Suddenly a Bride (12 page)

“See? I told you. He doesn’t light her fire. Doesn’t ring her bells.” Eve reached across the table and laid her hand on Elizabeth’s. “I’ve got a good five or six years on you—”

“Try twelve,” Chessie interrupted, toasting the air with her wineglass. “But do go on. We’re hanging on your every word of wisdom, O Ancient One.”

“Ignore her. She never drinks, and now you know why. What I’m saying is, I’m a few years older than you, and I know I’m still a long way from looking for somebody
comfortable.
I’ll bet you Richard isn’t, either. I mean, I read his books. Maybe Richard isn’t getting any, but Jake LaRue sure is. Ergo, Richard wants it, too. It only makes sense.”

“Jake LaRue saves the world and shoots people,” Elizabeth reminded Eve. “Does that mean Richard wants to shoot people, too?”

“Back to you, O Ancient One,” Chessie said, checking her cell phone for messages. “Ah, he called back.
Good. Now he can wait for me. Eve? You were saying something profound?”

“Yes, I know. But now I’ve lost my train of thought. Oh, right. No, Elizabeth, he doesn’t want to shoot people. At least no more than any of us do.”

Chessie, who had been in the midst of sipping from her water glass, had to quickly put the glass down and grab up her napkin to catch the dribbles. “No more than any of us do? You want to explain that one, killer?”

Eve glared at her. “Are you going to keep interrupting me? Because I’m trying to make a point here. I understand men. After all, I’ve been married, remember?”

“Yes, we know. Twice.”

“Once! I keep telling you that the first one didn’t count.”

Elizabeth couldn’t help herself. She felt the laugh begin low in her belly, and biting her bottom lip to keep it from exploding from her simply wasn’t going to work. Her laughter poured from her, her new delight in life, in her new friends. Just the way she
saw
life at the moment was so delicious, so
freeing,
that she was soon giggling like the twins, laughing at silliness until tears rolled down her cheeks.

“That is one happy woman,” Eve confided as Elizabeth tried in vain to control her case of the giggles. “You know what that means, don’t you? She’s getting some.”

Chessie turned wide eyes toward Elizabeth, her expression one of such panic that all Elizabeth could do was nod her agreement with Eve before she went off in another paroxysm of pure unadulterated glee.

E
lizabeth sat in the darkened living room, the only light coming from the television set and a show about what some committee of people who’d never scrubbed a bathroom floor on their hands and knees in their lives considered the top ten bathrooms in the country.

A shower stall without a door or curtain, but just open to the rest of the bathroom—
and
complete with handheld sprayers? What idiot thought that could work? It didn’t take a genius to know the havoc Danny and Mikey could wreak with an arrangement like that. She’d have to build an ark.

A bathtub you could fill up to the very top and then even let the water run over the sides and into some reservoir or something? Who paid the water bill, for one
thing? Had these people never heard about conserving natural resources, for another?

But most importantly—did none of the people who owned these Taj Mahal bathrooms have children? It had taken her nearly an hour to clean up the bathroom tonight after both boys had been bathed. How was it possible to get so dirty playing miniature golf?

Elizabeth did know how, however, as she’d watched. The boys had definitely found and become attached to every bit of dust and dirt they could on the course, not to mention the disaster that had been their rainbow-flavored water-ices that had been served up in double-size but flimsy paper cups that had begun to leak almost immediately. A little colored melting ice, a little dust, and
bam,
instant huge, sticky, grimy mess.

And she’d like to know how Mikey managed to get some of that mess
inside
his sneaker. Even with two bath towels put in with them, she could still hear the thump-thump of four size-five sneakers going round and round in the dryer.

But she’d had fun overall. The boys had been not only well behaved but actually quite amusing. They weren’t babies anymore, but more like real people. And although he hadn’t stopped at the apartment a second time, or even called and left a message while she was gone, the twins had told her that Will wanted to take them all to the waterslides at Dorney Park tomorrow.

How dirty could the twins get in a pool?

Life, by and large, was actually pretty good. Because she was finally allowing it to be pretty good, to be fun
again, to not feel guilty when she smiled, or went a day without thinking about Jamie.

She’d had sex. No, she’d had great sex. And that had been fun, too.

Elizabeth had no thoughts about a long-term relationship with Will Hollingswood. She certainly wasn’t thinking in terms of forever or shoes and rice and all of that. She doubted he was thinking along those lines, either.

And that was fine. That was good. Hopping into bed with the man couldn’t by any stretch of the imagination be seen as taking baby steps back into life, but he’d shown her that there still was a life out there for her.

What she and Will had, if they could be said to have anything after only one night together, was an adult relationship. What she and Richard had—and they definitely did have something—was a mature relationship.

Clearly, if the way she’d been feeling all day could be used as a yardstick, an adult relationship beat a mature relationship, hands down.

