by Pamela Bauer
“You need to make time,” she advised him. “You should come to the party next week. She’s going to be there. When she found out they needed someone to help with the entertainment, she volunteered.” She sighed again. “Wasn’t that sweet of her?”
“Very.”
“What I like about her is she always has a smile on her face.”
“Sounds like you, Dolly.” They’d reached her room and he led her over to her favorite chair. “Now you sit right there. I’m going to close your curtains so no one sees what’s going on between you and me,” he told her with a wink.
“But the snow is so pretty,”’ she protested.
“It’ll just take us a minute.”
“Boy, you are good, aren’t you?” she quipped.
He grinned and wagged his finger at her. “Ah, Dolly, you are one sharp lady.” As he reached for the cord on her drapes he automatically glanced outside to where his car sat in the parking lot. Although he’d arrived a short while ago, it was already covered with snow.
He had started to pull the drapes shut when he saw a familiar red head. It was bent over the windshield of a car, clearing away the snow. Its owner wore a dark green jacket, black slacks and a pair of chunky-heeled shoes that were totally inappropriate for the weather.
“Dolly, what did you say the woman’s name is who does your hair for you?”
“You mean Kryssie?”
“Kryssie, huh?” he said, closing the curtain.
“It’s really Krystal but she lets me call her Kryssie. Isn’t she sweet?”
“You know what Dolly, I do believe she is.” And with a smile on his face he got to work.
TUESDAYS WERE LONG DAYS for Krystal, because she spent her morning at the nursing home then went straight to the salon for a full day of work. Today she had brought her lunch, which she ate in the employee lounge while she balanced her checkbook and went over her monthly budget.
She and Garret had lived in the house well over a month, yet so far they’d had no utility bills arrive in the mail. Concerned, she made several phone calls during her lunch break and discovered the accounts were paid in full. When she asked to verify the billing addresses, she learned that although both of their names appeared on the accounts, the bills were mailed to Garret at his clinic address.
Without consulting her, he had assumed responsibility for the payment of the heat, electric and telephone bills. So much for his fifty-fifty division of expenses, she thought. As usual, when she tried to call him she reached his voice mail. She decided not to leave a message, but was determined she would talk to him about the matter that evening.
It continued to snow all afternoon and she was relieved when her final two appointments of the day canceled, meaning that as soon as she finished with her afternoon clients, she could go home. By the time she left the salon, many businesses had closed because of the winter storm. As she made her way through the parking lot to her car, she nearly fell, her feet sliding around on the ice and snow. After scraping her windshield and brushing off the car, her fingers were as cold as her toes.
Driving was difficult, but she managed to make it to within a couple of blocks of the house before she had any serious problems. Trying to avoid a collision, she ended up in a snowbank. The man driving the car behind her stopped to make sure she was all right and offered to call a tow truck, but she knew it was unlikely that on such a night anyone would respond to the call.
She decided to leave her car and walk the remaining distance since she was so close to home. As she climbed out she wished she had worn a different pair of shoes, but the severity of the storm had caught many people by surprise, including her.
She had trudged about half a block when she saw Garret’s car at the corner. When he saw her, he got out. He didn’t speak but came toward her with an intense look on his face.
Before she could say a word to him, he scooped her up into his arms and began to carry her toward the car.
“What are you doing?” she demanded.
“Rescuing you.”
“You don’t have to carry me. I can walk. I’m pregnant, not crippled,” she told him.
He paid no attention. “Haven’t you heard of boots?” he asked, looking at her platform shoes.
“It wasn’t snowing when I left this morning.” He stumbled and she thought they would both go tumbling to the ground, but he managed to stay on his feet. “Please put me down. I’m perfectly capable of walking.”
He ignored her pleas and kept slogging through the snow until he got to his car, where he managed to open the passenger door and dump her inside. When he’d come around and sat in the driver’s seat, he asked, “Where’s your car?”
“Not far from here.” She explained how she was forced off the road to avoid an accident. “How did you know where to find me?”
“I called the salon and they said you left for home an hour ago. I figured you’d be somewhere between here and there.”
“Thank you for coming to find me,” she said gratefully.
He didn’t appreciate her thanks, however. “Why didn’t you leave when they issued the winter storm warning?”
“Because I had clients with appointments.”
“The salon didn’t close?”
“Did the clinic?”
“Yes. Most businesses did.”
“Well, mine didn’t.”
They had reached the house and the car skidded as he pulled into the snowy driveway. He turned off the engine and, without another word, he came around to her side to open the door. When she got out, he picked her up again and, despite her protests, carried her into the house, once more mumbling about the inappropriateness of her footwear.
It was warm inside and she kicked off her wet shoes and padded in her wet stocking feet across the kitchen floor. She was thirsty and hungry and went straight for the refrigerator.
When she opened it, he said, “You need to get out of those wet clothes.”
Something in his tone set her off. “I don’t need to be told what to do. I’m perfectly capable of taking care of myself.”
