HIS WORDS struck her like numbing blows, and his nearness overwhelmed her.
“No,” she said, her throat constricted. “I’d never ask you here for that. Never.”
“I know that,” he said. “But think about it. It’s best for everyone.”
She shook her head to clear it. “No. We didn’t get it right before. We—we just can’t live together.”
He bent so close she felt the warmth of his breath on her lips. “We don’t have to. Who says it has to be a conventional marriage?”
She stared at him, bewildered. “You mean it wouldn’t be real?”
Something flashed deep within his eyes—something he immediately shuttered. “Sham? If that’s how you want it.”
“I can’t—” she began.
But Nealie came stamping importantly down the stairs in her new boots. “I love these,” she declared. “I feel like I’ve got big furry rabbit feet. Like Bugs Bunny.”
Briana wrenched her hand from Josh, and he took a step backward.
But Nealie had seen. She stopped halfway down the stairs. Behind her big glasses, her eyes widened, and her face looked both hopeful and perplexed. “You were holding hands. Do you like each other again?”
“I’ll always like your mother,” Josh said. “I hold her hand once in a while. Like she was—my sister.”
“Oh, Nealie,” Briana said, desperate to change the subject, “you’re sweater’s buttoned all crooked. Let me fix it.”
Nealie’s small hand tightened on the banister. She came down the stairs, no longer stepping proudly. Briana went to her to rebutton the cardigan. The child, in her excitement, had gotten it comically askew.
But her face was solemn and puzzled. Briana knew the girl was confused by what she had seen. “Daddy and I are friends, that’s all.” She fastened the sweater. “Look at you. You’ve got one sleeve up and one sleeve down. There. Now you’re perfect. And your boots are beautiful.”
Nealie looked at them, and slowly her smile came back.
Briana straightened and took Nealie’s hand in hers, her fingers still tingling from Josh’s grasp. She went to the coat closet, painfully conscious of him but avoiding his eyes.
As they stepped out the door, he leaned near and whispered, “Think about what I said. We’ll talk later.”
She made no answer. Her ear burned as if he had breathed a live spark into it.
SHE WALKED into church with him, each of them holding one of Nealie’s hands. Everyone stared except her brother, who nodded mechanically, then fixed his eyes on the church program.
Beside Larry, Glenda smiled uneasily and mouthed hello. The little boys gaped and whispered and poked each other with excitement.
Beside Larry, Briana’s father sat. He, too, tried to smile, but there was nervous pain in his face. He gave Josh a weak wave of greeting. Josh nodded in return.
The sermon seemed the longest Briana had ever sat through. The subject was the importance of the traditional family.
AFTER THE SERVICE, in front of the church, Josh suffered through a reunion with Briana’s family.
He could feel the force of Larry’s disapproval. It came at him like a great, invisible wave pulsing through the wintry air. Glenda, still pretty but looking wan, tried hard to offset her husband’s unfriendliness.
She didn’t so much ask Josh questions as chirp them nervously, one after another. How was his trip? How long had he been in Russia? Were the people nice? What had he photographed? Oh, my, wasn’t that interesting?
As she chattered, her sons watched Josh with a hostile suspicion they seemed to have absorbed from their father. Glenda ran out of questions. An awkward silence weighted the air.
Then Rupert stared at Nealie’s boots, his nostrils flaring. “What are those?”
“They’re boots,” Nealie said. “They’re clear from Siberia, Russia. My daddy gave them to me. He had them made special.”
“Why’d he do such a dumb thing?”
“It’s not dumb,” Nealie retorted. “He did it because he loves me.”
“If he loved you, he’d stay home with you.” Rupert sneered and stepped on Nealie’s toe, smudging her boot.
With a fiery look, Nealie shoved him so hard he fell into the snow on his bottom. Josh wanted to kiss her and raise her to sit on his shoulders like the champion she was. Rupert began to cry.
“You kids stop that,” Briana’s father commanded with surprising sternness. “You’re right in the front yard of the church, for Pete’s sake. Rupert, stop yowling.”
Rupert stopped crying. He thrust out his lip and sulked instead.
Leo turned to Josh. “The boy’s high-strung,” he said gruffly.
