To Wear His Ring (36 page)

Nerves suffused his voice, but once the words were out, relief flowed through him, clearing a path for new reactions. Suddenly he felt glad, incomprehensibly, shockingly glad. Blowing out a long-pent-up breath, he flopped onto his back. Maybe the sun and blue sky were harbingers: Everything was going to be all right.

“I have a son,” he murmured, realizing Nettie would forever be the first person to whom he’d spoken the words. “I have a son. He’s seven. His name is Colin. And I’ve never met him.” Placing an arm over his eyes, he decided to let the sun burn away his guilt. From this point on he would begin to make things right. “I knew his mother years ago in London. We were together a few months and then went our separate ways. Apparently Julia died several months ago. She was in the States, living in Florida. After she died, Colin got shuffled off to some friend of hers, and…it’s a long, long story. I didn’t know anything about Colin until last month, and I didn’t know he was really mine until this morning.”

“The envelope.”

“Yeah. Proof positive. Although, I think I knew when I got the call. It’s weird, but I think I sensed the connection the moment I heard his name. That sounds crazy.”

“No. No it doesn’t.”

Amazed, Chase found himself laughing. “My God, Nettie, I have a son! And I want…” He choked, wondering if every “new parent” had to deal with this ocean of undulating emotions. “I want so damn much to make up for the time we’ve missed.”

Dropping his arm, he arose, expectant and grateful to be with someone who would understand his burgeoning excitement, someone who had “family” stamped all over her. With pride out of the way, he wouldn’t mind a few pointers—about what holidays were supposed to look like, for example. Man, he had a lot to learn!

Nettie was already sitting up, looking almost as stunned as he felt.

He shook his head. “I’m sorry I sprang this on you.” After another brief struggle with his ego, he admitted, “I thought I could ignore the whole thing until it went away. I don’t have much to be proud of in this situation. Not yet.”

Raw energy coursed through his system. Feeling he had to move, Chase stood and walked to the tree. “You could put everything I know about being a father in a thimble and it wouldn’t be half full. But I’m going to do this.” He thumped the rough bark with the heel of his hand. “I’m going to be the best damn—” he actually had to take a breath before he could say the word in reference to himself “—
dad
that kid will ever need!”

His vehemence was utterly male—masking self-doubt, filled with determination and trepidation in near-equal measures. Sitting on her knees, Nettie thought no man had ever looked so beautiful, so powerful or brave or scared. Except…

Tears gathered without warning behind her eyes.

Brian. Yes, except for Brian on the day she gave birth to their son. He’d held the tiny body and though doctors and nurses had bustled around them, Brian had seen only his child. Nettie had thought then it was like watching Columbus discover America. O, brave new world. Where nothing would ever be the same again.

She closed her eyes. Another man. Another child. Another bright, uncertain future.
Ah, Chase. Forgive me, forgive me for what I’m going to do.
Through willpower alone, her eyes were dry when she opened them.

Chase stood beneath the tree, knowing he’d gotten carried away, but his adrenaline was pumping. He’d stacked his reputation on maintaining equilibrium in the midst of chaos. Now his legs were so wobbly, he wondered briefly if they could actually buckle.

“You were the first person I wanted to tell, you know.” He released a shaky laugh that sounded as though it came from someone else’s mouth. “I think that means something. Don’t you?” He smiled, waiting for Nettie’s sweet smile in return.

Waiting. And then hoping.

She twined her fingers, gripping her hands in a tight ball on
her lap. “I am glad for you, Chase. I am…so glad. Glad you told me, too. And I think you’ll be a wonderful father.”

Sounding reserved, she offered him…platitudes.

You caught her off-guard, he reminded himself. You’re misreading her. You’ve had time to get used to it. She’s probably wondering why you didn’t tell her right away. Women like to be told.

Pushing away from the tree, he stepped forward. “I should have brought this up earlier. I wish—”

“No.” Nettie shook her head—vehemently, or so it seemed to him. “No, it’s not that. I—I could be handling this better.”

His muscles tensed. “Handling it?” He shook his head. “Just say it. Whatever it is.”

Only by the tiniest flicker of eyelashes did she betray her nerves.

“I’ve enjoyed every moment we’ve spent together,” she told him, and he sensed immediately that those words were going to be his consolation prize. “But this is all so sudden, and…Under the circumstances, I really can’t…I don’t think we should…” Annoyed with her hesitation, she paused, cranked her composure up a notch and unloaded the rest of the pistol straight from the hip. “The truth is, I don’t want to see you anymore.”

