AT BRENNAN HOUSE, Julie had become a bit of a celebrity. Expecting twins was something out of the ordinary even in a place filled with pregnant teenagers. Girls constantly were putting their hands on Julie's stomach to see if they could feel two babies kick. It was almost as if they saw Julie as a goodluck charm. They seemed to reason that if Julie could handle all the ups and downs of her pregnancy, then surely the rest of them could do it, too.
Lisa, however, worried that Julie was having a whole lot more downs than ups. This impression was confirmed one morning about a week after Matt had visited Danfield. That was how Lisa measured time now…according to when she'd last seen Matt. On this particular morning, Julie's mother paid yet another of her visits to Brennan House. Mrs. Douglas took a seat on one of the overstuffed chairs in Lisa's office, watching sourly as her daughter waddled into the room. Julie had already perfected the telltale Brennan House waddle.
“Here you are at last. You know what a long drive I have to make. Why did you keep me waiting?”
Julie lowered herself gingerly into another of the overstuffed chairs without saying a word. Lisa watched from the other side of her desk, wondering why Mrs. Douglas had insisted on a formal meeting. That was what she'd called it over the phone— she'd wanted to set up a “meeting” with her daughter and Lisa.
“What can I do for you, Mrs. Douglas?” Lisa asked, as always struggling to contain the irritation this woman evoked in her.
“I have some very good news.” Mrs. Douglas paused importantly. “The wedding date is set.”
Lisa had no idea what the woman was talking about. Julie didn't seem to have a clue, either. She just looked at her mother.
“Who's getting married?” Julie asked in a small voice.
Mrs. Douglas gave an unpleasant laugh. “You, of course. Who else did you think? That wretched boy has finally buckled under. He'll marry you, all right, and the both of you will take responsibility for what you've done.”
“But, Mom!” Julie exclaimed in obvious horror. “I haven't even talked to him—”
“I did the talking. I never thought my daughter would be walking down the aisle with her stomach out to here, but it has to be done. No grandchildren of mine will be bastards. Of course, the ceremony will be as private as possible. We won't be inviting any guests.”
Julie clutched both arms of her chair. “Mom,” she said in that pleading voice. Mrs. Douglas looked ready to start in on another diatribe, and Lisa knew she couldn't bear to hear it.
“I'd like to speak to Julie alone,” she said, just as she had at their first meeting.
“It's all been settled,” Mrs. Douglas informed her. “There's nothing for you to say. Your only job is to back me up, and make sure Julie does the right thing.” The woman made it sound as if Lisa were her employee. That was hardly how Lisa saw it.
“I would like to speak to Julie alone,” she said firmly. The woman stared at her. Lisa didn't glance away, even for a second. And at last Mrs. Douglas stood up.
“I'll be just outside.”
Once again Lisa had to go shut the door after Mrs. Douglas. Then she came to sit next to Julie. “Marriage is very serious,” she said. “And you do have choices, Julie. Right now you have to tell me what you want. Just tell me how you feel.”
“I…I don't know…”
“Are you in love with this boy?”
Julie didn't speak for a very long time. And then, slowly, she raised her shoulders in a helpless shrug. “No,” she whispered.
“Julie, listen—marriage is serious.”
“So is having a baby,” Julie said as if by rote. “Two babies. And I have to take responsibility…”
Lisa felt powerless. She hated that sensation. It reminded her all too well of the way she felt because of Matt. Powerless to make him love her.
“Julie—”
“I have to take responsibility.” Julie spoke woodenly, gazing straight ahead, no longer even looking at Lisa. Then she heaved her body from the chair and went out to her mother.
GRANDMA BEA CARRIED her new watering can to the sunporch. Matt brought up the rear with her old watering can, the rusty battered one she couldn't bear to give up.
“You might as well tell me about it,” Bea said as she watered the hibiscus.
“There's nothing to tell.”
“Now, Mathias. You keep saying that, but when my grandson goes gallivanting off on a mysterious trip to who knows where, of course there's something to tell. Give that fern a good dousing, will you?”
Matt watered the fern. Although he'd returned from Connecticut a full week ago, Bea wouldn't let up about it. She wanted to know every detail of where he'd been and who he'd seen. She didn't seem to realize that Matt wasn't talking.
“Is she a pretty girl?”
Matt gave the bougainvillea a sour glance. “Don't start that again, Bea.”
“I may be old, but I'm not stupid. When my grandson goes cavorting off, there's sure to be a pretty girl involved.”