Josh bit back a sarcastic reply and forced a smile that he hoped would pass for understanding. From the corner of his eye he watched Nealie bend and polish her boot tip clean.
On the surface, Briana’s father acted friendly enough. But he eyed Josh strangely, as if taking measure of a dangerous competitor. Glenda invited everyone to Sunday dinner, but Josh declined. He made his excuses as gallantly as he could, but he did not want to spend the afternoon with this family. He wanted only his own child—and Briana.
He said he and Briana and Nealie had to drive over to Springfield so he could rent a car of his own. That, at least, was true enough.
The trip was short, and Nealie rode home with him. At the house, Briana put on an apron and made spaghetti because Nealie remembered it was Josh’s favorite. He sat at the counter, playing word games with Nealie, but he could not keep his eyes from Briana.
She moved like a dancer, he thought with a pang, every movement marked by grace and efficiency. She bantered with them as she worked, and he marveled at her ability to act as if nothing had passed between them, either last night or this morning.
But he knew she was as aware of what had happened as he was. The memory of it tingled around them like an electrically charged field. He had always been good at hiding his feelings. He’d never before realized Briana was every bit as good as he was and maybe better.
He loved Nealie dearly but was glad when after dinner she began to yawn and at last fell asleep on the couch. He carried her up the stairs, put her on her bed and covered her with an afghan.
When he went downstairs, he saw her empty boots standing by the couch. The sight touched him for a reason he could not name. He picked them up, stroked them, then set them down.
“She loves them,” Briana said, drying the last of the dishes. “She really does. You made a great choice.”
He leaned against the counter nearest her. “You should have let me help you with those.”
“No,” she said, hanging up the dish towel. “You’re company.”
“I’m not company,” he said, looking her up and down. “I’m the father of your child. And your child-to-be.”
“It’s only biology,” she said. “Technically, you’re a guest.” She said it coolly and briskly, as if she were warding him off.
“Am I?” He arched an eyebrow.
He moved behind her and undid the bow of her apron strings. When she took off the apron and set it aside, he let his hands settle on her waist, his thumbs just above the swell of her hips.
She went stiff and still. “Don’t.”
“We’re about to make a baby. We’ve still got lots to talk about.”
He felt her muscles go even more rigid. She pulled away from him and moved to the other side of the counter. She’s keeping it between us like a damn chastity belt, he thought.
“Then talk,” she said. “But no touching. That’s not part of the bargain.”
“Bargain?” he said. “Is that what you call it?”
She shrugged. She had changed from her church clothes into jeans and a long-sleeved white T-shirt. When she shrugged, her breasts did things that made his mouth water.
He tried to keep his voice cool, businesslike. “There’s plenty about this bargain that’s not resolved.”
She shrugged again, and the movement of her breasts forced him to look away so she wouldn’t see the hunger in his eyes.
“We can’t talk about it in front of Nealie,” she said. “It’s—difficult.”
“Difficult. Yes.”
“It’s strange,” she said with sadness. “We tell children truth is important but in front of them we lie. We turn into the hypocrites we warn them not to be.”
He said, “Seems to me you’ve got a lot more hypocrisy ahead of you.”
Her dark eyes snapped. “What do you mean?”
“You’ll have another child. But you’ll lie about it to your family. And to Nealie. And someday to the child, too. That’s a lot of lying for a woman who used to be honest to a fault.”
“That’s different.”
“Is it?”
“Yes. I was talking about things—things like this morning, about Nealie seeing us touching. What to say to her about other things, that’s all.”
He crossed his arms, a gesture of resolve not to try to touch her again. “This morning. That’s a loaded subject. But let’s talk about it.”
Her face went wary. “I—I’m sorry my brother came to see you like that. It’s always been part of the problem, I know. Somehow my family keeps pushing itself into the foreground.”
“Yes,” he said, crossing his arms more tightly still. “They do.”
“And you don’t get along with them,” she said.
“You could phrase that the other way, too. They don’t get along with me. Your brother doesn’t try, and your father doesn’t want to. They were scared to death I’d take you away from them. Then where would they be?”
She pushed her hand through her long, dark hair. “Oh, please,” she pleaded. “I could see it after church. Nobody said anything, but it was there. It’s hopeless between you and them. The way it’s always been.”
