Carly's Gift (16 page)

With no words to answer him, she silently took his hand and led him to the stairs. She would get through this, she told herself as they entered the bedroom.

With the skill that had come from years of practice, Ethan stripped her, laid her on the bed, performed what had become the almost ritualistic movements meant to arouse her, separated her legs, and thrust himself inside.

Carly cried out at precisely the right moment and seconds later it was finished. Several seconds after that, Ethan rolled off of her. When his breathing had calmed, he kissed her on the temple and said, “This was only the beginning. It's just going to get better and better from here on out.”

“When are the boys coming home?” she asked.

Misinterpreting her meaning, he turned to her and smiled. “Not for hours yet.”

She caught her breath at his look of unadulterated happiness. Against her will she was reminded of the joyful young man Ethan had once been—before he'd married her and taken her troubles as his own. She didn't want to feel sorry for him, she wanted to hold on to her anger. But the harder she tried, the more elusive it became.

How could she hate him for loving her?

How could she not?

Thirteen

Juggling fear, anxiety,
and a case of homesickness that had hit the minute clouds covered her last glimpse of Ohio, Andrea stepped from the plane at Heathrow Airport. She walked through an enclosed ramp and entered a huge hall with moving walkways. Confused and all but overwhelmed by the rush of people around her, she stepped out of the mainstream of traffic and tried to get her bearings. She'd forgotten the information David had given her over the phone about what she would have to do to get from the plane to where he would be waiting for her.

While Andrea moved through long serpentine lines of people, she tried to overhear what kinds of questions were being asked by the officials, but she was too far away. What if they wanted to know about her mother and David? How would she answer them?

After retrieving her luggage and going through customs, she rejoined the ever-flowing stream of passengers and headed up the ramp, turned a corner, and ran into a wall of people. They glanced at her, found her wanting, and looked away.

She slowed her pace to sweep the crowd, searching the eager, smiling faces for one that looked familiar.

David wasn't there.

Her heart slammed against her ribs. Could he have forgotten she was coming today? Had he changed his mind and decided he didn't want her living with him after all?

David saw the stricken look on Andrea's face and renewed his efforts to get to her, roughly shouldering a portly man out of his way and stepping in front of a woman with her arms outstretched to welcome a man who'd arrived seconds before Andrea.

“Andrea,” he called, trying to draw her attention.

She turned at the sound of her name. “David?”

“Over here.” He raised his hand.

Relief flooded her face. She started toward him. “I forgot where you said you'd meet me.”

The thought crossed his mind that he should hug her, but he was unsure how she might feel at the familiarity. Instead he offered her a smile he hoped expressed his pleasure in seeing her and reached for her suitcases. “I'd hoped to get a spot where you'd see me right away, but there was an accident on the M4 that held us up and I didn't get here as soon as I'd planned.”

Andrea looked around expectantly “Did Victoria come with you?”

She'd tried to make the question sound casual, but David could see how anxious she was about finally meeting the woman she would be living with. “The ‘we' I was referring to was my driver,” he said, making his way through the crowd. He glanced at his watch. “It's nearly eleven. I'm sure Victoria has been in bed for hours by now.” The explanation felt lacking. “Christmas is a particularly busy time of the year for her,” he went on. “With all her social and charitable obligations, she has to catch up on her sleep whenever she can.” He should have stopped while he was ahead. Not only had he put Victoria's soirées ahead of meeting Andrea, he'd put her need for sleep there, too. “I'm lucky if I see her at the breakfast table,” he concluded, making one last attempt.

“Oh,” Andrea said.

There was a myriad of meanings in the single word and the way Andrea had said it. He turned and gave her a conspiratorial wink. “You'll be pleased to know she's set tomorrow morning aside just for us.”

Andrea offered him a tentative smile. “I'm looking forward to meeting her.”

David almost laughed aloud at the contrast between her words and the look on her face. Andrea was clearly no more eager to meet Victoria than Victoria was to meet her. He stopped to let a woman with a stroller pass in front of him. “She's nothing like your mother, but once the two of you get to know each other, I'm sure you'll do fine.”

“She doesn't want me here, does she?” Andrea said, following him outside into the freezing night air.

David hadn't been gone from the States so long that he was taken aback by Andrea's American bluntness. What surprised him was her acumen. “What makes you say that?” he asked.

“It's just a feeling I get.”

“She needs a little time to get used to the idea of having you around.”
As do I,
he could have added. He moved toward the car. As soon as the chauffeur spotted David coming, he got out to greet them. “Andrea, this is Harold Duncan, the best driver in London, and a man who will soon be as indispensable to you as he is to me.” In a spontaneous gesture that surprised David as much as it surprised Andrea, David slipped his arm around her shoulders. He would have to remember to go with his instincts from then on and let propriety be damned. “Harold, this is my beautiful, almost grown daughter, Andrea.”

“I'm most pleased to meet you,” Harold said, with a slight bow.

“I'm pleased to meet you, too,” she said, extending her hand, but careful not to move so much she dislodged David's arm in the process. “Especially since I'm not old enough to drive myself yet.”

He smiled indulgently. “I think you'll find me useful a bit past the day you've got your license. Even for the stout-hearted, London traffic can take some getting used to.”

David laughed. “I've been here thirteen years and I'm still not used to it.”

