled across from one another when the barmaid approached. “What can I get you?”
Doug held out his hand, deferring to her.
She couldn’t think. “I, uh, a glass of Chablis, please.”
“For you, sir?”
“A draft.”
As soon as she left, Doug reached across the table and clasped Libby’s hands in his own. “I’ve missed you.”
What could she say? “It’s been a while.”
“Too much of a while. Waiting is damn hard work.” He squeezed her hand. “I’m hoping it was worth it. Was it?”
She wanted to glance away, to avoid his eyes, so full of expectancy. There was no way to do this easily. She drew a deep breath, the warmth of his hands on hers failing to thaw the ice locked in her chest. “I need to say some things, and I hope you’ll listen until I’ve finished.”
“I’ll do my best.”
Before she could begin, the barmaid returned with their drinks, giving her an excuse to draw her hands into her own lap.
He waited, watching the head on his beer subside. “Will I need liquid courage?” When she didn’t answer, he lifted his glass and took a healthy swig. “Okay. I’m fortified. You’re on.”
The script she’d so carefully prepared vanished, and she had no idea where to start. “You are a wonderful man—”
“Oops. That sounds like a line introducing a big ‘but.’”
She shrugged helplessly. “I guess it does. I don’t know how to put this gracefully.”
He studied his beer. “Just jump in.”
“Remember at Christmas when you asked me if I could love you?”
He looked straight at her. “I remember. You said you thought maybe you could. I took that as a yes.”
“Oh, Doug, it was a maybe.”
“So do you have an answer yet?”
She stared at her untouched glass of wine. “I like everything about you. Your sense of humor, your thoughtfulness, the way you treat me as if I’m something special.”
“You are,” he murmured.
“Your family couldn’t be more wonderful, and I’ve always wanted to be part of a loving family like yours.”
“Another ‘but’?”
“You deserve a woman who loves you totally and unconditionally. I’ve tried, Doug, really tried. I like you better than I like almost anyone, but—” her throat clogged with sudden tears “—I don’t love you the way you deserve to be loved.”
He didn’t lift his eyes from the pilsner glass he slowly rotated between his fingers. “It’s him, isn’t it?”
There was no use pretending she didn’t understand. “Yes.”
When he looked up, his expression was controlled, but bleak. “I wish he’d never come back.”
“In the long run, I’m not sure that would have changed anything. We would probably still be having this conversation.”
“I’d hoped somehow—”
“I know. So had I.”
“So what about you and your ex?”
“I’m not sure. We both made a lot of mistakes in the past. Hurt each other in damaging ways. But I can’t deny that I still have feelings for him. Whether we can overcome what happened before, I don’t know. All I know is I have to try.”
“I won’t kid you. I’m disappointed. From the beginning, I felt you were the woman for me. To know that feeling isn’t reciprocated…well, it hurts. Big-time.” He paused, then shoved his half-finished beer toward the center of the table. “I want to tell you how much I desire your happiness, but it’s hard thinking that some other guy will be responsible for that.” He reached in his pocket, pulled out his billfold and slapped a twenty on the table. “I won’t beg, Libby.” He slid from the booth and stood. “There’s no point in making this any more difficult than it already is.” He gestured to her wine. “Stay. That twenty’ll more than cover the tab.”
Looking into his ravaged face, she started to stand.
He laid a hand on her shoulder, preventing her from rising. In a choked voice, he whispered, “Be happy, Libby.” Then he turned his back and strode rapidly toward the door.
From a vent overhead, a blast of warm air enveloped Libby, augmenting the flush of shame and regret coloring her cheeks. A hundred things she could have said flooded her mind. None of them, however, would have softened the blow. She wrapped her fingers around the stem of her wineglass and moved it across the surface of the table until it rested beside his beer. He had loved her.
“Miss, is something wrong with the wine?”
She shook her head. Even if the wine had been sour, it couldn’t compare with the way she felt. This had been torturous. She cared about Doug, and nothing had prepared her for his anguish.
But it would never have been right between them.
Not once with Doug had she experienced the abandon she had felt in Trent’s arms last night, when every cell in her body had cried out for more of him.
She stared at the two glasses on the table, symbolic of what would never be, and waited until the enormity of what she had done sank in.
For better or worse, she had chosen Trent. And despite how painful this scene with Doug had been, she felt she’d made the right decision. She could never settle for “maybe” love, not when she had known the real thing.
