Lance walked home through the snow, his mind whirling. But once there, he couldn’t light, couldn’t think. He needed someone to talk to.
And without really knowing why he picked him, Lance went looking for his brother Jake. Lord knew Jake had a lot of problems of his own at the moment, but all Lance needed was a sounding board, someone to listen to him talk it all through. Of anyone, Jake was also most likely to understand.
There was too much snow to even consider getting out his car, but the condo Jake rented wasn’t far, so Lance set out on foot again, walking through the silent, pristine streets, taking pleasure in the snow still drifting from a dark sky.
Home. Man, he’d missed it.
Jake’s place was located in an upscale development with good access to the ski roads. Most of them were time shares, or vacation homes of the wealthy, and there were more gorgeous, well-tended women in the five-acre square than anyplace outside Hollywood. Lance rang the bell to his brother’s apartment, admiring the very fine assets of a girl in tight pants as she cleaned off her car.
But that was all he did—admire. Another Lance, another time, might have leaned over the railing and whistled at her. More likely he’d have called out and started a flirtation that would end up in an exchange of phone numbers.
Today, it didn’t seem that interesting. A nice rear end wasn’t much to go on, after all. And this one wasn’t nearly as nice as Tamara’s, even if she didn’t show it off like this.
He heard his thoughts with a sense of annoyance, and pushed the bell again, more impatiently. You’d think he’d never slept with a woman before the way he kept going over last night in his head.
Jake flung open the door, bleary-eyed and unshaved. “Lance!” He shoved his thick black hair off his forehead. “What the hell are you doing here?”
“Nice welcome. A brother can’t drop by?”
Jake crossed his arms over his bare chest, shivering in a pair of sweats. “Well, he could, but this one never does. Come on in.”
The apartment, for all its built-in luxury, was even worse than Lance’s. Lance’s was at least neat. Jake’s furniture was covered with discarded clothes, and an empty wine bottle with two glasses littered the coffee table.
Seeing the evidence, Lance said, “You have a woman here? Maybe I should come back another time.”
Jake moved into the kitchen and began to measure coffee into the basket. “There’s always a woman here. No big deal.”
Something about the comment brought Tamara to mind. How hurt she would be if Lance said that about her. “I guess it hasn’t occurred to you that maybe those women have feelings, huh?”
“Look who’s talking. I’m not the one who got a black eye from a jilted lover the first day back in town.”
Lance didn’t particularly want to think about that. “One time. Big deal.”
Jake snorted. “C’mon, Lance. This is a case of the pot calling the kettle black, and you know it.” He shook his hair out of his face. “It’s not like I’m going around with the girl next door. I’m just another notch on their belts.”
The girl next door.
Lance rubbed his stomach restlessly. That was the problem, wasn’t it? There were rules, and Lance had broken all of them by going after Tamara. It made him feel vaguely ill.
“Just be careful,” he said.
Jake leaned a hip on the kitchen counter. His eyes were almost a neon blue, all the more startling against the darkness of his hair. The hollows that had made him look gaunt at the Wild Moose a few weeks earlier seemed even worse. “Did you come here to give me a lecture on sex in the nineties?”
“No.” He narrowed his eyes. “You look like hell, though. Are you still not sleeping?”
For a single moment, Jake closed his eyes. It made him look unbearably weary. “It’s not so much the sleep, but the dreams.”
“Why don’t you get some help, man?”
Jake shook his head. “I’m fine.”
Yeah. In a pig’s eye. Jake had suffered more at the hands of their father than either of his brothers had. Somewhere along the line, he’d internalized Olan’s driving, perfectionist standards. It was killing him now.
As if he knew how he looked, Jake straightened suddenly and tossed his hair out of his eyes. “What’s up? You look like you’ve got something on your mind.”
Lance remembered why he had come. “I have something to tell you.”
“Shoot.” He stretched across the counter and snagged a ruby-colored terry cloth robe.
