Three Brides, No Groom (11 page)

He blinked as if he wasn’t sure he’d heard her correctly. “Kiss
you? Now? Why?”

“Because I want to feel something besides this pain. Please…you
were eager enough not so long ago.” The pain of actually seeing Eddie was bad
enough. But that pain was only a small portion of what she felt, and Clark had
witnessed it all. She’d bared her soul, unable to hide behind a facade of
disinterest. So maybe kissing him wasn’t such a good idea, but she certainly
hadn’t expected an argument from him.

Taking matters into her own hands, she took away his option to
choose and kissed
him.
Her palms on either side of
his head, she angled her mouth and firmly planted her lips on his. He offered no
resistance, giving in fully to the exchange. As before, she was overwhelmed by
her own heated response.

He moaned and, pushing his tongue into her mouth, gained
control of the exchange.

Even as their bodies moved against each other, she didn’t know
what had prompted her to ask him to kiss her. Instinct, she suspected. Survival.
He was the anesthetic, the drug that would help ease her through this agony. His
kiss was the promise that she could, would, feel again. The reassurance her
heart demanded and craved.

Again and again he kissed her. But then he pulled back, as if
easing away in a slow deliberate process before addiction set in, while she
waged a silent war, seeking, wanting,
needing
more
of him.

Clark was refusing her. Her pride would have been badly bruised
if she had not been aware of how difficult it was for him to maintain
control.

“No more,” he gasped between labored breaths, sounding like a
man on the rack, crying for mercy. He groaned and lifted his face toward the
ceiling, exposing his throat. She kissed him there, pressing her lips to the
underside of his jaw, her tongue exploring the taste and feel of his skin.

He rewarded her with a soft moan. He reached behind her, and
she didn’t know what he was doing until the television abruptly went silent and
she realized he held the remote control in his hand.

He set the remote aside, then glanced at his wrist and swore
under his breath. “I have to get back to the office.”

She barely recognized her own voice. “Now?”

“Yes, now.”

This time his rejection
did
hurt,
but she pretended otherwise. She dropped her arms and scrambled up from the
carpet as though she hadn’t a care in the world, as if this little interlude had
meant nothing to her.

Clark stood with far less enthusiasm. “Will you be all
right?”

“Me?” she asked, as though it was a foolish question. “Of
course.”

He didn’t believe her, and his eyes said as much.

“I’ve got a million things to do. Groceries, errands…” she
said, counting them off on her fingers.

“Carol,” he said, stopping her. “I mean it.”

“So do I. I feel great. You haven’t got a thing to worry
about.”

He held her gaze for a long time, as if gauging the truth of
her words. Good old-fashioned pride saved her. As she had for months, she
pretended she was unaffected, unscathed and at peace.

She almost wished she hadn’t.

He left soon afterward, and she moved to her window and watched
him drive away. Using him as a buffer had been wrong. He deserved better. She
liked Clark, always had. Even before they became friends, she’d taken his side.
Since working for Softline, she’d discovered she more than liked him. She’d come
to appreciate him.

Clark Rusbach was quite possibly the best friend she had.

* * *

“Hi, Mom, hi, Dad,” Carol said into the telephone.
“Happy Thanksgiving.”

“Carol, sweetheart. How are you?”

“Wonderful. Great.” A small lie, but one she could rattle off
without guilt. “I’m subbing at Ballard High School this week, teaching English
and PE. I’m loving it.”

“What about your job at Softline?”

“I’m working there, too. They’ve been wonderful, giving me
whatever days I need when the school district phones.”

“You’re spending the day alone? Thanksgiving?”

Her mother made it sound like a fate worse than death. “I
already told you—Clark’s family invited me over.”

“Clark’s your new boyfriend.”

Carol had stopped counting the number of times she’d explained
otherwise. “We’re just friends.” And they were. Good friends. She’d never
experienced this kind of friendship with anyone else, male or female. While the
Door Handle project continued to consume much of his day, he found pockets of
time to be with her. He seemed to possess the uncanny ability to know exactly
when she needed a friend most.

