The Burning Point (36 page)

They reached the end of the bay side of the campus and turned left to follow the edge bounded by the Severn River. Despite the other strollers, Kate felt as if they were in a bubble of privacy, isolated with the cool wind and the poignant cries of the gulls. She could almost imagine that they were eighteen and nineteen again.

Donovan interrupted her reverie. "Do you ever think about the future, Kate?"

She looked up at a gull wheeling through the sky. "Not really."

"What, no goals?"

Odd to realize how few goals she'd had over the years. She'd wanted to qualify as an architect and eventually have her own practice, but those had seemed like normal milestones of life rather than true goals. Working at PDI had been a dream, not a goal, and she'd accomplished that by chance, not will. Feeling vaguely slothful, she said, "My chief goal at the moment is to survive this year."

"That's the sum of your ambitions? Mere survival?"

Images of the children she'd wanted to have with Donovan flitted across her mind. She could almost feel the soft weight of an infant in her arms, hear a wordless gurgle of delight. Ruthlessly she suppressed her imagination. The goal of building a life and a business with the man she loved had been left dead in the ruins of their marriage. "Don't underestimate survival. Sometimes it's the most one can manage."

He took one of her hands between both of his, stroking with his palm. "I promised that I wouldn't touch you. I haven't entirely kept to that."

She felt as if she were fourteen, and for the first time in her life a boy she liked had taken her hand. She was acutely aware of textures, the faint roughness of calluses, the hollow of his palm as it glided over her sensitive skin.

Part of her wanted to jerk away. A larger, yearning part wanted to slide into his arms. "The first time you broke your word I was on the verge of falling down an elevator shaft, so I can forgive that pretty easily."

"The other times haven't been life or death. Slowly, the walls between us have been coming down." He continued to caress her hand. It was a G-rated seduction in broad daylight. Her blood bubbled through her veins with excitement and alarm.

Then his hands stilled. "I give you fair warning, Kate. The past has left us with a lot of heavy baggage, but maybe we can still build a future together. There's never been anyone for me but you. I can't let you go again without at least trying to change your mind."

Kate was trapped by his gaze, his intensity. Pure panic boiled through her at the thought of allowing him into her life, her body, her soul, again. Yet she didn't run. For that, perhaps, she deserved some credit. "Warning noted. But Patrick--we've both changed. Are you really interested in me, or in memories of the golden past?"

His clasp tightened. "In
you
, Kate. You've acquired a lot of edges, some of them darned uncomfortable. But at heart you're still the girl I fell crazy in love with when I was nineteen. I can survive without you--but I'd rather not."

Earlier she'd speculated on how she might react to him if they had just met as strangers. But that could never happen--the past and its shadows would always be with them. Between them. "Don't...don't rush me," she said unsteadily. "I don't know if I can give back what you want."

"But you're not saying absolutely never. God, Kate, if there's a chance...any chance at all...." He raised her hand and kissed her fingertips with a tenderness that made her want to weep.

"I don't know if there is a chance, Patrick! Maybe it will never be possible to get rid of that baggage."

He laced the fingers of one hand through hers, raising his other hand to skim her cheek. "Trees can grow from tiny cracks in stony cliffs, Kate. This may be a very small crack indeed--but it's a beginning."

Chapter 33

The doorbell fluted its two-note chime as Julia set the baking dish of lemon chicken into the oven. She closed the oven and headed to the front hall, wondering who might be calling late on a Saturday afternoon. Was it Girl Scout cookie season already?

Not yet. Charles Hamilton was standing on her front steps with a bouquet of variegated carnations and two dogs. "You're an hour early, Charles. Dinner just went into the oven, and I haven't taken a shower yet."

"I know this is a rotten trick. But I'd finished the Saturday yard work, so I decided to be selfish and disguise it under the pretense of promoting spontaneity."

She buried her smile in the spicy carnations. "What excuse do the dogs have?"

"They wanted to visit Oscar."

"Naturally. All right, Tort and Retort, come on in."

They trotted inside with impeccable manners. Oscar Wilde advanced, and a round of ritual sniffing began. The dogs were long-time friends. Julia was always amused by the fact that little Oscar was leader of the pack.

She led the dogs to the back door so they could chase each other around the fenced yard. When she returned to the kitchen, Charles raised her chin and gave her a thorough kiss. "I thought that after I've messed up your schedule, I can walk the dogs while you shower."

"A good plan. Let me get these into water." She put the carnations in a vase, thinking how quickly she and Charles had drifted into a comfortable pattern. They had dinner together several nights a week, sometimes at her house, sometimes at his. While not eliminating the primal sorrow over Sam's death, the relationship did help her get through the days, and the nights. Especially the nights.

After placing the flowers on the dinner table, she said, "Maybe I'll join you on that dog walk. There's plenty of time before dinner will be ready."

He led her into the living room and drew her down to the sofa beside him. "I have a better plan. Let's neck."

She emerged from his embrace laughing. "Charles, this is absurd at our age!"

"Why should kids have all the fun?"

"A good point, but I think necking was abolished sometime during the sexual revolution."

"It's a fine old custom, worthy of being reinstated." He began to toy with the top button of her shirt. "So is petting. Remember the incredible excitement that a single button could inspire in the long-ago days of our youth?"

Actually, she could remember. A little breathlessly, she said, "Were you always this playful and I just didn't notice?"

"No, it was Barbara who washed the starch out of my stuffed shirt. It was impossible to live with her and be stuffy," he said. "Does it bother you when I mention her?"

"I can accept our relationship as a kind of private retreat that exists apart from the normal world, but talking about Barbara, or Sam, or our children, pulls me back to reality. When Tom was staying here, and when Rachel and Kate dropped by unexpectedly, I felt as if I had a scarlet A on my forehead."

