by Carol Grace
“You married?” she asked, wiping the counter clean.
“No.” Why had he ever come in here today? He wasn’t ready to be grilled by the biggest gossip in town. He would never be ready for that.
“Neither is Hayley,” she said pointedly.
“So you said.”
“Never cared much for her parents, did you?”
“Never knew them very well,” he said. Actually he knew them as well as he wanted to. His first encounter with Mrs. Bancroft came at about age ten when he’d been passing by their house dragging a stick along their fence…ka-ching, ka-chin, ka-ching, wondering what it would be like to be rich enough to live in a house like that. Vowing that someday he’d have enough money to have such a showplace. That someday he’d be as respectable as they were. As he daydreamed, idly banging his stick, the Bancroft poodle started barking, and Hayley’s mother got up off her lawn chair.
“Stop that,” she screamed. He wasn’t sure if she was yelling at him or the dog. In any case, he continued walking around the perimeter of their property, whistling and banging his stick while the dog continued frantically barking at him from the other side of the fence and Mrs. Bancroft became apopleptic. That was indicative of the way things went between him and the Bancrofts from then on.
Sam laid a bill on the counter and stood up. “Nice to see you, Mrs. Henwood. I haven’t forgotten about your flowers.”
“Guess we’ll be seeing more of you around here,” she said. “Hayley doesn’t do dinners, only breakfasts.”
He nodded. Every night at the diner with meat loaf, mashed potatoes or chicken-fried steak? Every night more interrogation? More gossip? For six months?
When he finally did pass through the gate and walk up to the wraparound front porch of the dove-gray Victorian mansion, he steeled himself for a rush of unwanted memories, but he didn’t feel anything. Not even satisfaction or revenge, nothing. He was numb. Until Hayley met him at the door with a baby in her arms. Then the shock waves rolled through him. His pulse rate rose. He took a step backward and stared at her as if he’d never seen her before. He hadn’t. Not like that.
Four
It wasn’t Hayley’s baby. It couldn’t be. She wasn’t married. She believed in the traditional family. Mother, father and kids. And yet, the way she was standing there in her doorway, holding it as if it were hers, as if she was Mrs. America waiting for her husband to come home from work… Then it hit him like a Douglas fir four-by-twelve. Though he’d never had any family life to speak of, he suddenly knew this was what it was like. To come home from work and find your wife waiting for you with your baby in her arms. It wasn’t something he’d ever wanted.
Growing up in an unhappy home, deserted by the parents who should have cared for him, he was far from a traditionalist and had no illusions about marriage. All he knew was that it wasn’t for him and he wanted no part of it. As much as he’d envied the Bancrofts their house and their money, he knew marriage and family were out of the picture. As it happened, his demanding career gave him the perfect excuse for not even contemplating such a scenario.
But for one moment he was seized by an irrational feeling of longing so strong and so painful he could only stand there and gape. He felt a sharp sense of regret for what might have been if Hayley wasn’t who she was and he wasn’t who he was. He was having a hard enough time getting used to the idea of Hayley as a grown woman, let alone as a wife or a mother. He didn’t know what to say.
“Where…how…who?” he asked.
“They’re here,” she said. “The family I told you about.” She stepped back and shifted the baby higher on her shoulder, blithely unaware of the impression she’d created. “I forgot that I’d advertised baby-sitting services. The parents checked in, drank a glass of sherry then took off.”
“And left you with their baby?”
“That’s not all,” she said glancing over her shoulder at two small boys dressed like Power Rangers, sitting on the floor watching TV. “I can’t complain. I asked for it. I wanted guests. I offered baby-sitting. I just didn’t expect them to be so…so noisy and have so much energy. I thought I’d tuck them in bed and read them a story, but they don’t want to go to bed. They don’t want to hear any ‘baby stories,’ either.”
“Look out, it’s Godzilla,” one shrieked, catching a glimpse of Sam out of the corner of his eye.
