On Common Ground (Harlequin Super Romance) (12 page)

“A nature lover?” Walt asked. “Then she should pay us a visit on Orcas.”

“No, we haven’t met the mother, just his father,” Daphne provided the necessary information. “They’re actually on sabbatical this semester, but Stanfield made a quick trip back—something to do with the trustees. He seems nice enough.” She sniffed at the end of the sentence.

Lilah glanced at her sideways. It was the sniff, not the words that caught her attention.

“Didn’t Justin have a sister, too? Do you remember her?” Mimi leaned forward to look around Daphne at Lilah. When Lilah didn’t respond, she tapped her on the leg. “She was a few years ahead of us. Kind of weird, homeschooled, I think. A real brain. Valedictorian, too.”

Lilah shook her head. “I’m not sure. There were a lot of brains who went to Grantham. They scared the he—” she saw her mother raise an eyebrow “—the heck out of me,” she corrected herself.

Daphne nodded toward Justin, who had just stepped into the batter’s box. “Well, I feel totally confident with our current batter.”

“C’mon, Justin,” her father called out. “Two runs and we beat these upstarts.”

Justin glanced over and flashed a broad smile.

Lilah could feel herself blushing even though she knew he hadn’t really directed it at her, or had he?

Justin dug in with the toes of his front shoe. As he did, his hips swayed in his well-worn jeans.

A catcall could be heard from the stands. And it was decidedly high-pitched and feminine.

The pitcher wound up.

Justin left the pitch alone as it barely skimmed the dirt. “Scared to throw one over the plate, huh?” he heckled the pitcher.

Mimi put two fingers against her teeth and whistled loudly.

Walt watched her with admiration. “You know, I always wanted to be able to do that,” he admitted.

“The benefits of an underbite,” she replied. “By the way, Lilah?”

She only glanced over after the pitcher threw another ball. This one was so high that Justin caught it with his arm extended and threw it back himself.

“Somewhere in between, next time,” he shouted.

Lilah glanced at Mimi. “What?” she asked, her head turned away from the action.

“I hope it’s not an imposition, but I’d invited Press’s friend Matt to join us for dessert, forgetting totally about the pig roast going on now. But I don’t see why he can’t meet you here instead,” Mimi said. “The kid’s really interested in your work in Congo, and I think he could be useful to you. He’s studied international relations, so he’s got the theory under his belt. And think how you’re perennially short-handed in the main office in the capital. You know kids that age. They’re so tech savvy, he could probably update all your computer software, get it working faster and make data more easily available to help speed up diagnoses. Who knows? You might even find a use for him in the field.”

Matt.
Lilah cringed at the memory of her sleepy behavior in his presence last night. “We
could
use someone to help with evaluating the cell phone pilot project,” she thought out loud. “Okay, tell him to come. Though I can’t promise him anything remotely resembling a paycheck—”

“No problem. From what I understand, he worked all through his first year at Yale— A student, majoring in Political Science. Like I said, no dummy. Very genuine. He’s just a bit shy about talking himself up.”

“All right, already. I’m sold. If you vouch for him, that’s good enough for me.”

Mimi pulled out her phone and texted Matt. “Good. I’ll tell him that we’re not going to a restaurant as I’d originally thought, and he’s to come by here in a little while instead.”

“All young people should be encouraged to serve a greater good,” Daphne went on with a knowing harrumph. “And talking to someone in your position will give him confidence, if nothing else. A mentor can make such a difference. I know from talking to Justin that without the influence of his mentor, a woman named Roberta Zimmerman—a real pedagogical dynamo at Bank Street School, let me tell you—he never would have gotten to where he is today.”

“What is it with you and Justin anyway?” Lilah asked. “You’ve only just met.”

“True, but you can tell a lot about someone from first impressions.”

“And your mother’s first impressions are legendary,” her father said. He clapped after Justin hit a fly ball foul down the first baseline. “Straighten it out, and you’re golden,” he called out.

