Adversaries and Lovers

by Patricia Watters

  Ben gave her a half smile, and replied, “Honey, this isn’t about a quick roll in the hay. I'll wait as long as it takes.”

  "A year?" she said, impulsively.

  He leaned over the table, took her hand again, lifted it to his lips and gave her palm a kiss, then looked directly at her and said, "As long as it takes."

  Kate felt her face flush. The fact was, she wanted more from him. She wasn’t certain how much more, but it was definitely more than a quick kiss on the palm. Images of being with Ben in the hot tub kept haunting her. He tipped his wine glass toward her, smiled knowingly, and said, "I'll toast to that."

  She pursed her lips. “Am I that easy to read?”

  “No, honey, you’re not that easy to read. But sometimes you send signals so strong I’d have to be comatose not to catch them.”

  Kate expected him to use that as an opening to try to lure her into his bed, and there was no question he'd be catching her at a weak moment. But instead, his gaze moved beyond her, and he seemed to fall into the moody silence she was beginning to know. She glanced around to find the focus of his attention, and saw, through the opened doorway to his bedroom, that the photograph was no longer on his bed stand. Its absence somehow seemed a more powerful reminder of Gayle’s presence in his life than when the photograph stood in plain view. She wondered. Had he moved the photograph in anticipation of having her in his bed that evening? Or was he at last breaking free of Gayle’s hold on him?

  For whatever his reason, clearly, the absence of the photograph disturbed him. She saw it in the lines of tension around his eyes, and the troubled frown on his brow. He said nothing, just continued to eat in silence, and she knew it would be a mistake to force his thoughts. In time, perhaps he’d open up to her. Then, maybe he never would.

  CHAPTER NINE

  After they’d finished eating, Kate offered to help with the dishes, but Ben insisted on doing them himself. He seemed preoccupied, so Kate let him be, amusing herself by enticing Chloe to jump this way and that after a fuzzy tail on a stick. But after Ben finished in the kitchen, he walked over to sit beside Kate on the futon. Drawing in a long breath, he rested his elbows on his knees and laced his fingers together, and for a while he sat with shoulders slumped, eyes fixed on space, and said nothing. Kate saw his jaw clench and his lips tighten, and she put the stick with the fuzzy tail aside and started rubbing his back and massaging the muscles of his neck. “Does that help?” she asked.

  He nodded, but still, his thoughts seemed far away.

  Kate regarded him silently for a few moments then said, “Do you want to talk about it?”

  Again, a silence stretched between them, and Kate was certain he’d retreated into his comfortable old armor. Then, to her surprise, he started talking. “We met when I was a senior in high school and she was a sophomore,” he said, brows gathered in memory. “We were both on the swim team. That year we each made the cut for the Junior Olympics, and we both brought home golds in our divisions. I went on to college and waited for her to graduate so we could marry, but she wanted to go to college too. So while I was waiting for her to complete college, I started Stassen Sports, and she went for a business degree and planned to help run the business.” He was silent for an extended period of time, and Kate wondered if that was all he intended to say. But after a deep intake of breath, followed by a long sigh, he continued. "It happened two months after she graduated from college. A gold medal swimmer and I couldn’t save her.” He cupped his forehead in his hands and sat, immobile.

  Kate moved around to kneel in front of him and covered his hands with hers. “Terrible things happen in life that can’t be avoided, things that are no one’s fault. You can’t keep blaming yourself for what happened. And always trying to be in control of everything won’t change it either. But if you don’t let it go, Ben, it will destroy you.”

  His head still in his hands, he said, “Don’t you think I’d let it go if I could? Do you have any idea how many nights I’ve lain awake in bed, trying to put it behind me?”

  “Maybe you can’t put it behind because you’re trying to do it alone,” Kate said. “Short affairs with willing women can’t mend a broken heart.” After a while, when he still said nothing, she allowed the words beating in her head to escape. “I think you need a warm body to curl up with tonight, Ben, someone who truly cares about you.”

  Ben lifted his head from his hands and when he spoke, it was almost in a whisper. “You have no idea how much I want that, honey, but what you’re offering right now I can’t accept.”

  Kate looked at him long and searchingly. “Why?”

