Heather Graham (14 page)

Kim just kept smiling. She had no intention of correcting him on his assumption that her lunch date was with Brian. “I’m taking the next few weeks off, David. Lacey is going to be in charge of photography. Please don’t give her any more trouble, David. I’ve warned Mr. Simms that there is a personality clash between the two of you.”

David’s smile slipped, just a hair, but it did slip. That tiny slip gave Kim enormous satisfaction. “If you’re worrying about Mrs. Hart’s job, Kim, I wouldn’t. I’d worry about your own. The grapevine has it that old Simms is aware you’re planning on going into free-lance work, and he doesn’t like moonlighters.”

“Thank you, David,” Kim said sweetly, “but I just spoke to Mr. Simms. It didn’t sound as if he intended to let me go.”

She turned and left the studio.

But as she drove nervously to meet Keith, her mind was in a new turmoil. Mr. Simms didn’t like his employees moonlighting, and it was possible that on principle he might decide to let her go if he had heard that she had been approached by several of the southern magazines.

She forgot about work hassles when she walked into the restaurant and saw Keith standing to wave to her. Seeing him again brought back a new flood of pain. She could suddenly remember days they had spent sailing, easy days when they had fished and sunned and drunk beer and then danced all night. She would never forget Keith for the way he had patiently cared for the twins because they were hers and would always be so much of her life.

“Kim.” He greeted her by kissing her quickly but with a haunting poignancy before he allowed her to sit across from him. “I have been just sick. Going crazy wondering about you…about the two of you…”

“Keith…” Kim murmured miserably. His eyes had taken on the look of a basset hound. She felt as if she were kicking Old Yeller after he had already been shot. “Keith, this all is going to take some time.”

“Kim, I don’t think I can stand the time. Your husband—God, it feels strange to say that!—looks fine to me. Why can’t you just tell him the truth—that we, you and I, are in love now? I’d always understood that he was an exceptionally bright guy, Kim. I don’t think he’d be in any great shock.”

Kim shook her head. A waitress came to the table, and Kim ordered a grilled cheese, the first thing that came to her mind.

When the waitress left, she tried to explain. “Keith, Brian wants his sons, his home, and his marriage. He’s not demanding anything of me but has made the assumption that we are every bit as married as we were twelve years ago. And I can’t fight him right now, Keith. Not with the boys, not after all that he’s been through.”

“Oh, Kim.” Keith looked very pale, unusual for someone with a permanent tan. “I don’t know if I can wait this thing out…thinking about you, worrying about you.”

“Don’t think about me, and don’t worry about me,” Kim said softly.

“Kim, I’m a normal human being, I’m jealous.”

“I’m not sleeping with him, Keith,” Kim heard herself say. And oh, what a stupid thing to say, as if it were a promise! She wasn’t lying; she wasn’t sleeping with Brian…not yet. But what would happen if Brian were to press her, to want her? Could she refuse him? Did she want to refuse him?

“Oh, precious.” Keith caught her hands across the table and kissed them. Kim wanted to die.

“Listen, Keith”—she ran her hand through her hair before going on—“I’m going to go away with Brian. He says we have to get to know each other, again.”

“Oh, no!” Keith groaned.

“Keith! Talk! We need to talk to each other. I have to help Brian. Surely you understand that.” She tried to bite her grilled cheese sandwich. It tasted like rubber, and she gave up any attempt to eat.

“Talk, yeah,” Keith murmured. “Well, at least the twins will be with you.”

Kim swallowed guiltily, but she didn’t correct him. She touched his hand lightly. “We don’t have much time. Let’s have that time to be just us, okay? I don’t want to keep talking about this. It’s all driving me crazy. Please, Keith? Tell me how things are going with you. How’s business?”

He hesitated, then warmed to a discussion about his boats. Time passed quickly. Kim glanced at her watch and realized she had taken much more than a lunch hour.

“I’ve got to get back. I have a few problems at work.”

“David Harris?”

Kim nodded, narrowing her eyes curiously. She had told Keith that she had dated David, hinting that the relationship had ended less than harmoniously. He had never seemed to think much of it, a reaction that had sometimes annoyed her. She was interested now in his response to her admission that her problems were with David.

