Meeting at Midnight (15 page)

T
here's something particularly humiliating about almost being arrested by your little brother.

“Watch your head,” Duncan said.

I stopped dead beside his patrol car. “If you think I'm going to ride in the cage in back, I'll have to report you for drinking on duty.”

One side of his mouth kicked up. “Guess I can let you ride up front. Though I may rethink using the handcuffs. Transporting a suspect who isn't properly restrained is against regs.”

I growled and jerked open the passenger-side door. He was enjoying this entirely too much.

Duncan grinned and rounded the back of the car, got in on his side and started the engine. “I can't get over you starting a brawl in a bar. What were you thinking?”

“I didn't start a fight. I hit one man one time.” Once, I
thought with satisfaction, had been all it took. Chuck had dropped like a felled tree.

“I guess those other three fellows just imagined they were in a fight.”

“Some people are too suggestible.”

He sighed and pulled out of the lot. It sounded a lot like the sighs I used to heave when he was a teenager. “So why did you hit Meyers?”

“The other guy was too much of a runt. Chuck is more my size.”

“That isn't quite what I meant.”

I knew that, of course. I gave it a couple moments, then said, “They talked about Seely in a way I couldn't stomach. About her body, really. It wasn't about her at all, just what they wanted to do with her body. I warned Chuck. He wouldn't quit.”

“As a man, I understand. As your brother, I sympathize. As a cop, I ought to be reading you your rights.”

“No one pressed charges.” Thanks in part to my promise to pay the owner for damages, even though I hadn't broken anything. Not even Chuck's jaw, since I'd had the sense to aim for his belly. You can break your hand hitting someone in the jaw.

“Drunk and disorderly.”

“I'm not drunk, dammit! I only had time for one swallow.” But Duncan was grinning again, so I knew he'd just been yanking my chain.

Neither of us said anything for a few blocks. I was thinking about how pathetic it was when a man couldn't even manage to get drunk without causing all sorts of ruckus when Duncan spoke again. “I'm sorry things didn't work out for you and Seely.”

“Yeah. Me, too.”

“Gwen has spoken with her a couple of times since she moved out.”

I was surprised, though maybe I shouldn't have been. They'd hit it off pretty well. “That's good, I guess.”

“Seely wouldn't tell her what went wrong.” Duncan paused. “Gwen is afraid maybe
she's
what went wrong.”

“No! Tell her…” I scrubbed my face with my hand, sighed and got it said. “I had feelings for Gwen at one time. You know that. But that's in the past.” Something I hadn't made clear to Seely—but she hadn't given me much of a chance, springing it on me that way.

Or maybe I hadn't made it clear because it hadn't been clear to me, either. But I was beginning to see a lot of things I'd never managed to bring into focus before. Losing Seely was a lot like dying cold and alone on a mountain. It clarified things. “Tell Gwen that the problem is me. Not her, and not Seely.” I sighed. “I found out she can't have children, and I didn't handle it well.”

“It isn't easy when the woman you love isn't able to bear your child.”

There was an edge to his voice—not much, just a hint. And all of a sudden I knew myself for a fool.

The type of cancer Gwen had been treated for made pregnancy dangerous. It was likely that the only child she'd ever have was Zach…
my
son. I'd felt sorry for myself often enough because Zach wasn't wholly mine, living with me. But Zach was also probably the only son Duncan would ever have.

I'd never thought about what that must mean to him. And he'd never spoken about it. Duncan was the kind of quiet hero whose sacrifices were easy to overlook.

And me…I was ashamed. “You'd know about that, wouldn't you?” I said at last, as we turned off on my street.

Duncan didn't say anything until we pulled up in the drive behind my truck. Then he turned to me. “If you love Seely, you'll grieve with her for what you can't have. And it won't be just
your
unborn children you mourn. It will be hers, too.”

A few more things became clear. Painfully so. After a mo
ment I managed to say, “How did you turn into more of an adult than me, when I had such a big head start?”