  Ben brushed his thumb across her parted lips. “Because some weary devil in me won’t let me use the woman I care the most about as a crutch.”

  “Is that what you think I’m offering, a crutch?”

  “Ah Katie... You’ve saved yourself for your perfect mate.”

  “That doesn’t matter right now.”

  “It does to me because after it’s over I’d be living with guilt, and you’d be living with remorse. I won’t let that happen, not tonight, and not when you’re caught up in feeling sorry for me.” He sighed deeply, and said with a blend of weariness and self-assurance. “Honey, I didn’t intend to dump this on you. I can deal with it.”

  “Maybe you can,” Kate said more firmly, “but sometimes it’s nice to have a shoulder to lean on too. Let me be that shoulder.”

  Ben gave a slight shake of his head and said, “If I started leaning on your shoulder, sweetheart, it would start sagging, and I’d only be half a man.”

  “That’s macho male blather,” Kate snapped. She moved to sit beside him again and curved her fingers around his hand and rested her head on his shoulder. Without looking at him, she said, “You don’t have to be a pillar of strength every minute of your life, Ben. No one will think less of you if they discover there’s a tiny chink in your armor.”

  Ben pulled his arm free, curved it around her shoulders, kissed her on the forehead, and said, “If you stay around me long enough, you’ll discover more than one chink.”

  Kate looked up at him and replied, “I look forward to that.”

  Ben smiled, bemused. “What? Staying around me, or finding chinks in my armor?”

  Kate returned his smile. “Both. And I’m glad you’ve finally started talking about Gayle.” She didn’t want Ben to retreat into his snug armor, so she pressed on. Gazing around the room, she asked, “Did Gayle like it way out here?”

  Ben lifted his shoulders. “I didn’t own the place then.”

  “Do you think she would have liked it?”

  When he didn’t reply, Kate looked at him. He seemed to be having trouble answering. Finally, he said, “I don’t know. Maybe not. Gayle liked the city. We’d planned to buy a condo.”

  “Is that what you wanted?”

  Ben shrugged. “I never gave it any thought. I only bought this place after she... I bought it to get away from everything. Call it busy work.”

  “No, it’s not busy work,” Kate said. “Your metal gull coming in for a landing is not a hodgepodge of relics from a junk yard, and your cook stove is not a welded marvel consisting of a boiler, an old iron grate and a water reservoir, and your gargoyles aren’t just old friends. They’re works of art. Whether you want to admit it or not, you are an artist, and this place is your masterpiece. You, Ben Stassen, are an exceptional man.”

  Ben's eyes softened and he smiled. “A guy could get used to this.”

  Kate looked at him steadily. “That was my intention.”

  ***

  The following week, Linda Barnes called Kate, and they made arrangements to meet for lunch. On the phone, Linda addressed her as Katie, a clear sign that Ben had been talking about her to Linda. The odd thing was, Kate felt at ease with the prospect of spending time with the mother of he woman Ben had loved nearly half his life.

  At noon, when Kate arrived at the restaurant, Linda was waiting in the foyer. She gave Kate a hug and they f
ound a table. Following Linda’s suggestion, they ordered cream of broccoli soup, peppered crab soufflé with button mushrooms, honeyed carrots, and rice pilaf. While they ate their soup, the conversation centered on the budding romance between Grandma and Henry Stassen. But gradually it shifted to Stassen men in general, and by the time the crab soufflés arrived, Ben was the sole topic.

  Linda speared a carrot, and said, “Ben can be very overbearing at times. I was about to wring his neck the other night. I saw how irritated you were, and with good reason.”

  Kate touched her lips with her napkin. “I’d hoped it didn’t show,” she said. “And yes, I was irritated with him. He seems to always need to be in control.”

  Linda smiled and said, offhandedly, “I’m familiar with Ben’s take control behavior. It’s part of his protective mechanism with those he loves.”

  Kate looked at her with a start. “But, Ben and I are just friends. Neither of us has said anything about love.”

  Linda took a sip of tea. “No one has to, Katie. It’s obvious. I’ve seen Ben with women over the years and he’s never used endearments or acted like an overbearing and overprotective parent with any of them. Only with Gayle, and now you.”

