They ended up pressed against a wall, temporarily caught between the drink line and the bathroom. Thad wrapped his arms around Lara and she leaned into his chest. This close, the grimy odor of the stage had lessened, and all she could feel and see and touch was him.
All of the reasons she had used to try and keep him at arm's length no longer mattered. They were together.
She turned her head, nestling back into his neck. “You can say it, if you want.”
He did not pretend to misunderstand. “I love you.” He did not ask for the words in return, either by a look or a sound, and that made saying them easier. She slid her hands up to his neck and dragged him down, down, until only a hairsbreadth separated their lips.
“And I love you.”
Everything faded away when he bent his head and kissed her, not with the usual scorching passion, but with sweetness and joy and longing.
“Get the fuck away from my Betty.”
A hand grasped Thad's shoulder and spun him away. The crowd around them grew deafening as Brett McNair, his face livid under the heavy coating of stage makeup, drew back his fist.
“Damn it, stop!” Lara swore, leaping forward, trying to intercept the blow.
It landed, knocking Thad back. Dimly, Lara was aware of the tiny lights as dozens of cell phones were whipped out, recording the unfolding drama.
She was about to step between them when Thad shook himself, and a hungry look flared in his eyes. He flew at Brett, knocking him into a trash can. They landed in a heap, fists flying as they pummeled one another without mercy, the meaty sounds of their fists audible even through the cacophony of sound. Though she tried to make herself heard over the roaring crowd and the grunts, it was useless. There was nothing she could do to separate them and, she had to admit, Thad was holding his own. Kindness usually disguised his inner bad-ass, the Marine Corp training he rarely allowed out to play. He had Brett by the throat, punching him in the ribs when the security guards finally separated them.
“Damn it,” she muttered, then went over to Thad, who was being held restrained by two guards. After a quick word, they released him, allowing her to wipe the trickle of blood that formed a scarlet river down his face.
His color was up, and he grinned at her. A fierce light still danced in his green eyes, letting her know that he had enjoyed the fight and would conclude it by staking his claim on her in bed as soon as possible.
“Settle down, Rocky,” she said. “Let’s get this straightened out first.”
“Hey Betty,” Brett said, unrepentant and bleeding. “Love the new hair.”
A collective gasp went up from the crowd and the attention of the crowd switched to her.
Chapter 17
What saved the concert from being an utter disaster was the abundance of cell phone footage that showed Thad being attacked by Brett, who had thrown the first punch. Though they had a lovely ride in a police car to the downtown station and were questioned and breathalyzed, there was no reason to hold or charge them. His lawyer brother was called, and showed up at the police station an hour later, loudly demanding their release.
Marcus Gilbert was a carbon copy of the other brothers; tall and strong with bright green eyes, though his hair was kept ruthlessly short in an attempt to tame wild curls into a semblance of order. Even at midnight, he showed up dressed in an expensive suit that screamed “lawyer” so loudly that the police officers gave them a wide berth.
“Do you want to press charges?” Marcus asked as soon as they were shown into the small private meeting room.
“Hell, no.” Thad cursed, annoyance clear in his voice. It had not taken him long to realize the consequences of this night, and he exuded rage from every pore. “Is this going to get out?” He asked, nodding at Lara.
"Of course it is." Marcus spared her a quick nod. “A pleasure to meet you, Lara. I got the rest of the story from Logan and Lucas on the drive down. They made sure to tell me about your many…assets.”
Thad chuckled, and then abruptly stopped when he saw Lara's face.
“You told them?” Lara asked.
Thad shook his head. “No, but I am not surprised that they figured it out. Logan knew who you were from the moment he saw the car. The guy has genius recall.”
Marcus interrupted. “There is no chance of this being swept under the table. I saw a news crew out front. The story will be in the papers by morning."
Lara groaned and laid her head against the table. The cool plastic soothed her aching head. “Damn him. Damn him for doing this.”
Thad rubbed her shoulders. “It's going to be fine,” he soothed.
A tiny sob escaped before she ruthlessly crushed it, sinking her nails into her palms until all she could feel was the sting.
“But the good news is that you guys are free to go. I can walk you out the back where my car is waiting.”
Though it felt disloyal with Thad sitting next to her, she had to ask him one last question. “What are they going to do to him?”
Marcus's face became less friendly, though still carefully polite. “McNair? He is in the hospital right now. He had a couple broken ribs. He was tripping on about a dozen different narcotics. If I had to guess, I would say he will be forced to enter rehab and do community service.”
“Good, the selfish bastard.”
As he had said, Marcus was able to sneak them out the back to his waiting car, driving them to the parking garage and Lara's Charger.
“You want me to drop you off at your house?” Marcus asked his brother.
“No, we are heading home together.” Thad opened the passenger door for her, a gallant, old fashioned gesture that seemed at odds with the events of the night. He hugged Marcus, who then sped away from them in a smooth prowl of German luxury vehicle.