Even if some of the bloom had gone off her euphoria since last night, and she was feeling a little sad that Will hadn’t called her. He’d stopped by when she was out having lunch with Chessie and Eve, and that was nice, but that was also it. He hadn’t tried to contact her again. She didn’t think she’d disappointed him in bed. He certainly hadn’t acted like a man who’d been disappointed.

Had she been too willing? After all, they barely knew each other.

Did it matter? Again, she wasn’t looking for a hus
band. She already had one waiting in the wings if that was what she wanted, right?

Widowhood had been a cocoon—first one of necessity and then, probably, one of choice. It was safer in the cocoon, just her and her boys. But the twins were growing up; it wasn’t as if she could stack bricks on their heads and keep them little, totally dependent on her, as she was on them.

So it had been time to emerge from the cocoon, to see if she could spread her new wings, be a butterfly. Will understood that; he was a man of the world.

Richard had offered her a bigger cocoon, that’s all. Will offered her nothing but the sky. It was up to her what to do with it.

“You’re not eighteen anymore,” she told herself out loud. “You don’t have to marry the man just because you slept with him. That’s what adult relationships are all about.”

Maybe it would be better if she simply didn’t see Will again, outside the baseball practices and games, where she had to see him.

She took a deep breath and let it out on a sigh. Well, that thought had taken the rest of the air out of her brand-new balloon, hadn’t it?

Elizabeth lifted the remote and pointed it toward the television, feeling she’d seen far enough into the lives of the rich and ridiculous, and began clicking through the channels.

Infomercial. The life cycle of the honeybee. Infomercial. She paused with her finger over the button to
watch Lucy and Ethel work on an assembly line in a chocolate factory, smiling even though she’d seen that episode of
I Love Lucy
a thousand times. Then she moved on through three channels in a row, all dealing with true crimes, complete with gory details and a commentator who seemed much too cheerful to be talking about a guy hiring a hit man to kill his wife. Infomercial—this one for a tiny bit of plastic that supposedly hid your bra straps, gave you instant cleavage and relieved backaches. If you ordered now, you got two of them for the price of one.

“Which is still about five million times more than that bit of plastic cost to manufacture,” she grumbled, wondering what was wrong with her. Usually she laughed at these things.

And she’d been so happy—no, slap happy—just ten hours ago in the restaurant with Chessie and Eve.

Maybe it was because Annie’s husband had decided at the last minute to come along to the miniature golf course, which had made her feel like a third wheel, even with the boys so clearly enjoying themselves. Maybe it had been the way Todd Sr. had stood behind Annie and helped her time a putt that had to avoid the slowly rotating blades of a wooden windmill. Maybe it was the way the two of them teased and seemed to finish each other’s sentences…and seemed so complete in one another.

Maybe, after an evening of glorious sex and an afternoon of wine and girlish giggles, she was lonely.

Maybe she missed Will. Not the sex. Will.

Suddenly she felt homesick for her cocoon. Life was easier when you didn’t
feel.

The phone rang, nearly sending her heart into her throat, and she grabbed at it even as she looked at the mantel clock to see it was past eleven. Phone calls after eleven at night or before eight in the morning were never good news. At times like this, “Who died?” was what she wanted to ask when she picked up the phone, even as she was saying a cautious hello.

“Elizabeth? You answered quickly. I was worried I might wake you.”

“Richard?” Elizabeth cleared her mind of both bad thoughts about her mother maybe taking a header in her Florida kitchen and her secondary assumption—which was
then you’re not Will?
and tried to slow her heartbeat. “No, I haven’t gone to bed yet. Did you try to call earlier? Another mother from the baseball team and I took the boys out for a totally unhealthy dinner, and then we all went miniature golfing. Danny had a hole in six,” she added, smiling. “It was his best hole of the night, and Mikey hit one ball over the—”

“Elizabeth, I’m coming home,” Richard interrupted. “I’m already at the gate, and my plane boards in five minutes, so please excuse me for cutting you off. I have a driver picking me up at the airport, but I’d like you to be at the house when I arrive. I imagine Elsie can come over and stay with the boys if you think they shouldn’t be alone.”

Well, of course I can’t leave them here alone,
Elizabeth thought. And did he have to sound like this was
some Mother Hen complex he disagreed with, or was she just overreacting? She adored Richard, but he did seem to believe he was the center of the universe.

Oops. And she was his employee. She’d forgotten that part for a moment. This wasn’t Richard the maybe-fiancé speaking. This was her boss.

“Richard? Are you all right? Where are you, anyway?”

“Denver Airport, which is probably very nice, but I’d rather be on the plane, with someone offering me a pillow and blanket. And definitely a stiff drink, except that I’m already higher than the proverbial kite on pain meds and muscle relaxants, and clumsy as it seems I am, that’s probably not a good idea.”

