To Wear His Ring (46 page)

Plump and no-nonsense, with a striking resemblance to Julia Child, Georgiana Rees shook hands with Chase, nodded brusquely to Nettie and boomed down at Colin, “Hello, young man. Show me your room.”

Perfectly amenable to the request, Colin displayed his books and several toys while Nettie and Chase watched anxiously from the doorway. Bored with a Buzz Lightyear doll that had seen better days, Colin announced, “I got better stuff at our other place. We didn’t bring it all over here, yet.”

“Your other place?”

“Yep.” Colin tossed Buzz onto the bed. “We used to live at Nick’s.”

“Ah. Do you like your room?” Ms. Rees queried, looking at a framed print of a very British foxhunt. Not exactly Disney memorabilia.

But Colin nodded. “My dad’s getting me a bed shaped like a car.”

Dad.
The three adults in the room all noted the name. Only Chase, though, feared his legs would no longer support him.

Dad.

Feeling her fiancé’s body tremble beside her, Nettie looked up. She saw the tears in his eyes and remembered the first time Tuck had called her Mommy. Shakespeare, bless him, was dead wrong on that “rose by any other name” issue.

With one word, a seven-year-old boy had just given a grown man his place in the world. Forevermore.

“M
y what a yummy, yummy fudge sauce.” Ms. Rees—Georgiana—licked the back of her spoon, wiped a drip of chocolate from the rim of her dessert glass and sucked her finger. She made a loud smacking sound. “Is it purchased?”

“Ah, no. I made it.” Try as she might, Nettie could not reconcile the stolid Ms. Rees with a word like
yummy.
Georgiana had spent an hour with them and had done little more than chat thus far. Nettie’s nerves were tight as piano wire, and Chase appeared to be ready to jump out of his skin. Lilah had called to ask how things were going and even she sounded nervous and tense. Only Colin and Georgiana were able to concentrate on their ice-cream sundaes.

Ensconsed on the couch, the formidable woman made one more swipe around her dessert glass while Colin, seated on the floor with his sundae in front of him on the coffee table, found a more interesting pursuit in lifting his spoon to create a mini waterfall of melted peach ice cream.

Nettie and Chase sat on side-by-side chairs facing the social worker.

“Well,” Georgiana said, dropping her spoon into the glass
with a clatter and clapping her knees. “Let’s get down to business.” From her large handbag, she dug out a yellow legal pad and a pen. Balancing a pair of old-fashioned bifocals low on the bridge of her nose, she scribbled with strong stokes and made a bold slash beneath whatever she had written. She glanced up at them, smiling.

“I was surprised to hear you two were engaged. Rather sudden, was it?” Her voice was energetic, her gaze uncompromising.

Chase felt his hackles rise.
Calm and cooperative
, he reminded himself, realizing he’d gain little by suggesting she mind her own damn business. First, though…

“Colin, would you take your dish and Ms. Rees’s into the kitchen, please?”

“I’m not done.”

With a pointed glance at the melted sundae, Chase nodded. “Yeah, you are. Put the dishes on the sink and then run out back and rewind the hose for me. You can water Nettie’s flowers first, if you want.”

Because there was nothing Colin liked better than to spray the world with a garden hose, he was on his feet in an instant. “I know how to water them. Nettie showed me.” As carefully as he could given his haste to go outside, he transported the dishes to the kitchen.

Georgiana scribbled furiously.

Chase waited until the back door opened and closed. Then he said, “I’ve known Nettie three weeks. I’ve never been married or engaged before and never wanted to be. Whatever you’ve heard about my reputation where relationships are concerned is probably true, and I don’t know if I would have been smart enough to notice the diamond in my path if we’d met even a few months ago.” He looked at Nettie and his harsh gaze softened considerably. “I like to think I would have.” Turning back to the attentive social worker, he said, “I do know this—Whether or not Colin had turned out to be mine, I would have pursued my relationship with Nettie. With or without a custody hearing, I would have proposed.”

Georgiana raised a brow dyed I-Love-Lucy red. “What about you?” she questioned Nettie. “Would you have accepted? With or without a custody hearing?”

Chase knew he couldn’t hang on the answer, not in any obvious way.

Nettie appeared startled. Whether by Chase’s declaration or Georgiana’s question wasn’t clear, but it took her a moment to regroup. “Yes. Absolutely. With or without.”

Another note went down on the legal pad. Georgiana, however, was not smiling. Chase reached over to take Nettie’s hand and give it an encouraging squeeze.

“Your career is quite demanding as I understand it,” the social worker said to him. “How do you plan to address the demands of parenthood and a job that requires extended periods of travel to other countries?”

“I haven’t had time yet to work out the details, but there will be changes, of course.”

