It was a dangerous gamble. He had hit her where she was most vulnerable, but she wasn’t an iceberg ignoring him any longer. She was giving a riveting imitation of a snarling wildcat.
“Don’t you ever accuse me of not being a good mother to my children,” she cried, trying to break free from his hold. “There’s nothing I wouldn’t do for them.”
“Then let them see their father.”
She tried to hit him, but he grabbed her wrist.
“Don’t you tell me what to do with my children.”
“Let them have a normal life, with all its risks and pleasures. Let yourself have the same thing.”
“I suppose you mean by that I ought to marry you, that being your wife would be such a pleasure I could forget everything terrible that might happen.”
“Dammit, Liz, I’m talking about two people who love each other wanting to be together for the rest of their lives.”
“That sounds strange coming from a man who wanted to be a good doctor but wanted nothing to do with his patients.”
“Who was convinced I was wrong, that I ought to give people a chance?”
“Getting to know your patients isn’t the same as getting married. ”
“It’s more of a risk than you’re willing to take.”
“I divorced David. I came back here without a job.”
“You came here because you were afraid to go anywhere else. Admit it, Liz, you’ve been running scared since you left New York.”
“I am not. I turned my back on something I didn’t want.”
“And you turned your back on finishing your degree and building a career that would give you and your children a better life. Admit it! You were running then, and you’re running now.”
“Damn you, let me go.”
“I love you. I want to marry you.”
“Well, I don’t love you.”
“Liar!”
He took her in his arms and kissed her. It was like their mood—hard and brutal. She fought him just as hard.
“Let me go,” she demanded.
“Not until you admit you love me.”
The steering wheel had caught him painfully on the hip, but he refused to let her go. She turned her head when he tried to kiss her, so he kissed her neck. When she twisted away from him, he kissed her ear. Then suddenly she was kissing him back with all the fervor of their night of love. They didn’t stop until both of them were out of breath.
“I love you,” she said, sounding as if the words were pulled from her unwillingly. “I can’t stop myself from making that mistake, but I can stop myself from making the bigger mistake of marrying you.”
“It won’t be a mistake.”
“Yes, it will. We’d always be pulling against each other. It wouldn’t be long before it would destroy our love. We’d grow to hate each other.”
“You aren’t going to give us a chance, are you?”
“Don’t you see we don’t have a chance?”
“What you mean is you’re too afraid to try.”
She pulled back from him. She might as well have pulled a piece of plate glass between them. The barrier she threw up was that hard. “Go to New York, Matt. Take that job and make lots of money. I’ll be very proud of you when you become one of the most famous surgeons in the whole country. All of us will be proud. Forget you ever heard of a place called Iron Springs. Forget us. We’re not part of your world. We never were.”
She was closing him out, putting so much distance between them he couldn’t even talk to her. He was on the outside knocking as hard as he could, but he couldn’t get in. Everybody else had let him in, made him feel a part of the community, but none of it mattered as long as Liz refused to even listen to him.
It was just like Gull’s Landing all over again. It didn’t matter that he’d been rejected for different reasons. He’d been rejected. It hurt just the same.
He moved back to his part of the seat. “Maybe you’re right,” he said, letting the anger run freely through his voice. “Not about Iron Springs, but about marrying you.” He turned on the ignition. The engine sputtered. He turned the key again, ramming his foot down on the accelerator repeatedly. “I don’t want to marry a woman who’s afraid of life. I don’t know who my parents were, what they were doing, what they dreamed about, but somehow I know they were searching for something they were willing to risk everything for. I don’t know what it was, but I can feel it. That’s what I want in my wife, in the children we’ll have together.”
The engine caught. He threw the car in reverse and backed across the road in the beginning of a three-point turn.
“I want someone solid and dependable, too. Doctors are called away at all hours. I won’t always be around for important events. I want someone reliable enough to stand in for me when I can’t be there.”
He put the gearshift in drive, and the car jumped across the road. Liz shrieked when it came to a halt with the tires on the edge of the shoulder. There was nothing beyond, but Matt was too angry to be scared.
“There’ll be more Joshes in my life,” Matt continued, “kids I’ll get to know and care about. Not all of them are going to get well. I’ll need a wife strong enough to support me while I get over the emotional devastation.”
He backed up and pointed the station wagon toward Iron Springs.
“But just as important, I want a wife who’ll have the courage to love me and to have faith I’ll love her, that I’ll never shortchange our love no matter where my career takes me. I want someone who can enjoy life, endure the rough, delight in the good. We only go around one time, and now that I’ve finally understood what it means, I don’t want to waste it. The irony is that you pulled me into life and now want to back out.”
He took a curve dangerously fast He didn’t care. If Salome could drive through these mountains like a maniac, so could he.
“I want a woman willing to look life in the teeth and dare it to do its worst. I thought I wanted the woman who taught me that lesson, but I guess she’s a whole lot better at talking than she is at doing.”
He pushed the accelerator to the floor, but not even the roar of the engine or the screeching of tires as he skidded through a curve could cool the anger that boiled in him.