“Clumsy, you? You’re in pain? What happened? Did you fall?” Not her mother, then, but Richard. And her mother was only seven years older than Richard. And why was she suddenly thinking about
that?

“Fell, tumbled, went ass over teacups—you name it, I did it. Getting out of the damn hotel shower, and I never did figure out how to use all the jets and shower-heads. Water jets they give you, but no rubber bath mats.”

“They probably would clash with the overall effect,” Elizabeth said quietly, the memory of the luxury bathrooms still in her mind. “Did you break anything?”

“No, the shower is still in one piece,” Richard said, a bit of his humor finally coming through. “Look, Elizabeth, we’ve canceled the remainder of my appearances, and all I want to do is get home and get my doctor to
order the damn MRI that was suggested, to make sure I didn’t do more than what the emergency room people said I did.”

“Which is…?” Elizabeth asked, aware that Richard had said
damn
twice. He must really be in pain.

“Pulled muscles in my back and some mild contusions—in other words, I somehow managed to skin my damn knee on the shower drain when I went down. The only direct flight was in to Philly Airport, so I won’t be back in Allentown until at least six. Can I count on you being at the house?”

“Yes, of course I’ll be there. Where else would I be?” And then she winced, both at the thought of Will possibly taking them all to Dorney Park tomorrow afternoon that had raced into her head, and at the realization that she wasn’t exactly jumping out of her skin with excitement at the thought of having Richard home. Then there was a third thought: How do I tell him I’ve decided my answer to his proposal is no…when the poor man is obviously in pain?

“Good. Thank you, Elizabeth. Ah, they’re calling first class. If I start now, I can probably hobble onto the damn plane by Tuesday.”

Elizabeth hit Off on the phone, ending the call Richard had already terminated, and sat back in the comfortably overstuffed chair. Well, now, hadn’t reality sneaked up on her, just when she was beginning to like feeling like a girl again, like a woman again.

But she was a woman. A woman with two kids, a job and plenty of responsibility. Still, it had been fun while
it lasted, even if it hadn’t lasted quite a full twenty-four hours.

As Richard and his strong dose of muscle relaxants would say:
damn.

Richard Halstead the writer was urbane, endlessly interesting, sometimes too absorbed in his work, but wonderfully intelligent.

Richard Halstead the man was kind, generous, polite and prone to avoid social engagements in favor of a round of golf or a snifter of brandy, a comfortable chair and the company of a good book.

Richard Halstead the patient could be taken out into the gardens and shot, and no jury would convict her.

He would move a little wrong in his chair and his yelp of pain would have her running to his side, sure he’d just popped a rib or something. At least for the first half-dozen times. After that, she just said, “Then don’t move that way if you know it hurts when you move that way.”

And he seemed to have this built-in radar that told him when she’d sat down to drink a cup of coffee, or had stolen a moment to phone over to the apartment to see if the twins were all right, and even when she’d opened the door to the bathroom, hoping for a few moments of privacy.

Because the moment she thought she finally had a free moment to herself was when she’d hear, “Elizabeth!”

“Elizabeth, I hate to ask, but could you possibly
make me a can of chicken noodle soup? With crackers?”

“Elizabeth, can you find my other reading glasses? These pinch at the nosepiece. And there’s a book in my office I’d like to have. I can’t remember the title, but it has a blue cover. Something on criminology. Or was that forensics? It’s blue. I do know that.”

“Elizabeth! I dropped the remote again. Could you come in here and pick it up for me? If you can’t come right now I’ll do it my—
Ow,
dammit!”

“He’s worse than the twins. I should tie the thing around his neck with a big blue bow. That’s what I should do,” Elizabeth muttered as she walked through the foyer to answer the bell. It might be Sunday, but the doorbell had been ringing all morning with Get Well deliveries from Richard’s agent, his publisher, his publicists and even from the radio station in Boulder he was supposed to be interviewing with at that very moment. John, his agent, had sent flowers and a bottle of aged brandy—how he’d managed that on a Sunday morning was anybody’s guess. Elizabeth was beginning to consider cracking the thing open and chugging from the lovely brown bottle.

She pulled open the door, prepared to see another delivery person bending his head around an oversize vase of expensive hothouse flowers.

“Oh,” she said, stepping back a pace. “Will. It’s you.”

Suddenly, for as uninhibited as he’d made her feel, as she’d gloried in feeling only two nights ago, she now felt as if she should cross her arms over her breasts or something in belated modesty.

“I’ve shown up at a bad time?” he asked, stepping into the foyer. “I did something stupid yesterday, Elizabeth. I suggested to Dan that we all go to Dorney Park today. I shouldn’t have done that without clearing it with you. I realized that almost immediately. But now I don’t want to let them down. Mike told me you were over here. I thought you said you were on vacation until your boss got back.”