Marking Time (23 page)

“She was on the phone a lot,” Maggie said with disapproval.

“Do you think she has a boyfriend in Nashville?” Clare asked. “She hasn’t mentioned anything to me.”

“No,” Jill said. “So when can we ski?”

“Tomorrow if you want.” Clare wondered why Jill had changed the subject so abruptly. “We’re supposed to get a big snowstorm in the next day or two. We’ll see what the weather does.”

“Cool,” Maggie said.

“Let’s go for a walk in town. I want to introduce you to my new friends.”

They bundled up and headed into town where Clare showed them off at McHugh’s and the Book Nook. Diana and Bea were delighted to finally meet Clare’s daughters. The girls dragged Clare into all the stores in town, even a few she hadn’t been to yet. By the time they walked home, it had begun to snow lightly.

“
Who
is
that
?” Maggie pointed to the house.

Clare smiled at the sight of Aidan bent over the table saw on the front porch. She felt her face go hot when she remembered kissing him on Christmas Eve. “
That
is Aidan O’Malley. He’s doing the work on the house.”

Jill grinned. “Can’t wait to see if the front of him lives up to the back.”

“Oh, trust me,” Clare said with a smirk. “It does.”

Jill’s eyes widened. “
Really
, Mother. Do tell!”

Clare shrugged. “Nothing to tell. We’re friends. You guys will like him.” When they got to the house, Clare waited for him to shut off the saw. “Hey, you’re back.”

He looked up and smiled. “I wanted to beat the snow. Got some new friends, Clare?”

Maggie giggled. “We’re her daughters!”

“
Daughters?
” Aidan asked with mock horror. “You have
daughters
?”

“Very funny. Jill and Maggie, this is Aidan O’Malley. He’s a carpenter with a screw loose.”

“I’m offended,” Aidan said.

“You’ll get over it. Come on, girls. Let’s get dinner started. We’re having lasagna if you want to stay, O’Malley.”

“I’d love to.”

They left him working on the porch and went inside.

“What was
that
all about?” Jill asked.

“What?” Clare asked.

“You were flirting with him,” Maggie said as if she were an authority on the subject.

“I was not!”

“He’s
dreamy
,” Maggie said with a sigh.

Clare couldn’t deny it. “Isn’t he?”

Jill’s eyes went wide again. “Do you
like
him, Mom?”

“We’re friends. Don’t make a big deal out of it.”

“Hmm.” Jill took a bite of a carrot Clare got out for salad. She leaned against the bare wall in the kitchen and eyed her mother with interest.

“Hmm, nothing,” Clare said, but she was rattled that the girls had zeroed in on her growing friendship with Aidan so quickly.

By the time they’d had dinner and launched into a competitive game of Monopoly, the girls and Aidan were fast friends.

“That’ll be four hundred bucks,” Maggie told him when he landed on Boardwalk.

He groaned. “I’m busted. You girls have driven me straight into the poor house.”

“I can definitely relate,” Clare said dryly.

He got up to look out the window to check the snow. “I’d better go, but I’ll be over in the morning to dig you out.”

“We can do it,” Clare said.

“I don’t mind. The skiing will be great tomorrow.”

“Do you want to come with us?” Jill asked. They had grilled him about the best runs on the mountain.

“I really should get some work done.”

“Go ahead,” Clare said. “This place isn’t going anywhere.”

“I’d love to,” Aidan admitted. “I haven’t been yet this year.”

“Good,” Maggie said as she finished putting the game away. “I’m going to bed. See you tomorrow, Aidan.”

“I’m going up, too,” Jill said with a big yawn.

“I’ll be up in a minute,” Clare called after them.

“They’re great kids,” Aidan said as he pulled on his coat.

Clare walked him to the front door. “I like them.”

Smiling, he took a step toward her. “I can see why.”

“It’s really coming down out there. You should go.” His nearness stirred butterflies in her belly. She didn’t know what made her more anxious—that he might kiss her again or that he wouldn’t.

He ran his thumbs along her jaw. “I missed you,” he said, dipping his head to touch his lips to hers.

Clare’s senses were filled with the fragrance of Christmas pine and sawdust and a hint of the cologne he’d worn on Christmas Eve. She felt his arms close around her and relaxed against him. Under his coat, her hands found his back as he brushed his lips over hers again.