There were shouts and whistles. Lilah shifted her attention to the field. The pitcher readied with his mitt in front of his face, shielding the ball in his other hand. Then he separated his hands and lowered his pitching arm to lob the ball underarm.

Lilah held her breath.

“What I was getting at was the fact that he’s dyslexic,” her mother said.

There was a crack of the bat.

Lilah turned to look at her. “What?”

And that’s when the foul tip caught her in the side of the head.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

N
OREEN
FINISHED
DISCUSSING
the problems in the guest bathroom with her contractor—the rainwater showerhead was not centered correctly and the drain was definitely not the one she had chosen…she’d asked for square holes, not round—before wishing him a good weekend putting his boat in the water on the Jersey Shore. The man lived to go deep-sea fishing. She didn’t begrudge him that. She just wished he employed a better plumber.

She waved goodbye then returned by the kitchen to the small room off the conservatory in the left wing of the house. She knew she’d find her husband there in his newly finished study. The old library was in the process of becoming a state-of-the-art entertainment room. Not that she had anything against reading. She was, after all, a member of two book clubs, one just for books in French.

No, the reason she had relegated Conrad’s study to the back of the house was that he used it for smoking his wretched cigars. True, the penetrating smell had a certain appeal, conjuring up the privileged old world of exclusive men’s clubs—nothing her late father, the struggling family doctor, would have been allowed to join, that’s for bloody well sure. “Consider your daughter’s health,” she had admonished Conrad soon after she showed him the ultrasound photo of their daughter in utero. “I will not have her lungs poisoned or elevate her risk for heart disease.”

He had agreed not to smoke anywhere near the baby.

“And I would also like my daughter to continue to have a father as she grows up into a fine young woman,” she had added.

“My other children have never shown any desire to have me watch them grow up,” he had scoffed.

Noreen could feel the tinge of sadness beneath the sarcasm, but that was a whole other conversation. Instead, she’d said, “Did you ever think that maybe I would like you to keep me company as we both watch her grow up?”

Conrad had immediately softened. Noreen remembered a particularly tender night of lovemaking and a black pearl necklace on her place at the table at the end of the week. The first had touched her heart. The second had appealed to her vanity, something she reluctantly acknowledged.

Still, he hadn’t stopped smoking. Hence, the mega insulated, jumbo filtering system that served his new study.

And that’s where she found him now, puffing thoughtfully, a tumbler of vodka in his right fist, the latest Harlan Coben novel on his lap. He had already changed clothes, his bespoke suit for work replaced by khaki trousers and a Brooks Brothers white polo shirt. On his feet, Noreen couldn’t help noticing that he wore well-worn boat shoes with no socks, just like his son. Around his waist, only slightly less trim at sixty than when he was Press’s age, he wore a needlepoint belt with the crest of Grantham emblazoned in a running pattern. She had needlepointed it for him for his birthday last year, and he had been quite taken with it. She would have made one for her stepson, as well, but she knew it was something Press wouldn’t be caught dead in. Needlepoint belts just didn’t seem to go with the tattoo of a little-known dinosaur fossil that he had on his forearm.

Conrad looked up when she came in and smiled appreciatively. She had showered and changed into impeccably fitting designer jeans and a crisp white shirt, the cuffs expertly rolled up and the tail tucked into her trim waist. It had been a real struggle to regain her figure after Brigid’s birth, but one she had refused to give up on. Her large yellow-diamond engagement ring, four carats, Tiffany setting, gleamed on her left hand. A single gold bangle rubbed comfortably with her Patek Philippe watch on her wrist.

They had been married for eight years already, and she knew without question that his joy at seeing her was still genuine. Just as she knew that she found his healthy, but somewhat jowly, face and shock of white-gray hair still as attractive as ever.

“And how are the renovations going? Still burning up my hard-earned money?” he asked, not totally facetiously.

“Not as quickly as I would like, and not without issues. I won’t bore you with the shower mix-up in the guest bath.”