His brother jumped up and placed a rocket in a miniature launcher which he aimed straight at Sam. Sam ducked and the rocket hit the bay window with a loud bang. The window cracked but didn’t break. Hayley gasped and there was a moment of shocked silence.
The boys then dropped their power launcher and ran out of the room, screaming excitedly at the top of their lungs. The baby burst into tears. Hayley patted her back. She cried louder.
“Oh, Lord, what have I done?” Hayley asked, looking at the window with dismay. “I should never have offered to take care of those monsters. I don’t know anything about babies. I don’t know anything about kids. And I can’t afford to replace that window.”
“It was my fault. They took me by surprise. Never thought I looked like Godzilla. But it’s the kind of thing I used to do, firing rockets at the enemy. Catch them off guard. I should have taken the hit instead of the window. I shouldn’t have ducked,” Sam said, examining the crack in the glass.
“You have good reflexes,” she said. “But you’re not required to take the hit. You’re not the secret service,” she said morosely.
“I owe it to you. I cracked a window in this house one time.”
“I don’t remember that,” she lied, nuzzling the baby with her cheek. But she remembered only too well. The sharp crack as a stone hit her bedroom window in the middle of the night. The shock as a rush of cold air hit her when she opened the window in her nightgown. The sight of Sam in his black leather jacket looking up at her. Her whole body shook with fright. She’d been scared her parents would hear. Scared he wouldn’t leave. Scared he would.
“In this case I’d say the parents are responsible for replacing it,” Sam said.
“Then they’ll never come back here, and they won’t recommend it to their friends. No, I can’t even tell them. Where do you think they went?”
“The parents?” he asked.
“No, the little devils.”
“I’ll go look,” he said, crossing the room. “I understand how their minds work. I’ll find them.”
“And when you do—”
“I’ll bury them alive in your mother’s rose garden. No one will think of looking there.”
Despite the broken window, the screams and the cries, she smiled. Glad to see he hadn’t lost his roguish sense of humor. “Actually the garden isn’t a bad idea, if you could get them out there. There’s still a tire hanging from the oak tree. But you shouldn’t have to,” she said feeling a pang of guilt for using him this way, on his first day in town. “You’re a guest, after all.”
“No problem,” he said. “Playhouse still there?” he asked casually.
Hayley jerked her head up from the baby’s cheek. “Yes,” she said. “Although it was renovated, turned into a pool house some time after…after I left home, but basically…I mean it’s still there.”
“Yeah, uh-huh,” he said blandly, and left the living room.
Could he have forgotten? How could he not remember the most important, the most incredible event of her life that had taken place in that garden, in that playhouse? Because to him it didn’t mean that much. That’s how. The baby’s cries subsided to mere snuffles. Hayley looked into its little scrunched-up red face. “Don’t cry,” she murmured. “Never cry over men. It’s not worth it. How about some milk?” she asked. Without waiting for an answer, Hayley headed for the remodeled kitchen and warmed the bottle the parents had left behind.
Then she sat in the garage-sale rocking chair she’d refinished and fed the baby. From where she sat she could see Sam and the two boys running around the yard playing some kind of game involving a bal
l. He ducked, he darted, he kicked and he ran. What a shame he hadn’t played sports in high school. But he’d said they were for kids, and in some ways Sam had never been a kid. Not until now, she thought, watching him gently tackle one of the boys.
So that’s what it would be like to have a family of her own, she thought as she rocked slowly back and forth, lulling herself into a dream world. Instead of guests, that would be the kids and the dad in the yard. The mom and the baby in the kitchen. A fire in the wood stove radiating heat. A lamb ragout simmering on the back burner of the restaurant-size stove. A loaf of bread in the oven. Only the last parts were true. She’d started the bread and thrown the stew together this afternoon, just in case, hoping Sam would stay for dinner, knowing she shouldn’t count on him…but hoping…wanting to make him feel at home, though he wasn’t looking for a home, not with her, anyway.