Lisa Hardaway was more than pretty. She was beautiful and sensuous and passionate. But he'd had no right to make love to her.
“I needed to get away,” he said. “That's all.”
“Mathias, I intend to see you settled before I'm gone. If you have any of your own prospects lined up, I should know about them. Otherwise we'll have to start from scratch.”
What was the old gal up to now? Matchmaking services, along with trying to rearrange the entire rest of Matt's life?
“No prospects,” he said after a minute. “And you don't need to find any for me, either. I'm not into… settling down.”
Bea poked her fingers into a potted begonia as if to make it behave. “Someone has to carry on the family,” she said. “Someone has to start a new brood. You can bet it won't be your cousin. She scares men off. Scowls at them with that skinny face of hers, and—”
“You probably did a lot of scowling yourself, before you met Grandpa.”
Bea smiled. “I took a single look at your grandpa, and knew he was the one. That's how it happens.”
Not in his experience. He'd spent a lot of his life convinced there could never be just one woman. Then he'd decided there was no woman for him at all. Lisa Hardaway hadn't changed his opinion— she'd only confirmed it. She deserved someone like Patrick Dannon, someone who could give her steadiness…a future. Matt himself didn't think about the future. That was as dangerous as thinking about the past.
“Start working on Joanne's love life,” he told his grandmother. “Line up a date for her. Maybe then, the two of you will start getting along.”
“It's no use trying to distract me. I'm serious, Mathias. I don't have much longer. It will make my going so much easier if I know you have someone.”
The sunporch was crowded with plants. The smells of potting soil and green leafy things seemed to take up all the oxygen. Matt wiped the sweat off his forehead and thought longingly of coolness.
“You're not leaving anytime soon, Bea. You're too stubborn and cranky for that.”
“We're talking about you, not me.” Her voice softened. “Matt, you need a real family. A wife, children of your own. Don't you think you deserve a little happiness?”
“My idea of happiness is different than yours.”
“No, it's not. You just feel guilty because you're the one who survived. You don't understand there's a reason you survived.”
“Don't do this, Bea—”
“My sweet Mathias,” she murmured. “You're the one. You'll make sure the family doesn't disappear.” Bea gasped then, the watering can tumbling from her fingers, rolling onto the wooden floor of the porch.
“Bea, what is it?” Matt was at her side in a second.
She clutched at her chest. “It hurts,” she whispered. “Oh, Mathias, it hurts…”
He caught hold of her just before she, too, could go tumbling toward the floor.
LISA TRIED not to listen to the whine of the plane's engines. That was always her downfall—straining to hear the slightest change in sound and then being convinced the engines were about to expire. She was ashamed of herself for being so nervous whenever she flew. It was something she ought to have outgrown a long time ago. But no matter how many times she got on a plane, fear always threatened to overwhelm her.
She eased her seat back and began flexing her feet. This was one of the stress-reduction exercises she taught the teenagers at Brennan House, but it didn't seem to be doing her any good right now. Too many thoughts scrambled for room in her head. The last time she'd taken a flight to Hurricane Beach, Patrick had been sitting beside her, and he'd distracted her no end. With his ability to talk nonstop, to make instant friends with other passengers, to joke and to prod at Lisa's emotions, he'd both exasperated and entertained her. But this time around, she was flying without him. She couldn't very well have brought him along after breaking up with him yet again last night. This time he'd almost seemed to believe her. “What is it about Matt Connell?” he'd asked soberly. “Why can't you just forget the guy, and move on?”
Lisa pressed her head back against the seat. She would do everything possible to avoid seeing Matt on this trip to Hurricane Beach. Surely she'd be busy enough to avoid him. It was going to be quite a whirl, getting ready for Amy's wedding.
Amy and Jon had finally set the date. Not only had they set it, but they'd given themselves hardly any time for preparations. The wedding was going to take place in only a few days. Characteristically, once Amy made up her mind to something, she wanted it this instant. Lisa remembered her sister's voice on the telephone: “Everything's a jumble, Lisa. Mom and Dad will hardly speak to each other anymore. Megan and I have tried to make them talk, but they won't budge. Maybe this whole plan for an anniversary party is a disaster…and to top it off, Jon's parents still haven't made up their minds about our engagement. But the fact is, if we wait until everything's perfect, we might never get married. So we're going ahead, anyway. We're going to tie the knot!”
