AFTERGLOW (24 page)

"I didn't mean it
… that
is, I didn't mean to do it here, just after we saw the kids off with Margaret and the general
…
in the most unromantic place—"

"I understand," said Chelsea, who didn't understand at all. "Please, David, let's wait. Really, I don't think—"

It was his turn to cut her off. "I would have expected you to say something a bit more
…
loving."

A harried businessman bumped her with his clothes bag, apologized and rushed on.

Chelsea felt as though the world had tilted and she was going to fall off. Marriage! He couldn't mean it, not really. It had been brought on by the fact that she got along so well with his children. He saw her as their surrogate mother, saw them all together in a blissful, utterly fictionalized future, where all was sweetness and light and good fun. David was merely confused.

She said, "Let's go have a toothsome Mexican dinner."

"What?"

"I'm hungry, and I want my dinner."

He clamped down on what he'd intended to say. He'd give her two glasses of white wine, then trot out his good qualities for her inspection and obvious approval.

He managed a smile and said, "Onward. To Mill Valley? The Cantina?"

"Yes," said Chelsea, not looking at him.

The Cantina was crowded, and they had to wait twenty minutes for a table. David made certain she drank two glasses of wine during that time. He spoke only of things at the hospital, to which she responded with an appropriate positive or negative. He wished he knew what she was thinking.

He ordered a third glass of white wine for her over her taco salad. She raised an eyebrow at him, but said nothing. David didn't drink a thing.

"Chelsea," he began, "about what I said at the airport—"

"I will think about what you said, David, if you're certain you still feel the same."

"I still feel the same. I want to marry you."

"I will think—"

"Damn it! Just listen to me a minute. Chelsea, I'm not a pauper. My income is reasonable. I can support you—" He swallowed on that faux pas and shook his head. "What I meant to say is that I'm not a pauper. You enjoy making love with me. We have fun together." He stopped, thinking it ridiculous that he should have to be selling himself to her. She either knew all that already or she didn't. She either wanted to marry him or she didn't. He said nothing more, merely speared a bite of his enchilada and chewed.

"You're from Boston," Chelsea said, not looking up from her meal.

"That certainly is a profound statement," he said.

"What I mean is that
I …
well, I want to think about it, David. Please, give me some time."

And that was that, he thought. She gave him a rather curious, puzzled look when he walked her to her front door, but didn't invite him in, just sent him on his way at ten o'clock at night. It didn't occur to him until much later that he hadn't told her that he loved her. He smacked his palm against his forehead. Dumb!

It was Elsa who told him that a lady wanted to speak to him on the phone. David, in the middle of stitching up a six-year-old's head, grunted and asked Elsa to take a message. Elsa hadn't told him it was Chelsea Lattimer.

It was close to six o'clock in the evening when he finally broke free. When he saw Chelsea's name on the message slip he frowned and quickly dialed her number. Three rings, and then her damned answering machine.

"If this is David," a subdued voice said, "the answer is no.
I'm
sorry. This is, ah, Chelsea."

David stared at the phone as if it were something alien and quite distasteful. He heard the buzz. Damn it, she hadn't even said enough to fill up the free time between buzzes.

He rang her up every thirty minutes until midnight. Same message. By the time he dragged himself to bed his silent fury with her had changed to outraged anger. He cursed her until he fell asleep.

The next morning he called again. Her regular message was on the machine, not the special one she'd left for him. He cursed her through his shower, breakfast and drive to the hospital.

By afternoon he was back to silent fury.

By evening he wanted to cry in his beer.

"Chels, where the devil are you?"

"Up at the Heritage House in Mendocino," Chelsea said to George. "Look, George, I just wanted to get away for a while."

George looked thoughtfully out the window, then back to the phone. "It's been nearly a week. Have you been there all that time?"

"Yes."

"You really didn't have to run away, Chelsea."

Chelsea chewed on her lower lip. "Is David all right?"

"If you mean by that is he still acting like a human being, the answer is mostly. He finally fessed up to Elliot yesterday. I think he'd like to beat you silly, Chels. You really didn't explain anything to him, did you?"

There was a deep sigh on the line. "No, not really, I guess."

"Do you love him?"

"Well, yes. No. I'm not really certain, George. How 'bout I'm miserable and leave it at that?"

George was silent for a moment, then said crisply, "I think I'll drive up to see you today. How does that sound?"

"Just promise not to tell David, all right?"

"You got it."

At two o'clock that afternoon George found Chelsea in the beautiful restored Victorian sitting room-bar at the Heritage House. She looks awful, George thought, staring at her friend before Chelsea was aware of her presence. There were shadows beneath her eyes, testifying to sleepless nights, and her fingers were nervously plucking at her slacks. What a mess, George thought, planted a smile on her face and strode forward.

"Hi," Chelsea said.

"Hi, yourself," George said, then sat down on the old sofa beside her friend. "You look like a reject from—"

"Don't say it. Too true. A silly, weak woman is always supposed to look like this. George, I blew it!"