“Aidan,” she whispered against his lips.

“Hmm?”

“I missed you, too. I really did.”

Encouraged by her confession, he tugged her closer. When he nudged at her lips with his tongue, she opened her mouth to let him in. The swirl of his tongue against hers made her weak, and before long they both were breathless.

Reluctantly, he took a step back but kept a firm hold on her hand. “It’s been a long time since I’ve looked forward to anything the way I look forward to seeing you every day.” He kissed her hand and then her cheek. “See you tomorrow.”

Before she could think of anything to say to that astounding statement, he was out the door.

Aidan returned early the next morning with a shovel. He cleared off the sidewalk, stairs, and porch before there were any signs of life inside. More than a foot of snow had fallen overnight, and the rumble of snow blowers and the scrape of shovels filled the air on Maple Street. When he was done shoveling, he used his key to go inside. The silence told him the three ladies were still sleeping, so he quietly brewed a pot of coffee in the kitchen. He’d been impressed last night by the way Clare had made the gutted kitchen look warm and inviting for her girls. She’d dragged the kitchen table back in from the living room and covered it with festive placemats. An arrangement of evergreen, holly, and winterberry sat in a jug on the table.

He took a cup of coffee with him to the downstairs bathroom. As he worked, he thought about the evening he’d spent with Clare and her daughters. The girls surprised him. He had expected typical teenagers, but they were exceedingly polite to their mother, even solicitous—jumping up to get something for her or to refill her glass without being asked. He’d seen none of the usual teenager attitude he’d learned to expect from girls their age by watching his sister in action. It was almost odd, really.

He was also more curious than he’d been before about their father, since the only sign of Clare in either of them was Maggie’s spectacular blue eyes. The girls were gorgeous, and Aidan felt an unexpected stab of jealousy when he imagined what their father must look like.

By the time he heard stirrings upstairs, he’d applied a coat of paint to the bathroom walls. The new floors in the bathroom and kitchen would be installed next week. The job was slightly ahead of schedule, which worried him. He needed to slow it down so he would have more time to get to know Clare before she went back to Rhode Island. He didn’t like to think about her leaving. He’d been taken aback by how badly he’d wanted to kiss her last night and couldn’t wait to do it again.

“Morning,” Jill said from the doorway.

He turned to her. “Hey. Did you sleep well?”

“Yeah, I was tired after driving all that way. That’s the farthest I’ve ever driven in one day.”

“Plus it’s through the mountains, which can be stressful.”

“My fingers hurt from gripping the wheel,” she admitted with a grin. “What time do you want to go skiing?”

“Whenever you guys are ready.”

“I’ll go wake up Maggie. Thirty minutes or so?”

“Sounds good.”

“I like that color,” she said, nodding at the sage-colored paint.

“Your mom picked it.”

“She has good taste,” Jill said with a pointed look that told him she knew something was brewing between him and her mother.

Before he could reply, she turned and went back upstairs. Aidan laughed, ridiculously pleased by the backhanded compliment.

The ski area at Mount Mansfield wasn’t as busy as Aidan had expected it to be since it was Christmas vacation week. He figured the tourists were scared off by the big snowfall overnight.
Wimps
. Within an hour, he and the girls had made three runs down the intermediate slope and were ready to move up.

They skied to the end of the line at one of the lifts for the advanced trails.

“You guys are really good,” Aidan said. “I’m impressed.”

“Our dad’s a great skier,” Jill said. “He taught us.”

“Does your mom ski?”

“She used to,” Maggie said. “Before.”

“Before her fall?”

The girls looked at him with confusion on their faces.

“What fall?” Jill asked.

“Oh, well, she said…” Aidan felt like he was wandering into murky territory.

“I meant before she was hit by the car,” Maggie said. “She’s still recovering.”

“Not so much from the accident but the coma,” Jill added. “Three years is a long time to be inactive.”

Aidan felt like someone had hit him. Hard.

They were quiet on the ride up the mountain in the chairlift. Aidan was reeling. No wonder they treated her like she was made of spun glass.
Three years in a coma? Jesus.

Arriving at the top, they got off the lift and concentrated on skiing the challenging trail. Aidan and Jill reached the bottom a few minutes ahead of Maggie, who had waved them on when she got tired.