The answer he gave her was logical but disappointing. “I wouldn’t rock too many boats with him, my love,” Keith said warningly. “I mean, you do want to keep your job.”

“Is a job ever really worth catering to a heel?” Kim asked.

Keith shrugged. “This is the real world, Kim. Jobs pay mortgages, put food on the table, and keep our plastic cash below the credit limit. Sometimes the only mature thing to do is kowtow a bit.”

“Yeah,” Kim muttered, standing.

Keith immediately rose beside her, suddenly realizing that lunch was over. “I don’t like this, Kim. I really don’t like this. You’re trying to tell me you’re not going to see me for days…weeks.”

“I’ll call you, Keith, as soon as we’re back from wherever,” Kim said gently.

They stepped out of the restaurant into the sunlight. “Oh, Kim…” She heard her name as a fervent groan, and she was suddenly drawn into his arms. He kissed her sloppily, but with such emotion she couldn’t protest even as her mind wandered to the fact she’d been swearing to chastity to both men in her life, yet she felt as if she’d become the kissing queen. But what could she do? She just felt bad about everything.

She wasn’t thinking about her lunch date or the fervent embrace Keith had given her before the restaurant when she finally drove home—much later than she had intended—after trying to spend the day leaving things so smooth that nothing could possibly go wrong in her absence.

Unknowingly Keith had made quite a point to her. With Brian suddenly home, she didn’t dare take a chance on losing her job. If she had moved in with Keith, her expenses would have been halved. But now she had no idea what kind of income the government would give Brian. She only knew her taxes far exceeded the amount the government had given her for being his widow.

She was pensive as she entered the house, so much so that it took her awhile to realize how quiet her usually boisterous home was. Glancing out the window, she noticed what her self-absorption had kept her from noticing as she parked: Brian’s car was not in front of the house. She shrugged, assuming he had taken the boys out to pick up something, and started up the stairway to peel off the pinstripe pantsuit and the hot black chiffon blouse she had worn to work. She was startled to hear soft murmurs from the twins’ room.

Frowning, she walked to their doorway and paused. They were sitting oh the lower bunk, chins held up by their palms as they glumly stared at each other and spoke in low, dispirited tones.

“What’s going on?” Kim demanded.

She was shocked by the sharp gazes they sent her, four vibrant lasers of condemning blue.

“Nothing,” Josh muttered, glancing back at the floor with disgust.

“Don’t tell me ‘nothing’ in that tone of voice, Joshua Trent,” she snapped. “What’s wrong with you two? Where is your father?”

“My father”—Josh accentuated the word—“is out.” He stared back at the ground again and muttered beneath his breath, but Kim caught his words: “Where he should be.”

Infuriated by her son’s attitude and totally mystified, Kim swept into the room and stood before him with her hands on her hips. She glanced at Jacob, but he merely gave her a baleful stare and also turned his gaze to the floor.

“Josh, Jake, I want to know what this is all about—now.”

Josh looked up at her again. She had never seen him so hostile. “It’s not about anything. Dad is out, and he should be out. Especially when he’s not wanted by his own wife.”

“What?” Kim’s frown increased with her growing confusion.

Jake looked up at her. His stare was still antagonistic, but it was also touched by a liquid glaze, as if he were trying not to burst into tears. “Dad went to the airport to pick up that Lisa lady. She came in tonight because they’re going to dig her husband up first thing in the morning.”

“Oh…” Kim murmured. So the saintly Lisa was coming in. The house was a mess. Where were they going to put her?

Brian’s absence was explained, but her sons’ attitude of severe and impaling hostility was not.

They were definitely Brian’s boys; she knew the sharp blue stares, the look that could reach into a soul and send one shivering.

“If Mrs. Barnes is coming,” she said crisply, “I hope the two of you have done your best to see that the house is in order. Now I’m going to ask you two this once, and only once, and damn it, I want an answer. What is the matter with you, and why are you acting like spoiled brats?”

Both of them held their tongues for a moment, their faces grim and sullen. Then Joshua blurted out, “We saw you, Mother!”

“Yeah, and Dad saw you, too!”

“What?” Kim murmured again.

“We saw you, throwing yourself all over Keith in front of that restaurant!”

