Eddie’s Prize (37 page)

Rub my tummy?
Eddie could feel the utter disbelief the cat tried to hide. Inwardly, he hissed at the cat to behave. Out loud he said, “After the quarantine is lifted, that would be fun.”

“Yes,” the cat agreed. Could Lisa hear the sardonic note in that voice? Eddie could feel the cat preening somewhere inside him. “Today I will just run so you can see how beautiful I am.”

Stupid cat, your feline vanity is showing
, Eddie fumed silently inside himself.

Lisa’s lips quivered for a moment. Was she about to laugh or cry? Eddie wasn’t sure. She dipped her head. “Okay.”

The cat nodded Eddie’s head. “This is good. Since we can talk to each other, I can tell you how I feel instead of having to hide inside Eddie and make him do cruel, stupid things to you. I’m sorry, mate. I didn’t mean to hurt you. I love you. Please come back.”

“I need to talk to Eddie about that now,” Lisa said firmly. “Can you leave us alone for a while?”

The cat faded to the very edge of Eddie’s awareness. “He’s gone,” he told Lisa. He felt like shouting with joy. Lisa must truly love him. She was willing to play with the beast that had hurt her so much. She accepted in the space of a day what Eddie had spent a lifetime denying. “I should have told you about him. I should have trusted you.” He stared at her and willed her to see his desperate sincerity. “I promise I’ll do everything I can to make it up to you.”

Lisa nodded. “It’s not that easy. You’ve made the cat your scapegoat. You have to take responsibility.
You
, Eddie.”

She was right. Shame writhed down his back. “I should have made peace with him years ago. I should have realized how he—I mean, we were hurting you.”

“The bruises are bad enough, but you held me at arm’s length. You didn’t trust me.” She fingered one of the handkerchiefs still balanced on her knee. “I’ve always thought that without trust there can’t be true love. That almost destroyed me. I don’t know if you can understand how much that hurt until you know more about me. I don’t usually talk about this. In fact, I’ve never told anybody the whole thing.” She took a deep breath. “But what it boils down to is I’ve never felt loved. No one has ever truly loved me.”

He let go of the stall door to back up a step. That was ridiculous! “Mr. Gray said half the men in the world were in love with you in the Times Before. And I read the magazine myself.” He pushed the jealousy away with a vicious shove. The cat remained a shadow in his mind, listening and watching. “You had a dozen boyfriends. There were many men who loved you.”

“Eddie.” Her voice was weary. “That’s not love. Those men were in love with my pictures, like the men I dated were in love with my money or my fame or my looks. They didn’t love
me
. No one loved me.”

“Your family—” he began, but she cut him off.

“My family?” The acid in her voice made Eddie want to hold her. Her voice smoothed, but shards of broken glass hid in its depths. “My mother began dragging me to auditions when I was four. When I would get a part, I was her little angel. When I didn’t, I was a little bitch.”

What mother would treat her daughter like that? Eddie curled his hands into fists that he hid behind the door. “Your father?”

“My dad left when I was ten. He just packed up a suitcase and drove away. I ran down the driveway, crying and holding on to the door of the car, begging him to at least say good-bye. It’s a miracle I wasn’t hurt.”

He knew what a car was, but he couldn’t imagine a man risking his child, a precious daughter, that way. “How long was he gone?”

Lisa’s laugh didn’t sound like a laugh to Eddie. “I didn’t see him again until I was twenty-three years old. By then I was a household name because of my modeling. He came schmoozing up to me, wanting to be part of my life.” Her voice lifted to singsong sarcasm. “He said he was so proud of me. He had followed my career since the day he left. The only reason he left was because my mom threw him out. He would never have left if he’d had a choice.” She dropped back into her usual voice, tinged with self-disgust. “God, I was so desperate to have somebody love me I believed him! I gave him money, I bought him an apartment, I introduced him to important people. Stupid, stupid Lisa.”

She wrapped her arms around herself, silent tears making shiny tracks down her face. Eddie felt helpless. He wanted to hold her, protect her from this pain. The cat wanted to claw her father into bloody ribbons.

She plucked a square of white fabric from her knee and wiped her eyes. “And when I figured out he was using me, I cut him off. Then he threatened me, and I ended up getting a restraining order against him.”

“Did your mother throw him out?”

