by Alison Kent
Carson had traded his rental Jeep for a Lincoln, and he pulled the luxury car into the driveway. She was tired and didn’t think to wait for him to come around and open her door, so she got out under the last little fizzle of her own steam. She was halfway up the front walk before she heard his door slam.
The toes of her shoes hooked over the fingers of one hand, she dug in her purse for her keys with the other, and didn’t bother to shut the front door behind her. Once inside the living room, she tossed both shoes and purse onto the sofa and leaned against the tufted back to wait for Carson.
He still wore his tux jacket, but his tie hung loose and his shirt was unbuttoned and rumpled. His hair needed a good combing, the circles under his eyes a good night’s sleep, but she couldn’t have loved him any more than she did in that moment.
She shoved fingers back through her own wilted hair and smiled, so full of the love she was feeling. He hadn’t shut the door, but stood in the tiled entryway. She didn’t think he was waiting for an invitation, but she offered one anyway. “You’ve got to be hungry. What sounds good?”
Hands stuffed in his pockets, he leaned a shoulder into the jamb of the still open door and shook his head.
“You want some juice? There should be some orange in the fridge. If not, I’ll check the freezer.”
Still he didn’t say anything, still he stood unmoving.
Eva started to worry. “Are you ready for bed? You’re welcome to use the shower first.”
This time at least he answered. “No. Thanks.”
She’d offered him food and shelter. She wasn’t sure what else to say. “Do you want to go?” Or for some reason did he not want anything? She laced her fingers in a tight web together. “Carson. You’re scaring me.”
“Scaring you wasn’t my intent.”
Finally. “Then what is your intent?”
He shrugged. “I’m not sure anymore.”
Something had happened. “What’s wrong?”
“I just need a couple of answers.”
Eva’s heart fluttered in her throat. “Sure. Answers to what?”
“Nothing too difficult.” His cynicism nipped the bud of Eva’s joy. His eyes glittered. “You should be able to help me out since it’s about your pregnancy and Zack’s parentage.”
Slowly, Eva’s eyes closed. Oh, God. Oh, God. Okay. Okay. She would open her eyes and glance toward the door and realize this was all a bad dream. That she was in her bed. Or on the Lake City High cafeteria floor.
But when she looked again he was still there. The lines across his forehead were etched deep. And the shadows beneath his eyes appeared as dark as the blue black of his lapels.
She sank down to the floor, tucked her heels to her bottom, and buried her face in the hands she’d propped on her knees. “How did you find out?”
“How do you think I found out?”
“From Zack, obviously. But—”
“You want to know how the subject came up?”
She nodded. Her head still tucked to her knees, she nodded.
Carson snorted. “It was so classic. Hearing it from Zack when he was talking about you. How great you are. How you’ve always been there for him. How for years he hasn’t even thought about the fact that you’re not his real mother.
Oh, God. “I was going to tell you—”
“I’m sure you were. I’m sure as soon as I found out you were going to tell me.”
She shook her head. “No. I’d already decided to tell you tonight. This morning. Whatever time it is. I wanted to wait until after we’d slept. I wanted to be able to get the words out without stumbling over my tongue.”
He didn’t respond, so Eva went on. “I never meant to leave you with the impression that I had given birth to Zack. But when we had the conversation about my pregnancy that day in the gardens, I never thought I’d see you again. I certainly didn’t expect anything like what’s happened.”
“What has happened, Eva?”
“I think that we’ve fallen in love again.” She raised her head, and met his eyes in time to see him flinch. In time to see him look away. And she held on to that one seed of knowledge. That one root of truth.
He loved her. And they could get through anything if he loved her.
When he looked back, he was again in control, his features taut, his jaw set, his lips a grim line. “So you moved back to Kansas after leaving New York and went to work for Zack’s grandfather?”
