Blessing in Disguise (29 page)

“You don’t like my father very much, do you?” Hannah said when the silence had stretched too thin. It wasn’t a question.

He shrugged, and became suddenly engrossed in spelling out C-A-S-T on the board. Finally, he said, “I guess that makes us even.”

“I don’t suppose it would do any good if we staged a hunger strike,” she sighed. As if in reply, her stomach rumbled. Thinking of the Cornish hen downstairs made her realize how truly pathetic she was. How could she expect to be like Ghandhi when she couldn’t even go a whole night without food?

“She already thinks I’m weird. Everyone does. If I stopped eating, I’d just be racking up more couch time with my shrink.”

“I don’t,” Hannah told him. “Think you’re weird, that is.”

He frowned at his letters in furious concentration, but she could feel his pleasure at her approval as surely as if he were Trixie wagging her tail. “Is E-S-O-P a word?” he asked.

“Only with an A in front, but that’d make it a proper noun, so it wouldn’t count.”

“Hannah?” He looked up, and as the light caught his face she saw a tiny tear, like a bead of sleep, in the corner of each eye.

“Huh?” She pretended to be busy sorting through her tiles to make R-A-G-G-E-D, which would earn her a double word score.

“Do you ever think about how much easier their lives would be without us? I mean, like, he used to care about your mom, right? And now she’s history. Maybe we’re next.”

“It’s different with kids,” Hannah said, but his words were a cold finger brushing her heart.

“My dad is always saying how much he loves me ... but when I’m with him, mostly what he talks about is my mom. Always wanting to know if she ever talks about him, and if she’s going to marry this jerk—I mean, your father.” He hung his head, his silky brown hair fanning away from his forehead.

It was the sight of his neck so exposed that did it. Hannah was taken aback by the wave of compassion she felt for this geeky kid who before, when she’d even noticed him, had always been more an irritant than anything else. She saw now that he was hurting like she was, maybe even more.

“Listen, I’m starved,” she told him. “I could eat about six of those Cornish hens, but I’ll take whatever’s left. Do you think you could sneak a plate of food up to me?”

“Sure. But it’s not like you’re being punished or anything. I think they feel bad about what happened.”

“Yeah, but I
do
have a reputation to uphold, if you know what I mean—even if it
was
partly my fault.”

Chris bounced up from the bed, sending tiles skittering across the board. “I’ll see what’s in the fridge. I know there’s lots of ice cream.”

“Just as long as it doesn’t have nuts. Oh, and, Chris
...?”

“What?” He half-turned on his way out the door, flicking his hair out of his eyes as if to get a better look at her.

“Thanks,” she said softly.

“De nada.”

“Just remember, you’re talking to the Scrabble Queen of New York. I’m going to slaughter you when you get back.”

“Up your nose.”

“With a garden hose.”

Flashing her a snotty grin, he was gone. A second later, she heard him clumping down the old wooden stairs with a purposeful sound that made her think that maybe, just
maybe,
she could get through this week, after all.

Throughout their silent dinner, Grace had held her anger in, but now, as they trudged along the snowy trail below the house, she let Jack have it.

“Jack, how
could
you? You’ve made Hannah hate me even more.” Her breath blew out in ragged white streamers. “As if she doesn’t already have enough ammunition against me!”

“That’s for you and Hannah to work out,” he said, his voice as cold as the air she could feel stinging her cheeks, “But as long as you’re under
my
roof, I won’t tolerate Hannah’s treating you rudely.”

“I see,” she said. “It’s not that Hannah treats me like shit. You’d just rather she did it somewhere other than in your house.”

Now she stood shivering, shin-deep in snow, wishing she’d worn ear muffs and gloves. Even with her knitted hat pulled down low and her hands shoved deep in the pockets of her parka, she felt her ears and fingers growing numb.

She could hear Jack sigh—was it exasperation? “Grace, you’re twisting my words. Why do you want to make this any worse than it is?”

“Worse than this?” she cried. “It’s
you.
Jack. You’re refusing to see what’s been going on under your nose! If only you’d talked to her before this ... made it clear to her that you and I aren’t”—she swallowed—“that I’m not just some
girlfriend
who might be long gone by next Christmas.”