“Are you quite confident you can mother a seven-year-old boy?” Abruptly, Georgiana transferred her focus back to Nettie. “It certainly seems possible, given Mr. Reynold’s career choice—current career choice,” she amended when Chase started to speak, “that you will be called upon to be a so-called single parent at times. Tell me how you feel about that responsibility. In your own words,” she added sternly as again Chase attempted to interrupt.

Nettie pulled her hand away from Chase. She had not expected questions to be addressed to her, specifically. And questions about motherhood…

Clearing her throat, she answered, “I take motherhood very seriously. I understand the responsibilities.”

“How old are you?”

At least a hundred.
“Twenty-five.”

“Do you have nieces or nephews?”

“No.”

“Would you like children of your own someday?”

Nettie’s tongue grew instantly thick. Her head felt fuzzy. “I—That…isn’t necessary. Right now I’m concentrating on Colin.”

Strategically, it was the wrong answer. She could see that in Georgiana Rees’s face. Nettie felt Chase’s gaze upon her, but refused to meet it.

“What, in your opinion,” the other woman pursued, “are the qualities that make a good mother?”

A horrid, prickling heat bubbled in Nettie’s veins. She couldn’t think. Dumbly, she stared.

“Have you given it much consideration yet?”

An awful urge to scream filled her throat.
Every day. All day.
And whatever else she came up with, Nettie always returned to the conviction that whatever the qualities were, she didn’t possess them. If she did, her three-year-old child would not have died without his mother there to help or to hold him. But those were the nighttime thoughts. The two-in-the-morning-whenyou’re-all-alone-and-can’t-push-them-away-anymore thoughts. Useless, useless thoughts that yielded neither to reason nor to compassion.

Was that what Georgiana Rees wanted to know? If Chase suspected how dark Nettie’s musings were when it came to motherhood or marriage, if he had any inkling of the fears that robbed her of her usefulness, he wouldn’t have asked her to be his fiancée, even as a ruse.

“Are you all right?” The man she had optimistically offered to help sat forward in his chair.

She had to speak. If she continued to sit dumbly like this, she might cost him the custody of his son singlehandedly.

“I—Yes. No,” Nettie confessed, “I’m not feeling very well.”

Chase left his chair in an instant. “I’ll help you to the bedroom. You can lie down.”

“No.” Unsteadily, Nettie rose. “Actually, I’d like to go home.” Belatedly, she realized she had no car here. She’d have to walk to Nick’s, where Sara and Lilah were waiting, and surely it would appear odd to Georgiana to see Nettie walk away from a cottage in the middle of a lonely field while her fiancé stayed behind.

Alternatively, she could call Nick’s and have one of her sisters come get her, but that option required more explanation. She began to feel trapped, which often led quickly to feelings of claustrophobia, which led to panic and the horrid, indefinable dread that accompanied an attack. She wanted to run. She wanted to run now and she wanted to run far.

Chase frowned at her, but with more concern than anger or disapproval. “I’d like you to stay,” he said in a low voice, as
if she were the only other person in the room. “But if you definitely need to leave, I’ll take you.”

He was concerned about her. Let down by the woman he had counted on to help, his first concern was still for her.

Deep breaths, Nettie reminded herself. You are not a coward. It’s just anxiety. You can bear the discomfort until Georgiana Rees leaves. Then you’ll run.

With her head spinning and her stomach gyrating in the opposite direction, she tried to stand straight and give the illusion, at least, of control. “No, that’s all right. I’ll stay.” But she wouldn’t answer any more questions. “Why don’t I make us some coffee?”

That’s it, she breathed, distract yourself. When in doubt, play Donna Reed.

Through sheer will, she sent a smile, albeit a brittle one, in Ms. Rees’s direction. The woman eyed her like a hawk. In fact, Nettie thought, I’d rather be eyed by a hawk. A hawk would not be in the position to destroy Chase’s happiness. A hawk would not tease the past out of Nettie in slow, tortuous nibbles. When hawks went for their pray, they were swift and unequivocal. No pretense.

She took two steps, but her legs felt like tubes of jelly. Breathe. You can relax your body and walk at the same time. She knew it was the truth, but lacked faith that a body reacting as strongly as hers was right now could actually make it all the way to the kitchen. What if Georgiana saw her stumble or start to shake? What if anxiety this extreme really could make a person go absolutely bonkers, and she fell apart in front of the social worker and Chase and even, heaven forbid, Colin?

The dread intensified. She was telling herself all the wrong things. Too many “what if” statements poured more adrenaline into her already sensitive system and within seconds she was afraid she wouldn’t be able to walk at all. Without thinking, she grabbed the back of the chair for support.

Chase reacted immediately. Her fiancé had no way of knowing, of course, that there was nothing physically wrong with her, that her body was reacting to a truckload of blame that turned into anxiety. So without another word, he swept her into his arms. There was no pretense in the action; his focus was Nettie.
He was concerned. Even though she was supposed to be helping him, he was concerned.

