Home to Eden (24 page)
Authors: Dallas Schulze
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Gareth was halfway through his fourth cup of coffee when the doorbell rang. It was barely ten o'clock in the morning. The only people likely to visit at this time of day were people anxious to proselytize their religion or his parents anxious to offer sympathy. At the moment, he thought he'd prefer the former to the latter. At least he didn't have to be polite to strangers.
He rubbed his fingers over the ache between his eyes. Whoever they were, he wasn't in the mood to deal with them. After yesterday, he wasn't in the mood to deal with anyone. He felt raw and aching. All he wanted to do was crawl into a hole somewhere and pull it in after him. Maybe they'll just go away. The bell rang twice in quick succession, which seemed to pretty much eliminate that hope. He remembered that he'd left the car in the driveway yesterday, which meant it was obvious he was home. If he didn't answer the door and it was his mother and father, they were going to worry.
Cursing, he set his cup on the counter and went to the door. As he flipped the latch on the dead bolt, he tried to arrange his expression into something approaching normal, although who the hell knew what was normal for a man who'd just found out that the woman he'd planned to marry was carrying his brother's child.
He pulled open the door and felt as if he'd been kicked in the chest, all the air forced from his lungs.
"We need to talk," Nick said
"I don't think I have anything to say to you." Gareth felt the newly familiar mixture of anger and pain twist his gut.
"Well, I have something to say to you." Nick flattened one palm against the door, anticipating his brother's urge to slam it in his face.
Gareth's fingers knotted around the edge of the door until the knuckles whitened from the pressure. For a few seconds, he let himself consider the possibility of slamming his fist into Nick's face, but aside from affording him a momentary satisfaction, it wouldn't accomplish anything. Considering all the time he'd spent counseling gang members that violence wasn't the answer, it was ironic that it should be his first reaction. He dropped his hand and turned and walked away, not saying anything, just leaving the door open.
Nick hesitated. It wasn't exactly an invitation but it was as close as he was likely to get. He stepped inside, shutting the door behind him. It had been five years since he'd been in Gareth's house but it looked much the same as he remembered. The carpet was new but the sofa still sat under the same window with the same two easy chairs at right angles to it. The familiarity was disconcerting. It was as if, in this one place, the last five years had never happened.
"Spit it out." If Gareth's sharp tone hadn't been enough to dispel any feelings of nostalgia, the hard anger in his eyes would have been.
Nick drew a deep breath. On his way here he'd rehearsed a speech, but the carefully chosen words seemed flat and meaningless. He settled for simplicity. "I wanted to tell you that I'm sorry."
Gareth's laugh was sharp and angry. ''Is that supposed to make everything better?"
"No. No, I don't expect it to make everything better but I had to say it. I never meant to hurt you— neither of us did."
"How comforting."
Nick thrust the fingers of one hand through his hair and sighed. This was turning out to be even more difficult than he'd expected. Guilt nearly choked him every time he looked at his brother.
"It wasn't something either of us planned. It just... Things got out of control and it...happened."
Gareth shoved his hands in his pockets and half turned away. Things got out of control. The words carried a sting he knew Nick hadn't intended. In all the months he and Kate had been lovers, things had never once gotten out of control. She'd never initiated their lovemaking, never given any indication that she particularly missed it when circumstances kept them apart. It hurt to know that it had been different— she had been different—with his brother.
"Is that all you have to say?" he asked.
"We need to find a way past this," Nick said quietly.
Gareth's head came up, his eyes black with anger. "Don't tell me what we need to do. I don't give a damn what you need. Do you even know what you did?"
"I know exactly what I did." Thin white lines bracketed Nick's mouth but his answer was steady. "I'm not asking you to forgive me."
"Then what the hell do you want?" Gareth asked with a tired kind of anger. "What do you want from me, Nick? Do you want me to say it's okay that you slept with the woman I was going to marry? Am I supposed to feel good about the fact that the two of you couldn't keep your hands off each other? Or how about if I tell you that I think it's just swell that you got her pregnant? Is that what you want?"
