Warm Hearts (20 page)

“Yes, I'd be angry, but only at first. I'd need to blame someone, and you'd be there. But when I stopped to think rationally, the anger would fade. I'd realize that I couldn't blame you for something you didn't create. Hell, you don't enter the picture of a relationship until it's in a shambles. Through the course of therapy, you can point out what's wrong, which I presume you did in this case. You can make suggestions for improving things, which I presume you did, also. You can even try to put those suggestions into effect during your sessions, but when you have only one hour a week to do it—” he exhaled a loud breath “—the odds have to be against you in those tough cases.”

“It doesn't seem fair,” Caroline concluded quietly.

“Life isn't, that way.”

Those words were to echo in her mind the next day. When she spoke with Brendan on Wednesday night, she was particularly discouraged. “Karen called this morning in a panic. Her doctor has ordered her to bed until the baby is born.”

“To bed? What happened?”

“She started bleeding. It doesn't have to do with the baby directly, but if she stays on her feet she's apt to bring on premature labor.”

“When is she due?”

“That's one of the problems. The doctor says that she has another eight weeks to go, but she's convinced she conceived a month earlier. I'd almost agree with her. She's huge. She's been so uncomfortable for so long that we've been expecting the baby momentarily.”

“Don't they have tests to determine that kind of thing?” he asked. He wished he knew more about the subject. Unfortunately, he was a virgin when it came to pregnancy and babies—not that he wasn't eager to learn, but eagerness alone couldn't provide the facts with which to offer Caroline comfort.

Caroline was every bit as naive. “Your asking me is like the blind leading the blind. I asked Karen the same question. She said something about an ultrasound test—that produces a picture of the baby. From the size of the skull they can tell the stage of gestation but only working up to a certain point in the pregnancy, after which it determines nothing more than the size of that particular baby. Anyway,” she said with a sigh, “Karen didn't think to have the test done in time.”

“Oh. Poor kid.”

“The baby?”

“Karen. It won't help if she panics now.”

“That's what I told her, too. But she really is distraught. She was planning to work right up to the end. Now she'll have to miss that many more weeks. She's convinced that she's blown a partnership.”

“Nah. I can't believe that.”

“Me, neither, but she does.”

That he could believe. “Firms foster that kind of paranoia. They hold partnerships as the be-all and end-all, the carrot dangling in front of the associates' noses. You don't bring in enough cases, you don't get a partnership. You don't bill enough hours, you don't get a partnership. You alienate one of the partners, you don't get a partnership. They seem to think it increases productivity, when in the end it only fosters resentment and ill will.”

“You sound happy to be away from it.”

“Very. Large firms today are more like businesses than the professional institutions they used to be. Let me tell you, if Karen's firm denies or even withholds her partnership simply because of maternity matters, she could sue them for discrimination.”

“What a pain.”

“Mmm. If her firm does that, she'd be just as well free of it.”

“The problem is that she doesn't want to be free of it. She's worked so hard to get where she is, and when it came to this pregnancy, she desperately wanted everything to work out. To have something like this happen … something she has no control over … she feels thwarted and very frustrated … I feel so bad for her, Brendan!”

“I know you do,” he said gently, then added, “Hey, maybe you could visit her this weekend. That would probably calm her down … or perk her up … or whatever she needs by then.”

Caroline had thought of that. It had been one of the first things to come to mind after Karen had told her the problem, and she'd barely kept herself from blurting out the offer. But she'd held her tongue. She didn't want to go to Karen's for the weekend. Not this weekend.

“I could do that,” she said quietly.

Brendan heard her hesitance and, regardless of its cause, was pleased. He didn't want her spending the weekend with her sister. He wanted her spending the weekend with him.

Still, he knew that she'd be torn.

On the other hand, there was one way to satisfy them both. “How about I drive you up there?” he asked, then went quickly on. The plan was formulating fast, and he liked it. “Philly isn't so far. We could leave early Saturday morning, which would give you plenty of time to visit with Karen and Dan. After that we could drive just a little farther to one of those special inns you have in your book and spend the night, then return to see Karen again on Sunday before we head back here.”