“Well, there’s no easy way to it, so I’ll just say it. I found out that Valerie had a baby—my baby—before she died. Her cousin has been raising him all this time.”
“Is that the bartender at the Wild Moose, the one you were so hot for?”
Annoyance rose in Lance’s chest. “I wasn’t hot for her, but that’s the one.”
“And she laid this story on you and you just believed her? That her kid is really her cousin’s, and you’re the father?” He took a mug from the mess on the counter and rinsed it out. “Haven’t you learned anything?”
Lance tried to remind himself that his brother was burned-out and near the end of his rope, but it didn’t help. “Tamara wouldn’t lie.”
“Is that right?” Jake lifted a dark, arched brow. “All women lie, little brother.”
“You don’t know her.”
“I don’t have to. I know her kind.”
Lance narrowed his eyes. “Not all women are like your wife, you know. And not all women are like Valerie.”
“Uh-huh. What makes this one so different?”
“She has no reason to lie.” Which wasn’t quite true. She was poor as the proverbial church mouse, and stood to gain a lot financially if Lance took her on. But stubbornly, he said, “She has integrity, Jake. She’s so good with him, too. You should see her with that boy—and he’s not even her blood child. She’s given up everything to take care of him, and that makes me feel like hell.”
Jake looked at him. “You’ve got it bad, don’t you?”
“What?”
“Poor bastard.” Jake shook his head. “I’ve never seen you like this.”
“It’s not like that,” Jake said. “I have a lot of respect for her. She’s not like Valerie, if that’s what you mean.”
“I didn’t say she was. You had it bad for Valerie, but that wasn’t your heart talking, if you get my drift.” He sipped his coffee lazily, his neon eyes glowing with that eerie, near madness. “At least get a blood test. Make sure the boy is really yours.”
It was a reasonable expectation, especially considering Valerie had never exactly been known for her faithfulness. But Lance saw Tamara’s green eyes, so guileless and wary, and he didn’t want to see the expression that would be there when he made that request. “No.”
Jake inclined his head, and for one moment, Lance caught a glimpse of the old Jake. “She must really be something.”
A deep stabbing ache ripped through his chest. “She is that,” he said, and his voice sounded rough. And more quietly, “She is that.”
Jake moved abruptly, putting his cup down. “I’d give half my life to feel a glimmering of faith in a woman right now.” His jaw looked hard. “Don’t let her get away.”
Lance laughed bitterly. “But don’t you see, Jake? It’s practically a criminal act for a Forrest to settle in with a woman that good.”
“Yeah.” He picked up his cup again. “But I’d still get a blood test. Don’t be a fool.”
But Lance didn’t do it. He didn’t have to—he only had to look at Cody to see the extraordinary family resemblance. And the bottom line was, he trusted Tamara. He also knew he’d been with Valerie nearly every waking minute through that three-week period at Christmas all those years ago. She wouldn’t have had time to have another lover.
Cody was his. And damn anyone who said differently.
He tried not to consider the possibility that he wanted to believe it because he wanted an excuse to make Tamara’s life easier.
Over the next few days, Lance occupied himself with the details of this big change in his life. He spoke to his accountant, and had him draw up a monthly payment schedule that was double the state standard. He’d have made it triple, but doubted Tamara would accept it.
He also made arrangements for a single lump sum to be paid for back child support the day she signed the papers granting him visitation rights. He thought that was enough to ask for in the beginning.
The one stipulation he asked for, and Tamara agreed, much to his relief, was that neither of them could take Cody out of Red Creek. Lance wanted the stability of the small town for Cody, but he also worried that Tamara might, since she would have the financial wherewithal, return to the university.
It made him feel like a heel in some ways—of all things, the university life was one she’d aspired toward for many years—but he couldn’t bear the idea that he’d finally come to know his son, and then she’d marry someone else and leave Red Creek.
He told his mother. She was not surprised—she’d suspected Cody was Lance’s child, but hadn’t realized he “started up again with that Valerie,” as she put it. Tyler was as pleased as he ever was about anything, and said it would make Curtis happy to have a cousin.
