Waiting for Your Love (Echoes of the Heart) (7 page)

“No man could be a more perfect husband and father,” she said. “Or love his family more than you do. I just wish it hadn’t taken your moving back to Chandlerville to show me the kind of life I want to make for myself, and the kind of man I want to make that life with.”

He rubbed her shoulder, feeling their heartbeats settle into the same rhythm.

She’d said she’d have to leave soon.

She had an important trip ahead of her and life-changing decisions to make. The last thing Conrad wanted to be was a distraction. And as much as he’d love having her with him all night, there was Harper to consider. Before Conrad allowed his son to think there was something more than friendship between his father and Clair, Conrad needed a firmer hold on what that
something
might be.

But for this moment at least, he was holding an amazing woman in his arms. And he’d been gifted the chance to win her heart. It was an opportunity he had no intention of squandering. One steady moment at a time, he’d make certain that he and Clair figured this out.

“I know you’ll keep worrying,” he said. “And that’s okay. As long as let me show you what you’ve helped me see. How to face what scares you most, and how to trust that everything will be fine—because you don’t have to go through it alone.”

“You’re
not
still planning
on going to Charlotte,” Barbara Summerville complained the next morning as she watched Clair pack. “You’re still negotiating with those PetClub people?”

From her disapproving tone, you’d have thought Clair was packing for a “Girls Gone Wild” jaunt to Vegas. Instead of flying out in a few hours for a day of meetings at the heart of North Carolina’s tech corridor.

“I’m taking care of my business, Mom.” Clair left the bed to slip her best suit and two casual-but-not-too-casual dresses into her garment bag.

Not that she’d decided yet whether she’d wear the suit tomorrow, to PetClub headquarters. Or if a dress would be appropriate for the dinner scheduled later tonight with two of the company’s top executives. She’d also packed slacks and a silk blouse with a coordinating jacket,
and
khakis and a golf shirt, just to round out her options. Once she arrived and knew whether tonight’s destination was an authentic barbecue joint or five-star Italian or something in between, she’d sort out her look.

She headed for the bathroom to root in the bin beneath the sink for her travel hair dryer.

“
Work
business,” her mom chided. “What about the business of finally doing something with your personal life? You and Conrad looked so happy yesterday. His mother and I are thrilled. And he’s a doctor, honey, with family money coming his way one day. You don’t need to worry yourself to death about business anymore.”

“I don’t need to…?”

Clair tossed the hair dryer into the shoulder tote she’d carry onto the plane. She bit her lip to keep from screaming.

“I won’t have to worry about my business anymore, the life I’ve built for myself?” She faced her mom. She couldn’t remember a single instance of Barbara praising her for the tireless discipline it had taken to grow ALL PAWS and PAWSMatch into what they were today. “Because if Conrad and I stay together, I’ll have what? Snagged myself a successful doctor who’s going to save me from ever again having to decide anything more stressful than what to make for dinner?”

“Why would you want to keep doing things the way you are now? I’ve never understood this compulsion of yours to focus your energy on anything and everything except the people and things that should make a lovely young woman truly happy. Is work really all you think you need? The rest of your life must seem so empty.”

“Because my end-all, be-all should be finding myself a man and becoming compulsive about my life with him? The way you have with Daddy? Is that why you fill your days with playing tennis twice a week at the country club and volunteering for every committee in town? Is all of that making you happier about
your
empty life?”

Clair loved her mother to distraction, but things between them couldn’t go on like this, not without clearing the air. Especially if Clair was about to move hours away.

“I’m not the one who needs to rethink her personal life,” Barbara said pleasantly.

Pleasant
was the way she dealt with everything, from a rainy weather report to why her husband couldn’t make it to yet another family gathering—like how he’d bailed on yesterday’s barbecue because of a last-minute obligation to play eighteen rounds of golf with an investor whose portfolio was one of the largest he managed for the bank.

