Speak Now (42 page)

As she crawled from the pool, Cara couldn’t help but feel like a bedraggled cat, crawling in from the rain. One look at the eager children tossed those thoughts out of her mind. Riley and Bryson cared only that she invest in them. Jonathan seemed blinded to her lackluster appearance, and the secret smile hovering around Verna’s dark eyes told Cara that she’d passed some unspoken test of approval.

“Into the mudroom and put on some dry clothes, both of you,” the children’s nanny demanded. For a moment, Cara felt an odd dissociative feeling of being dropped into the old south and hearing Jonathan’s mammy scolding all of them. It was both creepy and soothing in an odd, dichotomous sort of way.

“I’ll just put something on so I don’t trail water through the house. Be out in a minute.”

Cara hurried into “her” room, anxious to change into something that didn’t quite advertise—she snickered at the choice of word—her “assets.” She dragged the suitcase onto the luggage rack next to the closet. Who had luggage racks in their homes?
Apparently,
she thought as she unzipped the suitcase,
people like Jonathan.

For an entire week, she’d packed and unpacked that suitcase, each outfit perfectly planned for every occasion and designed to showcase her at her finest. “Okay, Lord, I know it’s shallow and full of myself, but I want to make a lasting impressio
n—a good one. We’ve got to get through the next six weeks somehow.” She pulled out her cutest skirt and a top that always made her feel her best. “Oh, and, Lord, the courage to ask about house hunting. That’d be a good one too. It just feels weird, but I’ve got to do it.”

~*~*~*~

Little hands led her to a room upstairs that Jonathan had skipped in the original tour of the house. What she’d imagined as Lily’s personal sanctuary was obviously home to the big surprise. She obliged Bryson and covered her eyes with her hands, happy that she did once she felt Jonathan guiding her through the room. Just that small amount of touch would last her for days if she savored it long enough. On the count of three, she dropped her hands and stared at
an armoire. Though she couldn’t see him, she felt Jonathan’s eyes and the delight behind them. Riley jumped up and down as if she’d lose the contents of her bladder in seconds. “Do you like it?”

Cara nodded. “It’s pretty…”

“She doesn’t know what it is, Daddy. You said she’d know,” Bryson accused.

“Open the door.”

Anxious to find some way to show true excitement, Cara tugged on the door and then gasped. “You got me one of
those
! I’ve wanted one for ages!”

The large armoire
opened into an organizing Mecca for scrapbooking enthusiasts. Excited, she pulled one of the pouches from the inside of the door and examined it more closely. Bryce’s voice hardly penetrated her consciousness as he said, “Daddy says that this’ll make having to pack up all your stuff not quite such a chore.”

“Pack up? Why—” Understanding dawned. “Of course. You’re right, it will.”

Now that the excitement of gift giving had ended, the children hurried down to see what snacks they could wheedle out of Verna. Cara ran her fingers over the door, a little overwhelmed with the gift. It meant a lot to her that Jonathan had tried to find something that pleased her tastes rather than his. Even the eggshell paint rather than stained wood showed his attention to her preferences. “The paper organizer is over here. I asked at the scrapbook store down the road, and she said someone who is as committed as you are probably would need the additional storage.”

“You went into a scrapbook store?” The idea seemed ridiculous.

“I knew you’d need something—”

“But why buy it now? We’ll just have to move it. It’s such a great gift, but—”

“We can’t wait years to live our lives to save trouble in the future. You’ll want to have your own space here, and this is the beginning. Whatever we need, we’ll buy, but I thought you’d want some of your current—”

“Wait, did you say here? As in Atlanta here, or as in when we’re married and all together in some nebulous place here?”

“As in this house. There isn’t a room in this place that you’d feel at home in, so I thought this would be a good…” His voice quieted almost to a whisper. “What is it?”

“I’m moving here? As in to this house here?”

“Well…” He rubbed the back of his neck. “Um, did you plan to keep separate homes?”

“Did you plan to tell me you weren’t moving to Rockland after all?” Cara hated the way her voice rose, but she couldn’t help it.

“You thought I was moving—”

“One of the first things you told me was that you planned to take over the company and move to Rockland. Then you proposed and never once mentioned me living here. What else was I supposed to think?” She wheeled on her heels, trying not to cry as she strode through the door. A few steps down the hall, she turned and said, “And to think I was trying to work up the courage to ask you about house hunting. You’ve got some nerve, Jonathan.”

“I don’t understand—”

“That’s obvious.”

With tears blinding her, Cara hurried down the staircase and across the house, barely reserving enough self-control to stop herself from slamming the door. Anger, something she didn’t experience often, made her hands shake, and right then, they looked like she suffered from an advanced case of Parkinson’s. When he knocked on the door, as she’d known he would, Cara glanced at herself in the mirror. That was one advantage to not putting on her cosmetics after their swim. She didn’t have raccoon eyes. “Come in.” Despite her best efforts, a heavy sigh hovered over her words.

“Can we talk?”

“I can. I’m good at it. The questions are, will you listen, and do you feel like talking?”

“Yes, and yes.”

She patted the foot of her bed with her toe, but Jonathan shook his head, his eyes reminding her of the torture that’d produce. “Good point. Where can we talk?”

“We need privacy. I’ve got a few things I need to share.” His eyes dropped. “Verna made me promise.”

“I guess that excludes a quiet restaurant.”

“Yeah. Not for this conversation.” Jonathan thought. “Let’s table this until after dinner. The church is open until nine. We’ll go find an empty classroom—or the nursery. It has couches.”

“M’kay.”

Jonathan frowned and reached for her before shoving his hands in his pockets. “Scale of one to ten. How angry are you?”

“When you’re not looking at me like that, eight or nine.”

“Then I’ll keep looking.”