Harold picked up Andrea's bags and put them in the trunk. When he was finished, he came around the side and opened the door for her and David. “When you think you're ready to give it a go, we'll take you outside the city for your lessons.”

Andrea looked to David for confirmation. “If you aren't afraid of some snow and ice, you could start next week,” he said. “We'll be spending Christmas at Hawthorne. There are back roads on the property where you and Harold can slip and slide to your heart's content.”

She climbed inside and scooted over for David to sit next to her. “I hope you have another car—something a little smaller than this?”

He hesitated at telling her the “other cars” were a Porsche and a Mercedes. “I think we could probably find something.”

Andrea looked around the interior. “What is this thing, anyway?”

He chuckled. “It's called a Bentley. Not much to look at, I admit, but it'll grow on you once you get used to it.”

“The only thing I ever had grow on me was a wart.”

This time it was Harold who chuckled. Refraining from commenting on her remark, he said, “Home, sir?”

“Unless Andrea would like to stop for something to eat.”

“Gosh, no. It seemed like they never stopped feeding us on the plane. I must have had ten Cokes.”

“Then home it is.”

They were on the M4 and Andrea had been quietly staring out the window for several miles when David decided to begin laying the groundwork for her eventual return home. “I talked to your mother earlier today.”

Andrea didn't move. “Why?”

“She called to tell me how angry you were when you left.”

“I was mad at her, not you.”

David let several seconds pass before he went on. “It seems to me you've directed your anger at the wrong person.”

She turned to look at him. A frown drew her softly arched eyebrows together. “Meaning I should be mad at you? How could I? You didn't even know I existed.”

“I should have figured out what happened—maybe not at first, I wasn't thinking too well back then. But a lot of years have gone by since your mother and I last saw each other.”

“All that means is that you didn't know her as well as you thought you did.”

This time it was David's turn to look out the window. “How much has she told you about me, about the years we were together?”

“Hardly anything.”

He took a deep breath. Should he tell her everything, or only what she needed to know to heal herself and return home? “Carly and I have known each other since we were little kids. She and Ethan were my best friends the entire time we were growing up. But it was Carly who knew me the best, better than anyone ever has—or will. If I hadn't been so caught up in my own problems when I was in New York, she never would have been able to—” He stumbled on the words, wondering if he would ever come to terms with the what-ifs and if-onlys that had been plaguing him lately. “Let's just say she would never have married Ethan.”

“Are you telling me she didn't love my dad when she married him?”

He'd gone too far to back down now. “She loved him as a friend. She would have done anything for him—and he would have done anything for her.”

Andrea cast a nervous glance at Harold. “You mean like him marrying her because she got herself pregnant,” she said softly.

“Andrea, no one gets
herself
pregnant,” he said with a touch of impatience. “It takes two.”

“She should have been more careful.”

It was on the tip of his tongue to say, “Accidents happen” when he realized how callous it would sound. No one wanted to think of herself as an accident. The only thing worse would be to know she was the result of rape. “If she had taken better precautions, you wouldn't be here now. Frankly, even taking into consideration my feelings about missing out on my daughter's life up until now”—the lie just kept getting easier and easier—“the heartache your mother has gone through, and the pain you're in right now, I can't say I'm sorry this has turned out the way it has.”

“She should have told you the minute she found out she was pregnant. You had a right to know.”

He'd lost count of the number of times the same thought had gone through his mind in the past two months, only in a slightly altered form.

David struggled to find a way to help Andrea understand what he was still trying to work out for himself. “What would you do if someone told you that your brother, Eric, was going to break his leg in such a way he would never be able to play basketball again, but that you could keep it from happening if you were willing to have the broken leg for him?”

“That's not a fair question.”

“Why not?”

“Eric loves basketball more than anything.”

“Exactly,” he said, pleased that she had caught on so quickly. “Your mother knew that was how I felt about writing.”

“You can't compare the two. Lots of writers are married and have children.”

She had him there. “At one time or another, all of us are put in positions where we end up making the wrong choices for the right reasons. What your mother did wasn't easy for her, Andrea. Her decision to push me away wasn't made lightly.” He couldn't convince her without telling her things that would cause more pain. “Carly loved me every bit as much as I loved her—probably more. I don't think I've ever done anything so selfless. She sacrificed a great deal for me.”

“You're making her sound like some kind of saint.”

“And you're not buying it,” he said, keenly disappointed to discover he hadn't gotten through to her after all.

“She didn't have to marry my dad. There were other things she could have done.”

“Like what?” he asked, beginning to lose his patience.

“She could have put me up for adoption.”

“Do you think your life would have been better if she had?” he asked.

Her lip quivered as she answered. “I don't know.”

“Did you ever hear that old saying, don't judge someone until you've walked a mile in their shoes?”

She shook her head and pressed her shoulder deeper into the corner.

“Other than Carly herself, you and I were the most affected by her decision to marry Ethan. Unless there were some way we could actually go back and
be
her, unless we could feel what she was feeling, we have no right to sit in judgment of her, especially not sixteen years after the fact.” He reached across the seat and gently touched her arm. “Think about it, Andrea. She was only five years older than you are right now when all of this happened. She was in an impossible position. There was no clear-cut answer, no way to keep someone from being hurt. So she did what she'd been doing all her life—she took care of the people she loved in the best way she knew how.”