“Oh really? Is that what you were doing when you ran your car off the road? Taking care of yourself?”
“That could have happened to anyone in this kind of weather.”
“And how far do you think you would have made it in those shoes if I hadn’t come along? For crying out loud, Krystal. It’s a snowstorm out there. Don’t you own a pair of snow boots?”
“And I told you, it wasn’t snowing when I left this morning,” she said, unwrapping her scarf from around her neck.
“It doesn’t matter. Someone who’s pregnant shouldn’t be wearing shoes that look like they have Mickey’s building blocks for soles,” he shot back at her.
“The kind of shoes I wear is none of your business,” she retaliated.
“Everything you do is my business. You’re carrying my child.”
She shoved her hands to her hips. So that’s what this was really about. The baby. He wasn’t worried about her health or her well-being. He was worried that she might do something that would harm his child.
When she’d first seen his car, she’d felt a rush of warmth at the thought he’d come looking for her. But now she realized the only reason he had was because of the baby.
Everything was for the baby. The house, the clothes, the food, the bills…at the thought of the utility bills, a fresh stream of anger rose in her. “And there’s something I want to talk to you about. Since when did it become your responsibility to pay all of the utility bills for this house?”
“I do live here,” he said calmly.
“So do I and we agreed everything would be fifty-fifty. Now I find you’ve paid the gas, the electric and the telephone bills without telling me!”
He stared at her in disbelief. “You’re angry because I’m paying the utility bills?”
“I told you I didn’t want to feel indebted to you.” The quivering of her voice told her she was dangerously close to losing cont
rol of her emotions, but she continued on anyway. “I know that doesn’t matter to you. You don’t care how I feel about anything! You just want to be in control.” She shrugged out of her coat and threw it in the corner in frustration.
He stared at her, wide-eyed, then went over to pick it up. When he would have hung it up in the closet for her, she grabbed it from his hands.
“I don’t want you hanging up my coat! I’ll do it myself,” she cried.
“You’re obviously overwrought. Maybe you should go lie down,” he suggested.
“I am not overwrought,” she denied strongly. “What I am is tired of you treating me like a child. You keep doing all these things for me without even taking into consideration I might not want you to do them. How do you think that makes me feel?”
He didn’t say anything for several seconds. He just stood staring at her. Finally he said in a quiet voice, “I do them because I care about you, Krystal, but I can see that’s a misspent emotion. What does a man have to do? Walk out on you before you think he deserves your attention? Well, I can do that.” And before she could utter a single word, he was gone.
Krystal found it difficult to swallow. Her body began to tremble, from emotion as well as from cold. She stumbled down the hallway to her bedroom, where she went inside and slammed the door. She peeled off the layers of clothes and hopped in the shower, needing the warmth of the water to chase away the chill in her bones. As she let the steam envelop her, there was only one thought running through her mind. How could she have been so stupid to fall in love with a man who saw her as nothing but an obligation?
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
IT HAD ONLY BEEN one week since the first snowfall of the season and already it had melted. Garret wished he could say the same thing about the tension in the house, but ever since that night when Krystal had made it perfectly clear what she thought about his efforts to make life easier for her, they had hardly said more than ten words to each other.
He’d tried to give her a peace offering—bringing home a book on breast-feeding. She’d interpreted it as a sign he was worried about her baby’s IQ. He simply didn’t know how to handle her mood swings and decided he might as well give up. It was easier not to have any contact with her than to get his head snapped off for trying to do something nice for her.
They were like two strangers living in the same house. Not a good environment for a child. And certainly not the way he wanted to live his own life. At least when he’d lived alone he was comfortable. Now he could hardly sleep nights and he knew that she felt the awkwardness, too. They were avoiding each other as much as possible and that was no way to live.
He’d been contemplating solutions to the problem and so far hadn’t been able to come up with one. He’d sublet his apartment—not that he wanted to move back into it, because he didn’t. He liked the house. And he liked living with Krystal in the house. The problem was she didn’t like living in the house with him. Any way he looked at it, it was a mess.
He glanced at his watch. It was barely four. She wouldn’t be home from work yet. He knew her schedule because she wrote her hours in red on the calendar in the kitchen. Today she worked until five. She also had karaoke tonight.
Karaoke. He didn’t even want to think about her hanging out in some bar singing on a stage. But she had a different life than he did. She liked to have fun. How many times had he heard that from her? Too many, as an image of her in a smoky bar played in his head. She should have known better than to expose her unborn baby to all that secondhand smoke. She also should have known better than to go out in a snowstorm in platform shoes.
As he pulled up in front of the house he saw his mother’s car out front. A glance in the driveway told him Krystal was home, too. Uneasiness filled him. Why would his mother be over unless something was wrong?
He quickly parked and went inside. Seated at the kitchen table were the two of them, laughing and having a jolly good time, as if the past couple of months had never happened.
“Garret! I didn’t expect to see you so soon,” his mother remarked when she saw him.