S
ara sat at her desk in the Kalamoose jail, tapping a pen rapidly against a stained blotter while Nettie balanced herself on a cot in one of the cells, measuring for curtains.

New curtains, for crying out dang loud!
Just what they needed, more girly stuff to make a perfectly good jail look like a sorority house. As if the old ruffles weren’t torture enough.

Tossing the pen, Sara pulled a couple sticks of Juicy Fruit from the desk drawer, blew to remove excess dust, then unwrapped and crammed them both into her mouth. In four days, Nettie had scraped the paint off the entire lower half of their house, slip-covered Sara’s favorite TV chair and arranged the contents of the snack cabinet in alphabetical order, which meant Sara had to dig for the Pop Tarts, but the dried apples were right up front. Nothing was safe.

“Come on, let’s go,” she said, rising from the chair. “It’s almost seven, and my stomach’s going to cave in if I don’t put something in it soon.”

Nettie turned from the window. The same cheerful smile she’d worn for days—as if her cheek muscles had frozen solid—wreathed her face. “I didn’t realize the time,” she chirped, hopping
down from the bed. “I’ve got an Irish stew in the Crock Pot. I made chicken Oscar, too. We can pop that into the oven, if you’d rather. Or I can freeze it for another time. Oh, and there’s soda bread, but I could whip up a batch of biscuits if you—”

“No!”
Burying a choice swear word beneath her breath, Sara pleaded, “Don’t whip anything.” Heading for the door, she grabbed her hat, smashing it onto her head. All she wanted for dinner was a triple-decker peanut butter and jelly with a handful of the potato chips that were shelved somewhere between Oreos and Raisinettes. “Let’s just go.”

Since Nettie had walked to the jail, after Sara locked up, they both got into the squad car, neither of them speaking on the short drive home. Staring out the window with her arms and legs crossed, Nettie knew she had morphed into Heloise and was driving Sara half mad, but she couldn’t stop herself. She didn’t want to stop herself. Each desperate act of domesticity enabled her to cease thinking and to feel in control, at least for a while.

When they reached the house, she jumped out of the car and ran up the porch steps to busy herself with dinner preparations. With any luck she’d be tired enough to turn in before the last smear of grease was sponged off the last plate.

As soon as she opened the door, she realized something was odd. Lights were on all over the house, yet she didn’t remember turning on any lamps before she left. There was also a definite aroma of flowers in the air.

Nettie crossed the threshold, about to comment to Sara, when she noticed several things at once: a shawl tossed over the living-room lounger, chunky-heeled sandals kicked off carelessly at the base of the stairs near a leather carryall, and a huge candle with three wicks, lighted and sitting on the coffee table.

Her gaze rose to the top of the stairs and her mouth opened in astonishment. “Lilah!”

Wearing powder-pink leggings and a soft V-neck sweater that looked as if it had been woven from cotton candy, the secondborn of the three Owens girls was the picture of nonchalant glamour. Her golden hair curled halfway down her elegant back. Perfect makeup highlighted a gorgeous smile and brilliant blue eyes that sparkled with life.

“Nettie-Belle!” Skipping down the stairs with the grace of a
dancer, the enthusiasm of a puppy, Lilah wrapped her arms around her sister, squeezing until Nettie thought she might see stars from lack of oxygen. “Mmm, you feel good. Let me look at you.” Lilah pulled back and sighed. “Beautiful as ever. Come back to Los Angeles with me, baby, I’ll make you a star.”

“Yeah, that’s what we need in this family, more dramatics.” Sara’s grumble provided a perfect and oh-so-typical foil for Lilah’s effusiveness.

“Hello, Eeyore.” Turning her attention to her older sib, Lilah put her hands on her hips. “Look who’s complaining about dramatics. I haven’t seen you for a year and you’re still wearing the same costume.”

“It’s a uniform.”

“Mmm.” Lilah tilted her head. “Needs a scarf or something.” Before Sara could respond, Lilah grabbed her in a bear hug, rocking excessively and planting a smacking, lipstickstaining kiss on Sara’s cosmetics-free cheek.

“Oh, for crying out loud.” Wriggling free, Sara wiped her face.

Over Lilah’s contagious laughter, Nettie realized Sara had shown no surprise at all. “Did you know about this?”