"Then let's go back to necking and pretending we're adolescents." He scooped her up and lowered her to the carpet, then kissed her again. "If we were sixteen, I can imagine us getting so excited we'd fall off the sofa and hardly notice."

"These days, of course, we have to be careful not to do anything disastrous to our aging joints." Her arms went around him. "I must say that not all of you seems to have aged."

He waggled his thick eyebrows. "I'm not as good as I once was, but I'm as good once as I ever was."

She groaned. "That's an old one."

"Old is good--that's the whole point." He returned to her shirt buttons. "I wonder if I can manage to get to second base before dinner?"

She'd always liked Charles's sense of humor, but this private, sweetly silly side of him was new to her. It was nice that someone she'd known almost her whole life could still surprise her. In a quavering, adolescent voice, she said, "I'm a nice girl. My mama says that if I let a man touch me like that, he won't respect me in the morning."

Charles waggled his eyebrows again. "Trust me, little girl, the more I touch you tonight, the more I'll respect you tomorrow."

She was giggling and he was unfastening the last of her buttons when the front door opened, and Kate and Donovan walked in, windblown in jeans and carrying motorcycle helmets. Paralysis was universal. Kate's jaw dropped, Donovan looked thunderstruck, and Julia wished that she were dead.

Charles recovered first. He swiftly redid a couple of Julia's buttons, enough to make her decent, then got to his feet and helped her from the floor. "There is no point in pretending this is anything different than what it appears to be."

Julia stammered, "Kate, I'm so sorry that...that..."

"No, we're the ones who should apologize," Kate said, her face pale. "We were just coming back from Annapolis and thought we'd stop by and see if you wanted to join us for dinner. We shouldn't have...I mean, it never occurred to me that..."

"That an adult child with a key can't walk unannounced into the house she grew up in," Charles supplied. "An understandable attitude. Any errors in judgment here were mine."

A white-lipped Donovan was about to speak when Kate grabbed his arm and hauled him away. "Good night. I...I hope you both have a nice evening."

When the door closed, Julia sank onto the sofa and buried her face in her hands. Charles sat down and put an arm around her shoulders. "I'm sorry, Julia. Getting caught by one's children is worse than getting caught by one's parents, I think. And it's all my fault."

She couldn't go on like this any longer. "It was as much my fault as yours. I could have said no. So I...I'll say no now. Better late than never."

He became very still. "Are you ending things between us?"

"It's not that I haven't enjoyed our time together, but I...I..."

"You're ashamed to be seen with me."

In a sense that was true. Being caught with him by Kate and Donovan seemed like a negation of the marriage that had occupied the center of her life for almost forty years. "I'm sorry, Charles. The simple truth is that at the moment, I'm too...too mixed up to be any good for anyone."

Charles's earlier playfulness vanished and he looked every minute of his age. "I thought that being together would be good for both of us. I know it was good for me. But I've had a couple of years to adjust to being alone, and to want something more." He got to his feet. "You haven't, and from your point of view, the most significant thing about me is that I'm not Sam. I can't change that, and wouldn't if I could."

A word from her would prevent him from leaving, but it was a word she couldn't say. She had an identity, and it was defined by sorrow. That giggling teenager was a stranger. "Thank you for trying to help. I...I wish I could accept that better."

"People heal in their own time and fashion," he said heavily. "I think it's best if we don't see each other at all. Good-bye, Julia."

As he headed to the back yard to collect his dogs, she dropped onto the sofa again, knotting up in the corner with misery. Would she ever get over her current craziness, the mood swings and desperate loneliness that would exasperate a saint? Someday, perhaps.

But at the moment, she couldn't believe that would ever happen.

∗ ∗ ∗

Donovan was at the explosion point by the time Kate got him outside. "Christ, Kate, how could she?" He yanked on his helmet. "How could Charles? I never thought he was the kind of guy who hit on grieving widows."

He swung onto the Harley and tilted it upright, then turned the key in the ignition. "Get on." The engine roared to life with his furious stamp on the kick start pedal.

Kate had an eerie memory of the day Tom had come out. On that occasion Donovan was the one who'd pulled her outside, not vice versa, but the rage was familiar.

He's mad as hell, and I'm not going to take it any more.
She reached forward and turned off the ignition, then pulled away the key ring. "We're not going anywhere until you calm down, Donovan," she said in the sudden silence. "In your present state, you'll kill us both before we're halfway to Ruxton."

"Give me the keys!"

"Why are you flipping out?" she said wryly. "I'm the one who just found my mother about to get naked with the family lawyer. Are you having some weird Oedipal reaction?"

He slammed his hand down on the bike's handlebars. "God damn it, Kate, don't psychoanalyze me!"

She flinched. The terrified uncertainty of what might happen next was far worse than any physical injury had ever been. It was time to change the script. "Patrick, earlier today you said you wanted a future with me. That's never going to happen unless you get a better grip on your temper. Anger is normal, but bullying and intimidation are
not acceptable
."

His face whitened, and for a scary moment she had no idea what he'd do.

"Jesus." He lowered his head and pulled off his helmet, his fingers trembling as he ran his hand through his hair. "You sure know how to hit a body blow, Kate."

"This isn't a fight. It's more like the journey of a thousand leagues that begins with a single step. And if you want to make this journey with me, you'll damned well have to prove that you've changed."

A pulse hammered in his jaw, but slowly the tension eased from his rigid body. "I'm sorry, Kate. I keep thinking I've made progress on keeping my temper under control." He exhaled roughly. "Then something like this happens."