Patty smiled. “Yes, you may run, run, run. But remember, Tucker, you’re not to pretend that the sand is snow and pour it over your head.”
“’Kay,” he said, then dashed toward a waving Sarah Ann.
Patty watched him go, then swept her gaze over the benches surrounding the playground, seeing David rise and start in her direction.
He isn’t smiling, Patty thought, registering a steadily increasing sense of panic. She was going to snatch Tucker out of the sandbox and hightail it home before David could tell her what was on his mind.
He was coming closer and closer. He looked so tired, had dark circles beneath those mesmerizing blue eyes of his, and he was limping more than usual, as though he didn’t have the energy to swing the cast on his leg forward with each step that was bringing him closer and closer.
Patty could hear the echo in her ears of her own wildly beating heart when David stopped next to Sophia’s stroller, a frown on his face.
“Hello, David,” Patty said, attempting to produce a cheery tone of voice that didn’t quite materialize.
“Patty,” he said, nodding slightly. “Shall we sit down?”
They settled onto a bench that gave them a clear view of Sarah Ann and Tucker, yet was too far away from the children for them to hear what was being said by the adults. Patty pulled the stroller around so she could see Sophia who was happily blowing bubbles from between her tiny lips.
“Sophia is really into bubble-blowing,” Patty said. “I have no idea why, but she thinks it’s great fun. She’s extremely intelligent, of course, to be able to do that at such a young age. I wish she’d come up with a new game, though, because that bubble-blowing is chapping her chin and…”
“Patty,” David said quietly, shifting on the bench to look directly at her.
“I don’t want to hear what you have to say, David,” she said, her voice quivering. “I could tell by the tone of your voice on the telephone that something was terribly wrong and now that I see you I know that I’m right, and I just don’t want to deal with…” Patty stopped speaking and sighed. “You’re ending things between us, aren’t you?”
“I have to,” David said. “Last night was a very clear picture of how things would go under your rules, or whatever you want to call them. I can’t live that way, Patty. I don’t want to drive home in the dead of night with my child sleeping in the back seat of my vehicle. I don’t want to wake up the next morning alone in my bed.
“I want to marry you, live under the same roof with you, be able to reach for you in the night and know that you’re sleeping beside me. I want all of us to be a family, a real family, living, laughing, loving, having hopes and dreams and goals for the future that we plan together.”
“David—”
“That’s what I want,” he said, “but it’s not what you want. Oh, I could play ostrich and pretend that maybe it isn’t true, maybe you’ll change your mind-set about becoming my wife. If I did that I could continue to see you, be with you. But it wouldn’t be fair to Sarah Ann to allow her to believe that being with you, Tucker and Sophia is the way things will always be, then yank the rug out from beneath her later. I can’t do that to her.
“Patty, I love you so much,” David said, his voice growing raspy with emotion. “But what you’re willing to give in this relationship isn’t enough. It just isn’t. An ongoing affair is too shallow, empty, lonely. I can’t do this.”
Tears misted Patty eyes. “I’ve failed you, haven’t I? I can’t meet your needs, give you what you want, and so you’re leaving me.”
“Don’t start comparing me to Peter,” David said, a pulse ticking in his temple. “You think you failed him as a wife and he left you. You think you failed me as a lover and I’m leaving you.”
“Well, it’s true,” she said, two tears spilling onto her pale cheeks. “You’re ending things between us and it’s all my fault.”
“No, damn it, it isn’t all your fault,” David said, his voice rising. “I could say that I failed you because I wasn’t capable of meeting your needs, accepting you, the woman I love, on your terms. But there’s no blame to be placed here. We just can’t connect on the last piece of the puzzle. Everything else is great, perfect, wonderful, but…
“God, Patty, I don’t want to end what we have together. The thought of never seeing you again, never holding you, making love with you, hearing your laughter, watching those eyes of yours sparkle when you… The mere image in my mind of walking out of your life is ripping me to shreds.”
Patty pressed trembling fingertips to her lips to stifle a sob.