“I’m not going to apologize for my busy social life,” Barbara bragged. “Or the causes demanding as much of my time as I can give them. Not to mention how I help your sister whenever she needs me.”

“Ra never gets a chance
not
to need you, Mom. You won’t let her forget how incapable she is of taking care of herself and her husband and kids on her own. I actually think you’re afraid of what you’d do with yourself, if she didn’t need you so much.”

Clair wasn’t certain why she was dragging her sister into this, except maybe to shift their mother’s focus away from Conrad. Earlier that morning, Clair had been on the phone with first Bethany and then Nicole, both of whom had gushed about how
obviously
perfect Clair and Conrad were for each other. Which had been wonderful to hear—and daunting.

It was
terrifying
how much Clair wanted to be with him right now, instead of preparing to fly away.

Let me show you what you’ve helped me see. How to face what scares you most, and trust that everything will be fine…

They hadn’t done more than snuggle and kiss last night before she’d headed home. She’d said she needed to get ready for Charlotte, and he’d said he totally understood. He was being amazingly supportive. Why couldn’t her mother make the same effort, instead of spooking Clair even more about everything that had happened in the last twenty-four hours?

She and Conrad were going to get together again as soon as she was back in town. To talk, they’d agreed, and to carve out some real time to be alone. To rediscover each other, revel in each other, and see where that led them.

But for how long?

How long did they really have as a couple, no matter how amazing he was being about her PetClub offer and potential move? The merger, if she agreed to it, was about to consume her life.

She realized her mother had been studying her silently from the other side the bedroom.

“What?” Clair asked. “What’s wrong?”

“You tell me.”

Clair was momentarily stunned by Babs actually offering to listen, instead of diving headfirst into giving more unsolicited advice. So stunned, Clair almost lost her mind and blurted out the flood of conflicting wants and desires and fears jockeying for her attention.

“I’m just nervous,” she said tentatively, testing her mother’s sincerity. “The next couple of days are going to be big. My entire work life is hanging in the balance. And there’s no easy solution that would make things right for everyone.”

“Making things right for your
non-work
life is what I think you should be concerned about.”

“No kidding.”

“This thing with Conrad. Don’t mess it up. You don’t want to be alone forever.”

“No, Mom. You’re the one who’d do anything not to be alone. Even staying in a marriage that’s nowhere near what you deserve. Well, I’m not like you. When it comes to love, I won’t settle for anything less than everything, and I don’t have the first clue about…”

“About what?”

“What else there is, besides what I grew up watching. You and Daddy barely talking to each other, day in and day out. And now Ra’s building the same kind of life with Glenn. And that’s not for me, Mom. It’s empty and lonely. It feels like giving up on love every day. Yet…I don’t know how to do anything else.”

Barbara’s expression tightened. But she was listening still. They were really talking about this, like mother and daughter.

Barbara Summerville never invited conversation about herself. Her weaknesses were always private and always in the past. There was never anything she couldn’t manage, never anything she needed that she couldn’t bend to her will. “Nothing but good times ahead,” was her mantra. A worldview that she’d made certain her offspring were well schooled in emulating.

“I’ve never given up in my life.” She plucked her Gucci bag off the vintage quilt Clair kept draped over the foot of her bed. Barbara shouldered her purse with the dignity of a proud woman who refused to be pitied. “You may have gotten your workaholic ways from your father, but not your stubbornness. Whether you see value in it or not, I’m happy with my
lonely
life, exactly the way it is. Can you say the same thing?”

Clair could only swallow, because her mother was right. Clair
was
lonely. She had been for years.

“If you’re such a confident businesswoman,” Barbara continued, “so excited about embarking on your next great adventure away from everything and everyone you know, why show up yesterday with a man on your arm, just to avoid dealing with me?”

“That’s not what happened?” Clair hedged.

“Have you asked yourself,” her mother pressed, “why you’re
really
one reckless decision away from moving to North Carolina? Could it be so you can continue to avoid dealing with Conrad?”