“And the way it’ll always be?” he said, a bite in his voice.
“I suppose,” she said and stared past him.
She would never leave them. He knew that. They had laid the perfect trap for her. They needed her. She was the strongest of them, the smartest, the most giving. She was the one who held everything together for them, including their finances.
He took a deep breath and set his jaw. “Now you want to tell them we had a fling, I got you pregnant, then went on my merry way again.”
Her head jerked so that she met his eyes square on. “I’d never say that.”
“It doesn’t matter what you say. It’s how they’ll see it. They’ll hate my guts even more than they do now.”
“They don’t hate you,” she hedged. “They just—”
He cut her off. “Don’t dodge it. It’s a real issue. It’ll affect my relationship with Nealie. And with—the new one.”
For once she didn’t have a fast answer for him. She jammed her hands into her pockets and looked stubborn. All she said was, “I won’t let that happen. I promise.”
“You can’t promise,” he argued. “You can’t promise how other people are going to feel. Nealie, for instance. What’s she going to think? What will other people say to her? That I came back here, knocked you up—”
“Don’t be crude.” Her eyes flashed again.
“I can be a lot cruder than that,” he warned. “They’ll say I knocked you up, then left you. What kind of man will she think I am?”
She tossed her head. “She knows what kind of man you are. She adores you. She’d never turn against you.”
“Oh, Briana. What an idealist you are. What a scheming, lying, hypocritical little idealist.”
Her hands flew out of her pockets, clenched into fists. “Schemer? Liar? All I’m trying to do is save my child’s life. If you want to call me names, go ahead. I’ll do what I damn well have to.”
Beneath his crossed arms he felt the brutal hammering of his heart. But he kept his calm facade. “And exactly how are you going to explain all this to her? What lies have you cooked up especially for her?”
Briana’s eyes narrowed, and she set her fists on the countertop, like someone getting ready to fight. “I’ll tell her the truth—mostly. That I got pregnant and that though you and I both love her and love the baby, we knew getting married again would never work. But we wanted the baby—both of us did—and we decided this way was best.”
“In short, a very complicated lie. Hard for a child to understand. Even one as bright as Nealie.”
Briana leaned toward him, her fists on the counter, her stance militant. “You apparently didn’t hear me. I will do this. My child is in danger. If I have to bend the truth, or if everyone gossips about me, I don’t care.”
“I wasn’t talking about you, Joan of Arc. I was talking about my daughter.”
“I will make her understand and accept it,” Briana said emphatically.
“Yeah, yeah,” he sighed cynically. “And next you’ll be out in the radish patch shaking your fist at the sky and crying, ‘With God as my witness.’ From Joan of Arc to Scarlett O’Hara in ten seconds. Speedy.”
“Ooh,” she said from between clenched teeth. “You are the most impossible man—”
“Put on earth, obviously, to deal with you, the most impossible woman. Briana, you don’t have to put the truth through all these contortions. You don’t have to run this gauntlet. There’s a simpler way. This morning I made you a proposition—”
“A proposition.” She hissed the word. “You have an interesting way of putting things yourself.”
“All I’m saying is marry me. We don’t have to live together. We can live the way we live now. You stay here with your precious family—”
“It’s no sin to love your family,” she interjected.
He ignored her. “—and I make my living the only way I know how. I’ll come to see Nealie and the baby as often as I can. It won’t be a conventional marriage, but at least your family can’t object to a baby if we’re married. Nobody can say things to Nealie that are mean—or at least too mean. And you—you’re saved from living in a jungle of lies.”
She straightened and put her hands on her hips. “Except for the marriage, of course. That’s a complete lie.”
“Better a simple lie than a complicated one.” He smiled.
“Didn’t you hear a word of that sermon this morning?” she challenged. “About the importance of marriage? About husbands and wives committing to each other? About the sanctity of the union?”
He laughed. He shook his head. “Briana, you’re hopeless. You’re both the most conventional woman I’ve ever known—and the least. You’d tell a thousand improbable lies that will only hurt you and everyone else. But you reject the plausible one that’s best for us all.”