“For which I am eternally grateful.” He smiled and closed his book, shifting it to the side table. Then he patted the arm of his leather club chair, a signal for her to join him.

She readily slipped on the rounded arm of the chair and scooted around to face him. Their eyes were almost level. “It’s just the process can get frustrating, especially since I’m in the house much of the day. Sometimes I wonder why I obsess about it so much. In any case, the contractor is one of the few ‘green’ builders in Grantham, and since I think it’s important to practice what you preach, I’m not about to let him go.”

How the builder reconciled building “green” with burning gallons and gallons of fuel every weekend on his boat was a contradiction she had never quite figured out. But then Noreen had discovered long ago that almost everyone was a mass of contradictions.

“Well, tonight you can put all that aside,” Conrad said. He picked up one of Noreen’s hands and brought it to his lips, offering a tender kiss.

“Tonight?” she asked. Her brain went to mush as he nibbled on her fingertips.

He brought her hand to his chest and covered it with his own. “Reunions? The gathering at Lion Inn? Some of my classmates were members there. Hadn’t I mentioned it?”

“You may have said something vaguely about it, but I don’t think so. Otherwise I would have put it on my calendar.” Like most mothers, Noreen lived and died by her calendar. “Unfortunately, tonight’s out of the question. Don’t you remember this morning? Brigid and her friend are going to the new Pixar film, and then afterward she’s invited her here for a sleepover.”

“Can’t Cook watch them for you?”

Noreen got up off the chair, letting his hand slip away, and walked over to the French doors. “No, Cook has the weekend off.” She undid the latch and opened the doors wide. The high-powered air cleansing system was handling the odor of the Nicaraguan tobacco all right, but she needed the separation. It was typical of Conrad that he assumed her schedule would mesh seamlessly with his at a moment’s notice.

“I don’t know why you don’t get a nanny like all of our friends,” Conrad said.

“We’ve been through this before,” Noreen said, trying to keep the irritation out of her voice. Conrad enjoyed picking fights over nothing, she knew, not because he was argumentative by nature, but because he was spoiled. Anything that distracted those around him from giving him their absolute fullest attention he found annoying.

Still, despite all that, he adored her. As—despite the objections of her friend Vivian—she did him. Moreover, she refused to go along with Vivian’s armchair psychology that Conrad represented a father figure for the father she had lost at a transitional stage in her own life. As far as she was concerned, love was another of those things that was a mass of contradictions.

So with a patience borne of love, she went through the litany of rejoinders that she brought up whenever he broached the subject of child care. “I enjoy raising our daughter myself.” That was the selfish answer. “I feel it’s important.” The moralistic response. “When she grows up and sees a psychiatrist, I want to be the subject of her complaints, not a series of strangers whose names she can’t even remember.” An homage of sorts to Woody Allen.

Of course there was always the other obvious reason—the possibility that her husband would repeat his pattern and take up with the next nanny to come along. She knew that others thought this the reason for her reluctance to have help. She had once heard Mimi say it to Press when she thought Noreen was out of earshot.
They can believe what they like,
Noreen thought. Unlike everyone else, she actually gave Conrad credit for being able to love her and remain faithful.

“I wanted to keep Brigid all to myself, especially when she was so small and defenseless. So, you see, I was and am just being selfish, dear,” she said, wrapping up her argument.

“No, you’re not. You’re terribly loving, selfless even. I don’t deserve you.” And as if to reaffirm his affection, Conrad made the ultimate sacrifice and put out his cigar.

Noreen circled back to his chair and kneeled in front of him. “You know, now that she’s no longer a baby, you might find it enjoyable to stay in and play with Brigid and her school chum. I’m planning on making homemade pizzas and then playing Candy Land.” She took his hand in hers.

“I’m not sure if I’m the best role model. I always cheat at board games.”

She cocked her head. “Maybe your daughter could be
your
role model and show you a gentler side to life?”