George saw the tears swimming in her friend's eyes and quickly rose. "Let's go for a walk along the cliffs."

A stiff breeze was blowing up from the ocean, but the sun was bright overhead. "It's so beautiful here," George said, taking a deep breath. "When I was last here with Elliot, I didn't get to see much of the scenery. Thank heavens the cottages are interesting in themselves."

Chelsea didn't say anything, merely leaned down, picked up a pebble and flung it with precision out into the water.

"You want to tell me about it, Chels?"

"He asked me to marry him at the airport. I was so taken aback that I didn't say one sensible thing. Then at dinner he started telling me all about his
…
prospects, I guess the word is."

To Chelsea's surprise and disgruntlement, George laughed. "I'm sorry, Chels, but I did the exact same thing to Elliot, only we were thirty-five thousand feet in the air. I told him all about my investments, how I'd pull my own weight and all that stuff. He looked at me as if I'd lost my marbles."

"What happened?"

"He put me off, just as you did David. Eventually he told me no. He'd prepared this damned speech, all about my growing career and his ancient years and how it couldn't work. I wanted to kill him, as I recall."

"You never told me that," Chelsea said.

"Well, I'm telling you now. Actually, I didn't tell anybody. It hurt too much at the time."

"Does David hurt, do you think?"

"For heaven's sake, Chels, he asked you to marry him, didn't he?" George gave her a fond, exasperated look. "Of course he loves you. How can you doubt that?"

"He didn't say anything about love."

"Goodness, you must really have had him going!"

"George, look, I think he asked me to marry him because we'd had such
fun
with his kids, and he saw me as being the perfect surrogate mother for them. You know, all sweetness and light. At least, that's what I thought."

"I never realized David was such a shallow person," George said. "But, then again, I suppose you know him best."

"Shallow! He isn't shallow!"

"But, Chelsea," George said reasonably, "you just said that he didn't love you, he just wanted a glorified baby-sitter."

"George, why don't you just leave and smile up at me from a cover on a magazine!"

"Can't take the heat, huh, Chels? All right, I'll stop ragging you. Now you can't stay up here for the rest of your life. What do you intend to do?"

"Go home and see him, I guess," Chelsea said, her voice more resigned than glum.

"And what will you tell him?"

Chelsea stopped, sat down on an outcropping of rock and dangled her legs. She said after a moment, "George, will you please stop pacing in front of me? You look so bloody beautiful, it makes me feel like a toad."

Obligingly George sat down beside her. "Now we're two toads sunning ourselves on a warm rock. Talk, toad."

Three minutes of dead silence followed.

"I know you've been spending hours thinking, Chels. Why don't you just think out loud?"

"Oh, all right. David is from Boston."

"Good grief, a capital offense!"

"That's not exactly what I mean. I mean that he and I couldn't be more different. He's got to think I'm a flake, George, even though he's probably forced himself not to believe it right now. You know, a goodtime girl who's never serious. A person who makes his kids face
up
to being kids and not little stuffed shirts. And he's still got to be a stuffed shirt. People don't really change, George, you know that, even though his ex-wife told me he had. He'd be at me within six months to stop joking around and running off at the mouth."

"Hmmmm."

"And he said nothing at all about loving me. I think he's lonely and sex starved, that's all."

"And you make him laugh, right?"

"Yeah."

"And you enjoy each other in bed, right?"

"Yeah. He won that wager. I kept thinking that the next time we'd make love I'd yawn and want to read."

"Hmmmm."

"It just kept getting better," Chelsea added in a mournful voice.

"That certainly sounds suspicious. I agree with you, Chels. I'm so bored with Elliot now that I've read everything on the bestseller list just to keep myself going."

"You are not! Elliot can't keep his hands off you, and you're always draped all over him!"

George arched a perfect eyebrow. "Really?" she said in a drawling voice.

"You're a rat, George, or a rattess."

"And you, Chelsea Lattimer, are an idiot. Do you love David?"

"Damn it, yes, but
I'm
not going to marry him. George, just imagine all the problems we'd have. It just wouldn't work."

"What problems?"

"Well," Chelsea said finally, "lots of problems. I just can't think of any right now. He'd turn back into a stuffed shirt within six months."

"Actually, I only see David as a stuffed shirt when he turns seventy."

"Maybe, maybe not. I just wish he didn't look and act like one of my heroes most of the time."

George fell silent, and Chelsea didn't see the wicked gleam in her eyes. She said, "I wonder what a hero would do with you, the heroine?"

"Something outrageous, doubtless. David isn't ever outrageous. He's too dignified."

"Even in bed?"

"Well, not usually. Well, never, actually."

"Hmmm."

"I guess what it boils down to, George, is that
I'm
just scared. Marriage is something that makes me start shaking. It's the heaviest commitment a person can make. What if I blow it?"

"Why would you blow it?"

"Well, just look at David and Margaret. They didn't make it, and they appear to have had everything in common. David and I are as different as
… I
can't think of anything original, and I don't want to be trite. Writers don't want to say the expected thing."