Jake didn’t say anything else about the blood test.
After a week, Lance was finally ready to face Cody himself. Saturday morning dawned bright and crisp, with a promise of more Indian summer in the air. The snow, except in shady spots, was gone, and Lance woke up with the taste of trout in his mouth.
He called Tamara. It was harder than he thought to hear her voice. The sound of it sent a wave of need through him, deep and wide, and for a moment, he sat on the other end of the line, seized by an erotic vision of her in the car, half-naked as they drove through Red Creek.
“Is anyone there?” she repeated.
“Sorry,” he said. “It’s Lance.”
A short pause. “I recognize your voice, you know.”
“Oh.” On a pad of paper, he drew an almond-shaped eye. “I just wondered if I could come get Cody this morning for a few hours, and take him fishing at the lake.” He cleared his scratchy throat. “I thought maybe it was time to get going on all this. Make it right.”
“I see.” She sounded afraid.
“Tamara, I’m serious about what I said at the lawyer’s office.” They’d met there briefly two days before to go over the details. He’d seen the immense relief on her face when she heard his custody request—simple visitation, nothing more. And although she’d protested the amount of money he wanted to settle upon them, he’d managed to talk her around. “I’m not going to interfere.”
“I know. It’s just strange.” She paused, and in the silence, Lance could hear Mozart playing in the background. “The truth is, I usually spend Saturdays with him, and I’ll miss that.”
“We can do it tomorrow, if you’d rather. Or I can baby-sit when you need to work. Just tell me what works best for you.”
“No, today is fine,” she said. “I have a test on Monday and I need to study.”
“Are you sure?” The eye he was sketching took on an elliptical fold, that distinctly American Indian and Asian detail that gave Tamara’s eyes such an exotic cast. “Tomorrow is supposed to be really gorgeous, too. We can fish then, instead.”
“No, I think he’d love to go today. I’ll get him ready.”
To make things as easy as possible for both of them, Lance tried to make it short when he came to pick up an eager Cody, who was practically bursting with the anticipation of a fishing trip. His exuberance took some of the strain out of the air, but Lance still couldn’t look at Tamara head on, and he noticed she kept her distance.
“Don’t let him fall in the lake,” she said.
“I won’t.”
“Cody, you mind, you hear? When you go by a lake, you have to behave yourself.”
“Or you can get drownded.”
“Drowned. Right.” She buttoned his jacket and kissed his forehead. “Have fun.”
For a split second, Lance caught her gaze. For that single heartbeat, a flare of pure yearning and silent agreement passed between them. Then it was gone. “C’mon, kiddo. Let’s go catch us some trout for supper.”
Tamara watched them through the big front window with a sense of deep loss. Lance took Cody’s hand, and they walked to his car, two blond heads shining in the sun, two loping walks. Father and son.
And she didn’t even have the comfort of being Cody’s mother, of being part of the union that had created this beautiful child. It made her feel alienated, like she’d never really belonged in the picture. Now Cody would take his rightful place among the Forrest family, while Tamara was only his caretaker, with nothing to give him.
It was a lot more depressing than she would have expected. Hadn’t she wanted this for Cody? With the money Lance provided for his care, Tamara would be able to at last afford some of the things she’d longed to give him and simply couldn’t: a computer to help stimulate his astounding mind before he got bored, art and dance classes if he wanted them, a musical instrument a little later. She would be able to afford to buy him many books, and wouldn’t have to worry about the price of peewee football uniforms.
All the things she’d had to do without as a child. All the things she’d been desperately afraid Cody would have to do without.
And she couldn’t ask for an arrangement that was any fairer, or with a better man. Lance had shouldered his responsibility easily, fairly, quickly, without undue demands or restrictions. He had the power to do anything he wished, and he had only asked for simple visitation privileges.
So why was she so unhappy this morning?
Lance.
