Forever Spring (17 page)

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The traditional turkey-with-all-the-trimmings dinner was a smashing success. The disputed pumpkin pie was a smashing success. Karen was exhausted.

“Boy, I’m stuffed.”

“That was the general idea.” Karen smiled fondly at her youngest son. “First you stuff the bird, then you stuff yourself. It’s the American way.”

“Yeah.” Mark’s eyes glowed with happiness and contentment. “Thanksgiving’s pretty neat.”

“Yeah.” Rand grinned. “It’s almost as good as Christmas.”

“Christmas!” Mark whooped. “Yeah! Will you still be here, Dad?”

“Yeah,” Charles echoed enthusiastically.

“Yeah?” Karen chided, frowning.

“Aw, Mom, everybody says yeah,” Rand grumbled.

“Yeah, they do.” Mark nodded vigorously.

“And if everybody leaps off a cliff, will you follow?” Karen asked reasonably, her frown darkening as she noticed Charles’s grinning encouragement of his sons. Annoyed, frustrated because it had always been this way, she shifted her frown to him. From the beginning Charles had opted to join forces with his sons, be one of the guys, while she’d been left with the role of disciplinarian.

“And you?” she charged. “Would you follow also?”

“Aw, Mom,” Charles mimicked, earning laughter from his sons and indulgent smiles from his parents.

Karen couldn’t win, and she knew it; besides, she was simply too darned tired to fight. Surrounded and outnumbered, Karen gave up the battle as gracefully as possible. Erasing her frown with a bright smile, she glanced at Judith and Randolf.

“Would you like coffee or tea or an after-dinner drink?”

“Coffee would be lovely.” Judith smiled in appreciation of Karen’s surrender. But then, as Karen knew well, Judith had always chosen to take the path of least resistance, which partially explained her son’s lack of discipline.

“Coffee sounds good,” Charles agreed.

“I think I’ll have a brandy,” Randolf said, sliding his chair away from the table.

“Why don’t we have it in the living room?” Judith suggested, rising also. “It’s so much more comfortable in there, and the fire’s so cheery.”

“Excellent idea, my dear.” Randolf placed his hand at his wife’s waist to escort her from the dining room. “Come along, Charles, we’re in Karen’s way here.”

“Right.” As Charles pushed back his chair, he arched his brows at Rand and Mark. “Why don’t you guys go out into the fresh air. Go sink some baskets.” He flicked his hand in the direction of the garage, indicating the rusting hoop with its tattered netting mounted on the side wall.

“Okay with me,” Rand replied. He grinned chal-lengingly at his brother. “11 play you a game of one-on-one.”

Mark scrambled off his chair. “You’re on!”

Within a matter of seconds, Karen found herself standing alone in the dining room. A weary smile of acceptance twisted her lips as she gazed down at the remains of the holiday meal littering the two-hundred-year-old oval table.

What you need, Karen advised herself wryly, is a fairy godmother who isn’t afraid of dipping her hands into hot dishwater. Or Judith’s housekeeper, she revised as she began to stack her best china. If memory served, the housekeeper had been given the entire holiday weekend off.

Sighing softly, Karen turned to carry the first load of dishes into the kitchen, but paused at the sound of the front door slamming, followed by the aggrieved sound of Rand’s voice.

“Hey, Dad! That basketball hoop’s so loose it’s about ready to fall off the wall. Can you fix it?”

“It’s a holiday, Rand,” Charles replied. “Make do today. I’ll have your mother give the man who does the repairs a call tomorrow morning. Okay?”

“Yeah, I guess so.” The door slammed again.

It’s a holiday, Karen silently repeated, somewhat sarcastically. Damn, you could have fooled me! Telling herself to knock off the private pity party, she continued on into the kitchen. She didn’t have time to wallow in self-pity; she had a table to clear, dishes, pots and a grease-spattered roast pan to clean, and coffee and brandy to serve. Boy! Aren’t holidays fun!

By ten that night, Karen decided that there was a lot to be said for wallowing in self-pity; Charles was having tremendous success with the ploy. All he had to do Was look dissatisfied and every member of the family leaped to make him comfortable.

She groaned with sheer bliss as she slipped into bed. Closing her eyes, Karen soaked in the blessed quiet.

Maybe, just maybe, she thought as she began to drift toward sleep, tomorrow will be less hectic.