“Aren’t you going to say anything?” he asked.
“Everything’s been said.”
He skidded through another curve. He didn’t know why he should have been so afraid of this mountain before. All it took was a little guts.
“Not everything. First thing when you get to the office tomorrow, notify the medical board in Richmond that I’m flying to New York to look at a job. If I take it, I could be gone in a matter of days. They’d better see about getting someone to replace me.”
As he hurtled down the mountain, he realized he was practically holding his breath. He still hoped Liz would say something so he could change his mind. He didn’t want to go to New York. His ambition to become a surgeon was unchanged, but it wouldn’t mean anything without Liz, or the kids. Even though they weren’t his biological children, he felt like they belonged together. All four of them.
But they couldn’t do it without Liz. She was the glue that would hold everything together. Or keep it apart.
She didn’t say a word.
Liz paused, her hand on the knob. Matt had been gone for five days, but it felt like a lifetime. She didn’t know if she could stand to enter the clinic one more day. The days before he left had been difficult, but the ones since he’d been gone had been agony. She hadn’t thought it was possible to miss anyone so much. Her children only made it worse. If they had known she was the reason Matt had moved out of the house, the reason he was in New York, they’d never forgive her.
She wasn’t sure she could forgive herself.
She wasn’t pregnant, but despite the difficulties it would have caused, she couldn’t help regretting she wouldn’t have Matt’s baby. It was stupid, but she couldn’t change the way she felt. Rebecca’s sudden interest in having
a bigger family only made things worse.
She entered the offices in time to hear Salome’s pungent reply before slamming down the phone.
“I ought to make you answer this damned phone,” Salome said accusingly the moment she spied Liz. “It’s your fault everyone’s as cranky as a bear in heat.”
Liz didn’t have to ask what Salome was talking about. Since the clinic patients learned Matt had left town, that he was likely to take a job in New York, they’d been mad as plucked hens. They’d also been trying their best to get in one last appointment with him. When they couldn’t, they took out their frustrations on Salome. Naturally that didn’t improve her temper.
“It’s not my fault,” Liz said, collecting her paperwork and hoping to hide in her office for the rest of the day.
The phone rang, and Salome picked it up. “All of our representatives are busy serving other customers,” she growled. “Call back later.” She slammed down the phone.
“Salome, you can’t cut people off like that. That could have been an emergency.”
Salome slid the phone in Liz’s direction. “You want somebody to talk to them, you do it.”
“It’s not my job.”
“It’s not going to be mine if things don’t get better around here pretty damned fast.” She compressed her electric blue lips into a tight, dark line. “Why the hell didn’t you marry Beefcake and keep him in Iron Springs?”
“I’m not responsible for providing the town with medical care.”
“Come off it. We both know what we’re talking about. He wanted to marry you, and you were too afraid to take the chance.”
“What...how...?”
“How did I know?” Salome asked. “Hell, everybody knows you two are nuts about each other. Everybody also knows he talked himself blue in the face trying to get you to go out with him. When he finally did, he comes roaring back into town hardly fifteen minutes later looking madder than a stomped-on snake. You looked like you’d swallowed a mouthful of alum. Next day he’s making plane reservations for New York. What none of us can figure out is why you’d do anything so stupid. Folks always thought you were a smart woman. Hell, I even used to look up to you.”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“No, I don’t know why you got cold feet. I do know you let the best man you’re ever going to find get away. No, you ran him off. That’s so dumb it makes me want to hit you.”
The phone rang. She snatched it up and shouted, “Not now!” in the receiver and hung up again. “Now get out of here before I do.”
Sadie entered the office. “Salome, what on earth have you been doing? I’ve got people on the other phone threatening to come out here and—”
“I know, I know,” Salome said. “I’ll call ’em back. Just do something about Liz. Just looking at her makes me so mad I could start spitting all over again.”
Liz snatched up the rest of her paperwork and headed toward her office.
“Don’t pay any attention to Salome,” Sadie said. “She—”
Liz spun back around. “She didn’t say anything other people aren’t thinking and feeling,” Liz said. “There’s no use pretending otherwise.”
“Well, it is true people are wondering why you drove the doctor off. He was mighty well liked.”
“I didn’t drive him off,” Liz nearly screamed. “He wouldn’t have stayed.”
“He was thinking about it. I bet you could have talked him into it, at least for a while.”
Liz started to repeat herself then stopped, her mouth still open. “What do you mean he was thinking about it?”
“It was the day you were supposed to have dinner. He heard the county was considering closing this clinic. That was just after we’d heard Dr. Kennedy was going to retire after the mess he made over Josie’s cyst. Anyway, he said if they moved the clinic to Woodstock, he’d have to stay until they decided to move it back. He said people around here couldn’t do without a doctor. He said what would have happened to Josie if he hadn’t been here? Then there’s Dr. Kennedy’s patients to consider. Maybe they do think they’re too good to come to the clinic, but they’ve got to have a doctor. Who’s going to take care of them if Matt leaves?”