It was Lance. Somehow, his arrival in Red Creek had turned her whole life upside down. What had seemed normal in the past was now intolerable. His vividness, the bold brightness he’d brought into her life, made everything that went before seem drab and gray.
Because it had been drab and gray.
Now Tamara found herself filled with yearning, the normal yearnings of a young woman. She wanted to make love more than once every four years. She wanted a husband to share her life with, more children, a job she cared about and that felt important, not just something to pay the rent.
And even more. She wanted a life filled with books and music and stimulating conversation, a real life, not the grinding day-to-day struggle that had marked her own mother’s life.
Slowly Tamara looked around the room, feeling a dawning sense of awareness. Her mother had loved her with a deep, devoted passion, but the struggle had put her in an early grave. Would her mother have succumbed to a disease like cancer so young if her life had been smoother? If she’d had a husband to help her? If she hadn’t had to struggle so hard every single day?
Maybe she would have anyway. Disease was capricious and unfair. But Tamara couldn’t help thinking that life had worn her mother down so much that when the cancer struck she had no reserves left with which to fight it.
Surprised, tears sprung to her eyes. “Oh, Mama, what would you tell me now? What should I do?”
And suddenly Tamara knew. Her mother would say the same things she always had: don’t settle for anything less than exactly what you want. Fight as hard as you can. Don’t ever give up.
For four long years, Tamara had been lost. In retrospect, she saw that she’d been grieving her mother deeply when everything with Valerie happened. That grief, and the unexpected desertion by Eric, had clouded her judgment. She could have gone back to finish her degree, but she’d been too overwhelmed. It was just easier to stay in Red Creek with Cody. In Red Creek where things were familiar, where her mother lingered in the breath of the trees and the sun on the mountains; and in the aisles of the grocery stores.
And here in Red Creek, she had fallen into a rut, a rut of survival that echoed her mother’s life with Tamara. It was an odd tribute, and not surprising, but it was also not at all what her mother would have wanted for her. Her mother had made the monumental effort to move a thousand miles from home to give Tamara a better life than the one she’d known.
And in her rut Tamara might have stayed forever if not for the bold, blindingly bright presence of Lance Forrest, blowing into town like a carnival, exciting and full of laughter.
Smiling, Tamara thought he was also as inconstant as a carnival, but there was nothing wrong with that. It wasn’t a quality a woman wanted in a husband, but he never made any pretenses about that.
Which made it possible to love him as he was.
If she were truly honest, she had to admit she also wanted Lance Forrest. Part of her discontent this morning had to do with the fact that she wanted more than breath to have gone with them to the lake. Just to hear him laugh. Just to see that glittering mischief in his eyes. Just to touch his strong forearm one more time.
“No,” she said aloud. The facts were, he wasn’t husband material and she wouldn’t try to make him so. There were things you couldn’t do to a person. He was as free as a hawk in the sky. It would be cruel to cage him.
With bittersweet resignation, she knew she would get over him. Someday.
In the meantime, she would accept the gift he’d brought into her life. She would break this dull routine. She would claim the life she wanted.
On the table were her loathed accounting books. Very slowly Tamara smiled.
No more accounting, not another single minute. She didn’t care if it messed up her grade-point average. She loved history and poetry and literature, and she intended to spend her life immersed in them, teaching or researching or whatever she could find. There was no law that said she had to spend her life at a university. She was only a few credits away from her degree. She could make arrangements to study three days a week in Denver to complete them, especially now that she knew Cody had family in town.
Then she could teach. At the high school or the junior high, or even at the community college. They went through teachers like spring snowfall in this climate—people always thought living in the mountains would be glamorous and thrilling, but the reality was, the winters chased a good many of them away within a year.
Feeling exhilarated, Tamara slammed her accounting books closed, picked them up and put them in the trash. As she did it, she laughed.
And inexplicably, found herself in tears at the rush of emotion in her breast. “Oh, Lance,” she whispered. “Why can’t you be the marrying kind?”