“But to postpone it,” David went on, “will just make it worse down the road. It’s better to make a clean break now.”
He shook his head. “This is so damn hard. I envisioned seeing Sophia’s first smile, her first wobbling steps, hear her first words—that would include her calling me Daddy—and I was going to play ball with Tucker, you know? Get him a little baseball glove and a bat and…
“Hell, there’s no reason why I couldn’t teach Sarah Ann to play ball, too. We’d be out in the yard playing, then you’d call us in for dinner and we’d sit around the table as a family. Man, I’m killing myself here saying all this stuff that is never going to happen.”
“I’m sorry, David,” Patty said, crying openly. “I’m just so very sorry that I couldn’t give you what you need to be happy.”
“And I’m very sorry that I couldn’t make what you were capable of giving me be enough. We were close, so close to having it all. So close, yet so very far apart.” David got to his feet and stood staring at Sophia for a long moment before switching his gaze back to Patty. “I’ve got to go now. There’s no point in dragging this out any longer. I’ll get Sarah Ann. Patty, I love you. I only wish this weren’t goodbye. I really hate that word right now. But goodbye.”
Through a blur of tears, Patty watched David lift a complaining Sarah Ann from the sandbox, then leave the park. She heard his vehicle start, then the sound of the powerful engine grew fainter and fainter until it finally disappeared.
Patty wrapped her hands around her elbows and struggled for emotional control, not wishing to upset Tucker with her crying.
David, her mind screamed. Don’t leave me, please, David. I love you. I love you so much. I’m so sorry I failed you. Oh, God, David, please don’t…
It’s too late, she thought. David was gone. All that they’d had together, everything they’d shared, was over. She was alone and she had no one to blame but herself. She’d hurt David. She was the source of his pain and so he had left her.
There was no wondering why he had walked out of her life, no mystery to his leaving as there was with Peter. David Montgomery wanted a wife and she didn’t know how to be a proper wife. End of story. The beginning of so many long and lonely nights that would stretch into infinity.
Tucker left the sandbox and ran toward Patty, causing her to quickly dash the tears from her cheeks and produce a smile by the time he arrived in front of her.
“Hi, big boy,” she said. “Having fun?”
“I was, but David tooked Sarah Ann home already.” Tucker cocked his head to one side and stared at Patty. “You look funny, Mommy. Your face is really white and your nose is really red.”
“Allergies,” Patty said. “Something is in bloom here in the park that is causing my allergies to go cuckoo. It’s nothing to worry about.”
“I guess David gots allergies, too, ’cause his voice was weird when he said ’bye to me and told me to give you a hug from him. Why didn’t he give you a hug himself?”
“That’s just something grown-ups say sometimes when they’re leaving,” Patty said. “I can push Sophia’s stroller over by the swings and push you as high as the sky. Would you like that?”
“Yes,” Tucker yelled. “You’re the bestis mom in the whole wide world.”
Patty stood and started to push the stroller toward the swings as Tucker ran on ahead.
Oh, yes, she thought, strugg
ling against fresh tears, as a mommy she was top-notch. An Olympic Gold mother. And as a woman making love with the man of her heart? She had given herself in total, trusting abandon and welcomed and received all that he had brought to her.
But David wanted more.
David wanted a wife.
But she couldn’t give him what he wanted.
So David was gone.
And her heart was shattering into a million pieces.
Patty drew a shuddering breath as she parked the stroller and began to push Tucker on the swing.
The only hope she had of gaining even a modicum of inner peace, she thought, was to know why, how, her flaw had destroyed her marriage to Peter and robbed her of a future with David.
There was only one person who possessed the answers she needed. She’d have to gather every ounce of inner strength she could muster to have the fortitude to hear the actual words spoken, listen to the list of her failings but she had to do it.
After all these months she would have to meet with Peter.