She nodded. “The wholesale greenhouse. I told you about it? That’s where I met Bobby. His wife died three years after I went to work there. Bobby and I married a year later. Zack was almost five. And then there was... the fire.”
Carson shook his head. “Poor kid.”
Eva barely heard the muttered words. But they added to the tiny bloom of her hope. “I’ve been overprotective of Zack his whole life and I know that. But with everything he’s gone through and everything he’s lost...” She shook her head. “I did what I thought I had to do.”
“You thought you had to lie to me?”
“No. I never intentionally lied to you, Carson. But, yes, I should’ve corrected the misunderstanding long before now. It’s just that I never knew if there would be a need for you to know I hadn’t given birth to Zack. He is my son. And that’s the only fact that mattered.”
“Right. Your son. But not mine.”
She nodded again. But this time she wasn’t sure what to say.
Carson finally closed the front door. He stayed in the entryway and leaned back. “And what about my son, Eva?”
She didn’t say anything. For a long minute she didn’t say anything at all. She couldn’t think about the baby she’d lost. Their baby. Not with Carson standing here, knowing. Finally knowing.
“What about my baby, Eva? Tell me. You were pregnant when you left New York.”
She nodded.
“And Judith knew, didn’t she? That’s why she wouldn’t tell me where you’d gone.”
Eva nodded again. “Judith knew. And she knew how much I wanted our baby. So she let me out of my contract.”
“I’m going to ask you one more time.” Carson blew out a long breath. “What happened to my baby?”
Oh, God. Her stomach churned and she couldn’t breathe, and she pressed the back of her hand over her mouth.
“So help me, Eva. If you—”
“I lost the baby,” she shouted.
“What?”
“I lost the baby.” Breathe in. Breathe out. “I had a miscarriage.”
“When?”
“About three weeks after I got home. There was nothing I could’ve done, the doctor said. It wasn’t my fault. It wasn’t anyone’s fault. There was just a problem with the baby.” She pushed to her feet then, wanting to be on his level to say the things she’d planned to say.
“Carson, think about it.” Breathe in. Breathe out. “The entire time we were together in New York, you talked about seeing the world.” The countries his parents had seen without him. “You didn’t want a family. I knew that. If I’d ever had a hint that you were ready to settle down, don’t you think I would’ve stayed?”
She walked toward the entryway where he stood with both hands braced in fists against the wall shoulder-high. His head hung low between. “I couldn’t tell you then. Back in New York. So I went home to sort out my feelings. I thought that maybe later... that maybe we could try again. That you’d ready to make a home with me and your child.
“But we never had that chance,” she said, and laid a hand in the center of his back.
He jerked out from beneath her touch, raising his hands to ward off any further approach. “You never gave us a chance,” he said.
Arms crossed defensively over her chest, Eva stepped back. “Look, Carson—”
“No. You look, Eva. Did it ever once occur to you that that kind of responsibility, that chance at stability might’ve been exactly what I needed? That whatever wanderlust I had was a survival tactic? That it was easier to talk up
the excitement of travel than to admit I had nothing to keep me in New York?”
No. No. She didn’t want to hear this even though she’d known it all along. “You had me.”
“Did I? When did I have you, Eva?”
“We lived together—”
“We played house. We never talked about our future. You couldn’t wait to get back to Kansas. I couldn’t wait to see the world. We never talked about doing either of those things together. As a couple.”
“You knew I couldn’t go with you,” she pleaded. “That I had to go home and take care of my mother.”
“Why didn’t you ask for my help? Why didn’t you ever once ask me if I wanted to leave New York with you instead of taking off on my own?”
“Because I was too young to know that leaving wasn’t really what you wanted.”
Humorless laughter rang out. “But that’s where you’re wrong. Leaving has always been what I’ve wanted.”
His face shut down, his voice shut down. His body stood in the entryway, but he was no longer there in spirit. “You were right not to tell me. Just think of all I would’ve missed. The countries I might never have seen. The past seventeen years I might’ve spent with you making babies instead of making a name that means nothing.”