“How do you know all this?” Liz asked.
“I listened in on the phone,” Sadie said, “the way I always do.”
Ethan Woodhouse had been instrumental in convincing Dr. Kennedy. to retire, but Josie had been the one who convinced him to recommend Matt to his patients. In her usual subtle way, Josie had said she’d sue him for malpractice if he didn’t.
“Why don’t you try to talk him into staying?” Sadie asked. “With all Dr. Kennedy’s patients, it won’t be like he has to start a practice from scratch.”
Liz mumbled an excuse and stumbled away to her office. She couldn’t believe Matt had actually considered staying in Iron Springs. She, on the other hand, hadn’t been willing to consider anything but staying in Iron Springs.
What had happened to her? Why had she lost the courage she had as a teenager, the desire to see more of the world, experience more of life than Iron Springs could offer her? When had she lost her desire to live rather than hide?
It didn’t matter so much when or why it happened, just that she realized it and was willing to do something about it.
She couldn’t live without Matt. She’d already proved that to herself. Her children couldn’t live without him, either. The fact that everybody in town apparently knew it proved she was trying to ignore a truth that was too big to hide. No matter what she had to face, even if it was discrimination or snobbery, nothing could be worse than facing the rest of her life without Matt.
She also had to admit a truth she had denied up until now. Everything she was looking for in life depended on people and relationships, not location. She could have been content in White Plains if David had loved her the way Matt did.
She had to call him. She couldn’t wait. Matt said he wanted a wife who was willing to go after the things she wanted in life. Well, she finally knew what she wanted, and she meant to go after it She just hoped she hadn’t waited too late.
Thirty minutes later, she still didn’t know the answer.
“Dr. Dennis has checked out of the hotel,” the desk clerk told Liz. “He left for the airport to catch a flight to Richmond, Virginia.”
Richmond! Why hadn’t he gone to Charlottesville? That’s where he’d left his car.
Chapter Twenty
Liz was anxious to get home. She’d been called in to help the doctor covering for Matt deal with a small emergency. That wouldn’t normally have been a problem, but it was Saturday, and none of her usual baby-sitters were available. She’d had to leave Ben and Rebecca with a neighbor. It wasn’t that she didn’t trust Marjorie. She hated to impose.
She didn’t want to admit it, but she had spent more of the morning thinking about Matt than about her children or helping the doctor. She’d heard from Matt only once since he left, a short note saying he’d be later getting back than he’d planned. Actually the note hadn’t come to her. It had come to the doctor in charge during Matt’s absence. Though she’d tried several times, Liz hadn’t been able to reach Matt.
She kept going over in her mind what she intended to say to him when he returned, but none of that would matter if he no longer wanted to marry her. She wouldn’t give up yet. Matt loved her. She was sure of that. She’d disappointed him, but she’d been running scared. She wasn’t now.
She had returned to Iron Springs because it represented so much of what she valued in life. But she’d also come back with her tail between her legs. She was ashamed to admit it, but she’d accepted Ethan’s attention because she needed to feel attractive again. Rather than borrowing the money to go back to school, she had taken a job in the clinic because it represented security. She held off from dealing with David’s desire to see his children because everything about him reminded her of her failure.
She hadn’t even noticed it,
but over and over again she’d acted like the coward Matt had accused her of being.
She wouldn’t do that again. She didn’t know what it would take to get Matt back, but if it meant moving to New York, she’d start packing this afternoon. All she wanted was to see him again, talk to him, convince him that she loved him as much as he loved her, that she would never again be afraid to follow him wherever he wanted to go. If she’d known where to find him, she’d have driven to Charlottesville or Richmond to see him.
But she didn’t know anything about his life in Charlottesville, not his friends or their telephone numbers. That was another mistake she wouldn’t make again.
The thread of her thoughts snapped when she saw Marjorie and Marjorie’s children in their front yard. She didn’t see Ben or Rebecca. She had told the children to stay outside. She didn’t want them tracking mud or leaves through Marjorie’s house. She hoped the children hadn’t had a falling-out.
“Where have you got them locked up?” Liz asked when she entered Marjorie’s yard.
Marjorie looked confused. “They’ve gone with their father.”
Liz’s whole universe came to a screeching halt. “What are you talking about?”
“They went with Mr. Rawlins. He came by about an hour ago. He said you knew he was coming.”
David hadn’t called, written or anything. Why? Maybe he didn’t want her to know when he was coming. Maybe he wanted to swoop down and spirit her children away.
“I wouldn’t have let them go,” Marjorie said, “but Rebecca said you’d told her he was coming. She said she and Ben were supposed to go with him.”
Paralyzing fear rose in Liz’s throat. David had kidnapped her children, and she’d made it easy for him. She’d heard of numerous cases where fathers had kidnapped their own children and disappeared.
“He said he was taking them on a picnic,” Marjorie continued. “He said he’d be back in a few hours.”
Liz didn’t believe a word of it. He was just trying to keep her from looking for him so he’d have more time to get away.
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