“Who knows? Neither one of them would know the truth if it bit them on the ass. The only thing my mom loved was my mom. No,” she corrected herself. “She loved whiskey and beer and scotch much more than she loved even herself.” She looked at him with tragic eyes in a calm face. “I left my mom’s house the day I turned eighteen. Thank God my agent was handling my money, or I wouldn’t have had a cent.” Her eyes somehow became even more tragic. “If even parents can’t love a girl, who can?”

Eddie wondered if she knew she was crying silently, tears running down her face. “I can,” he said firmly. “I’ve been an ass, and I haven’t treated you the way you deserve, but I love you.”

He couldn’t tell if she believed him. She didn’t look at him. After a silent moment, he asked, “You had a brother, didn’t you?”

“Derek.” A tremulous smile. “My little brother. He really did love me. He never wanted money or to go fancy places where the paparazzi would take his picture. We didn’t get to see each other very much, but when we did, it was usually at his place by St. Cloud. And now he’s probably dead.”

Her silent tears turned into little shudders. She groped for one of her handkerchiefs and blew her nose with an inelegant honk that almost cheered Eddie. She wouldn’t let him hear her make that noise if she didn’t trust him, would she?

“We can send a message with the next traders that come through.” Eddie doubted her brother was still alive, but he would do anything to give her peace.

“He’s probably dead,” she sobbed into her afghan. “And if he’s not, he’s as old as Mr. Gray.”

“We can still send a message. Knowing would be good.” He dragged his hand through his hair since he couldn’t smooth hers. “Lisa, I love you. And I don’t care about your money or how famous you are or any of that.”

She hiccupped. “I know. That’s why I love you. I don’t have any of that now, and you still picked me. You even risked your life in that Bride Fight to be able to marry me. I remember the day you told me you thought I was beautiful, but not because of how I looked. That’s the day I began to fall in love with you.”

She set the crumpled handkerchief down and put her shoulders back. “I didn’t tell you all this to make you feel sorry for me. My life wasn’t as bad as I made it sound. I just want you to know why I’m so insecure sometimes.” She tapped her forehead. “I know up here that there are some people who really love me.” She paused, frowning. “Not very many, but a few. But in my heart, I doubt. That’s why your mistrust hurt me so badly.”

A knife slashing back and forth over his heart couldn’t hurt this much. “I’m sorry,” he said helplessly. “So sorry that I don’t even have words to say it right. I love you, Lisa Madison. I love
you
, the true inside you, not your beauty or even your wonderful breakfasts, but you. Neither one of us is perfect, so our marriage isn’t perfect either, but can’t we work on it?”

To his horror, her face twisted in agony. “Oh, God, I’ve waited all my life to hear that!” She wiped her dripping nose on the back of her hand, forgetting her stack of handkerchiefs. “I hate crying. It makes me look awful.”

“You look beautiful,” he said honestly. “Lisa, I know I don’t deserve your forgiveness, but will you come back to me so we can try again?”

As she opened her mouth to answer, the door on the far end of the stable opened. “Hey, Madison,” one of Taye’s men shouted. “Your mother’s here. She wants to see you. And Lisa too,” he added.

“What?” he and Lisa said in unison.

“Lisa, you come out first so Madison doesn’t bump into you. We’ve cleared a path to the gate, Madison, so you can talk to your mother.”

As soon as Lisa had stuffed her afghan in her bag and gotten clear of the stable, Eddie hurried out into the yard. As promised, the wolves in the yard had cleared a wide alley for him to pass through. One of Taye’s men had the gate open to set a chair for his mother to sit in. When she was settled, he came back in and closed the gate behind him. Eddie lunged for the fence, scanning the road for her escort. Standing several yards back were Steve Herrick and four other armed men holding horses.

“Are you out of your minds?” Eddie yelled at them. “What’s my mother doing out during quarantine?”

Steve raised a pale, sardonic brow. “Have you ever managed to talk her out of something she was dead set on?”

Eddie swallowed his retort. Steve had a good point. “Mom, what are you doing here?”

“I need to talk to you, and especially to Lisa.” She waved a mittened hand behind her. “Steve and you boys, you go back along the road a ways. This is a private conversation.”

