Suddenly a Bride (7 page)

She lifted her face so that she could meet him halfway. If nothing else, curiosity was winning out.

“Mom?
Mom!
Can I get out of bed? I’m thirsty!”

Will stepped back. “I thought it would take fireworks to wake up those kids.”

“Or the sound of a pin dropping on cotton. They have an inner sense that tells them when I’ve just slipped into a bubble bath or I just picked up the phone to call my mother—that sort of thing. I don’t know how they do it, but they do it. I’m sorry, Will.”

“I should be going anyway,” he told her, heading for the door. “Practice is at nine tomorrow morning.”

“Mom!”

“Yes, I’ll…we’ll see you then. And we did have a wonderful time tonight.”

She closed the door behind him, fought the urge to lean herself up against the wood and sigh a girlish sigh and then headed for the cabinet to get Mikey a glass of water. No, she should make that two glasses of water, or Danny would be sure to ask for one. And then, with them both awake, they really needed to brush their teeth and get into their pajamas and…

She nearly dropped the glass when she heard the knock on the door.

“It’s only me, Elizabeth,” she heard Will call through the door.

“Uh…it’s open?”

He stepped inside, holding on to the pair of child booster seats. “I figured you might need these,” he said, putting them down on the table.

“Oh, yes, of course. I’m sorry I didn’t think of that. Thank you.”

“You’re welcome. Oh, and one other thing.”

Elizabeth gripped the glass tightly.
Here it comes. He’s going to kiss me. What do I do if he kisses me? Close my mouth? Open my mouth? Fall on the floor in a dead faint?

Will walked past her to lift the lid on the cookie jar. “I thought I’d take one for the road,” he said, holding up a cookie like some sort of prize. “See you tomorrow.”

“Yes…see you tomorrow,” she echoed, lifting her hand to give him a small finger-wave.

This time, after the door closed, she counted to ten, waiting to hear his car move off down the drive.

Then she sat down in one of the kitchen chairs and laughed until Mikey padded into the room to remind her he was still thirsty.

Once back on the main road, Will used his hands-free cell phone to call his cousin. She answered after five rings, her voice sounding as if he’d woken her up.
Good.

“Chessie, this isn’t going to work.”

“Wha…who—Will? What time is it?”

He shot a look at the dashboard clock. “Not quite
midnight. And I mean it, Chessie. This isn’t going to work. I’m going to call it off.”

“You’re going to call what off? For God’s sake, Will, it’s midnight. Just because you can operate on less than eight hours’ sleep doesn’t mean the rest of us can. Call me back in the morn—Oh, wait. Um…does this have anything to do with Elizabeth? I thought you told me you were just taking the three of them to a ball game. Ah, man, Will, what did you do?”

“Nothing,” he told her, looking to his left before pulling out onto the highway. “I did nothing, I should do nothing, I am doing nothing. It was a stupid idea, Chessie. She’s not my type.”

“If you mean she isn’t cold and ambitious and only out for herself, then no, she isn’t.”

“Leave Kay out of this,” Will told her, concentrating more on his driving than he was on what Chessie was saying. Always a mistake.

“Aha! So you knew just who I meant, didn’t you?”

“Never mind that. I’m just telling you—”

“Never mind that? You wake me up in the middle of the night, and then don’t even give me a moment to gloat when I score a major hit? Hi, Will, this is Chessie—remember me? I
gloat.
I live to gloat.”

“Yeah, yeah, score one for Chessie. Can we get back to the reason I called, please? Because your plan is full of holes, Chess. There’s no such thing as just waking someone up. You have to figure out what to do with them once they’re awake.”

“You could be nice and hang up and call them again
in the morning,” his cousin said. She then added quickly, “Okay, okay, I know you’re not talking about me. You’re talking about Elizabeth. What did you do, Will? Turn on all your boyish charm in one go?”

“This has nothing to do with me. I’m only saying that Elizabeth…that she’s…” How about that? Him, the silver-tongued lawyer, at a loss for words. “She could get hurt.”

He could hear Chessie getting out of bed. Well, either she’d thrown back the covers and gotten out of bed, or she had just levitated a good three feet above the mattress. “William Hollingswood…what…did…you…do?”

“
Nothing.
I didn’t do a single thing. All right, almost. I was going to kiss her good-night. Hell, it’s the natural end to an evening. But I didn’t. Chessie, I don’t think the woman’s been out on a date since her husband died. How do I say this and not have you crawl through the phone and murder me? Okay, I can’t. She’s
ripe,
Chess. Ripe for the plucking.”

“But you won’t…pluck. Right?”

Will closed his eyes for a moment. “No, I won’t. But she knew I wanted to. She’s a nice woman, Chess. A lady, a mom, for crying out loud.”

