Magic Moment (24 page)

Laura drew away. “We’ll be a happy family, Chase.”

They sat, kissing, whispering, soaking in their love. Then, excited over their own home, they browsed through the real estate brochures. Months outdated, more recent ones were needed. Nevertheless, they pored through pages, picking out neighborhoods, house styles, and discussing their preferences.

“This is a pretty house.” Laura surveyed the room. “I like the fireplace in the kitchen. Aunt Lonnie said her father bought the house as the family vacation home.”

“Yeah. When he passed away, he left the house my father and I live in to my mother,” Chase said. “Aunt Lonnie got this one. With both her parents gone, her sister married, Aunt Lonnie hung around Philly for a few years, then moved here permanently.”

He sighed, then continued. “I think the real reason Aunt Lonnie left Philly was she couldn’t stand seeing my mother married to my father.” He hesitated. Laura waited for him to speak, clutching his hand.

“Aunt Lonnie feels my father beat my mother.” He was quiet, shaking off a memory before going on. “I never saw any marks on Mom. Not that it means much. But I did hear her cry. A lot.”

Laura held his hand tighter. “Oh, Chase,” she whispered.

“Even if his abuse wasn’t physical, I’m sure my mother got plenty of emotional cruelty from him.”

Although Chase was a grown man, he still lived in his childhood home. He joked that the house was so big, he and his father went weeks without bumping into each other. Eventually, while they waited out the rainstorm on
Madre
, he confided to Laura that if he moved out, he felt as if he were leaving his mother alone with his father.

That sentiment, she knew, stemmed from the depths of his heart and was part of what made her love him.

“Chase, why didn’t Aunt Lonnie marry?” Laura asked. “I never wanted to embarrass her by asking, but I’m curious. She’s a great lady.”

“Aunt Lonnie was engaged. Doug was a soldier and killed in Vietnam.” He paused for a moment remembering. “She said he was the love of her life, the best, and no one could replace him. She wasn’t going to try.”

Chase got up and took two steps toward the varnished-stained desk. “There’s a scrapbook with some pictures.” He opened three drawers before he found the book. “Here we go.”

He sat down next to Laura, their feet propped on the ottoman. Chase’s arm automatically swung around her shoulders, and she nestled against him.

The first picture was a black-and-white snapshot of two dark-haired little girls in bathing suits, one about four years old, the other about six. Chase pointed to the older girl. “That’s Aunt Lonnie.” His index finger moved to the other child. “That’s my mother.”

“Chase, you look exactly like your mother.”

He snickered. “Much to my father’s chagrin. Of course, he would rather that I resembled him.”

A page flip revealed a similar picture, but this one in color. Michelle Donovan, as a child, stared back. Full head of mixed dark and light brown wavy hair, big sapphire blue eyes, long, lean nose. Chase would never allow Dick Donovan to forget his late wife.

“Your mother was beautiful,” Laura murmured.

“Yeah, she was.” He stared a few long moments. He flipped the page. “That’s my grandmother and grandfather.”

The picture appeared to be a Christmas card photo, in color. A toothily grinning family dressed in their Sunday best, sitting on a sofa surrounded by a mass of holly. Mother, father, and the two girls who were perhaps ten and twelve.

“Or as Aunt Lonnie refers to your grandfather, the dummy who convinced your mother to marry your father,” Laura said.

“That can get her on a pulpit.” Chase frowned. “Aunt Lonnie feels strongly my father married my mother for the business. I hope she didn’t bore you with her stories.”

“No, I don’t find Aunt Lonnie boring at all.” Laura truly enjoyed the women’s breakfast chats. “She filled me in on the family history. She talks about her days as a teacher, and funny ‘whatever happened to’ stories of her students.”

They looked at several more pictures of a teenaged Lonnie with Chase’s mother before they came across a young, twenty-something woman, with waist-length dark hair wearing jeans and a white tank top. With her was a soldier, around the same age, in U.S. Army fatigues. Smiling, wrapped in each other’s arms, were a beaming Lonnie and Doug, her soldier/fiancé.

“Chase, she’s positively radiant. I’ve seen Aunt Lonnie smile, but never like that.”

He studied the picture. “Yeah, it’s as if these days, she only goes through the motions.”

“You can tell looking at this picture. They were so much in love,” Laura noted with a touch of melancholy.