Following the September Sunday when she’d brazenly thrown
herself at him, they both avoided any physical contact. She appreciated the
wisdom of keeping their relationship strictly platonic. Nevertheless, she
couldn’t help wondering…

“I like Clark,” her father said.

“You’ve never met him,” Carol said. Her father would champion
any man, even Bozo the clown, as long as he wasn’t Eddie.

“I don’t need to. I’m just grateful you didn’t marry that
bum.”

“Harry,” her mother chastised.

“I know, I know, you don’t want me to remind her of Eddie,” her
father muttered. “As far as I’m concerned, she had a lucky escape. I don’t care
how good a football player he is, Eddie Shapiro is no gentleman.”

While Carol agreed with him in principle, she couldn’t force
herself to admit it outright. Thoughts of Eddie still followed her like dark
shadows. Try as she might to not think about him, not a day went by that she
didn’t think about him. Much of the anger had passed. She wished him well—at
least she hoped she did. The only thing she hadn’t been able to find was
acceptance.

Each time the phone rang, her heart leaped and she prayed
against all reason that it was Eddie. She’d stopped counting the times she was
convinced she’d seen him on the street, or heard his voice across a crowded
room. Each time a small flicker of hope and joy would fire to life, then quickly
fade as reality set in.

“Harry, please,” said her mother. “Can we not talk about
Eddie?”

Her father muttered something Carol couldn’t make out. “I’m
going to have a wonderful day,” she said, forcing enthusiasm into her voice. “So
don’t worry about me.”

“You’ll be home for Christmas?”

“I’ll be there.” By hook or by crook she would find a way to
share the holiday with her family. “Give my love to everyone,” she said, trying
hard to remain cheerful. “And eat extra turkey for me.”

The goodbyes were especially difficult. She had missed
Thanksgiving with her family before. But this year it was different, and her
parents recognized it as keenly as she did herself.

Clark arrived just before noon to pick her up for dinner. He’d
trimmed his hair and was dressed casually in an Irish cable-knit sweater and
gray slacks. Carol did a double take, barely recognizing him. He looked
good—different, although she couldn’t say what it was. She found herself
staring, perplexed by what was happening, and when he frowned, she quickly
turned away.

“I made an apple pie,” she said.

“Wow. I didn’t know you baked.”

She was pleased to see that she’d impressed him. “My mother
insisted I learn two things before I left for college. How to bake an apple pie
and the proper way of cutting up a chicken.”

“The important things in life,” he teased.

“They are!” she said, perhaps a bit too defensively.

“Hey,” he said with a smile, and held up both hands. “I’m
agreeing with you.”

He opened the car door for her and then carefully placed the
plastic-covered pie in the back seat. While Carol was grateful for the
invitation to Thanksgiving dinner, she couldn’t help being curious about his
parents. He rarely mentioned them. She suspected they were older versions of
him. Successful genius types. Her one fear was that the entire dinner
conversation would revolve around things she couldn’t even pronounce, much less
understand.

She couldn’t have been more wrong. His parents were as normal
as her own. She might have suspected he was adopted if it wasn’t for the
physical similarity between him and his father.

Nadine Rusbach zeroed in on Carol’s train of thought almost
immediately. “I know what you’re thinking,” she said, as she opened the oven
door and tested the turkey.

“You do?” The comment caught Carol unawares, before she could
disguise her thoughts.

“Don’t worry,” Nadine said, closing the oven door. “Everyone
wonders how it is that two perfectly ordinary people like Sam and me could have
spawned Clark.”

Carol was fascinated.

“We knew our son wasn’t going to be like other children when he
started reading at the age of two.”

While Carol had never questioned Clark’s brilliance, she hadn’t
been aware of how intellectually superior he actually was. She thought once
again about the fact that, unlike Eddie, he didn’t need to boast about his
talents to anyone who would listen.

“He didn’t fit in with the kids at school, and he could have
gone to college when he was thirteen, but we talked it over with him and decided
against it. Sam and I wanted him to have as normal a childhood as possible.”

