Carrie rolled her eyes. “We’ll see, won’t we?”
With a flourish, Eliot buttered a scone and set the plate in front of Margie. “Here you go, Margie, enjoy.” Buttering another one, he offered it to Carrie. “Tell us everything.”
They nibbled on scones and sipped coffee as she shared the events of the last twenty-four hours. She couldn’t stop smiling, although she kept the details of the intimate encounter on the boat to a minimum.
“So where do you go from here?” Margie leaned back in her chair. “What happens next?”
“I don’t know. He wants to date.” Carrie scrunched up her face. “It all feels backward. Dating? After all this time?” She gestured at the albums and photos on the table. “Anyway… he agreed to wait until Sunday to actually meet Jack, so I’m putting together a quick photo album for him.” Handing a black leather album to Margie, she chuckled at the first page. “Look at this one. Jack’s like two minutes old. Oh, and here’s one with Eliot and Uncle Noah right after he was born.”
Margie turned the pages slowly, examining the chronicle of Jack’s young life as Carrie followed along. After the first few pages, almost every one included shots of Jack at a piano. Jack playing in a recital at Lawson Music Camp. Jack at Eliot’s beautiful Steinway with Eliot standing over him. Jack at the piano in their apartment, intent on a sheet of music.
The last page was an eight-by-ten, black-and-white photo taken last winter. Carrie had been experimenting with duotone film, and the light in the apartment had caught her eye. In that instant, Jack sat at his Grandmother Beth’s old baby grand, his head thrown back, his eyes closed, long lashes touching his cheeks, and his fingers stretched over the keys.
Margie gasped. “That’s beautiful. He looks like Beth Anne, doesn’t he? So dramatic. Liam will love this one.”
“That looks like a publicity shot.” Eliot peered over Margie’s shoulder.
Carrie gave him a scowl. “Not deliberately.” She yanked the photo out of its plastic sleeve and tossed it down on the table. “Don’t say that, Eliot. If I had a choice, I wouldn’t even tell Liam that Jack plays.”
“Why on earth would you not tell his father that the child plays piano like an angel? ’Specially considering who his father is?” Margie rose to take dishes to the sink.
Carrie handed her a mug and plate. “That’s exactly the reason. Who knows what he’ll do with the information? What if he wants to take him out on tour or something?”
“And what if he does?” Eliot piped in. “Why would that have to be a bad thing?”
Carrie shook her finger at him crossly. “He’s not taking Jack anywhere. I don’t want that kind of life for my son. I won’t allow it.” Reaching for another photo of Jack—one of him with several friends playing basketball in the yard behind the marina—she replaced the one she’d pulled earlier. Expelling a breath, she started shoving pictures in envelopes, moving quickly to clean up the table.
“You’re not the only one in this anymore,” Eliot’s tone was sober. “The sooner you recognize that, the better off you’ll be.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Carrie stacked the albums back in the bookcase beneath the stairs, glancing up as Eliot and Margie exchanged a meaningful look.
“He means that you can’t allow Liam into Jack’s life and yet refuse to let him participate in decisions about him.” Margie arranged framed photos on the baby grand in the corner.
“You know what? I can’t think about that right now.” Carrie strode across the room and grabbed more photo albums. “My life’s completely upside down. I don’t know where things are going with Liam. One minute he’s furious, the next he’s all, well… never mind.” Heat suffused her cheeks. “And I still have to tell Jack and pray the kid doesn’t hate me.” Tears started to form, but she blinked them back, refusing to let her tumbling emotions take control.
“You knew you’d have to tell Jack about Liam sometime,” Eliot said. “It’s not like you’re handing him some worthless bum for a father. My God, why would he hate you?”
“I don’t know, maybe–maybe because I kept him from Liam for such a long time.”
“Now you’re borrowing trouble.” Gathering up his basket, Eliot headed for the door. “Have a little faith in your son and in his father. Things are going to be different, but that doesn’t automatically mean they’re going to be bad.” He elbowed open the screen door. “Margie, walk up with me? I want to steal a couple of your tomatoes if you have some to spare.”
“Sure, I have plenty.” Margie gave Carrie a quick squeeze. “He’s right, you know, sweetie. Change often turns out to be a very good thing.”