He reached behind him for the knob and pulled open the door.
“Carson, wait.” Eva reached out with one hand.
“What do I have to wait for, Eva?” he asked, and then he was gone.
In the middle of her living room, Eva stood alone. And in her red silk prom dress and red stocking feet, she cried.
Chapter Twenty-six
CARSON SAT IN THE RUBBLE-strewn alley, his shoulders pressed back against the factory’s rough wall. What in the devil had possessed him to come to Belfast with his foot in a cast? He could’ve been stateside, covering the Preakness and the Belmont Stakes. He was getting too old and worn out for Northern Ireland.
Using the sharp end of a broken jar and the ragged edge of a pipe that resembled shrapnel, he sliced and sawed and chewed his way through the fiberglass, then busted more than one knuckle tearing the thing in half.
Once he’d freed his foot, he stretched the muscles, flexed the tendons, and leaned back, waiting for Sean Teer, the Irish journalist and Carson’s escort through the city, to return. Sean had promised to rustle up a pair of boots. And now that the cast was fodder, Carson would be in deep trouble if his colleague didn’t come through.
The story the press had been sent to cover had yet to break. Now he and three of his American colleagues were stuck here another night. Transportation back to London wouldn’t arrive until tomorrow.
He really didn’t need any more downtime. He’d already had hours to think. And all his thoughts had been of Eva. Eva and their baby, which she’d lost.
That morning after the prom, when they’d stood so distant in her living room and he’d seen the tears in her eyes, he’d known the emotion was real and not manufactured for his benefit.
As furious as he’d been at her sin of omission, his overwhelming emotional need at that moment had been to draw her into his arms and hold her close. To console her, to shoulder what he could of the weight of her loss. Her loss. Because he hadn’t lived with the sadness for half of his life.
Eva had.
He flung the shard of glass across the alley, and watched it bounce off the rubbish heap piled across the way to shatter on the ground. Deception. He rolled the word around in his mind. Yes, he’d been deceived. But he’d never been maliciously betrayed. And there lay a chasm of difference.
He knew Eva well enough to believe her when she’d said she’d seen no reason to tell him of her miscarriage. It wasn’t like his knowing would’ve made any difference. And at that age? Hell. He’d have countered with nothing but accusations of blame.
If she hadn’t been so thin, she might’ve carried the baby to term. If she hadn’t run, she might’ve given him a chance to be a father.
But she’d been thin because his camera demanded it. And she’d run because he’d given her no choice.
At nearly twenty-three years old and with travel on his agenda, he wasn’t sure he’d have stayed in New York even if he’d known. Not when he’d planned for years to strike out.
Then he’d called it wanderlust. Now he knew he’d been searching: for acceptance and belonging and a place to call home—when Eva had been standing on the other side of his camera for two years, offering him everything he wanted.
Youth was certainly blind and hardheaded.
Sean ducked into the alley, tossed Carson a pair of ragged boots, then shot back out into the street with a parting call to hurry, the echo of which reached Carson’s ears.
“Yeah, yeah. I’m coming.”
He dug in his backpack for an extra sock, then managed to shove his weak-as-a-noodle size-twelve foot into the size-ten boot. He grabbed the split length of a crate slat to use for a crutch, and hobbled after Sean Teer.
He was going home.
“ARE YOU HOLDING YOURSELF responsible for my fluid intake or something?” Eva glanced down at the quart of iced tea Jan had set on the counter at Blooms. “All you’ve done recently is ply me with liquids.”
“I’d ply you with food, but you never stop to eat. You need to keep up your strength.” Jan sipped her own tea through a straw.
“I’m as strong as an ox.” Eva flexed a bicep. “Okay. A very small, very thin ox. But thanks. I need it. It’s way too hot out there for May.”
