Bride by the Book (Crimson Romance) (23 page)

“You can’t do that, Angie,” he said. “Not while your father might need you. Now clear your desk, so you’ll be ready when your mother arrives. She’s probably going to need your help.”

An irrational fury flashed through her. If Garner thought he could force her to go back to BrownWare, he was about to find out differently.

Then despair clutched her heart as she realized there was only one possible reason why he wanted her to leave—he no longer wanted her, and he now had an excellent excuse to ease her out of his office and his life without a nasty showdown.

It made sense, she decided, and turned her back to him. In fact, it was the only explanation that made sense. Never mind that she had just spent another wonderful night in his arms, and that he had held her and offered her comfort of a kind she had never received before in her life. Never mind that barely an hour ago, he had made no mention of any doubts about their relationship.

She had read about this sort of thing, where the woman never saw it coming until the man told her he thought she ought to see some other men.

At least he hadn’t said anything about seeing other men. If he had, she might have brained him with his own computer keyboard.

“Sure,” she managed to say before turning to head back to her desk. “It’s not like I needed the money.”

Once there, she packed her Rolodex into her tote, along with her netbook and a few other belongings. Then she marched out of Garner Holt’s law office for the last time and went next door to watch her father and Peter argue over the best placement of the jumpers on Cliff’s computer motherboard.

• • •

Garner found he had no chance to have another private moment with Angie. Not that she showed any signs of wanting one. She had taken a few personal items off her desk and stowed them in her briefcase before walking out the door without so much as a goodbye.

He told himself it was for the best, at least for now. Angie had no idea what awaited her until her father was under the care of a good doctor, and he didn’t have to be a genius to see that Angie did not want to leave Smackover and go back to Palo Alto.

He ignored an overwhelming desire to rush next door where she had taken refuge and beg her to stay with him. Surely, Angie didn’t think he was sending her off because he no longer wanted her. Then he reminded himself that Angie probably wouldn’t go unless he did send her off, and nobody knew better than he did what guilt would assail her if she wasn’t beside her father during the next few days or weeks.

Somehow, he managed to remain in his own office, even though he badly wanted to rush next door and tell Angie he didn’t mean it, that her job was safe and so was the place she had made in his life.

But he couldn’t concentrate on his work, and he wasn’t even sure how he’d make it through the next few days if Angie left town.

Garner turned his chair and stared out the window at the flower beds Laura tended so assiduously. He felt almost like he had when he left Dallas, as if all the pleasure in his life had ended. As if he would never experience joy and happiness again.

Definitely, he was not looking forward to the next few days.

He sat staring out the front window, unmoving, until he saw a nondescript silver car glide to a halt in front of the window. A slender blond woman emerged, stared critically toward the office then down at a piece of paper in her hand. She nodded, tucked the paper into the leather shoulder bag she carried and marched toward his door with a swift, decisive step.

Garner rose and moved toward his front office. He would have known Celia Brownwood anywhere.

“Mrs. Brownwood, I presume,” he said, upon opening the door for her. “Your husband and daughter are next door, working on my brother-in-law’s computer.”

“Is that right?” Celia stepped back and surveyed him through her glasses, then plucked the glasses off her nose. “Damned things. They’re for distance vision, and I keep forgetting. So you’re the lawyer my daughter says she’s working for.”

“That’s right.” Garner figured the less he said, the better.

“Well.” Celia studied him a moment, and Garner regarded her in equal silence. “I knew this would happen one of these days. The minute Angie got away from Vern, in fact, and anyone can see I was right.” Celia had nothing more to add about his relationship with her daughter and reverted to her current mission. “The sooner I can get Vern back to Palo Alto, the sooner I can get this mess straightened out. Where did you say he was?”

“Next door,” Garner said. “Your daughter and Peter Van Holden are both with him.”

“
Peter
.” Celia shook her head. “What on earth is Peter doing here? On second thought, don’t tell me. I probably don’t want to know. I have Vern’s doctor on notice in Palo Alto and a plane waiting in Little Rock, so the sooner I can get him into the car, the better. He’s not going to get away with telling me his physical was perfect, when he didn’t even bother to show.”