Chapter Fifteen
Late the next morning Patty paced restlessly across her living room, alternating between wringing her hands and wrapping them around her elbows. She was dressed in trim, dark-blue slacks and a lighter blue string sweater, and her freshly shampooed hair fell back into place each time she turned her head as she retraced her steps.
“Patty,” Hannah Sharpe said, watching her daughter’s performance. “You’re making me dizzy. You’re terribly tense for someone who asked me to babysit so you could run some errands. And why do you keep looking at your watch? A person doesn’t make an appointment to do errands as far as I know. Are you ready to tell me what’s really going on?”
Patty halted her trek and looked at her mother.
“I’m meeting Peter for lunch at a café near his office,” she blurted out in a rush of words, then drew a much-needed breath.
“Peter?” Hannah said, her eyes widening. “Why on earth would you want to see that man? Honey, he hasn’t bothered to visit Tucker in months, and he never acknowledged Sophia’s birth and… No, Hannah, hush. I will not be an interfering mother.”
“I have to talk to him about something that is important to me.” Patty fiddled with the opal ring she had slipped on her finger. “I’m telling myself that this ring from Grandpa will give me the courage to get through this, but I don’t think the butterflies in my stomach understand the plan.” She looked at her watch again. “I’ve got to go. Thank you for watching the kids.”
“You know that’s never a problem,” Hannah said. “Your father and your Uncle Ryan are coming by here to pick up Tucker and take him to a petting zoo that’s set up in the parking lot of the mall. Sophia and I will be fine so there’s no need for you to rush back. But I can’t imagine why you’re going in the first place. It would make sense if you said you were meeting David for lunch.”
“No, it wouldn’t,” Patty said miserably. “Believe me, Mother, it wouldn’t.” She paused. “Tucker? Will you come kiss Mommy goodbye? I’m leaving now.”
Tucker came running from his room, gave Patty a smacking kiss on the cheek, then said he had to finish the picture he was coloring for his grandma and dashed back down the hallway.
“It’s just breaking his little heart that I’m going off without him,” Patty said, rolling her eyes heavenward. “Well. Here I go. Yes.” She snatched her purse from one of the chairs. “Goodbye, Patty. No, that’s not right. I’m Patty. Goodbye, Mother.”
Hannah frowned. “I’m not certain you should be behind the wheel of your car.”
“I’m fine, I’m fine, I’m fine,” Patty said, starting toward the front door. “I have to do this, Mom.”
“All right, sweetheart.”
“’Bye.”
During the drive to the restaurant, Patty mentally lectured herself to get a grip, gain control, be prepared to appear calm, cool and collected when she saw her ex-husband for the first time in months.
Peter would not have a clue about how difficult it was to be near him, reliving the pain of his betrayal. But she was on a fact-finding mission and was determined to get the information she sought. It just happened to be Peter Clark who knew what she needed to know. No big deal. She could handle this. Yeah, right.
Patty parked in the lot next to the small café, locked her car, straightened her shoulders and marched into the restaurant, totally ignoring the trembling in her legs and the increased swirl of the butterflies in her stomach.
She stopped just inside the door and glanced around. Peter slid out of a booth in the far corner and raised one hand to gain Patty’s attention.
With each step she took toward Peter, Patty felt the butterflies quiet their frenzied flight and her legs cease the maddening trembling.
There was Peter, she thought. The father of her children, the man she had vowed to spend the remainder of her days with. There was Peter. A stranger to her now. Someone who no longer had the ability to hurt her because she felt nothing for him. Nothing.
“Hello, Patty,” Peter said quietly, when she reached the booth.
“Peter,” she said, then slid onto the bench seat.
He sat down opposite her.
“You look fantastic,” he said, managing to produce a small smile.
“Thank you.” Patty lifted her chin. “I must say, Peter, you aren’t looking well at all. You’ve lost weight. Have you been ill?”
“No, not really,” Peter said. “I’ve just been under a great deal of stress during the past few months.”
“Oh.”
“Ready to order?” a waitress said pleasantly, as she appeared at the edge of the table.