Eddie waited while Steve and his men led the horses away and Taye motioned his men to step back. It would require far more distance than they had for the wolves to not hear what was going to be said, but the illusion of privacy was appreciated. While he waited, he examined his mother. She looked younger. Younger? Maybe just better. The sick, gray cast to her skin was nearly gone. Her cheeks were flushed, but that could have been the cold air. “Mom,” he began.

“Hush, Edward.” She craned her head and beckoned to someone behind him. Lisa joined him at the fence, maintaining a careful distance from him. “Lisa, I have to apologize to you.” She cleared her throat. “There was something that Eddie wanted to tell you, but I forbade it. I was wrong. You have a right to know. I’m sorry.”

Lisa smiled, with her always generous heart making it a warm and true smile. A fierce rush of love rolled over him as he watched his wife smile at his mother. “Darlene, I understand. Eddie and I have talked about it, and I really do understand why you feel the way you do.”

His mom’s gaze cut to him. He swallowed. Even sitting, with her big belly in her lap, her gaze was formidable. “Mom, I love you, but I decided that Lisa had to know, or our marriage would never work.” He tried to control the note of pleading that shaded his voice. “I’m sorry if that hurts you.”

“No, it doesn’t hurt me. You did the right thing.” She looked down, folding her hands over her belly. “I told your father this morning.”

“Mom!” Eddie’s heart gave a sick leap. “What did he say?”

His mother laughed. It wasn’t amusement that shook her head, but more like wonder. “Not very much. He said he had known for years, but he never mentioned it because he figured that if I didn’t want to talk about it, he wouldn’t push.” She looked up at him. “He’s known all these years. I can hardly believe it! I’ve loved your father for twenty-seven years, but never more than I did this morning. I don’t think we need to spread our secret around, but I’ll let your father decide who should know.”

A strangely light feeling came over Eddie. All his life he’d had to hide his secret. Having that weight lifted from his shoulders made him feel like he was floating. “He never said a word.”

“No. Your father has his faults, but he is utterly steadfast in his love for his family.” His mother stood very carefully. “Lisa, I’ve been so focused on protecting myself and my family that I’ve ignored how you must feel. In some ways, my son has treated you shamefully, but most of the blame for that can be laid at my door. Please, forgive me for being so stupid. Forgive Eddie and come home. Our family isn’t the same without you.”

He turned his head to see more tears sliding down Lisa’s cheeks. “I’ve already forgiven him and you,” she said. “As soon as the quarantine is lifted, we’ll be home.”

Eddie’s heart bounded into his throat. “You’ll return to me?”

“Yes, Eddie, I un-repudiate you.” A giggle shimmered through her tears. “Or whatever the word is. I accept you. Both of you.”

His mother looked at the careful distance between them. “If you’ve forgiven him, why are you standing so far apart?”

Lisa’s eyes were big when she stared at him. “The quarantine. We’re all staying away from Eddie in case he’s infected.”

His mother snorted. “About the only good thing about our curse is he can’t get the Plague, or carry it to others.”

“Really?” squeaked Lisa, hopefully.

“Really.” His mother smiled fondly when he locked gazes with Lisa. “It won’t be too long before the quarantine is lifted, I’m sure. So we’ll see you soon.”

Lisa had said she would return to him! Eddie wanted to crush her to his chest and scream in ecstasy, but she hadn’t moved toward him. Eddie reluctantly looked away from Lisa’s shining eyes to watch his mother heave her pregnant body into the saddle. “Mom!” he called. When she gathered her reins and looked back at him he smiled. “I love you.”

She smiled and raised a hand before nudging her horse into a walk.

He was watching his mother’s back, so he didn’t see Lisa launch herself at him. The force of her body colliding with his knocked him back a step, but the feel of her in his arms, so familiar and so longed-for, brought hot tears crowding his closed eyes. The scent of her hair against his nose carried the finest perfume to the cat purring inside him. Lisa, beloved wife. Mate.
His.

Lisa buried her face in his shirt. “Oh, God,” she murmured over and over, like a prayer. “Eddie, you must be cold. Let’s go inside so you can warm up.”

The wolves parted to let them through to the den’s front door. One of them helpfully handed Lisa the bag of crocheting she had set down to talk to his mom. Lisa took it and tugged him past the welcoming warmth of the rec room and down a hall. As they passed Jelly and Jay, the boy sighed glumly.

“Rats,” the young wolf said obscurely. “It’s going to get loud this afternoon.”