It was a super idea, if he did say so himself, and he couldn't help but smile in a self-satisfied, smugly male sort of way. But the smile faded quickly as it occurred to him that there was possibly one small flaw to his plan.

Caroline might not be ready to introduce him to her sister.

“Actually,” he rushed on in the hope of compensating for that flaw, “I have friends in Philly myself. If you preferred, I could drop you at your sister's Saturday and pick you up there on Sunday. My friends have been nagging me to visit for months, so if you'd rather be alone with Karen, I would certainly understand.”

“Brendan—”

“It wouldn't be any kind of a problem for me. And that's the truth.”

“I liked your first idea better,” Caroline said.

He paused for a single heartbeat. “The one about the inn?”

“Yes.”

“Really?”

“Uh-huh. If you're sure you wouldn't mind.”

“Mind? Of course I wouldn't mind! After what I've been going through here and what I'm bound to find piled up on my desk when I return, I'll look forward to the break!”

*   *   *

Brendan's meetings on Thursday were scheduled through to four o'clock in the afternoon. He'd warned Caroline that they might run late, and if that were the case, he'd have to take a later flight home. She had fully reconciled herself to simply seeing him on Friday after work. After all, she reasoned, that was how two good friends who just happened to be lovers would handle a brief separation. There didn't have to be any late-night reunion. They were both far too level-headed for that.

Caroline began the evening at her own place. She'd come home earlier than usual, a fact that she didn't stop to analyze, other than to tell herself she could as easily do paperwork at her kitchen table as at her office desk. That reasoning became moot, though, when the phone started to ring.

Her mother called, all in a stir about Karen's problems, but Caroline was able to fudge the facts enough to make her feel better. When, soon after that, Carl called in alarm because Madeline had suggested to him that Karen might not make it through childbirth, Caroline was able to set his brotherly heart—which she was pleased to see still functioned—to rest. She then called Karen herself and was relieved to hear her sounding a little calmer. Karen asked if she'd come to visit. Without a word about Brendan, Caroline said she'd try.

When the phone lay quiet at last, she returned to her work. She was determined to catch up on every last bit of paperwork so that if she did get to Pennsylvania for the weekend she could do so with a clear conscience.

Good intentions notwithstanding, she didn't do much catching up. She did a lot of looking at her watch and glancing across the courtyard and wondering whether Brendan had made the six-o'clock flight or had had to reschedule. When Timothy, who lived in the apartment beneath Connie, came up to borrow laundry detergent, she welcomed the momentary diversion. She did not welcome it, though, when Ben called a few minutes later to ask if she was ready to see him. She couldn't believe the man's gall.

After calmly telling Ben what he could do with his ego, she decided that she'd had enough of the telephone for one night. Turning on the answering machine, she went to sit at the window. She felt odd, filled with a sense of anticipation that was new to her. Anticipation … and restlessness. She got up, wandered around the loft, returned to kneel on the window seat … only to repeat the circle ten minutes later.

Then inspiration struck. Slipping into a pair of sandals, she grabbed her key and Brendan's and crossed the courtyard to his building. She hadn't picked up his mail that day when she'd come home from work; it hadn't made sense, since he would be returning himself. But she did it now, brought it upstairs, then opened the windows and turned on the fan to move the air in the loft a bit.

Standing in the middle of the room, she looked around and sighed. She'd done what she'd set out to do. There was no reason why she shouldn't return to her own place.

Except that she'd be bored and restless there.

She felt better here.

It was the change of scenery, she told herself. For the past three nights she hadn't budged from her apartment. It was nice to be out. The fact that Brendan's apartment was hotter than her own didn't matter. She really did feel better here.

For several minutes she stood where she was, smiled, then sighed. She tacked loose wisps of hair into her barrette. She smiled again. She wiped the beads of sweat that dotted her nose. She sighed again. Then, nonchalantly, she scanned the apartment.