“I’m your birthday present,” Lilah answered in her sister’s stead. “You know how Sara feels about shopping.”

Nettie’s eyes widened. Her birthday was still several weeks away. And Lilah’s infrequent visits were often rushed. “You don’t have to head right back then?”

The blonde shook her head. “I’m taking a long vacation.” She tossed an arm around Nettie’s shoulders and grabbed Sara in a near chokehold. “Come on. I brought food, Irish Cream and presents.”

“Lilah! This is…scandalous!” Laughing delightedly, Nettie held up a scrap of royal purple material that was, she assumed, a thong. “What am I supposed to do with it?”

“Wear it, of course.”

Sara grabbed a vanilla wafer and dragged it through a pot of peanut butter melted with the butterscotch morsels Lilah had pulled from her overnight bag. The unusual combination was a
classic Owens sleepover snack, something the girls’ mother used to make.

“You expect her to wear that thing out of the house?” Sara said with her mouth full.

“Under the proper attire, yes.” Lilah swirled her Bailey’s Irish Cream over ice.

“Well,” Sara picked up a huge strawberry, dunked it in the sweet fondue, tipped back her head and took a bite, “why wear the thing at all then? Looks uncomfortable.”

“Sara, if you have to ask what for, you’ve been alone way too long.” Lilah grinned.

They’d been eating, chatting and opening gifts for the past hour. Lilah had brought Sara an autographed copy of the screenplay for
The Quick and the Dead
and a box of designer chocolates from a ritzy store on Rodeo Drive. She’d given Nettie perfume, the thong and a matching bra.

“I know better than to call a shoestring underwear,” Sara claimed, flipping through the front pages of the script.

“Men love them.”

“Huh,” Sara grunted. “They don’t have to wear ‘em. Try chasing a bank robber in one of those things. You’d hang yourself.”

Lilah’s bright laughter filled the room. “And speaking of chasing men,” she said, mischief darkening her eyes, “How’s Nick?”

Sara turned as red as the strawberry she’d just popped into her mouth. “How should I know?” she sputtered, leaping to her feet so quickly, she nearly overturned the coffee table. “I’m going to bed. I have to get up early for work tomorrow. And don’t leave that candle burning, when you go upstairs. It wouldn’t surprise me if you burned the house down with your candles and your…thongs, and…” Tossing her strawberry stem onto the fruit plate, Sara stalked off.

Lilah took another sip of her drink and murmured, “Still carrying a torch, I see. And not doing a thing about it.”

“How did you know?” Nettie asked when Sara was safely up the stairs and out of earshot. She slapped a hand to her forehead. She herself had just started suspecting, but she’d been too immersed on her own life to pursue the thought. “I can’t believe I was so blind. How long have you known?”

“She’s been ga-ga over Nick since high school, but she makes a second career out of pretending she couldn’t care less.” Lilah shook her head. “She’s so tough about some things, but when it comes to any man who’s not on the FBI’s Ten-Most-Wanted list, she’s a big ‘fraidy cat.”

“Sara?” Nettie shook her head. “I know she hasn’t dated much, but I never think of Sara as being afraid of anything.”

Lilah sighed. “Sweetie, when it comes to the opposite sex, we’re all afraid of something. Or someone.” Curling her long legs beneath her, she settled more cozily into the plaid chair that had always been her personal favorite. “So how about you?” She arched an impeccably groomed brow. “How’s your fling coming along?”

Nettie’s heart had to squeeze out the next beat, but she managed to shove her cheeks back into smile mode. “Oh, that,” she tossed off as lightly as she could. “I’m afraid my fling is
finito.
” Rising, she began to gather the used napkins and plates. “You were right. I’m not fling material.”

“What happened? Did he say no to a longer commitment?” Sisterly loyalty put palpable anger in Lilah’s tone.

Nettie shook her head, mopping smears of peanut butter dip off the oak table.

“Why don’t you leave that stuff and sit and talk to me,” Lilah suggested. “Sara says you’ve been doing your Martha Stewart impersonation again.”

Nettie stopped wiping and looked up. “Is that why you came?”

“She’s concerned. I’m concerned, too. Sara wasn’t sure how to help you, so she called.”

Lilah shrugged with her customary casual grace. This time it irritated Nettie to no end. “You were both worried when I was planning to have an affair. Now you’re worried that I’m not? Seems a little ironic, wouldn’t you say?”

“We just want you to be happy, Net.”