  “That may be,” Kate said, “but the fact remains, Ben is still in love with your daughter." She stabbed a button mushroom and popped it into her mouth

  Linda leaned toward her and said, “He may always be in love with Gayle, but that doesn’t mean he won’t love again.”

  Kate chewed the mushroom while considering Linda’s words, then said, with uncertainly, “I can’t imagine Ben in love with me. We disagree too much. Besides, if he loved me he wouldn’t build his corporate offices in Sellwood. It would destroy the lives of so many old people, including my grandmother, and he knows by now that I could never come to terms with that.”

  “Ben’s a sharp businessman,” Linda said. “I’m sure he’s considered everything when making this decision, even the fate of the old people. He’s not an insensitive man.”

  “He is in this case. He just refuses to see it,” Kate said, trying to keep her voice steady, realizing it was becoming agitated again. “If our relationship were to develop into anything more serious, I’d always feel like I came second to his business. That’s the sort of A-type personality that destroys marriages and families. But I don’t know why I’m even talking like this. Like I said, Ben and I are just friends.”

  A smile crept across Linda’s face. “Sweetie, you just keep believing that. Meanwhile, if you want to keep him around while you make up your mind whether to pursue something more serious, just allow him to feel he’s your knight in shining armor and he’ll be just that. Ben’s absolutely faithful to his lady love. But you have to understand, the fact that he failed to save Gayle almost destroyed him. Allowing himself to care again puts him in a vulnerable position.”

  “I know how vulnerable Ben is right now," Kate said. "and how hard that is for a man as proud and private as he is.”

  “He’s a fine man, Katie. Don’t discard him too quickly over this zoning issue.”

  Kate looked across the table at Linda and envied Gayle having had her as her mother, and for the first time in years, she felt the raw-edged loss of her own mother. Although Grandma raised her from the age of thirteen, Kate missed having her mother to share moments of the heart. Grandma never filled that role. She gave Linda a reassuring smile. “I know Ben’s a fine man and I’ll keep an open mind until the zoning meeting. After that—” she shrugged. “We’ll just take things easy until then.” But Kate wasn’t at all sure things could remain on their being friends basis until then. It was becoming increasingly more difficult to maintain that pretense.

  They ate in silence, Linda seeming to be in deep thought, but after a while, she said to Kate, “It’s funny. You’re very different from Gayle, yet you seem to fill the void in Ben’s life in a way that perhaps Gayle never did. I like to see him happy again.”

  Kate blinked back tears that threatened and said, impulsively, “What was Gayle like?” She looked at Linda, surprised at her own audacity, and added, “I’m sorry, I wasn’t thinking. It’s probably hard to talk about her.”

  “Sometimes it is," Linda admitted, "but this isn’t one of those times.” She looked off in quiet contemplation and Kate knew she was assimilating memories. Then she began to talk with animation. “Gayle was a very high-spirited and vivacious young lady who loved life and often strayed close to the edge, tempting danger and taking chances. We allowed her to date Ben at an earlier age than we’d intended because he was a settling influence on her. We also knew he’d protect her from herself and her own rash actions.” Linda paused for a few moments, then gave Kate a wry smile and said, “Gayle was also a bit spoiled, I’m sorry to say. Ernie and I were older parents by the time she came along, and she being an only child, well, we tended to overindulge her and give into her whims. Ben let her have her way a good part of the time too, but he knew when to put the brakes on. But even when he did that, she knew how to handle him, kind of like handling a big, overgrown puppy. When he growled, she corrected him with firm, but gentle discipline. You instinctively do that, which is probably why Ben's drawn to you.”

  “I don’t know about instincts,” Kate said. “It’s just the way I react when he treats me like a child.”

  “Like I said, he’s being protective. I doubt he even knows he’s treating you that way. Give him time. He’ll come around. We know this man. We also love him like a son. When Gayle died, we were afraid we’d lose him too, but it turned out he needed us as much as we needed him. Then he bought the river property and started building that house with a vengeance. His visits tapered off. Oh, he’d call each day, but the only time we’d see him was when we drove to his place. At first we knew it was his means of dealing with his loss. But somewhere along the way he began to find joy in what he was doing and started to smile again. And we discovered he was an artist, a very fine one, though you can’t tell him that.”