Brushing aside her protest, Chase murmured to her soothingly as he strode to the bedroom. Guilty and ashamed, she looked into his face, but all she saw was love.

If a heart could swell and break at the same time, hers did.

Gently he laid her on the bed. Gently took her hand and asked if there was anything he could bring her.

“Go back to Georgiana,” Nettie told him, taking his hand for a moment. He relaxed at her touch. She could feel it. “I’m fine. I just want to rest awhile.” Rest and try not to think, an impossible task.

Chase nodded. “I’ll get rid of Georgiana as soon as I can.”

It was on the tip of Nettie’s tongue to promise she’d turn in a better acting job next time, but it wouldn’t be true. She couldn’t sit calmly with Georgiana and tell glib lies about motherhood.

Sadly, worried about Chase and Colin and deeply concerned about the part she could play in separating them, Nettie withdrew her hand. “Don’t rush her out. Please. Not for me.”

Bending forward, he kissed the tip of her nose. “I think we’ve all had enough for one evening.”

When Chase left the room, closing the door behind him, Nettie felt a tiredness so profound, she thought she could sleep for days. She couldn’t let herself rest, though. She had to figure out a way to extricate herself from any more of Georigiana’s crossexaminations without endangering Chase’s case.

A splatter of water hit the exterior wall of the bedroom. Nettie scooted off the bed and went to the window. Pushing aside the curtain, she saw Colin holding the garden hose and turning in circles, spraying everything he could and wrapping himself in a coil of rubber. Give a little boy a chore, and he turned it into an adventure.

She smiled. How could Chase ever let you go?

The thought came unbidden and with it, a tide of emotion that swelled too quickly for her to stem. She had to make sure Colin and Chase stayed together. She
had
to. She could tolerate goodbye…she
would
tolerate goodbye as long as she knew that Chase didn’t have to. She had to be able to picture him with his son
after they left North Dakota. She could stand being alone again if she knew that Chase wasn’t.

“He deserves that,” she said, gazing out the window. “He’s a good man.” She thought of that first night in the jail. And their first kiss when she’d helped him unsaddle King. She remembered how nervous and happy and vulnerable he’d seemed when he told her he had a son.

“Please don’t let him be hurt,” Nettie whispered to the God she hadn’t spoken to much the past few years. She wasn’t sure she believed, anymore, in prayers being answered or in a Power that protected…In heaven above. It had hurt to believe almost more than it hurt not to.

She watched Colin. Wound in the hose, he began to struggle with it as if fighting some enemy force. In his imagination, he would always win. But he lived in a world that often changed the rules of the game just when you finally thought you knew how to play.

“Don’t get hurt,” she whispered. “Don’t get hurt.” She put a hand on the window, overwhelmed by an urge to call him inside.

He wasn’t hers to coddle, and that was a good thing because her fears had made her overly protective. Still, for this brief span of time, there was something she could do.

Quickly, before she wasted any more time, Nettie ran from the bedroom. She smoothed her skirt as she returned to where Georgiana and Chase were still convened, Chase talking and Georgiana still scribbling.

They looked up as she entered. “I’m sorry I rushed out like that,” she apologized breathlessly to Georgiana, anxiety unnoticed as she concentrated on winning the other woman over. “A little too much pasta, I think.” Smiling as if her illness were already a thing of the past, she patted her belly.

“You certainly look better.” Georgiana considered her.

“I am.” Nettie ignored Chase’s concern as she moved to stand by his chair. “I thought about my answer to your last question, and I’m afraid I may have given the wrong impression.”

Georgiana raised a brow, and Nettie knew that nothing but utter sincerity would move the other woman. “I have no immediate desire to have more children,” she admitted, and the
honesty bolstered her, “precisely because nothing is more sacred to me than motherhood. I know it’s the most challenging, most important occupation a woman can undertake. In becoming Colin’s mother,” she hesitated only briefly, “my focus would be on Colin. He lost his mother. I lost mine, too, when I was still a child. It’s inappropriate to discuss more children right now. The one we’ve got deserves our full attention.”

From the corner of her eye, she caught Chase’s upturned gaze, though she couldn’t see his expression. Georgiana appeared pleased by Nettie’s words, but Nettie wasn’t through yet. “I also think it’s inappropriate to threaten a man with a custody suit when you haven’t even met him. Julia’s parents are more than welcome to visit—they should visit—but not in a spirit of judgment. Chase and Colin are a brand-new family. They need support, not threats. And they don’t need to be put under a microscope. If a few magazine articles are bothering everyone, I can tell you right now that Chase’s womanizing days are over. He adores his son. If he didn’t…I couldn’t adore him.”