Celia seemed far more steamed over her husband’s lie than the fact that her daughter might have acquired a lover. Garner wasn’t sure whether or not that was a good thing in the long run, since he realized that, as a scientist, Celia respected and expected the truth, hence her annoyance with her husband. But he knew that as soon as Celia had straightened out that complication, she would turn her formidable energies toward her daughter’s affairs.

“Yes, ma’am,” he said blandly, and added nothing else.

His first concern was to get Angie’s father on the road to treatment for whatever ailed him. Then he could turn his attention to making Angie understand that he was not ending their relationship. He was merely postponing it. She had to realize that her father’s welfare came first.

When he opened the door to Cliff’s office and escorted Celia Brownwood inside, Angie looked anywhere but at him. Catching sight of her mother gave her the perfect excuse to ignore him.

“Vernon Brownwood, you have a lot of nerve telling me Dr. Foster said you were in excellent physical condition,” Celia announced. “He says you never showed for your appointment.”

Vernon almost dropped the screwdriver in his hand. He turned jerkily to face his wife with as guilty a countenance as Garner had ever seen. “Celia? What are you doing here?”

“You may well ask,” Celia said in a voice of doom. “But the answer should be obvious, even to a space-pilot like you. I’m here to haul you back to Dr. Foster’s office, of course, where you would have proceeded on your own if you’d had a lick of common sense.”

“I’ll see Foster later.” Vernon turned back to Cliff’s computer, which Garner saw almost looked whole again. “I had a lot of important things going on the day of that appointment. I’ll make another when I get home. Besides, there’s nothing wrong with me.”

“I’ll be the judge of that.” Celia marched up to him and took his arm. “Grab his left arm, Angie. If he gives us any trouble, I’m prepared to put a sleeping pill in his coffee.”

“Celia, can’t you see I’m working?” Vernon held the screwdriver above his head. “It isn’t every day I get to take apart one of these Jaxxos.”

“Doping his coffee is a little drastic, don’t you think?” Angie said, looking everywhere but at Garner. “Take off your glasses, Mom. You’ll run into something.”

“Celia, this is uncalled for,” Vernon insisted.

“You should have thought of that before you lied to me,” Celia said flatly. “Put that screwdriver down this minute.”

Vernon tried to cover his guilt with belligerence. “I will not. I don’t come to your classroom at Stanford in the middle of one of your lectures—”

“Can he please finish with my computer?” Cliff chimed in meekly.

Celia cast a cursory glance over the computer. “It looks finished to me. Peter is perfectly capable of finishing anything that needs doing on any computer that I ever saw.” She plucked the screwdriver from Vernon’s hand and laid it on the desk.

Peter looked up and pinpointed Cliff. “We’re all done here. As soon as I put this last screw in, you can boot it up and try it out.”

“Thank God,” Cliff said, on a gusty sigh of relief.

“Let go, Celia,” Vernon said. “I want to see how it performs, now that we’ve switched the chips and—”

“Peter, you can help us get Vernon into the car if it becomes necessary,” Celia announced. “You might as well make yourself useful.”

“Hello to you, too, Celia,” Peter said, undisturbed. “It’s high time you paid attention to something other than those radiation counters you’re so fond of.” He looked up at Vernon and gestured with the long, bent-nosed pliers he held. “I’m not so sure one of your little radiation experiments didn’t go awry here.”

Celia drew herself up. Garner found it educational to see how a woman who was barely average height could suddenly make herself look six-feet tall.

“Peter Van Holden, you will get up this minute and take my husband’s other arm, or I will personally devise a laser beam-of-death and direct it toward the bedroom of your apartment.”

Garner’s eyes widened and he regarded Celia with considerably more caution. Angie stepped forward. “Let Peter finish putting this computer back together, Mom. I’ll help you get Daddy out to the car.”

“Hey, wait a minute, Ang,” Peter said. “You aren’t leaving, are you? We’ve got this game—”

“I knew it,” Vernon yelled, face reddening. “You’re both in collusion against BrownWare. I’ll—”

“Shut up, Vernon Brownwood.” Celia’s tone brooked no nonsense. “You are in very deep trouble here. With me, your wife. You no longer have time to carry out some ridiculous vendetta against Peter and Angie. You are about to become very, very busy trying to keep me from skinning you alive. Do you understand that?”