She suspected this was as close as she’d get to a real family life. The baby in her arms was not hers, the kids in the yard were not hers, the man out there was not hers, either. A family was not in the cards for her. She’d tried and it didn’t work. She would probably never know the satisfaction of feeding her own baby or of rocking it in this chair. But she had so much else—friends, the house—that she couldn’t complain.
The baby fell asleep in her arms and she walked upstairs and put her in the crib she’d set up in the master bedroom suite, pressing her lips against its soft baby cheek for just a moment before laying it into the crib. Then she went back to the kitchen and stirred the stew. Dusk was falling on the old house, a fine mist was blowing off the bay. She looked out the window and saw Sam standing in the yard looking at her. It was too dark to see his face, but she could feel the heat from his gaze all the way in here. Just like that night so long ago.
She stood for a moment looking out at him, wishing, wondering… Transported back in time. To that night when she’d stood in the window shivering, her heart hammering under her thin nightgown that billowed around her body. He’d threatened to climb the drain pipe and come up. She contemplated sliding down the drainpipe. Just to keep him from coming up.
Her memories faded as they burst into the kitchen, the wild children and the high-priced doctor who’d spent the last half hour playing with them.
“We’re hungry,” the small boy with the freckles announced.
“How about some lamb stew?” she asked brightly.
“Yuck,” the boys chorused.
“Have you got any peanut butter?” Sam asked.
“For you?”
“No, for them. I’ll have a glass of your sherry. They’re all yours.” He left the kitchen and headed for the living room and the imported sherry while Hayley spread peanut butter on bread, poured two glasses of milk and seated the boys at the breakfast table.
When they finished, she set them up in the den with a video their parents had thoughtfully provided and which Hayley hoped didn’t contain any violence that would incite them to do further damage to her house. Then she went back to the living room to find Sam.
He was sitting on the couch in semidarkness with a tumbler of amber liquid in his hand staring out at the lights on the bay. Before she could speak he set his glass down and rubbed his hands together.
“I didn’t mean for you to play baby-sitter,” she said.
He shrugged. “I’m out of shape. Haven’t played touch football in years. Not since college. Of course it wasn’t really fair, two against one,” he said, smiling.
“How’s your hand?” she asked, sitting on the far end of the couch. Far enough away to remove any temptation. On her part, not his. He wasn’t even looking at her, instead his gaze was fastened somewhere on the horizon.
“It’s all right. Why? Oh, you heard about my run-in with the door.” He clenched and unclenched his fist, testing it. “That was nothing.”
“That’s good. I imagine most things you do require two good hands.”
“Not everything,” he said. “I can think of a few things that don’t. A few things I could do with one.” His voice was low and rough and loaded with meaning. He turned to look at her then, a long, slow, intimate look that made her pulse quicken, and she wished she hadn’t started this conversation.
Sounds of the video came from the study, mingled with muted shouts and laughter. She hoped it was too dark for him to see her face flame, she hoped he couldn’t hear her heart pound as she contemplated the things that could be done with one hand. With his hand. A surgeon’s hand. Touching, exploring, exciting…which was probably just what he wanted her to contemplate. He was no longer a hormone-driven, sexy, dangerous bad boy. No, he was a hormone-driven, sexy, dangerous man.
No, she was not going to fall for Sam again. She was too smart, and she’d been through too much. But she couldn’t tear her gaze away. Not when he looked at her like that. Like he knew what she was thinking, what effect he had on her. She continued to stare at him, trying to see beyond the face and the attitude. Trying to see what kind of man Sam Prentice had become.
One thing hadn’t changed. They were from two different worlds. Only now his was the world of high-powered, high-priced medicine. Her world was back in the small town she called home, where she was struggling to make a living.
“What about eating?” she asked lightly, finally breaking the spell. “You can do that with one hand. I can offer you lamb stew or the house special, peanut butter sandwiches.”
“I’ll take whatever smells so good.”
She got up off the couch, comfortable in her role as hostess, and led the way into the brightly lit kitchen.