GEORGIA DREW her fur-trimmed leather coat more tightly around her and hudd
led against the passenger door, ignoring the wintry scenery. The played-out mines on the hillsides around Butte served as grim reminders of her bleak childhood and the lost promise of Ashley’s life. She could hardly remember the time when her most serious problem was whether she and Ashley would travel to Denver or Salt Lake City to shop for a prom dress.
Gus hadn’t said a word in fifty miles. Instead, he had tuned the radio to some obscure local station and kept his eyes fixed on the highway. He had not been happy with her decision to visit Whitefish immediately, not only because he would have to leave his foreman in charge of the Loomis construction project, but because he had not felt the urgency to confront the situation with Trent and that woman.
Honestly, men could be so clueless. Didn’t Gus understand that this relationship needed to be nipped in the bud? If it went forward, that would make it even less likely that Trent and Kylie would move back to Billings, a hope Georgia had secretly nurtured.
Trent had never spoken about his first wife, and Ashley had seemed totally unconcerned. Well, Georgia wished now that she and Gus had insisted on more details. This was all too precipitous. She couldn’t bear thinking of Kylie with someone else, someone her granddaughter might eventually call “Mother.”
She’d had a bad feeling all along about Trent’s decision to move to Whitefish. And now she actually had the sense Gus expected her to be civil, not only to Trent but to this Cameron woman.
“You all right?” he said, leaning forward to turn off the inane radio station.
“What do you think?”
“Georgia,” he sighed, “are you sure you want to go through with this?”
“How can you even ask?”
He waited until he had successfully overtaken and passed a semi. “We stand to lose a lot.”
“What on earth do you mean?”
“If Trent is in love with this woman and Kylie is excited about the idea, what possible good can we accomplish by butting in?”
“Butting in? This is our only grandchild we’re talking about.”
He patted her knee. “Exactly my point.”
She shivered. Despite the exasperation she felt with him, he had tapped into her secret fear—they could lose Kylie if they weren’t careful.
Gus cleared his throat, then added, “I’m having second thoughts about this trip, Georgia, but I’ll do my best to support you.”
Turning away from him, she stared mindlessly at the blurred signs whizzing by. No matter what it took, she would make sure Kylie knew she had grandparents who loved her and put her welfare first.
CHAPTER NINE
LIBBY WAS TEMPTED to call in sick the next morning. Her late evening with Trent, followed by the sleepless one last night, had done her in. Over and over she had replayed the scene with Doug, wondering if she could somehow have made it easier, less painful for him. She hadn’t meant to be cruel. She’d wanted to say more. To explain. But in his hasty exit, she recognized his need to preserve his pride.
She dragged herself out of bed and into the shower. It was against her principles to say she was ill when she wasn’t, so she wouldn’t play hooky. Staying home, tempting as it was, would simply prolong the inevitable—a meeting with Mary. She owed the woman honesty, both as her principal and especially as Doug’s mother.
In an attempt to make herself feel better, she dressed in one of her favorite outfits—black tailored slacks and a royal blue-and-black checked sweater. She swept her hair off her forehead with two black combs and put on her favorite lipstick. Studying herself in the mirror, she decided she didn’t look too bad for someone who’d had a grand total of eight hours’ sleep in the last two days.
When she spotted Kylie waiting at her classroom door, Libby mentally clapped a palm to her forehead. How could she have forgotten their tutoring session? Easily, she thought ruefully.
“You’re late.” The child had a penchant for stating the obvious.
“I’m sorry, honey. I had trouble getting myself out of bed this morning.”
“I didn’t. You know why?” She didn’t wait for an answer. “Grandma Georgia and Grandpa Gus are coming this weekend. And you know what else? Grandma’s bringing me a new Barbie.”
Libby found herself momentarily at a loss for words. How would the visit from his in-laws affect Trent? Or her? “She must be very fond of you,” Libby said, unlocking the classroom door. She reached her desk and set down her things.
“She is.” Kylie trailed behind her and stopped at her side. “I love her lots. But she doesn’t do stuff like ski. She prob’ly won’t like it that I’ve been skiing all these times. She only goes to the beauty parlor and shopping. But she buys me lots of clothes.” The girl’s voice brightened. “I bet she’ll take me shopping for my wedding dress.”
“Your what?” Libby croaked.
