Barbara Freethy - Some Kind Of Wonderful (6 page)
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brides and controlling mothers, she was more than ready for a quiet
evening at home. But as she walked down the hallway to her apartment,
she was reminded of Matt's plea for her help.
She hesitated outside his door, listening for Emily's cry. All was
quiet. Well, as long as she wasn't crying, Matt didn't need her help,
which was a good thing. She didn't need to get further involved in
their problems, she had enough of her own.
And she was determined to pick up her sketch pad tonight and try to
draw something. Besides, it wasn't as if Matt had made any attempts to
get to know her before Emily's arrival. He had wanted to be a silent
neighbor, and that's the way she preferred it, too. Why let Emily's
arrival change their relationship? It
was better this way. The whole
situation had heartbreak written all over it. And Caitlyn wasn't about
to
let a handsome reporter and his mysterious sister drag her to a
place she didn't want to go.
Deliberately, she turned toward her apartment and slid her key into the
lock. She had barely touched the knob when Matt's door flew open. His
hair stood on end, as if he'd raked his
fingers through it a dozen
or more times, and his eyes had a wild look
in them.
"Where are you going?" he demanded.
"Into my apartment."
"You said you'd help."
"I don't hear Emily crying."
"That's because she cried herself to sleep," he said, waving his hand
in the air. "She screamed every second of the last two and a half
hours. Her face turned purple. I thought for a minute she had killed
herself when she finally fell asleep."
Caitlyn tried not to smile, because in truth, a desperate, barefoot
Matt Winters was pretty irresistible. "Well, she's asleep now. You
should try to get some rest, too."
"You can't leave me alone with her."
"I think I can."
Matt grabbed her arm, his eyes filled with desperation. "I'm going
crazy, Caitlyn. She hates me. Nothing
I do is right. She hates the way
I hold her, the way I talk to her, the way I feed her. I'm doing
everything wrong. You have to help me."
"I'm sure she just misses her mother. It's not you."
"It is me. I was never good with babies. Kids that can talk are okay,
but babies are like little aliens to me."
She felt herself weakening. "I can't. It's been a long day, and I'm
tired," she said, removing her arm from his grip. There—she'd done it.
She'd said no.
"I'll make you dinner." He snapped his fingers, a new light in his eyes
now, one of determination. "Or I'll order out. That would probably be
safer for your stomach. I'm not much of a cook. And we can have some
wine. Do you like red or white?"
'"White, but that doesn't matter. I'd like to help you, but I—"
"But what?"
"It's too hard," she said helplessly, knowing he wouldn't begin to
understand and she couldn't begin to explain.
"I know it's hard. That's why I need your help," he said,
misunderstanding her reluctance. "I've been playing music to cover up
her crying, but I'm afraid if she keeps on screaming, someone in the
building will come looking for a baby, and then what will we do?"
"We?" she asked pointedly. "I don't think it's our problem, I think
it's your problem."
"If you want to split hairs," he said with a shrug.
"I'm hardly splitting hairs. She's your niece."
Before he could reply, Emily let out a glass-breaking shriek from
inside the apartment.
"See," Matt said. "She's awake and mad. I think she needs a woman's
touch, something soft and gentle. Like you."
Matt looked into her eyes, and Caitlyn felt the breath flee her chest
again. He was really, really good at getting past her defenses, and he
didn't even know it. So intent was he on securing some help that he
had
no idea he was affecting her in a basic man/woman way that reminded her
this situation was dangerous on many different levels.
Before Caitlyn could offer up another protest, Matt pulled her into his
apartment. Emily sat in her car
seat on the floor by the couch. And it
was her tiny, puckered, angry face that drew Caitlyn to her side.
Undoing the straps, Caitlyn picked Emily up and cradled her
instinctively against her chest.
Emily's tiny mouth turned immediately toward Caitlyn's breast, seeking
nourishment, love, nothing that Caitlyn could
give her, and that tiny gesture almost broke Caitlyn's heart.
"Get me a bottle," she ordered Matt. "Do it now."
Matt stared at her, then moved into the kitchen, where she heard him
running water and hitting the buttons on the microwave.
"It's okay, baby," she whispered. "Your food is coming."