Lisa had tried to tell her sister she was glad, but she didn't think she'd been too convincing. All the contrasts to Amy's happiness seemed to crowd in upon her. Young Julie Douglas, betrothed to a boy she didn't love. Lisa's own parents, who apparently were getting closer and closer to abandoning fifty years of marriage. And Lisa herself, loving a man who didn't seem to believe in love…
Always Matt. Everything came back to him. It was as if, fifteen years ago, she'd started on a journey that only took her in circles. How did she break free? Would it ever be possible?
Somehow, in spite of the clamor of her own thoughts, she actually did manage to doze. And the plane, as always, arrived safely at its destination, engines intact. With the other passengers Lisa made her way into the Tallahassee airport. She scanned the crowd, and right away saw Matt Connell.
A surge of adrenaline shot through her, as if she was about to take off running. But did she want to run away from Matt…or toward him? The question was immaterial, because he was already walking toward her. He moved with the deliberate gait that hinted at restrained power. Even as he approached, his features remained unsmiling.
“Hello, Matt,” she said as breezily as possible. “Imagine seeing you here. Did you come to see somebody off?”
“I came for you, Lisa.”
Why was it that the mere sound of his voice could send a tremor through her? She felt the flush blooming on her skin.
“I don't understand,” she said. “Someone in my family is supposed to pick me up.”
“Your partner let me know you were coming back to Hurricane Beach. What flight you'd be on, and so forth. I took the liberty of telling your sister that I'd pick you up.”
Lisa gazed at him indignantly. “You've been talking to Dena behind my back?”
Matt wore one of his implacable expressions. “I'm glad Dena called me. It seems you still refuse to use any of my money. She was hoping I could convince you otherwise. I'm hoping the same thing.”
Lisa had only her one carry-on bag, and she started walking toward the exit. “This isn't a good idea, Matt. You meeting me—”
He kept pace right alongside her, and at the same time managed to take the bag from her.
“Running away from me isn't the answer, either,” he said. “And you do need a ride to Hurricane Beach.”
Unfortunately, she couldn't argue about that. A short while later, she.found herself in Matt's twoseater, her overnight bag loaded into his compact trunk. As he began driving, the muggy Florida air enveloped her, greeting her as if she were a longlost friend. She wished Matt's car weren't so small and intimate. And she wished her gaze didn't keep straying to his unyielding profile, his hands strong and competent on the wheel. Hands that knew how to touch her…
“Damn,” she muttered.
Matt gave her a brief glance. “Accepting my help wouldn't be a weakness, Lisa. And your partner says if you don't start using some of that money soon, you really will be in bad shape.”
Darn Dena, anyway, for confiding in Matt. Lisa forced herself to stare straight ahead. “You've mentioned it yourself, Dena is fifty percent of the operation. If she decides to go ahead and use your money, I can't really stop her.”
“It seems she has too much respect for your partnership to do that. She says it has to be a joint decision. And meanwhile, the money is just sitting in the bank…and the house on Highland is sitting empty. Does that seem reasonable to you?”
Where Matt was concerned, Lisa had abandoned the idea of being reasonable. “Can't you just leave it alone—”
“There's a funny thing about trying to make amends,” he said. “Once you start, it's hard to stop. Look, I know I didn't handle things so well up there in Danfield.” He paused. “I never should have made love to you.”
Anger sparked in her. “Why, Matt? Why are you sorry?”
“It wasn't right of me to…complicate things.”
“I see,” she said caustically. “You think that if we hadn't gone to bed, it would be a lot easier to convince me to take your money.”
“Lisa, it's not like that.”
“And maybe you think that once I accept your damn money, you can wipe the slate clean and just go on. Amends made.”
“It's not like that, either,” he said quietly.
“What is it like, Matt? Maybe you can tell me.”
He didn't speak for a long moment. And then, “I'm sorry, Lisa. Sorry that I can't be the kind of person you need.”
There was only one thing worse than loving, a man who couldn't love you back. And that was having the man know you loved him—because you'd opened your mouth and told him so.
“Listen,” she said, “let's just drop it, okay? You don't owe me anything anymore. The slate really is wiped clean.”
“It's not that easy. Even if you accept my help, I'll always regret what happened, Lisa. The way I left you…and the child you lost.”
Neither one of them said anything after that. Lisa's anger seemed to have died as quickly as it had flared. She stole another glance at Matt. Yes, he was unyielding—but with himself most of all. He did not readily forgive himself.
They had almost reached Hurricane Beach when Matt spoke again, his hands seeming to tighten on the steering wheel.