“Not your type.”

“God, no.”

“Did you
want
to kiss her? Or was this one of those, ‘oh, hell, we’re here, why not’ deals?”

“I don’t know,” Will said honestly. “What I do know is that Elizabeth is the forever type, and I’m not. On my
own I never would have asked her out. So, since you’re the one who got me into this, how do I shut this thing down without hurting her?”

His cousin was silent for a few moments, and then surprised him. “There’s a
thing?
Really? You know, Will, it could just be that Elizabeth doesn’t find you all that captivating. Did you think about that one? Okay, so you took her out. One time. Do you really think you’ve now ruined her for all other men or something? God, that’s arrogant.”

“You’re right.” Will pulled into his own driveway and cut the engine. “It was one date. And not even a date, since we had the twins with us. It was just a friendly evening. I’m overreacting,” he said, sitting back in the bucket seat. “Of course I am. I’m being an ass, and I’m sorry. And I’ve already asked her out for tomorrow night. Why did I do that, Chessie?”

“Yes, you were, and I have no idea. Unless, of course, Elizabeth packs more of a punch than she thinks she does. Does she, Will? Is this phone call about you being worried about her or you being worried about yourself?”

“Go back to bed, Chess,” Will said, cutting the connection. And then he sat in his car for another five minutes, trying to answer his cousin’s question. “One more day. I’ll give it one more day,” he said at the end of those five minutes, and then he went inside, feeling he’d at least begun to back away…even if Elizabeth didn’t know that yet.

S
am The Dog had somehow managed to wrap his leash around Elizabeth’s bare legs in the time it took to grab a folding lawn chair from the back of the SUV, and the boys were already halfway down the hill to the field by the time she could follow them.

She felt a small pang as she watched them so blithely desert her—and not only because they’d left their bats and mitts behind in the backseat. They were growing up. Sometimes it was as if they grew an inch or more overnight, and they didn’t seem to need her the way they once had…the way she’d always clung to them, probably too tightly, once Jamie was gone.

They’d just finished first grade, had been away from her for nearly seven hours a day. Now they were
playing baseball. Tomorrow they’d be leaving for college.

“And now let’s all have a pity party for the overprotective mommy in the crowd,” Elizabeth grumbled as she struggled to hold on to chair, bats, gloves and Sam The Dog while navigating the slope down to the ball field. “Sam The Dog! Stop pulling on the leash!”

Her mother would have told her that she was attempting a “Lazy Man’s Load,” trying to carry too much at one time in order to save herself a trip back up the slope to her car, and that the exercise was doomed to end in failure. And her mother would, as usual, have been right.

The lawn chair slipped out from beneath her arm, cracking her hard on her ankle bone before it hit the grass. Her reaction was to reach down to grab her ankle, a move that dislodged the two bats tucked into the crook of her other arm. She made a quick, twisting grab for them, and that’s when it happened.

Sensing the slack on his leash, Sam The Dog made a break for it, heading straight onto the field and into the midst of the players standing huddled around the coaches.

It was like watching a bowling ball strike the pins, sending them scattering everywhere.

Sam The Dog, being a border collie, immediately began trying to herd all the children back to where they were, even while the coaches seemed to be attempting to shoo him off the field.

Elizabeth left everything where it had fallen and
took off down the slope. “Sam The Dog! Sam The Dog, you come here this instant! Danny, grab his leash!”

Danny made a valiant stab at it but only ended up laid-out on his belly as Sam The Dog eluded him as he circled the children, urging them closer and closer to the pitcher’s mound.

She saw Will standing near the players’ bench, a clipboard against his chest, watching the excitement with an amused smile on his face. She hastened to where he stood, nearly breathless from running and shouting. Well, at least now she didn’t have to worry anymore about what she was going to say to him the next time she saw him.

“I’m so,
so
sorry,” she told him as Mikey finally managed to grab Sam The Dog’s leash. “He means well. He really does.”

“Mikey or the mutt?” Will asked her, his eyes still on the ball field. “He was herding them, wasn’t he? And with much more success than we’ve been having. Amazing. If we can find him a shirt that fits, we could make him the first-base coach. What’s his name? I heard you calling something, but I couldn’t catch it.”

“He’s Sam The Dog,” Elizabeth said, relieved that she and the dog weren’t going to be immediately ejected from the field.

Will turned his attention to her. “You’re kidding, right? And you call him that? Not Sam? Sam The Dog?”

“He’s Richard’s dog. Officially, he’s Samuel Thibold Devonshire, I think it is, but Richard thought that was too long, so now he’s Sam The Dog. I don’t know. It fits somehow.”