Jonathan led Cara through the church, around the corner, and into the nursery. She took the couch; he grabbed the rocking chair and held onto the arms as if gripping them before an insane rollercoaster ride. How long they each sat there, not meeting one another’s eyes, not speaking, miserable, neither really knew. However, Cara couldn’t stand the pained look on Jonathan’s face every time she glanced in his direction.

“Did I mention that I’m furious?” she whispered.

“I kind of got that vibe.” A lump in his throat bobbed before he continued. “I can’t tell if you’re angry that I missed something we need to discuss or at the idea of living in Atlanta. Is it too far from your parents—”

Cara’s eyes closed as she tried to control the tide of emotions roiling toward them, ready to smash their perfect relationship to bits. “Actually, I think your cluelessness bothers me more than anything.”

“Clueless?”

“Can you say you aren’t? Seriously. Can you sit there and tell me that you are not clueless right now?” The words dropped like mini detonators for one terrifying bomb.

“Okay, yeah. I wasn’t questioning the word so much as in what area.”

She knew her hyper-controlled responses gave him false reassurances that she wouldn’t explode, but Cara kept trying anyway. “What did you tell me about your job when we met.”

“I get it,” Jonathan agreed. “I said I planned to move to Rockland in about five years. It hasn’t been five years.”

“And what did I tell you about my job?”

“You’re the assistant CFO of the Rockland territory of Mayflower Trust.”

“How old am I?” She wrung her fingers together, resisting the urge to shred the fabric of her skirt.

“Yeah, I know. You’re of the youngest assistant CFO I’ve ever seen, but—”

“What happens if I transfer?”

“I don’t know. Every company has their—”

“Jonathan! I end up in the accounting pool with a dozen others. You know it.” Her interruption reemphasized her fury.

“Surely Derek—”

“No. It doesn’t work that way with Mayflower. We don’t use our position to advance people who make career-killing choices for the fun of it. Get real, Jonathan. You never once even hinted that I’d have to leave my job. You didn’t mention me living in Atlanta—not even once, but you did talk about taking over Delta. You did talk about looking forward to a new house—to getting out of Atlanta.”

“I can’t just walk into my uncle’s office and say, ‘Sorry, I’m getting married, so I guess you’re out of here now.’”

“That’s ridiculous, and you know it. The man has been trying to get out of there for a decade.” She glared at him. “Just what are you afraid of, Jonathan?”

It was his turn to look stunned. “Afraid?”

“You’ve spent your entire career trying to prove yourself worthy of the position of CEO of Delta. Why? What are you afraid of?”

“Noth—” Her eyes narrowed further and her lips went white. “It’s hard to explain.”

“I’ll wait.” When he didn’t look ready to give her an answer five minutes later, Cara stood. “Then let’s go. I’ll go home.”

“And what?”

“And figure out how to try to salvage my career and forgive you for doing this to me.” The relief on his face increased her indignation. “What!”

“I thought you were going to say cancel all the wedding plans.”

“What? So you do something incredibly insensitive, selfish, and stupid and think that’ll get you out of this? Are you insane?”

Jonathan gripped his knees tightly and then relaxed, exhaling loudly. “I didn’t think you were going to quit speaking to me, but I thought—” He pinched his nose, ran fingers through his hair, and rubbed his temples. Every nervous, frustrated, or confused gesture that a man could make, it seemed as if he did them all simultaneously. “I just thought you might want to stop things until it was worked out.”

“Well, I don’t. I just want you to open your eyes and realize what you’re asking of—no, demanding of—me. You just effectively said, “Your career means nothing. So… nothing, that we don’t even have to discuss it.” She folded her hands with extreme preciseness. “So what are you afraid of?”

His eyes, tortured by some ghost they both knew she couldn’t imagine, finally met hers fully for the first time since they’d arrived. “Nepotism.”

Her laughter didn’t help the situation, but she frankly didn’t care. “The man who can command the attention of every person in a crowded room, who has been credited with a thirty-five percent increase in company revenue since starting with the ‘family business,’ and who is known in the business world as the man who worked his way up from the bottom is worried about nepotism. Seriously?”

“How can I expect people to respect me if I got everything handed to me?”

“The fact is, you can work from cleaning toilets to the top, but it was still handed to you. The first job was still handed to you. Your education, your inside experience from listening around the dinner table, the contacts, friends—it’s all part of God’s gift to your family. You can’t just discount that, no matter how hard you try to manufacture a ‘regular guy’ attitude.”

“That’s—”

“The facts.” Anger grew as she spoke, her eyes flashing, her hair tossed behind her almost by itself, and her knees and ankles clicked together as if she was in a business meeting where someone attacked her boss. “You went, did all the low-level jobs, and because of it, you’ll be a better boss. That’s what people think. They think you did it so that you weren’t removed from the rest of your company’s employees. They don’t think you were trying to earn the right to be you.”

The word “you” seemed to echo around them, growing louder rather than quieter with each second that passed. At last, Jonathan asked, “So, your career would be negatively impacted if you moved. You have no doubt about that.”

“I have no doubt.”

Jonathan slid his phone open, punched a button and waited for someone on the other end of the line to pick up. Her eyes asked who he called, but he ignored her. “Hey, Uncle Weston, it’s Jonathan. Yeah. Well, I was calling to tell you that I’ll be moving back to Rockland after the wedding. Yeah, we’re calling the movers and a realtor on Monday. Do you have an office for me?”

Each second that passed as he spoke raised her seething barometer to new levels. Just before he hung up, she strolled out of the room with a lot more grace and poise than she felt. She wanted to throw things. Jonathan caught up to her as she reached for the car door handle. “Hey—”

“Take me home.” Cara’s tone was unmistakable.

“What did I do now? I just put in my transfer, Cara! What more do you want from me?”