“Now, Celia . . . ” Vernon began.

“How dare you lie to me?”

Garner had to admit that if Celia Brownwood spoke to him in that tone, he would very likely wither up in the same way Vernon did.

“It wasn’t a lie,” Vernon said in a small voice. “Not exactly. I was going to see Foster in another week or two.”

“I’ll bet,” Celia said grimly. “Well, let me tell you something, Vernon. You are going to see George Foster tonight. I don’t care if it’s midnight. Then you are going to do whatever he tells you, depending on what he finds upon examination.”

“There’s nothing to find, Celia.” Vernon’s tone of mild exasperation lost most of its impetus when he encountered his wife’s fiery blue gaze.

“You’d better hope there isn’t,” Celia said.

In the meanwhile, Cliff quietly took his chair at his desk and stared at his computer monitor with an awed gaze. Behind him, Peter watched the screen critically.

“Go ahead,” Peter said, and placed the last screw. “Try it out.”

Cliff punched the power button on his computer with apprehension. Then he sat back with a look of dawning hope that was replaced by burgeoning awe.

“Look at this, Garner,” he exclaimed. “I’ve never seen a computer boot up this fast before.”

Laura peered over his shoulder. “Try one of your spreadsheet programs, darling. Try the one that was so slow to load.”

Cliff tapped at his keyboard. “Wow,” he breathed. “It just popped open. I’ll bet it’ll even multi-task the way they claimed it would when I bought it.”

Laura and Peter gathered behind Cliff to issue suggestions and commentary on the turbo-charged computer, and Garner remained where he was, still trying to catch Angie’s eye. Just as assiduously, she avoided his gaze.

“It was nice to meet you, young man,” Celia said. “Sorry about the misunderstanding over the phone last week.” She examined Garner’s face with her slightly far-sighted gaze. “Not that it was a misunderstanding at all, by what I can see.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Garner said. Apparently Celia knew exactly what his relationship with her daughter was, but whether or not she approved, he remained uncertain.

“Come along, Vernon. We have a plane to catch in Little Rock.” Celia marched toward the door, towing her husband along with her.

Angie, on Vernon’s other side, gave him her best professional secretary’s smile without meeting his eyes and accompanied her parents out Cliff’s front door.

Vernon deflated like an old balloon and allowed himself to be hustled out to Celia’s rented car and placed in the front seat beside her. Angie quietly climbed into the back seat and cast him a glittering little smile.

Garner had remained standing on the curb looking after her.

• • •

Angie made it through the first two weeks after her departure from Arkansas like a robot. Only by carefully refusing to think about her time in Smackover and pretending she had never left Palo Alto could she make it through the comic catastrophe that ensued.

Celia dragged Vernon onto a departing flight the moment they arrived at the airport outside Little Rock. In Denver, after a wait made almost unbearable by Vernon’s alternate pleading and cursing, they boarded a direct flight to California, and by six o’clock the following morning, they escorted Vernon into Dr. Foster’s office.

By then, Angie felt like the walking dead, and she didn’t much care how she looked, especially when Dr. Foster ordered an ambulance to transport Vernon to a hospital, where he was scheduled for a list of tests and scans.

After two days of intensive tests and assessments by numerous specialists, Vernon was scheduled for surgery to remove a growth inside his brain that might or might not be cancerous. The doctor said most of his erratic behavior, and definitely the pain in his head was caused by the growth.

“I’ve never had a headache in my life,” Vernon said. “How was I supposed to know that’s what was going on?”

“If it’s your head, and it hurts, then it’s a headache,” Celia said. “Common sense. Something you’re sadly lacking in, Vernon.”

Angie didn’t know whether to feel relieved or angry, and she felt so tired, she could feel neither. Nor would she allow herself to think about Garner. The only way she could keep going was to not think about him, to pretend the brief time she had spent in Arkansas was a dream.

When Vernon’s surgery was completed and the tumor successfully removed, she stood beside Celia to receive the doctor’s report and Vernon’s prognosis, then could not recall a word of it five minutes later.