No Place Like Home

by Leigh Michaels

  Kaye devoured a strawberry. “Where did you take her? The Wolfpack?”

  “What’s wrong with the Wolfpack?”

  “Nothing. It’s just not very romantic.”

  “Did Graham have any better results last night than I did?”

  Kaye was incensed. “If you mean did he stay overnight, no!”

  His eyes started to sparkle dangerously, and she bit her tongue. “Then I saved a lot of money by not taking her to Pompagno’s,” he said gently.

  She didn’t speak to him for a full minute after that. He just grinned at her and ate his waffle.

  I don’t have to explain anything to him, she told herself sternly. It’s certainly none of his business whether I’m sleeping with Graham or not. “Tell me about the rest of your family,” she said finally. That should be a safe enough subject, she thought.

  Brendan shrugged. “My father teaches mathematics at the university in Lakemont. I have three brothers and a sister—”

  “Goodness,” Kaye said.

  “It certainly wasn’t my idea, but I got used to it. I remember that the four of us were disappointed when Anne came along—she’s the youngest, and we wanted another boy to complete our basketball team. She didn’t think much of the idea of four older brothers, either. I can’t think why.”

  “I would have given anything for one brother, older or younger,” Kaye mused. “Or a sister. You have no idea how much an only child misses.”

  “No wonder you want five bedrooms,” he teased. “Have you always lived here?”

  “No,” she said. “I figured out once that I moved thirty-two times as a teenager. Before that, I can’t remember how many places we lived.”

  “You said you lived with your father?”

  Suddenly, she wanted to tell him about it. “Daddy was an entrepreneur,” she said, “which is a polite way of saying that he didn’t hold a regular job. He always had a new project, you see, and if he could only get the right backing to carry it out, we’d be millionaires. Of course, when it didn’t work, we moved on. Usually late at night, so the landlord couldn’t talk to us about the unpaid rent.”

  There was a long silence. She bit her lip, feeling like an idiot for sharing this hidden side of her with a man like Brendan. She’d never even told Graham about her father.

  “That wasn’t much of a childhood,” he said. His voice was so gentle that she wanted to drown in it. There was no condemnation, no drawing back, just tenderness.

  She swallowed a half-hysterical sob. “I used to pretend that we really lived in a big house somewhere and that we were just traveling from place to place in sort of a royal progress. I used to daydream that it was all just an adventure, and that some day we’d go back to our real home.”

  He twisted one of her blonde curls around his finger. “I should have thought, in that case, that being a travel agent would be the last thing you’d want to do.”

  She thought about it. “It does sound odd, doesn’t it? And yet, it’s always been part of my fantasies—to see Paris, and go to India, and walk along the streets of Hong Kong.”

  “So where have you been so far?”

  “Practically nowhere.”

  He raised a questioning eyebrow. “But there will never be a better chance.”

  “Even with a discount, traveling takes money. I’m building up a nest egg at the moment.”

  “For what?”

  “I don’t plan to ever be penniless.” She didn’t realize how defensive she sounded until the words were out.

  “Now I understand why Graham is so attractive to you.”

  She searched his words for sarcasm and was faintly surprised when she didn’t find any. But she refused to apologize for her way of thinking. “I have to admit it will be nice to have jam with my bread and butter, for a change.” She looked at him with a challenge in her eyes.

  “And he can afford a lot of jam.”

  “Yes,” she said, “he can.” There was a long silence. She had the feeling that she should explain it somehow, that it was important for him to really understand her point of view. She toyed with a spoon as she tried to put her thoughts together.

  “Everyone disapproves when two people who have no common interests get married,” she said slowly. “They think it’s foolish. Yet people think it’s awful when financial considerations come into it at all. Well, money worries break up a lot more marriages than hobbies do, that’s certain. Does a woman love any less when she marries with her eyes open—when she chooses a man who shares her attitudes about money?”

  “Not necessarily,” Brendan said coolly.

  “That’s right. But people insist on thinking that only those couples who fall head over heels and don’t even look at consequences can possibly be truly in love. Why do people get so excited about romance, anyway?”

  “Would you stop taking out your irritation on the whipped cream, Kaye? It’s beginning to look like cottage cheese.”

  She put the spoon down. “People wouldn’t think it was very funny if a girl started down a mountain wearing a blindfold along with her skis. And yet, when she marries a man without a dollar to his name they say, Isn’t that romantic? They’re so much in love! Well, romance doesn’t last very long when the bills don’t get paid, and there are a lot more important things in a marriage than love.”

  “Name two.” There was a cold edge to Brendan’s voice.

  “Respect,” Kaye retorted. “And a feeling of security. And shared goals. That’s three, so there. Are you satisfied?”

