Otherwise Engaged (14 page)

“It’s odd, actually,” Marsh said, still staring at his ring. “This marriage thing. I can’t explain it
medically, but when you get married, something happens to your brain, and you get … well, slightly stupid, I think. You say ‘I do,’ and then you instantly want everyone else around you to say it, too, regardless of their situation. I mean, I’m sitting here thinking you’re a fool for not actually going ahead and marrying this woman, when in reality
I’m
the fool. You surely have your reasons for doing what you’re doing, right?”

Pres nodded, unable to hide a smile.

“And therefore I shouldn’t feel bad or sorry for you because you’re not going to do exactly what I did. And in fact, you
can’t
do exactly what I did, because what I did was marry Leila, and I’d be damned upset if you attempted to do the same.”

“How is Leila?”

Marsh smiled, his lean face relaxing. “Fabulous, thanks. Amazingly wonderful. Exquisitely excellent. You’re sure you don’t want a blood test?”

Pres laughed. “No thanks. Molly and I really are just pretending to be engaged. The whole thing started out as a little lie I told during a press conference. I didn’t want to be
Fantasy Man’s
Most Eligible Bachelor of the Year, so I fibbed and
told the news teams that I was going to get married. But someone had a picture of me with Molly, and one thing led to another. They didn’t believe me when I told them I made it all up, so now we’re seeing if the media attention will die down if we give them what they want. What we’re really trying to do is keep those vultures away from Molly’s son.”

“I heard about what happened over at the church.”

“Zander starts school tomorrow,” Pres told the doctor. “I’ve issued invitations for our official engagement party to all those Peeping Tom-type shows that try to pass themselves off as news, like
American Lifestyles
. The party’s on Wednesday night, up at the resort, eight o’clock—tell Leila and consider yourself invited.”

“I will, thanks.” Marsh shifted his weight, pushing himself more fully up onto his desk. “So let’s get this straight: You’re having a party to officially announce an engagement that’s not really real?”

“I know, it’s crazy. But I can’t think of anything else to do. The main thing is that we’ve let these camera crews know that their attendance at this
event depends on their leaving Zander alone—you know, not harassing him at school. If we get word that Zander’s being followed or bothered in any way, they get scratched from the guest list.”

“I hope it works.”

Pres nodded. He did too.

“So if not a blood test, what are you here for?” Marsh asked.

“Information.”

“Something to do with one of your scuba-diving projects?”

Pres shook his head. “No. I want to talk to you about Zander Cassidy.”

Marsh stood up and crossed to the other side of his desk. “Pres, the boy’s a patient. Without his mother’s permission I can’t discuss—”

“I’m not asking you to break any rules,” Pres told him. “I know the kid has some kind of degenerative hearing loss. That’s not a secret. I just want you to help me understand what that means, and what can be done to correct the situation.”

Marsh sat down behind his desk. “If you have questions, I’m sure Molly could answer them—probably even better than I. Audiology is not my specialty, and she’s done quite a bit of research—”

“It’s kind of an emotional issue, and the fact is, Molly’s not a doctor.” Pres leaned forward. “Come on, Marsh. Tell me what this kid’s prognosis is and what the options are for changing it. I care about these people. I want to know what I can do to help.”

Marsh folded his hands on his desk and levelly met Pres’s gaze. “Alexander Cassidy is progressing toward total deafness. His condition is genetic and irreversible, Pres. I’m sorry. There’s no magic operation, no miracle cure.”

Pres stood up. “I can’t accept that.” He began to pace. “There must be
some
thing. Some alternative treatment, some recent technological advance—”

“There’s nothing,” Marsh said gently. “Do you think Molly hasn’t searched for some way to preserve her son’s hearing?”

“Molly doesn’t have the resources or the money—”

“Molly has far more than resources and money. She has her love for her child.”

“All the love in the world couldn’t help her if there were some million-dollar operation Zander needed—”

“And all the million dollars in the world can’t help restore Zander’s hearing,” Marsh told him. “Pres, I know you don’t believe me, but your money can’t buy what this little boy needs.”

Silence. Pres could hear the sound of his watch as the second hand swept around the dial. “I want to help them,” he said again. “Can you give me the names of specialists I can call?”