“I guess.” Carrie walked them out to the deck, unable to keep her eyes from the massive boat in berth thirty-eight. “Or I could get my heart broken again, couldn’t I?”
“Maybe,” Eliot nodded. “But better a broken heart than a frozen one.”
“A little fortune cookie wisdom, old friend?” Carrie offered him a wry grin. Resting her elbows on the deck rail, she tracked Margie and Eliot’s progress to the docks below. The sound of their laughter drifted back up the stairs.
It was early—not even nine yet.
Where did he find those beautiful flowers?
Their delicate scent filled the room, intoxicating her senses as she came back into the apartment. Suddenly, calm, peaceful, orderly Carrie was a morass of feelings. Tears threatened and yet she couldn’t stop smiling. Her heart ached one moment, then sang in the next. A twinge of—okay, Carrie, let’s call it what it is, lust—weighed heavy.
That particular sensation had been buried so deep for so long she barely recognized it. Oh, she’d handled the feeling readily enough when it surfaced through the years, but the memories of Liam were nothing compared to this new reality. Now her lust simmered, clouding her thoughts with its intensity. She’d barely gotten off that boat last night without dragging him down on the deck and making love to him until they both ached.
Can we build a relationship—a family—on the basis of heat?
That was the big question.
Carrie’s immediate reaction was no way. Heat had no staying power. Heat cooled quickly when the dishwasher broke down, the toilet backed up, or the car doors froze in winter. Heat faded when a teenager grew sullen and sulky because he couldn’t stay out past eleven on a Friday night. Heat disappeared when a husband and father traveled far and wide, away from home for weeks at a time.
But the heat is still there, even after sixteen years.
And oh, God, she was so ready for some heat. So ready for Liam’s arms, his hands, his mouth. So ready for the fulfillment of years of fantasizing and waiting, even though she’d never realized she had been waiting. She hadn’t dared believe she would ever see him again, let alone touch him, kiss him. Shivering, she pressed her hands against her belly, almost as if to hold that feeling in.
Her cell phone sang “Maggie May” on the bar. A check of the caller ID revealed a number she didn’t know, an area code she didn’t recognize. But there was no name. “Hello?”
“Are you hungry? Would you like to have breakfast with me?” asked a deep, sexy voice.
Her stomach did a crazy flip. “How did you get my cell number?” Moving to the window, she glanced down at the boat, where Liam sat in a canvas deck chair, his feet resting on the stainless steel rail. He waved up at her.
She backed away from the window, embarrassed that he saw her looking for him.
“It’s on your business card. I picked one up yesterday when Will and I were in your studio.”
“Oh–oh–um, well…,” she stammered, tongue-tied and foolish.
He chuckled, almost as if he knew the effect he had on her.
Closing her eyes for a second, she took a deep breath. “Actually, Liam, I have coffee and blueberry scones. Why don’t you give me thirty minutes and come on up?”
“Do you have eggs?”
“Yep,” she said. “Thirty minutes. Okay?”
So it
begins.
Change begins today, and I can open my mind and heart, or I can kick and scream.
Either way, life is going to change.
ELEVEN
Exactly a half hour later, Liam tapped on the screen door.
Carrie had barely had time to shower and change into a pink polo and white capris. Still barefoot and detangling her damp, loopy curls, she held the screen door open. “You’re up early.”
“I’m always up early.” Clad in jeans and a faded plum-colored T-shirt, he flashed that killer grin as he eyed her up and down. He’d already gotten some sun in the couple of days he’d been on the boat, and the color suited him.
Carrie’s heart stopped for second, but amazingly, resumed beating as he ambled in, fingers tucked in his pockets. She headed for the kitchen. “I like mornings too. How do you like your eggs?”
“Scrambled, if that’s okay.” He stared around the big open space that served as living room, dining room, and kitchen for her and Jack. “Nice place.”
Nodding, she began work on breakfast. It was better to keep busy. If she didn’t, she was sure to humiliate herself since she longed to touch him. Longed for him to touch her.
He roamed around, peering at the paintings on the walls, picking up pictures from the baby grand. “What a beautiful piano.” He ran his fingers over the keys.