His cleaning service had been in while he'd been away, she decided, because the place was spotless. She smacked her lips together and let out a small, idle hum. So she couldn't waste a little time by cleaning.

Strolling casually toward the refrigerator, she pulled the door open and looked around. But no, she couldn't cook dinner. She had no idea what time Brendan would be arriving or whether he'd have already eaten, and anyway,
she'd
already eaten. Besides, it was hot. Not to mention that the contents of the refrigerator consisted of a carton of cottage cheese, a bottle of ketchup, a pitcher of orange juice, a half-empty box of glazed donuts that were probably stale and a sealed package of bologna. True, his freezer, like hers, was filled with frozen dinners, but she couldn't prepare him one of
those.

She sank down on the sofa, kicked off her sandals and waited. When, no more than five minutes later, a knock came at the door, she quickly sat forward. Her heart skipped a beat or two, then settled. Brendan wouldn't knock at his own apartment.

She peered through the tiny viewer on the door, then debated for the space of several additional heartbeats. Feeling only a glimmer of unsureness, she slowly opened the door. On the other side stood the same blond-haired woman she'd previously seen only from a distance.

At the sight of Caroline rather than Brendan, Jocelyn Wills's smile got lost in a look of confusion. Her eyes flicked to the number on the door, as though she wondered whether she'd come to the wrong apartment by mistake. “Is … Brendan here?” she finally asked.

In that instant, Caroline could see why Brendan had felt the need to protect Jocelyn in a new city. She was lovely in a down-home, innocent, almost fragile kind of way. For that reason—and others that she didn't stop to dissect—Caroline didn't feel at all threatened by the other woman's appearance.

“You must be Jocelyn,” she said with a smile that was gentle and came easily. “I'm Caroline. Brendan's told me about you.”

Jocelyn dipped her head a fraction and gave a nervous smile of greeting, then sent an uneasy glance past her and repeated, almost timidly, “Is he here?”

“No. He's been out of town all week, and he's due back tonight, but I guess he must have missed his original flight if he isn't here yet.”

Pressing her lips together, Jocelyn nodded. “I just wanted to say hi,” she murmured, and turned to leave. “I'll catch him another time…”

“Uh … wait!” Caroline called out on impulse, then had the horrible notion that she was making things worse. She could clearly see that Jocelyn was disconcerted to find a woman waiting for Brendan in his apartment. She could clearly see the impression Jocelyn had gotten; Caroline was barefoot, wore a T-shirt and shorts and looked perfectly at home. She could also see that Jocelyn was going to be mortified when she got over her initial confusion.

The woman seemed so utterly alone, standing there in the hall with a questioning look on her face, that Caroline wanted to drag her inside and explain exactly what was going on between Brendan and her, and how suddenly it had come to be, and apologize for upsetting her. But that would make it worse, she realized.

She pictured Elliot with that same expression of hurt he'd worn for a fleeting instant the Friday night before. Unfortunately, to mention Elliot to Jocelyn at this moment would possibly be the most insensitive thing Caroline had ever done.

So, instead, she said with an apologetic smile, “I'll tell Brendan you came by. I'm sure he'll give you a call.” Whether it had been her tone of voice, her smile or her words, something she'd done had made Jocelyn feel a little better, because she nodded a bit more confidently and then went off down the hall.

Caroline felt like a heel, but there wasn't any remedy for it. Quietly closing the door, she returned to the sofa and wondered what Brendan would think about what she'd done.

She should never have answered the door, she decided at length, but she couldn't do anything about that, either. It was done.

With a sigh, she slid lower on the leather, crossed her ankles, propped her feet on the low coffee table and let her head rest against the charcoal-brown cushion. She thought more about Jocelyn and about herself. She thought about why she felt so at home in Brendan's apartment and knew that it had little to do with the structural similarities to her own. There was something about Brendan's loft that was … that was … Brendan. She felt as comfortable here as she did in his arms. There was the same aura of safe haven, the same kind of cultured strength. And there was the same mild and subtle scent of musk and man. Of Brendan.