It wasn’t.

Karen was awakened early the following morning by two disgustingly wide-awake boys and their grinning father, all demanding to be fed. She was up and running from the moment her feet hit the floor.

The day was fine, crisp and cold. After breakfast, Randolf suggested an invigorating stroll on the beach. His suggestion was agreed to with enthusiasm. En masse, Judith, Randolf, Charles, Rand and Mark bundled up in warm jackets, gloves and assorted caps and scarves, then trooped merrily out the door.

Standing beside yet another cluttered table, Karen waved them on their way, grateful for the lull that enabled her to clean up the kitchen, make the beds and dump the first load of laundry into the washer in peace. It also afforded her a quiet minute in which to make the call to Gil Rawlins about fastening the basketball hoop; Gil was out of town for the weekend. Positive the boys, and Rand in particular, would be disappointed, Karen considered tackling the job herself, then rejected the idea. Who would get the meals and clean up afterward if she fell off the ladder and broke a bone?

No sooner had Karen finished in the kitchen than the red-cheeked, bright-eyed beach strollers trooped back into the house, requesting lunch. As she had surmised, the first words out of Rand’s mouth were about the basketball hoop. To Karen’s relief, though, he accepted her negative report with a philosophical shrug. At that moment, he was obviously more concerned with filling the emptiness inside his body than with exercise.

“Can I have a club sandwich made with the leftover turkey?” he asked.

“Oh, but—” Karen began, meaning to tell Rand that she was planning to use the leftover meat in a turkey pie for dinner. She never got the words out of her mouth.

“My, that does sound lovely,” Judith agreed with her grandson. “I’ll have the same.”

Inwardly concluding that just about
everything
sounded lovely to Judith, Karen shrugged and decided broiled steaks would do as well for dinner. Lean steak was more in line with Charles’s diet anyway.

Lunch was a pleasantly congenial meal. Karen thoroughly enjoyed the lively conversation once all the triple-decker sandwiches had been prepared and served. Between voracious bites of food, the boys regaled her with an in-depth account of all the shells they’d found on the beach and how much fun it had been having their grandparents as well as their father help collect them.

Though Karen found it nearly impossible to imagine the designer-attired Judith, Randolf and Charles grubbing in the sand for seashells, she smiled and took the boys’ word for it, pleased the outing had been a success. There had been moments, too many in number, when Karen had suffered twinges of conscience and regret about denying her sons the fullness of a cohesive family experience. Gazing into the boys’ animated faces, she decided the weekend was worth all the extra work and occasional irritation.

They were lingering over coffee and dessert when the front doorbell rang. Rand was already standing, since he had just asked to be excused from the table.

“I’ll get it,” he called, loping out of the dining room and down the hall.

“Now who could that be?” Judith wondered aloud.

“I haven’t the vaguest idea.” Karen shrugged.

“You weren’t expecting more company, were you?” Charles asked, looking both suspicious and annoyed.

“No,” Karen said, bristling at his proprietary attitude.

“Can I help you, sir?” they heard Rand ask in his best prep school manner.

Everyone grew quiet as they listened for a response. It came in a deep, attractive male voice that froze Karen’s mind and shot adrenaline through her system.

“Yes. My name is Paul Vanzant. Is Ms. Mitchell in?”

Chapter Ten

The teenager had to be Rand.

Staring into the tall, skinny boy’s brown eyes, Paul could see a masculine teenage image of Karen. He decided he liked the kid on sight.

“Hey, Mom, there’s a man here who wants to see you.”

Rand’s voice broke in midsentence. Paul suppressed the urge to smile, recalling how embarrassed Peter had been at the same age when his voice had been changing. Then the urge to smile vanished, to be replaced by a humming tension as Karen, her face pale, her posture rigid, walked out of the dining alcove and along the hall toward him.

“You should have invited Mr. Vanzant inside, Rand, instead of keeping him standing outside in the cold.”

Outside in the cold.
Paul felt a bone-deep chill. He could sense her withdrawal. She was closing him out, had closed him out. Despair coiling in his mind, Paul stepped inside. After closing the door, Rand stood, his gaze moving from Paul to his mother. Karen didn’t say a word; she didn’t have to. The pointed look she leveled at her son said it all.