The lines around Nick's mouth deepened and a muscle ticked in his jaw. "We're family—"
"Funny you should be so aware of that now."
"I can't change what happened and I know it's going to take time—maybe a lot of it—to get past this."
"There are some things you just can't get past."
"I hope this isn't one of them," Nick said quietly. "I've lost enough family. I don't want to lose you, too."
"Maybe you should have thought of that before you got Kate pregnant," Gareth said, not giving an inch.
Nick had no answer. What could he say? That he hadn't been able to think of anything beyond the need to have her? The hunger to make her his? Could he even honestly say he'd do anything differently if he was given the chance to live that night over again? He sighed. "I'll leave you alone."
He slid one hand in his pocket as he turned toward the door.
"You and Kate—" The words seemed to be jerked from Gareth. "Are you— What are you planning to do?"
Nick pulled his hand out of his pocket. His fingers clenched for a moment and then opened slowly. He bent to place Kate's engagement ring on the coffee table. He straightened and met his brother's eyes. "We went to Vegas and got married last night."
He walked out without another word, leaving Gareth alone with the ring and all the dreams it had once represented.
Kate slid the pruning shears along the rose stem and cut at a slight angle just below a cluster of five leaves before sliding her arm carefully out of the tangle of canes. The faded rose was held neatly in the grasp of the pruning shears. She dropped the blossom into a brown paper bag that was half-full of similar remains. She paused before reaching for the next tattered flower and allowed herself a moment to savor the beauty around her.
In early June, the formal rose garden at Spider's Walk was a riot of bloom—icy white, blood red, soft apricot, butter yellow and every color of pink imaginable, fat blossoms that filled the air with an indescribable perfume. Bees flew from flower to flower, guests at a scented feast. Months ago, she'd tried to picture what the garden would look like when it was in bloom, but her imagination had fallen short of the reality. Aside from some minor cleanup, she hadn't even begun work in the rose garden, but it was already her favorite place on the property and the most beautiful, she admitted ruefully. Nature didn't really need human assistance to put on a spectacular show.
Releasing her breath on a happy sigh, Kate reached for another faded blossom. It was her day off and no one expected her to be anywhere or do anything. The morning sun was warm against her back. She could spend the entire day puttering in the gardens if she wanted. The remains of the perennial border were overrun with weeds. She might—
Sunlight caught on the gold of her wedding band. She stared at the dull gleam, the problems of the perennial border momentarily forgotten. She tilted her hand back and forth, watching the light run across the simple band. It had been almost two months since Nick slid it on her finger, but there were still moments when it surprised her to see it there. Less and less often, though, she admitted as she rubbed her thumb over the inside of the band.
Living with Nick—being married to him—hadn't been as much of an adjustment as she would have expected. She gave most of the credit for that to him. From the beginning, he'd acted as if there was nothing extraordinary in the situation.
After the horrible scene with Gareth at his parents' house, she'd thought her life in ruins. Her mind had been spinning with half-formed thoughts of leaving town with her head bowed in shame, like the heroine in a creaky Victorian novel. But Nick had picked up the pieces of her life and put them together again in a whole new pattern.
"We'll get married," he had said. His tone made the words a statement rather than a question.
Kate had felt the bottom drop out of her stomach as she stared at him. "This is the nineties. No one gets married just because of a baby."
Nick had arched one dark brow. "Can you think of a better reason?"
She'd found herself without an answer.
When she thought about it, it seemed incredible that she'd given in with barely even a token struggle. From the time she was small, one of her primary goals had been to control her life. She didn't ever again want to be at the mercy of someone else's whims or find her life pulled apart by their weakness.
Yet, from the moment Nick had placed his hand over the child she carried and said that he would take care of them both, she'd found her need to be the captain of her fate giving way before the desire to lean on his strength. Maybe her pregnancy had awakened some age-old need to be cared for, to let the male of the species protect her and their unborn child. Or perhaps her reasons were more pragmatic. She was tired—physically, mentally and most of all emotionally. Tired of worrying, tired of making decisions, tired—heaven help her—of being strong.