“It was my mother’s. One of the few things I brought with me when I came up here.”
“This is her, isn’t it?” With a smile, Liam picked up a gilt-framed photo of Beth Anne Halligan sitting at a piano. “She was a knockout.”
“Yes, she was. I don’t really remember her, only that my father was heartbroken when she died. That’s Dad with her in the blue frame.” Carrie turned on the gas under a skillet. “Are you okay with butter or are you a low-fat kind of guy?”
“Butter’s great—that’s how I always make them.” One by one, Liam took photos off the piano—her father, Margie and Noah, Jack in the sailboat, she and Julie on the beach. He gazed at a picture of Julie, her husband Charlie, and their kids, taken last Christmas. Eliot at his piano. Carrie and Jack by the lighthouse. He examined each photo intently. That was how he did things, she remembered from Montreal. Always scrutinizing. Studying.
“You cook your own eggs?” Somehow that wasn’t a picture she had of him. She’d never thought of the man as holding an ounce of domesticity.
He looked up and laughed, a warm, sexy sound, and a quiver shot through her. “I cook. How do you think I eat when I’m home?”
“I guess I figured you had people for that, like servants or a maid or a cook.” A warm flush crept up her neck.
Grinning, he continued his tour of the apartment. “A service comes in to clean once a week when I’m home, and I send my laundry out. Otherwise, I take care of myself.” He passed by Jack’s closed bedroom door under the open stairs, then glanced out the back window at the pines. Leaning his elbows on the bar, he watched her pour golden, frothy eggs into the sizzling skillet. “I think you have me confused with some rock star, sweetheart. I’m a symphony conductor. I don’t have servants. I live a pretty simple life in Chicago.” He gestured to the stairs. “What’s in the loft?”
“A bedroom and a bathroom. Uncle Noah remodeled this old place when Jack was about three. Before that we lived in the big house with them. I love this apartment. It’s perfect for us.” She stirred the eggs gently, smiling up at him, noting that he’d wandered back to Jack’s door. “It’s okay if you want to go in and take a peek.”
“Are you sure?” Hand on the knob, he hesitated. “I’m dying of curiosity, but I don’t want to trespass.”
She paused. Jack’s domain was his own, and they were always conscious of one another’s privacy. How would he feel about a stranger in his room?
But this isn’t a stranger, it’s his father.
“Go ahead, it’ll be okay.” She prayed the tour wouldn’t set off the anger she was certain still smoldered in him.
Liam drew a bracing breath, turned the knob, and shouldered the door open. Sunshine streamed in from the open shutters over the south-facing window. His eyes swept the small room that held some of the clues to his son’s personality. Carrie watched from behind the kitchen bar, picturing Jack’s room in her head, most likely slightly messy but not so much that she needed to be concerned about Liam checking it out.
One wall was a huge window that looked south across the bay. Posters covered the other walls—one from Willow Point Lighthouse, another from Sleeping Bear Dune. The colorful Beatles Sergeant Pepper poster, a movie poster, and a picture of the Milky Way with a tiny red arrow and the words, You are here. Some young and fabulous starlet, whose name Carrie couldn’t remember smiled from above the bed while next to her, Eric Clapton bent over his guitar. A Chicago Bulls team picture was tacked up above a cluttered desk, along with a bulletin board covered with ticket stubs, photographs, and playbills from area theaters, many of them from Interlochen.
She set the skillet aside and moved to the open door, breathing in scent of teenaged boy—sweat and dirty socks mixed with Irish Spring soap and pine from the trees outside. When she leaned against the jamb, she saw that the bed was neatly made, but the open closet door revealed shirts and pants hung haphazardly on hangers, some even spilling onto the floor. A small flat-screen TV and a stereo sat at the end of the bed, which was on a platform that contained drawers. A T-shirt sleeve peeked out of one of the drawers. CDs and DVDs marched in orderly rows above several shelves of books below the stereo.