Patty asked for a chicken salad and Peter ordered a hamburger and fries. The waitress nodded and hurried away.
“How are the kids?” Peter said.
“I don’t believe you have the right to ask that question,” Patty said. “You don’t even know what I named our—my—daughter. I refuse to give you an update on how the children are, Peter. You can insist, I suppose, since you pay child support but I doubt that you sincerely care how they are.”
“You’ve changed,” Peter said, narrowing his eyes. “You’re— I don’t know what word I want—tougher? Stronger?”
“I’ve grown up a great deal since you left,” Patty said, one fingertip stroking the opal stone in the ring. “Tougher? Stronger? Yes, those words apply, as does more mature. I’m no longer someone who is willing to accept quietly whatever might be done to her. I am now a woman who is fully prepared to raise her children and take care of them, as well as herself.”
“I’ve heard that you’re seeing someone,” Peter said.
“That’s none of your business.”
“Chicken salad,” the waitress said, sliding a plate in front of Patty. “Burger,” she added, plunking down Peter’s lunch. “Drinks?”
“No, this water is fine,” Patty said. “Thank you.”
“Same for me,” Peter said.
“Okeydokey,” the woman said, then disappeared again.
Patty picked up her fork, stared at the salad, then set the fork on the edge of the plate.
“I’m going to ask you something, Peter,” she said, “and I’d like an honest answer. You owe me that much.”
“All right. What’s the question?”
Oh, God, Patty thought, she couldn’t do this. She didn’t want to hear the words that would chip away at her, piece by piece, as Peter listed her sins, the ways she had failed him as a wife. No.
Yes. She had to do this. Peter’s answer could be a slender, fragile thread to possible inner peace. It could give her the ability to accept herself as she was once she knew the definition of her failure.
“I… I would like you to tell me,” she said, wishing her voice didn’t sound so shaky, “how I failed you as a wife. I realize that I didn’t make you happy, wasn’t capable of being for you what you wanted and needed me to be, but you never told me where I had gone wrong, what I had done to drive you in
to the arms of another woman. I have the right to know, Peter, and I want the truth. How did I fail you?”
Peter opened his mouth to speak, then snapped it closed. His shoulders slumped and he dropped his chin to his chest. Seconds ticked by before he looked at Patty again, and her breath caught when she saw the tears glistening in his eyes.
“Oh, Patty,” he said. “You didn’t fail me as a wife, or woman, or the mother of my son. You are not a failure. I am. You are everything and more than any man could ever hope to find in all those roles.”
“What?” she whispered.
“It was me, don’t you understand? I was the rising star of the company. I had the golden touch. I wrote more insurance policies than anyone else, left the other salesmen in the dust. The bosses were talking about giving me a bigger office, a hefty raise, hinted at stock options being the next step for me up my ladder to shining success. I soaked it all up like a thirsty sponge, strutted my stuff, was so full of self-importance.
“Then I’d come home at night to our little house and you’d have dinner ready and Tucker would run to greet me, and I knew the evening would consist of playing with him, then watching TV with you until it was time for us to go to bed.”
Patty frowned as she nodded.
“It was suddenly too ordinary, too dull for me, the wonder kid. I deserved more than a cookie-cutter house, meat loaf and mashed potatoes and a docile little wife who wanted nothing more than to please me. I had earned some excitement, by God, some sizzle, party time, nights on the town. You were a dedicated wife and mother and I didn’t want to settle for that.”
“Dear heaven,” Patty said.
“And whoa,” he went on, “look at this. Here was my sexy secretary suddenly making it clear that she liked my new status at the office, wanted to be in on the fun and games that went with my clout and bigger paycheck. Gloria was ready to party and so was I. I actually convinced myself that I had fallen in love with her and wanted the world that came with being with her.”
“And so you walked away from me, our marriage, our son, the new baby that was on the way,” Patty said, struggling against threatening tears. “Without a backward glance, you went.”
Accidental Family (The Baby Bet: MacAllisters Gifts #14) Page 19