Home Field Advantage (17 page)

So he selected a wine from
the list and poured her a glass despite her protests. "Don't drink it if
you don't want it," he said.

Marian eyed the glass as
though it held poison, but after a few minutes of very casual conversation, she
took a cautious sip, then a longer one.

As naturally as possible
while they ate pasta and tender veal, John steered the conversation toward
parenthood, which made the jump to his marriage not too startling.

He hadn't talked about Susan
in a long while, except to his daughter and the once to Marian. And Emma wanted
to hear about Mommy, not her dad's lover and wife and friend. Talking now, he
realized how very long ago his marriage seemed.

"We were young," he
said, shrugging. "I don't know what Susan would have thought of the move
up here. She liked the city. We went riding sometimes, but somebody else
saddled up the horse for her and groomed it when she was done. I don't know how
she would have adapted."

"But she liked to
garden," Marian said softly.

"Yeah." He gave a
twisted smile. "So she did. What the hell, maybe she wouldn't have minded
a goat peering in her kitchen window."

Marian winced. "But if
your wife was still alive, you would never have met up with Esmerelda. I don't
suppose that would have broken your heart."

Screw Esmerelda. He would
have never met Marian. The thought came like a jab to the solar plexus. For
the first time, John wondered if his marriage would have lasted. He had loved
Susan and mourned her. But his emotions toward her had been simpler than what
he felt for Marian. Less protective, less tender. He'd found his wife sexy, but
had his passion for her ever been as explosive as last night's kiss? Had he
ever looked at her and felt the way he had tonight when Marian started down the
stairs? That red dress had swirled and reformed itself so that he could see and
yet not quite see Marian's long, slender legs and gently rounded hips and
breasts that he ached to touch and kiss and weigh in his palms. He'd dreamed of
seeing her hair loose, of tangling his fingers in that dark silk and watching
it slip over her white shoulders like rivers of night. Did she have any idea
how provocative she was, coming down the stairs to him?

Had he ever watched Susan
come to him and known he would have paid almost any price to have her?

A year ago he would have felt
guilty for wondering at all, for not remembering; now he'd accepted Susan's
death and the fact that she wouldn't be back. In one violent instant, their
forever had ended.

"What about you?"
he asked finally. He tried hard to sound casual. "You never mention the
twins' father. I assume you're divorced?"

She hesitated, and he
realized that he had probably sounded like a prospective employer. He didn't
care, if she would only answer.

"Yes," she said at
last. "It's been a while."

"It can't be too
long."

As though in refuge she took
a sip—no, closer to a gulp—of wine. "I was pregnant when he...when we
separated."

"Pregnant?" John
repeated incredulously. What the hell...?

Her fine dark eyes were
clouded with turbulent memories, though she sounded no more than wry. "I
was the only woman at the Lamaze class there by myself."

Anger stirred in John and
shook itself awake. What kind of bastard would let his wife go through
childbirth alone? "Is he involved with the twins at all?"

He had never heard her sound
bitter, but now she gave a short, sharp laugh. "Involved? He left me
because I was pregnant. No, that's not exactly true. He grudgingly accepted the
fact that we were going to have a baby, even though he really didn't want
children. I knew he wasn't very interested in the idea. I mean, you talk about
things like that when you're dating. But people change. Don't they?"

John nodded, his fury held
grimly in check.

"The pregnancy was an
accident. But I was happy. And I was dumb enough to think he would be, too.
When he wasn't..." She bit her lip. "And then just a few months later
I had an ultrasound and the doctor broke it to me that I was having twins. I
went home and told Mark. I remember him just looking at me. He didn't say a
word. He was quiet all evening. The next day I went to work—at a child-care
center. Isn't that ironic? I chose to work with kids all day, and then I
married a man who didn't want any." She was looking everywhere but at
John. "Anyway, I came home and he was gone. He left a note on the table.
'I'm sorry, but I can't face it. I'd go crazy. I'll be in touch.'" Marian
drew a shuddering breath. "Most of his stuff was gone. The next day I
discovered that most of the money in our bank account was gone, too. And that's
it. I've never heard another word from him. I don't suppose I ever will."

"The son of a
bitch," John muttered.

"I think so, too."
She gave another laugh, sounding as though it had been wrenched from her by
force of will. "I don't know why I told you all that. I'm sure you didn't
want to hear the history of my life."

"I asked," he said.
He realized his right hand was curled into a fist that he wanted badly to slam
into the bastard's face. He pried his fingers open and reached across the table
for Marian's hand. "Did you try to get child support out of him? The court
is on your side, you know."

She seemed unaware that her
hand had turned in his to return his clasp. "They tried," she said
simply. "He'd left the state. There was a limit to how far they were
willing to go. If I could have afforded a lawyer..." She shrugged
helplessly. "Do you have any idea how many women there are like me? Hardly
any men pay child support faithfully. I'll never understand. Don't they
care?"

What did she want from him?
he wondered, looking into her bewildered dark eyes. Reassurance that some men
did care? Or that he did?

"I don't know," he
said honestly. "I don't know why a father wouldn't want to help raise his
children. Maybe with some divorces the kids get forgotten in all the anger.
With your husband just walking away like that..." John shook his head.
"I don't know."

"He did have good
qualities." Marian gently disentangled her hand from his and reached for
the wineglass. Instead of picking it up, she ran a fingertip around the
fragile rim. She sounded...far away. "I have to keep reminding myself of
that. If Mark wasn't...decent, I'd feel like a terrible fool now."

"Why did you marry
him?"