Marsh gazed at him for a moment, then nodded. “Of course. I’ll have Helen fax some names and phone numbers to your office in the morning.”

Pres reached across the desk to shake the doctor’s hand. “Thanks for seeing me on a Sunday.”

Marsh smiled sadly. “I wish it had been for a blood test.”

“S
O WE’RE DIVING
a wall at about sixty feet,” Pres told Zander as they sat on the edge of the pool. “We’re right where we’re supposed to be, but Simon, this is his first time at this depth, and he’s still pretty much a virgin diver, he suddenly panics and instead of taking air
in
to his BC to keep himself neutral, he lets it
out
. Just like that, he goes into free fall, and drops like a stone. I can see him, and I know that he’s still panicking, so I go after him. We both go down too far, too fast, about another sixty feet, and I’m not happy about
that, but I grab him and adjust his BC and finally get us both neutral again. He’s really freaked out, breathing too fast—really sucking the air out of his tank and—”

Pres stopped talking, suddenly aware that Molly was standing beside them. He looked up at her. “Hi.”

“And you do this for fun?” she asked, one eyebrow raised.

“Absolutely.”

“Did this Simon have fun?”

“Eventually.”

“So what’dya do?” Zander asked, eager for the end of the story. “What happened next?”

Molly shifted impatiently. “When you guys are done telling horror stories,
you
need to do your homework,” she said, pointing to Zander, “and you …” She looked down at Pres. “I’d like to talk to you, if you don’t mind.”

She turned to go back to the house, but Pres stopped her by reaching out and grasping her ankle. “Hey, how’s the work on the roof coming?”

She gently pulled herself free, shading her eyes and looking up at the house. “It’s noisy,” she
admitted, “but hopefully it won’t take too much longer. At least not more than a week.”

“How about you and me take a walk on the beach,” Pres suggested. “Get away from the noise for a while?”

Molly smiled ruefully. “I suppose after three days it’s time to give the world another photo opportunity, huh? Lord, I’ll be glad after tonight, when this is all over.”

“Hey, Mom,” Zander said, splashing his feet in the cool water of the pool. “I was thinking. … You know this make-believe game you and Pres are playing, pretending to want to get married and everything, with this big party tonight?”

Molly nodded, waiting for her son to go on, hoping he wasn’t going in the direction she feared he was going.

“Well, I was thinking, why don’t you just get married for real?”

He went. Straight where she’d hoped he wouldn’t go.

Zander turned to look at Pres. “You like us, don’t you, Pres? And we like you. …”

Molly intercepted, tapping Zander’s shoulder so that he would look up at her and correctly follow
her words. “Of course Pres likes us, but Z, people just don’t go and marry everyone that they like. It’s much more serious and complicated than that.”

“Why?” Zander asked.

Pres tapped the boy on the leg, and he turned to face him.

“Because when people get married,” Pres said, “they should go into that relationship really believing that this is the one person they want to spend the rest of their life with. And the rest of your life can be an awfully long time if you don’t pick the right person.”

Zander turned his wide blue eyes from Pres to Molly. “And you don’t think Mom’s the right person?”

Molly closed her eyes. “Zander …”

“Your mom and I don’t really know each other that well.” Pres glanced up at Molly, a glint of humor in his eyes. “She’s pointed that out to me on at least one occasion, and you know, I think she’s probably right.”

“So you
might
get married, after you know each other,” Zander concluded.

“Zander, if I were you, I wouldn’t hold my
breath,” Molly said. “It’s highly unlikely that’s going to happen.”

“But it’s not impossible. Nothing’s impossible. You say that all the time.” Zander turned back to Pres. “So what happened to Simon?”

Molly mouthed the words
I’m sorry
, to Pres, but he just smiled.

“Okay,” he said, getting back to his story. “Simon and I are down at about a hundred and twenty feet, and I know we’re in big trouble. We’re close to the limit for a no-decompression dive and—remember what I told you about all the time limits for divers because of the water pressure, and how if you dive past a certain depth, you need to take your time coming back to the surface to decompress?”

“Or you’ll get the bends,” Zander said.

“Right.”