Grace sucked in her breath. What if Jack said she was w
rong
—that he had no idea where they’d all be next year?

“Grace ...” His voice was pitched low, and she felt something bad coming—something she needed to get away from quickly.

She walked ahead of him, the only sound now the crunching of snow under her boots—and his, as he loped to catch up with her. Now came the low reedy cry of an owl, and the distant sound of a dog barking. Bare branches arched overhead, making Grace feel as if she were in a cathedral where she was expected to walk softly and speak in a whisper, when what she wanted to do was stamp her feet and shout.

Jack was a silhouette beside her in the moonlit dark, his huge shadow tilting over the snow before him. Beneath the thickness of her down jacket, she felt him grip her arm.

“Listen
to me,” he commanded. He sounded a bit out of breath, but it couldn’t have been from running. Jack was strong as a Brahma bull. “I
do
want us to be together ... not just for now, but a year from now.”

“And after that?” she challenged him.

He was silent, and it seemed then as if the cold had seeped through her heavy jacket, right down into her heart.

“I’ve always been honest with you, Grace,” he said. “The truth is, there’s a lot I’m still not sure about.”

“You mean our kids?”

“Hannah and Chris ... they’re only part of it.” He was shaking his head. “Grace, I’m no spring chicken.”

“You’re fifteen years older than I am, Jack,” she reminded him, feeling almost relieved.
So that’s what he’s afraid of!
“You make it sound like fifty!”

“Maybe it doesn’t seem like much of a difference now, but ...” His voice trailed off, and now there was only the starchy sound of his boots punching through the snow.

“But someday you’ll be seventy, and I’ll be fifty-five? Is that what’s bothering you? Jack, I don’t believe you! That’s like me worrying over whether Hannah’s
children,
when she has them, will like me.”

“Easy to say when you’re at the young end of the scale,” he reminded her.

“I’m far from being a kid. Jack. I’m old enough to know what I’m getting into.”

“You think you know. But do you? Your father died suddenly, and your mother—she’s far from being an invalid, I’d say.” He paused, taking a deep breath. “Grace, in twenty years, maybe sooner, you could be stuck looking after an old man. How can you make any kind of promise when you don’t even know what it is you might be committing yourself to?”

“And if I don’t?” she challenged. “What then? I lose everything. I’d rather have ten or twenty good years with you than spend the rest of my life regretting that we didn’t take a chance.”

He sighed. “I wish I could believe that.”

“Jack, you’ve always looked after everyone. Would it be so awful to have someone looking after
you
for a change?”

“Not if it meant your feeling tied down. And you
would,
Grace, believe me. What if I weren’t even able to make l—”

“Sshhh, don’t talk that way.” She placed a finger against his lips, but even so a shiver traced its way up her spine. Quickly, she changed the subject. “Now ... what’s this thing you wanted to show me?”

A smile crept out from under the grim mask he wore. He fished her hand out of her pocket, and squeezed it hard. “Come on ... it’s just a little farther.”

“It better be good. I’m freezing my butt off.”

She felt her anger fading, yet she ached inside knowing that Jack still had not asked her to marry him.

“Don’t worry—if it falls off, I’ll find it.” He grinned, his teeth impossibly white in the shadows.

Grace felt a smile tugging at her lips, but she refused to give in to it. She couldn’t forgive him for being so stubbornly practical.

“We’re almost there. ...” Jack’s voice carried toward her on a plume of frosty smoke. His steps slowed as he negotiated a slippery stretch that wound down a low embankment, and he finally came to a halt at the edge of a clearing bordered by the frozen stream.

Then she saw it, where before there had been only grass and shrubs—a miniature version of Jack’s cabin, all wrapped in shingles that gave off a faint scent of cedar she could smell even from here. There was a porch in front, shadowed by the pitched angle of the roof, and she could see the corner of a snow-laden deck that overlooked the creek in back. A chimney jutted up over the roofline, and she could make out the small woodpile at the foot of the stairs that led up to door.

“Merry Christmas,” Jack said softly. “Your own studio, fully equipped. Only one key to it, and it’s yours. You can hole up here and write till the cows come home.”