She gave a sad shrug.
"He was handsome, charming, funny. He didn't mind my animals, though he
never paid much attention to them. We enjoyed the same things. At least, I
thought we did. I try to remember everything I liked about him. I need to be
able to tell Anna and Jesse something. The children have to believe their
father was a good man."

John was left without a word
to say. Good men didn't walk out on pregnant wives. But he understood why she
clung to her belief, even though he wanted her to consign the bastard to hell.
He wanted to be Anna and Jesse's father.

But he wasn't going to have a
chance, John thought. Not while Marian needed her pride so badly. But at least
he'd gained something from tonight. He understood why Marian had such shadows
in her eyes. Why she was too thin, too tired, too desperate. And why she
wouldn't accept any more from him than she had to.

Bleakly he realized the
truth. Marian wouldn't be ready to give herself to a man until she could do so
with the confidence that independence would allow her. Until she didn't need
him, Marian would not let herself want him.

Well, he couldn't change the
past. Maybe he couldn't even banish her shadows. But he could do one thing for
her. He could track the son of a bitch down and make him pay the child support
he owed. The money could free Marian from her constant worry.

The irony was, it might also
free her to walk away from him. If she hadn't let herself feel anything for
him, what would hold her? Emma wouldn't be enough, not if she could afford to
give her children a home of their own.

He'd never gambled, not with
money. But on the field, he'd taken risks all the time. Mostly they paid off. A
few of them had given him scars on his knees and the end of his career. But if
he hadn't taken risks at all, what would he have had? A nine-to-five job and a
lot of regrets, that's what.

This was another risk he had
to take. Or maybe he shouldn't think about it that way. Maybe he should see
this one for what it was. A gift, for the woman he loved.

Nearly an hour later, on the
way home, Marian realized that somehow they never had discussed her duties,
though John had told her what the salary would be. When she protested that it
was too much, he insisted that he'd paid Helen the same amount, and Marian
managed to swallow her pride.

Taking advantage of the
darkness in the car, she braved herself to ask whether he'd prefer if she and
the twins ate dinners earlier so that he and Emma could have some time alone
together.

"Don't be
ridiculous," he said.

"I just don't want you
to feel you have to include us in everything. We're not guests. I work for
you."

"Which reminds me, why
don't you go ahead and collect your menagerie. God knows we have plenty of
space."

"Are you sure?" she
asked again. For some ridiculous reason, she felt like crying. Here she'd
talked about Mark without a sniffle, accepted the fact that she was going to be
paid an absurdly high salary, but now this one last kindness crumbled her
walls.

"Do you have any idea
how often you've asked me that?" he said mildly.

"Sometimes I think you
must be nuts," she said, digging in her purse for a tissue.

"Maybe Sleeping Beauty
thought Prince Charming was nuts, too. Did you ever think of that?"

Her heart contracted. Why had
she ever asked him that ridiculous question about whether all men fancied
themselves as Prince Charming? She swore he used it to get under her skin. Did
he have any idea how successful he was? She wanted to believe in fairy tales.

Then maybe you should
believe, a small voice in her head whispered. Sleeping Beauty had let herself
be awakened, had known her true love the moment she opened her eyes. What if
she had squeezed her eyes shut and kept snoring? Would the brave young prince
have gotten bored and ridden on in search of more adventure?

Of course, the fairy tales
never went on past the romantic first kiss. Maybe he had ridden on, once he
became bored with marriage. Maybe Sleeping Beauty had been a fool not to take a
better look.

And maybe Marian was just
tired. "He probably was crazy," she retorted. "Either that or
mercenary. Risking your life to rescue some woman who's been asleep for a
hundred years doesn't exactly sound sensible. But marrying for a nice fat
kingdom—that might be worth taking some risks for."

"What a romantic!"
John said in amusement. "Do you provide footnotes when you're reading
fairy tales to the kids?"

"No," she said, in
a voice that sounded odd even to her. "I let them dream."

He gave her a quick look but
didn't comment. Marian wondered then what he was thinking, and she still
wondered in the days that followed.

Life settled into a routine,
bittersweet because it was so close to what Marian both wanted and feared. In
the intervening days he hadn't kissed her again, though he smiled at her often
with rakish charm. He touched her, too; nothing she could object to, just a
hand on her shoulder, his body brushing hers as he passed in the kitchen. And
they talked—comparing tastes in movies, books, and horses, friends and jokes.
She discovered that he thought no more about washing Jesse's face and lifting
him down from the booster seat than he did of making Emma's lunch. So, after a
joyous reunion with her pets, Marian did her best to settle in. She gradually
unpacked her possessions, acclimated the cats to their new home, and tried to
convince the dogs that there were some parts of the house where they didn't
belong.

The hardest part was calling
her day-care customers to let them know she wouldn't be going back into
business. Each call represented a child she had grown to like or even love.
She'd baby-sat a couple of them for over two years now. She had taught
four-year-old Lizzie her letters, Crystal how to get along with other children.
She had read them stories, hugged them, rocked them to sleep. And now she was
letting them down.

Of course, they were growing
up and would have left her someday anyway. But kindergarten was a milestone,
something they and she would have been ready for. This was too sudden. She
couldn't even hug them good-bye.

Lizzie came on the phone to
say good-bye herself, and by the time Marian hung up she was crying. She had
convinced herself that Emma needed her more than the others, but what if she
was wrong?

She was wiping her cheeks and
didn't know John had come into the kitchen until he said gently, "Hey.
What's wrong?"

"Oh, I was just talking
to...to Lizzie. One of my kids. Do you remember her?"

"The one who wanted to
give her breakfast to the dogs?"