“I thought you didn’t do dinners,” he said as she set a large bowl of savory ragout in front of him.
“Where did you hear that?”
“I stopped in at the diner.”
“Don’t tell me. You saw Wilma. What else did she tell you about me?” she asked with a frown. She knew it would happen sooner or later. The gossip, the stories.
“Nothing. Sit down. I hate to eat alone.”
She poured herself a bowl of stew and sat down. “Who do you usually eat with?” she asked, picturing him with beautiful women at expensive restaurants.
“Peter Jennings or Tom Brokaw. What about you?”
“I prefer Dan Rather,” she said.
“To me?” he asked with a glint in his eye. He thought he knew the answer to that one. He thought she would choose him. He was as cocky as ever. She had to keep up her guard so he wouldn’t know that his effect on her was as devastating as ever. His ego didn’t need any more inflating.
She paused with a forkful of lamb in midair. “I’m not sure. I don’t know you, Sam. You’ve changed and I have, too. I don’t know what to think. I’m having trouble adjusting to the new you.”
“How do you think I feel?” he asked. “I hadn’t thought about you for years. You drop in on my life and suddenly I’m back in New Hope. I’m in your house, eating dinner with you. It blows my mind.”
She nodded understandingly. But the idea he hadn’t thought about her for years hurt. Especially since she’d never been able to totally forget about him. There was a long silence. She sliced some bread. He took a piece.
“How did you learn to cook like this?” he asked. “Or is that one of the things you can’t talk about?”
“I took some classes,” she said, ignoring his last question.
“I didn’t think you learned at home,” he said.
“Oh, no. Mother didn’t want my sister and me in the kitchen ever. She was sure when we grew up we’d have someone else cook our food just as she did. To her it was like learning to type. If you did, you’d be consigned to being a secretary. If you learned to cook, you’d end up in the kitchen. She couldn’t have foreseen the demise of the Bancroft fortune. Now I imagine even she has to cook occasionally, unless they go out to dinner every night.” She took a sip of water. “I assume that’s your life, too, restaurants or dinner parties. A successful surgeon, a bachelor, you must be in some demand on the social scene.” She ke
pt her tone light. She didn’t want him to think she was prying. He’d always hated answering questions about his home life. Because he didn’t have one. And she didn’t want him to think she cared if he was on the town every night with some beautiful woman, because she didn’t.
“I was when I first hit town,” he said. “So I made the rounds, maybe just to prove I could. That I was good enough. A dirty, scrappy kid from the wrong side of town. But I don’t play that game anymore. And most women don’t want to deal with my surgery schedule. So I usually end up having dinner with Tom Brokaw, if I have dinner at all. In case you’re interested, I prefer you to him.”
She set her fork down. The look in his eyes sent chills up and down her spine, while her face was burning. How could he do that to her after all these years? One backhanded compliment and she was eighteen again, crazy in love again, her hormones raging.
She reminded herself that she’d dated, she’d been married, and yet there was no other man who had ever made her feel that way. With just a few words and a look. Making her feel like the most desirable woman in the world. As if he’d pursue her to the ends of the earth. Which he hadn’t…wouldn’t. He hadn’t ever been back to ask about her. Hadn’t even thought about her in all these years.
“I’d better go see how those boys are doing,” she said briskly, getting to her feet. “Maybe I can get them to bed.”
“Want some help?”
“No. You stay where you are. You’re a guest and you’ve already done your time.”
Sam ate slowly, enjoying the savory stew, looking around the kitchen at the maple countertops, the copper pots hanging from a rack over the sink, the delft-blue teapot and a bunch of garden flowers stuck into a vintage milk bottle. He wondered how much she’d done to the room and how much was a remainder of the glory days of the Bancrofts. He recalled what Wilma had said. “She’s got it fixed up real nice…. Her folks let it go downhill.” Yes, she did have it fixed up real nice. It had a certain charm to it. A warmth, a welcoming spirit. Like Hayley herself.