Kylie bounced on her toes. “Yeah, I told her about you and Daddy. Getting married and everything.”
Libby clamped a hand to her stomach. Big mistake not calling in sick. She took off her coat and hung it in the closet before leading Kylie to the reading table, where they both sat down. “Kylie, I have something very serious to say to you.”
The girl’s upbeat expression sobered. “Okay.”
“You want me always to tell you the truth, right?”
“You promised.”
“I know I did. And the truth is, your daddy and I haven’t decided anything about a wedding. For now, we’re going to spend more time together and see how things go. It would help us both if you would tell your grandparents you jumped to a conclusion about a wedding.” Kylie crossed and uncrossed her fingers.
“Do you know what it means to jump to a conclusion?”
“To do something before it’s time?”
Libby nodded. “They miss your mother a lot. It might be hard to understand how your daddy could like someone else. It would be harder still to understand how he could remarry.”
Undeterred, Kylie looked up with a smile. “But they’ll like you, too. I promise. We’ll be a big happy family.”
Her words tore at Libby’s heartstrings, because in them she recognized the fantasy she herself had nurtured as a child—the myth of the big happy family.
She put her arm around the girl. “For now, why don’t we begin our reading and leave all this grownup stuff to your dad and me. Meantime, it would probably be a good idea for us not to talk to anyone else about this.”
Kylie cocked her head. “Okay. But don’t you and Daddy take too long. The sooner you get married, the longer you can be my new mommy.”
Libby could scarcely concentrate on the girl’s reading. Kylie had obviously made up her mind about what she thought would happen. Marriage. What in heaven’s name had Libby and Trent set in motion? If things didn’t work out between them, the emotional fallout for this child would be devastating. But neither could their relationship be built on the foundation of a child’s welfare. First had to come genuine love and a lifelong commitment. The sparks sizzling on a physical level could sputter and die. A lasting relationship was a flame that required constant tending.
The headache began with tension gripping her forehead like cold forceps, and it would only get worse, Libby knew, as she anticipated her after-school meeting with Mary.
“YOU WANTED to see me?” Mary, arms laden with a stack of folders, entered the office where Libby had been waiting.
“Yes, is this a good time?”
Mary set the folders down on the edge of her desk, then settled into her chair. “I always have time for you.”
Libby knew the principal was fond of her, and that knowledge made what she had to say even more difficult. “I need to speak to you about Doug.”
Mary waited for her to go on.
“I care a great deal about him,” she began lamely. “Like you, I want the best for him. But I wanted you to hear this from me. I’ve broken off our relationship.” Saying it aloud to this woman she so admired was even more difficult than she had anticipated.
“Do
ug called us this morning,” Mary said with a nod.
“I’d like to explain.”
“You don’t owe any of us an explanation. Sometimes things simply don’t pan out as we’d like.”
Why had she been so apprehensive about Mary’s reaction? Her depth of understanding was one of the traits Libby particularly admired. “You have all been so nice to me, including me in family events, treating me in such a welcoming way. Frankly, I fell a little bit in love with all of you.”
Mary leaned forward, her hands clasped in front of her. “You didn’t come from a big family, did you?”
The sting of tears betrayed her. “There was only my stepfather. I…I always wanted a big family.”
“Was that part of Doug’s attraction?”
“Yes—uh, no. I mean—” Libby squirmed like a student in the hot seat. “I am very fond of Doug. He’s a wonderful man. In all honesty, though, I have to say I bought into the whole picture—Doug, you, the rest of the family. Breaking up with him was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done.”
“Then why do it, dear?”
She hesitated, knowing there was no turning back.
“I think I’m in love with another man.”
“Your former husband?”
“Yes.” Libby rubbed her hands nervously along the wooden arms of the chair.
“I see.”
There was a moment’s silence while Mary digested the truth. Then the older woman spoke. “I’ve always admired you. You care a great deal about others. I have to admit that I’d hoped you would one day be my daughter-in-law, but only if you could love Doug with all your heart.”
Libby nodded, mute.
“I wish you well, Libby, and I will miss seeing you at the house.”
“I suppose we need to talk about how this affects our professional relationship.”
“Not at all,” Mary said, quick to assure her. “You are an excellent teacher, we’re both adults, and I see no reason to create a problem where none exists. However—” she sat back “—there is Kylie to consider.”
“Kylie?”