“It’s my early afternoon,” he told her, noticing how Krystal’s laughter came to an abrupt halt. She averted her eyes, pretending to be fussing with the teapot sitting on the table.
“You look tired. You must be working too hard,” his mother commented.
“I’m fine,” he answered. He was about to excuse himself and go into his room, but Krystal beat him to it.
“If you’ll excuse me, Leonie, I’m going to change my clothes,” she said, and made a hasty departure.
“Cavorting with the enemy, Mother?” he asked, shrugging out of his overcoat.
“Krystal’s not my enemy, dear…or did you mean I was cavorting with your enemy?” she asked with a perceptive lift of one brow.
“What are you doing here?” he demanded.
“I was having tea with Krystal until you walked in and scared her away,” she remarked.
He couldn’t believe it. His own mother was looking at him as if the icy tension that existed in the house was his fault.
“Krystal doesn’t frighten quite that easily,” he retorted, then went to hang his coat in the entry closet. His mother let that comment slide.
“I thought you would be happy to see me here. You’re the one who’s been encouraging me to set aside my disappointment and try to look at the positive side of your situation. Now I have and you look annoyed.”
He sighed. “I’m not annoyed. I’m glad…for your sake and for Krystal’s. You are, after all, the baby’s grandmother.”
“And I’m Krystal’s friend.” She got up to clear away the cups and saucers from the table. “She needed both today.”
He frowned. “Why was that?”
“Because she was upset.”
“About the baby?”
“No, not about the baby,” his mother said with a reassuring pat on his arm.
“Then what?”
“If you want to know what it is, why don’t you go ask her and find out for yourself?”
He shrugged. “I will later. I thought she worked until five today.”
“No, she had the afternoon off so we went shopping. You’ll have to have her show you what I bought for the baby.”
Leonie’s cell phone rang and she excused herself to take the call. He could hear that it was a client by the tone of her voice, so he stepped into the living room to give her privacy. Spread out on the sofa were tiny little undershirts and nightgowns. Some were pink and some were blue.
He was standing over them when his mother walked in. “Aren’t they tiny? I’d forgotten how small those things can be. It’s been quite a while since Mickey was that size.”
Just then Krystal reappeared. She’d changed out of a white T-shirt and jeans and into a black dress that sparkled when she walked. For a change her hair was worn in a rather simple style, brushed away from her face. She’d never looked sexier to him.
“Oh, you look lovely.” His mother said what he wished he could have. “They make the cutest maternity clothes nowadays. Nothing at all like what I had in my day.”
Garret hardly thought the dress should be described as cute. Elegant maybe, and much too nice for some bar. Again, the thought of her being with a bunch of people drinking beer and whiskey in order to get up the courage to sing into a microphone made him irritable.
“Garret, doesn’t she look lovely?” his mother prodded.
He met Krystal’s eyes then, and what he saw there made him want to take her in his arms and hold her close to him. She quickly looked away as he said, “Yes, very nice.”
“I’d better get going,” she announced. “Dinner’s early.”
Leonie nodded in understanding. “I wish I could be there to see you perform.”
“I’m sure it’ll be fun,” Krystal said as she pulled her coat from the closet.
There it was again. That word. Fun.
His mother gave him one of her looks which he knew meant he should
do the gentlemanly thing and help Krystal with her coat. As he did he caught a whiff of the scent she wore and he had to fight the urge to wrap his arms around her and hold her close to him. Memories of the night they’d made love flashed in his mind. Before he knew it, she was out the door, eager to be away from him, as usual.
That’s when his mother turned on him. She faced him with hands on her hips and said, “All right. What is going on with you two?”
“I’m sure Krystal’s already answered that for you.”
“If you mean did she tell me that you won’t talk to her, yes, she did.”
Leonie sounded angry with him. “Do you think maybe that she’s the one who won’t talk to me?” he asked.
That caused her to chuckle. “No, because I know better. Krystal cannot not talk to anyone. You, my son, can go for days without speaking and see nothing wrong with it.”
“Well, thank you, Mom, for the compliment,” he drawled sarcastically.
She slung an arm around his shoulder and gave it a squeeze. “That’s not a criticism. It’s just the way it is. She’s a talker. You’re a thinker. It’s one of the reasons you’re attracted to each other.”
“I’ll let that slide.”
“What? The talker-thinker stuff or the part about you being attracted to her.”
“Well, it would be pointless to deny that I’m attracted to her, not with my sofa covered in baby things,” he said dryly.
“You know I try not to interfere when it comes to your personal life.”
He held up his hands in supplication. “Then don’t say anything, Mom. I thought renting a house together would be a good solution to our problem, but you know what? It’s not working and I’m not sure I can do this…not even for the baby’s sake.”
She grimaced. “That’s what she said, too.”
A knifelike pain went through him. She didn’t want to live with him. It shouldn’t have come as a surprise. He’d only been fooling himself if he thought she was going to suddenly appreciate his interest in her. The phone rang and he went to answer it.