“If we could hook up a direct IV, you could monitor your own fluid intake.” Jan feigned a piteous expression. “But then, you wouldn’t need me to look after you.”
Silly woman. Eva laughed. “Of course I need you to look after me! What kind of friend do you think I am?”
“One I am damn proud to know.” Jan grabbed Eva’s hand and squeezed. “You have been a pillar. A rock. I would’ve fallen apart days ago if I’d been in your shoes.”
Carson was still a sore subject with Jan. Eva had come to terms with his departure, though her friend was probably interviewing hit men.
“My shoes would fit you just fine,” Eva reassured the other woman. “You know I love Carson. I’ll probably love him forever, but life does go on. Anyway”— Eva made a quick change of subject—”look how strong you were, waiting all those years to conceive, now you have the twins. You never gave up.”
Jan’s hand went to her hip and she frowned. “Well, what fun would that have been?”
Eva laughed, and circled the counter to give her friend the hug she deserved. “I’ll be fine. I have you and Gerald. I have Zack. And I don’t have man trouble.”
Hmm.” Jan gave Eva’s back a final pat, then pointed toward the glass wall looking out over the gardens. “I’d say that’s exactly what you have, girlfriend. The very nerve of some men.”
Eva looked back through the same window. Her heart stopped, then started, then thudded a wild drumbeat she felt all the way to the roots of her hair.
Carson.
Eva’s gaze was captured by the movement of the man. His walk was powerfully determined. Stylish pewter frames shaded his eyes, but the rest of his face—the set of his jaw and the lift of his chin— broadcast his intention.
He was here for her. And Eva’s breathing caught, then quickened.
“Uh, Eva.”
“Hmm?”
“Don’t be too easy on him. It never hurts a man to grovel.”
“Easy? Not a chance. He’s going to have to work for this one,” Eva said, though she knew he wasn’t going to have to work hard at all. Not with the way she loved him. And not with what she saw in his face, even with the shield of the tinted shades.
“Good girl,” Jan said, giving Eva’s hand a final squeeze. “If you need me later, I’ll be at home. I’m checking into the logistics of that IV. For Carson. I think he’s gonna need it.”
“I think I can handle this one. Thanks, Jan. For everything. You’re the best. Oh, and turn the sign to closed on your
way out, would you?”
Once Jan left, and the door was pulled shut, Carson had Eva’s full attention. The first thing she noticed, after she noticed the three weeks’ added growth to his collar-length hair, and the way the sun glinted through the strands of honey and gold, was that his cast was gone.
He wore brown deck shoes—sans socks—on both feet and khaki-colored safari fatigues that showed off the strength in his legs. He wore a black-banded wristwatch and a chocolate-brown T-shirt stretched over chest and shoulders so beautifully wide.
He’d reached the door to the interior of the shop, and now he pulled it open, pulled off his shades, and met her anxious gaze. Then he smiled. Joy suffused his eyes, and the laugh lines fanned out like spread fingers. He looked happy and settled and more content than she’d seen him look at any time in his life.
She pressed a palm to her fast-beating heart as the first stirrings of hope fluttered near. And then the door shut behind him and he moved into the store without stopping or looking away. He had his mind made up and his goal in sight, and Eva retreated a step, then two, then three—not in trepidation, but because she wanted to watch him, to anticipate his purpose, thrill at his approach just a few seconds more.
But then he reached her, hooked one arm around her neck, and drew her close. She felt the warmth of his breath, the heat in his eyes, and then his mouth descended. He kissed her wildly. He kissed her senseless. He kissed her until she had to come up for air. She laughed. With both palms flat on his chest, she laughed. His answering chuckle and sigh veiled her fingers.
“Let’s make a baby,” he said.
“What?” Was he out of his mind? “Where did that come from?”
He pressed her hand to his heart. “From here. Where I love you. Where I want you. Where I’d die for you.”
She closed her eyes, then opened them slowly. He was still there. “Oh, Carson. I love you.”