  He was staring at her with disbelief. Finally, he said, very quietly, “Are you trying to convince me or yourself, Kaye?”

  What difference does it make what he thinks of me? she asked herself wearily. I’ll probably never see him again, once I have my house. It can’t matter whether he has a good opinion of me or not; I know I’m not marrying Graham for his money.

  But it still made her sad to think that she hadn’t been able to explain exactly what she meant. She played with her fork, drawing patterns in the leftover maple syrup on her plate, and wished that he could understand.

  It was Brendan who broke the silence eventually. “Would you like another waffle?”

  She considered. It sounded to her like a peace offering, and in any case, the things were wonderful. She yielded to temptation. “Yes, I would. You could make your fortune in waffles, you know, Brendan.”

  “Be the waffle tycoon of middle America? I might, if the real estate business ever palls.”

  “Why do you sell houses, anyway? Graham says the real money is in commercial property.”

  “Somehow, I would expect Graham to see it that way.” His eyebrows had drawn together, and he looked angry.

  Kaye was startled.

  “I sell houses because I like working with people. Corporations don’t have much heart, and while I suppose there’s a certain satisfaction in selling a piece of property to build a warehouse or a factory or a shopping mall on, it can’t compare with the exhilaration of helping a young couple find their first real home.”

  “I see what you mean,” she said uncertainly, “but...”

  “Dammit, Kaye, money isn’t everything. I set my own schedule and I live the way I want to. I don’t have to please anyone but my client and myself. If I want to spend a week on Lake Henderson in a fishing boat, I do it. I refuse to be a slave to a time clock, or an employer, or even my own bank balance.”

  “But surely you’d like to make some investments— you could have some security.”

  “Certainly I keep an eye on the future,” he said. “But I speculate for fun, not for profit. Don’t you see, Kaye? I don’t have to break my neck getting rich to consider myself a man. And I don’t have to convince the world of anything by displaying my material possessions.”

  “I suppose that nasty crack is aimed at me for wanting a big house.”

  “It didn’t happen to be.”

  “I want security, Brendan, don’t you see that? It isn’t to show the world how
well off I am, but for myself. I want a home I can count on.”

  “Kaye, home isn’t a place—it’s the people who live there. You can buy houses, but you can’t buy a home, no matter how much money you have.”

  “As long as we’re talking about buying things,” she snapped, “that’s a fancy car you’re driving.”

  “I’m not opposed to material possessions. There are lots of things I’d like to have. But I’m not going to give up a way of life I enjoy and work every minute of the week instead, just so I can afford to buy those things. I enjoy what I have now—I don’t wait for the future.”

  “You sound like my father.” Her voice was tremulous. She couldn’t imagine herself with such an unconcerned attitude. “What if you don’t have anything in the future, Brendan?”

  “Then I’ll still have a lot of terrific memories. And do you know something, Kaye? They can take cars and pieces of art and antique furniture and houses away from you in bankruptcy court. But they can’t take your memories. Sometimes memories are the only things that last. And I’m going to have some good ones.”

  There were tears in her eyes. She wasn’t quite sure why, but she knew she didn’t want him to see them. “I think my waffle’s burning,” she said. He swore and turned around to tend to it, and she furtively dashed the tears away.

  “It’s just right.” He put the waffle on her plate.

  “It scares me when you talk like that,” she said. “You can’t pay your bills with memories.”

  “No. But they can keep you warm at night.” He looked down at her with a smile and ruffled her hair. “Don’t start worrying about me, love,” he said softly. “I’ll always have prospects. You said yourself I could make a fortune in waffles. The one I’m concerned about is Graham.”

  “Graham?” she scoffed. She fumbled for a tissue and blew her nose. Silly, she told herself, to get all choked up about Brendan McKenna’s attitude towards money! And the very idea that he could talk about Graham in that pitying tone!

  “Yes,” he said. “Tell me, Kaye. If Graham Forrest would happen to gamble once too often, and lose that business of his, what is he going to cling to? His memories of dinner with the supermarket mogul?”

  CHAPTER SIX

  TOGETHER, they looked at twenty houses that week. Each night, as soon as Kaye got off work, they started out on a new tour, and each night she came back to the plaza discouraged. It seemed sometimes as if she would never find what she was looking for.

  They looked at a modern house that had a huge family room with a thirty-foot ceiling, but bedrooms that were scarcely big enough for a baby’s crib. She walked through that one in a hurry, and had to wait for Brendan to catch up. “Are you still following me around to gauge how much I like a house?” she asked impatiently.

  “Oh, no,” Brendan said airily. “Not any more. Now I follow you because I like to watch how you walk.”

  You asked for that one, she told herself.