“True, I guess. But it’s so obvious. I mean, if you called him Sam The Deer that wouldn’t be so obvious. Sam The Donkey? Sam The Duck? Or, to make it simple, you could just call him STD.”

At this, Elizabeth narrowed her eyes as she looked at him. “STD? I don’t think so.”

Will smiled, covering his mouth with his hand. “Oh, right. That would seriously cut down his chances with the lady dogs, wouldn’t it?” He took two steps toward the field. “Mikey! No dogs on the field. Bring him over here.”

There were protests from the team, all of whom seemed to be almost as enthralled with Sam The Dog as he was with them.

“Come on, put some hustle into it. We’ve only got the field for another hour or so.”

Elizabeth took the leash from Mikey, telling him to get Danny and run back up the hill to get their equipment and her chair. “Once again, Will, I’m really sorry. But Richard is gone, and Sam The Dog looked so forlorn as I was leaving that I thought it wouldn’t hurt to bring him along.”

“Richard’s gone? Richard as in your boss—that Richard?” Will asked, as if that was the only thing he’d heard. “For how long?”

“We’re not sure. His publishing house keeps wanting to add new cities to his tour. A week, ten days—more? Why?”

“No reason,” Will said, taking Sam The Dog’s leash from her. “I think the pooch here will enjoy himself
more if I tie him up next to the team bench. And I just thought that might mean you’re pretty much on vacation, with your boss gone.”

Elizabeth mentally, figuratively—please, Lord, not physically, because that he could see—backed up a pace. “I have a few things to do, routine things. But yes, I suppose you could say I’m on vacation.”

“Then you’ll be staying here in town, not going anywhere. Not taking the kids to the shore or anything?”

She shook her head. “No, I hadn’t planned on it. Why?”

He seemed to mentally pull himself up short. “No reason. It’s just that we need to field ten kids—we have four outfielders, cuts down on the coaches having to chase balls—and we only have fifteen on the team. I’ll be down two for a week when Jason and Drew Keglovitz leave on vacation. So…so it’s good to know that Mikey and Danny will be available. Sam The Dog, huh?”

Elizabeth nodded. “Sam The Dog. Right. Well, um, I should go find a place that’s out of the way and let you get back to work.”

“Okay, good. I’ll…I’ll see you after practice.”

She turned away, her eyes momentarily widening in a “what the heck was that all about?” way before she picked up her lawn chair and headed for the grassy area where other parents were congregated.

“Here, put your chair down next to mine,” one of the women, a striking redhead, said, motioning for Elizabeth to join her. “Cute dog. I’m Annie Lambert. My
Todd is the one with the bright orange hair—no surprise there, right? Which little darling is yours?”

Elizabeth introduced herself as she unfolded her chair and sat down. “I’ve got two here, actually. Mikey and Danny. They’re twins.”

“Oh, how neat. Unless you’re the one up all night with them while they’re newborns, I guess. I swear, my Todd never slept through the night until he was three—years, not months. Where are they?” Annie asked, shading her eyes with her hand as she looked out over the ball field.

Thanks to her evening at the IronPigs game, Elizabeth was able to answer with some authority: “Danny’s standing at first base, and Mikey is at third.”

“Really? You have to mean the ones with those adorable blond curls sticking out from under their caps. I’m so sorry. I thought they were girls.” Annie pulled a comical face. “I was told there were a couple of girls on the team. Not that I don’t love curls, and I would hate to see them cut off. It’s bad enough their soft baby skin doesn’t stay that way. Todd’s got knees like sandpaper. He’s also got his hair shaved down to just about nothing for the summer, but that was his father’s idea. I think it’s great that your husband is letting you keep their curls this long. They grow up too fast as it is.”

“I’m a widow,” Elizabeth said, as if that excused the curls, which was ridiculous. The curls were probably ridiculous. Why hadn’t she realized that? But they were babies, her babies. And now they were growing up so fast. “They need haircuts, don’t they?”

Annie put her hand on Elizabeth’s arm. “Sweetie, you do what you want to do, and don’t listen to anyone else. They’re your kids. But, yeah, I’d say get them haircuts. Kids can be cruel.”

“They never told me about any problems in school,” Elizabeth said quietly. “But you’re right. My husband would have made sure the curls were gone by the time they were three or four. It’s just so difficult sometimes…letting them—
Ohmigod!
”

As she and Annie had been talking, Elizabeth was also watching the practice on the field. Will was throwing balls high into the air, and the fielders—they were called fielders—were running in to catch them. Trying to catch them. Watching the balls bounce and then chasing them.

It had been Danny’s turn, and he’d run in from left field just as the other players had done, opened his mouth wide just as the other players had done and held out his huge glove, just as the other players had done.