Liam leaned down to squint at the collections and Carrie couldn’t help smiling. Some of the books were obviously from his younger years—the Hardy Boys, Harry Potter, even Dr. Seuss and Mercer Mayer nestled next to the story of Ernest Shakleton’s exploration of the South Pole, Stephen Ambrose’s Undaunted Courage, and several Clive Cussler adventure novels. The CDs were a diverse mix of rock, classical, and everything in between, including Bob Marley, Daft Punk, the Beatles, Alicia Keyes, The Kinks, BB King, and John Legend. She grinned when Liam’s brow furrowed at a CD of the music from Baz Lurhmann’s La Bohème, as well as Jack’s newest fascination—Broadway musicals. The soundtracks to Rent, Cabaret, and the original Broadway production of Camelot were stacked on top of the other CDs on the shelf.
He glanced up as she backed out of the room. “Quite an eclectic music collection,” he said, following her to the kitchen to accept a plate of eggs.
“There’s really not much he doesn’t like when it comes to music.” She was grateful he still seemed to be in a good humor. Either that or he was concealing any anger remarkably well. “Maybe not twangy country so much, and he’s not into hip-hop, but he likes rap. For some strange reason, this spring, he discovered Broadway musicals.”
“I saw the CDs. What’s that about?” Liam set his plate on the table, then held her chair while she sat.
She smiled over her shoulder at the courtly gesture, remembering how he’d always been such a gentleman around her. It still made her heart beat faster. “It’s a weird phenomenon. He cycles through music, really getting into something for a while, then moving on. Over the winter, it was Ben Folds and classic rock like the Beatles and the Stones. After his school put on Guys and Dolls in April, suddenly he was all about Broadway. Cabaret, Rent—even The Music Man.” She laughed. “He sings with the CDs in the car, so conversation is out of the question.”
Liam grinned, shaking his head as he dug into breakfast. They ate in companionable silence for a few minutes.
Carrie inclined her head toward the album sitting on the table near him. “That’s for you.”
“Really?” Liam hefted the album. “Are these pictures of Jack?”
She nodded, taking up a forkful of eggs.
He opened it. Staring at the first page, he ran a finger over a photo of newborn Jack. He started to reach for his glasses in his shirt pocket and appeared puzzled for a second when he realized he didn’t have either glasses or a pocket. Carrie got her own wire-framed reading gl
asses from the bar.
“Here,” she handed them to him. “Try these, but eat. Your food will get cold.”
Liam put them on, giving her a strange half-smile that sent a prickle up her spine. As he ate, he stared at the first page—Jack as a newborn in the hospital bassinette. Noah and Margie swinging a toddling Jack between them. Eliot smiling tenderly at the sleeping baby in his arms. She could tell he didn’t even taste the food, so absorbed was he in the photos. He didn’t comment at all, just kept studying the pictures, almost as if he were trying to memorize them.
Finishing the meal in record time, he carried the album to the window seat. “Thank you. That was good. Do you mind if I take a minute here?” His voice was raspy as he settled in, back propped against the wall, his long legs stretched out on the cushion.
Carrie nodded as she sipped her coffee, mentally preparing herself for whatever reaction might come as he slowly turned the pages of the album. With his head bent over the book and her reading glasses perched on his nose, he concentrated on each page, examining each photo. Every so often, he’d pull a picture from its vinyl envelope and hold it up to the window. Fifteen minutes later, he shut the album, hugging it against his chest. Removing her glasses, he laid them carefully on the window seat beside him.
Carrie watched him cautiously, unwilling to be the first one to speak.
His face was closed up—no smile, nothing. A muscle worked in his jaw, his lips tightened into a grim line. Massaging the bridge of his nose with his thumb and forefinger, he took a deep breath. “He plays the piano?” His voice was deadly quiet.
“Yes.”
“How long has he played?”
“Since he was little.” She raked her fingers through her curls. “He’s very gifted, Liam. He’s–he’s a–prodigy.” The word wrenched from her.
“Shit, Carrie!” Liam burst out. “When were you planning on mentioning that?”
“I’m telling you now.” Her hands shook. The eggs churned in her stomach. She swallowed once and then swallowed again. “He’s been studying with Eliot for years, and he finished his first year at Interlochen last month. In September, he starts there as boarder.”
Once More From the Top (The Women of Willow Bay) Page 8