“I think it’s rather late, don’t you?”

“It’s never too late.” Or at least she hoped. “You know, one of these days I’m going to ask you to contribute to your…our daughter’s upbringing.”

“Didn’t I pay for that expensive nursery school? I never knew that Quakers could be so mercenary.”

Noreen shook her head. “It was a terrific environment that instilled Brigid with a sense of cooperation and confidence.” She had often wished she could send her husband there, as well. “I’m not talking about money, and you know it.”

He leaned back and eyed her slowly. “My job is demanding. My daily commute extends the hours even further.” Conrad was a founding partner in a private equity firm on Wall Street.

“No one’s denying that.”

He was silent for a thoughtful moment. “Is this conversation some roundabout way of telling me you’re planning on leaving me?”

“Not at all. I’m merely saying that I consider myself extremely lucky to be able to raise our child without having to worry about how to pay for the bread on the table. Yet—”

“Ah, the all-important qualifier.” He grinned knowingly.

Despite the smile, Noreen noticed he squinted a little nervously. She charged on. “Yet, as important as I think it is to be here for Brigid, I also believe I should show her—and show myself—that her mother is capable of accomplishing things outside our home. There are only so many PTA functions I can volunteer for or nonprofit boards I can sit on. All
they
want is
your
name and money anyway.”

“Last I heard, both were still worth something,” he said with a degree of pride.

“Of course they are,” she agreed. “But you know what I’m getting at. How many pillows can I needlepoint? Pretty soon you won’t be able to see our bed beneath all the cushions.”

“There are other beds in the house,” he offered.

She gave him a look of exasperation.

“You want to visit your mother in Belfast?”

Noreen shook her head. “No, she was just here for Christmas and New Year’s. And now she plans on coming over this summer again.”

Conrad raised his eyebrows at that last bit of news, but he held his tongue. Nonetheless, he leaned over to reach for his drink. “Perhaps you want to go to work, then?” he asked after a healthy sip.

“To tell you the God’s honest truth, I’m not sure exactly what I want,” Noreen replied. “I’m still mulling things over, but, yes, I have some ideas. And before you say anything—money’s not the issue. I’ve never defined myself by a paycheck.”
Unlike you,
she could have added but didn’t. “It’s more that I feel the need to contribute to society.”

“But you do, you know,” Conrad said with all sincerity. “You take care of Brigid and me in ways I can’t thank you enough for. You make us both very happy.”

Noreen smiled in appreciation. “I’m glad. And that
is
rewarding. But not enough. Don’t you understand? Several years ago when I got inquiries from Allied Irish Banks in Dublin and UNESCO in Paris—following up on internships that I’d had with them in university—I didn’t feel it was fair to you or Brigid. It was one thing to do consulting from Grantham, but given the travel these positions would have entailed, I turned them down. After all, my home is here.” She paused. “But now she’s older. And I’m older. Not to mention, you’re older, too.” The remnants of her Irish lilt made the end of the sentence sound almost like a question.

But then Noreen got serious. “As I said, I’m still considering my options, but I believe it’s time to adjust my priorities. I owe it to myself and my late father.” She paused to compose herself for a moment, then cleared her throat. “But I must tell you—whatever I decide on, it will entail a greater commitment from you in terms of Brigid. I’m not talking about being a househusband, just providing greater flexibility in terms of being here.”

Conrad finished off the rest of his vodka. The ice cubes rattled in the empty glass as he put the cut-crystal tumbler on the coaster. “I’m sorry you won’t be able to get out tonight, but I hope you don’t mind if I pop over to campus, catch up with some of my old mates?” He simply ended the discussion by changing the subject.

Noreen could tell he was miffed. He wasn’t used to having her assert her needs over his. Still, that did not mean she was about to give up. She loved him. But she also needed to be true to herself. She rose. “Just don’t be too late, darling. It’s your turn to take Brigid to soccer first thing tomorrow morning.”