He grinned, a subtle flash in the darkness. “I had a great example. Someone who raised kids he didn't father.”

I nodded. “Frank McDonald, maybe? He's great with his stepkids.”

“No, you jerk. You.”

 

The Sleep-Rite Inn wasn't much, a horseshoe-shaped cluster of rooms around a courtyard of cracked and pitted asphalt, with a perpetually empty swimming pool as the centerpiece. The blinking neon “Vac-n-y” sign pretty much summed the place up.

Number fourteen was two doors down from the highway. I was scowling as I knocked on the door.

“Go away,” number fourteen's inhabitant called, “or I'll call the police.”

“For God's sake, Seely, what kind of place did you pick to run away to that you have to call the cops if someone knocks on your door?”

The door was so thin I heard her gasp. A moment later the lock clicked and the door opened, and there she stood in one of her old sweatshirts and the bottom half to my pajamas, rolled up at the hems. After a moment she said, “You weren't knocking, you were pounding. And it's ten-thirty at night. What are you doing here?”

“Breaking my promise. Can I come in?”

Her face had that closed, wary look that I hated, but she stood aside. I went in.

I'd never been inside the Sleep-Rite Inn's rooms before. I looked around, my scowl deepening. “This is a dump. If you needed money, why didn't you say so? We could have called it a loan,” I said grudgingly.

The tiniest smile flickered deep in her eyes. “You think I
should have borrowed money from you so I could live more comfortably when I left you?”

“Since you probably wouldn't let me give it to you, yeah.”

“And you came here at ten-thirty to tell me so.”

I flushed. I'd swung off course for a moment. “I came because that was a stupid promise. How can you get your head straight when you don't know if I've got mine straight yet?”

She tilted her head to one side. “Have you ever broken a promise before, Ben?”

I didn't think so. In fact, I was pretty damned sure I hadn't. I began to pace. “I had this all worked out, what I was going to say and how to say it. You're throwing me off.”

“Sorry.”

She didn't look sorry. “The thing is,” I said, halting in front of her, “that I can change course. Change my mind, that is. It may take me a while, but I get there. We'll adopt. If you want to,” I added when her expression didn't change. “A very smart man helped me see that kids don't have to start out being mine to end up that way.”

“You still want to marry me, then.”

It wasn't a question, but I thought I heard an ache behind it. “More than I've ever wanted anything in my life. Seely…” I wanted badly to touch her, but I didn't trust myself. Sex had been too easy for us. It had broken down some walls, maybe, but at the same time sex had made it easy to think we didn't have to talk, too.

Or maybe that part was just me. I swallowed. “I'm not good with words. And I'm stubborn. Sometimes that's good, but it means I can take a while to see the obvious. You asked about Gwen. Well, it's real obvious to me now that Gwen was a dream, part of how I thought life was supposed to go. What I didn't see was that sometimes you have to let go of the dream in order to take hold of reality.”

Her eyes misted. “Ben…”

“Let me finish.” Now I reached for her. I couldn't help it. I put my hands on her shoulders and ran them down her arms to her hands and held on. “You're my reality, Seely. And you're better than any dream I ever mooned over. There's more
of
you—more giving, more fun, more…I don't know how say it right. Just
more.
So if you need time, I'll give you time. If you want to go back to just dating, we can do that. Just don't shut me out. Please.”

She threw herself at me. She was laughing, or maybe crying.

Or maybe that part was me, too. I blinked several times, stroking her hair, savoring the feeling of having her in my arms again. “So, you want to go out with me?”

“I want to marry you, you idiot.” She raised her head, and yes, her eyes were shiny wet. And her smile was huge. “I always have. From the moment I found a man too stubborn to die crawling up a mountain…that's another family tradition, you see. Knowing it right away when we meet the love of our lives. But you still haven't said what you're supposed to.”

I hunted frantically through the last few minutes, trying to think of exactly what I'd said. “Did I remember to ask you to marry me instead of telling you?”

She shook her head, but it was one of those fond, he's-only-a-man head shakes women use sometimes. “You're supposed to tell me you love me.”