Emily whimpered and squirmed and grabbed Caitlyn's hair. Her little
fingers tugged at the strands so tightly tears came into Caitlyn's
eyes. But at least this pain was real and not the phantom that haunted
her dreams.
"Here you go," Matt said, returning to the room with a bottle.
She put the nipple into Emily's mouth and the baby sucked greedily.
Caitlyn sat down on the couch so
she could make Emily more comfortable.
"Are you crying, Caitlyn?" Matt asked.
She shrugged off his question as she blinked the telltale moisture out
of her eyes. The man saw too much. "Emily pulled my hair. It's nothing."
"Are you sure?"
"Yes."
"Look at me."
She didn't want to; she really didn't want to. But the silence between
them lengthened and she found herself lifting her head and gazing into
his eyes. They were perceptive eyes, shrewd, seeing right into
her, and
she didn't like it one little bit. "You must be a good reporter," she
murmured.
"Why do you say that?"
"Because I find myself wanting to confess, and you don't even have a
lightbulb over my head."
"Confess what?"
"Nothing," she said hastily. "I said I had the urge to confess, not
that I had something to confess."
"But you do."
"No. I don't. You're the one with the secrets." She hoped to turn his
attention away from her.
"And you're trying to redirect. I applaud your technique."
"Did you find out anything about your sister?" she asked, ignoring his
perceptive comment. She had to keep her distance, and sharing secrets
with him wouldn't accomplish that.
"Nothing yet. I wish I had more to go on, a description, a picture of
what she might look like now."
"Maybe like you?"
"More like my mother than me probably. I took after my father. Sarah's
hair was darker than mine,
black as ink. She used to wear it so long
she could sit on it. And her eyes were black, too. They always seemed
big for her face. Or maybe it just looked that way because her skin was
so white. She bruised easily. One touch and she'd have a purple mark
tor a week.' He paused, obviously caught up in his thoughts. "Sarah was
a scrawny kid, her ribs always poking through her shirt. I knew she
needed more
to eat, but I couldn't always get it."
"And your mother wasn't around?"
"Not much. She was a mess most of the time. Hell, why am I telling you
all this0"
"Maybe it's easier to tell a stranger."
"1 was hoping you'd stay a stranger," he said bluntly. "I'm not much
for nosy neighbors."
"Have I acted like a nosy neighbor?"
"Well, not until about five minutes ago, when you started giving me the
third degree."
"Because you pulled me into your apartment," she reminded him.
"You're right." He sat down in the chair across from her, resting his
elbows on his knees as he watched Emily suck on her bottle. "A neighbor
used to call the cops on us. Mrs. Malkovich. She was a mean old woman,
used to chain-smoke in the hallway until you couldn't see past your
nose. I'd have to lie, make up some story about where my mother was,
and hope she'd come back before they did. It worked, too, until the
fire, until we had nowhere to go. Then Mrs. Malkovich got even by
telling everyone that our mother was never coming back. The next thing
I knew we were put into separate foster homes. They wouldn't even let
us stay together."
"How old were you?"
"Sixteen. And Sarah was nine."
"Did your mother ever come back?"
"No." Matt stood up and paced around the apartment. 'I have to find
Sarah. I've looked a hundred times over the years, but the records were
sealed, locked away for our own protection, or so they said. As if I
needed to be protected from the only person who ever gave a shit about
me."
"I'm sorry, Matt. That's so horribly unfair."
He shrugged. "Whoever told you life was fair?"
"What happened to you after they split you up?"
"I went to a foster home for a few months, then another and another. I
was mad at the world. No one wanted a part of me. On my eighteenth
birthday I was told to get out and move on."
"What did you do then?"
"You're certainly full of questions."
"Just passing the time, unless you'd like me to leave you with Emily?"
she asked pointedly.
"No, you just sit there and relax," he told her hastily. "I hung around
San Francisco for a while, picked
up odd jobs, eventually moved around
the country, got into the newspaper business."
She waited for him to embellish, but he remained frustrating] y silent.
"Just out of curiosity, do you write in more depth than you speak?"
His mouth curved into a reluctant smile. "When I'm not talking about
myself, I can be quite articulate."
"Thank heavens." She glanced down at the baby in her arms. "Tell me
more about Sarah."
"It was so long ago."
"You must remember something."