  “I know, I tried.” Kate visualized Ben’s beautifully-carved gargoyles and the pieces of metal art he’d offhandedly put together, and said, “When I was in art school, I saw nothing to compare with what Ben can do. He has a natural eye for what I’ve struggled to learn, yet he has no appreciation of his own work.”

  Linda looked at her, curiously. “I didn’t know you’d attended art school. Ben never said anything.”

  Kate shrugged. “I mentioned to him, but it isn't relevant now. I haven’t painted in years.”

  Linda’s delicate brows gathered in a frown. “Why not?”

  “I guess nothing inspired me. But after seeing Ben’s work, and then going to Cooper’s Landing—that place is an artist’s dream—well, I’ve been thinking about getting out my old paint box and starting in again. Maybe after the zoning appeal's over.”

  Linda reached across the table and patted Kate's hand. “Follow your heart, honey. If Ben inspired you to paint, then that’s what you should be doing."

  Kate smiled, pleased that Linda seemed to be taking an interest in her. After a few moments, she asked, with curiosity, “Was Gayle artistic?”

  Linda flashed a radiant smile. “Oh, heavens no,” she said, laughing. “I’ve often wondered what she would have thought of Ben’s funky place with all its gargoyles and hodgepodge of stained glass windows and junkyard relics. Gayle’s idea of a home was to live in the city in a high-rise condo with stark white walls, glass and chrome tables, framed advertisement posters and bean-bag furniture."

  Kate wondered if Ben surrounded himself with everything opposite of what Gayle would have wanted as a means of blocking her out of his mind. Yet, in spite of his efforts, Gayle’s shadow hung over his place like a shroud. But Kate refused to let some petty jealousy over a dead woman haunt her. Biting her lip to stifle a giggle, she said, “I’m sorry, but I just had an image of Ben sitting like a giant pretzel in a beanbag chair.”

  “And speak of the devil…” Linda looked beyond Kate and flashed a
brilliant smile. “I mentioned to him that we'd be eating here, but I didn't expect him to drop by.”

  Kate turned and saw Ben standing in the foyer, eyes scanning the crowd. As she looked at him, the conversations that buzzed around began to fade, and she was unable to take her eyes off him. He’d never looked more handsome, his powerful presence seeming to sap her energy. Then she took a long breath to clear her head, shifted her gaze to Linda, and said, “If my mind was of a suspicious nature, I’d say you were a matchmaker.”

  Linda gave her a sheepish grin, and shrugged. “A mother knows what’s best.”

  Ben’s eyes flitted over the diners and fixed on Kate, and he started toward them. He gave Linda a peck on the forehead, then turned to do the same for Kate, but when he stooped over to place the kiss on her cheek, she turned in surprise and he kissed her square on the lips. He smiled into her eyes and said softly, “You look beautiful, sweetheart.”

  Kate flushed deeply and shifted her gaze to Linda, who was smiling like the cat who’d swallowed a canary. So much for convincing her they were friends.

  Ben pulled up a chair and sat at the end of the table. He looked from Kate to Linda and said, “So, what have my two favorite ladies been discussing?”

  “Mainly your grandfather and Katie’s grandmother,” Linda lied. When he looked disappointed, she added, “This may come as a surprise to you, sweetie, but you’re not the only cock in the henhouse. We do have other things to talk about.”

  Ben took Kate’s hand, and said, “As long as I'm the only cock in your henhouse.”

  Kate pulled her hand from his and replied, “If you don’t stop this, Linda will not believe a word I’ve been telling her.”

  Ben arched a brow and looked at Linda. “What has she been saying?”

  Linda smiled. “My lips are sealed.”

  Ben signaled the waitress and ordered coffee, then insisted the women have dessert. While Kate and Linda enjoyed chocolate truffle cheesecake with brandied fudge sauce and whipped cream, Ben sat back and sipped his coffee. He seemed distracted, brow furrowed, gaze fixed on Kate, as if expecting her to say something. She had no idea what he was after, but he also seemed... annoyed? After a few minutes she raised her eyes to meet his gaze and said, “Is there something bothering you?”