Nettie gave an uncharacteristically cynical huff of laughter. “Yeah. As long as my happiness doesn’t interfere with Sara’s feeding schedule or your next audition.”

It was a shocking, completely uncharacteristic thing for Nettie to say, and they both knew what she was referring to. Lilah’s face went pale beneath her makeup.

“We were scared, Nettie. We thought you wanted…to be alone. We didn’t know what to do.”

“Well, that made three of us.”

After Brian and Tucker had died, Nettie had been helpless to take care of anyone’s emotions, even her own. It was understandable, but frightening to the two women who had relied on her most of their lives. Even through her own despair, Nettie had seen her sisters’ discomfort and though she had felt like a marionette lying limp and disjointed on the ground, she’d somehow managed to scrape herself together and hold her body upright long enough to tell her sisters to go home, get on with their lives…she’d be fine. Like a marionette, she’d been hanging on by a thread.

Guilty but relieved, they had left, and at the time Nettie had felt grateful that she could still “be there” for her family. Make everything feel normal and safe for them, just as she always had. Except that by then she’d understood there was no such thing as “safe.”

Well, this time she was fresh out of illusions. The dream of experiencing a happiness with Chase that couldn’t be snatched away was only that—a dream.

Facing Lilah with an uncompromising stare, Nettie said, “He has a son. Seven years old.” That was it, all she had to say, really. Tucker would have been six.

Lilah so clearly wanted to respond, wanted to tell her
So what? Go for it
, but she didn’t dare.

“Who will be there this time, Lilah, if everything falls apart?” Nettie drove her point home. “Sara? You? Will you stick around and pick up the pieces? Because—” Her voice started to break. Relentlessly, she pressed on. “I wouldn’t survive it another time. I don’t think I’d want to.”

“But maybe it won’t fall apart this time, Net. You’ve had your share—”

“You think that’s how the world works? You still think it’s
fair?
Tragedy isn’t dealt out like a deck of cards—everyone gets five and then you go around in a circle and tell the dealer what you want. No one cares what you want! Nobody’s checking to make sure you only get what you can handle.” Nettie slashed a hand through the air. “That is such a crock! Mother and Daddy were thirty-four when they died and they had three children. And
everyone else on that plane had people who loved them and needed them. You want to talk about fair? Brian was twenty-three.
Twenty-three.
” She didn’t even say Tucker’s name; she couldn’t. “Maybe the truth is some people get more than their share because they’re jinxed. Maybe I’m doing Chase a big favor—”

Nettie began to shake. As if she were standing with her feet in ice, the shivering started from the legs up, until her entire body quivered without control.

All she’d wanted was a little bit of joy to remind her she was still alive. What she’d got instead were reminders she didn’t want of a life she’d never have again.

Leaving everything—plates, napkins, Lilah—right where they were, Nettie turned to run up the stairs. If a life lived in avoidance meant she was only half alive, fine. It was also half the pain.

It had taken seven years for Chase to discover he was a father, mere hours to travel to Florida to meet his son for the first time, a couple of minutes to note all the physical resemblances between them and about two seconds to realize he was in over his head. Way over.

Twisting the top off a bottle of cold beer, he slumped into a chair at the kitchen table. Given an aisle seat on the plane ride back to North Dakota, Colin had preferred to gaze silently out the window, rather than converse with his father. Chase wondered if they should have spent a few days at Disneyworld, or if he should have brought a gift, something to break the ice. Hell, he hadn’t thought to take along a single thing a kid might want to eat or play with or wear.

On the ride from the airport to Nick’s, Chase told his son about Nick’s horse, received an encouraging but brief flicker of interest and then…zilch.

Now Colin was upstairs, preferring to unpack on his own while Chase remained downstairs, nursing a cold beer and a gutful of self-doubt rather than the walloping sock in the chest of fatherly love he’d expected to feel.

Chase took a long pull from the bottle of Budweiser. Yeah, this father gig was a real piece of cake.

Elbows on the table, he dropped his forehead onto his palms. He wanted to talk to someone. But not just any someone.

Nettie.

She was the first person who came to mind. And the second. Furious with himself, Chase shook his head. She’d bailed. Only moments after those robin’s egg eyes had said, yes, her mouth had uttered no to any possibility of a relationship. Because he had a kid.

Chase put a hand on his breast pocket, remembered he’d foolishly given up smoking and rose to pace to the window.