“I don’t want a sham marriage,” she said, squaring her shoulders. “Or for you to marry me out of pity or because it’s the right thing.”
“Either way you play it, your life will be a sham, won’t it?” he said, raising one eyebrow. “Why not a respectable marriage that’s a lie instead of a misguided affair that’s a lie? I don’t ask that you be faithful. If you want someone else, fine. I couldn’t care less.”
She looked more stricken than angry. He played his trump card. “And one more thing, Briana.”
She looked at him, her eyes full of uneasy questions.
“This is the only way our baby won’t be a bastard. You’re not the only one who’d have to live with that. So would he. So would Nealie and your family.”
He let the words sink in, and he could tell he’d made a point she couldn’t counter. At last she said, “I don’t want you to be noble. It’s so unlike you.”
“I’m not being noble. I’m being stone-cold practical. I don’t want to marry anybody else. So I might as well marry you again. If I find somebody else someday—or you do—we’ll deal with it then. One problem at a time. Okay?”
She raked her hand through her hair again, a gesture of weary frustration. All she said was, “You make my head spin.”
“Likewise,” he said.
They were silent for a long moment. He thought of going to her, of taking her in his arms, of saying he wanted to be married to her again because he loved her and would do so until he was in his grave.
But Nealie’s voice cried out from upstairs, startling them both. She sounded confused and alarmed. “Mommy! Come help me! My nose is bleeding—bad!”
NEALIE SAT QUIETLY in Josh’s arms, her head resting against his shoulder. He held his finger against her nostril, applying pressure to stop the bleeding.
Briana came upstairs with a cold compress—ice cubes wrapped in a washcloth. Josh took it from her and put it over the bridge of Nealie’s nose.
Nealie looked pale but no longer frightened, and she seemed to feel safe in her father’s embrace. Briana knelt and began to clean Nealie’s hands with a second washcloth. She gave Josh a troubled glance.
After church he had taken off his sweater and tie. His white shirt was spotted with blood. “Your shirt—” she said.
“It’s not big deal,” Josh said and smoothed Nealie’s hair.
“I messed up everything,” Nealie said unhappily. “The pillowcase, my good sweater—”
“Shh,” Briana said, “I can get them clean again.”
“Even Daddy’s shirt?”
“Sure she can,” Josh said. “She’s Supermom. You know that. Now be quiet. I think the bleeding’s stopped.”
Nealie sighed and settled even closer to him. “The nosebleed woke me up,” she complained, then yawned. “I was dreaming about white mice. They could talk.”
“Close your eyes,” Josh said. “Maybe they’ll come back. Here, we’ll just lean against the backboard and be quiet.”
“Can I take off my sweater?”
“If you’re careful,” he said.
“I’ll help,” said Briana. She unbuttoned the brown cardigan, then helped ease Nealie out of it and her undershirt. She dressed her in a pajama top and let her sink back against Josh.
“Shhh,” he said. “Be still.”
“Will you tell me a mouse story?” Nealie asked in a croaky little voice.
“Yes,” said Josh, “but first close your eyes.”
“I’ll get a clean pillow,” Briana said. She and Josh exchanged looks that spoke the silent language of parents.
He was saying, I’ll stay with her and try to get her back to sleep.
She was saying, I’m scared, Josh.
So am I. But we can’t let it show. And we’re going to take good care of her. I promise you this.
He turned to Nealie. In a meditative voice, he said, “Once upon a time there was a white mouse named Wilberforce. He lived with his mother and father and seventeen brothers and sisters in a cheese factory….”
Briana kept her face immobile, picked up the stained pillow and sweater and took them downstairs to the laundry nook. She went back upstairs and got a fresh pillow and pillowcase from the linen closet.
She took them into Nealie’s room. Nealie, eyes closed, rested against her father’s chest. In a low droning voice, he said, “The mother mouse said, ‘What kind of cheese do you want for supper tonight, dear? American, Swiss, Cheddar, Monterey Jack, Gouda, Edam, Roquefort, Stilton, Parmesan, mozzarella, provolone or Liederkranz?’
“And the father mouse said, ‘Excuse me, my dear, I was reading the paper. Did you say something?’