Molly backed away. “I’ll be up at the house.”

“We’ll be there in a sec.” Pres barely even glanced at her this time, turning back to Zander, who was thoroughly enthralled in the story. “So we’re down too deep, and Simon is hyperventilating, which means he’s using up his air supply way too quickly and my dive computer is flashing all
kinds of warning signals. We’ve already been down there too long. To be completely honest, Zander, I was more scared than I’ve ever been before in my entire life.”

Molly couldn’t help but listen, fascinated and horrified despite herself. She stood quietly by the gate to the pool and watched Pres talk to her son.

“So I make the calculations,” Pres told Zander, “and I realize we’re in big trouble. Even without Simon breathing too fast, we don’t have enough air to get to the surface with all the decompression stops we’ll need. And on top of that I can’t get Simon calmed down. We’re underwater, and I can’t talk to him.”

“If I learned sign language, and Simon learned sign language, then we could talk under water,” Pres signed to Zander. “It would’ve been easy to calm Simon down if we knew sign language,” he said aloud.

Molly had to sit down.

She reached blindly behind her for a lounge chair and sat, staring at Pres in disbelief. How had he managed to learn so much sign language so quickly? Sure, he’d told them that he wanted to learn, but …

She’d thought he was just making polite noise, that sign language was one of those things he’d like to learn but would never find the time for. She hadn’t believed him. She hadn’t thought he was serious.

Obviously he was.

“And when we made our way back to the hundred-foot mark,” Pres was telling Zander, “there was the rest of our dive team, waiting for us with spare tanks. Thanks to them, we made it to the surface, took our time, had plenty of air, and nobody got bent.”

“Cool,” Zander said, awe in his voice.

“You know what the moral of that story is?” Pres asked.

Zander shook his head.

“Never,
ever
dive alone, and if possible, dive in teams of more than two.”

Zander nodded reverently, as if Pres had just imparted some incredible gem of wisdom.

Pres smiled at Zander. “I think it’s homework time now.”

Zander glanced quickly back at Molly. “Yeah. I guess.”

“Do you have a lot?”

Another glance at Molly. “I don’t know. Not too much.”

“Will you be okay, hanging out here while Molly and I go for a walk?”

Zander nodded. “Sure.” He started to dash past Molly, but skidded to a stop. “Mom, can I have a snack?”

“Yes.” He was gone before the word was out of her mouth.

Pres unwrapped a piece of chewing gum and folded it into his mouth as he approached Molly at a much slower pace. She stood up, still incredulous.

“I can’t believe you’re really learning to sign. When?
How?
I’m speechless.”

Pres smiled. “You can’t be speechless …” he said, then signed, “…if you know sign language.”

His hands were graceful, his fingers long and really quite beautiful. Somehow they managed to be both elegant
and
work-roughened—just like the man himself.

“Considering that you’ve been avoiding me since Saturday night, and I’ve had a whole lot of free time, I took advantage of the opportunity and
got some books about signing. And Zander’s been teaching me too.”

“I haven’t been avoiding you,” Molly protested. “At least, not
exactly …”

“Let’s walk.” He took her hand with an easy familiarity, and together they started down the path that led to the beach. He glanced over his shoulder at her. “What’s on your agenda? I got the sense that this was going to be a talk with a capital
T
.”

“About tonight …”

“Can’t avoid me tonight, Molly. There’s no way you can cancel. We’ve got a guest list of over five hundred people.”

“Five
hundred?”

“Roughly.”

“I’m not going to cancel. I’m just … nervous.”

As they reached the open sand of the beach, Pres slipped his arm around her shoulders so that they were walking arm in arm. “I’ll be there, right next to you the entire time.”

“That’s
what’s making me nervous.”

She fit perfectly against him. Whether they were dancing or walking or even kissing, they
were a near-perfect match. She tried to put some space between them, but he wouldn’t let her go.

“Uh-oh, photographers, dead ahead,” he murmured. He tugged Molly toward him, covering her mouth with his in a lingering kiss.

His mouth was as sweet as she remembered. And she
did
remember. Vividly. In fact, she’d been dreaming about his kisses now for three nights running. Kisses, and more.