She had been almost pathetically grateful that someone else was making decisions at a time when she felt barely capable of remembering her own name. Kate snipped another dead blossom and dropped it in the sack, then let her hand fall to her side while she stared unseeingly at a pollen-laden bee that was waddling along the edge of a half open rose.
Sometimes it bothered her that everything seemed to be working out so well. Her marriage was... Well, it wasn't exactly a marriage at this point. It had been her idea that they should have separate rooms. She smoothed one hand absently over the slight swell of her stomach. Looking back, it seemed like a case of shutting the bam door after the horse was out, but at the time, it had made sense—at least to her. And Nick hadn't argued. He hadn't offered even a mild protest.
Kate's teeth worried the inside of her lower lip as she considered their unique sleeping arrangements. Maybe Nick hadn't argued because he hadn't wanted her to change her mind about marrying him. Did he still want her? Did she want him to want her? They hadn't really discussed anything beyond the bare fact that they were going to be married. They hadn't asked any of the questions that had occurred to her since then. How long was this marriage going to last? Would it eventually be a real marriage?
Questions she was half afraid to ask, she admitted.
She wasn't ready to risk upsetting the status quo. Living at Spider's Walk with Nick and Harry, she'd found an odd sort of contentment—odd because it was so unexpected. By rights, she should have been miserable, if for no other reason than that she deserved to be miserable after hurting Gareth the way she had. But whether she deserved it or not, she'd been almost...happy.
"If you keep scowling at that bee, he's likely to take offense," Nick said from a few feet away.
"Oh!" Kate jumped, her head jerking toward the sound of his voice. He was standing in the middle of the main pathway, a coffee cup in each hand. Leroy stood next to him, looking bored. "I didn't hear you."
"Sorry. I guess I had my sneakers in creep mode."
Her eyes dropped to his feet. "You're barefoot."
"No, I'm not. I'm wearing purple Nikes with silver glitter on the toes. But not only are they in creep mode, they're also set for invisibility." He closed the gap between them as he spoke, and Kate could see the laughter in his eyes, though his expression remained serious. The way he could smile with just his eyes was one of his most endearing characteristics, she thought, feeling her heart clench a little.
"Silver glitter?" She raised her brows. "Sounds a little flashy."
"Too gaudy, do you think?" he asked anxiously.
"For you?" She pretended to consider the question. This sort of nonsensical conversation was typical of Nick. She'd smiled and laughed more in the past two months than she could ever remember doing in her life. "I think it's just right."
Nick frowned. "I'm not sure, but I think I've just been insulted. And after I came all the way out here to offer you sustenance." He offered her one of the cups. "Decaf." Leroy sat beside him with an almost human sigh.
"Thanks." Kate bent her head over the cup, feeling her cheeks warm at the oblique reference to the baby. Despite the fact that her pregnancy was the whole reason for getting married, they hadn't talked about it much. She was stupidly self-conscious whenever the subject did come up. It was ridiculous to feel embarrassed. He certainly knew she was pregnant and how she'd gotten that way. Even if he did seem to have forgotten that part of it lately.
Despite herself, her eyes slid in his direction. He was standing with his feet braced slightly apart, one hand wrapped around his coffee cup, the thumb of the other hooked in the pocket of a pair of faded jeans that rode low on his hips. An ancient gray T-shirt molded the solid muscles of his chest. His dark hair was slightly rumpled and his eyes had a sleepy look, as if he hadn't been awake for very long, which he probably hadn't been. She knew he'd worked until at least two in the morning because she'd heard him downstairs when she got up to make one of her increasingly frequent trips to the bathroom. He hadn't shaved yet and a dark growth of beard shadowed his jaw, giving him a vaguely dangerous look that made her heart beat a little faster.