“And the mother mouse sighed and said, ‘I asked what sort of cheese you wanted for supper. American, Swiss, Cheddar, Monterey Jack, Gouda, Edam, Roquefort, Stilton, Parmesan, mozzarella, provolone or Liederkranz?’
“‘Let me see if I have this straight,’ said the father. ‘The choices are American, Swiss, Cheddar…’”
Briana laid the clean pillow on the bed and smiled at him in spite of herself. He was clearly trying to lull the child to sleep. She turned and left him reciting his hypnotic lists.
He was a good father, a wonderful father. But to marry him again? A marriage in name only was repellent. To try a real marriage would never work, she told herself, never. She couldn’t face the thought of losing him a second time. It would kill her.
HE CAME DOWNSTAIRS when she was soaking Nealie’s cardigan in the kitchen sink. Since the nosebleeds had begun, she kept a special bottle of soap for removing the stains. She was determined to save the sweater, which was one of Nealie’s favorites.
He moved beside her, and his nearness, as always, made her skin prickle and her blood flow too fast. He said, “She’s asleep. I think she’ll be out for a while.” She felt the warmth of his breath on the side of her neck.
Briana cast him a quick sideways look. “I never heard of cheese used as a lullaby.”
“I nearly put myself asleep,” he admitted. He nodded at the sweater, which she was still scrubbing. “Can you get it clean?”
“I think so. I’ve had enough practice. Too much practice.”
He shook his head. “It’s one thing to hear about her nose bleeding. It’s another to see it. I felt my heart stall. It just quit beating for a minute.”
“I know the feeling,” she said, keeping her gaze on the sweater.
“We’ll get her through this, Briana. We will if it’s humanly possible.” He put his hand on her shoulder, not erotically, not possessively, but as a friend would. Yet his touch still set a tremor through her.
She said, “Your shirt—I’ll try to clean it.”
“I don’t have another one here.”
“I’ll find something for you,” she said. “Please take it off. It’ll upset Nealie to see you in it. And she’ll want to know she didn’t ruin it.”
“She probably did. It doesn’t matter. I’ve got other shirts. I’ll tell her it all came out. She won’t be able to tell the difference.”
She took a deep breath. “Weren’t you just criticizing me for lying?”
“Touché,” he said.
It becomes a habit, she wanted to say. It becomes easy. Pretend this. Lie about that. Leave out this bit of truth. Twist that one. It becomes second nature.
Instead she dried her hands and said, “I’ll find you a shirt.”
She went upstairs. quietly so as not to wake Nealie. She looked in the least used drawer of the least used bureau in her room. She knew she had a few old sweatshirts and T-shirts stored there, work clothes.
Rummaging, she found, near the bottom, something she had not expected. One of his old sweatshirts—Josh’s. A pang of memory shot through her. She lifted the shirt from the drawer.
It was a souvenir of one of his travels, long past. It was faded blue, from Canada, and had a picture of a white wolf on it. Almost reluctantly she ran her fingers over the fabric, remembering its feel.
When he had first gone away, sometimes she’d missed him so much she’d gotten out of bed and changed her nightgown for this shirt, just to be touching something that had touched his body. She had been hurt and angry at his going, but she’d still believed he’d come back to her to stay.
“Oh, my God,” she whispered, remembering. How long had the shirt been lying there forgotten? Six years at least, six long years.
But she squared her shoulders, carried it downstairs and thrust it at him. “Here,” she said brusquely.
He looked at it in disbelief. “You saved this? All these years? Remember? I loaned it to you one chilly night and you liked it so much, I told you to keep it.”
She remembered. But she said, “Obviously I should clean out my drawers more often. I forgot it was there.”
He gave her a sardonic look. “For a moment I was flattered. I should have known better.”
He unbuttoned the shirt. “You’re sure you want to mess with this?”
“You’re the one who told her I’d get it clean.”
“Quite the little washerwoman, aren’t you? And pretty, to boot.”
He peeled off the shirt, and she sucked in her breath in shock.
He was still lean and muscular and she knew his body all too well. But there was something different—a scar. A crooked, purplish welt zigzagged across his left bicep and continued across his chest, stopping just under the left nipple.
“Good heavens,” she said. “What happened?”