Except instead of catching the ball, or wildly swinging at the ball with his glove or watching the ball bounce and then chasing it…Danny had just stood there, and let the ball hit him on the top of his head. He immediately clapped both hands to his head and fell to the dirt, yelling, “Ow-ow-OW!”

“Steady, girl,” Annie said, swiftly grabbing Elizabeth’s arm as she half rose out of her chair. “The coaches will handle it. The last thing the kid needs is Mommy running out onto the field.”

“But he’s hurt.”

“It’s a rubber ball. Sort of. He’ll be fine. Besides,” Annie said as Elizabeth sat down once more, “he’s got all those curls to act as a cushion. There, see, he’s up and going back to the base to try again.”

“They should have been girls,” Elizabeth lamented. “I’d know what to do with girls. But I’m an only child. I don’t have a brother—or even any male cousins. I’m flying blind here, Annie. That was okay when they were younger. But now…?”

“Now you follow your instincts.”

“Really? My instinct was for me to go running down there onto the field, remember?”

“Right. You figure out what your instincts tell you, and then you do the opposite.”

Elizabeth laughed and then pointed to the field. “Look, he caught it this time!
Yea, Danny!
”

Her son heard her and looked up the hill and then smiled and waved.

“Okay, I feel better now. Anything else I should know?”

Annie shook her head. “No, now it’s my turn. How well do you know our hunky coach?”

“Will?” Elizabeth didn’t know how to answer that. “Uh…I only met him yesterday. Why?”

Annie leaned closer to her and spoke quietly. “Word is he’s quite a hit with the ladies, as my mother used to say. Handsome, rich—all that good stuff. But also the love them and leave them type.”

“Really,” Elizabeth said just as quietly, and a quick vision of Kay Quinlan popped into her mind.

“I’m just saying, you know? He’s not here because he loves coaching kids or anything. He’s here because otherwise he’d be in the lockup for talking back to some judge. He might be looking around, thinking there has to be a way he can have some fun, as long as he has to be here anyway. You’re young, you’re pretty, you’re available. And I saw the way he was looking at you earlier. I’m not insinuating anything here. Like I said, I’m just saying, you know?”

Elizabeth nodded, looking down the hill to where Will was now showing Mikey how to hold a bat. The man didn’t look as if he wished he could be somewhere else. He looked as if he was enjoying himself. He’d looked as if he’d enjoyed himself at the sporting goods store, at the pizza shop and at the ball game last night. But what did she know about how anything
looked?
“Thanks. Not that I think you’re right. But I’ll keep your warning in mind.”

“Hey, don’t do it for me. The man is a dreamboat. I’d say go for it.”

“You’re suggesting a fling, Annie? Is that it?”

“As someone who hasn’t
flung
in a long time? Yeah, I suppose I am. I’ll just live vicariously through you. And look—no, don’t look! But he was just looking up here, and he wasn’t looking at me.”

Elizabeth kept her head down, pretending to search for something in her purse. She looked, she hoped, calm, cool and completely collected. But inside she was already up and out of her chair—running for her life.

Elizabeth had already folded up her lawn chair and said goodbye to Annie after the two of them exchanged phone numbers and a promise to take all three boys for lunch after the Saturday-morning game.

Elizabeth knew she could count her friends on one hand, and even those she’d known in the apartment building where she’d lived until moving into Richard’s guesthouse had sort of faded away in the past ten months. In truth, her friends had been little more than the mothers of other children the twins played with in the park. Her life had been much too busy and much too lonely once Jamie got sick and after Jamie died.

Living at Richard’s estate had cut her off even more, she realized with a bit of a start. Other than phone conversations with his agent, publicists and others, her life had pretty much revolved around Richard; Elsie the housekeeper; Barry, the sixtyish man who took care of the grounds; and the twins.

Well, she was on a first-name basis with two of the checkers at the local supermarket. But that probably didn’t count.

So it was nice feeling connected to other women again, however tenuously. First Chessie at the bridal salon and now the bubbly Annie.

She was even developing a social life. Dinner and a movie with Will tonight; a planned dinner with Chessie and her manager, Eve D’Allesandro; and now talk of an outing with Annie and her family. She’d soon have
to buy her own electronic day planner, she thought with a small smile.

Elizabeth watched from behind the bench as Will and the other coaches handed out some papers to the team and then reminded them that bats and bases and batting helmets didn’t pick themselves up and stuff themselves in the canvas equipment bags on their own.

Mikey, who didn’t seem to know there was a hamper in his closet, immediately raised his hand, volunteering to go bring in second base, and went running off to do just that. Danny was already sliding bats into a long canvas bag, without being asked.

“Way to show initiative, Curly,” one of the coaches said, rubbing Danny’s head as he passed by him.