Matt thought for a moment. "Angels. She used to see them dancing on her
ceiling at night. I didn't want to tell her it was just the streetlight
throwing shadows." He paused, lost in thought. "People always say you
can't miss what you don't have, but I think Sarah always missed it.
She'd get this yearning look on her face, as if she were trying to see
something that wasn't there. She kept wanting to light candles to make
things brighter. She was a sad little girl. That's what I remember
about hei most. I remember her being sad." He took in a deep breath and
let it out. "I have a feeling she's still sad."
Caitlyn nodded, her own emotions stirred by the pain in his words. It
didn't sound like Sarah had had much to smile about in her lite, Matt
either, at least not during iheir childhood. "What was your dad like?
Was he as bad as your mother?"
"No. He was a pretty good guy," Matt replied, a rough edge in his
voice. "He kept my mother sane, I think He was a cook at a restaurant
on Fisherman's Wharf, and even after a long day he'd come home and cook
for us. When he died, my mother fell apart. Sarah was just a baby, but
that wasn't enough to pull my mother together. She took
sleeping pills and pain pills and God knows what other kind of pills
and drank 'em down with a shot of whiskey." He paused, looking Caitlyn
in the eye. "I kept thinking she'd change, get better, but it never
happened. I was a fool."
"You were a child," Caitlyn replied.
"It doesn't matter anyway. What really worries me now is Sarah," he
continued. "What if she turned out like my mother? What if she's cut
and run on her kid the way my mother did to us?"
"She said she'd be back."
"I've heard that before. I've learned to take promises with a grain of
salt."
"That's saa."
He shrugged."I think it's practical."
"What if Sarah doesn't come back? What will you do with Emily?" The
question slipped out before Caitlyn could stop it. It was none of her
business what Matt did with this baby. In fact, she was supposed to be
pulling away, not digging in deeper, but despite his bluntness, or
maybe it was because of his bluntness. he was easy to talk to, and
different from most of the men she'd met in her life, men like Brian,
who always spoke from some elite intellectual plane.
"I don't know," he answered. "I hope it doesn't come to that. I'm not
exactly a family man. I work long hours, I travel , . ." His voice
drifted off as he seemed to consider her question even further. "I'm
not
sure I'd be a good father. I screwed up with Sarah."
"You weren't her father. You were a sixteen-year-old boy."
"Yeah, well, hopefully Sarah will come back and it will be a moot
question."
"I think you'd be a good father, Matt. You've done pretty well so far."
"Why do you say that? Because she's still breathing?" He smiled. "That
might just be luck. And you've been pretty helpful."
"That's true. But Emily is just a little baby. She doesn't need much
more than something to eat and someone to love her." Caitlyn looked
around the barely furnished apartment. "Which is probably a good thing
in your case."
"I haven't had time to get settled yet."
"Do you ever get settled? Or do you just move on?"
"Most of the time I move on," he said with a small nod at her
perceptive statement. "I've always traveled light. It's easier that
way."
From what she'd heard of his past she could understand his thinking.
But there was something about the way Matt was looking at Emily that
told Caitlyn he might have just found a very good reason to acquire
some baggage. Because she couldn't believe that a man who cared so much
about his missing sister would abandon his niece io strangers no matter
wliat he said.
"Hey, are you hungry?"" he asked. "Because I'm starving. Do you want to
share a pizza?"
"That sounds a little too neighborly for me."
He flung her a grin. "Yeah, I know. But since you're feeding Emily, the
least I can do is feed you."
Caitlyn hesitated. It was tempting, too tempting, because she wasn't
just liking Emily, she was starting
to like Matt, too, and that was
even more dangerous.
"I don't think so," she said firmly. "In fact, you should take Emily
now and finish this feeding." She stood up and handed Emily to Matt,
bottle and all.
He reluctantly took Emily, adjusting the bottle in her mouth as she
started to squirm. "Was it something
I said?"
"I have things to do."
"Well, this certainly isn't your problem. I can't blame you for wanting
to get on with your life."
Exactly. Only when he said it like that, Caitlyn felt guilty. She hated
to let anyone down, an unfortunate trait ingrained in her by her mother
and father, who had always expected and demanded so much from her.
"I'm not going to feel bad," she said out loud.
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