“New Guinea,” he said without emotion.
“How?”
“A guy with a spear. We’d been staying in this village several days. He’d been fine. Then one morning he came out of his hut in a rage, holding this spear and threatening us.”
“But why?” she asked, unable to take her eyes from the scar.
Josh shrugged. “I don’t know. None of us knew. Maybe he’d had a bad dream. Maybe he just snapped.”
“He tried to kill you?” she said in disbelief.
“He tried to kill Lieberman, the writer. I was trying to talk to him, get between them. Ellison got behind him, grabbed him. He was already throwing the spear, but Ellison knocked his aim off. They finally wrestled him to the ground.”
She could not stop herself. She lifted her forefinger and ran it in dread over the scar. She had not felt the bare flesh of his body for years. The sight and feel of it were achingly familiar.
Yet the scar was not familiar. It was unlike any she’d ever seen. “You could have died,” she breathed, touching the part of it nearest his heart.
“It was mostly a flesh wound,” he said. “He nicked a few ribs.”
“B-but,” she stammered, laying her hand over the scar, “you could have got an infection or—”
He put his hand over hers, pressed it against his chest so she could feel the strong beating of his heart. “No,” he said gently. “Ellison patched me up, radioed for a plane, I got taken to a hospital at Moresby Port. I was back on the job in a week.”
She stared at him as if he were a creature she could never fathom. She tried to draw her hand away. He kept it where it was, on the scar over his heart.
Her voice went ragged. “When did this happen?”
“A year and a half ago. Maybe a little more.”
She raised her dark eyebrows in hurt resentment. “You never told me. You never said a word.”
“I didn’t want to worry you. Or Nealie.”
“You shouldn’t hide the truth from us, either.”
“Ah,” he said. “Back to the issue of truth again, are we? Would you really feel so bad if I got killed?”
She wrenched away from him and snatched the bloody white shirt. “Get your clothes on,” she said, twisting the faucets to fill the sink. “Yes, I’d feel bad. I’d feel bad for Nealie. She worships you. She couldn’t stand it if you got yourself killed for some damn—picture.”
“You know,” he said, picking up the sweatshirt, “I think you’re a little jealous of the pictures.”
She shot him a look over her shoulder. “Of course, I am. They took you away from us. And half the time when you go, I wonder—I wonder if you’re ever coming back.”
He pulled the sweatshirt on. She was glad his torso was covered again. But it haunted her memory, and now she wanted to smooth his brown hair, which was mussed by pulling on the shirt.
“You’ve got it backward,” he said, leaning against the cupboard door. “I go to make a living, not to get killed. I’m careful.”
She concentrated on rubbing the shirt. “I’m afraid you’ll fall off a mountain or be eaten by sharks or trampled by a rhinoceros.”
He gave her a smile that was almost a smirk. “Beats dying of boredom on a tomato farm.”
How did we every get married? she asked herself miserably. Why? How did it last as long as it did?
His smile died, and he recognized he had made a mistake. He eased a bit closer to her. “I’m sorry,” he said, and he seemed to mean it. “I shouldn’t have said that. It was a stupid thing to say.”
“No,” she said, staring unseeing into the suds. “You’re right. This is my home, and you’d always be bored here. You’d always be going away, and I’d always resent it and be afraid. We both do what we have to do.”
She rubbed at the shirt until it seemed clean, then rinsed it repeatedly and wrung it out. He stood in silence, watching her. She straightened the shirt, smoothed it and put it in the dryer. She wiped her hands on a towel, and Josh suddenly seized one in both of his.
“You’re going to ruin your hands.” He stroked the rough skin on her knuckle.
“What difference does it make?” she asked. “I’m a farmer’s daughter. I get in the dirt and I plant and I weed. I don’t need to hold anybody’s hand. I shouldn’t hold yours. So let me go. Please.”
He raised one hand and set it on the back of her neck. “I don’t want to let you go. I want to keep you.”
“I don’t want to be kept,” she said, raising her chin. “And that’s what it would be, wouldn’t it? You keeping me? No. I’m never going to depend on anyone again except myself.”
“Well, Miss Independence,” he said, bringing his mouth closer to hers, “then how do you expect to have this baby?”