“I don't think he likes me very much.” Lara closed her eyes and rested her head back against the seat for a moment, then looked straight ahead into the long road leading home. Exhaustion swamped her, pounding a tattoo behind her eyes. She wanted to lean back and fall asleep and pretend that this terrible day had never happened.
Thad shrugged. “He's a lawyer. They are suspicious by nature. And he has had his own issues with women over the years.” He took his eyes off the road and patted his leg. His right eye was swollen, making him look like a boxer. “Lay down. I'll get us home.”
Home. It was the second time that he had said that. She unfastened her seat belt and lay across the seat, resting her head on his thigh.
The farm had always been home to her, the one place that was always there, unchanging. No matter what else was going on in her life, the farm was the same. She wanted that same stability for Mackenzie. For her, the farm represented all that was good in her life: love and family history, the backdrop of a thousand happy memories.
And now there was another element to her idea of home, one that had become increasingly important to her and Mackenzie over the past weeks. Thad, her scruffy, sexy professor who made her feel like a teenager and loved her in a way that defied reason.
“I love you,” she whispered against his jeans, so soft that she did not think he could hear them. The words felt newly minted in her mouth, like pennies. His hand settled in her hair, holding her safely against his side as they headed home.
Vanessa visited the next day to learn the details of the incident, and she could barely contain her glee when she called two days later and told them that the Randolph family had filed to remove Mackenzie from Lara’s custody, citing the fight at the concert as proof of her instability. As an added bonus, the hearing had been postponed until the third week of August, after Thad had to return to the university.
If Bug had not already been packed and looking forward to the next weekend at her grandparents, she would have told the Randolph’s to go to hell. For the past ten months they had done everything possible to undermine her authority with the child, from constantly gifting her with outrageous presents to thinly veiled criticisms that Mackenzie aped without understandi
ng their meaning.
“Grandma asks me if you drink wine all the time.”
“Grandma said I should tell her if you hit me.”
“Grandpa wants to know if you have a boyfriend. Is Taddy your boyfriend?”
It felt good to tell Mackenzie that yes, Taddy was her boyfriend. Her response was unexpected. Instead of anger, Mackenzie had clapped her tiny hands together.
“Good.” Then, later, she had come up to Lara and whispered in her ear, “He’s my boyfriend, too.”
If there were still problems in her relationship with Mackenzie, there was no such barrier between the child and Thaddeus. She loved him unrestrainedly, and crowed with delight each time she saw him walking up the driveway. “Taddy” sounded more and more like “Daddy” each time she said it, leaving Lara to wonder at the sort of parent her sister in law had been, for Kenzie trusted men far more easily than women.
Thinking back, it had always been Will that had cared for her, Will that had changed her diapers and took her to appointments. Perhaps Becky had been lost to them for longer than she had realized.
Discussions with the therapist only reinforced her conclusion that the anger Mackenzie displayed toward her was rooted in her relationship with her mother. Although her heart broke for the child, it also made their day to day life easier. She no longer constantly asked herself what she was doing wrong. Mackenzie’s love and trust would come in time, she knew it.
Chapter 18
The beginning of the school year was upon them. After the sun set, the nights had begun to grow chilly. Fall was in the air, and he knew that he would have to leave the farm soon, although his trailer would be staying.
The excavation of the creek bed had been completed. With the exception of the pipe, nothing else of note had been found. This, Thad repeatedly told Lara, was for the best.
“The pipe alone will guarantee that we can find funding to conduct a dig on the mound. Next summer we can start the dig.”
“How did the pipe get there?” she wondered, sitting next to him as he read over the lab findings spread across the table.
“It could have been washed out, or stolen. We will never know for sure.”
The pottery fragments and stone pieces they had collected had been taken back to his office. He would spend the next months analyzing them, and one of his graduate students, Jeremy, had been by last week to look at her father's artifact collection. His stunned delight in the scope of the collection had convinced her to allow them to be transported to the university as well. Perhaps, after Jeremy was done writing his thesis, she would donate them.
Lara knew that Thad would be gone soon. He had become such an integral part of her life in the last months that the thought of him returning to school made something ache, deep inside of her.
“I wish you didn’t have to leave,” she whispered next to his chest. She was luxuriating in the comfort of being next to him in bed. With Mackenzie gone for the weekend with her grandparents, they could sleep together, a rare luxury.
“You could stay here. A two hour commute wouldn't be that bad. Once the hearing is over and I get full custody, it would not be a problem.”
Overhead the skylights showed the light of a million twinkling stars. The room was steeped in darkness; the only light a few candles that she had lit on the nightstand. Loving him by candlelight was a delight to her senses. The faint illumination had forced her to focus on each part of his body, rather than the whole. Interminable moments had been spent worshiping the lightly dusted planes of his stomach, the under curves of his biceps, and the milky white planes of his thighs. Remnants of the orgasm still pulsed through her legs, making her shiver. She could get used to this.
“I don’t want to live together, Lara.” Thad was lying against the headboard, hands clasped behind his head. His glasses rested on the night table, next to the book he read before bed, a dry tome on ancient pottery that put Lara to sleep by simply glancing at it.