He’d built this for her! She knew from renovating her loft what a tremendous amount of work it must have been for Jack—the meetings with the architect, tracking down hard-to-reach contractors, taking time out of a busy day to look at tile samples and paint strips and door hardware.

She felt something crumble inside her ... an almost physical sensation, as if the snow where she stood had suddenly given way, plunging her down, trapping her. At the same time, she was filled with a sense of sparkling delight that dissolved the last vestiges of her anger.

“Jack. Oh.” She felt too stunned to do anything but stand there, rooted in the snow, a bitter wind whipping the fringe of her knitted scarf up against her cheek. “God, I’m so ... I don’t believe this.”

“I know it’s not a real Christmas, like what you’re used to.”

“Oh, Jack. It’s better.”

“Come on, I’ll show you the inside.” He sounded like a kid himself, as excited as Chris used to get on Christmas morning.

The interior was marvelous. Painted white, with a built-in work center of pale oak that wrapped around three-quarters of the main room. Bookshelves going all the way up to the pitched, skylit ceiling, plus a computer, phone, fax machine—everything she needed to work here indefinitely. A cast-iron Lincoln stove in the corner, set in a cove of bricks, that in addition to the gas line he’d installed would throw off enough heat. Jack explained, to keep her toasty even on the coldest days. But, best of all, sliding glass doors that opened onto the deck, where in warm weather she could sit and look out over the creek.

He showed her the tiny kitchen in back, where she could make herself a cup of tea or a bite to eat if she didn’t feel like trekking all the way back to the main house. There was even a bathroom with a shower, finished in rough cedar and quarry tiles. When it was all steamed up, he said, it would smell like a rain forest.

She imagined what it would be like in the spring, sun streaming in, her papers spread everywhere, the sound of the creek rushing below.

But for now, there was only this moment, this wonderful man looking down on her with love written all over his face, holding out this incredible gift. She saw how he would fit on the deep cushiony sofa, and how the pitched roof gave him all the height he needed in this small space. She pictured him with his paperwork out on the deck, a pair of reading glasses perched on his nose, keeping her company while she sat at her computer. His quiet presence giving her a warm sense of security, like a blanket tucked over her knees.

“I love it. Jack,” she told him, whispering it in his ear as she wound her arms around his neck.

“About Hannah ...”

She shook her head to silence him. In this place, she vowed silently, whether she was by herself or with Jack, she wouldn’t let anything or anyone intrude.

“I sincerely hope that sofa unfolds into a bed,” she told him, smiling up into his blue eyes, feeling him draw her into the warmth of his unzipped parka. “Because, if not, I want to exchange it for one that does.”

“It does,” he told her, his chin resting on the top of her head, his voice like some rich, potent brandy seeping down through her, down into her bones, making them glow.

Grace watched Jack gather up cushions from the sofa and, with a single powerful jerk, unfold its mattress. She was shivering, but this time it wasn’t from cold.

“Kiss me,” she urged softly.

At that moment, the electricity went, plunging them into darkness. She felt Jack’s lips curve into a smile as they touched hers.

“Don’t tell me
this
is part of my surprise as well,” she murmured.

“Only if you believe in fate.”

“Absolutely.”

She felt his hand pushing up under her sweater, his fingers fanning out over her belly, large and rough-skinned and unbearably gentle. Her skin tightened with goose-flesh, but not from the cold air skating along her bared midriff. It was Jack’s touch ... his wonderful sorcerer’s touch. Any shred of disappointment she might have harbored, any lingering wish that this studio had been a diamond ring instead, was banished by the warmth of Jack’s lips, and the great, comforting bulk of his body pressing against hers.

“I’ll freeze,” she protested with a laugh as he tugged her sweater over her head.

“No, you won’t,” he whispered. “I won’t let you.” In the darkness, as she wriggled out of her jeans, she was aware of him shedding his clothes. Then came the shock of his heat against her own nakedness.

She could feel his hardness, an urgent pressure against her hip. She reached down and began stroking him. She loved pleasuring him like this. She loved even the feel of him in her hand, velvet-skinned and so completely male, rising and stiffening with each thrust. Jack groaned, and she felt a shudder pass through him.

“Is my hand too cold?” she whispered teasingly.