“While I was growing up, Aunt Lonnie talked about Doug all the time. Almost as if he hadn’t been killed. She doesn’t anymore.”

Chase flicked through several more pictures with Lonnie and Doug before stopping at a bridal party. The bride dressed in layers of white chiffon, three bridesmaids in pink satin and lace, and a groom with his three groomsmen wearing black tuxes.

“Mom and Dad’s wedding,” he said, eyes glued to the group. “I’m sure there was lots of arm twisting to get Aunt Lonnie to be Mom’s maid of honor.”

“She loved her sister more than she hated your father.” Laura looked at the photo more closely. “It’s uncanny how much you resemble your mother. You both have the same beautiful blue eyes. I love your eyes.”

“Me, too. They help me see,” he quipped.

Laura’s elbow poked him playfully. For a man who claimed he was self-absorbed, Chase had difficulty accepting a compliment.

He turned the page. “This is the happy group at some momentous anniversary bash,” he said. “The twenty-fifth, I’m pretty sure. It wasn’t long after this party my mother started feeling sick.” He turned back to the original wedding party, then over to the anniversary photo, comparing and contrasting. “Same people twenty-five years apart.”

“Chase, Oliver Daniels was your father’s best man.”

Chase stared at the pudgy man. “Oh, yeah. I forgot.”

“And these other two men?” she inquired curiously.

His index finger pointed to a tall, lanky man next to Daniels. “This one is Chuck Hunter.” His finger moved to the man next to Hunter. “This is Alan Blair. If you’re up on your politics, Blair’s some fancy federal judge.”

She studied the picture. There was something familiar about the two men with Dick Donovan and Oliver Daniels. The mass of silver hair on one man, the tall, stick-like figure of the other.

“I’ve seen these men,” she muttered.

“In the newspaper, sure. Blair presides over a lot of drug cases. Chuck Hunter. Well, he’s far from an upstanding citizen. He was convicted of embezzling from his company some years ago. Drug charges, too, but they were dropped on a technicality. He’s probably still serving time.”

Laura stared at the photo. She was totally convinced. “Chase, Chuck Hunter isn’t serving time anymore. I’ve seen all these men, together, with your father at the warehouse.”

“My father hasn’t seen Blair or Hunter in years. Since my mother’s funeral,” Chase said. “If Blair knows what’s good for him, he’ll stay far away from Chuck Hunter. An embezzler slash drug trafficker hobnobbing with a judge, old Alan can kiss the federal bench goodbye. You’re mistaken, honey.”

Laura was adamant. “No, Chase. I saw your father with these three men. About a month before Saunders came calling.”

He looked at her seriously. “Tell me what you saw.”

She paused, gathering her thoughts. “Those warehouse guys never remember to send the packing slips up with the receipts. I need both for the invoices. One day, it was pretty late. Rachel had left so it was after five, and — ” she stopped to recall more.

“It was a Thursday, and I was taking a vacation day on Friday for Kate’s wedding rehearsal dinner,” she said quickly. Laura had been her friend’s maid of honor.

“I wanted to print checks and leave them for you to sign,” she told Chase.

He nodded his head, acknowledging. One of his few, but major, responsibilities was to sign account payable disbursement checks. If he were in the office while Laura printed checks, she passed them over for his signature. But if he wasn’t around, she left a note letting him know checks were locked in the safe, awaiting his signature.

Chase was attentive. “So you went to the dock for packing slips. Go on.”

“They were having an intense tête-à-tête behind some crates,” she said. “Your father, Oliver Daniels and these two men. Your father saw me and asked if he could help me. I had my slips and went back into the office.”

Chase was quiet. Laura, having learned her husband’s habits well, knew an idea was shaping behind his intense blue eyes.

“Chase, please don’t go back and confront your father,” she pleaded. “He’s leaving us alone. Remember what happened the last time you played super sleuth? You got arrested. We almost ended up hating each other. Please, Chase. Don’t go.”

He kissed her, long, deep, touching every emotion. “I’m staying with the two people I love most, my wife and my baby.”

“Good. Because we want you in Sea Tower where we can keep our eyes on you.”

“Don’t worry.” Glancing from her, he turned the page to a picture of a toddler. “Oh, look. Now, we’re getting to the good pictures. Me.”

A smiling, curly haired little boy, no more than two years old, in a pint-size red, white, and blue-striped
basketball uniform and clasping a baseball-sized basketball, stared back at them. One glimpse at the adorable little face, and Laura tossed aside their deep discussion.