“No.”

“Because from the start, your sister and I have wondered if he’s the real reason you’re considering the PetClub’s offer.”

“I…” Clair was about to lie and say that the thought had never occurred to her, not even once. But that would make her as incapable as her mother typically was of facing hard truths. “The merger, if it happens, will be about business. And I haven’t recklessly decided anything yet.”

Halfway to the door, Barbara turned back. “So you’re not one hundred percent sure?”

“About Conrad?” Clair was downright panic stricken. And so happy at the same time, the dueling emotions were making her dizzy.

“About giving control of your company, that precious app of yours you spent close to a year developing and babying into production, over to someone else. And moving away from everyone and everything you know, because that feels safer than staying.”

Clair folded and refolded the denim jacket she’d decided to pack in case she got the chance to walk around Charlotte on her own, one of the two nights she’d be there. Suddenly her mother was standing beside her again. Barbara took the jacket away. She drew Clair down to sit beside her on the quilt.

“About”—Barbara stared at their clasped fingers—“moving away from me. Because you think the way I raised you, the myopic advice I can’t stop giving, and the obviously disappointing example I’ve made of my life and my marriage, are the root of your problems.”

Clair softened at the regret she heard in her mother’s voice. They hugged. The accompanying wash of closeness stripped away everything but honesty.

“I’m afraid, Mom.”

Barbara nodded. “Aren’t we all?”

“What if I chase love and finally let it have me and find out in the end that I’m just not one of those people who can’t make it work? Even with Conrad. What if there’s a reason why business has been what I’m best at all this time?”

What if, now that she had the chance to be a success at both work and lasting love, she was too chicken to see it through?

Barbara winced. “I’m sorry if that’s all I’ve been able to teach you about relationships. That it’s all or nothing, and that expecting nothing is the only way to protect yourself from not having it all. Love’s never perfect. It’s always going to be what you make of it. And yes, it can disappoint you. Sometimes more than you think you can bear. But falling in love should never be something you’re afraid of, darling. I believe that with all my heart, even now. I wish… I’m sorry I wasn’t able to show you all the wonderful, earth-shattering things love can be, even when it doesn’t work out the way you expect it to.”

“Would you ever have tried again…with someone else besides Daddy?”

The room grew silent.

Clair listened to the refrigerator humming in the kitchen. For once her phone wasn’t ringing. Her staff was handling the business entirely on their own for the next two days. And, an even more unprecedented anomaly, she’d listed herself as unavailable as a PAWSMatch.

Her Chandlerville life had officially come to a standstill until she finalized things with PetClub.

“Mom?” she asked, when Barbara still hadn’t answered.

Her mother’s gaze refocused, snapping her back from another place and time.

“I thought your father was my one and only. I know that must be hard to believe, given what you think of our lives together now. But once upon a time I was so sure… And then you girls came along, and I fell head over heels for both of you and the life we had together. I’ve been happy, Clair. Don’t think for a minute that I haven’t. But I have regrets, too. Regrets I don’t want you to experience one day. Don’t make any hasty decisions about your future. Not until you’re completely sure of what you want.”

Clair sighed. “With PetClub?”

“With you and Conrad.”

Clair thought of all the years she’d spent trying to be different from her mother. Had she really put her heart on a shelf, too, the same as the woman who’d raised her?

“I need more time, Mom. I’m not sure about anything right now. Even Conrad and me."

“That man’s
your
one and only. I didn’t need to see the two of you together yesterday to know that. Everyone who loves you has known for years. For sure ever since Conrad moved back to town. You’ve dated a lot of other people, many of whom might have made you happy. But nothing’s changed how it feels when you and Conrad are together, right?”

Clair nodded.

Barbara did, too. She resettled her purse higher on her shoulder as she stood to leave. “Then it sounds like it’s time for you to make up your mind about more than a business deal.”