He knew he shouldn’t ask, but he couldn’t stop himself. “Tell me the rest, Jill.”

“Why didn’t she tell you?”

“I don’t know, but she will. When she’s ready. I need to know.”

Jill looked down at her ski and pushed a pile of snow aside. “She was raped by a psycho who threatened to kill one of us if she told anyone.”

“Oh
no
. No.”

“She lived with it for a long time, and then one day, she just couldn’t take it anymore. She let a car hit her right in front of us,” she said, her voice catching as if the memory was still a raw wound. “She thought if she was dead, he couldn’t hurt us.”

His throat tight with emotion and rage, Aidan put his arm around Jill, who seemed to need the comfort after reopening an old wound. “When did that happen?”

She leaned into him. “Almost four years ago. She’s been recovering from the coma since last April. The doctors had told us it was hopeless, so now they say she’s a genuine miracle.”

“Did they get the guy?”

She nodded. “He was already in prison for something else.”

“How does your dad fit into it?”

“They’re divorced.”

“I know, but why?”

“You should let her tell you,” she said, casting him a wary glance.

“Please, Jill,” he pleaded. “Tell me.”

With a deep sigh, she poked her ski pole into the snow before she looked up at him. “He met someone else when my mom was sick. By the time she woke up, his girlfriend was pregnant with twins. They got married in August, and the twins were born on the same day as their wedding.”

“He just
left
her?” he asked, enraged and horrified. “He left your mother for this other woman?”

“No, she left him. She didn’t want him to have to choose.”

Right in that very moment, standing at the foot of the mountain with his arm around her daughter, Aidan fell the rest of the way in love with Clare.

By the time the girls left the following Saturday, they’d toured the Ben & Jerry’s ice cream factory, visited the Von Trapp family lodge, and skied twice more with Aidan. He joined them for dinner every night and took them to his favorite Mexican restaurant in Burlington on their last night. The only thing that marred their otherwise outstanding visit was the nasty cold Clare came down with mid-week.

Ever since the conversation with Jill, Aidan had been tortured by thoughts of what she’d been through. He hoped she’d tell him about it herself, when she was ready. Until then, all he could do was show her how much she—and now her girls—had come to mean to him.

Aidan arrived at the house about an hour after the girls left. The door was locked, so he used his key and found Clare asleep on the sofa in the living room. He went upstairs for a blanket and brought it down to cover her. When he tugged it up around her, one big blue eye opened.

“Hey,” she said, her voice reduced to a croak.

“Oh.” He winced. “Sounds worse than yesterday.”

“Mmm,” she said, choking on a cough.

He felt her forehead. “You’re burning up. Have you taken anything?”

“Not yet. Can’t move.”

“Do you have any Advil or Tylenol?”

“Upstairs bathroom.”

He went up to get it, and by the time he returned a minute later, she had dozed off again.

“Clare,” he whispered. “Wake up. Come on, you need to take something.”

She woke up long enough to swallow two pills.

Aidan carried her upstairs to bed. She never stirred when he pulled the blankets up around her. He kissed her forehead and went downstairs to get some work done while she slept.

She was still asleep two hours later, so he decided to go to McHugh’s to get her some soup. He took the truck so he would only be gone a few minutes. When he got back with chicken soup and get-well wishes from Diana, Clare wasn’t in her bed. He gasped when he found her crumpled on the bathroom floor.

“Clare!” His heart pounding with fear, he shook her awake. “
Clare!
”

“What happened?” she asked when her eyes finally opened.

He checked her for injuries. “Did you faint?”

“I must have. I had to go to the bathroom.”

“Shit, you’re really sick. We should get you to a hospital.” He knew she was susceptible to pneumonia after her coma. How he knew and why he knew were his own secrets.

“No!” Her eyes went wide with fear when she grabbed his arm. “No hospitals, Aidan, please.”

A week ago he would have argued with her, but now he understood. “Okay, honey, don’t worry. No hospitals. I’ll take you to my house.”

Clare groaned. “Why can’t I just stay here?”

“Because this place is full of dust and paint fumes. That’s not good for you right now.” He lifted her off the floor and carried her into the bedroom. Had he ever noticed how tiny she was? “Don’t worry, you won’t have to do anything.”