She sat up and looked down at him, the dark blue comforter pooling around her waist.
“What?” Her voice was small.
“I don't want to live with you.”
Blank shock slapped her face, followed quickly by anger. Lara swung her legs off the bed and walked across the room to the closet. With hands that trembled only slightly, she took a robe from a hook and pulled it on, belting it around her waist. “I see. Are we done, then?” Her voice was cool.
Thad sat up. Lara’s face had gone pale, but otherwise she was composed, as emotionless as a statue.
“I want you to marry me.”
A crack appeared in the ice mask that was her face, a look of complete and utter shock before she controlled herself. “What?”
“I want us to get married. I was thinking next spring, when the lilacs are in bloom. We could go away, just the three of us, and come back in time to start the dig.”
“Are you crazy?”
“Probably,” he admitted, and then got out of bed to stand beside her. They were in front of the large window that overlooked the field where the mound waited, the glass cold against her skin. He wrapped his arms around her, and Lara tilted up her face for his kiss.
“It's not the most sensible thing,” he admitted. “We’ve known each other for…” He seemed to search his mind for a specific number, which Lara helpfully provided.
“Less than four months.”
“I thought it was longer.” After a moment of bemused contemplation, he caught the original train of his thoughts. “And that’s the point. It feels as though you have always been a part of my life. I love you, and you love me, but we need to make sure that we are doing the right thing, because a child is at stake.”
“So we wait until next year and just see each other on the weekends?” Every part of her rebelled at the thought of returning to the loneliness that had plagued her life before he came.
He nodded. “And every moment I can get away. We call and text and spend every moment learning those things about the other that will drive us crazy during the next fifty years. And have wild sex at every opportunity.”
“That sounds wonderful.” A spring wedding, she thought, here at the farm when the daffodils were in bloom. And Kenzie as flower girl, with a circlet of white rosebuds in her hair.
It brought another thought to the forefront of her mind. “I am planning to adopt Mackenzie. I haven't told her yet, but I want to.”
“Good,” he immediately replied. “I would, too, after we married.”
“And Taddy could become Daddy?” She teased.
“It would be an improvement.”
“But how would we live, Thad? You can’t walk away from a tenure, that would be crazy. And the commute every day would be awful.”
Thad rubbed his chin, thoughtfully. “Didn’t you tell me there is an apartment on the second floor of the garage?”
“Yes.” The small efficiency apartment had been added for her brother. The sparse, open space boasted a single bedroom off the large living area, and a bathroom.
“Rent it to Logan and Lucas. They have been looking for someplace quiet to live; they can look after the farm during the week, when I teach. There is a great preschool that Mackenzie can attend only a few blocks from my house. We can come back here on the weekends.”
“What about me?” Lara asked. Already, she could feel excitement building in her chest at the idea. It could work, she knew it. With the twins on the farm, she would not have to worry about it, and Mackenzie would have all the benefits of living in a town with an excellent school system while still having the farm as a refuge. She could have friends, and not grow up knowing the particular loneliness of an only child living in the country.
“You could do what you like,” he said, face very serious. “You could stay at home, or you could find a job. You could be one of those PTA moms that run every bake sale. Maybe we could have another child, someday.”
Abruptly Lara felt shy, unwilling to voice the idea that had been bubbling in the back of her
mind, but it was the perfect time to tell him. "Do you remember what you said about teaching?"
"Yes. Are you thinking about going back to school?" Enthusiasm layered his voice.
"God, no. But I was thinking that maybe, someday, I could volunteer and do some vocational training. Teach kids how to work on engines and things like that. Or I could see if there is a program to teach people in rehab job skills."
"That's a wonderful idea."
He sounded so happy and proud that tears she had been holding back started to fall like rain against her cheeks.
“OK,” she whispered.
"OK, what?"
"Let's get married." And he must have known her well enough to know that it was not that she had nothing else to say, merely that her heart was too full for words.
He picked her up and carried her back to bed, where they spent hours making love and plans.
Later, when he had fallen asleep and she sat looking down into his peaceful face, she decided that loving him was a certainty like breathing, and living, and starting again.
Chapter 19
The wooden bench was warm beneath her fingers. She could vaguely remember these same benches from trips to the courthouse with her father when he paid taxes, and the interior had not changed in the last twenty years. Framed portraits of the previous judges looked down on her, stern and unsmiling. Across the way she could see another family as they waited to see the family court judge. From their pleased expressions and best clothing, she guessed that an adoption was taking place. Silently, Lara said a prayer that it would work out for them, and for her.
Through the ducting, she could hear the steady hum of the air conditioner, wheezing like it was on its last legs. Although August was nearly at an end, summer heat continued to bake outside, and the artificial chill in the air felt good. It would not do to sweat in court, and her elegantly tailored pantsuit weighed on her like a ton of bricks. But Thad's reaction to her outfit had been gratifying, however, especially his request that she keep the red high heels for later.
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