Clark stuck his head into the kitchen. “Are you telling tales,
Mom?”

Nadine smiled warmly at her son. “Of course. Why don’t you take
Carol downstairs and show her your first computer?”

“Mom, Carol doesn’t want—”

“Of course I do.” She loved the idea of getting a look at his
childhood firsthand.

“All right,” he said. “Just remember, you asked for this.”

He led her downstairs into the basement and flipped a switch,
bathing the area in warm light. Leading her past the washer and dryer, he
escorted her into what might have been a workshop. Only it wasn’t tools that
lined the walls, but diagrams that resembled hopelessly entangled fishing lines.
The workbench held a large, now obsolete computer.

“That’s Melba,” he said.

“You named your computer?”

“Doesn’t everyone?”

She assumed he was serious until she saw the twinkle in his
eye. “If I named mine,” she said with a smile, “it would be something like
Beelzebub.”

He chuckled. “Melba took on the personality of a demon more
than once. When I built her for my sixth-grade science—”

“You built her, er, it?”

He nodded and went on with his tale. While she listened, her
gaze roamed the workroom. Tucked between the diagrams was a small color
photograph. There was something vaguely familiar about it.

“What’s that?” she asked when he’d finished his story.

“What?”

“That.” She pointed.

“Just a picture,” he returned nonchalantly.

“Can I see it?”

He hesitated, something she had rarely seen him do. “I guess,
although I don’t understand why you’re so curious.”

She didn’t understand, either, until he reached across the
bench, unpinned the photograph and handed it to her.

She frowned as she stared into her own smiling face. She was on
the football field, pom-poms in her hands. The camera had caught her in midair,
arms and legs akimbo, her body like a giant X. The wind had whipped her hair
behind her until it looked almost as if she were flying. “That’s me,” she
whispered, completely stumped about when the shot had been taken.

“Yes, I know.” He sounded bored, and eager to move on to
another topic.

She stared at the photo. It wasn’t recent. Not from the last
couple of years, of that she was sure. Her freshman year? Sophomore?

“I took it,” Clark admitted, as if confessing to a crime.

She raised her gaze to his. “When?”

“The first time I saw you.”

Although it was entirely possible that he had attended Queen
Anne’s football games, she couldn’t remember ever seeing him there.

“When was that?” It embarrassed her that she continued to be
mesmerized by her own image, but she couldn’t stop staring at her own innocence.
How happy she’d been, carefree, and full of enthusiasm for life and all that it
held in store for her. Her eyes shone brightly; her joy spilled over. She
realized now that the photograph had been taken her freshman year before she’d
started dating Eddie. Light-years ago.

“Did I really look like this?”

“You still do,” he returned, seemingly surprised by her
question.

“I do?” She wasn’t fishing for compliments, but she no longer
viewed herself in the same way. Eddie had robbed her of her happiness, stolen it
like a thief in the night. If that wasn’t tragic enough, she’d given him
permission to do so. Every day she allowed him into her thoughts, allowed
herself to hope, to believe, that he wanted her back, he continued to rob her of
her appreciation for life.

“You’re beautiful, Carol.”

Clark wasn’t a man who handed out compliments indiscriminately.
She couldn’t recall his mentioning how she looked one way or another in all the
months they’d been friends. And now he tucked his finger beneath her chin and
with maddening slowness lowered his lips to hers.

The kiss was gentle, devoid of passion. A friendly exchange.
Nevertheless, she felt its impact all the way to her toenails. Her eyes
fluttered open when he raised his head. Releasing a deep sigh, she offered him a
feeble smile.

“I think you might be the best friend I’ve ever had,” she
said.

He smiled. A rare smile that lit up his eyes. “We’d better get
back upstairs before my parents decide to eat without us.”

She nodded, and when he reached for her hand, their fingers
intertwined.

She first heard his parents when she was halfway up the
staircase.

“I’m telling you, Nadine, she’s the one.”

“Sam, please, don’t do or say anything to embarrass Clark.”

“Me? I’d never do that.” A short pause. “Not
intentionally.”

“Thank you for that.”