Rand shuffled his feet and cleared his throat. “Ah, I guess I’ll, um, go talk to Dad,” he stuttered, lowering his eyes.

“I think that’s a good idea.” Karen kept her gaze steady on Rand until he loped along the hall to the alcove.

Throughout the exchange, Paul felt the chill inside him intensify. A tremor of shock ripped through him when Rand mentioned his father. Charles was at the house! For the holiday or—? Ruthlessly cutting off the thought, Paul narrowed his eyes. Questions crowded his mind, but he held them at bay, waiting for Karen to make the first move. When she did, her voice was so strained that Paul was afraid he already knew the answers.

“Paul, what are you doing here. Why have you—”

“Here?” he interrupted her, sweeping the hallway with a glance. His remote tone and arched brows silenced her. She looked helpless for an instant. Then she sighed. Paul’s own chest heaved in response.

“Come into the living room, please.” Avoiding his stare, she turned to lead the way into the room Paul felt he knew more intimately than his bedroom at home. And yet her attitude made him feel like a stranger, an unwelcome stranger. The feeling induced a mixture of emotions in Paul, the strongest of which was anger.

“Won’t you sit down?”

So polite, Paul thought, she’s so damn polite. Suppressing an urge to grab her by the shoulders and shake her while demanding to know why she was shutting him out, Paul curled his fingers into his palms and decided he’d be damned if he’d play polite word games with her.

“Charles is here for the holiday?” he asked bluntly.

Karen flinched at his harsh tone but met his stare directly. “No.” Her tone was even, inflectionless. “Charles has been here for over a month. I brought him back with me a week after he was released from the hospital.” She drew a quick breath before continuing with her explanation. “Rand and Mark are home for the holiday, and Charles’s parents are visiting. They picked the boys up at school and drove them home.”

“I see.” Paul smiled; it was either smile or curse. “Just one big happy family, hmm?”

Karen winced as though she’d been struck. “Paul, please—” She broke off and bit her lip.

“I’m sorry.” Paul gave in to the need to swear softly under his breath. Self-disgust underlined each muttered syllable. He had lashed out in reaction to the fear creeping through him, and he had hurt her, insulted her. It was not like him, not at all like him, and yet...

Moving abruptly, he walked to the fireplace. He stared into the low, flickering flames, seeing in the blazing depths scenes of other, more satisfying moments spent in the room with her. His body tightening in response to memories as hot and vivid as the crackling fire, Paul raised his head and turned to gaze at her through eyes shielded by lowered eyelids. “I never even considered the possibility that I might be interrupting your holiday.” His voice was low, reflecting the tightness gripping his body. “I never even considered the probability of your boys being home.” A self-mocking smile briefly moved his lips. “All I thought about was my need to see you, to talk to you.” He paused to examine her expression and eyes. Her eyes were shadowed by a wounded look; her features were pinched with lines of weariness.

Anger flared in Paul. When they had parted five weeks ago, Karen’s face had revealed both her inner battle concerning her passionate, if brief, relationship with him and consternation over the possible effects of Charles’s heart attack. Now, a mere five weeks later, her eyes still betrayed inner conflict, but she appeared on the point of exhaustion.

What in the hell is he doing to her?
The question seared Paul’s mind and strengthened his resolve. Drawing a deep breath, he said, “I had planned on staying awhile, to give us time to get to know each other.” He smiled faintly. “And to give myself time to find out if what I suspect is true.”

“What you suspect?” Karen repeated, shaking her head. “Paul, I don’t understand. What do you suspect?”

“That I’m falling in love with you.”

For one perfect, brilliant instant, undiluted joy shimmered through Karen. Paul was here, near enough to touch. Her fingers itched with the need to reach out and seek proof of his reality. Her lips burned with a fire only his mouth could quench. Her empty body ached for a completion he alone could give. Within that perfect instant, Karen could envision an end to endless nights of longing. Paul was here. She was whole. Life was radiant.

And then the instant ended.

Reality waited in the dining alcove. And reality was unchanged by a man who suspected that he was falling in love.

The death of the perfect instant left the agony of an imperfect reality. How many times since the day she had driven away, leaving him calling after her, had she secretly, silently cried out for him? How many times in all the long nights since then had she awakened, her body quivering with the need to be a part of his? Karen shivered in response to the answers that washed through her mind.