She was shocked, both by her sons’ barely contained venom and by the fact that such an innocent gesture of caring on her part had become such a disaster. She saw in Josh’s eyes such condemnation that she wanted to reach out and slap him across the face. Instead, she made a sharp turnabout and started briskly for the door, her head spinning with a sudden, excruciating pain. She was losing her sons. Twelve years, and she was losing her sons.

She paused, her hand on the doorframe, her back to the boys. “I am very sorry if I have hurt you or your father. I never intended to. I realize I have become a monster to you. But I will not tolerate your atrocious behavior. Is that understood?”

There was a long pause, a very long pause, and then a simultaneous, strained “yes.”

She had to leave the room or she would burst into tears. But it was Josh who broke first. He was suddenly off the bed and careening across the room. He threw his arms around her back and rested his head against her shoulder. “I love you, Mom.”

She felt his tears soak through her jacket and blouse. She turned to take him into her arms. As if a dam had broken loose, she, too, started crying. And then Jake was in the huddle, and all three were sitting on the bedroom floor, arms entwined, crying.

“Oh, guys,” Kim finally stuttered miserably, “I know how you love your father, I know how very, very wonderful it is for you to have him back. I know that you want everything to work out between us. And—and we’ll try, guys, we really will.”

What was she promising? she wondered, her system suddenly jolted with a spasm of fear as the immediate crises with her sons ebbed in the circle of their arms. Brian had seen her, too. Brian, who had warned her not to see Keith again unless she walked out the door to sign divorce papers.

“Mom?” It was Jake now asking the question.

“Yes?”

“Do you love Dad?”

“Oh, honey, of course I do!” Kim exclaimed. And it was true; she did love Brian, so much. But could she simply turn off her feelings for Keith? And could she and Brian still form a living relationship?

“Then why don’t you just tell Keith that you do love Dad? If you were honest with him, he would understand.”

“She’s still in love with Keith, too, stupid,” Josh said with an unintentionally bitter overtone.

“Is it possible to love two people?” Jake demanded.

She smiled shakily and disentangled herself from the boys. “Yes,” she said honestly. “I care very much for your father, and I care very much for Keith. But listen,” she said more brightly, “did your dad tell you he and I are going to go away for a few days? Get to know each other again.”

Josh and Jake exchanged glances that looked purely conspiratorial except for the tinge of devilment. They were very definitely Brian’s sons.

“Yeah,” Josh answered her brightly. “We’re going to go stay with Gramps and Gramma.”

Kim frowned. Apparently Brian had spent the day arranging things. “Are you flying out to Arizona?” she asked.

“No!” Jake sounded impatient. “Gramps and Gramma, as in your parents, Mom.”

Kim had been starting to stand. She sank back to her knees with a weak “oh, no!” escaping her.

The boys frowned. She looked quickly from face to face and tried to smile.

“What’s the matter, Mom? I always thought you
liked
your parents?”

“I do, Josh, I love them. I just—never mind. I’d better go give Gramps a call myself….”

With her sons now watching her as if she had gone over the brink and become senile, she rushed out of their room and back to the kitchen. She hadn’t thought to call her parents about Brian, and now they obviously knew, and she was damn lucky that the sudden news hadn’t given one of them a heart attack.

“Damn!” she muttered viciously, dialing the phone energetically. Her mother was going to be sweet and understanding and merely thankful that Brian was alive. Her father was going to read her the riot act. And he, like the boys, was going to think her the most miserable hussy in the world if he didn’t believe she had instantly severed all other ties and welcomed Brian back with wide-open arms and no questions asked.

“Dad? Kim, I—”

That was as far as she got. “Riot act” was an understatement for the harangue her father had to give her. She was told how her poor mother had almost gone into shock when she heard Brian’s voice, how she should have had the decency to inform them immediately about Brian since
they
loved him if
she
didn’t, and then, as she had expected, she was treated to her father’s opinion on how she should run her life.

He had been such a great person to grow up with when she had been a kid, and Robert Thielson was still a great parent. But when it came to Brian Trent, her father seemed hypnotized.

“Dad, I’m sorry I didn’t call you right away. Things were a bit confusing here, and I was a little in shock myself. And I’m sure Brian told you that we were going away together,” she said to mollify her father. “That’s why we need to leave the boys with you.”