“How precious! Those blue eyes! This is what our baby will look like,” she decided.

Her interest heightened, Laura focused on the pictures. One by one, the various stages of Chase’s life up to his law school graduation passed before her. Absorbed in the snapshots and hearing her husband detail the events, all other thoughts flew out of her head.

At her first yawn, Chase carried Laura upstairs. He turned down her bed while she attended to bathroom needs and changed into her plum nightshirt. When she returned to the room, she crawled into bed. Chase fixed her pillows, and after she leaned against them, he tucked the sheet around her.

“Goodnight, honey.” He gave her a gentle kiss.

She raised an eyebrow. “Going out?”

“No. I’m going across the hall to sleep.”

Laura pursed her lips. “You’re going across the hall? To sleep? Chase, am I not your wife? Didn’t you tell me you loved me? Didn’t I say I love you?”

He mused over her questions. “Yes, on all accounts.”

A furrow in her forehead brought her brows together. “Then why aren’t you sleeping with me?”

“The baby.”

“What? He won’t mind.” She laughed. “He has to learn mommies and daddies sleep together.”

“Laura, I love sleeping with you, lying next to you. You’re the only woman I‘ve ever been in love with, or said those words to. I’m trying not to be selfish,” he said proudly. “Right now I don’t think I could lie next to you and not make love to you. After all, you’re
very
pregnant. You’re abstaining.”

Laura’s jaw dropped. Where did he get the idea that because she was pregnant they couldn’t make love?

He sat on the edge of the bed and took her hand between both of his. “I remember before I went back to Philadelphia. There you were all sexy and come hither, and such an intense — workout — wouldn’t be good for the baby. I mean, I was happy you wanted to,” he said quickly, a pink flush tinting his face. “I wasn’t sure you’d want to — you know — once you were pregnant. Since we had reached our objective,” he pointed out.

When she offered no response, his words rushed out. “Laura, I wanted you so bad. But we had to be mindful of the baby. You turned over, insulted, and went to sleep. I got drunk, downed almost an entire bottle of Aunt Lonnie’s best Irish whiskey, and then came to bed and held you while you slept. It was tough, honey. Just holding you.”

Laura didn’t know whether to laugh, cry, or smack him. “Chase Donovan, you’re such a dumbbell.”

“I’m your husband,” he replied without missing a beat. “Add some affection to your tone when you say that.”

“Don’t bring up your hesitations to me,” she chided. “Being pregnant doesn’t prevent me from — you know,” she said, mocking his term for intimacy. “There’s no harm to the baby or me. The last few weeks I’m pregnant, though, I can’t say I’ll be in the mood. I’ll be as huge as this house and as irritable as hell.”

Overwhelming affection rushed through Laura as she realized when she thought she had slept alone, thought perhaps she had dreamed him, Chase had been cradled beside her.

He gave her the impish grin that had turned her life upside down. “You’re kidding? We won’t hurt the baby?”

She slipped her hand from his and folded her arms across her chest, resting them on her chunky belly. “No.”

He was silent for a moment. “Oh.”

He got up from the bed, plopped down in a chair, and began untying his sneakers. “In that case.” One sneaker fell to the floor, then the other. He pulled off his socks.

“What are you doing?” she asked.

He stood, yanking his blue T-shirt over his head, revealing his broad chest. “I’m about to make love to my wife.” He continued undressing. “Lucky for us, Aunt Lonnie’s away the entire weekend.” His bare body slid beneath the sheet, nestling beside Laura. “We have a lot to make up. A lot to get in before you’re as big as this house.”

Laughing, Laura slid her arms around his neck as he pushed her back into the mattress. Her lips parted under his kiss. She loved the way his mouth, always warm moved over hers, his tongue gently probing. Laura offered assistance as he lifted the nightshirt. The garment dropped to the floor.

“Chase Donovan, you’re a dumbbell,” she whispered sweetly.

“Now, wife,
that
has the right touch of affection.”

Chase let a hand roam over her bare, very pregnant form, slowly worshiping the round, smooth belly. His hand glided up to caress her breasts. While he re-familiarized himself with the body he had denied himself so long, Laura cuddled against him. Her eyes closed as she soaked up his gentle caresses. Chase’s touch, so tender and soothing, simply had a way of exciting her and making everything else completely fade away.