“I…” A second's pure panic hit when the words wouldn't come. “I don't think I've said that in a long time. Give me a second.”

“How long has it been?” she asked gently.

Another memory search, but this one took longer, reaching back…years.

Could it really have been that long? Surely I'd said it sometime, to someone…but you didn't say stuff like that to your brothers. And Annie—well, she knew, so I'd never had to say
it. I cleared my throat. “The last time I remember saying that was to my parents. They were about to get on their plane.”

“And they never came back, did they?”

“But that's stupid. I got over that a long time ago. I…” Was still not saying the words she needed to hear. There was a buzzing in my ears. I felt almost sick. “Okay, I can do this. I…I love you.”

The kiss she gave me then was guaranteed to erase any lingering trauma associated with those words. After a long moment she sighed and laid her head on my shoulder. “And I love you. I fell hard and fast, so fast it nearly scared me clear out of town. If Duncan hadn't found me at the bus station…”

My arms tightened around her. “I owe him.” For more than one thing.

“I wanted to call you so many times. I hated leaving. But if you didn't love me, I couldn't marry you—not when I couldn't give you the children you craved. I was afraid I'd say yes, anyway,” she admitted. “That's why I left.”

“You could have told me you loved me,” I pointed out.

“Sure. And then you'd have felt honor bound to marry me, even if you weren't in love.”

I opened my mouth to argue…and shut it again. She might be right. I couldn't say for sure, since by the time she'd walked out I'd been head-over-heels for her, even if I was too dumb to know it.

Something occurred to me. “You mean you were going to take the bus because of me, not because of the deal with your brother?”

She nodded. “Partly. Mostly. Speaking of brothers…” She gave me another soft kiss. “Thank you. I had lunch with Jonathan yesterday, and he told me you'd spoken to him. He had a talk with Dr. Meckle—who, it seems, has lost all interest in writing a paper about such an uncooperative subject.”

“That's great.” I hugged her. So the blond guy she'd had lunch with had been her brother. That was a relief in more ways than one. Jonathan Burns had been pretty thrown by
learning he had a sister, and I hadn't been sure he would follow up on my suggestion to contact her.

I decided she didn't need to know I'd jumped to an unfortunate conclusion about who she'd had lunch with. “What did you think of Jonathan?”

“I think…” She took a deep breath, let it out. “I liked him. It will take time to build a real relationship, of course—we'll have to see how things work out. He…seemed glad to meet me. And as unsure as I was about where we go from here.”

It was a start. I was getting the idea that life wasn't one long, unfolding road, but a whole series of starts and stops and then starting up again—a little smarter each time, if you were lucky.

“Are you sure you don't mind?” She searched my face. “About not having children, that is. Unless we adopt, which I would like…but you have to be sure.”

“Of course I mind. I can't think of anything sweeter than watching you grow big with my child, and I'm sad that we won't get to experience it.” I smiled down at her tenderly. “But that's only one part of the deal, after all, and not the most important part.”

A smile slid across her face, slow as sunrise…mischievous as a puppy. “Maybe it's just as well we can't mingle our gene pools. Who knows what the offspring of two strong psychics might be like?”

I snorted. “Only one person in this room is gifted in that way.”

“Ben, I don't glow.”

“Of course you do. I
saw
you. Twice.”

“You must have seen my aura. No one else has ever seen me glow when I heal—not me, my mother or my granny. Not the people I healed. Not the researcher who decided I'd made it all up.” When I just stared at her, she chuckled. “Ask Zach or Mrs. Bradshaw if you don't believe me, but think about it. How could I have kept my healing a secret all these years if I lit up like a Christmas tree every time?”

“You don't glow.”

She shook her head.

I thought it over. “Okay, you don't glow to everyone else. Just to me. That doesn't mean I see auras. Otherwise I'd have been seeing them all over the place, and I haven't. Just with you.” I smiled, and it came kind of slow and easy, too. “I trust what I see when I look at you, Seely.”