“My grandmother had a heart attack a few days ago,” he said abruptly. “A bad one.”
“Oh, Matt, I'm so sorry.”
He seemed determined to show no emotion. “She's at the hospital. I was wondering if you'd have time to stop by with me for a visit.”
The request took Lisa by surprise. Matt had always kept her at arm's length where his family was concerned. Beatrice Connell had been a friend of Helene's. Lisa had met her several times as a child.
At her silence, Matt seemed to think an explanation was necessary. “Your mother's been to see her. And they spent a lot of time catching up on each other's news. Bea was really interested in how the Hardaway sisters were doing. I know she'd love to see you. It may take her mind off her problems.”
“Yes…and of course I'd like to visit your grandmother, Matt. I'm just sorry she's ill.”
He gave a brusque nod as he kept on driving. And now he seemed to have withdrawn from Lisa, all his emotions shut away from her. That was the irony. He wanted to make amends, but how could he do that if he refused to open his heart?
HURRICANE BEACH'S one small hospital looked every bit the southern mansion, stately Greek columns rising all along the two-story portico. Two modern wings had been added, however, jutting out on either side, and it was in the south wing that Beatrice Connell had been assigned a room. To Lisa, the old woman looked fragile and small as she lay in bed, attached to a heart monitor and who knew what else. With all the gadgetry of modern medicine, she seemed like a sparrow trapped inside a cage. Yet she appeared alert enough, studying Lisa with bright, shrewd eyes.
“Hello, Lisa Hardaway. I haven't seen you in years. And now you're Matt's girl,” she said, the term making Lisa feel like a gawky teenager all over again. Lisa glanced at Matt.
“Don't let Bea scare you,” he said gravely.
“I can speak for myself, Mathias. Now, sit down here where I can have a better look at you.” This last was addressed to Lisa, who pulled a chair close to the bed.
“How are you feeling, Mrs. Connell?”
“You're as bad as Matt, trying to change the subject on me. Call me Bea, and tell me what you think of my grandson. Would he make good husband material?”
Just when Lisa thought life couldn't be any more humiliating, she was proven wrong. She couldn't think of a single response to Bea's startling directness.
“You can be honest with me, Lisa,” said Bea, a roguish twinkle in her eye. “You might as well know I don't tolerate anything but honesty. So, would he make a good husband?”
Honesty it had to be. “No,” Lisa said. “He wouldn't.”
Bea chuckled, as if this answer didn't concern her in the least. “Tell me why not.”
“Because he won't let anybody get too close. I'd say that pretty much rules out a wife.”
Matt didn't say anything, but she heard him make a restless motion. And Bea, meanwhile, seemed highly entertained.
“This is a smart one, Mathias. She has you pegged.”
Lisa's gaze strayed to the monitor beside the bed. She didn't like the erratic movement of the green line across the screen.
“I don't want to tire you out, Mrs. Connell— Bea, that is.”
“I want you to stay and talk to me,” the old woman said somewhat imperiously.
“I think Lisa's right,” Matt began.
“Why did you come, if you're just going to rush off?” Now Bea sounded plaintive. “Tell me how the two of you met.”
Lisa was reminded of a kid asking for a bedtime fairy tale. But her relationship with Matt was no fairy tale. She was wondering how to get out of this one when Matt spoke.
“I saw Lisa on the beach when she was all of fifteen years old. She had very long, very blond hair. She was wearing shorts and a T-shirt and a baseball cap, and I remember thinking what a good combination that was.”
Lisa stared at him. “But I thought you didn't even notice me until I joined the aviation club—”
“I noticed.” His blue-gray eyes captured hers, and she felt it all over again—the irrevocable pull toward him, the need inside her aching for fulfillment.
A dry chuckle from the bed brought her back to her senses. Bea lifted a gnarled hand.
“I told you, Mathias. You take one look, and you know. That's how it works.”
Matt's face grew impassive. “You're going to rest now, Bea.”
“No, I am not.”
A nurse entered the room just then, bringing this particular discussion to a halt. Lisa stood.
“It was nice meeting you, Bea,” she said, knowing how inadequate the words sounded. But what did you say to someone who was so frail and so combative all at once?
The old woman placed her hand on Lisa's arm. Her fingers seemed as insubstantial as twigs.
“Don't let him push you away,” she murmured. “Promise me.”
“Mrs. Connell—”
“Promise me.” The green line on the screen gave another erratic jump.
“I promise,” Lisa whispered.