  They looked at a delightful Spanish stucco with a basement so wet that it could have passed for a wading pool. They looked at a nice old brick that had been remodeled by someone who had no taste at all.

  “It was re-muddled, actually,” Brendan said as he locked the door when they left.

  “And the person who did it should be shot. What’s next?”

  They looked at a house which sprawled in a square around a central court, with an entire wing devoted to the master bedroom suite and a second, distant wing which contained the other bedrooms.

  “I think Graham would like it,” Brendan told her. “It certainly has that feeling of privacy he seems to want. One thing about it, the kids won’t disturb your sleep.”

  She gritted her teeth. “If the children need my attention, I want them to be able to disturb my sleep,” she pointed out. “Which they can’t do if they’re sleeping in Cleveland, which is about how far away that wing is.”

  Brendan shrugged. “I just thought he might—”

  “We are not showing Graham another house until we have the perfect one,” Kaye announced with icy determination.

  “Of course not. We couldn’t upset his regular schedule for minor matters. His time is too valuable.”

  “If you’re trying to be sarcastic, McKenna—”

  “Haven’t you noticed yet how rigid your precious Graham is? That won’t change after you’re married, you know. I bet he’ll even make appointments for you in his pocket calendar— Tuesday, 11 p.m., make love to Kaye.”

  “That,” she said coldly, “was uncalled for.”

  “I imagine he thinks people should only make love in the dark, too.”

  She bit her lip and said, “You imagine a lot of things, Brendan. You really must get over this, you know. It’s not fair of you to take your frustrations out on Graham, especially when he isn’t here to defend himself.”

  “It seems to me you’re doing quite an adequate job of defending him,” Brendan said mildly.

  “And I don’t know where you got the idea that Graham doesn’t want anything to do with kids.”

  “Because he obviously thinks they should be seen and not heard. Graham’s idea of the perfect baby is the one on the Forrest cereal box—quiet and always smiling.”

  She didn’t bother to answer that one.

  Every day, when Kaye went to work, Emily asked about the progress they were making. Clearly she thought the whole process was crazy. “You’re spending more time with your real estate agent than you are with your fiancé,” she said one afternoon.

  “Graham’s been very busy,” Kaye told her. “He’s got a meeting this week of all his top aides. They’ve come in from across the country, and it would be foolish for him not to spend as much time with them as he can.”

  “But houses every night? Are you sure you’re not looking at the same ones the second time around by now? I didn’t think there were so many houses for sale in this city.”

  “Believe me, Emily, I know what I’m doing. And I’m in a hurry to find a house, so that when Graham is free, we can make a decision and get things in motion.” She sounded airy and certain of herself, but inside she was hoping desperately that her faith in Brendan would prove to be well-founded.

  One night she was held up by a late customer, and Brendan came into the travel agency to wait for her. After that, Emily really started shaking her head at Kaye’s schedule.

  “I know Marilyn said he was attractive,” Emily said, “but no man as good-looking as that should be left to roam the world loose.”

  “I am looking at houses,” Kaye told her, “not at the man who’s showing them to me.”

  “More fool you,” Emily said.

  “Emily, I am engaged.”

  “That doesn’t mean you’re blind. And you must admit that Brendan McKenna is a handsome devil.”

  The next time he came in, Emily told him that he looked exactly like her second husband.

  “Don’t fall for that old line,” Kaye warned him. “She’s only been married once.” She turned to Emily. “And Brendan has a steady girl—he takes her to church every week. So you’re wasting your time.”

  “Just my luck,” Emily groaned.

  After they left the agency, Brendan said, “How do you know I take her to church every week?”

  “Instinct,” Kaye said. “It’s not doing you much good, though. Most of the time you look as though your halo is slightly askew.”

  That was the night that he showed Kaye an imitation Roman villa with a fountain in the greenhouse and a mother-in-law’s apartment over the garage. “You could turn the apartment into a dormitory for the kids,” he suggested.

  “We aren’t going to have that many, thank you.”

  “Oh? I thought Graham was determined to start a new product-testing division under his own roof.”

  “You don’t like him, do you?”

  “It isn’t a matter of not liking him,” he protested. “It’s just that I thought you were hard to please, until I met him.”

  “The challe
nge is good for you. I’ll bet you’ve worked more hours this week than you did all of last month.”

  “And see where it’s got me?” Brendan protested wearily. “I can’t sleep at night for nightmares about houses, and I haven’t caught sight of a dime’s worth of commissions yet.”

  That was the precise moment when the frustration level got to be more than Kaye could deal with. She was standing on the fake marble floor of the greenhouse, beside the fake marble statue of a well-endowed and naked nymph who perpetually poured water into the fountain, when she started to cry.